章 25: Chapter 6.5 - A word about magic - Magic tutor POV (part 1)
My name is Vatlo Jora Erest and I'm a magic tutor working directly under king Rozulius Rezulius Bellcephora.
As soon as his firstborn son awakened to magic I was ordered to teach him, which was - of course - a great honor!
I don't want to brag but even though my attribute is water my mana reservoir is even more vast than someone's with the fire attribute!
Well... truth be told my disposition makes my magic more useful in the field of research than combat... But on the bright side, thanks to that I became a royal tutor while still in my twenties, which is an amazing achievement none of my peers can stand up to!
Once the young Horeo grew up enough for the teaching to have any sense, it was decided that I will tutor him and his fiancé at least twice a week - sometimes it would be done in the royal castle and sometimes in the duke's Espine manor.
I've honestly struck gold!
If I leave a good impression it wouldn't be impossible to gain the favor of a future royal couple!
It is honestly more than worth the trouble of traveling between the places in these circumstances!
And also, teaching someone with light attribute was already a huge deal, but the possibility of observing someone with wind attribute skipping three whole ranks and being as powerful as light attribute!?
Unprecedented!
Though, it wasn't all gold and glitter...
I wasn't teaching only the children with a bright future in the world of magic...
Together with the future royal couple came attached a black-haired boy with part of his face disfigured.
The bad experience from my childhood reared their ugly heads and made me, let's say, full of prejudice towards that child.
Because of his burns, it was hard to look at him if I'm honest, and the worst part was of course his darkness attribute!
When I first heard about him I was stunned!
He was supposedly already undergoing training to become the attendant of the young lady Espine!
Someone with a darkness attribute!
Darkness was not only the weakest attribute of them all – if that was the only problem with it, being a darkness magician wouldn't carry the stigma that it did in the current world!
Since almost everyone who wielded that kind of magic would stray from the righteous path, most nobles would straight up declare that their children are magicless if they awakened to darkness - to save them and themselves from shame attached to that foul magic!
But the king's order was the king's order, and apparently, the first prince himself has declared that he won't be learning anything - no spells nor manners - if it's not together with the black-haired boy... And there was that thing that the royal magician kept on nagging me about - something about that the prince's awakening to light attribute caused an unprecedented forceful awakening of the black-haired boy.
|One of a kind or not, the darkness attribute wielded by the worst traitors in the history of the kingdom of Bellcephora... that just spells trouble...|
I sighed inwardly when I entered the room when my three new students awaited.
After a short introduction, I have begun to explain the basics to the children, though for some reason the name of the boy with the darkness attribute reminded me of something...
But what could it be...? I had a feeling that it has something to do with the tragedy from three hundred years in the past – it wasn't the name of either of the perpetrators, but...
Unfortunately, the answer had eluded me and I had a lesson to teach, so I focused on that instead.
"As you may know, magic is divided into six attributes. Namely darkness, earth, wind, water, fire, and light. Thanks to the discovery of magic crystals and the development of ways of processing them, we were able to properly measure the average mana capacity that a large group of wielders of each attribute had and the ranks of mana capacity were formed. It is often called the divide of power and since most people refer to it in such a way I will be calling it like that too. I would like to point out that even if the 'strength' of each attribute may be different each of them has things that it excels in or is at least better suited for than others."
Learned from my childhood spent in the lawless province that my father was supposed to govern taught me that I should expect bad behavior from the boy with the darkness attribute - but to my surprise, he was the one most focused on listening to my words and was meticulously taking notes of each word I spoke.
|Well, it's still too soon to judge, he has the darkness attribute after all...|
I thought to myself even though the less reasonable part of my mind was telling me that such a studious boy can't really be bad, and then and continued the lecture.
"We will cover it in greater detail later but for now I'll quickly summarize what are the strong and weak points of each attribute:
Going from the strongest to the weakest.
Most powerful is the light attribute.
It is considered the purest form of magic, its specialty is long-ranged attacks but is also useful in close combat.
It's also capable of the area of effect attacks and – at the highest level of master - teleportation, the level of body enchants used for augmenting the physical capabilities is: strong.
Next, is the fire attribute.
It is considered the most aggressive and offensively oriented attribute.
It shines the most in ranged attacks because of the explosive nature of the vast majority of its spells and because of that it is not suited for close combat and it has almost no defensive capabilities.
Still, it can provide a barrage of powerful attacks laying waste to the enemies from a safe distance, physical augmentation enchants are: weak.
Then we have the water attribute.
