Emil stood in the room, motionless, his palm in front of him.
There wasn't much Knights could do with their magic at this stage, so casting wasn't difficult.
"Attash."
The chant was short and easy, just like the channeling process, so Emil didn't need to try too hard to cast his first spell.
After a few failed tries, a small, flickering flame started forming in his palm.
He raised his hand and looked at it.
The hand holding the flame didn't burn, but other body parts that came into contact with it did.
Emil took note of this. He could very well hurt himself with his own magic if he wasn't careful.
After playing around with it a bit more, he was sure.
This was a fully functioning flame, born purely out of his mana, completely under his control.
He felt excited, to say the least. A feeling of accomplishment overwhelmed him as he looked at the flame.
He could cast a spell, he was officially a magician now!
Perhaps he got a bit too excited though, as the flame burst into nothingness while he was flinging it around, right in his own hand.
"Ouch."
As it appeared, the part about Knights having weak control over magic was true.
Emil had to use full concentration just handling that small flame alone. He couldn't imagine how much more difficult casting more advanced spells could get.
"Alright now."
Feeling the abundance of mana filling up his heart, he decided to cast yet another spell.
The spell from the special admissions examination, he still remembered it well since he had a good thirty minutes to memorize it.
He didn't know what kind of spell it was, it could be dangerous for all he knew.
Fucking with darkness magic wasn't exactly written in his textbooks, but he had doubts he had to confirm. He was willing to buy the risks.
Sitting down, he started pumping mana out of his heart, into his mana pathways all the way outside his body according to the spell's instructions while chanting.
"Koreye Siyah."
To Emil's surprise, the spell worked in his first try.
A small black orb formed in his hand, so small it could be mistaken for a grain of rice if not for its color.
Waving it around, Emil noticed how much easier it was for him to control the small orb in comparison to the flame earlier.
To touch that thing would mean you have balls of steel, and Emil was sure he didn't have them.
So, the only way he could test its effects was by trying it on something else.
He looked at the closest object, the mattress under him, and threw the black orb at it before running away like a traumatized three month old kitten being chased by bratty little boys with their faces covered in mud and dirt from playing outside too much.
The black orb came into contact with the mattress and dissipated like a snowflake.
Under Emil's wary eyes, the spot the black orb touched turned dark and spread to approximately a fourth of it before coming to a stop.
Emil walked up to the mattress and touched the it with his shoe.
The black spot turned to ashes in response, like it'd been burnt.
Emil more or less had an idea of what this was.
He'd heard one of darkness element's properties was corrosion.
What he used just now must've been a spell of that type.
From his experiment, he could draw a few conclusions.
Firstly, he was indeed an Elemental Saint.
Secondly, darkness spells were heavy in terms of mana consumption. His formerly full mana core was now drained of every drop.
And thirdly, his affinity with the Darkness element, unlike his fire element, was probably at 100%. It was way easier to cast and control the darkness spell despite it being significantly more complex than the little fireball he just used.
If he was an Elemental Saint, his affinity with both his elements should be at 100%, but as it appeared, that rule only applied to his darkness element.
Maybe he could increase his affinity with fire later, maybe there was nothing he could do about it.
Either way, he was glad to have at least some talent with the darkness element.
"Well, what better time to cultivate mana than now that my my core's empty?"
With that mindset, Emil sat on his goofy ahh mattress and started cultivating.
One deep breath.
Two deep breaths.
Three deep breaths.
Twenty minutes and four deep breaths later, Emil was panting like a dog with his face red and clothes soaked.
He had to visit the school library to learn more about cultivation techniques and their varieties later.
He had more than a couple doubts he needed to solve about his cultivation technique. But as it stood now, he didn't have the knowledge to resolve them.
Like Miss Tudor said, active cultivation took a toll on knights' bodies. Their vessels weren't built for this.
The effects were amazing yes, but Emil was wondering if this was too much?
He was accustomed to pain courtesy of his physical condition, but could other knights handle this level of pain when cultivating too?
"As expected, the Royal Academy is filled with hidden dragons and crouching tigers.
If not for my physical condition, there'd be no way I'd have been able to handle this level of pain like other students do.
They truly are monsters."
Emil couldn't help but praise his fellow students. They were the best talents of their generation after all.
As of now, he'd tested the pills and their effects, he made sure of his identity as an Elemental Saint and also got more familiar with his cultivation technique.
There were still a couple things he was yet to resolve though.
First was how to cultivate passively 24/7, like all knights were supposed to.
Second was how his cultivation technique was supposed to help cure his condition.
For the latter, he could only wait until midnight to see what he could do.
For the former though, he had to do something right now.
Cultivation techniques for knights were supposed to come in two forms.
The first form was active cultivation, which was taking in huge amounts of mana through their breathing technique and refining it.
The second form was using a watered down version of the same breathing technique to take in much smaller amounts of mana, with the benefit of passive refinement.
Passive refinement meant he could breath in mana, refine it on the spot and gain a small amount of cultivation base.
It was much slower than active cultivation but it still added up to a large amount over time.
Emil's top priority right now was getting stronger, so he couldn't just sit around doing nothing when he knew he could be getting stronger with every breath he took.
The problem right now was that his cultivation technique only had one form, active cultivation.
There were no instructions for passive cultivation or whatnot, so all he could do was figure out a way himself.
With that goal in mind, Emil started racking his brain and trying to come up with ideas as to how his simple yet mysterious cultivation technique worked.