CHAPTER 113 DAY ONE
I woke up the next morning feeling relatively refreshed. I’d always had trouble sleeping well on Earth. I very rarely woke up feeling like I’d actually gotten a good night's sleep. Here that was a completely different story, all this despite the fact that my bed wasn’t anywhere nearly as comfortable as my one on Earth had been.
Maybe it had to do with me being turned into an elf? I wasn’t entirely sure, but I wasn’t going to be complaining about it.
Today was set to be my first day of the classes they wanted me to take. I was relatively excited. One of the options Fiona and her party had discussed for me was potentially going to a school and learning more about magic and stuff in this world.
I had rejected the idea at the time, but not because I wasn’t interested. Mainly because it wouldn’t lead to me getting stronger right away, and at the time I needed to get stronger more quickly.
Penny was…
My good morning came to a screeching halt as I sat in my bed. My goal had been to get stronger for Penny.
I missed her.
I sat on the edge of my bed and idly rubbed the part of my shoulder where my arm would’ve connected if I still had it. The arm I had lost while saving Penny from being sacrificed to demons in a ritual.
I still wasn’t entirely sure what their goal had been.
Adrian stirred and sat up with a loud yawn and a stretch. He looked over at me with sleepy eyes and started wiping at them in an effort to wake up.
“Mornin’ Alex.” He greeted as he stood up from his bed stretching some more and started going about his daily rituals.
When I didn’t respond he glanced over at me.
“Whoah, hey you alright man?”
I looked up at him, I guess I had a look on my face. But I wasn’t entirely sure what that look was since I knew I wasn’t crying at least.
I took a long moment to think about my answer before I replied.
“No.”
I then stood up and quickly dressed myself, magicking up an arm during the process. I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door quickly.
I wasn’t in the mood to talk about why I wasn’t in a good mood, and I knew he would ask if I gave him the chance. People who wanted to help generally did. Not that it was a bad thing. Just annoying at the moment.
I double-checked to make sure I had everything that I needed, I had my book, some spare paper, and a thinnel to write with. I pursed my lips at the thought of using the wretched utensil. I wasn’t even sure why I disliked it, I just did.
After making sure that I had everything that I needed I started making my way to the classroom that was supposed to be where the class was taught. Making it there, I double-checked the room number and double-checked the number on the sheet of paper Katherine had given me.
After making sure they matched, I opened the double doors and made my way inside, and I was the first person there. Given that it was still a few hours before the class was supposed to start, that made sense.
I went ahead and found a seat situated in the middle of the room and sat down there.
The room itself was built like a lecture hall, although a bit smaller in scale. Designed to hold maybe fifty to one hundred people rather than hundreds at the same time.
At the front of the room, there was something reminiscent of a chalkboard. If I had to take a guess it was a magical variant that cleaned off more easily than a chalkboard or a whiteboard did. I idly flipped through the first few pages of my book. I had already read through the first hundred or so pages of the five-hundred-page textbook they’d given me.
Most of it was pretty dull, and while it was useful information to know, a lot of it I already knew instinctively because it just made sense that was how things worked.
For example, a conflict between a fire user and an ice user. If they’re both in the fourth tier or above, or possibly even the third tier, and they fight, there’s a really good chance they could create a tornado.
Or at least heavily disrupt airflow in a way that’s detrimental to the ecosystem. You don’t necessarily think about these things, but once it’s brought up it’s an ‘oh yeah,’ kind of moment. Hot air rises, and cold air sinks. Have this happen in close enough proximity to each other over and over and eventually, a funnel will form.
I was no stranger to tornadoes. I used to live in Tornado Alley. In fact, some of the most devastating tornadoes in human history happened relatively close to where I had lived. I remember helping out with disaster relief efforts after it had hit. The tornado had done something like $2 billion in damages.
Not a small number that’s for sure.
I flipped the book closed and decided to wile away the hours by fiddling with my magic, despite all this time it was still a novelty to me.
I wasn’t sure that I would ever get bored.
***
Several hours later saw more people start filtering into the room, most of them gave me a cursory glance but didn’t say anything. Some of the looks were relatively hostile, it was hard to tell if it was because of the curse or if they were just angry people in general.
I doubt it mattered either way, I probably wasn’t going to make it through the entirety of this class without an issue arising.
It would particularly suck if the teacher ended up having a problem with me as well.
At that point, I’d probably just go to Katherine or Mortimer if I could. Something something, let the people in charge handle issues instead of taking them into my own hands.
Everyone who came in gave me a wide berth and sat practically anywhere else but the section of seats I had picked out for myself.
Not that I minded all that much myself. I continued to amuse myself by playing with my magic, trying to create increasingly complex structures with electricity and wood.
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Inventors from Earth would have had a field day with the magic system of this world. The inventions they could have created would have been out of this world. We would have hit the space age practically hundreds of years earlier.
After another thirty minutes or so, the last few people in the class seemed to trickle in. There were roughly thirty of us in all.
An average-sized class by Earth standards. Or I guess by the U.S. standards, not necessarily by the world. Although the one other country I had lived in said that it was relatively similar in class size to the U.S.
Then in walked a person I could only assume was the professor. She looked fairly young, around my age of mid-20s. Although that didn’t necessarily mean anything in a world of magic, for all I knew she was in her fifties or later.
[Level 973]
Right on the cusp of hitting the fourth tier as well. I was curious about whether or not she had a teaching class or if she had purely combative classes like most people I had met so far.
I guess I’d been putting myself in positions where meeting people with pure combat classes was going to be the case, it’s not like I was going to find a farmer fighting in the middle of a demon invasion. At least I hoped I wouldn’t.
Although I could see a farmer taking up a pitchfork or a hammer and defending his home. It just seemed like a natural flow of how things would go if his farm got invaded.
