Chapter 62: Impulse Control Issues
Lith came down from the ring with a dumbstruck expression, trying to understand what had just happened.
'Maybe Professor Trasque wanted to teach you respect for the opponent. By beating them like that, you abused your power, and that's exactly what the Headmaster criticized earlier.' Solus pondered.
'Trasque caring for respect? After how he threatened everyone and how he laughed in the face of that girl? Unlikely.'
Lith stood there, watching the other students performing their training. As Trasque predicted, every exchange was fast, but not as fast as Lith's. The performances he saw were mediocre at best, no points were assigned, but none were deducted either.
He was about to ask Solus to replay the exact wording Trasque had used for him when he finally understood.
In the following two hours, whenever it was his turn, Lith would let his opponent perform their attack before neutralizing it when he played the victim, while as the assailant he would give them the time to react.
Doing so cost him several defeats.
Despite all his battle experience against savage and magical beasts, letting the opponent set their own rhythm would sometimes put him at a disadvantage that was unsurmountable in such a limited space, with only first magic.
Lith spent most of the time spectating the other matches, often clicking his tongue at a bad move or at his own stupidity. At the end of the lesson, most of the students were mentally exhausted.
The uniforms protected them from any harm first magic could do, but in such a competitive environment, even a simulated life and death situation was faced as if it was real.
Playing both roles had made them realize how easy it was to take their lives and how big of an advantage those who had a weapon granted during an ambush truly had.
Only very few of them were actually capable of using first magic properly, the others were forced to improvise on the spot, desperately trying to score a single win.
Lith was still fuming when Trasque came over to him.
"Have you figured out your problem?" Trasque asked.
"Yes. This is an academy, not a battlefield. Hence my problem is an impulse control issue. During the warm-up rounds, I took my opponents down so fast that neither of us could learn anything from the training.
"In a real-life situation that would be good, but this is just an exercise, where I lost control of my pride and bloodlust. I risked leading the others by example, making them so focused on winning that they would not learn from their fights or those of the others."
Trasque had a pleased expression.
"Not bad, kid. You avoided ranting about my allegedly unfair judgment and actually questioned yourself. Usually kids your age are incapable of introspection.
"For that, I'll give you ten points for having learned your lesson, but the total still remains minus ten points, because I want you to remember it. A mage incapable of controlling his actions is a danger to himself and others."
Lith bowed to him in a sign of respect before leaving for the next class. Ten points were worth the Professor's respect, yet he realized that his reactions were out of proportion.
He was used to always being calm and collected, while now he was acting like a caged tiger trying to forcefully escape.
'This is so unnatural for me. Why didn't I pretend to accept Yurial's peace offering yesterday? I had everything to gain and nothing to lose. And today I wasn't able to grasp the meaning of the exercise until it was too late.
'Could this be another effect of the hormones, or is it my body somehow rejecting my mind?'
The thought was quite frightening, so Lith used Invigoration while walking. He checked every nook and cranny of his being, searching for a clue. At a first look, everything was fine, everything was as he remembered from over a year ago.
But then he noticed that the impurities in his body had moved a little toward his mana core, yet that made no sense. It would only happen when he refined his internal energy, and he had long been stuck at his bottleneck.
So, Lith focused on his mana core and discovered the source of all his troubles. It was pulsing, like a heart and at every beat it would turn to a lighter shade of cyan, while turning back to its normal color when at rest.
'Damn! My refining of the mana core has overlapped with its natural evolution. My core gets stronger over time, like everyone else's, but I have pushed mine so far that my body can't tolerate any further strengthening.
'My body and core will be at war until the latter is allowed to expand properly. That's why my first crush hit me so hard, the imbalance is also affecting my mind. From now on, I better count to one hundred before taking any decision.'
The fear of ending up like the Wither sent chills down his spine. It was a fate far worse than death, and he could do nothing about it but hope for his growth spurt to hurry up and finally happen.
He was so depressed that when he reached the Principles of Advanced Magic training hall, he barely noticed Professor Nalear.
The room was almost identical to the one they had just left, but instead of rings, strange contraptions occupied most of the space.
They consisted of a small pedestal, from which a reversed test tube jutted out. It was 1.8 meters (5'11") high and contained a black sphere made of metal. Every 30 centimeters (less than 1 foot) there was a mark on the glass, for a total of six marks.
"I hope you have studied and understood the first spell of your book, as I recommended last class, because that's what we are going to do today. Contrary to all others tier four spells, Lift works almost like an inferior spell."
