Spell creation club around the time of the first year exam.
...
Norman Foster sat at his desk in his personal section of the club room looking over large and clearly very old books. He had been doing this over the past two days while he was in the club room. The reason - Nick Capitol's spells.
"Those spells felt odd to me for some reason. After looking over my texts, I can now with certainty intuit the cause of my restlessness. The spells' effects aren't very special for someone at my level but it was the magic energy involved when the spells were cast that have my attention. Usually a Magician's spells take on a certain nature or characteristic when creating an effect. The most common characteristics are associated with the elements or a combination of them such as, water, fire, iron, even darkness could be a characteristic involved in magic energy. All this depends mostly on the spell used but the nature of a spell's magic can also be altered by the Magician's mindscape. This is clearly not the case for Nick as he does not have a mindscape and he used magic scrolls to cast his spells."
Norman rubbed his forehead in annoyance.
"That has to be why Nick's spells felt foreign to me. What a lucky kid. magic scrolls work by using the magic in the atmosphere to cast a spell and based on the spell, the magic attracted could have special characteristics, for example, if the spell involves creating a ball of fire, then magic energy with characteristics related to fire would be attracted to the scroll. Whatever kind of magic energy that Nick's spell attracted to the scrolls is unknown to me. Thinking back on the twisting of that goat's neck, usually all that is required is a spell that can produce a force to cause that effect, such as, a psychic spell that used magic related to the mind's will, or spacial magic that could rend the goat's neck or even magic that enhanced Nick's strength enough to twist the neck with very little effort on his part but I clearly felt that there was no external 'force' acting on the goats neck, magically or otherwise. It was as if whatever caused the goats neck to twist was borne from the goat itself influenced by Nick's magic spell but at the same time his spell did not directly cause the twist. There are dozens of natures that magic energy could take on and some are so special that they are treated as national treasures and some are even outlawed."
Norman, in his dozens of years of being a Magician have seen many kinds of magic but he had never come in contact with magic that had the nature that Nick's scrolls possessed. Norman had come to a conclusion.
"That young man has seemed to have stumble on magic with a very unique and maybe completely unknown nature. Hmph, I tried to find out more by getting him to become my disciple but the boy actually refused. If he had agreed to my proposal I could have used tens of excuses to forcibly take possession of his scrolls and do research."
Norman was left with no choice but to leave Nick alone, after all, the academy had its own rules, even ones that were not written in the school's handbook that were just as important as the ones written down. If I stole a student's magical possessions, especially one that that student created himself, that would be a serious crime and not even he, a Regular Magician, could avoid punishment if he was caught. The academy does this to protect the students from predators within its own walls and to foster their individuality and growth. In this case Nick's magic scrolls represented a great fortune because developing a new kind of magic energy always had opportunities attached to it, the more special and rare the magic energy the more opportunities would open up. If the magic involved a nature that was difficult to deal with in battle, that could even establish a country's supremacy over it neighbors for decades to come. Norman remembered a story he had heard, detailing when magic that had characteristics that affected a person's 'luck' was discovered. The person who developed this magic was able to kill people by giving them bad luck, using the person's own circumstances to deal with them. Before that kind of magic became more commonly used, it was practically unstoppable because it was so difficult to defend against because it was not truly understood how it produced its effects. Norman could only sigh at his loss, he could only try to entice Nick later when the opportunity was right?
"Sigh, if only Nick was as naive as Lana."
Up to now Norman had only valued Derek as a person worthy to be his disciple. Although Lana had real interest in spell making, she was unwilling to do the actual work it would require to become an excellent spell maker. Recognizing this, Norman used his position and the benefits he could offer to turn Lana into his plaything, promising her that if she pleased him he would teach her the shortest way to become a spell maker. Norman may be over one hundred years old but Magicians aged differently than normal people and do still indulge in their vices even after living for so long. When Norman had first met Nick, He was in the middle of 'taking care' of Lana and in his hurry to attend to whoever was at his door, he might of left traces in regards to his lechery. He only rushed because he thought since the person that knocked wasn't Derek, it might be someone from the enforcement office. While it is not against the rules to have intimate relationships with students, politically, it was a no, no. The Magicians' world is cruel and one should never let anyone get a hold on their weakness, politically or otherwise.
"For now, I'll continue helping him in order to observe his progress and if there is an opportunity, obtain whatever results he has in relation to the strange magic."
....
"Mr. Sensitive, how did you do in your match? I hope you didn't lose too bad."
Nick was honestly tired of this woman. The more he interacted with her, the more difficulty she had in hiding her condescension. He simply shrugged his shoulders in response and started to think back on his match with Don. Cindy seemed to take the hint and stood quietly at the side waiting for what would happen next.
(I did pretty well for a complete novice in combat. My spells worked well and there were no surprises. The most important thing out of the whole situation wasn't the match, it was the fact that another Regular Magician was interested enough in my scrolls to want me to become their disciple. I don't think that Devon Mason had good intentions though, that's just my intuition, the same one that warned me when Norman proposed the same thing. I need to study my scrolls carefully for any peculiarities when I get back to my dorm.)
Over the course of the next fifty minutes almost all of the students returned to the main hall except for those who were seriously injured during their match. It was at the end of the fifty minutes that Ray Menzes made his appearance, saying:
"Listen up, all of the judges have submitted grades for the matches that they watched. If you are concerned with the fairness of your grades, don't worry, the academy has methods to compel even Regular Magicians to act honestly. You were all graded based on a certain criteria and you will all be ranked according to this criteria. You will be emailed the breakdown of your individual performance tomorrow at midday. For now, pay close attention to your rankings. The ranks are separated into ranks E, D, C, B, A and S with E being the worst and S being the best. Honestly, they are only significant for the top 10 students as they will receive the reward of having an audience with the Dean to ask whatever magic related question they wish. "
The whole room went in an uproar, apparently an audience with the Dean was attractive to the the students. Nick had a thought:
(If I could get an audience with the dean, I could ask him what was so special with my scrolls, that would be very helpful.)
Nick had that wonderful thought but had very little expectations towards being ranked within the top ten of students.
Ray Menzes looked at his wristwatch, nodded his head and shouted:
"It's time! Students take a look at your rankings."
A large blue holographic screen appeared in front of the group of students separating them and Ray. The screen showed the rankings of over eight hundred students and each student had their eyes glued to the screen searching for their name. Nick went with the most obvious strategy.
(I'm going to look at the names starting from the top until I find mine.)
When Nick reached the fourth name on the board, his jaw almost dropped from shock, he ended up uttering the words without thinking.
"Nick Capitol, Grade S, Rank 4.