Teo and his friends were standing on the paved field behind school that was used for sports classes and the breaks between lessons, waiting for their new instructor to arrive while rubbing their hands together in a futile attempt to warm themselves up.
From the 26 children in their class, only 14 had applied for the new practical Magic course; the others were either afraid of embarrassing themselves or utterly untalented in Magic altogether.
Since the second semester had already begun, and it had only been a week since New Year's, it was naturally freezing cold, and the city was covered by a dense layer of snow. Even now, a slight fizzle of white tufts could be seen raining down around them, yet the small plaza remained free of ice and snow.
Actually, a few teachers had spent their morning splashing seawater at the field before drying it up with Fire Magic. They did not exactly know how it worked, but the method provided a long-lasting and better result compared to merely melting all the snow with Fire Magic directly.
After waiting for almost 15 minutes, a familiar face came rushing over from the main building. It was their Elements teacher, Dexton Kasahara, easily recognizable by his wavy, blond hair and his green eyes, clearly identifying him as someone from central Kalar.
"Sorry for being late," he said and hurriedly fixed his scarf that had slipped a bit while running and now revealed a speck of the snow-white skin beneath. He scanned through the crowd quickly and said,
"It seems that everyone is already here, good. Any questions so far?"
A corpulent boy wearing suspenders raised his hand. He was quite pale, and it seemed that not even his fleshy body could protect him from the biting cold. After a nod from Mr. Kasahara, he began to stammer his question,
"I, I thought we were s-supposed to get a new te-teacher for this class?"
"You were!", Mr. Kasahara said, "However, we could not find a decent teacher for the second year on such short notice... so I volunteered to pitch in as your instructor for the second semester."
It was no real surprise that the school had problems to fulfill the unexpected, new regulations of the Magic Association. Magicians were rare on the Continent, and so far from the bustling cities of central Kalar, even Apprentice Magicians were a luxury good that every school only had a limited amount of. For most classes, this was not really a problem, like math, history, culture, music, sports, and so on. These subjects did not require any Magic skills or knowledge to teach, but a practical course about applied Magic techniques was a different story, for apparent reasons.
Mr. Kasahara was an intermediate rank Apprentice Magician who also taught them the basic principles governing the Elements, so it was comprehensible to install him as a temporary instructor — the 'magical' teachers working at the school could be counted on one hand after all.
"If there are no more questions, then we will start now," Mr. Kasahara said.
A low whispering went through the crowd of students, but they soon fell silent with the gaze of their teacher weighing on them.
"Most of you should have awakened their Elemental vision and somewhat practiced their foundational Magic by now, right? If anyone still has problems with these points, please stand aside for now and come to me after I finished explaining the main task for today," the tall teacher began his explanation. As soon as he finished these words, the left corner of his mouth began twitching uncontrollably, as he saw a full six students stand aside. Usually, the younger generation was very eager to explore their new abilities, so he did not expect this many to be still stuck on level zero; he quickly recovered though, and continued with his instructions.
"The most important skill you can learn that will help you in every situation, regardless of context, is to defend yourself in the face of danger. So, we will start with that. Every idiot is capable of throwing his Element around, injuring not only others but even himself; we, however, will learn how to protect ourselves from these idiots."
The whole class chuckled at these words but quickly turned silent again to follow the lesson further. Obviously, no one felt addressed personally, even though most of them were precisely on the implied level.
"Defense is a rather complex topic, best learned through practice. Pair up in groups of two and try to defend yourself from your partner's practice attacks in turns. Remember, I said practice attacks. Wait until your partner is ready, and don't throw anything at them that they can't handle. Try to help each other! I will be making my rounds trying to help anyone with difficulties. If I see anyone overdoing it, I will gladly spar with him myself," Mr. Kasahara said in a clear and loud voice, causing everyone to straighten their backs and listen. The last words were followed by a particularly creepy smile, sending shivers down the students' backs.
They quickly began to gather in groups of two and spread out across the field, while Mr. Kasahara gave detailed instructions about Elemental Vision to the group of slower students.
Teo had left the honor of forming a group with Angelika to Jack this time, after getting sufficiently puppy-eyed by the latter, and searched for another partner by himself. He ended up in a group with Darrell, the plump boy who had raised the first question previously and had an Affinity for the Earth Element.
It was an extremely unfair matchup, as the Earth Element enjoyed a huge natural advantage in terms of defensive capabilities, but Teo actually looked forward to the challenge.
At first, everyone practiced his skills for a few minutes, warming up and getting ready for the task, then the first groups began to spar hesitatingly. Meanwhile, Darrell had slowly buried himself in a thick layer of rocks and earth. He concentrated the Earth Elemental Threads in the outer layer as much as possible to make it even harder and durable.
When Teo slowly began to grow bored with watching other groups, he heard a muffled voice coming from beside him.
"You ... can star... now."
Teo could barely make out a complete word, but he still got the message. He was ready a long time ago.
He had planned to start with something small, but seeing the human chestnut in front of him, he decided to get somewhat serious. The Earth Element really was unfair when it came to pure defensive ability. Even a weakling like Darrell could turn into a fortress if given enough time. After all, a wall of earth would not require any further energy or concentration, once it was built.
Yet all Teo could see was a perfect venue for target practice.
Having all the time in the world (obviously, Darrell wasn't going anywhere), he began to collect the Mana from the air around him and formed a small ball of energy in front of his chest. He would first test the waters with a basic Mana Bolt using less than half his power.
With a flick of his hand, he let go, and a bright blue glow flashed into the direction of the small hill that had formed on the practice field.
*Bamm*
The effect was a bit underwhelming, as the huge explosion of rubble Teo had pictured in his mind, did not occur. A blunt impact sound, a few cracks here and there, a few small pieces of debris flying a few meters away, and a sizable cloud of dust was all he had managed to conjure. It was a hard nut, indeed.
Seeing the small cracks slowly mending themselves as time passed, he got fired up a little and readied his next attack.
First, he would try two consecutive Bolts of similar strength to his first one; maybe he would already be able to blow apart the weakened shell after cracking it with the first impact. S
*Bammm*
*Ba-Crack*
His idea was quite good, as he really did manage to crack the thick shell apart this time, breaking off a piece large enough to see a shocked boy hurriedly repairing his shelter.
Three bolts would definitely be able to get the job done, but Teo had little interest in needlessly bullying his classmates. He just wanted to see what he could do with his skills.
After waiting for the opulent tortoise to retreat back into its shell, he began to prepare his third and final attack. He would attack using almost his full strength now, but still without using any special techniques, of course. The pure impact of the raw energy bundle would be more than enough.
This time Teo spent a few more seconds weaving his Mana Bolt compared to before, but was still done very quickly. The fist-sized Orb of energy hovering in front of him was exuding a natural aura of power, even though he did not even compress it that much. After carefully aiming at the intended spot, he fired, and the raw energy charged forth like water from a broken dam.
*Swooosh*
This time the flash moved a lot faster, glowed much brighter, and was accompanied by an audible whistling sound.
*BANG*
This was more to his taste. The right wall of the earthen shell was wholly blown apart, and small pieces of rock sprayed out, even hitting a few people who stood close by. Luckily no one was hurt, just shocked and a bit afraid.
Inside his crumbling shelter sat a deathly pale and trembling Darrell with his mouth wide open. Had Teo hit the shell a bit more to the left... The poor boy still had a ringing in his ears from the substantial impact and was gasping for air.
Obviously, the loud noise had also attracted the attention of Mr. Kasahara, and he was not pleased.