Tim looked at his clock with a disappointed expression before clicking his fingers and standing up sharply.

"Welcome to the beginning of your first academic year, here at the university!" He proclaimed, in a raised voice.

In front of him were banked rows of desks, mostly filled. A few students that had suddenly appeared in the front row looked around in confusion before staring at him wide eyed in a mix of wonder and fear.

"I'm so glad you were all so punctual!" This time his gaze was very pointed, the students at the front were solidly leaning towards fear now. Tim continued, "what I just demonstrated was evocation magic, this is the most malleable, but also comes at the greatest cost, mana is how your body stores magical energy, and evocation directly consumes it to influence the world around you. Magical energy is tied to your life force, your very soul, all of you have likely overspent mana and felt the effects. The issue with evocation, is while it is near enough instant, and very flexible, it is massively inefficient, and better effects can be granted from other schools of magic. I will not dwell on this too long, as you will all be familiar with the basics of evocation, to many that is all they know of magic."

Tim now gestured to the clock on his desk "This is an example of glyphic magic, runes shape the mana into the desired effect, in this case a very slow trickle of magical energy is released from a reservoir, and converted into kinetic, to keep the pendulum swinging. Your lesson tomorrow will be to make one of these yourself, as I did when I was an acolyte."

Tim drew a short dagger from his robe and pricked himself on the finger, letting a drop of oddly blue blood fall onto one of the runes on the clock. The sigil glowed briefly, before returning to the dull etching it was before, Tim explained: "These clocks, and most sigils, are powered by blood, you can use certain mana porous crystals or metals, but blood is the easiest method, the efficiency of these clocks mean that at your level they will need about a drop of blood a week, and at mine, barely a drop of blood each year. This demonstration for new acolytes is in fact is the only time I refill it."

"The last of the three main types of magic, alongside evocation and glyphic is self manipulating magic. This is the least practiced of the three, but is also my area of specialty, and if you wish to study it in your second or third years at the university, I am the one that leads those classes." Tim's appearance flickered, and his complexion changed, his skin previously looked aged, but otherwise blemish free, suddenly became a mess of strangely coloured tattoos, overlaying each other covering every inch of him. Even his eyes seemed to be tattooed in this way.

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"These tattoos are a form of self manipulation, as is my blood which has been modified to store far more mana than would usually be possible, my skeleton is also covered in similar tattoos, and isn't even made from bone any more." He grinned and his teeth gleamed a pale purple. "The disfigurement, and the pain that comes with the changes, are the main reason people steer clear of this type of magic, but as my appearance would suggest, I feel like that cost is worth it."

Tim then opened up the floor to questions. The students questioned him on many things, such as alchemy, which while not considered a school of magic in its own right, was still taught at the university due to its close links with self manipulation magic, however instead of exploiting and enhancing your body's magical effects, you exploited that of plants or dead animals.

Students asked him about how he kept his manipulations hidden, which in itself was a manipulation, one of the tattoos was a sigil that when fed energy would hide all his tattoos. He always thought that one was a bit ironic. He explained the difference between the glyphs in the clock and the gigantic glyphs that made teleportation arrays or barrier arrays, as they had to contain magnitudes more magical energy the easiest way to manage that was simply to scale up the whole structure.

Eventually one student eagerly asked:

"What about the rogue mages?"

Tim paused at this, thinking about how best to explain them. "Rogue magicians use magic far more like monsters do, they have overflowing latent magic, but didn't have any guidance on using it, with that amount of mana they develop magical effects that differ from any of the three schools. As they grow so too does their mana generation and capacity, and so their rogue magic becomes stronger and more refined. Unfortunately you will all have to choose one of the three schools to specialise in, as developing rogue magic artificially is impossible, many have tried." Some of the students that had excited faces  deflated at this, "In addition, they can't learn evocation either, their bodies and mana become so specialised that even the simplest spell doesn't work, and while they can learn runecraft, their blood will not power it."

The time for the lecture was almost over, so Tim began the more mundane task of explaining the curriculum for the first year, their timetables, and the preliminary evocation exam that would be coming at the end of the week.

He unceremoniously dismissed his students before activating thousands of tiny sigils spread across and within his body, and teleporting back to his residence.