"What do you think?" Professor Addilyn asked Vega.
Vega tapped the book with his fingers and answered, "I think most of the time the sound travels through the air, but we can actually use another method to hold it for longer." Like, for example, the earth element is useful to trap the sound inside."
She nodded and opened her palm, showing a stone. "The earth element has denser materials compared to the air. Try to vibrate this."
Vega touched his mana source to the floating stone. The stone hummed with a low-pitched sound. The deep sound shook the stone, and cracks started to appear around the surface.
"Earth produces the lower pitch sound. When the vibration is too much, then it cracks. So as sound adepts, we have to understand the best tone when we use any surface to trap the sound within."
The class went until the next day. Professor Addilyn demonstrated different materials, including water, metal, plants, and even fire. While the earth creates a lower-pitched sound, the speed at which the sound travels increases. The same is true of water; because of its flexible nature, it could change into a dense material or be very light. The best examples of denser materials are ice and metals. The sound traveled really fast and created a ringing sound that forced Vega to close his ears.
She also insisted that keeping the sound magic inside while humming would make it easier for Vega to control the mana output, making it last longer. The problem with humming a sound magic was that it only affected the items close to him or even the one he held.
Professor Addilyn hummed a magical sound that hid the cup she was holding. Vega listened to the melody with rapt attention. The melody could be beneficial for him to hide his flute when he uses it. He still remembered his mentor's words that the flute was always regarded as having the worst reputation.
His mentor closed the lesson while helping Vega to improve his casting speed. She activated her spell and shot Vega with several consecutive blasts of wind. While Vega had to defend himself and dodge the blade reaching him. One came from behind, forcing him to turn quickly opening his mouth and whistled. The air blade quickly dispersed.
She hit Vega with different spells including the fire, water, and earth around him. The fire crackled aiming to his stomach but with a simple water barrier, Vega avoided the attack, the water shot through the air creating several ice spikes shooting toward him. And Vega waved his hand creating a dense air that slowed down the spikes, giving him time to dodge. Several rocks flew at him when Vega whistled a high-pitched sound, breaking the rocks.
After his mentor sat back down and changed the room back to its original state, she reminded him, "Don't forget you can imbue the sound magic inside every element." Here," she took something from thin air and gave it to Vega.
The item was a sigil that buzzed when he used his mana to observe.
"That was a level-two sound sigil. You can use that to hide your flute. No one will ever notice that you use the flute when you use a more challenging melody."
After bowing and thanking his mentor several times, Vega exited the room and returned home.
The academy had grown quiet, and even the port was empty. Vega closed the door behind him and looked around the small room. His tome lay on the table, still showing his last recipe for creating the health potion. After he took notes on his study, Vega finally laid his head on the pillow.
The next day, Vega took several different classes, one of which was the potion class. The class was fruitful, and his tome had new recipes for creating a blasting potion. The blast radius reached around one meter wide and was famous for the apprentices majoring in fire. He successfully created a dozen of the blasting potion, which was sold out right away after he put it on sale.
For the afternoon class, Vega took the last class he picked, which was Singing With Your Mouth Close. The class was the most boring class he had ever been to. The mentor forced him to make a line and read the melody with his mouth closed. The only interesting element was the knowledge that if you combined several different melodies into one, the effect would be greater than doing it alone.
He read the contract again, reviewing all the terms inside. He still had around five more days to search for the boars before the backlash from the contract was activated. That day, Vega slept soundly. After a full three days of using his mana continuously, his body couldn't take it anymore. Apart from a slight dream about a huge board with its tusks stabbing him, he woke up fresh in the morning.
The bathroom was always full with the nobles, who got used to taking showers in the morning. The commoners, on the other hand, rarely used the bathroom. It was located just a short distance from his house. Without any roof, the bathroom was letting all the sun shine through. Luckily, the huge formations around the bathroom prevent any apprentices from peeking through the boxes with any magical means. Even the perverted old Grondor, whom Vega remembered being in charge of testing the initiates, couldn't break through the barrier.
