"Relax, Heimer. I'm doing everything right. I don't want to harm myself," Kayden assured the boy. "Now I'm going to start learning lightning spells in the library."
Saying goodbye to his friend, the boy went to the city library. He needed to find lightning spells for swordsmen or mages. Arriving at the place, he had to ask for a card to access the second floor. It was a quick process, he just had to show his core. The examiners didn't even realize it was a heart. The library was still monstrous, and Kayden walked to the first elevator on the right and went up.
As soon as the door opened, he was faced with only one floor full of bookshelves. No doubt there were fewer books than on the first floor. This was obvious, considering that the more knowledge you have, the less you have of it. Kayden began to navigate the elemental symbols on the shelves. The problem was that the place was huge. It took him a few seconds to find the shelf of lightning. In it, there were spells from the 1st to the 9th rank of apprentice mage. Kayden chose the book "The 10 Spells Every Lightning Mage Should Know". It took the boy 2 hours to read it all. Spells were mostly attacking and focused on explosive damage.
Of the 10 spells, Kayden found only two useful. One was called "Concentrated Lightning", which was nothing more than a single beam launched at the opponent. The other was a cloud of lightning that would deal area damage. The problem was that at level 3, the second would be ridiculously weak and waste a lot of mana.
The boy realized that finding what he wanted would not be easy. Life wasn't going to hand it to him on a platter. Kayden spent the next week just reading the books and looking up spells. He read at least 50 books in that time. In the end, he listed the top 3:
1) Concentrated beam
2) Acceleration
3) pop flash
He studied at least 400 spells; many of them were too cumbersome to be useful in the short term or not very efficient. After choosing between the options that would be most useful for his fighting style, he was left with these 3.
The concentrated beam was something that would deal you damage from a distance and with a good amount of force. Acceleration could increase your speed by 5% if used correctly. It seemed little, but it was one of the most basic spells of this element. Pop flash was meant to be more of an auxiliary tool. Its function was to cause a small blinding in the opponents. It was something very simple: Kayden needed to use two beams together so that they collapsed and caused a strong flash.
His set is designed to maximize his current best skill: sword fighting. He was eager to see how much better he would get by using these tricks. Today, he started practicing the spells in the same clearing as usual. It was difficult at first, but over time he got the hang of it. It started with the simplest and most useful, pop flash. The hardest part was compressing the two beams enough for them to collide.
It took Kayden 3 days to get this done. He considered it to be an average time, as his mana manipulation was way beyond his rank. Then he decided to use concentrated lightning. Since his body was constantly being improved, he didn't need speed at the moment, but rather something to attack from a distance. He felt that, as he had learned to use another lightning spell, this one was slightly calmer. It took Kayden 2 weeks to master the concentrated ray. What was to be an easy task became difficult when he discovered that he had no control over the beam when casting it, that is, the mana needed to be dosed correctly for it to reach the desired target.
Lastly, Kayden decided to learn acceleration. In the same clearing as always, he was sitting in the lotus position. This time, he went by the book and got it on the first try, but something didn't feel right. He got up and started doing some basic exercises. Quickly, he realized what was wrong: every part of his body was accelerated differently. When trying to run in one direction, he ended up falling to the ground. Heimer, who had just arrived, witnessed the scene and started laughing:
"Slipped Kayden? Want help?" I could see the boy's hidden smile.
"No need, I'm learning a lightning class spell. The problem is that it accelerates my body differently," Kayden explained to the boy.
"That's normal, you just need to practice more," Heimer knew that it wasn't easy to learn spells initially. Experience was lacking to connect the missing dots.
Kayden kept trying, but it was just too weird. His muscle memory couldn't keep up with his body's new speed. He tried to speed it up a bit at a time to get used to it and it got a little better.
The improvement at first was minuscule; this acceleration barely reached 1%. However, when he focused on a specific limb, he was able to reach 2%. He arrived at these conclusions through simple tests of the time it took to do an activity before and after accelerating.
Kayden decided not to focus entirely on accelerating practice, but to introduce it into his morning workouts. In time, he would get used to using the spell automatically. Today, he also decided to finally go back to school. Teaching was very free for students. The school offered
size and that's it, but it didn't oblige anyone to learn. Kayden went back to school only to practice fighting conventional mages.
Arriving in the classroom, he went to his desk and waited for the teacher to arrive. Seconds later, a chubby woman was seen walking through the door. As soon as she walked in, she started calling out various names on the list.
"Any questions, Antony? No? Everything is in order." As he spoke, he was scratching on the clipboard. " Elizabeth? Neither, very well." It took a few minutes and some doubts cleared before it was Kayden's turn. "Kayden? It didn't come again..."
"I'm here, Professor," Kayden held up a hand.
"Oh, didn't see you there, boy. What do you need?" she asked with a smile on her face.
"I need to fight conventional mages." The answer surprised the teacher. The boy didn't seem to be able to do much.
"Are you sure, little one?" Kayden nodded. "Then go to the gym in the first basement and tell them I sent you."
Kayden grabbed his things, or rather just his katana, and headed towards the gym. He had never been inside and didn't even know there were floors there. Walking a little way, he arrived at a giant rectangle with an oval cover. It was a typical high school gym. Kayden walked through the door and looked for a teacher. He spotted a middle-aged man teaching a group some sword moves. He waited for the man to finish talking and asked for directions. The man pointed to a door at the end of the gym and said it was just down one flight of stairs. As soon as he went down, Kayden was faced with several circles of mana raised to prevent spells from leaking.