Chapter 59: Chapter 59 - Heart Interaction
[Elijah Knight POV]
I was coming out of my last class of the day, Mana Utilization I, my stomach was growling a lot from the whole situation. Apparently that breakfast I had wasn't that reinforced.
"Hmm, Elijah, djid u know how to help me in djis questin?" Broz asked while he was walking beside me, with his notebook in his hands.
We were walking together through the halls of the academy, with the goal of getting to the cafeteria to eat soon. My hunger was so bad that it didn't matter which elf beauty passed by my side, I would just be hanging on to food. But at least I looked in my friend's notebook to see how I could help him.
"Oh... This activity is for you to write down ways to use mana out of danger. Hmm... Try to think about how you would use your earth element for household chores. I did it like this." when I said that, his face filled with understanding and he started writing in his notebook as we walked.
Along the way, I saw a few other dwarves approaching me, chatting friendly, patting me on the back, things like that. I really never expected to be treated so friendly and childish in this way, maybe it was because I usually only talked to adults when I lived in Darv. But I soon realized why, since Broznean always walked with me, the other dwarves began to really see that talking to me wasn't something unreachable. I had thought the speech on the first day had made that clear, but in fact there were still people who weren't confident in simply talking to DC officers in the hallways.
Arriving at the cafeteria, I was making the same idea as always, while I saved a table for us, Broznean would already get in line, so when he arrived at the table I could go get something to eat. I scanned my surroundings, waiting for my colleagues, but they still hadn't shown up, so when Broz sat down next to me, I got up to get my meal. It wasn't until I returned to the table that I saw them, but they were... Accompanied by a girl?
"Huh...? I thought Art was with Tessia and Luz with Lilia." That passed in my mind as I saw that girl with green hair and messy ponytail, getting closer.
The three of them went to get their meals and then sat down with me. As each table had six seats, on one side of the table was me, Luz and Broz, while on the other side was Arthur and that girl, with her sitting directly in front of me. Art's bond decided to keep using the seat that was left over for itself.
"Heya, Elijah. How was your last morning class?" Arthur asked as he tried to feed some lettuce leaves to his bond.
"It was okay, usual stuff, but really thanks for letting me see your class before this." I answered him.
"Oh. That? It was nothing, you seemed really interested in whether I was going to teach my students the same way I taught you." He gave a small laugh and managed to get the lettuce into his dragon/white fox's mouth.
"Oh... Elijah, we'd like to introduce you to that girl we mentioned earlier, the one who made that transmission artifact." Luz spoke while looking at the green haired girl.
"Oho! So you made those amazing artifacts?! Nice to meet you, my name is Elijah Knight." I said, with my eyes fully focused on that girl now.
"N-nice to meet you Elijah, my name is Emily Watsken... They told me that you like this idea of crafting items too, and that you'd like to learn more about it." she answered me, smiling shyly and not being able to meet my eyes.
"Oh yes, crafting items like that must be amaz—" Before I could finish my sentence, I felt a slight headache, supporting my head with my hands, I started to have a vision.
It looked like I was in a not-so-well-preserved place, sitting in a chair with a wooden table in front of me. It looked like I only had a dry loaf of bread and a glass of juice to feed me, and then I looked away. There was a boy there with me, with dry blond hair, his face completely blurred, preventing me from identifying him better.
A woman approached us and seemed to bring a girl with her, but her head and hair were completely black, as if she were a physical shadow. The woman left the girl sitting in a chair opposite us.
"Boys, this is Cecilia, she recently came to our orphanage. Hope you get along with her." Said the woman.
"Hm... But why us, mother Olivia? I thought you kept complaining about how rebellious we are." The boy next to me said.
"Don't be thinking I see you guys really like that, Grey... I just talk that way so the other boys don't even try to do what you do.... But to answer your question, you two are the guys who are the friendliest with new people, so I thought introducing her to you guys was the best option... Maybe you can show her around the orphanage while I work out some papers?" 'Olivia' said smiling at us and left the girl with us, and then walked away.
The girl didn't seem to say much, and kept her face down, but then, the boy named Grey, offered her a piece of his bread. "Well, headmistress Willbeck already said my name, please call me by Grey."
