After dinner, which consisted of a variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, and dried jerky, Alec and Basra left Moira to her plants. But Basra had a promise to keep, so she didn't let Alec retire for the evening. Instead, she hauled him back to the training ground.
"Run." Basra stood with her arms crossed and looked menacingly at Alec.
"What?" The training ground had been on the way back to the main buildings and dormitories, so he hadn't thought anything about passing through them. He was happy to have a full stomach and excited to go back and read his three condensation methods while trying to sense Aether.
"Did I stutter?" Basra asked.
"I-isn't it unhealthy to run on a full stomach?" Alec asked, plagued by the memories of a day ago when he had to run to the entrance exam. His legs still ached.
"It's not optimal, but life isn't so kind as to only threaten you when you're ready for it. Training when you feel like shit is good practice for when you have to fight with your life on the line when feeling like shit." Basra shrugged with one shoulder. She wasn't giving Alec a way out.
Alec sighed, and his shoulders slumped tiredly. But he could tell that if he didn't do this, he could forget about the magical meals in Moira's greenhouse. Besides, he would need decent stamina at the very least if he wanted to improve his odds of stopping the end of the world.
Based on the chiseled muscles he could see cut through Basra's clothes, she wasn't a bad trainer.
He started running around the training ground, following the track other students had made before him.
"Straighten your back!"
"Breathe with your lungs, not your stomach!"
"Extend your legs!"
"Pull back your shoulders!"
"Raise your knees!"
"Don't use your heels! Land on the balls of your feet!"
"Have you never run a day in your life before, Maggot?!"
Basra continued correcting Alec's running posture until it reached an acceptable level. She reminded him when he slipped up, and she shouted at him when he slowed down too much for her liking.
"Did I give you permission to stop running?!"
Alec's legs felt like burning lead. His lungs were on fire, and his throat was sore and filled with the taste of iron.
It was pain.
Still, there was something in Basra's voice that kept his limbs moving even when his brain failed to give the command.
When Alec finally collapsed, Basra stopped shouting and unfurled her arms as she went over to him and picked him up.
She carried him to the front desk of the boys' dormitory, where he got to rest for a few minutes before dragging himself to his room, where he promptly collapsed onto his bed.
He wanted to read. But he was too tired. The only thing he managed to hold onto was the words Basra left with him.
'See you tomorrow.'
It would have given him nightmares if he hadn't been too tired to dream.
Still, he woke up with just enough time to make it to first class, and while his body felt horrible, it wasn't unmanageable. It wasn't quite as bad as he had expected.
Taryeon had to ask him to stop shifting in his seat and making faces during Reina's lesson on different elements and their properties, though. It seemed she had adjusted her lesson to what Alec had mentioned the day before.
The pain in his body helped him stay alert and focused, even if it didn't look like it. It was fortunate that he had established a friendly rapport with Reina already. Otherwise, any decent teacher would have taken offense at how he looked whenever they opened their mouths.
It also helped that Reina knew why Alec was like that. She had gone back to check on Alec after a while and seen Basra put him through the wringer.
The fact that he was in such misery was proof of two things, both good for Alec's future. Basra and Moira liked him, though Basra probably accepted him because Moira liked him first.
During lunch, Alec retreated into the library while Taryeon went to lunch with the group of commoners he and Isidore had already befriended. Sarah was at the front desk, and she saw Alec enter.
Alec locked eyes with her and wondered if he should say anything, but she looked down and continued reading.
'Taryeon's right. I blew it.' He sighed. There wasn't much he could do about it now, even if Sarah seemed like a good ally to have.
So, he walked right past her and found a secluded corner of the library, where he could read in peace. It was also empty enough that his stomach could grumble as loudly as it wanted without disturbing other visitors.
Basra told him not to visit Moira without her. But she only ate her first breakfast and second dinner with Moira. She ate her second breakfast, lunch, and first dinner in the cafeteria.
If Alec wanted two meals a day, he would have to get up earlier and join them at breakfast.
That meant he had to go through the rest of the day hungry.
'This sucks.' But he could only blame himself for antagonizing Benjamin Mason against his better judgment and then move on.
He grabbed a book from a nearby shelf and flipped it open in front of him.
In reality, he had pulled up the three condensation methods in his possession as blue holographic screens. Since he only had one set of eyes, he could only read them one at a time, but having all three up at the same time made it easier to compare their differences.
The first one he noticed was the fact that his Hollow Gale was noticeably different. It wasn't in the method itself, but the descriptions.
The general method of condensing the first circle seemed to be to sense Aether. Supposedly, as soon as that happened, Aether should start slowly flowing into one's body.
Alec was skeptical.
Using the newly entered Aether and the Aether naturally present in the body, the mage was then supposed to start dragging it around the inside of their body in a specific order to refine the mana's shape and gather momentum before leading it to the heart, where they would then string it into a circle that spun around the heart.
Shadow Silhouette told the mage to use the body as a loom and spin the aether into wispy threads of shadow mana and use them to draw an outline of one's body.
Darkness Marsh had the mage squeezing the Aether into thick, sticky ink-like shadow mana as they spread it around the body. The more they covered, the better.
The two of them used different but similar images to describe the shadow mana that the body of a mage with shadow affinity was supposed to condense.
Hollow Gale did nothing like that.
The mage using the method was still supposed to draw in Aether into their body and sweep it around their body until it was dense and momentous enough to create a circle. But the visual imagery provided by the method's descriptions was lackluster.
There were no defining traits about the condensed formless mana.
Alec got the feeling that the mana should embody the hollowness of Hollow Gale, and that he shouldn't get hung up on the gale part. He did not know what that meant, though.
Maybe it would be easier to understand once he learned how to sense Aether.