She recited the spell, "Brezza Reale", and the weight inside the contraption in front of her rose completely above the first mark.
"The problem is, it has no use outside of practicing higher magic. What you just saw, is the effect obtained by casting it as if it was a tier three. But…"
She recited the spell once again, and this time the weight rose above the second and then the third marks before finally falling down.
"…you can freely add as many buckets of mana as you want. Your goal for this lesson is to manage to raise the weight to the top of the bell jar. You have two hours. To just barely pass, doing it just once is enough.
"Ten times out of ten means you pass with flying colors. Choose your station and start whenever you want. For those who don't remember the spell, you can study it now, but the time limit is always two hours, starting five minutes ago."
Professor Nalear ignored all the swearing that followed the students taking their position.
"Is she crazy?"
"This is insane! How can they demand that we become pentacasters in two hours?" "If this is her way to get even with us for yesterday, I'll report that b*tch to the Headmaster!"
Those were the politest remarks addressed to her.
Lith chose a bell jar in line of sight with Yurial, intending to use him as a beginner standard.
According to the school records he had in Soluspedia, an A rank magician was able to complete the exercise within half an hour, a B rank in more than one hour, C rank and below could fail.
That gave him an idea of how much time he should waste before succeeding, but not how to begin. Since Yurial managed to start from the third mark, he did the same just a minute later. The exercise was incredibly boring for Lith.
For a true mage, Lift was an oversimplified spell that made getting the weight up to the last mark easy as cake. Compared to achieving the same feat with spirit magic, it was ten times easier.
Lith could have done it on his first try, but that would make him too outstanding. The worst part was that the only way he had to measure time was for Solus to count the seconds.
After fifteen minutes, he allowed the weight to reach the fourth mark. After a little over twenty it reached the fifth, and less than five minutes later it reached the top. The bell jar turned red, emitting a "Ding!" sound.
Lith was so startled that he flinched back.
"Seems someone finally made it." Professor Nalear came to his side, her hair smelled like roses, making Lith's pressure spike.
"Twenty points for getting the first spot without any help." She said in her communicator amulet.
"But are you capable of doing it again?" She asked, coming dangerously close.
Solus activated protocol omega, generating cold spots under his armpits and at the back of his neck, to keep Lith from sweating bullets.
"Yes, of course." He tried focusing on the spell again, despite having troubles swallowing, like he had a tennis ball stuck in his throat.
The weight rose once again to the top, producing another ding.
"Interesting, I can see the weight has a fluid motion. Five steps?"
"Yes, once you get the gist of it, it's quite easy." He said looking at her nose instead of her eyes.
"Okay, champ. Since no one seems to be brave enough to ask for a hint, humor me. Try going slower, put half a second between every step."
Lith did as instructed, discovering that the spell was actually really versatile, allowing him to add mana freely, without fixed intervals, as long as the amount was always the same.
"Bravo! Now try going faster, like you want to break the bell jar."
Soon the situation degenerated into cries of "Faster", "Slower" and "Not so rough, be gentler".
Even though she was clearly referring to the handling of the weight, carrying no double entendre whatsoever, those words conjured in Lith's feverish mind images that were completely unrelated to magic.
Despite doing his best to focus on the task at hand, while Solus was cooling him off as fast as she could, Lith's paranoid nature was the only thing that saved him from embarrassment in the end.
That morning he had bandaged his nether regions, so that in the worst-case scenario, the rise of the spear hero would cause no bulge in his pants, keeping it sticking to his abdomen.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Legion20
Legion20 Ok, just to be crystal clear, I firmly believe that getting rekt, be it a martial arts training or a video game, teaches you nothing. You need to make your mistakes and learn from them, even better is having someone with more experience than you that takes his time to explain what you did wrong. In his quasi-sadistic way, Trasque is trying to follow the headmaster's principles, so training means training. If it was about kicking a*ses, he would do everything by himself XD
Chapter 63: Racking Points
"Well, we have just passed half an hour from the start of the exercise." Nalear said after her communication amulet emitted a low ringing noise.
"Seems I have nothing more to teach you about Lift. Now, do me a favor. Soon many of your colleagues will start to get scared or frustrated and will call me for help non-stop. Be a dear and give hints or suggestions to your classmates stuck at least at the third mark.
"I'll take care of the desperate cases."
Lith had nothing to do for at least another hour and a half, so he accepted, rubbing his forehead and closing his eyes, so he wouldn't have to look at her face.
