The room where the lessons where supposed to take place was almost full by the time Alerius arrived. The desks lined from the back to the front and he could see a chalkboard in front. He had not expected the room to look like a typical classroom. He had expected it to look different to the classrooms he had gone to as a dud.
Most of the students were around his age and only a few had core cultivation badges. He had expected there to be more Nobles and the students to be younger because he did not think Nobles could lack spiritual elixirs so they should have reached the Liquid Phase by the age of fourteen or fifteen.
Maybe they are in a different class he thought. The size of this classroom can only accommodate about sixty students and I saw more than that number in the cafeteria last night.
The desks in front were all occupied, so he made his way to the back were he found a sit. Along the way non of the students looked directly at him and if he passed in front of a student, the student would look the other way. Alerius was no longer bothered by this behavior for it was the first time it had happened. He had first noticed this in the cafeteria the previous night that the students didn't try to look directly him and no one had sat at the table he chose to sit on even though he was there alone. He had found it strange at first but when he had heard someone whisper about the Underlord's son in law he had understood that news about his betrothal was no longer a secret. He had then assumed that the students didn't want to offend him so they pretended not to notice him.
A few minutes after Alerius had sat down, a short old woman arrived. The old woman had a squire shaped cultivation badge covered completely in white. This meant that she was an Instructor as those who taught at the academy were called.
"Good morning class. I will be the instructor responsible for your first part of training you shall undertake here." The woman said.
"When I am talking I expect everyone to be quiet. Raise your hand if you want to ask a question and if I catch you talking I will chase you from my class. No matter who you are related to, in here I expect my rules to be followed. If you don't want to be here then you can leave. Don't worry if you leave you won't be disqualified from tournament which I am sure is the reason most of you are here for."
The woman had paused for a while as if to allow some daring student to leave the room. Alerius looked around the room to see if any one would leave but no one left though the noise stopped so her objective must have been reached.
"Since no one is leaving then we can began." Then she started writing something on the board while she continued talking.
"We shall begin with the basics. The academy accepts six hundred students each year who are then placed in ten classes of sixty students per class. Everyone in here is someone who is not familiar with cultivation world. Most of you have a low talent or are not Noble born and were not expected to amount to much so your families didn't tell you much about the cultivation world. Only you know the reason why your situation changed and how you managed to get a place here at the academy but we are not going to talk about that today."
So that's why everyone here is my age. Alerius thought. Am not the only one whose luck turned around.
Alerius looked at his fellow students trying to. Pick out those with low talent. His guess was that they should be Noble born so he tried to count how many students had core cultivation badges. He stopped when he heard the instructor continue talking.
"Cultivators should always follow the three tenets. I am not going to talk about the three tenets themselves as I am sure you know them. What I have written is what each represent concerning cultivation."
Alerius saw what she had written:
-seek strength
-don't show weakness
-know your place/station
"The first is archived through cultivation. The second is mostly through reputation and the third is shown by the cultivation badges. Most cultivators do not introduce ourselves, our information is stored in the badges so if you meet a fellow cultivator you. His badge will tell you his cultivation phase. If its higher than you then you are expected to show him respect. But if you are in the same phase you must read that fellows information which is stored in his badge and then act according to his station."
Alerius had noticed that every cultivator he had met had never introduced themselves including the instructor. Now he knew why. It was because of the third tenet.
"Now I am going to talk about stats. I am sure many of you know this already so I am not going to go into details. If you want a detailed explanation go to the library and read about the attributes. Many books have been written about the subject. I want each one of you to check your status window so I don't have to write the stats on the board"
Alerius did as instructed and checked his status window.
Spiritual Energy: 20
Life Energy: 85
Natural Energy: 0
Talent: 3.5
Main Attributes
Soul: 30
Aura: 10
Mind: 12
Secondary Attributes
Spirit: 13
Will:11
Analyze: 12
Perception: 11
Knowledge: 10
"Your status window shows you your overall body condition. Each stat or attribute is not limited to one function. I am not going to list all of them but I will only mention the function each attribute is commonly known for."
Alerius paid extra attention to listen because this was information he was lacking.
"The Soul attribute shows how strong your soul is. The stronger your soul is the faster your aura is made. A strong soul is important because all our magical abilities involve the manipulation of aura."
The students eyes lit up when they heard the instructor mention magical abilities.
"Hahaha, I can see that I have gotten everyone's attention but I have to disappoint you. We will talk about magical abilities next time."
Everyone groaned when they heard this.
"Let move on. The Mind attribute shows how powerful your mind is. Every action you take is directed by your mind so you can see the importance of a powerful mind."
The woman then pointed at the chalk. The chalk started levitating. She then pointed at the board and the chalk went to the board and wrote two words; Aura and will.
That's telekiness. Alerius thought. He was excited as this was the first he had seen magic performed.