It is much gentler than the previous two, although it's possible for the water-based attacks to reach the middle range, they are much more effective at the short and medium distance.
It is possible for a water magician to create a bubble that will defend them against their opponent's magic – but the durability of the bubble is directly linked to the magician's mana reservoir.
Water is best suited for magic defense and can provide some degree of detoxification which is the closest thing to the ancient healing magic.
Physical augmentation enchants level is: average.
Then there is the wind attribute.
Dangerous only at the short distance but very weak at the long and medium distance and difficult to use in close combat.
But it truly shines in utility spells - the ability to send long-distance messages is invaluable on any battlefield similar to their physical augmentation enchantments mostly focused around speed and in their niche are ranked as: very strong but in comparison with light and earth ones they fall down to only strong.
The fifth one in terms of power is the earth attribute.
Good short-range attacks with moderate magic defense.
They are treasured for their utility spells of terrain manipulation which is an indispensable ability when preparing a major defense or offense.
Useful in, or rather before, battle and construction alike.
Their physical augmentation enchantments, except maybe for the speed one, are: very strong.
As you can see, the stronger the magic the fewer weak points it has.
By no means any of the magic is worse than the other, they all just fit in a different niche, but as you have heard, there is mostly only a good side to those attributes since the side-effects come mostly from the incorrect use and their only limit is how much mana you have. After you deplete your mana you will experience the state of mana depletion that is slightly different for every person, in the worst-case scenario you will lose your consciousness but you certainly won't die just because you use too many spells."
"...?"
The children looked confused because of my choice of words, so I took a deep breath and explained what I meant.
クリエイターの想い 
Sound_Hammer
Sound_Hammer Hello there!
If you like the style of this story, you might also like my other work - The Villainess and I, her Zombie - available on this site too?
I tagged this book, come and support me with a thumbs up!
Creation is hard, cheer me up!
Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!
Have some idea about my story? Comment it and let me know.
Like it ? Add to library！
章 26: Chapter 6.5 - A word about magic - Magic tutor POV (part 2)
"And that is when the darkness attribute is sticking out from the rest.
Magic is well fitted for spies, assassins, robbers, and other people of... questionable interests.
Basic spells consist of entering the shadow and instantly traveling to the other place that is connected by another spell called shadow connect - it's similar to teleportation.
Another one is muffle – the name is self-explanatory – it muffles the sound of objects and people touched by the caster.
And lastly, there's the darkness blade - a spell that creates a short blade of condensed darkness capable of piercing through both physical and magical defenses of all kinds.
Physical augmentations enchantment: do not exist.
Some of it may sound useful, and it is, to a certain degree.
Aside from the darkness blade, there are no other attacks in this school of magic.
The first spell, which only sounds amazing, is extremely dangerous for the caster.
Darkness attributes is a corrosive magic – it is believed that darkness attribute mana itself is corrosive and gnaws at the body of the wielder – but that was never confirmed and might just be a superstition used to keep the darkness magician from mastering their magic.
But back to the traveling through the shadows - when the caster enters the shadow of their choosing, only his own mana is protecting his body from dissolving while being constantly drained.
Similar to entering and traveling through the darkness, mana is also needed to exit from the shadow.
It's not like with teleportation at all.
If a light magician doesn't have enough mana for a teleportation spell to reach their desired destination - they will not teleport at all.
But when a darkness magician miscalculates the amount of his mana and the distance they have to travel - they will become stuck in the shadow, unable to leave, and their only chance for survival would be if another darkness magician would dive into the exact same shadow and save them, in any other case, they will die slowly and painfully."
I finished the explanation and pushed myself away from my desk which caused the wheels to creak and the sound had snapped the children back to reality.
"Teacher! How is it possible that the darkness magician entering shadow might die? Isn't it just shadow?"
The blond prince raised his hand and immediately asked with a confused face.
"There is a lot of things that we don't know about magic – it might be that the darkness magicians are merely using the shadows as a medium to travel to some other world vaguely connected with our own, and that's why they can get trapped inside, but it's all unconfirmed theories that had not been explored since three hundred years."
I answered to the best of my ability – I wasn't lying, no one even touched the subject of darkness magic since the day of the heinous crime three centuries ago.
"B-but it's still magic, you can just be careful with it and everything will be fine! Why do people dislike it?"
To my surprise, the young prince wasn't finished with the matter and was the one to speak in defense of the darkness attribute.
|Sigh...|
It felt bad talking about it but it's better they'll learn this as soon as possible, I guess – especially when it comes to the studious boy with the burn scar...