"Great! Ten points for demonstrating complete mastery of the Lift spell, and another ten for helping me out." She smiled so radiantly that it would have made protocol omega useless, despite Solus' best efforts.
But Lith had timed his thank-you bow correctly to avoid her gaze and immediately turned back. He had so many people to look down upon, that he felt like a kid in a candy shop.
Yurial had made no improvement, but Lith didn't feel compelled to help him. He'd rather preferred for his help to be openly required, if not begged for.
After looking around, he noticed that Quylla wasn't too far away. She seemed to be swamped at the second mark, sometimes managing to reach the third.
She was 1.35 meters (4'5") tall, with such a scrawny build that she could only hope to weight over 30 kilograms (66 pounds) if she was soaking wet. She looked so frail and weak that a gust of wind would be able to carry her away at any moment.
'It's amazing how she managed to get a bright green mana core despite being so malnourished. If the tonic she received from Vastor really works, I wonder how powerful she will become.' Lith thought.
"Need a hand?" He asked. She was a commoner too, and up to that point, the only person that had apologized to him without a hidden agenda.
"Yeah, thanks. What am I doing wrong?"
"Nothing, it's just that you failed to grasp the spell's explanation." Quylla looked at him with a downtrodden expression, racking her brain while her neighbors at the fourth mark were sneering at her.
Lith was really tempted to kick them in the nuts, but alas, too many witnesses.
"If you remember, the book mentioned that this exercise requires creating five steps, right?"
"Right." Quylla nodded, taking a break to give Lith her undivided attention.
"Every step pushes the weight above a mark, so you may think that you need to create five steps, or if you prefer, five small pulses of mana, to push the weight up to the top."
She nodded again.
"But the book never mentioned that you need to generate them all together. Lift gives you a wide window of opportunity to create the steps."
Noticing that she still wasn't understanding, he dumbed the concept down.
"Imagine that you must walk up a flight of stairs to get to an upper floor. You need five steps to do it, and it's your mana that creates them. Even if you can maintain only two steps at a time, it's plenty enough.
"You just need to get up to the second step, let the first one dissolve, then create the third…"
"Move up to the third, rinse and repeat!" Quylla completed the thought. "That's why the book called them steps instead of pulses or pushes. To be honest the choice of words had puzzled me quite a bit."
Lith nodded.
"Otherwise it would require you to be able to cast five pulses at a time, and it would be completely unreasonable for the second lesson."
But Quylla was listening no more. After thanking him quickly, she went back to practice, managing to instantly reach the third mark. In less than ten minutes, another ding resounded.
Her neighbors had long stopped sneering, and once they managed to find the courage to ask Lith for an encore, he was nowhere to be found. Quylla ignored their requests for help, working hard to master what she had just understood.
After her, Lith helped Yurial and then Friya. He had yet to decide what to do with them, but he had nothing to lose in the exchange. He would kill two birds with one stone, showing them his superiority while also making them feel obligated.
Managing to establish a relationship on equal terms with the heir of an archmage and the daughter of an influential noble, would discourage his peers from showing open hostility if not force them to avoid any further harassment.
Soon, his outstanding performance in the light department would be well known. Very few would dare to move against him once Marth and Manohar had shown such interest towards him.
All he needed was just another push, and all the young master/mistress drama would become a relic of the past.
At the end of the lesson, Lith received ten more points from Nalear, since many of those he helped had managed to completely understand the true nature of the exercise.
'That makes fifty points!' Solus was ecstatic. 'Too bad we must also deduct the ten Trasque took away.'
'It's no use crying over spilled milk.' Lith replied. 'Besides, after lunch, we will have our first Forgemaster lesson. I can't wait to get my hands on it!'
At lunch, Quylla, Yurial, and Friya tried to join him once again, and this time Lith didn't send them away. He was curious to see what they had to offer in terms of knowledge and power.
Instead, he ended up swamped in small talk. Lith had completely forgotten what high-school conversations were like, how teenagers mostly talked about boys, girls, or whined about their teachers.
"Seriously…" Friya stabbed her lasagna like she had a personal vendetta against it.
"… what kind of Professor just puts you in a room and demands that you figure out everything by yourself? How big of a jerk can she be?"
Lith listened on and off to her, so when the topic at hand became his area of expertise, he was ready to answer the question he had just misheard.
'At least a double D cup.' He thought.
'By my maker, don't you dare say that out loud!' Solus mind-scolded him.
