“You better pick your friend over there and run away.” Marissa scowled at the light mage. His gaze was lost, he probably suffered a mild concussion from the shockwave. “Now!”
Marissa’s eyes leaked invisible mana, slightly glowing, but the razor-sharp purple winds around her were more intimidating than the glowing irises. Her aura was enriched with arcane energies and wild storms, enough to infuse fear in someone. Instantly the remaining noble got up and grabbed his friend, carrying him away without looking back.
I dispelled my Mana Void and Astral Projection, then I promptly fell to the ground. Not only I was mentally exhausted after conjuring such complicated spells in tandem and dispelling a lot of them, but also consuming all mana in my soul in a matter of seconds. I chuckled as I noticed I hadn’t even used the spell that caused me so much trouble.
“Are you alright?” Marissa asked as I caught my breath. She canceled all her active spells as I did so.
“Perfectly fine.” My voice was rough, but I believed my own words. “I just need a short rest.”
“Why didn’t you counterattack?” Her tone was filled with doubt and anger. “You could have easily whipped them!”
“Violence inspires violence.” I lectured as if I was an old hermit monk.
“You don’t believe that.” Marissa didn’t buy it.
“I do think about it, but you are right about not being my main motive.” I sighed. “If my instincts don’t fail me, messing with the nobility won’t bring any good.” Oh, how I hated classism.
My mother had made me aware to not involve myself in trouble before going to the academy. Especially trouble involving highborn.
“Mmm.” Marissa pouted as she looked at me.
“I know, I know. You are not happy about it.” My head had cleared a bit now, so I decided to chug down the mana potion to fill my almost empty mana pool. “Ugh, Adrian was right, it should be illegal for something to taste this foul.”
I got a sizeable boost to my physical mana pool and also to my passive regeneration, but it wasn’t enough. I spellcasted Mana Reservoir, the upgraded six-star version of Mana Pond, accelerating my innate low regeneration rate.
And I found myself again without any mana… I mean, what did I expect? Mana potions were expensive and hard to make, and this was a test made in a beginner’s class.
“So… when combat broke out, why you still were on the defensive?” Marissa sat by my side on the bench, both of us surrounded by the construct’s purple light.
“I wanted to humiliate them,” I responded sincerely, a linger of anger crackling down. “Losing a two versus two? Fair fight. Two versus one? That’s pathetic. Also, they looked pretty stupid, so being beaten by a girl must be extra humiliating to them.”
“Hey! I’m stronger than most guys!” She poked at me.
“Don’t worry, I know. But entitled kids like them always feel superior to everyone else. They are normally narcissists, egocentrics, classists, and sexists. Basically, the whole package of living garbage.”
“Huh, you let out a lot of words.” Marissa grinned as her gaze shifted to the dome. “So, you were actually angry at them.”
“Of course, I was angry,” I replied as I scratched my left ear. “I just don’t show it like a headless chicken, unlike someone I know.”
“Who are you calling a headless chicken?” She hit me gently on my shoulder, a warming smile saluting me. “By the way, what did you do with my last spell? I totally lost control of it, and it suddenly exploded.”
“Oh, that? I hijacked it?” I dismissed the fact as I checked on the reserves of my soul. Not even a quarter full. I even managed to drain my soul mana in that exchange.
“How?” It seemed like my plentiful, lengthy, novel-like description wasn’t enough of my actions weren’t enough.
“Basically, in an abridged way, I overwhelmed your spell with pure arcane mana to the point the spell was no longer yours, but mine.” I lectured her.
Even if my explanation was fundamentally flawed as I had also used soul mana. But that was more because I had used Astral Projection as a proxy to flow my mana across the air.
Hey, I did end up using the spell. Maybe just not in an intended way.
“Wait, is that even possible?” She explained her doubt as it went against what she knew of magical theory. “Shouldn’t the spell just have dissipated once I lost control?”
“And it did, I just delayed the inevitable for a few seconds.” I reminded her of the firework-like explosion the spell let out when it fizzled out. “It just so happens that I managed to take a sizeable chunk of control enough to deflect the enemy ray and then shove the unstable spell away.”