"What I used to lift that chalk is a combination of my Aura,Will, and Spirit. As I earlier said, every magical ability involves manipulating your Aura in some way. What your Aura attribute shows is how long your Aura can stretch. For example if your Aura stat is 20, then the maximum distance your Aura can stretch is 2 meters and if your Aura stat is 35 then the maximum distance it will stretch is 3.5 meters. How much effect your Aura has on the environment is depended on how strong your Will is. Having a strong Will means stronger magical abilities. Aura is manipulated using your Spirit. Therefore how easy you can control your Aura depends on how strong your Spirit is and this is represented by the Spirit stat."
A student raise his hand but the Instructor ignored him and continued teaching
"The attributes I have talked about so farexcept for the Mind stat are called spiritual attributes and the remaining three attributes are called mental attributes. Perception is awareness of your environment and the Analyze stat represents how fast your mind can process information. Some of you have heard some Cultivators say that time slows down for them when they are in fight. This effect they experience is due to having high perception and Analyze stats and not because time really slows down."
The Instructor looked at the student with the raised hand and said "I hope your question is not about how high the stats need to be in order to move things telekineticaly because that question falls under magical abilities and I said that I will cover that next time."
The student dropped his hand
"It appears that some of you have a poor memory, and that brings me to the last stat which is the knowledge attribute. A lot of Knowledge comes from experience and if you can't remember that experience then its the same as not having it in the first place. Therefore the higher the knowledge attribute the better your memory becomes. This stat is important when it comes to learning magical and martial skills. I would advice some of you to invest in this stat so that you don't keep forgetting simple instructions"
The all class laughed. Alerius noticed that the student who had raised up his hand was blushing. The instructor was clearly making fun of that student.
"That's all for the attributes and before we look at the different types of energies I would like to remind you that the functions of the attributes are not limited to what I have said. For example the Spirit stat also represents spirituality and at a high level you can scan your environment using your Aura and this is called Aura Sense. Cultivators use Aura sense to scan badges to read information stored inside."
So that's how everyone I met yesterday knew who I was without them concentrating too much on my badge. Alerius thought. But wait if that's true then why did that guard ask for badge at the gate.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Alerius decided to research about it later because he heard the Instructor continue talking
"Everyone knows that cultivation is just the combination of light energy and Aura to form Spiritual Energy and that Life Energy is the by product of an expanding spiritual core and is measured by the Talent stat. The first four stages of cultivation are known as Phases. Everyone knows how to reach Liquid Phase so I won't talk about that. To reach Paste Phase All you need is atleast Soul and Aura stat to reach 40 and need 20 units of Life Energy to advance. To reach Solid Phase, all your 3 main attributes need to be atleast 60 plus 40 units of Life Energy. I won't go into detail about the mechanism of cultivation but will only talk about the functions of the Energies."
The Instructor stretched out her hand and a ball of blue flames appeared on top of hands.
"Spiritual Energy is the energy used to drive your Aura so you can perform magic. Life Energy is used to make changes to your body and is used everytime you want to change any aspect of your body. What you see in your status window as attributes are these aspects and every time you increase them, you change your body in some way. When you are about to ascend from one phase to another for example from Fog Phase to Liquid Phase the 10 Life Energy required to advance are used to make permanent changes to your core so that it can then start converting the Foggy Spiritual to Liquid Spiritual Energy every time Spiritual Energy is stored in your Spiritual core."
The ball of flames started spinning around the Instructors hand.
"I will allow whoever is going to answer the following question to ask me any question in return and I will answer to the best of my ability even if its about magic."
The spinning ball of flames then started to change colors; from blue to red and back to blue continuously around the Instructors hand.
Alerius was sure that the Instructor was doing this just to get their attention but he couldn't deny that it was not working. He was fascinated by the light show just like the rest of the class.
"The question is this. If to advance from Gas Phase to Fog Phase, 5 units of Life Energy are required to change the spiritual core. Then how do those with a talent of 0.5 manage to advance when they reach spiritual energy level 9?"
Alerius saw a thin girl with a core badge from House Kapulya raise her hand, and when Instructor nodded her direction she answered saying "Life Energy does not exist in decimal points so when those with a talent of 0.5 reach spiritual level 9, the amount of Life Energy they have is 4.5 even though it will be displayed as 4. I think this amount of Life Energy is enough for them to advance."
"That's not correct but I will allow you to ask me a question at the end of this lesson. What you said about Life Energy not existing in decimal points is correct. For those with a talent ending with a decimal like 0.5, 1.5, 2.5 and so on. When they reach a spiritual level that should give them Life Energy units ending with a decimal point, that decimal will not be shown but they will be an addition of 1 the next time the spiritual core expands. For example someone with a talent of 1.5. When their spiritual energy level rise from 0 to 1, the Life Energy will display 1 instead of 1.5. And when the Spiritual Energy level rises to 2 then the Life Energy will then display 3. This is true for all talents that end in decimal that when the Life energy should end in decimal. The decimal will not be shown but that energy is not lost and will be shown the next time the Life energy rises and become a whole number. The reason am explaining this common knowledge is that it is relevant to the question I have asked."
