Taylor opened the door, fully expecting Tom to attack him when he opened the door.
Just as expected, the moment the two stepped into the room, a gust of wind headed in their direction. This time Alex did nothing.
He simply stood there and watched as Taylor glowed softly. Taylor reached out one arm and took the full brunt of the attack.
His feet skidded backward and his clothes flapped wildly. Alex reached out an arm to keep Taylor from being pushed into him.
'He has such a large frame that I can just sit here and only feel a light breeze'. Alex thought while realizing that Taylor made him look tiny, even though he was only a few inches shorter.
"Oh, it's just you guys. You would think that eventually, someone else would walk through those doors." Tom said before pausing. "You didn't warn everyone, did you?" He asked Alex, who was walking out from behind Taylor.
Taylor fixed his hair that was all ruffled.
"Not yet, I haven't but thank you for reminding me about that." Alex said, absolutely mortifying Tom.
"No no just forget I even mentioned it." Tom replied.
Alex and Taylor laughed in response.
"Now, time to ask the real questions. You two broke through, didn't you." James asked the two.
"You bet we did, and once we do it one more time, you all are gonna have a hard time getting all those rewards." Taylor told them.
"Don't get ahead of yourselves, you're talking to the two strongest non-instructor mages, around these parts. Besides, we are not gonna sit around and wait for you to pass us." Tom said, James, nodding in agreement.
"Just so you know, we went out and hunted fifteen other Master class beasts, after we got done babysitting you two." James said.
A shocked expression filled Taylor's face before he removed it. "Easily doable, in fact, expect us to double no, triple that number. Right, Alex?"
"If you say so." Alex said with a shrug.
"See, even Alex agrees with me. You guys are gonna get toasted." Taylor said with renewed confidence.
"Keep talking your big talk, we plan on breaking through to the Master class before the end of the year, and at that point, we could easily take down a hundred of them." Tom said with a big smirk.
Alex left the quarreling pair and walked up to a training dummy. He punched as hard as he could.
His fist sank deeply into the dummy before being forced back to himself. Alex then tried a roundhouse kick. The dummy was knocked over but a weight within it returned it to its standing position.
"You've got some decent form. Where did you learn that?" James asked.
"I played a few video games." Alex told him.
"You can learn fighting from playing video games?"
"Only if you choose to."
"Maybe I should try a few out." James said before attacking a dummy.
Alex looked over to the spheres that were around the room. All of them were within his range.
The limit of the Beginner class's range was around sixty feet. He had broken through, making it around seventy-five feet. Add in the range from his spacial element and he had a total range of around ninety-five feet.
Alex lifted a few of the spheres pulling them towards him. His dark energy was evaporating a lot slower in the light than usual.
'Still not very long-lasting in sunlight.' Alex thought while feeling his energy leaking away.
He lifted the spheres as they neared him, throwing them at the dummy.
'It's a lot weaker than the spacial element when it comes to physical interaction, but still, it's almost on the same level as water, earth, and wind.' Alex thought as he watched Tom toss spheres at Taylor, who dodged all of them.
'While it doesn't have a lot of speed, the amount of power behind it was massive.' He thought while wrapping the dummy in darkness.
Alex made his energy squeeze the dummy. The dummy bulged through the openings in the dark energy.
He noticed how spacial energy was both powerful and fast. It was also stored within him, and also present outside of him. An affinity that would be considered completely different from light or darkness, held so many similarities from the two.
Alex continued experimenting, trying different things with his dark affinity. He even traded blows with those who were present.
When the time came, James and Alex headed off towards the rune club.
They entered and Paul dragged Alex off to the other room.
"You still have the spare key right?" Paul asked.
"Yup it's right here." Alex said after fishing it out of his bag.
"Good don't lose it, and open the door I might have left mine in the other room." Paul said with a small laugh.
Alex unlocked the room. When he stepped through he saw that the armor was now covered in runes.
"Jim and Dan told me that they did some practice after we left." Paul said noticing Alex eying the armor.
"But that gives me the perfect excuse to show you this. You would have needed it sooner or later." He said while showing Alex a weird contraption.
"This locks into the frequency of a rune and can remove it in around ten seconds."
He then demonstrated it, holding it on a rune, after a bit, it beeped indicating that it was done.
"How'd you know where the rune is?" Alex asked.
"Well for one I'm the one, who made the map of where they all go. And secondly, this thing slightly sticks to them making them easier to find." He said while waving the device around.
"If push comes to shove and a rune was written in a wrong place, then we have this." Paul said grabbing what looked like a big camera.
"You can guess how it works."
Alex nodded. 'It looks pretty straightforward.'
"You can work on the runes, watch me work, and if you ever need a break, then you're free to just relax. I know that high school is very time-intensive, especially after you come from middle school where homework is given out less than twice a week." Paul said as he began removing the runes.
Alex nodded he grabbed a few materials and began imprinting runes.
——————
Alex a small pile of materials laid in front of him. One piece of cloth would flex back and forth when it came into contact with mana, another would turn, causing the cloth to form a helix shape when mana was applied.
Paul had rewritten a few runes and had them connected to the diagnostics computer.
A tone sounded, Alex and Paul headed off to the courtyard.
"So how did it go?" A Taylor who now had a few bruises all over him asked.
"It went well, I'm guessing you two had some fun." Alex replied
"Ha, you should see the one time I got him." Taylor said while pointing to Tom. He had a bruise on his cheek.
"You kept on attacking after the tone had already sounded, so it doesn't even count in the first place." Tom replied.
