Chapter - 3: Professor Rinaldi's curiosity
Fabio Rinaldi, a 50 years old man. He's a senior magician and a professor of Imperial Academy of Eldoria, which is called the "last fortress of mankind".
He was giving a speech on the podium like usual, calm and collected with his long term experience.
"Mana appeared in our world 10 thousand of years ago but It's been only 400 years since we humans learned to harness it, just before Eldoria empire's establishment We discovered many types of magic and the basic elements of fire, water, earth, air. There's advanced elements too but today we're only going to talk about the basics."
A brown haired girl raised her hand asking "Professor, I saw a mage casting lightning magic a few days ago, is lightning an advanced element?"
"Good question, student. No, lightning is inherently not a separate element, it's an advanced form of air element magic. You see, air element is not just manipulating the air. It's also about manipulating many different aspects of weather, and lightning is a part of it" The professor explained patiently.
"Then what other forms of advanced magic are there?" The same girl asked again.
"There are many different forms of advanced magic, like ice magic is an advanced form of water element. Advanced earth mages can not just control the rocks and soil, they can also control the minerals of earth like different kinds of metal. There's also compound magic which mixes different elements to cast advanced magic.
A mage who is an expert of water and earth elements can cast wood magic which manipulates plants and trees. The same way, one who's an expert of fire and earth elements can cast lava magic which deals constant damages.These are just some of the advanced magic we discovered. Remember, magic as a whole is still not fully developed, there's many mysteries still left to discover."
A chubby-faced boy then asked a different question "Professor, which element is the most powerful and easy to use?"
The nearby students laughed at that, making the boy embarrassed. He just gave a sheepish laugh.
"There's no absolutely powerful element. Each element has its own strengths and weaknesses. Like fire element. It has the most destructive and attack magics, making it very strong. Earth element has strong defense, air element has strong support but doesn't lack attack power, water element can counter the strong fire element and also has defensive capability.
So none is better than the other, the question is where you use it. There's another thing called field advantage. Each magic element becomes stronger and easy to control if there's a nearby source of it.
Take air as an example, air exists everywhere. So it's also very easy to control and consumes less mana to cast. There's always soil under our feet, so earth magicians can get support from it when they directly step on the ground. While large bodies of water are not everywhere, but you need to know that there's water particles in the air and water also flows under the ground. So water magic is not hard to use. But fire element on the other hand has the most destructive power but fire doesn't exist everywhere, fire element is only naturally found in volcanic areas which are not common.
So despite its power, fire element magic is also very mana demanding in use. That's why, one needs to keep in mind their mana usage before casting fire magic."
"So fire element is the strongest?" The boy said aloud.
"Hey idiot, didn't you listen to the professor talking about its disadvantages? FIre magic might be the most powerful when it comes to attack but you need to use your own mana to cast it with little to no support from the environment, while a magician can cast wind magic with little mana consumption if they are good with their control" A girl from another bench ridiculed him.
The professor observing it said "Yes, she's right." He repeated again to clarify to the still confused boy.
"Fire magic is powerful but it has its disadvantages. First of all, it's unstable. So it needs delicate control to maintain its form, There's also no natural fire sources in the nearby environment. So one needs to gather their own mana to summon it. On the other hand, theoretically a magician with masterful control can cast wind magic with very little energy consumption, they can also skip chanting for basic level magics"
"But professor, what about the sun? The sun is such a bright large fireball, it should provide some support for fire magic." The chubby boy confusedly asked.
"You have a great point." The professor was impressed, even the girl who was earlier ridiculing him got stumped by this question.
The professor started explaining "The sun is indeed a huge source of fire element. It has so much power that anything getting close to it would be instantly burned down. But remember, there's a great distance between the sun and our planet. The distance makes it impossible to gather the sun's power to cast fire element magic. Fire mages do receive some boost from the sun but it's negligible and too small to count on it. Instead those who tried to gather the sun's power discovered another element called the light element which is an advanced element of magic.
So there is support from the sun but it's not reliable and also depends on the intensity, plus it also disappears in the night."
As the class was in full swing, the professor suddenly noticed a flurry of activity at the back of the room. The backdoor opened silently, and three girls entered. One of them wore maid attire, likely a servant of the others.
The professor frowned. Clearly, they were late and attempting to sneak in unnoticed. However, this wasn't a typical classroom. It's a lecture hall featuring tiered benches rising along a ramp. To reach a seat, they would have to come to the front regardless.
He sighed, shaking his head and about to continue the class when he noticed something unexpected. One of the girls went to the back of the lecture hall instead of the front. Taking a closer look, it seems she's going towards the bookshelf placed near the ramp.