The colors of the flames started to change from blue to red to orange.
The Instructor asked if anyone else could attempt to answer the question and when no one raised their hands she said. "There is a simple method of gaining Life Energy but it has a life altering consequence that it is not told to anyone until that person has exhausted all the Life Energy they can obtain when their core expands and they can no longer advance. For example those with a talent of 1, when they reach spiritual level 19 will only have 14 Life energy units and they need to raise there Soul stat from 10 to 20 plus the additional 10 Life Energy units required to alter their core. The 14 Life Energy units is not Enough for this, so they need additional Life Energy units."
Another color was added to the ball of flames. It started changing from blue to red to orange to violet and then reversing.
This must be important if the instructor is going through all this trouble of adding colors to the flames just to get our attention alerius thought.
"The method involves converting Spiritual Energy to Natural Energy and then converting Natural Energy to Life Energy. To get Natural Energy, you must compress Spiritual Core just like when advancing but this time without adding Life Energy. If you continue to compress your core for an extended period, then the Spiritual Energy will transform to 1 unit of Natural Energy. Please note that your spiritual energy should be full before you try this. This process is painfull and can damage your spiritual core if used continuously without rest. If your Soul attribute is less than 20 then you can use this method once a month, if its between 20 and 39 then you can use this method once a week, if it is between 40 and 59 then you can use this once every two days and lastly if your Soul attribute is above 60 then you can use this method once a day. Another thing you should take note of is that no matter what stage you reach, even if it is the Underlord realm; the total amount of Natural Energy you can make from Spiritual Energy is always 1for each conversion session."
The Instructor then added green to list of colors the ball of flames was changing into.
"To change Natural Energy to Life Energy is quiet simple all it takes is opening your status window and then thinking about changing Natural Energy to Life Energy and it will change but the amount of Natural Energy units required to change to 1 unit of Life Energy depends on talent. You multiply your talent with 10 and that is the amount of Natural Energy required to form 1 unit of Life Energy. Earlier I said that Life Energy does not exist as a decimal number so for those with talents with a decimal number. The decimal number is rounded off and then multiplied by 10. For example; for a talent of 0.5, this will be rounded off to 1 and multiplied with 10 therefore for a talent of 1 and 0.5 the number of Natural Energy needed to form 1 unit of Life Energy is 10 units. For talents 2.5 and 3 the amount required will be 30 and 4.5 and 5 the amount will be 50."
Yellow was then added to colors the ball of flames was changing into.
"This is reversible but 1 unit of Life Energy always forms 10 units of Natural Energy not matter the talent."
Indigo was also added. Alerius noticed that the colors the flames were changing into are those found in the rainbow.
"The consequence of this method is that once you use this method then the spiritual elixir used to speed up core expansion stops working for you ever. This is one of the reasons people who have not exhausted their Life Energy units produced from core expansion are not told this. Cultivation without spiritual elixirs is a long process and grows longer the more you progress for example in the Fog Phase one can go from spiritual level 12 to 13 in about 3 months without elixirs but in the Liquid Phase it might take you about 8 months to progress from 23 to 24 and its longer in the Paste Phase as it might take you a year and some months to move from 31 to 32. The opposite is true when it comes to spiritual elixirs the time reduces from only taking one elixir once a month before Liquid phase to about one once a week as long as your Soul strength is above 60."
She clapped her hands once and the ball of flames winked out of existence.
"That concludes this lesson. We will be meeting once a week to give you time to get used to converting Spiritual Energy to Natural Energy. Any questions specifically about today's lesson?"
A lot of students raised their hands and the Instructor answered their question but alerius didn't pay much attention to the answers as the questions were about what she had already explaned this was until the girl from House Kapulya the only one allowed to ask any question for answering the Instructors question earlier asked her question.
"I have heard that the all attributes need to reach a certain number before you can perform magic is this true?"
"Yes this is true. We don't know the reason why but Aura can only be manipulated when all your stats are atleast 20 or above. Even if only one attribute is below 20 then you won't perform any form of magic. At one point every cultivator faces the decision to either decide to start perfoming magic or to push for an advancement. The Life Energy units needed for all attributes to be atleast 20 is about 80 and this can be used to reach atleast the Paste Phase. Most cultivators choose advancement and many of the cultivators you will meet below the Solid Phase can't perform magic especially if they are below 20 years."
Alerius didn't think he had such an option. To fight in the war he needed to be able to perform magic even if he wanted to advance he had to wait for atleast 6 months because he had just advanced to the Liquid Phase.
"I won't force anyone to chose but you know that next time I will be teaching magic so if you decide you want to advance then that's up to you."
The Instructor left immediately after that and that signified the end of the class.