Ding, Dong, Dang!

The bell for the start of first period rang out. The day after testing had finished, the new students received their class placements based on their performance from the previous day. Tara had been placed in S class. Her ranking in the the combat portion of the testing contributed greatly to her placement. Celine and Alastair were also given spots in S class. Celine made it due to her overwhelmingly high scores in the academic portion of the testing. Alastair had a fantastic performance in every facet tested, receiving first place overall.

Although Tara had received plenty of rest the night before, she sat with her head down on her desk. Next to her, Celine sat upright in anticipation for the coming professor. Moments after the bell rang, the classroom door opened. In walked a disheveled looking man. He had dingy black hair, heavy bags under his eyes, and a prominent hunch in his back. He walked to the front of the class and placed his bag on the podium. He briefly scanned the room before saying, "Good morning students, I am professor Demetrius Scilla. I was tasked with teaching S class. I will be the only teacher you have during your time here at Saint Agatha. I will provide you all with the knowledge necessary to becoming accomplished mages. What you do with that knowledge, and how you develop, is entirely up to you."

The sound of his voice startled Tara awake. She wiped the drool off of her face and readjusted her seat. Professor Scilla started at her for a moment before he continued his speech. "I prefer not to spend my time on meaningless topics, so we will start our first lesson now." After hearing his words, the students began taking out their textbooks. The professor raised his hand and said, "You won't be needing those. In fact, its probably best to leave your textbooks in your rooms. What I will be teaching you in class does not come from a textbook."

He walked to the blackboard behind him. He picked up a piece of chalk and wrote, theoretical magic, in large letters. "The first lesson I will teach you might also be one of the most important lessons you will have." He put the chalk down and continued, "Although we have made incredible progress in the research of magic, there are many questions still left unanswered. Primary of those are the questions regarding, what we call, theoretical magic. Just as the name implies, theoretical magic is magic that we have only made work in theory, without any success in real world applications."

One of the students raised their hand and asked, "What kind of magic is considered theoretical?"

The professor looked at the young man and asked, "Student, have you ever heard of time magic?" The student nodded their head in affirmation. The professor began again, "Of course you have. We all have. Time magic is often talked about in legend as one of the most powerful magics to ever have been. Its a magic that is talked about often as an ultimate form of magic, capable of changing the way we live."

Professor Scilla walked away from the podium and back to the blackboard. He began writing a series of complicated formula. After he finished, he turned around and asked, "Do any of you know what this formula is?" The class collectively shook their heads no. "This formula is one of the steps we found to activating time magic. Not just any time magic mind you, but time reversal magic." He turned back to the board and drew a diagram of an arm. "Imagine this is your arm," he told the class. He erased a part of the arm before saying, "Now imagine you hurt your arm. Although we have magic to assist in the healing process of a wound, it only accelerates your natural healing capabilities. The arm can never return to how it once was."

Tara thought about all the scars on her body that she had received from training. Although she was quite proud of them in a way, she definitely wouldn't have minded if they never existed to begin with. The professor continued, "If we had access to time magic, we could make it so that wound never occurred to begin with." The professor began drawing a strange picture. He drew many lines, some parallel, others intersecting. In one spot, he drew a small loop. "Healing an injury only scratches the surface of what time magic could do," he said as he pointed at the loop. "The true power of time reversal magic comes here."

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He tapped the loop with the tip of his finger. "These lines represent different branches of time. This loop represents the spot where your arm was healed with time magic. It can be said that the healing of your arm created a separate branch of time. A divergent path if you will." Next to the loop, he drew another line leading out.

"So your arm is healed and you are now apart of a new divergent time line, but that moment of healing doesn't disappear. An infinite amount of time lines are created of you turning back time to heal your arm. It creates a small loop of overlapping energy. In theory, it could create a near infinite amount of energy. If we could harness something like that, our society would evolve at an unprecedented rate."

The professor walked to the podium once more. Celine raised her and asked, "What exactly is stopping us from using magic like this?" She had a look of pure intrigue on her face.

"To put it simply, no one has ever been strong enough to do it," he replied. "Even if someone had that kind of power, you would need a great many healings, at a single time, to create the kind of power worth harnessing. At that point, normal healing magic would be more efficient for the amount of energy put into it."

This time Alastair raised his hand, "Theoretically speaking, if someone were capable, what would be needed to create an energy source large enough to harness?"

"Good question," professor Scilla responded. "We have theorized that a great injury would have to happen to our planet. Either in the form of a devastating disaster that destroyed part of our continent, or a massive amount of deaths happening at the same time. The amount of energy required to initiate the reversal of that kind of damage would be multiple times higher than what was required to inflict it. No person will ever be able to do that. Not by themselves at least."

Tara felt inclined to ask a question herself. She raised her hand and asked, "So are you saying that someone technically could if they had help?"

The professor sighed, "Yes, but there are major stipulations." He reached into his bag and pulled out a mana essence stone. "As you all know, this is a mana essence. A condensed, physical form of mana found inside monsters in the wild. You would need many ancient class mana essences to even begin the conversation. You would further need a vessel to house all of the energy produced. Any mage attempting to use their own mana wells would more than likely die long before the completion of the spell. An ideal vessel would be something like a dragon heart. A calamity class demon would also be sufficient, but neither of those beings have been seen for many centuries."

Tara started to feel overwhelmingly excited. She had already imagined fighting dragons and demons, but she now thought about being the only person to have ever cast time magic. She would become the undisputed strongest person to have ever existed.

Professor Scilla saw the excitement in her face and gave a warning. "Let me repeat, if something like this was actually attempted, the chance of the caster dying is basically one hundred percent. No mage has ever had the capacity to perform such a spell. That is why it is firmly in the realm of theoretical magic."

The professor finished his discussion on time magic. The rest of the lesson went into further detail of other theoretical magics. He talked about the possible applications of flight magic. He spent a lot of time talking about why necromancy was banned and how it is now considered theoretical because of the ban. He even spoke on the topic of transfiguration and how it was no longer considered theoretical. Although the information he provided was dense, Tara thoroughly enjoyed the entirety of the lesson.

Ding, Dong, Dang!

The bell rang, signaling lunch time. "After you are done with your lunches, you will report to the training center. There, we will go into combat training. Make sure you eat a sufficient meal to give you enough energy for the lesson, but something light enough as to not impede your movement." The students got up from their chairs and started to leave the room. "One last thing," the professor interrupted, "I would like to see both Alastair Hellebores and Tara Bouvardia before you two eat."

The rest of the students filed out, leaving the unlikely pair with the professor. The professor walked to them and spoke, "You two placed highest in the combat portion of testing. During our combat training, you two will assist me in demonstrations. You can decline now if you would like, but do so now and not later." Tara and Alastair nodded their heads. "I would be more than happy to assist you professor," Alastair responded. Tara chimed in, "Same here."

"Wonderful. You two run off to lunch and make sure not to be late."

Tara and Alastair left the classroom.

Professor Scilla turned to the blackboard and stared at the blackboard. He stared at the formulas he had written there.

He opened his mouth and uttered a single word.

"Soon."