"I bet your family hired a tutor for you." Yurial chimed in, shaking his head at her remark.
"Yes, why?"
"Only tutors spoon-feed magic. My father never explained anything to me, unless I was incapable of understanding something on my own. He would just give me books and demand results."
Being clear-headed again, Lith joined the conversation.
"By the way, why didn't your father teach you all these exercises beforehand? It would have given you quite an edge, and I don't think the academy would care."
Yurial shook his head again, sighing.
"Oh, yeah. Just because my father is an archmage, I have all the knowledge of the world at my fingertips." He said gritting his teeth.
"I wish it was like that. Until my great-grandmother became a mage, ours was a family of commoners. The two things she passed down to her bloodline are: the spite for nobles, no offense." He said raising his hand in a sign of apology toward Friya.
"None taken." She replied, while actually shivering with fear. The Headmaster's words were finally clear to her. People like Lith would resent the nobles that abused their authority, and so would the magic bloodlines.
'That's why the King is so hell-bent on changing the system.' She thought. 'Over time, us nobles are isolating ourselves from the masses. If it keeps up like this, soon the status of noble will be like having a bounty on your head.'
"And her hard-working nature." Yurial continued. "In my family, the less you do, the farther you get from the line of succession. Some of my profligate siblings are as good as disowned, with no money or authority of their own.
"The reason why I am the heir is because of my talent and efforts, and I could lose the title anytime if I start to slack off. When I asked my father to teach me the secrets of the academy, do you know how he replied?"
Yurial made a stern face, speaking with a low, harsh voice, mimicking archmage Deirus demeanor.
"Son, your grandfather was just a noble, not even a mage. My foundations and resources for magic were nothing compared to what I gave you. If you cannot achieve as much as I did despite all that, teaching you is pointless.
"For our Deirus family to prosper, you need to be able to walk with your own legs. Getting unfair advantages makes you lazy and reliant on other's help. There are no shortcuts in life to achieve what really matters. Now go back to work!"
The whole table giggled, Yurial had become so immersed in his persona that he yelled the last part, drawing the looks of all their neighbors onto himself. Realizing his slip-up, Yurial had become red, so Lith asked Friya about her tutor, to cut him some slack.
"I asked her countless times." She sighed.
"But she always replied that our money was buying her services, not her loyalty. And that she had no intention of taking the smallest risk with the Mage Association for such a little sum." Friya scoffed.
"With the amount we paid her, we could have probably built a fortress. What about you, Quylla?"
Quylla was wolfing down her second serving of lasagna, looking at Lith's steak like a hungry tiger. The mouthful she had taken was too big for her to talk, so they had to wait for her to be able to swallow.
"I had no tutor." She explained while trying to wipe the sauce off her face.
"The healer of our village had been killed by some bandits, so his books were available for everyone. I was an orphan, too weak to work in the fields, so I began studying them.
"Once I understood magic, I became the next healer until the Duke that was managing the rebuilt of our village heard about me. He made build a house for me, and when I became old enough, he recommended me to the academy. You know the rest."
She returned to give her meal all the care she could.
"Your story is really impressive." Yurial said. "But at the moment I am so amazed by the amount of food you are eating that I cannot think about anything else."
"I swear, she wasn't like this yesterday." Friya said.
"It must be Vastor's tonic." Lith said. "She is shorter than me by a good head, yet she is eating more than me. I guess she needs a lot of food to catch up. Mind if I touch your head?"
Quylla violently blushed, tried to say something, but her mouth was full again, so she just nodded, lowering her head. Lith pretended to cast a spell while actually activating Invigoration.
"Your muscles are severely undeveloped and your bone density is terrible. You need to drink more milk, for your skeleton."
"It's the first time I heard this." Yurial asked with a curious look in his eyes.
"Mind explaining?"
'Yeah, sure! How can I possibly explain the concepts of vitamins, proteins, and calcium when your language lacks even the words necessary to describe them?' Lith thought.
"It's an old saying from my village. Meat for the muscles, milk for the bones. How do you think I got so big at twelve?" Was what he actually said.
Despite being three years older than him, Yurial was just a few centimeters taller than Lith, while Friya was five centimeters (2 inches) shorter than him. To Lith's amazement, the three of them ordered a bottle of milk each and started to drink it instead of water.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS
Legion20
Legion20
Had a bad and busy morning, so could not give proofreading the usual attention. If you find any mistake, point it out and I will fix it ASAP.
Thank you for your understanding.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
4,564 Power
stone 
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