Four weeks after Nick's second combat class...
Kevin raised his hand to cast his spell directly in front of him:
(Electric Purge)
A ray of dazzling blue energy moved in a straight line towards a young woman, who, seeing the danger quickly activated her defensive method:
(Crimson Shroud)
A twisting collection of crimson flames appeared to cover the young woman like a shroud and the ray of electricity was consumed as it hit the shroud, eventually being cancelled out.
Seeing this, the woman dispelled her defensive flames and raised her hand, conjuring a soccer ball sized fireball and throwing it at Kevin who managed to transform into a ray of light, moving three meters ahead, past the quick moving fireball which eventually fell to the ground two meters away from where Kevin was initially positioned, scorching the ground an ugly black hue. Kevin approached the woman at the speed of a moving car while preparing his next spell.
Seeing that she could not outrun Kevin, the woman used an area of effect spell that she had recently learned to overcome her disadvantage:
(Flame Joker)
Suddenly, the five meter radius surrounding the woman became unbearably hot and Kevin who was still approaching the woman as a ray of light suddenly burst into flames, falling to the ground with a suspiciously quiet crash with the fire burning his body as he rolled in the dirt.The woman internally rejoiced:
(Flame Joker is a rare rank 2 intermediate grade spell that my family sacrificed for me to obtain. Its effect sets all magically imbued living beings on fire within a five meter radius of myself. There was no way that Kevin could of avoided that.)
"I won."
As soon as the woman said that, a snarky laugh came directly from behind her.
(Scene of Glory.)
The burning figure in front of Marcia as well as the scene caused by its crash to the ground suddenly dissipated like an illusion, as if her spell had never had any effect, revealing pristinely cut grass in its place.
Kevin appeared one meter behind Marcia and used another spell while crossing both of his arms in front of his chest:
(Bolt of Light.)
Using himself as a bolt, Kevin was covered in light and moved at blinding speed to knock into the woman's back which sent her flying three meters across the field. Kevin uttered with a smug grin:
"I win."
He ran towards the fallen woman who was shakily getting up and said:
"You've improved by quite a lot, Marcia, so much so that sparring with you is also helping me to improve."
Kevin held out his hand and helped Marcia up from the ground, with Marcia replying:
"You're too polite, Kevin. Your spells and tactics are superb, you must have been working hard this whole time."
Kevin and Marcia smiled at each other while most of the students surrounded them after their spar, saying:
"You guys were great, especially you Kevin. Your use of lightning and light spells together is ingenious."
"Yeah Kevin, you are a genius. Out of all of us you have probably improved the most since the start of the school year."
"Hey Kevin, why don't we all get some lunch together after class at the Chinese Buffet restaurant on campus to discuss our progress, my treat."
Kevin replied:
"Yeah sure, we work hard so a little treat won't hurt, ha, ha."
Marcia looked at Kevin with stars in her eyes, thinking:
(This Kevin Stalwart is really something. Not only is he polite, confident and good with magic, he also knows the value of maintaining relationships...)
Marcia glanced to the distant left side of the field as she thought this, looking at Nick Capitol as he rhythmically swung his sword, shirtless in the hot sun.
(Sigh, Nick seemed like a good investment but he spends most of his time alone and I only get to talk to him occasionally when I see him at breakfast and those talks never even amount to real conversations because he just asks me questions about magic and he will only answer my questions if its also about magic. He is so unfriendly; he does not care about relationships, he does not care about his appearance and he doesn't even care about his reputation. What use is he as a man if he doesn't consider those things?)
Marcia had started to feel a kind of loathing towards Nick and his indifference to those things that she placed a high value on.
(Kevin is a part of the Stalwart family and while they are not nearly as influential as the Bartholomew family, they have some influence. I don't mind getting close to him.)
While the students were making plans for their lunch after class, Thompson Varrow, their instructor, stood at the side shaking his head in disappointment:
(What a sorry lot. At first, they slowly started taking my class seriously until this young man, Kevin Stalwart, started becoming increasingly social within the class which has led to a clique and some kind of social hierarchy being formed when the students were supposed to be using their time to practise combat techniques. Magicians are not socialites and we do not cater to or concern ourselves with any particular group without material benefits in hand. This false warmth is sickening.)