The woman made it to the front of the room and sat her stuff down by the desk up front. It really was uncanny how similar this room was to the way we did things on Earth. She then walked over to the board and pulled out something that looked extremely similar to the Expo markers that everyone used to use on Earth.
“Alright everyone,” the woman announced, “I am Teradine Selzin, you can just refer to me as Tera.”
She then wrote her name on the board in the rigid runic structure that people used in this world.
“And this class is Beginners Magical Application. I’ll be honest, it’s a boring class. A lot of the start is going to be filled with stuff most of you probably already know. But this information is useful. Ever since we’ve started teaching our recruits this, deaths in the field have dropped by 15%. If you pay attention, you might get to be one of those 15%. If you don’t…”
She let the implied threat hang in the air as she gave everyone a stern look. She had gray eyes that really complimented the look, despite her stern expression she didn’t seem like a hateful individual, more someone who just took what they did very seriously.
As she should honestly, this isn’t the kind of profession you screw around in. That tends to get people killed and you court-martialed.
Did they even have court-martials here? They probably did and just called them something else, that would make sense.
“The goal for these classes is to get you up to speed and make sure that everyone is at a comparable point in education and skills in a month. After a month we’ll put you with teams of three to four. We’ll balance them based on what we know about your skills for your initial assessments. If you have problems with your team kindly get over it.”
She took a moment to look over everyone as she said that.
“You’re all adults here, act like it. If you don’t like someone, keep it to yourself, swallow your pride, and work with them for the good of humanity. If you can get your egos under check you’ll make it far in life. This I can promise you.
“With that out of the way, let's get this class underway. We’ve got four hours to work with here, and I plan to make the most of them.
“To start with we will give a basic explanation of magic and what it is just so we all understand the fundamental definition. Magic is the name we apply to the external manifestations of skills, system-guided or not, that are fueled by mana.
“To clarify, this does exclude physical skills and techniques that are fueled on stamina, given that most of you are in this class and not the other your classes primarily function off of mana, there are some similarities between the courses and structures of the skills themselves, but there’s a lot more diversity in magic that needs a more nuanced approach. We initially taught the courses together, but in the past two years, we’ve split them up and received great success in doing so. It allows for more specific approaches and lessons along with a deeper understanding of the nature of your individual classes that you wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Most people seemed lost at a lot of what was happening. I was relatively used to professors not telling us to do every little thing, most people wouldn’t take notes until they were told to do so. And if you weren’t ready for it, half the class would be done before you even considered getting out a sheet of paper.
Something I definitely hadn’t fully been prepared for in a lot of my early classes in college.
This time I was ahead of the curve, I managed to spawn a small bud of a flower on my wooden arm that had a good view of my paper, and from there I just allowed one of my extra minds to take over my writing and I didn’t even have to look down to see the paper to make sure I was writing straight.
It took a little effort to keep down the smile trying to plaster itself on my face. But thankfully I had a lot of discipline and was able to do so without too much trouble.
“Magic is used for a lot of things and is at the core center of many of our inventions and technologies that we develop. Without magic, we’d still be using unenchanted gear and our gear itself would be much cruder. With inventions made through magic, we’re able to purify our metals as we gather them even further beyond what the miner’s skills allow, creating more precise tools, allowing us to create more precise inventions.
“This then creates a sort of feedback loop that we’re seeing today, where technology is increasing at a rapid pace. As such we now have time for inventions like these markers, or the thinnels that you use to write with. These were an indirect result of an enchanting experiment to create a perpetual energy system. The runes used weren’t able to provide enough energy to directly power the item they were supposed to in the given surface area of the machine, but they produce enough power to supplement items like these here. Something much lower cost and easier to handle.”
Interesting, they were technologically advanced enough to be trying to create something like perpetual motion machines? I mean, physics just doesn’t allow for such a thing to exist… Probably?
It definitely wasn’t possible on Earth, that’s for sure. Maybe it was possible here? Assuming physics here is different than how it was where I came from. If it’s the same with just the added difference of magic and the system, well, then it was a lost cause.
I wondered what other things they built up that were new and that just hadn’t fully circulated the kingdom or the continent. Maybe there were self-driving carriages. That would be amusing. Self-driving cars were only just starting to be a thing when I was pulled here. They were… safe enough to ride in, but very much still a work in progress.
“Now we have a somewhat basic understanding of magic and what it’s used for, what powers magic?”
She looked around the room. Evidently, the question wasn’t rhetorical.
She arched an eyebrow imperiously, “Seriously? Not one of you knows what powers magic? It’s not a trick question.”
I frowned a little before deciding to raise my hand, her head snapped over to me and she gestured with her hand indicating for me to speak.
“Mana,” I answered simply.
She smiled lightly, “I’m glad at least one of you is paying attention somewhat. Yes, mana. Mana is the energy renewed within a closed system, whether it’s biological or mechanical in nature, that’s then used to fuel magic, in the form of skills or not. Specifically magic skills are used to reference magic that is guided by the system versus just plain magic which is done by technique rather than letting the system handle the casting for you. The same holds true for our physical counterparts in that aspect as well.”
I quickly wrote all that down while I contemplated it at the same time. That was interesting, specifically that the definitions for things were so… precise. It’s something I was used to with Earth but didn’t expect to see in such a fantasy, medieval setting.
I liked it. Mana is something that was generated in something like perhaps a battery and then used to power magic. Mana wasn’t also limited to being something that we had either, thus the idea that something like a mana-draining skill could work on anything that had mana.
It was such a scientific definition that answered so many questions I might have had within its own definition. It was absolutely beautiful.
The textbook for this class may have been extremely dull, but the class itself was extremely enlightening.
I was definitely going to enjoy these next four hours.