The training grounds were frequented by pretty much any student of the academy. It was a place where commotion and ruckus never died even when the amount of students was at its lowest. After all, no matter what you specialized in, spell-casting was the main property of a mage. You had to be able to dish out your fireballs and magic missiles at a moment's notice if you wanted to be competent, after all.

Well, considering Alec's situation, he was slightly behind on that topic. He could very well do some quick casting, but that wasn't enough to make him exceptional among his peers. Someone like Iris or Evan could already quad-cast simple magic such as fireballs, which was a bit discouraging for the more physically oriented Alec.

'It would be better if I found a solution to that,' he thought. However, he had a more important task at hand than that.

As the cheap special training room he had rented shone with bright purple lights, Alec's face lit up in excitement. By now, the room had become akin to a battlefield with all kinds of trash, furniture, books, and papers strewn around the floor. He hadn't touched the training chamber itself, but he would come to that later.

"This is incredible..." He muttered. In front of him, little specks of dust were rising into the air gently. They looked akin to a purple waterfall, albeit flowing upward instead of downward. And amidst those dust was a small pebble he had previously picked up on the way here.

The pebble was floating, however, it wasn't floating unstably like how telekinetic magic would make an object float. Normally, when a mage used telekinetic magic to make something float, they would apply a constant force that would be just right enough to keep it still. However, no matter how well accomplished the mage, it was impossible to adjust the force enough to keep the object from shaking or flailing ever so slightly.

Alec wasn't focusing on that though. He had simply cast a simple, first-circle magic, and the pebble stood perfectly still as if it was in a vacuum without gravity.

Once Alec took in the scenery to his satisfaction, he prodded the pebble away. It gently shifted through the air like a boat in a calm river before coming to a stop.

His heart started beating with excitement once again. He had been trying to replicate this magic for some time and had finally succeeded.

"Gravity magic..." He muttered. "The things I could do with this are endless," he said while imagining himself floating through the air with countless blades and weapons blossoming around him. He would point his fingers toward his enemies and they would either be flattened without ever knowing what happened to them or launch off the planet's atmosphere, boiling and suffocating in the vacuum of space.

'For now, though, I will have to make do with this,' he said. Striking a cool pose, Alec raised his finger toward the pebble. With the release of a bit of intent, the pebble shot out like a bullet, striking the reinforced glass covering the training chamber from the outside. It didn't manage to scratch the glass, but Alec hadn't expected that to happen either.

As the pebble crumbled into pieces, Alec decided to progress to the second level of his plan.

'So far, I have managed to recreate a first circle gravity spell that helps me manipulate the gravitational forces that affect an object, though there is a limit to the object's size,' Alec mentally noted. He quickly drew some conclusions by comparing this to other types of 1st circle magics and their relations to their respective branches. 'This could be the main spell of this branch. That is also probably why it has been so heavily scrutinized by the academia.'

This gravity magic had a very peculiar way of casting. Frankly, it felt different compared to the contemporary magic he was taught in the academy. This was to be expected, as he had scrapped it from the bits and pieces left from ancient times with the help of The Author's Pen, however, he hadn't expected it to be this different.

So far, most of the spells he had learned were immediate in execution or were sustained spells. This made him wonder why the spell realization stage of casting was even considered a stage. After all, it wasn't even a stage that required input. It was just the spell acting on its own.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Well, Alec was slowly but surely coming to a conclusion.

As far as he knew, modern magic was but a mere low-quality replica of ancient magic. What was scrapped was very minimal and fragmented. He himself had noticed this fragmentation with the classification of branches such as fire magic. In its essence, fire magic was just supposed to be particle magic, but today's magic world had somehow regressed and returned to thinking of the material world as if it was made up of elements such as fire, water, and so...

There were obviously some who noticed these branches contradicted themselves. After all, most spells had some relation to fire magic itself, even if they weren't necessarily related to flames and explosions. Hell, even water magic contained pieces of fire magic, which made Alec question the academic integrity of these expert mages.

With all these being said, the piece of gravity magic recovered by The Author's Pen was very different. The fact that it was made up of some esoteric magic matrices and seals aside, the very spell-casting process was more comprehensive. Once the magic circle was formulized, initialized, and actualized, it would be filled with mana, which was the same for any magic, really. However, the difference was that the realization stage of the gravity spell didn't immediately deplete all the mana in the circle. Instead, it would remain active for some time and let Alec manipulate it to his will until the energy ran out.

What Alec found weird about this aspect of the spell was the fact that it didn't contain any parts that would help him achieve such a thing. As far as Alec's understanding of magic went, this was akin to controlling a computer without using any interfacing peripherals like a mouse or a keyboard. How did he do it? He didn't know. But it worked out nonetheless, which brought another question to Alec's mind.

'What if I tried combining this circle with bits and pieces from the mana brain? Can't I create a proxy mini-brain of sorts that might function on its own? This wouldn't work with other spells as they are set in stone as soon as they enter the realization stage, but it might just work with gravity magic,' He thought excitedly. Being an author required a surprising amount of analytical creativity, which Alec could be lacking from time to time. Now, however, he felt full of inspiration. 'A semi-autonomous gravity spell would be cool. I would place it onto daggers and they would fly around on their own. Hell, If I have enough mana, I might even be able to form a network with the mana brain as the center. That means a highly coordinated assault on the enemies!'

Professor Andrew had told him an interesting piece of trivia upon one of his questions before. Apparently, as the mana brain lacked intent, it wasn't truly able to act on its own. It was very well capable of creating solutions to problems. However, it couldn't present itself with a problem.

A mana brain can only act and extrapolate on the main brain's orders, he had said.

This was the reason Alec was thinking of them as semi-autonomous. They wouldn't exactly be acting on their own, but it would be fine as long as he ordered them to hit the target as fast and hard as they could.

Formulating a plan, Alec took off his shirt and looked at the mana brain engraved on his chest. As he had found this piece of arcane inscription intriguing, he had asked Professor Andrew to teach him a certain piece of magical feat.

He brought both of his hands forward and tightened them into fists. Mana started coursing through his body, under his skin. A tingling sensation spread throughout, making him feel the pieces of magical nerve tendrils connecting the mana brain to his nervous system. However, that mana quickly surged further ahead and into his fists. Once it started piling up, Alec relaxed the index fingers and thumbs of both his hands, making a camera gesture in front of his chest.

The mana that had piled up inside his hands suddenly poured out, creating a blue, jello-like, square film between his fingers. Then, the mana brain magic circle on his chest spun in excitement before releasing a light. That light then became amplified by that mana film, which projected the mana brain magic circle in its true size to the opposite wall.

"This is still cool no matter how many times I do it," Alec muttered out loud. This was a method to see the image of a true-sized mana brain without having to copy it by hand from somewhere. It didn't really consume mana and was fun to do.

His eyes breezing through the magic circle and inspecting every detail within, a deep frown appeared on Alec's face. He had been really excited a short moment ago, seemingly filled with inspiration. But now, as if something was stopping him from properly reading the mana brain, he had lost that sparkle in his mind. No matter where his eyes looked, he couldn't find what he was looking for.

Slurping back the mana film with his hands, Alec sighed deeply. He had done well enough for now, and could always look into broader usage of gravity magic later. He was in no rush after all.

'Maybe when I go to the library, I will find some inspiration...'