Varrow looked at the far left corner at Nick who was dutifully swinging his wooden sword and nodded in approval.
(I did not make a mistake in setting that young man apart. I was hoping that his seriousness would rub off on the others but that has failed spectacularly. They are even actively shunning him. I wonder how things will unfold going forward.)
Nick did what would be his final swing of his sword for the day and breathed in deeply.
"That's two thousand swings today."
Swinging the sword was not as easy as it seemed as time went on becomes of the fatigue that could accumulate in the muscles and it took Nick a few weeks, from being able to do a few hundred good swings to being able to do a couple thousand good swings within two hours.
Nick decided to take a breather before leaving class and caught sight of the group of twenty five students as they were making plans for after class and paid particular attention to the two at the center of the gathering.
(Marcia seems to have found herself a lively host in...Kevin Stal something I think. I don't care about what Marcia wants to do since I only wanted information from her but looking at her now, it seems that she hasn't learnt her lesson.)
Nick shook his head in disapproval.
(If you want to belong somewhere, you should earn that right with your capabilities and not some ridiculous feeling of closeness with people who do not care whether you live another day.)
Nick put on his shirt, indicated to Varrow that he was going to leave and was about to head to the spell creation club when Kevin emerged from the crowd and said jokingly:
"Wait, Nick. We made plans to go out to eat after this and was wondering if you wanted to join us. We know that it must be hard for you to swing that sword for so long. I definitely don't want you to be left out."
After Kevin made this declaration, there were all sorts of grumbling from the surrounding students, saying:
"Why are you inviting him Kevin, he'll only bring down the mood."
"Yeah, why bother inviting that crazy guy?"
Kevin put on a thoughtful expression after hearing the comments and asked:
"You know him right, Marcia, what do you think?"
Marcia was caught by surprise after hearing that question from Kevin. Although something about the situation felt distasteful, she did not want to disrespect Kevin in front of everyone so she looked at Nick, then with a half embarrassed expression, she looked away from Nick and replied:
"I don't think that Nick would want to come, he doesn't like people after all, so you should not have invited him."
With a regretful expression, Kevin said to Nick:
"Sorry friend, no one wants you at the buffet so I'll have to rescind my invitation. I guess we'll see you in class tomorrow."
Nick stood in his spot and looked at the scene with an indifferent expression, not surprised by Kevin's performance or Marcia's betrayal. He shrugged his shoulders in response and simply left.
Slade soon spoke to Nick like a devil on his shoulders:
[Not going to do anything after that disrespect?]
Nick replied:
(Why would I? I've been disrespected dozens of times before and not one time did it really matter, it's no different this time. Those people and their bad behavior is not my problem.)
Slade asked cheekily:
[What about your reputation?]
(The people who take gossip and social nonsense seriously are not worth considering much less what they think about me or my situation. I don't care about my reputation among pigs.)
Slade said with unconcealed approval:
[I am liking you more and more, kid. Anyway, why do you waste time going to that club of yours, we could use the time to cultivate your soul but here you are going to hand in work that you accepted from that mediocre potion maker.]
(You know that the club serves a purpose. Besides, looking through Norman's notes is helping me to sharpen my translation skills so I don't mind the tasks.)
When Nick arrived in the spell creation club with his wooden sword in hand, Lana was the only one present and Nick asked:
"Where's Norman?"
Lana shook her head, saying:
"I don't know, I just know that he's not here."
An awkward silence followed between Lana and Nick but Nick eventually took out the documents that he was to give to Norman that had his corrections and said to Lana while placing them in front of her:
"Well, please see to it that he gets these documents."
Lana silently nodded.
Nick was about to leave but Lana stopped him:
"Wait, Nick. I never asked before but why are you still interested in scroll writing? You know that there are many Magicians that look at it as the magical equivalent of children's finger painting, right?"
Nick turned around and looked at Lana with a weird expression and replied:
"If your studying magic with the opinions of everyone else in mind, you might as well give up now cause you just aren't going to make it."
