The Beginning After The End (Beckoning Fates Book 3) (23 page)

Theodore’s annoyed expression changes to surprise when he realized I was
almost in arm’s length of him with my right fist surrounded by a condensed
sphere of wind.

“Fall!”
 
He snarls as he
clenches his right hand into a fist as well.

The sudden change in gravity knocks the wind out of me as I stumble a bit
forward to regain balance.
 

With a victorious grin on his wild, unshaven face, he takes one last step
to get in range to punch me when I shoot him a smirk and point upwards with my
finger in response.

“BOOM!”

The boulder that Theodore knocked up fell directly on top of him from the
abrupt change in gravity.
 
The
weight of the rock from the increased gravity flattened Theodore flat on his
stomach in an almost comical position.
 

“STOP!”
 

Claire gets in between the two of us and checks up on Theodore, who already
regained consciousness and removed the rock on top of him.
 
He would probably get a big bruise on
his back but his mana-enhanced body allowed him to avoid any serious injury.
 
The rock wasn’t too big after all.
 

“Good duel,
Theo
.”
 
I squat down and pat him on the
shoulders before bouncing out of the room with Sylvie trotting behind me.

‘Let’s go find a bench to take a nap on.’
 
I say to Sylvie.
 

“Kyu!”

“Did you guys do your
homework?”
 
I sat down on top of the
podium so I could get a better view of the class while I fixed my hair.

I slept through most of my
Fundamentals of Mana Manipulation class so I feel a lot better.
 
As I look around from the center of the
stage, I see my students looking at each other in hopes that they have the
answer to the questions I asked them yesterday.

“Looks like there’s no choice but
for me to answer the question.”
 
Feyrith finally sighs before standing up.

“The mana core is an excellent way
to easily and accurately measure the level of the mage’s power because it is
correlated to how much effort and time that mage has spent on condensing and
refining mana from their surroundings into their core.”
 
He finishes off with a swish of his hair
while sitting down.

“No.”
 
I hop off from the podium and walk
towards the shocked Feyrith.

“It certainly is an easy way to
gauge the mage’s power but it’s far from accurate.
 
Princess Kathyln, if you see an ordinary
fighter that stood at two meters and weighed almost three hundred pounds full
of muscles, what is your assessment on that fighter?”
 
I turn my gaze towards the Princess that
was sitting next to the embarrassed elf.

“I can expect the fighter to have
robust strength.”
 
She finally says
after pondering over the simple question.

“Correct!
 
All we can tell is that the oaf is
probably freakishly strong.
 
Does
that say anything else about his combat ability?
 
Yes, he’s strong, but in order to be a
great combatant, there are other factors such as agility, technique, mental
fortitude, experience, etc.
 
The
stage a mage’s mana core is at only determines how much ‘muscles’ he or she
has, but it doesn’t much else about the other factors.
 
Refining your mana core to higher stages
is still important, of course, but if that’s the only factor you use in gauging
your opponent’s level, you’re setting yourself up for defeat.”
 
I see some students start jotting down
notes so I catch my breath.
 

The nerdy girl with glasses raises
her hand after she finishes writing down her notes.
 
“Question!”
 
She asks.

“Yes, Miss. Myrtle?”
 
I find it amusing how much her name
suits her character.

“If trying to sense the opponent’s
mana core isn’t an accurate way of gauging his or her level, what do we
do?”
 
She has this face that seems
to say ‘try that question on for size’.

“You don’t.
 
Just assume that the opponent is
stronger than you.
 
Gauging the mana
core stage of anyone should just be used to satiate your curiosity but it
really doesn’t help.
 
Even if
sensing the mana core level can accurately gauge the fighting strength of your
opponent, what are you going to do if your opponent’s fighting strength is
lower than yours?
 
Go easy on
him?
 
Pick on him because you know
you’ll win?
 
What do you do if his
fighting strength is higher than yours?
 
Run away? Chances are, if you’re in a
situation where both of you are actively sensing each other’s mana core, then
running away won’t be an option.”
 
I
pause for a minute.

“Being overconfident because you
find out that your mana core is higher than your opponent’s can make you
careless while getting scared if your opponent’s mana core is higher than yours
will just make you feel hopeless.
 
Bottom line is, life isn’t so simple that you can accurately know whether
or not you can beat someone based on the color of someone’s mana core.
 
There are cases of fighters beating
careless mages because the mages got sloppy from being too arrogant.
 
ALWAYS assume the opponent is stronger
than you and try your best.
 
If that
opponent was weaker than you, then you put an end to the fight quickly to save
him the humiliation.
 
If that
opponent was stronger, congratulations, you’ve overcome the mental limit you
guys have been holding onto all your lives.”
  
I feel like some inspiration
speaker rather than a lecturer.
 

I walk over back to the podium
where Sylvie was now taking a nap on and continue speaking.
 

“Now, for the next homework.
 
Any of you figure out what I did last
class with the two wind spells?”
 
I
ask, leaning back against the podium.

*Silence*

“Sigh…” I guess being spoon-fed
answers all their lives really took a toll on their critical thinking skills.

“I’ll do a little demonstration for
the Augmenter’s answer first.”
 
Rolling Sylvie to the side, I take out two pieces of paper from
underneath her.
 
I crumple one of
the papers into a small ball and show it to the class.

“Watch.”
 
I put the ball on my right palm and
inhale deeply, building the suspense.
 

“Fwoo.” Utilizing all of the air in
my lungs I manage to blow the crumpled ball of paper about a meter away from
me.

“…”

The students stare at me with a
blank face from the anticlimactic outcome.

