Chapter 24: Skill issue
Felix Sythias’s POV:
Saying goodbye to the professor, I walked out the classroom. I looked around but couldn’t see Alex anywhere. I searched the hallway for a bit, then shrugged. He must have gone ahead without me. I went outside and still couldn’t find Alex anywhere. Weird. Maybe he was using the toilet?
I sat down at our table—the same one we used yesterday—and went ahead and ate by myself. I was hungry, and I’d finish the meal in seconds, anyway. Said meal was just some deboned porkchops I’d marinated in some spices. It was alright, though a little too salty.
It was probably for the best that I ate lunch by myself, since it gave me a moment to think. Last night’s revelations had been an eye opener and explained much of what had been going on with me this past… week? I couldn’t really tell when the crush started. Maybe it was down in the cave? Or maybe it was after he came out to me? I knew that’s when I started thinking about it, but had I been feeling things before that, too? I didn’t know, nor did it matter much. My feelings and thoughts were there regardless of when they started.
The crush explained why I felt a thrill every time I made Alex smile, and why every little touch left me wanting for more. I’d thought I was just starved for touch—and to be fair, I probably was, too—but this explained it much better. Even now I felt regret for cutting the cuddling short this morning; I felt it was necessary though.
Aside from that, very little had actually changed. Alex was still Alex, and I was still myself. The only thing that had changed was that I now knew a little more about myself. Apparently I had a soft spot for kind, considerate men with darker scales, ridges down their spine, and red rings around their eyes. Who knew? Well, I did, now.
Before I knew for certain that I had this crush, I hadn’t been sure what to do about it. Stars, I was stupid yesterday. The answer was so simple: do nothing. It really was that simple. I’d do nothing, and it would eventually fade. It was just a crush, after all. People had crushes all the time, and they always got over it, one way or another. And I would be no different. Alex would never have to know and our friendship would be safe.
I wasn’t sure what I’d do if he ever found out. I thought I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t simply abandon or ignore me, but would our friendship survive? I didn’t know for certain, but I didn’t think it would. It would just be too awkward. The knowledge that I had a crush on him would gnaw at his mind, painting every single one of my actions as trying to make him like me back. I didn’t see how any friendship could survive that, let alone ours.
And if he did like me back? I shook my head, not wanting to think about that possibility. Getting my hopes up needlessly would only work to worsen my crush. Besides, I didn’t want a boyfriend; I just wanted a friend. I had to do my very best to ignore the voice in the back of my mind screaming otherwise; it didn’t know what it was talking about.
I was licking my claws clean when Alex finally arrived.
“You ate without me?” he asked. “I was gone for maybe ten minutes, and you ate without me?”
“I was hungry,” I said, now feeling a little guilty for not simply waiting a few minutes. Then I noticed the glint in his eyes and rolled mine. “You could have told me where you went, you know. It wasn’t a private conversation, you could’ve peeked your head in.”
“Sorry, I was in a hurry,” he said while sitting down. “I saw Tiki and wanted to talk to her, but she was already quite far down the hall.”
“Tiki? Why?”
“I wanted her to apologize to you.”
I sighed, then looked up and smiled at him, resisting the urge to pat him on the shoulder. “Thank you Alex, and I mean it. I just wished you hadn’t in this case. Or at least not have told me. I wanted her to apologize on her own, so I would know it was genuine. Now I’ll just be wondering if she is apologizing because she actually feels sorry, or if she’s doing it as a favor for you.”
He shook his head. “What favor? She has like a thousand friends here. There’s nothing I can offer her that she couldn’t get elsewhere.”
“You have a point, but still. I don’t mind you trying to help me, but please, run it by me first, next time.”
“Alright, I can do that,” he said.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. “I still have a porkchop left and you can have it, if you want.”
“Definitely. Can I get my own lunch, too? I think I put it in your saddlebag.”
