“Stop! Enough! IT’S ENOUGH! Are you trying to annoy me to death!?” Alexei begged Alec to stop. Unfortunately for him, they had already started the game. Once a Magikard duel had begun, stopping it in the middle was considered dishonorable. He could just surrender, however, going down without a fight was not his cup of tea.

“Oh? Really?” Alec asked with a devilish smile on his face. Putting his hand on his chin and looking at his cards, he raised his hand again. “I think...” he muttered. His hand was about to hold a card from his deck, which made Alexei’s face shine with hope but for a brief moment. Then, his hand passed by the cards and touched a floating card.

The card was named Arcane Storm. Its name aside, it was actually just a lot of magic missiles bundled into one spell card. It was reusable but had no health, which meant that it would be destroyed once its magic core was hit. Of course, Alec made sure Alexei couldn’t do that by placing some tanky cards and deflection arrays, which left them in their current conundrum.

“I think I’m going to reactivate the Arcane Storm,” Alec said with a benign smile. Life drained from Alexei’s face, as little balls of mana started battering his cards, depleting their energy.

“You...” Alexei muttered. “You do know that you have to hit me with your cards to win, right?”

“Yep,” Alec answered nonchalantly. The card Arcane Storm only hit the enemy cards, not the player. Which made it a strategic, high mana-cost card that was only used once or twice per game against Swarmer-type decks. Alec, instead, was just using it to wipe the board again and again. What Alexei didn’t know was that Alec had a mana regeneration potion going, which refilled his mana reserves as he cast the spell time after time. “That was my turn.”

Sighing, Alexei looked through his cards before speaking.

“I didn’t want to do this to you, as you are technically a newbie player,” he said. However, a moment later, a resolute expression appeared on his face. “I play Suspension Field.”

He said as the card left his hand and formed a blue, transparent ball of energy in the air. Then, he hesitantly pulled out two other cards.

“Then, I use Octa-casting on this arcane lance,” he said as two cards left his hand and flew forward, creating 8 purple-colored lances blazing with pure mana. “I place the lances inside the suspension field and encase the field with teleportation wards before teleporting it.”

In an instant, Alexei’s ball of lances teleported right next to Alec’s Arcane Storm card. The suspension shield faded away as the lances launched at breakneck speed, dissipating the Arcane Storm, hitting Alec’s tanks from behind with amplified damage, and damaging Alec’s HP in the meantime.

“Huh...” Alec muttered dumbfoundedly. “Damn man, you really know how to play this thing, huh?”

Of course, this move had exhausted Alexei quite a bit. His mana reserves and mental energy were nearing depletion. Alec, on the other side, still had some mana to go. But he didn’t know how to win at all. His deck had been built entirely around wiping enemy units with the arcane storm and chipping away at Alexei’s health with his tank units, which was taking a long time.

“I surrender,” Alec said. Immediately, his remaining few tank cards became lifeless and fell to the ground.

“Huh, he pulled that strat’ on you too?” Evan asked before getting up from his chair and walking to their side. “Honestly, you kinda deserved it.”

“Yeah...” Alec muttered before gathering his cards into a deck and putting them back into their pouch.

It had been six days since his arrival at the dormitory. His days went by without any further problems. He would wake up, eat, shower, and go to the library to continue his studies. Of course, he would do it with the help of potions. Unlike the first time. He lowered the grade of the focus potions to very low quality. The low grade of the potion was too potent, unnecessarily so. Which was a waste of Alec’s precious mana.

After all, he could use that mana to play Magikards, which he had promptly become addicted to in a short amount of time. It was a very good method of training his mana control, especially for beginner mages like him.

What he realized while playing the game was, however, that some form of muscle memory had remained inside his body, making it much easier for him to learn the patterns of certain cards, presumably the ones the previous Alec had utilized a lot.

“Are you not going to the library today?” Evan asked. Placing the card pouch inside the drawer of his desk, Alec sat down on his chair in reverse, facing the center of the room.

“Nope. I just finished How to Magic yesterday,” Alec answered. His answer made all his friends in the room stop what they were doing and look at him.

“Seriously? You actually caught up in less than a week?” Evan tried to confirm. Alec thought briefly and shook his head.

“Theoretically. I still haven’t cast a spell yet,” he answered. Although he had finished reading and understanding the books, that didn’t translate into practical experience.

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“You should do pretty well. You’ve been playing the magikards for the whole day without any problems,” Alexei said after loudly closing his desk drawer. “Your mana control should be good enough for at least basic-level spells. You seem to have retained the necessary muscle memory to do so.”

“Really?” Alec asked while caressing his chin. Although he also felt confident, there was something that he was worried about. “I’m sorry but, will me not being able to use skills with the system be a problem?”

At his question, Alexei, Evan, and Thomas who had kept their silence up until now looked at each other. Then as if they were using telepathy, they nodded to each other as Evan started speaking.

“Not necessarily. You were capable of using spells before. Even in practical fights,” he said. Seeing Alec nod along, he continued explaining. “That is a great feat actually. Most people rely on the system’s semi-auto magic assist. You, on the other hand, were just raw-dogging the spell formulization process.”