When the group got to the courtyard, they were split up into groups that would fight each other.
The nine captains who had shown up, each took two freshmen to spar with.
Daniel and Michael went up to Alex and Taylor.
"Sorry, Taylor but we will have to borrow Alex for a few minutes. Today your sparring partner will be instructor Millay."
Taylor nodded reluctantly.
Alex followed the two instructors. They entered a room that was spacious.
"Alex we have brought you here because we have to tell you something very serious." Daniel told him after he and Michael turned off their watches.
Alex didn't say anything, he just let Daniel continue speaking.
"We know you have a light affinity. Don't be alarmed we aren't going to tell anyone else, however you should also not tell anyone else."
"Why?"
"Because as a mage of balance, when you get all of the rest of the affinities you will be far more powerful than Wyatt, who refuses to obtain a dark affinity. Many would see you as the next rightful heir of the kingdom, but the rest would see you as a threat. Even Wyatt would lose any concerns about public opinion and hunt you down."
'I can't, but I have to. That means that if I want to appear before the world, that I would need to become powerful enough to protect myself by that time.'
'The dark halo is the best way to train darkness, and as of right now I might be able to awaken a grand light ability if I continue to take in lightning catalysts. At that point, I can hopefully create a light halo with Taylor's help.'
'Will that be enough to hold off against an Emperor class mage in just two years, no I need to learn about space. It's my strongest affinity, my last line of defense. The library must have some books about it. What about the ancient phone? It has to have a lot of information about space, after all, if people of that time didn't have to study magic, then space would have been the most complex area of study. Maybe Lockhorn would be willing to teach me 'English'. I will have to ask him.'
Alex lost himself in his thoughts, he wasn't prepared to be rushed, he had already been working hard, but it seems like he would have to push himself to the limit in order to survive.
All of his thoughts and ideas began lining up as he thought. It was to the point that he was willing to look through the books in the restricted section of the library, just to be able to find some type of information.
"Are you still with us Alex, you seem to have your mind somewhere else? We wanted to tell you some good news about all this. We will be personally become your mentors, and we will make sure to protect you until the day you reveal your power." Michael told Alex to calm the young man.
"You will? Why?"
"Why, because we know the truth. In the past many years of our lives, we have been digging up all the lies being spread. For example, all dark mages are evil." Daniel said while summoning some dark energy.
"Another example is that all Tragnantians do not want to kill all the nobles. All the nobles who were hunted down in Tragnantia many years ago were corrupt and evil. when we looked through their history we could see one thing in common they had ties with the kingdom of light, Sol." Michael continued.
"And lastly," Michael said before summoning some light energy.
"That light and darkness can't mix." They said in unison while pushing their energy together. The energy combined and formed chaotic spacial energy. "Whenever light and darkness are in harmony this is created."
"This is the strongest most powerful energy known to mankind. You may not be able to see it, but it's something akin to radiation from a nuclear warhead. It stays behind and is able to massacre entire armies without them knowing. It has been banned from war and all knowledge of it removed from the history books." Michael said while passing a piece of paper through the invisible energy, it disintegrated immediately disappearing from sight.
"It is said that mages of balance are able to barely control this energy, but even with that small amount of control, the energy is almost always more powerful than anything else within its class."
"Ha. I guess the world knew more about it than I thought." Alex said before taking the energy under his control. Making it visible changing its color from through the full visible spectrum, and creating a portal. showing the two instructors his control of the element.
"This is the spacial affinity, and I am the first human spacial mage that I know of at least."
'I don't even know what Drak is, all I know is that he is immortal.'
"If what you all said is true, then I'm going to need your help. To be honest, at this point, you two and Taylor are the only ones I can trust with this secret. The bad news is that I need to understand how it works in order to use strengthen it, and information on space is scarce." Alex said hoping they would be willing to help him.
The two instructors came to a look of enlightenment. "So this is the same type of energy that creates the portals we use for travel. To think we've been stepping through such dangerous energy. Imagine if they malfunctioned." Michael said.
"To be honest with you Alex portals are what the rest of the world calls spacial energy. We had no clue that two different things were connected so intricately." Daniel told Alex.
The two teachers looked at each other before nodding. "Very well we said we would help you, so we won't change our stance. We will help you with your affinities while searching for anything about space." Daniel said getting excited about the prospects of training the first spacial mage.
Alex explained the intricacies of his affinities what it could do, his thoughts on how it works, and also the fact that spacial energy was his grand wind affinity, shocking the two instructors further. Alex then shared an even greater secret.
"Do either of you two know anything about ancient languages, like from before mana existed?"
"Before mana existed?" The two instructors asked.
"Yeah like 'English'. Lockhorn mentioned it yesterday." Alex said.
"I'm sorry Alex, but we haven't heard of these ancient languages before. Much less a time when mana didn't exist. If Lockhorn was the one to tell you, then you would have to ask him." Michael told Alex.
"We should get back out there. The longer we stay in here with our watches off, the more suspicious others will get. In two weeks when all the training is done we will announce you as our disciple, at that point we will be able to speak more freely." Daniel said before turning his watch back on.
"Very good Alex. Let's head back and join the others." Daniel said making sure the watch could hear him.
The three returned to the rest. Not much had happened, as their conversation lasted at most ten minutes. A lot of the spars were still ongoing. "Alex, go get Taylor to tell him we are headed to the dueling room you guys can go ham fighting each other at that point in time."
Alex nodded as he left the two instructors and went to go get Taylor.