I grabbed his lunch and handed it to him. Alex’s lunch was a lot more boring than mine. Bread with cheese. Also, who puts cheese on bread? Such a waste. That could’ve gone to a perfectly hungry dragon, instead; I liked cheese too. I was glad Alex enjoyed it, though. Maybe he would trade a piece for my porkchop?
He did, and I smiled as I nibbled on my tiny bit of cheese like a scaly mouse while Alex enjoyed his own meal. It had been a while since I ate cheese. I should eat it more often. When I went shopping tomorrow, I had to bring some more with me as well. I knew one shop that sold some of the best in the whole Academy.
“So,” I said, drawing out the word, “what did she say?”
Alex looked at me quizzically, and I elaborated. “I meant Tiki. What did she say?”
“I thought you didn’t want to hear?” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “You talked to her already, anyway. I might as well hear what she had to say.”
“Hmm, alright then. She was angry because she thought you reported her brother, despite promising not to. I convinced her this wasn’t the case and then convinced her she should apologize. She agreed.”
“It was that easy?”
He just shook his head and took another bite, not elaborating.
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While Alex went to his Magic 101 class, I went to my Advanced Elementalism class. It wasn’t what I expected it to be. Despite my worries, the first lesson didn’t focus on revision. That part was great.
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The part that wasn’t so great was that it focused on Skill use. I’d known that was always going to be a thing. The whole Academy’s school system was focused on teaching Skills and how to use them; I just hadn’t expected it to be this much for this first lesson. I expected theory, something I could apply with my instinctive magic, but that wasn’t the case.
It wasn’t all bad, though. The textbook itself dove pretty deep into theory, but we wouldn’t really get to that part until everyone had an applicable Skill. Getting the applicable Skill didn’t require deep knowledge of how it all worked, just some tedious exercises. No, the theory only came after you already had it, to make the magic better, and level up the Skill. So today, the professor focused on getting everyone those Skills.
He gave us exercises to do, which would eventually upgrade a basic elementalism Skill to an advanced one. Sadly, the light and dark affinities—the main reason I took the class—didn’t come into play in these exercises, so they didn’t help me at all.
Honestly, they were pretty basic exercises. Things I’d been doing for years. Things like combining affinities, making complex shapes, and so forth. Incredibly difficult if you hadn’t done it before, but I’d done that and more while growing up to amuse myself and had accidentally honed my mana manipulation skills to an extreme. There wasn’t a shape I couldn’t make, as long as I could properly imagine it.
I stopped paying attention partway through the professor’s explanation of the exercises and focused back on the textbook. The theory was dense, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of some of it, and I wasn’t sure if the professor would be willing to help—he was busy with the other students. I sighed. This was going to take a long time to figure out. I hoped Basic Lightning Magic would be more helpful, but I wasn’t expecting much at this point.
It didn’t help at all that I had no idea how to ‘unlock’ a new affinity for my instinctive magic, either. I had never done it before. As far as I was aware, I’d always been able to use the four basic affinities. I never had to ‘unlock’ them; they were just there. Figuring out how to actually learn a new one was my first priority, since I could read all the theory I wanted, but with nothing to apply it to, it was fun but ultimately useless knowledge.
For now, though, I’d keep reading and trying to understand the theory. Maybe it would give me a hint. I didn’t have anything better to do until the class was over, anyway.
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Unconventional Casting Media was more productive. I sat near the front of the classroom together with Alex. I had to sit near the side, though, or I would obstruct the view of the students behind me unless I laid down, and I didn’t want to lie down. I was a student just like everyone else here, and I would sit. Not on a chair maybe, but I would sit nonetheless.
In the front of the group, the professor was explaining some basics of which affinities produced what results when channeled without control through an object. For example, when channeled through iron, Earth mana would reinforce the material a bit, while wind magic made it a bit lighter or easier to swing. The strength of the effect depended on the material, and the amount of mana channeled through it.
