Jenhe looks of fusion on some of her students' faces and begins to expin her reasoning.

  “I see some of you are fused with my point allocation so allow me to expin. What we are attempting right now is elemental maion. The differeween this and casting a spell is the ck of a runiu. When we cast spells,” as she speaks, she raises her left hand and a glowing red matrix of runes appears above it, “we form a specific matrix of runes, formed with a set of precise calcutions, and imbue it with a mental image.”

  The tre of the matrix expands and a fist-sized ball of fmes forms, crag and flickering in a trolled manner. “When doing this, we substitute a solid mental image for a t that forms the mental image for us. In this situation, the as and properties of the spell are mainly trolled by the runiu you use, with little room for ge unless you have precise mana manipution.”

  Jenny dismisses the fireball and raises her right hand before her. “However, with elemental maion, there is no matrix or t to assist you in image and trol. Because of this, you must form an incredibly detailed image, and sider many small variables that will affect it, to ma even a small mass of pure elemental mana. This leads to most beginners only being able to form wisps of a.” Above her hand, small red sparks appear, flickering in and out of existence weakly.

  “We judge affinity based on how dehese wisps are. However, Emily here managed a full maion on her first attempt!” The sparks in her hand shoot towards the tre and deo a small flickering e fme.

  “It takes most mages getting to the third circle to form a full maion with their mai, hence why I believe this is an achievement worthy of praise.”

  Emily sees her peers nodding with uanding and feels a budding sense of pride.

  I guess the system was right in calling me a magical genius.

  “Right,” Jenny says with a cp, gathering everyone's attention again. “I’ve seen all of your attempts at fire so let us move on to water .”

  She once agaihem all to close their eyes and listen to her questioning them about the element. Emily pictures an orb of clear water in her mind and attempts to ma it. However, this time she only mao jure a mass of blue wisps.

  I think I spoke too soon. It’s weird though, my image of water feels just as clear in my mind as that of fire but it doesn’t mahe same. Is this what affinity means?

  As the css moves through the elements, Emily struggles with wind ah as well, only juring faint clouds of colour for each. While she is feeling disappoi her inability to replicate her first success, Jenhe css a challenge.

  “Now for the fual, exotid fher form elements, all of them are a lot more difficult for a mage to grasp, even if they have an affinity for it. Because of this, my interference would just be detrimental to yrowth, so I’m going to give you all a challenge instead. For the en minutes, anyone who mas a other than the on four will be givey points. This excludes Jeremy and Kyle since you’ve had many attempts at this already. Begin!”

  Ign the grumbling ing from the end of the line and shutting out all external stimuli, Emily closes her eyes and raises her palm. Without a moment's hesitation, she decides to try lightning.

  Since maing fire earlier, Emily couldn’t help w if her ck of ability to ma other elements was due to a ck of uanding instead of aptitude. To test this, she chooses to attempt lightning, the element assisted the most by her system-given knowledge and real-life experiences.

  As Emily focuses on the cept of lightning, three things spring to mind. The first is the memory of her first time breaking a mana crystal; the bzing matrix of lightning violently crag and pulling along a floating ring of metal has been fixed in her mind sihe sed is the delicate and orderly flow of electrical signals flooding her body even now in the form of the esoteric lightning called maa. The final piece to tie the two seemingly disected ideas of lightning together is her theoretical knowledge of electricity.

  In the pletely bnk space within her mind, Emily starts by pig two points. At both points, a small iron ball appears. One ball she pictures with a stroive charge, and the other positive. As she increases the differen charge, the gap betweewo balls begins to shake and a bolt of lightning shoots betweewo balls. The streak of lightning collides with the receiving ball and vanishes as quickly as it appears. However, Emily maintains and keeps increasing the differen charge.

  Lightning keeps striking and very quickly the gap between each strike narrows to the point of being indistinguishable. All that remains pictured in Emily’s mind is a fierce spear of lightning. Flowing in a trolled yet violent manner, with wildly grasping branches shooting off into the charged space around it, the spear distorts everything around it with a powerful eleagic field.

  Emily pushes a steady flow of mana into the image, instead of trepidation or excitement, all she feels is a serene sense of calm. pletely fident, Emily trusts the instinct tellihat her interpretation is corred opens her eyes.

  Floating above her hand is a small stream of lightning. pared to the power and violence of the image in her head, the maion is pathetic. However, her the grin that spreads across Emily’s faor the feeling of satisfa at her success are diminished in the slightest. The system notification that appears along with it only acts to add fuel to the fires of her joy.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  Hidde pleted: Magic? More like physics!

  [Magic? More like physics!]

  [Rank:] E

  [Description:] Use your uanding of physia a.

  Requirements:

  -Ma 1/1 Element (plete)

  Rewards:

  -Meiowledge: Basic Particle Physics

  --Quest: True Magical Genius #1

  -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

  [True Magical Genius #1]

  [Rank:] D

  [Description:] Living up to your title of teancer, you have maed a using your uanding of physics! But are two maions truly worthy of a magical genius?

  Requirements:

  -Ma 2/3 Elements in your first maion attempt (Not plete)

  Rewards:

  -Meiowledge: Basic Material Sce

  -Meiowledge: Basiematics

  _____

  Emily winces as a flood of knowledge settles in her mind. Reag up and massaging her brows, she siders the application of the new information she has.