“I don’t know, it seems too far-fetched.” Marissa stated in a meditative manner.
“I abused a bit my Arcane affinity to mana-weave at levels beyond what should be possible to me.”
“High affinity is too powerful, huh.” She scoffed.
“Yes, high affinity is unfair, ha ha.” I laughed nervously.
I felt a bit bad that I continued lying to her about my magical status. I resolved myself to tell her the truth one day, though today wasn’t the right one. But I would do it, and I was resolved in doing it. Some day.
An awkward silence bloomed between us, but Marissa was prone to cut them. “Can you do that against every spell?”
“Can I? Hmm… Let me think.” I laid down my body on the bench in exhaustion.
Magic was wildly inconsistent because sometimes it followed rules of physics like conservation of energy, but other times ignored many others. Maybe it was because of my lack of education, but the conjuration of magic through wizardry and sorcery did follow an undefined set of rules. There were rules, but it was hard to discern which they were.
“Elemental magic is easy enough that I can do it without much afterthought as you have seen.” I have explained. “But that’s because they are easy and visual, more complex magic like Void or Time would be considerably harder to hijack because it requires knowledge of the inner workings of the spell. And I don’t have any knowledge on any of the affinities, to begin with.”
“What about Arcane and Soul? You have plenty of domain over them.” Marissa was paying close attention to my explanation as her focused and methodical eyes glimmered.
“That’s… there are certain problems with the nature of both elements.” I exhaled as I quickly found plenty of reasons why hijacking such elements would be difficult.
“And they are…?” She inquired about my explanation.
“Arcane is the element of the mana-weavers, so it’s not strange to assume that an arcanist can regain control of a hijacked spell, or directly prohibit such action.”
“Hmm…” Marissa wasn’t convinced by my argument. “While your point makes sense, that implies that only arcanists focused on mana-weaving would be able to resist it, am I wrong?”
“No, you are totally right.” I noticed the weak point in my statement. “If it was one of those arcanists that simply treated the Arcane element as a standard elemental magic, they would have no chance of resisting it.”
“What about Soul then?” Marissa was clearly eager to hear my explanation as she had developed a love-hate relationship with the element as she had experienced first-hand its effects.
“I think Soul might be the trickiest.” I expressed my doubt. “Maybe there’s a better way to hijack spells, but following the method I used, to hijack soul magic I must get into the soul of another person. And as you can guess, that’s a bad thing.”
“Is it really necessary to enter the soul, can’t you just overwhelm the spell with mana as you did?”
“Honestly? I don’t know, I am theorizing so hard that we might be wrong from the very beginning.” I exhaled deeply from exhaustion. “But Soul, and to an extent soul mana, is mainly metaphysical. Mana, while is energy, is a physical thing. I can’t just use a rock to hit a ghost.” I explained it with a decent analogy.
“But it would be funny if you did so.” Marissa grinned.
“Yes, I guess it would.” I smiled alongside her.
“Well, are you ready to train now?” She metaphorically slapped me on the face.
I had totally forgotten the reason why we had come to the training ground in the first place after everything that happened. I examined my mana pool to see my body pool half full, and the soul one at maximum capacity.
“Sure enough.” I said with a groan, my tired body having difficulties getting up from the bench.
The training grounds were simple, in the same sense everything was simple in this academy. Sure, it was ‘just’ a rectangular field filled with sand and coarse dirt, but upon close look, one could discern a plethora of wards.
Whilst these wards were actually simple, there were a few of them. Some boosted mana regeneration, others reduced the sensation of pain, and a few of them granted protection to the outside, making a paper-thin transparent barrier that should guard onlookers from rogue attacks.
I stood in a painted white circle on the ground and Marissa did the same on the other extreme of the field. I gave her a nod and she responded with excitation.
“Ready or not, here I go!” Marissa shouted a battle cry as she rose upwards the skies riding a tornado miniature.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Not really ready but bring it on.” I put on a basic arcane barrier to deflect quick attacks.
