"Exhausted..." Lin Yuan flopped onto the bed, feeling more drained than if he had fought several battles. After invoking the authority of the old man Hawk to keep the students in check, he had only briefly explained the academy's schedule before hastily leaving, without formally starting any lessons. On his first day, he had merely come to see what this world's academy was like. After all, this world was vastly different from his original one, and methods that worked there might not necessarily apply here.
Overall, he was quite satisfied with his observations. Although the students were diverse, they were still just teenagers, not much different from the students he had taught in his original world. Well... there was the elf Charle and the dwarf Lock, both of whom were over a hundred years old. But according to the standards of elves and dwarves, they were still considered minors.
"Seems like I need to prepare my lessons quickly," Lin Yuan thought, as he realized that he would start teaching the students formally from tomorrow. He would usually write down and organize the content he needed to teach the next day. However, after interacting with the students today, he found that teaching here couldn't be the same as in his previous world. The students' levels of magic were uneven, their understanding and application of magic varied, and they even practiced different magic elements. Teaching them uniformly would be a huge challenge.
If he had to compare, Finor Academy's teaching method was somewhat similar to the graduate school model in his original world, where students followed their mentors and asked questions directly when they didn't understand. The only difference was that it wasn't as relaxed as graduate school.
Thinking this through, Lin Yuan understood why the academy, despite having classes, also had subjects divided by magic elements and assigned teachers of different magic elements. The purpose was to facilitate the students' learning better.
But what could he, the so-called "class teacher," teach them? In terms of magical strength, not to mention the teachers in the academy who were at least Level 7 mages, even in Class 3 of Grade 1, there were geniuses like Zona and Fasno. With Lin Yuan's ability to only master Level 2 magic, it seemed insufficient to teach them.
However, although the old man Hawk was somewhat mischievous, he wouldn't joke about such matters. There must be a reason why he had Lin Yuan become a teacher.
"Could it be because of this?" Lin Yuan raised his left hand, and a small fireball appeared in his palm. With his right hand raised, a small water ball also formed.
Apart from being able to understand all magic elements, the most distinctive feature of Lin Yuan compared to the mages in this world was his ability to use different magic elements simultaneously. Even Hawk, one of the two Archmages on the Farinos Continent, couldn't do that. Typically, even genius mages who could learn two or three magic elements could only use one element at a time, never like Lin Yuan, who could use two conflicting elements at the same time.
According to Hawk, Lin Yuan's existence completely overturned the common knowledge of magic on the Farinos Continent. Mages used magic mainly by relying on their mental energy to control the elements. Since humans could only focus their attention on one thing at a time, they could generally only use one magic element at a time. Unless, of course, the person was schizophrenic...
"If the old man calls me crazy, then I'll just act crazy for him," Lin Yuan muttered to himself.
He calmed himself and began to bring his hands together. He was conducting an experiment, one that was a concept of Hawk's—mixed magic.
So-called mixed magic involved combining different magic elements to create a more powerful effect than a single element. Although the idea had been proposed before, when two different mages used magic together, the differences in their mental characteristics would only lead to failure. It was only with Lin Yuan's ability to use different magic elements simultaneously, without any difference in mental characteristics, that this experiment might succeed.
Of course, when he had experimented with Hawk before, the results were always the same...
"Bang—"
A burst of energy, a mix of scorching heat and icy cold, exploded at the intersection of Lin Yuan's hands. With a loud bang, he was blown backward, along with the door, which flew off its hinges.
"Lin... what are you..."
"Ah..."
Lin Yuan felt himself collide with a soft body. He didn't have time to react further, only managing to cast a water shield behind the person to mitigate some of the impact.
"Ah, miss, are you alright?"
The young woman with golden hair whom he had collided with was of average appearance. Seeing Lin Yuan's profuse apologies, she smiled and waved her hand to indicate that she was fine.
"Lin, what are you doing, and how did it come to this?" The young woman was accompanied by Vice-Dean Kapachi, who looked at Lin Yuan's devastated dormitory, which resembled a disaster zone, and couldn't help but ask.
Lin Yuan chuckled, "I was just doing an experiment. Vice-Dean, how did you come here, and who is she..."
"Doing an experiment?" Vice-Dean Kapachi gave him a skeptical glance before slapping his own forehead. "Right, you've only been here for a few days. I forgot to assign you a laboratory. That was my oversight. But Lin, don't conduct experiments in your dormitory anymore, or you'll end up sleeping on the streets."
The woman beside him suppressed a smile at this, and Lin Yuan awkwardly scratched his head. "I won't. I'll be more careful in the future. Vice-Dean, you still haven't introduced..."