"You may or may not be aware that the darkness attribute magicians are often despised and ridiculed... But the laughter hides fear, and the reason for contempt is rooted in our kingdom's history."
I spoke up and propelled myself away from the dest and towards my students.
"Because you see, if the darkness magician wants to, they can store things in their shadow as long as they have enough mana to do so – which more often than not they do not... Either way, if said things or people have been secured with the protective layer of darkness mana they will last for a while but when the barrier depletes, they will be dissolved by the surrounding darkness - without exception."
I was beating around the bush too much – I saw the frowns of confusion on their faces...
Maybe I shouldn't tell them after all...?
|I'm their tutor now - they will have to learn it sooner or later anyway...|
I took another deep breath and started explaining.
"Think about it for a moment. It is perfectly possible for the darkness magician to pull a living creature inside against their will - and only the darkness magician can pull them out. The shadows are sealed spaces with no way out for anyone except for the darkness magicians."
Even after I made the decision of bringing up the tragedy of that dark day, it still took me a while to get to the point, but there I was...
"Three hundred years ago, in times before mana crystals, when all magic was treated the same way - Bellcephora kingdom had a special military unit formed of only the transcended magicians wielding the darkness attribute.
They were the pride of the king of that time, Kasorius Reterne Bellcephora, and caused both fear and respect from the other countries.
The members of that unit were known as the Ghosts of Bellcephora.
Thanks to them wars would end with only the commanders of the enemies being taken hostage with no way to stop them.
They were the country's heroes!
...until one day they have betrayed everyone that trusted them and turned their spells against their ruler...
King Kasorius was traveling with his family to the neighboring country for peace talks.
In the middle of the travel, the king's horse's shadow turned deeper and the members of the Ghosts emerged around his family.
King's escorts seeing the king's most trusted troops arrive, took up their arms as they were sure that if the special unit arrived then the king was in danger.
So they surrounded the king and the Ghosts, their swords pointed outside the protective ring, and they waited.
And listened.
Then a scream could be heard, but not a warcry from some enemy lying in ambush, but from the center of their defensive position!
When the king's guards turned around, they saw almost the entire royal family pierced by multiple blades of darkness – the king and queen and even the first prince who was riding together with his father and the first princess raiding besides her mother all died on the spot from the ruthless and vicious attack.
The only survivors of the initial attack were the second princess and the second prince, but even they were in grave danger - two of the Ghost caught the children and were escaping into the shadows together with them.
Guards couldn't react in time - they couldn't believe that the country's heroes would commit such atrocity and if not for the quick-witted squire who thanks to his wind magic's wind blade spell managed to cut off the arm of one of the Ghosts, the traitors would have all escaped after eradicating the royal family completely.
But thanks to the squire the second prince managed to escape from the one-armed Ghost.
Thankfully he managed to survive... but he was the only survivor.
All Ghosts escaped into shadows and disappeared taking the struggling second princess together with them.
At first, it was thought that the traitors would use the young second princess as a hostage, but the truth turned out to be much more gruesome.
Once the king's guards returned to the kingdom with the surviving second prince, what awaited them was the mountain of corpses of every official that had said behind in the castle and the mutilated remains of the kidnapped nine-year-old second princess corroded by the darkness and seated on the throne as some sort of grim warning or declaration...
The entire kingdom of Bellcephora has fallen into chaos.
After the chaos, ruin and famine followed.
It took over a hundred years to rebuild what was lost that during that single day."
I sighed, massaging my forehead, and looked back at my young students.
"So, my prince, I hope that this story answers your question why the darkness attribute is disliked by everyone."
I added with a weak smile.
"..."
"..."
The children looked terrified - especially the boy with the darkness attribute was looking at his hands in horror.
|Well, better to learn now, he will need to grow a thick skin if he seriously is going to become the attendant of the future queen...|
I thought to myself and moved back to the desk.
"But back to the original subject."
Even though the atmosphere was fit to end the lesson I continued the lesson.
クリエイターの想い
Sound_Hammer
Sound_Hammer
Hello there!
If you like the style of this story, you might also like my other work - The Villainess and I, her Zombie - available on this site too?
I tagged this book, come and support me with a thumbs up!
Creation is hard, cheer me up!
Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!
Have some idea about my story? Comment it and let me know.
Like it ? Add to library！
ギフト
-- 贈り物
が届きました 週次パワーステータス
200+ 推薦
ランキング 
3 推薦
チケット 
段落コメント