Lana quivered a little when Nick said that and fell silent, pretending to focus on her documents. Nick sighed and left the spell creation club and made his way back to his dorm room. Nick sat at his desk and looked at the progress that he had made on Copy and felt pleased with himself. A few weeks ago, while he was meditating, he managed to figure out how to solve a major hurdle in creating his spell and has made rapid progress since then.
The initial version of the spell was almost complete and all he needed to do to finish it was to figure out how to structure the final parts of the spell that would allow it to execute seamlessly with little chance of failure. Nick had tried for the past few days but had failed after many attempts.
"It has been three months since I signed the contract with the General Beast Store and I've only got a few months left, I'm running out of time."
Nick felt subtly pressured and it was getting in the way of his recent attempts at meditation. Nick picked up his pen and stared and the last parts of the spell for hours, trying to figure out the solution. At around midnight, Nick sighed and put his pen down.
"I'm still unsure."
Nick decided to do some meditation before going to bed so he started chanting his meditation technique and mediated for the next two hours.When he was finished, he stopped meditating and caught sight of the whirlpool of magic energy that was dissipating.
(Why does the magic energy that gathers take the form of a whirlpool before it enters my body? It seems a little strange that that is always the shape that the magic energy takes on as it slowly saturates my mindscape...)
"Huh?"
Nick felt a stroke of inspiration.
"From reading math books, I know that natural phenomenon often takes on certain patterns to produce the most optimal results, given the circumstances. What if the magic gathering in a whirlpool is the most optimal way to saturate my mindscape with magic energy while the magic energy already within is being processed and the magic energy outside is kept in a state of constant motion to prevent it from dissipating or even becoming unstable..."
Nick opened his eyes wide as he grabbed his pen and started writing notes for his spell, Copy. Despite his tiredness, he persevered and four hours later, he finally found a solution for the final part of his spell that would allow it to efficiently produce its effect without stalling or failing after activation.
"Let's test it out..."
Before Nick could muster the strength to test the spell, his head suddenly fell on the desk and his now heavy eyelids closed; Nick had fallen unconscious once again from mental exhaustion.
......
When Nick woke up, he checked his phone and discovered that it was already 8:00 am.
"I missed my alarm!"
Nick quickly got into the shower without thinking of anything else and then got dressed and left for combat class with his wooden sword in hand. Unlike usual, he arrived at class exactly as it began instead of being there one hour earlier, time he would have used to review the math books on his laptop.
Thompson Varrow took note of Nick's arrival and told the rest of the class to wait a moment for him to lecture them; he walked over to Nick with a wooden sword, saying:
"You've been swinging that sword up and down for over a month now so It's time for you to learn how to swing it using more complex motions."
Varrow proceeded to show Nick a set of sword play techniques where he swung the sword aggressively in a sequence of strange patterns.
"This sword technique is called the Waiting Viper because its movements allow you to stall the enemy and strike ferociously when the time is right. I want you to practise the movements that I just showed you until further notice."
Because Nick had a rank 2 mindscape, his memory was already close to perfect so remembering how Slade moved was no problem for him. Nick began practising the movements, but for the entire two hours of class his sword play was sloppy at best.
(My pacing and control of the amount of strength that I use are not good enough.)
Nick sat in the grass, resting before he made his next move.
(I finally finished the initial version of Copy but I woke up so late this morning that I didn't get a chance to test it. I'll have to return to my dorm room quickly after visiting the spell creation club.)
After seeing the other students leave, some of who looked at him scornfully before they left, Nick got up, picked up his sword and backpack and left for the spell creation club.
........
When Nick arrived, Derek, Lana and Norman were all present and after greeting them, Nick asked Norman:
"Do you have anymore tasks for me professor?"
Norman seemed to think for a while before saying:
"Not today, I'm busy helping these two so I haven't arranged any tasks for you, come back tomorrow."
Nick nodded his head and as he was about to leave, from a side glance, he noticed that Lana was looking at him with an unsightly expression.
(Sigh, why do all of these people want to hate on me? Is it my fault that they are mediocre or worse?)
Nick shook his head and left the spell creation club, soon returning to his dorm room. Nick sat at his desk and after looking over the laws that he had written down for Copy which seemed to now be glowing in a feint red hue, Nick decided that it was finally time to test out the spell.
"This has been months in the making."