After feeling fresh from the slightly salty water, Vega wore his robe and visited the mission hall. Because he needed to go outside anyway, it couldn't hurt taking another mission on the way there to gain more contribution points. The library was still forbidden for him, but he knew that when he advanced, the first floor was of no use to him, and he could still go to the second floor by himself. Based on his knowledge, the second floor was a little different, and he needed to use his contribution points to exchange for any information, even the basics.
The adept society treated high-level apprentices as the cornerstones of their forces. Because after that stage, becoming an adept was a thousand times harder than only advancing in the minor level. Even high-level apprentices have their own minor level, divided into five general steps. Because of that, the power level of any apprentices will soar when they reach high-level apprentices, and they can handle most jobs around the academy.
Approaching the gate, the apprentices had already created several lines before they went through several formations to go outside. Even though the academy was the sole ruler of the island, it didn't make all the apprentices going outside safe. Threats from smaller schools and even the creatures awaited them outside.
After patiently waiting for the lines to shorten, Vega showed his medal and waited until the scanning process was over. The medal blinked, and the high-level apprentices acting as guards bowed to him and let him through. As usual, Vega had to go through another formation between two statues and felt the wave of magic around him. This one was stronger than he had experienced before. From the edge of his eyes, he saw the women's statue guarding the academy move a little when he passed by the gate.
Not far from the academy, Vega passes by the inn, which was normally filled with apprentices from the other schools and even other apprentices from the other academies. He turned right, avoiding the regular pathway, and chose to go through the jungle right away. He didn't want to group with anyone and preferred to be alone.
Swatting the leaves away from his face, Vega already had some red lines on his hands from the sharp edges of the leaves. Taking out his flute, he used the sigil his mentor gave him to stop people from recognizing the flute and used it as a tool to stop his hands from getting worse. Luckily, this sigil was more advanced than the one he got from Mistress Vin, which means that as long as it was outside, it gathered its own mana.
The chirping of insects could be heard in the quiet forest from time to time, and the lush branches and leaves of the trees covered the sun completely. Sunrays occasionally shone through the gaps like beams of light. The lines of trees and the sound of insects and birdsong made him realize he was not around the seaside anymore. Squinting his eyes, Vega made sure to look out for anything that moved.
Deeper inside the jungle, the weather was colder and the place was even quieter. Several flaps of wings startled him, and Vega dove. After making sure it was nothing, he tiptoed, watching where he stepped.
Vega felt something coming from behind and easily used his air blade to slash the poor rabbit. Vega cursed inside while watching the rabbit's legs twitch a little because the blood was still flowing outward. To make sure he didn't kill any other innocent animals, he used the vibrational sequence around him to catch the silhouette of any creatures within three meters of him.
Vega killed some ordinary animals when he went deeper into the forest. Of course, most of them were predatory he went deeper into the forest. Of course, most of them were predatory. The trees became taller the deeper he went. There was a swooshing sound by the tree, and it was one of the three-eyed monkeys watching where he was going.
He stopped his humming and put the flute on his lips. He played the traumatic melody his mentor used before focusing on the creature. Vega hoped the melody would scare the monkey to leave and didn't call any of his friends to stop chasing him. Three-eyed monkeys were simple creatures, but their numbers made them hard to kill.
The monkey shrieked loudly and ran away. Vega keeps playing the melody, focusing on the tree, but slowly widens the distance to include several trees at once. His mane covered a three-meter distance, just like his vibrational sequence would. After the last note ended, Vega gasped for air and took hold of the trees to keep himself steady.
Humming and playing a melody from the flute were altogether different things; while he was humming, the mana was still contained inside his body. He learned that humming could only affect the items he touched, while the flute affected the area around him. Two different things while using the sound mana He took note of the experience for later, when his mentor was back from her journey.
After he calmed down, Vega stumbled deeper into the forest when the snorting from the boar reached his ears. Crouching down, he tried listening to how many footsteps the boar had. Humming, his silhouette shimmered and disappeared, fading into the background.