"And my name is Nico, it's a pleasure to meet you, Cecilia." My body said it without me having any control.
She looked at us and took the piece of bread, taking a bite. "Thank you... But why are you 'the rebellious' here?" she asked, curious.
"It's just that Grey is the muscle guy and he's been testing my inventions. He has a tiny amount of Ki, so I always have to do something that helps him. But in the end we always get in trouble." I said, again out of control, as Grey gave me a light tap on the shoulder.
"Hey! No need to explain to everyone about my Ki pool." He said, making him and I laugh.
"Oh... So you like crafting items?" the girl Cecilia asked with her face slowly gaining color and allowing me to see her smile, but before her face was fully visible, I found myself out of that vision.
I tried to understand what I saw and I looked around me, seeing Emily and Broz with worried expressions, while Arthur looked at me with a slightly somber expression and Luz was eating his meal as if nothing was happening.
"Is everything okay? All of a sudden you were staring at nothing and your mouth was moving with no voice." the green haired girl asked.
"Oh... Is that? I'm sorry, it's just..." I tried to find words to explain my awkwardness.
"He has a slight psychological problem, sometimes he thinks he's talking when in fact he's not... It would be like... Me talking to you, then I say something super exciting, but I don't realize that I'm only saying that in my thoughts only." Luz helped me with that lie, it was much better than me saying things involving memory loss.
"Oh! I di not know bout djis, Elijah" Broz looked at me.
"It's just that so far, I think it's the first time this has happened around you." I said scratching the back of my neck, lying.
"But back to what I was talking about, yes, I'm the type of person who would love to learn how to make things like artifacts. Could you teach me?" I asked Emily, taking a good look at her.
"Of course! No problem. By the way, I'm the leader of a club made for that purpose, if you want you can join it. So far, with me, we have only three members and we're there from 3 pm until 7 pm. What do you think? ?" She said excitedly.
"Fine. I'll let Claire Bladeheart know about it so she's aware of my overtime." I answered her and looked at my colleagues, Luz and Art were smirking.
"Wait...." I thought a little, seeing their facial expressions and the situation they put me in.
"A-are they really... Are they trying to make me and her a couple?" I blushed slightly in my cheeks at the thought of it, I knew they had said they would try to look for girls for one of them to be my girlfriend, but I thought it would take a month at least to find someone with the same tastes as me.
"Well, I think we're going, we have class for now." Art said getting up with Luz.
"Oh... Okay" I said.
"Aaaahn?!? A-are you going to let me alone here?" Emily said looking at the Leywin brothers.
"Elijah and Broz will give you great company, especially Elijah." Luz said with a slight laugh as the two walked away.
"Aahn... What do you like to do in your free time, besides artifacts?" I asked, trying to break the ice of the situation, if they really think I have a chance with her, I can't screw up.
And about that vision... I think I'll ask Arthur about that, since... I think that "Grey" was him in the past life for what we talked before... Geez... This is so strange.
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[Claire Bladeheart POV]
I had finished my scouting routine a little earlier than expected, so I was now in the Team-Fighting Mechanics class field. Professor Glory was there and allowed me to use a part of the field for me to practice some moves while she analyzed me.
With my rapier, I lunged through the air and did some side-steps, followed by stunts that used as little wind mana as possible. I was trying to imitate some of the moves Luz had taught me when he was training me at my house. It was really hard for me, it's been a year without his training, so some of my moves were out of focus.
At least some of the techniques he taught me, like imbuing fire and wind mana into my body at the same time, without using multiple mana channels, were slowly becoming automatic from so many times I trained them on my own. I was proud of myself, but I wanted to know his opinion, because since his arrival in the academy, he hasn't seen me fight once.
"Vzzzzzzzzzzzz"
Hearing a strange sharp sound approaching, I quickly dodged taking a step to the left and soon I saw a blade made of wind approaching and almost hitting me. When I looked at the owner of that blade, I realized, that was not a blade, it was an arm covered in sharp wind mana, and the owner of it was smirking and looking at my face.
"Heh! Nice dodge, Cupcake." I grinned at what he said and gave his cheek a hard squeeze to the point it hurt.
