"That damn Friena!" Kyle breathed roughly as he lay on his bed. "Chasing me around," he spoke again.
"Agh! So damn tired!" He turned around and lay on his stomach.
"In the end, we left early .... I wonder what the others are doing," he mumbled. Truly, thanks to Friena, both of them left their classmates standing. He didn't know what happened next after they left.
"Well, they should be fine," he said as he turned around again but then noticed that the door was being opened.
"Hey, Kyle!" It was Joshua.
"Hey, you are done with your class?"
"It can't even be called a class yet since the lessons haven't started," Joshua sighed while closing the door and then walking to his bed.
"You seem frustrated. What happened?" Kyle got up from his bed.
"My classmates. There is a dispute among them," Joshua complained. "Because there are two influential people in there, they are now arguing about who should be in control of the class."
"Oh? Who are they?"
"Leonhart Vizil and Ferlando Ophius," said Joshua. Kyle knew of them; they were the famous sons of the nobility. Leonhart came from a Ducal family, while Ferlando was the Fourth Prince. Despite their difference in status, in Costina, it meant nothing since the usage of status would be punished, but that just was not so effective, to be honest, and those with power outside of Costina could still pressure those who were weak. So Leonhart could still receive punishment later, once he was out of Costina, through other means. So what made Leonhart so daring? It was because Leonhart was known as a commandeering person, who liked to challenge those who were strong. He also liked to stand above the others.
"They are trouble," Kyle commented. "It is best for you to stay away from them," he added.
"I think so too. Once I heard that they were nobles of high rank, I knew that my class wouldn't have it easy!" In annoyance, Joshua fell down to his bed. "Anyway, what about yours?"
"I think we did better. We went for training."
"Huh? You guys went for training? How?!" Joshua pushed himself up on his elbows.
"Teacher's permission, of course. He allowed us to do anything we wanted today, so we decided to train."
"Damn, your class is a motivated one. You guys are one step ahead of us."
"Hahaha, you should tell the teacher about those two. If they keep fighting, it won't do good for your internal situation."
Joshua nodded. "I also agree, but I have to be discreet. If they found out, I wouldn't have a good life in the class." It seemed Joshua wasn't that naïve after all. It was good for him.
.
Later that evening.
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During breakfast and dinner, students would eat in their own dorm cafeteria. It was only during lunch hour that they would eat at the school cafeteria.
When Kyle arrived at the cafeteria, he saw his classmates and bid his farewell to Joshua to talk to them.
"Hey, guys!" Kyle greeted them while bringing his food.
"Kyle! You ditched us!" Ozi accused him with a mocking glare.
"Hahaha, my bad. Friena was chasing me intensely."
"Seriously, who is she? Your girlfriend?" Tucker questioned. He looked jealous.
"She is my childhood friend. Anyway, she was angry that I had left her behind to arrive earlier here."
"So you are the one being rude, huh,?" Ozi mumbled.
"I can't help it! I'm excited about school," Kyle defended himself with a grin. "Rather than talking about me, what happened after I left?"
"Ah ... once the sparring matches had ended, we discussed how we should proceed. We decided that there were things that needed to be improved by ourselves and things that could be improved with help from each other. For now, we decided to focus on private training first, before we are helping each other," Tucker explained.
"While we already saw each other's capabilities, you must realize that some of us are beyond our ability to help. Like Ninia, Eric, or Friena," Quinton added.
"That's true." Truly, people like them were beyond the need for help at the moment. It was more like they were the ones that were able to help the others to improve.
"Anyway, since you are here, we wanted to talk about you," Ozi told Kyle.
"Me?"
"Yeah! After all, you are one of the strongest. You did defeat Friena and then successfully stalled Ninia alone!"
"Well …. Friena wasn't serious back then, and neither was Ninia. I don't think of myself as being that strong," Kyle denied.
"Still, you did better than most of us," Quinton continued "You are using string magic. It is most commonly used in puppetry, so it is rare to see it in combat due to how weak it normally is. But your strings seem strong."
"Well, I trained a lot with it. My specialty is mana control and reinforcement. Because of that, I can reinforce my strings to become stronger. Unfortunately, they are still broken easily and do not pose any threat."
"Can you teach us how to control our mana better?" Quinton asked. "I know it is not an easy feat to create multiple strings and control them."
"Sure, I'll tell you guys right away." Kyle pointed at Ozi first. "Ozi, you have a good amount of mana, but you have poor control of it, correct?"
"That's right."
"But you compensate for the waste usage of mana by using it sparingly. So if you can use your mana more efficiently, you can fight in a longer battle. Using your mana sparingly and deploying it at the right time is already an amazing feat, but with mana control, you could use your mana faster and more precisely."
"Then you, Tucker, your mana control is good. It's just that you focus too much on the sharpening of your spearhead."
"You noticed that?" Tucker looked shocked.
"You have probably trained yourself to make your spear able to pierce anything. As a result, you lack control of the other parts. For example, back then, Ninia easily pulled on your spear. Had you been able to control your mana better, you could have stood your ground and held your spear better. With that, at least Ninia would have a slight problem pulling you out of your stance."
"I see."
"Lastly, you," Kyle eyed Quinton. "Using firearms means you need to have a high mana control to infuse your mana into your bullet. You did well, but it is not enough to be compatible with the rate of firing the bullets, right?"
"Yes, because infusing mana into the bullet requires focus and better control of mana. I could not shoot the bullet right away. My problem is simple, the faster I can infuse my mana, the faster I can shoot."
"But it doesn't do any good against someone like Ninia," Kyle sighed, and so did Quinton.
"Yes, another thing that I am aware of is that if I reduce the mana I infuse, it will lessen the damage. Someone with high defense is a big hurdle for my bullets."
"I understand that is why you want to find the balance. Unfortunately, it takes time and experience to be able to shoot faster, and to get higher damage."
"So, is there no other way?"
"Hmmm, there is a way, but it might be hard to change the way you control your mana."
"Change the way? Is there another way to control mana?"
"First of all is the amount of mana we regenerate. We regenerate our mana by breathing. This is a common technique. But actually, there is a faster technique that is regeneration through our pores."
"Pores?"
"Yes, with this technique, our regeneration isn't limited to by breathing alone. By doing this, you have a faster rate of regeneration."
"But what's that gotta do with mana control?" Tucker asked.
Kyle grinned. "Simple. Because we receive much more mana, it also means that we need more control over it, right?"
"Ah, so you mean that by having more mana, we will also train our mana control, because a huge amount of mana is harder to control," Ozi concluded.
"Correct, but it will be hard because it will disturb your habits. It might even make you unable to fight properly. But I think it will be fine if we take this slowly."
"How?"
"By starting to learn how to absorb mana through pores slowly. But we have to do this during the weekend."
"Hmmm ... then after this training, what are we going to do?" Tucker asked.
"When you guys are able to control mana better and have more mana, it means you are becoming stronger. We are going to focus on balancing both speed and strength," afterwards, Kyle continued to explain things until the dinner finished.
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Author: Aida Hanabi
Proofreader: Teppo