As I had chosen to specialize in mana-weaving, Marissa had done the same for her Wind affinity. Her approach was a curious one as she preferred to use a plethora of passive spells to enhance her reaction time and movement speed.
Such combat style would only leave her vulnerable to the mana-draining capabilities of arcanists, but she had developed a budget artillery magic to counter absorption of mana and dispelling.
Her quick-paced style was born between our frequent sparring at Thal’mer park. Not only evasion was good to fly around trees, but my self-imposed handicap was what made this possible. Against Marissa, I decided to employ soul magic, a slow, not combat-oriented magic, but strong enough to knock down in one hit opponents that didn't possess soul resistance.
Which was basically every single person in this world.
The aeolian projectile approached me at obscene speeds, clearly boasting her movement capabilities. This was an archetype match, Marissa was nimble and ferocious, but could only withstand one attack. Meanwhile, I was slow and methodical but could take up a beating. Rogue against warrior. Glass cannon against wall. You get the idea.
Marissa spellcasted a dozen wind daggers, nothing beyond a cantrip, that impacted against my barrier. She knew the weakness of this way of fighting, multiple attacks.
I could easily dispel a five-star spell if given enough time, but tens of attacks? It didn’t matter if they were two-stars or cantrips, the change of focus between each projectile took time and I wasn’t fast enough to dispel them all. That was why I was currently using a rough proactive defense mechanism like the barrier I had spellcasted, instead of my reactive and more mana-efficient mana-weaving.
Either way, I had promised I would mostly use soul magic. Shame there weren’t Soul defensive spells that didn’t involve only protecting the soul. Did it make sense? Yes. Did it suck being unable to use soul barriers as a physical defense? Also, yes.
I threw a concentrated ball of soul mana before me, a totally invisible attack that didn’t affect the physical world. With a smirk, Marissa dodged to the side, clearly expecting it an invisible menace.
As my surprise attack failed, I started running away. She would catch me anyways, but I had prepared an ambush while doing so. Extracting fragments of my soul, I littered the training grounds with levitating intangible mines which were, of course, undetectable.
And no, fragmenting my soul didn’t hurt. It was like cutting one’s nails, a minimal fraction of the body that didn’t affect the whole. Even then, with my latest advances in soul healing magic, mending my soul was a matter of a single cast.
It also happened that my soul was far bigger than others. And I didn’t mean other people of my age, but in general. So, in a weird way, I was keeping my soul growth in check by carefully shedding needless parts away.
I feared what would happen if my soul became bigger than my actual physical body.
Marissa stopped dead still in her tracks sensing something was wrong. How did she know about the minefield? We kept secrets from each other in order to ensure a better sparing, it was always funny to reveal a new secret weapon. But her battle instincts were paranormal.
For example, I was using right now a secret spell I had never told anyone about. I had never stopped running or looked behind at any moment, yet I never lost Marissa from sight. This was the Soul Sight spell.
An interesting spell that emitted a faint pulse of soul mana and allows the caster to know the position of the souls around. So, technically, I could fight Marissa with my eyes closed. It would still be difficult and challenging, but infinitely easier than doing it without my sense of sight.
“What are you waiting for?” I finally stopped and taunted her. “Come get me!”
She didn’t buy it, carefully examining her surroundings. As she looked at the minefield, I began casting the upgraded seven-star version of Astral Projection. While the casting was slower and consumed more mana, it also was a lot easier to control, making it possible to move at the same time with my avatar.
After a few seconds filled with intense thinking, Marissa unloaded a fan of wind knives towards the minefield. To my surprise, multiple mines were broken in contact with the concentrated mana projectiles. Not too unexpected as I had thrown tens upon tens of mines and only used a spec of my mana pool.
“You know you can just walk around it?” I suggested to her. “You haven’t even destroyed half of the constructs.”
And I know what you must be thinking right now. How could she destroy my soul mines when I’ve just told soul mana didn’t exist in the physical world?