"You just got out of the hospital... Don't play pranks." I said and Luz had a neutral look, nodding as I let go of his cheek.
"Ara ara, look who's around here. Professors Leywins, do you really want to take my class?" Professor Glory said looking at Luz and Arthur who arrived soon after.
"Maybe so, maybe not, it's up to you, Vanesy." I chuckled a little at the fact that Luz spoke Glory's first name.
"Okay! So I don't think you will participate in the practice today, but I want you to take your notebooks and write down any failures that occur among the other students. Your activity today will be this, identifying the problems of teamwork. " She said and the two brothers accepted the idea.
"And what would be today's activity, Professor Glory?" an orange-haired student asked.
"Well, due to the accident last week, I've been doing more theoretical activities with you. But with the return of all the people who were affected in the accident, I wanted to do something.. Different... I'll want you to attack a target, but you'll have to do it as a team! A combined attack!" My eyes widened hearing her voice.
"Combined attack? Is this serious?"
"The class is related to team fights, so I think that makes a lot of sense."
"But how many people will be on each team here? Will we be able to choose who our partners will be?"
"Calm down guys! It's going to be pairs, got it? You can decide who your pairs will be." when she said that, all the students were already joining in pairs, while I looked to my side and saw Curtis approaching.
"Will we be the DC duo this time?" the prince said expecting me to shake his hand, but I ended up messing up his hair.
"Of course." I smiled and looked towards Glory, who was now stomping the ground, creating an earth pillar.
"This pillar will be your target. Don't worry, if in your turn the pillar is already destroyed, I'll make another one." She warned and told everyone to move away, so that those things could be done one at a time.
First it was a pair that looked confident, while the other pairs chatted with each other to get ideas on which spells to use for a combined attack. I noticed that Luz and Arthur were there beside Glory, both boys were taking notes in their notebooks, as she herself asked them to do.
"So what are we going to do?" Curtis asked me.
"Can you fill your hands with flames?" I asked and Curtis soon walked away, imbuing his hands with fire mana.
"Try forcing the flame to be more localized in the palm." When I asked him to do this, his eyes widened, already knowing what I wanted him to do.
"Do you want me to cast a fireball? Claire, I'm an augmenter, I don't know how to do that." he sighed.
"If I can do it using my rapier, so can you. After all, I don't want this fireball to go far, I want you to launch it against my rapier. I'll do the rest." I told him, his eyes were still doubtful, but he ended up accepting the idea.
We let Professor Glory know that we were ready, so we waited for some students who had already decided before us. Most people decided to go in groups where one was an Augmenter and the other was a Conjurer, it was even interesting, since Curtis and I were the only ones where we were both the same type.
After two pairs had gone, it was our turn. The earth pillar had been destroyed by earth blows from one of the people from the previous duo, Professor Glory had to rebuild the pillar so we could show our attack.
"You can start!" She warned us and I whispered some things to the prince. We walked a few meters away, positioned in places I had talked about and started our choreography.
"Flame Glove!" Curtis filled his hands with flames, with those flames later focusing heavily on his palms. He clasped both his hands together, the fireballs coming together and then he launched that attack.
"Flame Ball!" When he spoke the name of that improvised spell, I started running, grabbing my rapier and making wind mana surround me. That Flame Ball was approaching me and I defended myself against it using my rapier, while at the same time speaking my spell.
"Ignition!" This was one of the few Luz's spells I managed to master. My entire body was surrounded by flames, which were becoming more intense by the wind mana that was already around me. The fire from my body was going to my rapier, and at the exact moment it happened, the Flame Ball hit it, causing the flames on my blade to become more intense temporarily.
I stopped running when I saw my target 2 meters away from me and I hit into the air quite fast, screaming this new improvised spell.
"Flame BladeBeam!"
All the flames in my body and the ones on the rapier went directly to the tip of my blade with my movement, and after a millisecond, that concentration of fire released, turning into a shot that hit our target, causing smoke to rise a little, because that was earth.
When the smoke cleared, I could see that I had fired a straight shot into the center of the pillar, with no signs of the shot having spread, it went straight to where I aimed, and it looked like it made a hole 10 centimeters deep.
