I left the gym and went on my way to my dorm. Before I got there though, I felt a burning sensation on my head and in my stomach. The people around me all jumped back in fear of being burned by the green flames that had engulfed my horns.
What had started as the warmth of a campfire slowly became the pain of being burned alive. One of the students ran for the nurse, It was quite the sight to see the nurse on the back of Ben, a lightning mage, not just because he was tiny comparatively, but they were moving at breakneck speed.
"GET OUT OF THE WAY!" The frantic nurse hadn't heard such shrill screams in years.
Ben let Nurse Nalep off his back, leaving him to start casting many runes to reduce my pain.
"Any of you who can cast painkiller spells start casting! He's breaking through to the next stage."
Suddenly sparks of black lightning started arcing off of my chest and the floor retreated away from me. The Green flames intensified, burning the top of my uniform to nothing, then died. It was eerily quiet.
Orin jumped out of my shadow bigger than ever, his horn had grown, and his fur was singed and he was definitely not happy, he looked at the only one who was still casting spells, Nurse Nalep, and growled.
"What have you done to Ingen?" Pressure pushed on Nalep, interrupting his casting.
"AH! I didn't do anything! He just broke through, he needs help!" Nurse Nalep was frightened, he was focusing too much on casting to notice the beast come from my shadow.
The pressure ceased, and Orin spoke "If anything happens to Ingen, I'll bite your head off."
"Ugh, my head. What happened?" A small voice broke the contest of will between Orin and Nalep.
Orin changed size to that of a normal fox and hopped into my lap. I instinctively pet his back. Nurse Nalep put a hand on my shoulder.
"You need rest, badly, you just became a stage two mage."
I noticed the crater at my feet. "Excuse me, what?"
"It was probably the most exaggerated advancement in school history. Now have your fox or your golem take you to my office."
'Orin, would you please.'
Orin became the size of a horse.
"Danny, help me get up onto Orin's back."
Danny brought me to Orin and set me on his back, leaving me to be sent to the nurse's office.
It took four days for me to fully recover. When you advance to the second stage, the world's energy floods your body until it's full and then empties out, then it does it again, over and over, until you have the conductivity to let the world energy go through you harmlessly. By the end of it all, you would gain a lot of progress as a mage.
Disregarding all of that, tomorrow is my birthday! Unfortunately, I have to spend it training with my quarterstaff. Professor Unda was furious that I had skipped training and promised to give me an extra 10 bruises for every day I didn't show up after my recovery, and I recovered so I picked up my staff and trudged to the gym.
'What did I get myself into.'
I came out of training with three bruises, Professor Unda was brutal.
The next day, on my birthday, I got two bruises instead of three.
Most of the first years, including me, graduated three days later, and still, not a lot happened.
'I guess I'd better start work on my latest work during the break. I'll send a letter home to tell them I'm staying at school for this one.'
I dropped my pocket workshop on the ground, closed my eyes, and thought about its bigger version. When I opened them, the workshop was large again. I entered my own organized chaos, diagrams of birds, fish, constructs, and gliders were strewn around, littering all parts of the workshop.
"I don't think I can make a flying machine just yet, the materials are just too low-quality, but I'm almost positive that I can make a one-man glider."
I started with the wings, I made them out of canvas to keep the weight low. The hollow bones of birds inspired the structure, which was made out of hollow tubes of wood. I put them together into a backpack and made them able to retract. It took a week and a half of fine-tuning before I was ready. I was the only person available to use as a test subject, so I had Orin jump as high as he could with me on his back. Orin was huge and jumped thirty feet into the air, I opened the glider, and its wings promptly fell off.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Instinct took over and I built a shell of wood out of my staff to protect myself from the impact, filling it with as much air as possible, and right before impact, I made a hole in the bottom for the air to escape and used all of my Eneru to pick up the large sphere with telekinesis. The end result was me lying on the ground immobilized, but not hurt. I rested just enough to regain movement, giving Denny enough time to collect the scattered pieces of the glider from the forest.
"It needs metal reinforcements, bad."
I scrounged around in the box of parts dad left in the workshop and found what I was looking for, a reinforcement that keeps carriage wheels on.
"Perfect!"
I attached it to the wings with minimal modification. It was a minimal weight addition, but it added a lot of structural integrity.
"Orin, I'm going to need to borrow your back again."
"No, you'll get hurt, your Eneru isn't nearly regenerated enough to recover from a fall like that again."
"Fine, I'll just go jump off a cliff instead"
I felt an immovable mass of fur and muscle press on me.
"No, you're staying here until you get your Eneru back."
"Spirit is a bad influence on you."
'Good influence.' Spirit joined the quarrel that lasted all the way until I was topped up on Eneru.
Orin stood up and let me on his back.
"Let's go"
Orin jumped. I opened the glider, this time it stayed in place.
"YES!" my voice was drowned out by the wind pelting my face.
I glided all the way down, then I realized a fatal flaw in the glider's design.
"I CAN'T LAND!"