The answer is that… it technically did? Soul mana was one of the most complex mana types because it adopted the properties of the soul and mana. Which meant that it was simultaneously physical and metaphysical. Unless you interacted with it, soul mana purely existed on another plane. But if you intended to interact with it, you could… interact with it.
Yeah… I already got a headache a time ago as I remembered that soul mana and light shared this curious property of changing their state. Though there was a minimal difference. Light behaved like a wave or a particle. You could say light behaved as energy and matter. But common mana already did that! So soul mana had an order of complexity higher as, beyond these properties, it also interacted with another plane of existence.
Magic didn’t deserve to be this complicated.
So, to sum up, soul mana could be affected by other magical constructs, albeit to a lesser degree than other types, and it also was innately invisible to the naked eye, unlike arcane mana.
“Meh, it’s funny to ensure some chaos, don’t you think?” Marissa nonchalantly commented as she unleashed more fans of knives.
Like my soul minefield, it had to be a cheap spell as she just kept on giving more and more. To be honest, my soul mines weren’t actually a spell, but a cheap trick. Lesser than a cantrip, they were unstructured magic. One-star magic. They didn’t require mana or casting time, which made them quite useful. If one ignored the fact I need to sever my own soul, it was a pretty neat thing.
By the time she made considerable damage to the minefield, I had already finished casting the upgraded Astral Projection, and I thought to myself, could I continue distracting her while my avatar crept toward her?
And so, I did. “You have a really bad aim.” Taunting was the main part of the job.
“Do I? I don’t sense that many floating things now.” So she could really sense the mines, huh.
“You know I can just cast more?” I told her even if casting wasn’t the correct term.
“I don’t think so, maybe one or two times more, you can spam such spell.” Oh, ho ho. How wrong you are Marissa. Because I use my own soul as a catalyst for the spell, it was much more efficient to cast than you might have thought.
“Cometh forward then, I believe you are up to this challenge of mine.” I didn’t really know what I had said, I just wanted to taunt her.
“I’m on my way.” She continued throwing knives as if she were an explorer clearing a jungle with a machete.
Thanks to my meaningless conversation, my Astral Projection approached Marissa menacingly, camouflaging with its innate invisibility, as it walked across the spiritual plane.
The moment I was ready to jump onto her, my construct would become semi-physical, therefore becoming visible to her. I needed to be careful to not alert her.
I maintained my poker face while looking at her, she was too distracted throwing endless projectiles to detect the shadow assassin behind her. Then…
She jumped to the skies with the most powerful burst of air available to her, even I, who was a good fifteen meters away, tumbled a bit from the shockwave. Her body elevated tens of meters up, I had to greatly tilt my head to have a good look at her.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice your distractions and the Astral Projection?” Oh damn, I underestimated her greatly. The currents of air got stronger around her.
As the wind goddess herself, she fell down from the skies with a spear made of wind. She had been waiting all this time, having the spells on standby. There was no way I would dispel the spear as it looked like a six-star, minimum. She was far too close, and I didn’t have my Mana Void to assist me.
I accepted my defeat with open arms.
*******
I found myself waiting in a queue after sparring with Marissa. We did some more rounds, sometimes I would use only arcane magic, other times exclusively my soul, and finally both. The last round was won by me without a chance of victory in Marissa’s favor.
The halls of the academy were bustling with people even though classes were already over, and it was the last day of class for the week. On second thought, it was probably because it was the end of the week. People always tended to do things last minute, no matter the species or the world.
Contrary to the dullness of the utilitarian library, the reception hall rejoiced on the typical ellari overdecoration. All furniture was made from lavender wood which pleased the eye, with a plethora of purely esthetical inscriptions. A chandelier of gold emitted light from magical means, illuminating the room with multiple Mage Light cantrips.
Whilst I patiently waited for my turn, I did some pseudo-spiritual meditation. Unlike the normal one, which could be detected by sufficiently advanced mages or arcanists, this one happened on my soulspace, which was untraceable even to high-level psychimancers.
“Next.” The lady at the desk announced with a deadbeat tone. “What would you like, sir?”