"Oh, I almost forgot the main reason I came," Kapachi clapped Lin Yuan on the shoulder. "This is Lin Yuan, the main teacher for Class 3, Grade 1." He then pointed to the young woman. "And this is Katusha, an 8th-level Water Mage who has just transferred from Pamil Magic Academy. She will be mainly responsible for tutoring the first-year students in water magic. Since both of you are new teachers, I thought I'd introduce you to each other."
Lin Yuan shook hands with Katusha, feeling somewhat puzzled. Finor Magic Academy, though hailed as the best on the continent, owed much of its reputation to the Archmage Hawk Fernas. In other aspects, there were at least three other magic academies on the continent whose strength was not inferior to Finor's, one of which was Pamil Magic Academy.
Since Pamil Magic Academy was located in the capital of the Machino Empire, and the Machino Empire had always been at odds with the Kuse Empire, it was understandable for students like Red to study at Finor Academy instead of Pamil for personal reasons, without affecting diplomatic relations. However, it was quite different for someone like Katusha, who was originally from Pamil Academy, to come to Finor Academy as a teacher.
"Teacher Lin, I heard that today was also your first day of teaching. What impression did the students of Class 3 leave on you?" Katusha suddenly asked.
"Impression?" Lin Yuan tilted his head, thinking about the morning's events, and couldn't help but smile. "They're all good kids. I believe they are all talented and will bring glory to Finor Academy in the future."
"These words sound very diplomatic," Katusha smiled slightly, without pressing further. She turned to Vice-Dean Kapachi and said, "Your Excellency, since we've already met Teacher Lin, we won't disturb his rest anymore." As she mentioned rest, Katusha glanced meaningfully at Lin Yuan's room before turning and leaving with Kapachi.
Lin Yuan scratched his head. Had the two of them come just to introduce Katusha to him? Looking at the mess inside his room, he sighed wryly. It seemed he wouldn't be able to sleep there tonight. Thinking about the mixed magic experiment he had just conducted, which seemed a bit different from the one at Hawk's cabin, Lin Yuan felt a spark of inspiration. He decided to leave his dormitory without bothering to clean up.
Although Finor Academy was nominally within the boundaries of Winden City, it actually occupied a large area outside the city, with a considerable distance from the city walls. This made the surroundings relatively quiet.
Lin Yuan, fearing that another failed experiment might disturb others, walked out of the campus and arrived at the riverside outside the school. When he had experimented with Hawk before, the old man, considering the high risk, had never attempted to fuse two completely conflicting magic elements. Generally, he would use the relatively mild earth and wind magic elements. However, every time they tried, these two elements seemed entirely unrelated and could not be combined.
The reason he had just thought of using the completely conflicting fire and water magic elements was entirely inspired by Zona. If Zona, a native of Farinos, could successfully practice both fire and water magic, it meant that these two elements were not as incompatible as most mages believed.
When the fireball and water ball collided just now, they did not explode immediately. Instead, they entangled each other for a tiny, almost imperceptible moment, like two strangers tentatively probing each other. After the probing, the two elements began to repel each other, eventually leading to the explosion.
This puzzled Lin Yuan greatly.
According to the basic magical theory that Hawk had taught him, magic was essentially mages using their powerful mental energy to control the elements of the world. As for why there were so many different types of magic, it was simply because the methods of control varied.
If Hawk was correct, then from Lin Yuan's perspective, if the elements were likened to bullets, then the mental energy of the mages would be the weapon controlling those bullets. As for magic itself, depending on the type, it could be categorized as handguns, cannons, cruise missiles, and so on...
However, the situation he had just encountered was somewhat different from his initial understanding. The water and fire elements seemed to be more than just simple bullets.
"I need to try again. If I don't even have the spirit to experiment, how can I teach students?"
Lin Yuan calmed himself and once again conjured a fireball in his left hand and a water ball in his right. This time, instead of letting the two magics touch immediately, he carefully sensed them.
The two elemental magics gathered in his hands seemed somewhat different from usual, though he couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly was different.
After some thought, he dispelled the fireball in his left hand and immediately noticed that the water ball in his right palm seemed to rotate more gently than before. If he hadn't been paying close attention, he might not have noticed the difference.
After several more trials, he confirmed that the water ball did behave more intensely when the fireball was present, though the difference wasn't significant.
Lin Yuan then tried dispelling the water ball to focus on the fireball and found an even more noticeable result. The fireball seemed slightly larger when the water ball was present, even though he hadn't changed the amount of mental energy he was focusing. It seemed as if the fireball itself had made the choice.
Could it be that these elements have consciousness?
The thought startled Lin Yuan at first, but then he quickly dismissed his initial surprise. This world was already different from the one he had come from. He had mastered magic, something that belonged to novels in his previous world. Why should he be afraid of encountering something new and unfamiliar?