"Yes!!!" I did a little jump up, cheering and then I looked at Luz and Art who were writing down what I did, I could see Luz smirking as he started looking into my eyes, making me blush a little and go with Curtis where the other students were waiting.
It took around 30 minutes for all duos to do that, and the reason for that was because some took a long time to decide which attack to do. That and Professor Glory complained a lot about the fact that Lucas didn't really make a combinated attack with his duo, as he actually destroyed his duo spell and attacked with only his spells.
Art and Luz were next to her and started talking about all the mistakes we had during those attacks, they saw the use of spells against the efficiency of the final result, and was time for they tell about our attack.
"Claire, the spells you and Curtis used are extremely basic, and the result was much better than expected, but I'd like to reinforce that the 'ignition' spell was misused. You'd better have started this spell long before that, so that the flames it made would have more time to be better fed with wind mana." Luz said.
"Curtis, from the way you moved your hands when using that 'Flame Ball' I bet it was your first time ever trying to do a ranged attack that didn't involve your Beast Will. You could have positioned your legs better so you had more balance at the time you cast the spell, luckily, it hit Claire's blade anyway." Art commented adding a slight constructive criticism.
I was happy as my mentor saw that our attack was pretty good considering the spells used. And if I used Ignition earlier would it be more powerful? I didn't even think about that little detail. I looked at Curtis and saw him mimicking the move he did before, now with the addition Arthur mentioned.
It took a few minutes for all of us to be analyzed by the Professors Leywins. But something happened that I didn't foresee.
"Vanesy, how about we show them a great example of a combinated attack?" Arthur asked.
"Oh? Want me and you to make an example?" she questioned.
"No, he meant for me to do it with him." Luz replied.
"But didn't you just get out of the hospital?" Professor Glory said worriedly.
"Relax, a positive consequence of the accident was that I can now release and absorb mana at a faster rate." Luz said as Glory made a pillar of earth.
"We'd like a thicker target. Like a wall." Art said and soon he himself stomped on the ground, creating an incredibly thick wall of earth around the Professor's pillar.
"Are you sure about that?... That looks like 60 centimeters thick." When she said that, all the students looked confused, me, Tessia and Curtis were the only ones who weren't surprised by the situation.
"Of course. This is a move we've been thinking about for a while, long before we enter Xyrus Academy." Art said as both of them walked away from that thick earth wall.
"Lightning gear, spear form." When Arthur said that, his eyes glowed yellow and his arms were surrounded by an absurd amount of lightning mana, as if it were a gauntlet purely of that. Slowly all that mana was focusing only on the area of the hands and the rest was joining in his palms, with the union of his palms and the separation of them soon after, a spear made completely of lightning was formed.
"Mirror Scale." Luz said that spell, creating around him several barriers of wind mana, all rectangular in shape and angled in strange ways. As the name suggests, these barriers lightly reflected what was in front of them, as if they were mirrors.
Arthur threw that lightning spear towards his brother and soon another wind mana barrier appeared to protect him, and not only that, the spear was redirected in another direction, hitting another barrier that had the same effect, and continued like that, with that intense lightning being reflected and seeming to glow brighter. Carefully, the barriers were moving and getting closer to each other, the lightning flash was increasing in the same proportion as it was being redirected nonstop.
That is until the barriers are together forming an odd shape, it looked like a perfectly symmetrical prism, with the flash of lightning being almost a source of light that could blind someone.
"Π∆¶√..."
My mentor's voice seemed to quadruple as he said that, I couldn't even understand what he was saying, I was so confused. With the prism he created whirling frantically, making a high pitched noise. Everyone, even Professor Glory, was scared of that, it was easy to know what kind of double spell it was, it was an attack and an amplifier, and it seems that the amplification was more powerful than it should have been.
His voice was still quadrupled in that moment, when it seemed to finally finish the spell and a small hole appeared in the prism. Through this hole, lightning came out, causing an almost deafening sound followed by an intense explosion against their target, making a large amount of dust to rise. But when we could see the scene better, we noticed that there was no longer any trace of that thick and dense wall.
Everyone looked back at the Leywin brothers, who seemed to have gotten a little tired of the spell. They approached us with their voices showing how they bodies were feeling.