It was weird being referred to as a sir while being twenty-two. Maybe for humans that would be true, but even some ellari were opposed to the idea of considering thirty-year-old ‘adults’. The lady at the desk didn’t care about the honorifics, so I decided neither should I.
“I would like to file a report of an assault on my person.” I stated.
She rose her left brow on responded. “Would you kindly elaborate on the matter?”
Why was I doing such a thing? To avoid the upcoming response from the high ellari duo. I knew how those types of kids thought. Whether noble or not, entitled brats always look at their parents or tutors for help when something went south. It was obvious there would be retaliation on their part even if they deserve it. Acting was mandatory according to my point of view.
“Of course.” I nodded. “Today I found myself waiting for my partner at the training grounds when, suddenly, a pair of boys attacked me.” I added a pause at the ‘suddenly’ trying to be affected by the events.
The lady picked up a paper that appeared to be a complaint request, but instead of lending it to me, she began writing on the paper.
“You say that you were waiting alone?” She asked for confirmation.
“That’s right.” I affirmed.
“Did you do anything to provoke them?” She inquired monotonously while reading the questions on the formulary.
“I did not,” I responded. “Though they said something about being on the ‘noble’s zone’.”
The lady’s expression soured even further at that response. “Did you attack back against verbal response or self-defense?” She continued with the questions, now with a glimpse of worry in her voice.
“I did not leash at any case. I remained totally defensive the whole encounter, not attacking physically or verbally in any shape or form.” I added.
Someone could argue that the redirection of Marissa’s spell, which provoked the light mage to fall to the ground, could be considered an offense. But my intent was to save them, so… Yeah.
“Did something else happened?” Oh, she had seen through my half-truths.
“My partner came to defend me when they physically and magically assaulted me.” I wanted to keep the description of events vague, but the lady knew better than that.
“And I suppose this partner of yours used a rather aggressive defense?” She commented while continuing to write on the paper.
“Only after I was threatened and assaulted by physical and magical means.” The lady rose her face when I stopped talking, looking for explicit confirmation. “But yes.”
“Well, according to your descriptions of never lashing out, remaining defensive, and the fact that your partner had only sprung to defense after the other party had committed so many infractions, your petition will be probably accepted.”
Probably. Ferilyn Meritocracy my ass. I did it all correctly, acting passive whilst my person was being attacked, I reported the incident before the others distorted the events, and all I get is a probably? I felt as if I was grounded in a classist society, rooted in unfairness.
Weirdly enough, I wasn’t angry, I just sighed in defeat. I was better than those self-proclaimed nobles, living off their genes and the past achievements of their ancestors.
“Wait a moment.” The lady called for my attention before I parted ways. “Can I have some examples of the threats and verbal abuse to your person?”
“Give me a second.” I cleared my throat. “’Will have to teach you a lesson’, ‘die commoner’, ‘scum’ and ‘lowlife’. Maybe I’m forgetting some, let me think.” I tapped my finger on the desk before coming up with it. “’Rats’ not the worst they said, but it also was one of those.”
The clerk looked at me with disbelief. I enjoyed the fleeting instant when I said ‘die commoner’ and her expression momentarily change to ‘these damned nobles’.
“Emm…” She needed a second to recover from my onslaught. “Such proofs will ease the acceptance of the petition. If the offender has repeated infractions, it will rather easy to pass through. If it makes you feel better.” The lady added the last part with a whisper.
“I understand.” I bowed and left my space on the queue open.
I highly doubted that those nobles had committed any previous offenses as they seemed to be freshmen like me. A week gives only so much time to do things, no matter how long ten days can be.
I had a day and a half of free time to do whatever I please. Because we were still in the first week, there wasn’t any homework. Even if there were, I would have finished it already before the weekend.
For now, I would comfort myself with a relaxing cup of steaming tea and then, maybe (most certainly), spend some time at the library examining the tome shrouded in mystery.
Funny that my only quest, at the moment, was guessing who wrote spells on a book bigger than myself.