'Is she thinking of climbing the ramp through it? That's so foolish, she's gonna stand out more like this' He had the same thought as Livia.
He started feeling sorry for the girl's stupidity when he got surprised by something. The girl indeed started climbing the bookshelf but there was no creaking noise. Furthermore, the girl climbed very fast with practiced movements, which is a stark contrast to the silence. Reasonably, the bookshelf should make sounds because of its swaying and the books moving on it.
'How's she doing it?' He concentrated more and finally noticed a small movement of mana very close to the girl and along with small shifts of air.
This new finding left him utterly astonished. The girl has such fine control that there was no indication of her casting magic, but it's true from the observation that she's manipulating the air to cover her movements.
'But what's the relation between air and silence?'
"But professor, is it not possible to mitigate this disadvantage through other means for fire magic to be less demanding on mana? Otherwise fire magicians going to run out of mana soon mid battle"
A question came which distracted him. He moved his gaze away to see it's the same brown haired girl as before who asked him the first question. So he quickly answered it.
"Yes, it's possible. In fact we are using it very often.There's an orb which is found near places with strong fire elements like the…" He paused mid sentence as he noticed through the corner of his vision the previous girl jumping from the top of the bookshelf.
'How's she going to la…' And the girl floated in the air instead of plopping down right away. She floated in the air and landed softly on the ramp where the benches are located. Then looked down saying something to the maid girl who in return gave her hand to the other before getting pulled up quickly.
He noticed with keen interest that the girl again manipulated the air to help pull the girl up. 'That's some fine control of magic she has; and it's not a fixed magic spell but free control of the air element!'
"Professor?" The girl reminded him and he coughed before returning to the lecture, but still focusing on the back.
"As I was saying. There's an orb called fire stone which appears in environments with strong fire elements, like a volcanic zone or lava ocean. It's believed to be formed by a stone, metal or very rarely even wood absorbing the fire elements and condense them inside of it. Simply put, any object and material which crystalizes fire elements inside it can turn into a fire stone. We use the term 'stone' here because stones are the most common vessel for the elements to possess.
The fire stones acts as accessories which gets processed to make different types of equipments, the best use of it for fire magic is to be cast in a wand"
By the time he finished explaining, the last girl also got pulled up to the ramp and they quickly took their seats behind everyone. The girl, as before, used air magic to pull the other her up. Like this, they successfully sneaked inside the class without anyone except him noticing it.
Taking another look now that they appeared closer, he finally recognized the lead girl. It's the youngest child of the current emperor Claudius, Elena Rosalind De Acender.
There're tens of thousands of students in this Academy, so he can't recognize everyone, but he still needs to pay attention to those from prominent families, especially those related to the emperor.
Looking at the side, the other girl is Livia Docus Filia Di Navis. Just as her name stated, she's the daughter of duke Marcus of Marleone duchy. Which is known for its maritime industry and naval might.
'Let alone the princess, Lady Navis is also a high noble. Yet both of them came late. Sigh, let's forget it. I can't embarrass her highness here. And the way she sneaked in is worthy of forgiving her." The professor decided to let it go but is still curious about Elena's use of air to cover the sounds. 'I need to research about it later'
…
Elena noticed the professor discovered them and is currently observing her, but she didn't care as she knew he's not going to expose them. She's currently more busy answering the curious Livia and Letizia about the way she sneaked in without making any sound.
"So sound gets transmitted through air and by removing the air around you, you disable sound getting passed to the others around us? But how do you know of it, your highness? I never read or heard about it anywhere." Livia wondered aloud with confusion in her voice.
"You heard the professor, magic is a field we didn't uncover everything about yet. It's developing and ever changing, so new knowledge gets discovered every now and then." Elena calmly explained. In fact, she discovered it herself in her past life while experimenting with wind magic
"But your highness, I don't understand one thing. How do you breathe if you remove the air around you? As you know, we breathe in air to live." Letizia, who's sitting beside her, asked with wonder.
"It's simple. I didn't remove all of the air around me, I only removed those a bit far from her. You can think of it as me creating a barrier around me, keeping some air inside while cutting of those around the edge"
"Amazing, your highness. You're clearly the same age as me, still young. But you already mastered such a convenient skill. Don't tell me you discovered it yourself!" Livia truly became a fangirl with stars shining in her eyes.
Because of the constant chattering, those in front of them finally discovered their existence and looked back wondering if those 3 were always there and only now got found out.
Elena caught a glimpse of their curious stares and moved her vision to see who they were. Which made the people to quickly look away.
…..
Total word count: 2070
Total 5.5 pages.