“Oh, wait, isn’t that pretty hard? How did I even do that?” Alec asked. He had gained detailed knowledge about the spell-casting process and knew that it was hard for a mage to use spells without the system’s assistance. Evan shrugged in response.

“I have no idea. I think you pretty much sidestepped the issue with your telekinetic magic. But you never actually told me how you did so.”

“Oh, because talking about a mage’s specialization is taboo?” Alec asked, to which Evan nodded in answer. “Well, it is what it is. I’ll keep looking into telekinetic magic to figure out a way.”

“If you are going to do that, you might want to go to the training grounds,” Evan said. He had shown Alec around the academy before.

“Uhh...” Alec thought for a moment. With a small frown on his face, he nodded and left the room.

There was obviously a reason for him to be this reluctant to go to the training grounds.

‘That place should be a breeding ground for cliché antagonists to appear,’ he thought. He currently lacked the ability to cast spells, which made him wary of potential 3rd rate villain characters. ‘They might even be waiting somewhere to watch students struggling with casting basic-level magic spells to bully them.’

However, unfortunately, practicing magic anywhere else in the academy without the necessary authorization was strictly forbidden. Other than certain utility spells, all magic would be caught by the academy’s ward array and promptly returned to the user.

The training grounds were about 200 meters from the dorms. It had a floor made of paved dirt, just hard enough to make it durable while just soft enough so that students didn’t die by falling over and hitting their heads.

There were different magically enhanced dummies placed in an orderly manner, each having different functionalities. Some were more resistant against certain magic types while the others deflected the spells back to the sender.

It was covered with eight-meter-tall stone walls from each side, protecting the outside from the spells being flung around inside.

Looking around, Alec approached the entrance. However, when he got closer, Alec noticed an almost invisible, blueish barrier blocking the way. Turning his head slightly to his right, he noticed a booth.

“Umm...”

“Free practice? Special practice? Private practice? The fees are lower because the semester hasn’t started yet,” a gray-haired man manning the booth said. Without thinking much, Alec asked for free practice, which promptly got a long sigh from the man. “Cheapstakes... Here. Don’t forget to give it back while leaving.”

Looking at the talisman the man gave him, Alec nodded and passed by the barrier. The training grounds at this hour were somewhat crowded. Out of every 3 training dummies, one was occupied by a student trying out all kinds of different spells. Between each dummy, there seemed to be an invisible, corridor-like barrier that stopped stray spells from hitting other people’s dummies, or worse, other people.

Approaching one of the dummies, Alec took a deep breath and started thinking about the books he had read so far.

For a ranged mage, the best spell to learn first was the magic missile. It was described as being “cheap, simple, and effective” in the book Magic 101. It was also a very versatile spell, causing more than a hundred variant spells to branch off.

Picking his first spell to attempt, Alec flipped through a mental image of the book in his mind and found the page where the magic missile was described.

Most spells were made up of 4 different stages.

The first stage was the spell formulization stage, where the mental image of a spell’s magic circle is formed inside the mind and pulled to the real world. This image is turned into something called intent, which is actually an extension of the caster’s mind. The stage where the system’s magic assistance would’ve helped him was this one. If he wasn’t a cripple of course.

Remembering the necessary information, Alec forced his mind to the best of his capabilities, trying to remember the magic circle for the magic missile. Even for a simple spell, it was relatively complicated and hard to imagine. Even with Alec’s increased mind stat, it was troubling to maintain the image.

Fortunately, he barely managed to complete the formulization stage.

The second stage was spell initialization, where the caster would reinforce the framework made from the intent with mana. This was the stage where the magic circle would become visible to the naked eye.

Reaching out to his reserves, Alec pulled out some mana and fused the mental image with mana while raising his palm to face forward, toward the dummy. This caused a magic circle to slowly form slightly further away from his palm. However, this circle was jagged and crooked, barely able to maintain its shape.

For now, though, it held on.

Going on to the third stage, Alec had to complete the spell actualization stage. He would spin the mana inside the framework in a circular motion without breaking the intent, which in turn, would manifest the spell from inside the magic circle.

Alec’s magic circle, in accordance with his mana, started slowly spinning. Small trails of mana started seeping from the circle, forming into a small, pitiful magic missile. By this point, Alec had exhausted himself a lot. He didn’t even have the focus to spare to wipe off the beads of sweat on his forehead.

Finally, he had reached the fourth and last stage of casting a spell. Spell realization was the stage where the function of the spell would be realized. Which in this case was the magic missile launching forward in a straight line and battering the target.

Trying to push the spell away with his intent while cutting off the mana stream from his hand, Alec felt the spell finally separating from him, becoming a real, physical thing. Which made him overjoyed. Which in turn, caused the spell realization stage to fail and the magic missile to dissipate before leaving his hand.

“Oh come on... I put so much work into that...” Alec muttered with a frown on his face. Sitting down on the paved dirt of the training grounds, he started catching his breath.

‘It seems that I still have a long way to go...’