Holding my fingers up to silence
any students about to argue what the point of that was, I roll the other paper
I had into a tube.
 
Packing the ball
tightly into the back end of the tube, I inhale deeply one more time.

“FWOOM!” The crumpled ball of paper
shoots out more than 10 meters in front of me before bouncing on the ground.

““AH!””
 
Some of the students had light bulbs go
off in their heads as their expressions brighten up in understanding.
 
I hide my grin when I see Kathyln’s face
also brighten up as she starts jotting down notes.
 
As for Feyfey, he still has a question
mark bobbing on top of his head because his face looks clueless as before.

“Since many of you seem to
understand what I just did, can someone please enlighten the rest of the
class?”
 
I say as I walk up to pick
up the pieces of paper I littered.
 

“It has to do with concentrating
mana into a small point, then compressing it and shooting it out, right
Professor?”
 
A shy looking girl with
a huge spear next to her responds quietly.

She called me Professor!

“Correct!
 
Augmenter’s are raised to utilize the
many mana channels that they have so we unconsciously use a lot of our mana
channels for many of our spells, diluting it.
 
It doesn’t matter so much when you use
it on your body but the spell is weakened greatly when attempted to cast a
long-range spell.”
 
I demonstrate by
widening the paper tube I rolled up.
 
Blowing through one end, the ball I put inside loosely just drops down
in front of me.

“It’ll be hard to get used to at
first but being able to better control your mana channels will help you
greatly.
 
Now, for Conjurers’ turn.”
I pick up the crumpled piece of paper I littered.

“Since Conjurers naturally have
much less mana channels compared to their mana veins, they naturally shoot
their spells in a compressed form, whether it’s out of their body directly, or
by affecting an area to have the mana alter it into the form of their desired
spell.
 
What Conjurers need to do is
utilize the raw amount of mana that they can absorb to compensate their lack of
mana channels.
 
Close your eyes and
try to imagine this.”
 
I see
everyone confused but shut their eyelids nonetheless as they wait for my next
instructions.

“Imagine both Conjurers’ and
Augmenters’ bodies to be a pool of water.
 
We’ll say that leaves are particles of mana.
 
For an Augmenter’s body, just picture
small bundles of leaves being dropped in various locations over the pool.
 
While these bundles may be small,
because there are so many, they begin to spread and join the other leaves that
spread from other directions until the surface of the water is covered in
leaves.
 
That is the essence of body
enhancement.
 
Now, for Conjurers,
imagine just one humungous ball of leaves dropped into the pool of water.
 
Because it comes from a single location,
it may take longer for it to spread, but in the end, the leaves will still be
able to cover the surface of the pool.
 
That is how body enhancement works for Conjurers.”
 
The class remains silent as the students
open their eyes and think over what I just said.
  

“The reason why all of you
Conjurers injured yourselves while trying to absorb the spell you conjured is
because you didn’t use the mana from your core.
 
The only mana that you’re completely
immune to is the mana refined in your mana core.
 
Even that, after your mana influences
the environment into a spell, can hurt you.
 
Therefore, Conjurers will need to
utilize both mana from the atmosphere and mana from their mana core into a
spell and integrate it into their body or drop the big pile of leaves to make
it spread over the pool of water.”
 
As I finished explaining, I motioned for the class to come down onto the
stage and start practicing.
 
For the
rest of the class, I went around helping them while giving them little tips on
how to better visualize what they need to do.
 

After the giant bell rang,
signaling that the class was over, Sylvie stirred awake and hopped on top of my
head as I dismissed class.
 
I was
surprised some students actually complained that the class was too short.
 
I guess I was doing something right.

I took the long route to my next
class to take up more time while I did a broad surveillance.
 
I messed around with sending very faint
pulses of wind to try and use it as a sort of 3D radar but my limit for now was
around 20 squared meters, which wasn’t very useful since I could see that far
anyway.
 
Earth Pulse wasn’t as
useful since I can only detect the very basics like, how many people were in
the area, not if they were actually in combat or not and the buildings and
trees diluted the accuracy.
 

Arriving to Gideon’s class late, he
just motions for me to hurry on to my seat before he resumes talking.
 

“Hey.
 
Why are you so late?”
 
Emily whispers to me.

“Disciplinary Committee
duties.
 
I have to go around school
until ten minutes after class starts.”
 
I respond, lowering my voice so Gideon doesn’t hear.

“All right!
 
Let’s get in pairs and work on our
project.
 
The materials are in the
back but don’t all of you go all at once.”
 
He takes a seat and starts reading over something while the class stands
up to get the materials needed for the Light-Producing Artifact, or LPA.
 
I was about to walk over as well when Emily
stops me.

“I already have all of the
materials we need for an LPA.
 
Let’s
just get started.”
 
She rummages
through her oversized bag before finding the various necessary components.
  
After laying out all of the things
we needed, she looked at me and pointed with her lips to get moving.
 

Building the LPA wasn’t easy but
Emily seemed fairly impressed by how fast I caught on.
 
Even if she was a twelve year old, her
being a genius and all made me a bit happy.

The rest of class was spent with tinkering around with some of the various
parts to artifacts that Emily brought with her until Gideon dismissed us.
 
As I was about to leave, he grabbed me
by the back of my shirt and pulled me towards him.

“Brat.
 
Let’s catch up
sometime.
 
We have a lot to talk about.”
 
He gives me a devious grin but otherwise
just pats me on the back.

“Mhmm.
 
We should grab some
coffee, Professor.”
 
I wave back
before leaving the room with Emily.