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"In today's class, you will learn about how to fight against a shaman", the muscular, mean-looking teacher said, throwing a glance over all of us.
No one had the courage to ask it, but I knew one question was crossing everyone's mind at that moment: "Uhm… excuse, master Gaillardia?", I shyly raised my hand, surprising even myself, probably emboldened because of the chain links I broke recently. "Haven't we been learning this exact topic all this time?"
A shadow of a smile crossed the mean-looking teacher's face for just a moment before she opened both her arms out and explained: "You've been learning how to cast some offensive and defensive spells, that's all. Good enough to scare a wild beast, but not to fight against a real trained mage. And to prove that… You! Try to shoot me with one of your spells, any of them!", she nodded towards me.
"Ok…?", I pointed my hand to my teacher, controlled the flow of magic so not to reveal the exponential growth I had just gone through, and shot a fireball.
Before the burning sphere could touch teacher Gaillardia, however, a wall of water blocked the way of the projectile, and killed the flames. Giggles burst of the crowd of students watching, as they made sure to remind me of my status as a seed in a sand desert, but they didn't last long, as the teacher picked another student: "You! Attack me."
"Uh… Hya!", the girl conjured an obsidian-tipped spear, and shot it toward Gaillardia.
And just like happened to me before, a stone wall appeared in the way of the projectile, destroying it. The teacher asked for another student to attack her, and the third one, with a smug, hurled a boulder at her, but her body emanated a red blood-like mist, and she moved supernaturally quickly, avoiding the boulder with ease.
Leaving everyone confused, and somewhat magic deprived as the other students breathed hard, the teacher was unscratched.
"Do you understand what just happened?", she asked us, pacing back and forth in front of the crowd of her students.
"Y- You foretold the future?", someone suggested.
"No."
"You have a very quick reaction time!", someone else screamed, confidently.
"Yes, but that's not the right answer either. What I just did was reading your magical waste, and predicting what spells you'd cast. You can do it by paying attention to the color, format and feeling of the magical waste. For example!", she raised one hand, and lazily conjured a fireball, wasting a lot of magic in an aura that looked like a wavering orange and white light. "As you can see, this magical waste suggests I'm conjuring a fire spell. And if you paid very close attention, you'd have seen that the waste appears before the conjuration itself, as you're still creating whatever you want to bring forth. So, by reading that someone is conjuring a fire spell, you should prepare a water-based defense spell. If the opponent is throwing quick perforating arrows or spears at you, put a tough barrier between the two of you. And the rest, you will learn in this class today!"
On my way back from the Applied Magic class, massaging a few spots where I ended up hit for now being able to read the magic waste quick enough, I found a familiar face who I hadn't seen in a while.
"You're…", I stopped before human girl with short green hair. "Mari, right?"
"Oh? It's you! So, you made into this school after all, honey. And, did you always have this white lock of hair?", the girl, still followed by the man with a Mohican turned to me with a bright smile on her face. Approaching my ear and covering her mouth, she whispered, suspicious: "You're not getting involved with anything suspicious again, are you?"
"I don't think so", I shrugged.
"Hahaha! Well, I'll trust you, love!"
"Why, did something weird happen?"
"More or less…"
"Mari…!", the man with a mohican hairstyle frowned at me.
"It's fine, darling, the entire school knows already, and, anyway, it's not like it's any big deal after all", she turned to her companion with a careless expression, brushing whatever issue aside. "Basically, the teleportation system is all a bit… wanky right now."
"Wanky?"
"Yeah, it's teleporting people slightly to the wrong place and causing some accidents."
"Oh! Is that why my friends and I ended up being teleported right over a river?"
"Hahaha! Probably!", she turned to her companion. "See? He knew about it already even", looking back to me, she concluded: "This never happened before, and how no one is really sure about how the teleportation magic works, it's not like we can simply fix this… So, well. Take care when teleporting next time."
"I will, thanks for the advice", I nodded, smiling. "Actually, it comes in handy, for I'll be teleporting tomorrow already!"
"Oh, and where are you going, dear?", her question made my smile grow even bigger.
"We're going to…"
Once we had everything in our bags, packing basically the same adventuring material we bought last time, Ike, Spruce and I moved anxiously to the teleporting area. We were stretching our necks and looking over the line of people, measuring how much before we got to the teleporting drum once more, we even looked to one another and giggled, excited. Even though we were going in another adventure that could result in the same tragedies that our last one did, the feeling for that time was totally different, and it was due to one reason only.
"So, you've never been there?", asked Hyber asked brushing his sleepy eyes while displaying a smug smile. When the three of us shook our heads in negative, he laughed. "Hehe. Well, I think you're going to like it."
It was finally our time to get teleported, and with the beat of a drum…!
Instead of bones and leather, up ahead extended wide blue skies, and a bright yellow sun! Beneath our feet, there was no fur, but white sand! And before our eyes, an ocean as wide as one could see!
"We're at the beach!"