In the end that’s all they were, though: effects. If you wanted anything more, like a sword wreathed in fire—though I’m not sure why so many children wanted that, it sounded super inconvenient—you needed to cast a spell through the medium.
That’s where this class came in, it taught the basics, and then focused entirely on casting spells through any medium, and I did mean any medium. And when you considered the fact that you couldn’t cast a spell without a medium, it explained why the class was such a popular one: it taught you the tools to use anything as a medium, greatly expanding your possibilities in the field.
Lost your sword? No problem! Just pick up a stick, reinforce it with earth magic, and sharpen it with water magic; now you have a crude, new sword! And if you were stuck in a stalemate, you could just make your spear suddenly shoot out lightning! It made you adaptable and unpredictable.
It was great, but there was one big problem: spells were a piece of System magic.
At the most basic level, a spell was an instruction for the System to do something, like setting a sword on fire.
But I didn’t have the System, and I couldn’t use any spells, so that left me with just the basic effects. I could still do some pretty awesome stuff with that though, because I was already at a level where I could use multiple affinities at once. Instead of making a blade either sharp or strong or light, I could make it sharp, strong and light. Not that I’d use a blade.
My problems didn’t end with not having a System, though. Those basic effects were terribly inefficient, and would guzzle my mana-pool down to zero within minutes. For norm—for other people this wasn’t really a problem, since they could simply increase their Attributes and get more mana that way. Or simply learn more efficient spells. I couldn’t do that, and was stuck with my current mana pool.
Except, maybe I wasn't.
I had a meeting with the research team tomorrow, and they would inspect my mana-pool and its unexpected growth. Maybe they could point me in the right direction for figuring it out. Or… maybe I shouldn’t let my pride get in the way and just ask for help.
I wanted to give it a try by myself first, though.
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After class, Alex and I did homework in my room.
I had a lot more of it than yesterday. Aerial Combat was a mostly practical class, after all, and didn’t give much in terms of homework. Right now, I was doing some introductory exercises for basic channeling. It was very simple—in theory, anyway. I had to force some mana to flow through a thin cylinder of metal.
It was more difficult than expected. A lot more difficult. I’d channeled mana through objects before, but it was always through an enchantment, or something specifically made for channeling mana, never just a plain metal rod.
I could get the mana in, but then it just wanted to spread out the sides and then back into me, rather than flowing to the end of the cylinder, filling the entire volume with mana. It was frustrating, and I couldn’t understand why the damn mana wasn’t flowing through like it should. No matter how much I pushed it, it just wouldn’t go where I wanted it.
“Hey, Felix?” Alex asked, “Can you explain this to me? I don’t understand the text.”
I put down the metal rod, glad for a distraction, and looked over at Alex. He was pointing at a paragraph of text in his Magic 101 textbook. Grabbing the textbook, I looked over the text and frowned; this textbook had no business being so incomprehensible. It was for Magic 101, for the stars’ sake.
“Basically, it says that using more than one affinity at once is exponentially more expensive,” I said. “Because unless your control is really high, the different mana will conflict with each other and annihilate, so you have to channel more.”
“It does?”
I nodded and handed the textbook back.
“Was there anything else?” I asked. I should really be focussing on my own homework, but that metal rod could go hump sand.
“Not right now. But thanks,” he said, and I sighed. Back to the damn rod, it was.
We did homework for another few hours, but in the end, I was unable to figure the rod out, and I moved on to other bits of homework until it was time for dinner.
“Are you ready to go?” Alex asked, and I looked up in confusion. “To… dinner? You didn’t forget, did you?”
I had, in fact, forgotten that I’d promised to go out to that restaurant with Alex. After last night’s revelation, it slipped my mind. I still really wanted to go, but I wasn’t sure if I should. I was afraid it would be too much like a date, and that would probably only worsen my crush.
I couldn’t back out now, though. I’d already promised to go. And if I was being honest with myself, I really wanted to go; my crush and fears be damned.
“Of course not,” I lied, “Let’s go, shall we?”