"As you can see... Combined attacks can be incredibly powerful... You just need to know your own limits and the limits of your ally." Luz said.
"That lightning used up 25% of my mana pool... But thanks to my brother's spell, the end result was the same as if I had spent 175% of all my mana... Remembering, I'm in the Dark Yellow Stage. " Art commented, making some students more impressed.
"Well... Even I was impressed by that! You are really Xyrus Academy Professors!" Professor Glory chuckled and patted both of them on the back, then looked at us. "Okay, Class. You're dismissed early! Next class I want to see you guys bring me amplification spells like these two here did!"
"Yes Professor!" We all spoke to each other and some had already started to leave the field while others were talking to each other.
Me, Curtis and Tessia went to the two boys. I could still see the princess's astonishment at the result of that great spell, I already believed it would be something so powerful, considering that both of them had already faced a Class S mana beast alone.
"Heh, I guess we put on a show for them didn't we?" Art spoke as Tessia jumped up to hug him.
"That was AMAZING! Seriously, where did you guys get that idea?" Curtis said excitedly.
"Actually, we only considered the idea of a magnifying glass affecting light. And we took that to mirrors affecting lightings." Luz spoke while looking at me. "And you did very well, I didn't expect less from my disciple, but we need to get back to our training together." he messed my hair a little.
"Eeeeh? But when would we do that?" I asked, curious.
"We could use a special training room that Cynthia said we would have. It was one of the things included in the proposal for us to be here." my mentor answered me.
"Wait... So you guys have your own training room? It would be nice then to have the disciplinary committee training there." Curtis commented.
"No. That room will only be for me, Luz and Tessia. But I think if someone from DC is going to enter, it will only be if we're together with you." when Arthur said that, Tessia hugged him tighter.
"Do we share the same training room? Master Cynthia is amazing!!!" the elf princess said as her Leywin gave her a light headpat.
"Yeah, apparently it's the same training room. It's big enough for me to practice my air strikes a bit." my mentor commented and looked up at the field sky from our last class.
"Air strikes? Man, you do everything, don't you?" Curtis asked and both boys just gave the thumbs up, not saying anything else. That made the five of us start laughing.
"President, we need to go, we have to take advantage of the free time we have to get some things done." Clive's voice soon came as he approached us.
"Hmpf! Okay.... See you later guys." Tessia said and get out of there with the vice president.
"I think I'll also take the opportunity to take a break before my next class. After all, I'll be teaching later tonight." Luz yawned.
"Oh really, you teach two classes. So how many students do you have?" Curtis looked more excited.
"I have around 30 students in my basic class, and only 6 in my advanced class... It's so bizarre that one person in this advanced class is Kai."
My eyes widened "Kai? Is Kai in a rune class?"
"He really does random things, because liking runes is completely new to me. He never tried to sign up for these classes before, so I don't know what changed for him to want that now... After all, it's just your basic class that has become mandatory, isn't it?" The prince spoke and my mentor agreed.
"Only my basic class is required, so much so that I'll have to teach you that at some point if you want to graduate here at Xyrus. But my advanced class is considered a completely extra. Anyway, Claire, I'll start making the cupcakes today, after that class." He was talking to Curtis, but in the end he looked at me.
"Yea!!!" My eyes sparkled, excited.
"Geez, why do you love these cupcakes so much?" the prince put his hands on my shoulders, shaking me a little.
"Because his cupcakes are amazing!" the three of them seemed to laugh at my comment.
"Welp, see you tonight, guys." Art said as he left with his brother.
"Hmmmm...." I looked to the side and saw curtis smirking.
"What's it?" I asked confused.
"Are you sure you don't...really like Luz?" He whispered to me and I blushed instantly.
"N-no. Why do you think that?"
"It's because the two of you seem like a really cute couple. I would honestly help him out on a date you could have...like use my authority as prince to leave a restaurant only to you two." He kept smirking and chuckling, my face turned into a complete tomato.
"Stop saying things like that, otherwise I'll fill you with more things to do!" I said, but it didn't seem to affect him, as he continued with that smirk.
"Aah!" I got tired of those things and ran out of there.
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