  I think with this I should be able to ma wind if I sider it a movement of the air. Why did I op to wonder what was transferring charge though? The metal in my lightning image wasn’t accurate, I should just sider it a point of charged water vapour in the air.

  Wait a sed, if the maions have to be on my first attempt, does that mean I abuse time travel to have ano?

  “-mily! Emily! Are you okay?” Jenny’s ed voiaps Emily out of her ruminations.

  “Ah, yes. Sorry, I’m fine, just a little distracted,” Emily responds while l her hand from her face.

  “Good, gratutions on maing a higher element! Truly a talent blessed by the Goddess herself.”

  Jenny walks back to her podium quickly and grants Emily her reward.

  “Twenty points to Emily Coldstone! Right, that marks the end of our time for today.” She walks back to stand in front of the group as she tinues.

  “I would like all of you five to go to the information hub and cim a spell for a of your choice. The ant allows eaew mage a single first circle spell for free and then after that, you will have to pay for any others. Emily, I believe you should choose a fire spell, it’s best to focus on your simpler element first to get used to spell casting. Alexia aer, you should focus on water. Tom, earth. And Nico, fire. By our lesson in two weeks, I would like you all to attempt to learn and cast your spell. If you succeed by the lesson, you will pass this module. If not, you keep trying or s elements,” Jenny finishes with a smile, before turning to the two boys at the end of the line and speaking to them with disdain.

  “As for you two, I will see you again in a fht. Try spendiime pung each other and more time in the library. If you fail to plete this lesson two more times, I have now been given permission to revoke both of yhts as mages and send you home.” Turning back to the rest of the css, her smile returns.

  “You’re all dismissed!”

  All the students give a light bow with their right hands across their chests, which Emily quickly copies, then start moving towards the door in silence.

  So, is this quest really tellio time travel just to show off? I’m not against it, but it seems a bit odd for the system to care.

  Stepping out of the , Emily turns to head towards the transportation circles but gets stopped by a hand on her shoulder.

  “That was crazy! You’re like, super talented!” Tom practically shouts while Emily turns around to face him with a frown.

  “Thank you, but could you try not to deafen me please.”

  “Ah, sorry.”

  As Tom scratches his cheek in embarrassment, Emily pushes his hand off her shoulder and begins to turn around to leave.

  “Are you going to the information hub now?” She pauses at Hester’s question.

  If I’m going to rewind anyway, I may as well see if I get a load of spells for free.

  “Yeah, you?”

  “Same, let’s go together.”

  The three of them start walking side-by-side down the hallway.

  “That was really hard though, I barely got a rea for earth. How did you mao mawo elements so well?” Tom asks after a few moments of walking in silence.

  “I just thought of a time I’d seen the element and simuted its formation,” Emily replies without much thought and looks over to see a fused look on Tom’s face.

  “What do you mean simuted its formation?”

  “Well for fire I started with a bnk space, then pictured a spark growing into a small fme. Then I added a bit of metal to the fme and pictured them both heating up till the fme melted the metal. I also thought of the wind blowing against the fme and how it would react. After the metal was melted, I was left with my image of fire and that’s it.” Tom’s look of fusion grows as she speaks.

  “Why did you include metal when trying to form fire?”

  “I once saw an airship explode and the memory of the burning ship was my main reference for fire, so I thought it fit. Also, I heat metal to form it when making things, so it was the best way for me to picture it. After all, Jenny told us to form our own image so I thought reting it to something I’ve done or seen in the past would help.”

  A look of realisation spreads across Hester’s face as she listens too.

  “I was just trying to picture the elements alo never occurred to me to think of a past experieh them. Thanks, Emily!”

  “No problem, I’m surprised Jenny didn’t say something simir.”

  “Ah, you should probably call her Miss Forsythia by the way. Most mages teag here don’t like being called so casually.”

  “Oh sure, it feels weird to call her Miss though. She only looks like she’s twenty.”

  “She’s probably around a hundred years old though,” Tom joins in again, finished dealing with his fusion over elemental maion.

  “Wait what?” Emily asks in disbelief at his cim.

  “Didn’t you know? Mages' life spans increase with their circle.” Emily shakes her head, so Tom tio expin. “Weird. We had this expio us when the mages from house Dahlia tried to persuade us to join them. At first circle there isn’t much difference, only having a slightly improved body, but you should still be healthy till one hundred years old. The sed circle doubles that to two hundred years. And at the third circle, you live upwards of three to four hundred years.”

  “What about the fourth circle?”

  “Sorry, they didn’t tell us because they said it wouldn’t matter to us, though I guess for you it might.”

  I’ll ask Juliahen.

  “It’s alright, ’t expect you to know everything. Also, did you say that house Dahlia persuaded you to join? You weren’t forced?”

  “Forced? No, they came and told us we had the ability to beages and asked us to serve them as vassals and iurn they’d send us to The ant for training. They’ve treated us very well, were you forced?”

  Hester and Tom both wait for Emily’s respoh looks of .

  “Very much so. Those assholes tried to use a brainwashing spell on me. Luckily, I was able to resist it, but house Mandrago seems to do that to all their vassal mages. I’m gd to know it isn’t on practice.”

  The horrified looks she sees directed at her calm her suspis a little.

  “Stop looking at me like that, I’m fine. e o’s go.” Emily rolls her eyes at the siblings with a small smile as she steps into a transportation room.

  These guys are alright, I’ll talk to them agaiime.