13 Instructor 101 - This Student is dangerous!

Again the light orb in front of him changed to different elemental states, before turning into water and dropping down on the ground and disappearing into the earth.

"Most students of magic specialize into one type of magic, as it is usually easier to advance that way. It does not mean that they are unable to cast other magic, but sometimes it is a better idea to master one type rather than trying and failing to master everything. All of you have at least some talent in one of the magical types, otherwise you would not be here. This yellow stage is referred to as the form stage, while the white stage is often called power accumulation stage. Without at least yellow grade magical aptitude you will not be able to have the necessary power and control to give your magical energy form and thus decide its type."

"Next." He raised his hand again and formed a simple magical barrier in front of him. The barrier was transparent and slightly glowing covering one side like a rounded screen of magical power.

"Once you reach beyond the form stage and have enough power and control of the form of magic, you will step into the shape stage. Creating a fire is simple, as is creating a boulder of ice. However what happens when you want to make an ice sculpture or a wall of fire with specific limits and dimensions?"

Their instructor changed the size of his barrier and made it smaller like a shield someone might hold in one hand.

"Giving your magic not just form, but also shape, requires more power and control. It is necessary though for more advanced magical spells and usually requires an orange magical affinity. Some of you might have been born with only a yellow grade affinity and training you beyond this inborn limit is what we will do here. As for those with an orange or higher affinity, it will be easier for you to acquire the power to complete these tasks, but it requires a lot of control nonetheless, as such, most of our classes time will be spent on learning more about the shape stage of our magic arts and the ways to control, optimize and making the best of your available magical power."

He released his magical barrier, with the magical energies trembling for a moment and quickly diffusing into the air afterwards.

"For theories sake, even though we won't cover them in detail here, let's go through the further stages. Beyond the shape stage, in the red affinity realm is the stage of affinity. This has nothing to do with the term magical affinity that is your inborn aptitude which is increased by training. It refers to the affinity between your magical spell and its surroundings. Talk about bad naming sense of our forefathers." he chuckled and the whole class was torn between joining the laughter or keeping their serious attitudes.

"Magic is essentially a change to the fabric of reality. You force your own will onto your surroundings making them change in a way that goes against the natural order of things. In some cases these changes are temporary. If you summon water or earth, the summoning itself is your will forced upon reality. Water or sand doesn't just appear out of thin air without a reason obviously. Once these physical manifestations or objects are created though, they usually align with the natural order. Even if your spell ends, the objects remain behind, making many magical applications possible."

"Going beyond an instantaneous effect and forcing such an effect to stay around for a certain duration is what affinity is all about. You cannot make the natural order accept such strange things on a longer timeframe yet, but you can at least give this changed environment a shell that is better understood and accepted by the laws of nature. Like a freezing block of ice dropped into boiling water will cause a lot of steam, a stationary instantly created fire will not cause much of a reaction to the natural laws, but throwing such a fireball and making it fly through dozens or hundreds of meters across a battlefield is a different story."

"We don't want to cause a lot of such 'magical steam' for various reasons. First of all fluctuations around a spell make it a lot easier to notice, to disrupt and to destroy. It also causes the caster to use up a lot more magical energy to hold the spell stable and keep it from breaking apart."

"If we return to the example of the ice dropped into the boiling hot water, what we do during the affinity stage is to add some warm water around the freezing block of ice. There will still be a reaction, but there is a big difference between boiling water and warm water. The reaction of the block of ice in the boiling water will not be as drastic. Adding such a shell or area around a spell that has a higher affinity with both the spell itself and the area around it, like a middle ground, is what we call an affinity zone. This is also the reason this stage is called affinity stage."

"The expert realm of violet grade magic takes this step further. It is also called persistency stage. It does not take a genius to figure out that at this stage, it will be possible with a certain amount of external power as a source of fuel, spells can be made persistent for a certain time even without the constant influence by the mage. One example would be fortification barriers that last for dozens or hundreds of years, sometimes even when the caster is no longer alive."

"Beyond that it gets quite a little bit more abstract. With blue grade magic, mages we usually call Skylords, we reach the intent stage, where a caster limits the natural rejection of magical effects by twisting the natural order with his will, making his intentions and ideas part of what would be possible around them."

"Using this application makes them able to fly without consuming an insane amount of magical power. Green grade magic of a Hierophant would step into the sentience or soul stage, able to separate their spirit from their physical bodies and commune with various spiritual beings."

"Then there is the brown affinity realm of earthly magic. Those casters are sometimes called earthbound gods. They are able to directly commune with the natural world around them, making their spells have an immense power. They are able to use magic on a much larger scale making them appear like gods to many tribal cultures."

"Grey and Black affinity grades have not appeared so far and we really have no way to even test for them. This is called the realms of the gods as these affinities if trained to this level would make someone able to go beyond this worlds limits and leave the world behind if they want to. Of course no mortal reached them in our history, at least we have no recordings of any, who knows what these earthbound experts are really up to and if any of them reached beyond the earthly realm at some point. If we go with some religious beliefs there are various explanations for the gods, but this is not the scope of our class here."

The instructor looked at the faces of his students who were all listening to his explanations. Some were nodding as if they heard all of this before, while others seemed to hear all of this for the first time.

"Theory is good, it will help you understand what is going on around you. To make use of this theory though, you will need a lot of practice. Practice makes perfect, more or less at least and that's exactly what we are going to do now."

He then split the students based on their abilities. Those who could already form some magic in the shape stage were moved to one side, while those who were still stuck in the form stage were told to train on their own and do their best to change their magical manifestations in size and shape in order to reach better control.

"In a fight, the most important thing is not some heroic objective or some silly honor bound idea of who is right. Dead heroic people are still dead, dead people cannot fight and dead people cannot make a difference in a war. There might be situations where giving your life is worth it, but to get to that point you have to survive long enough to even be able to influence the outcome of the fight. If you cannot defeat your enemy, maybe you can come back later with reinforcements and try again, maybe you can get stronger and then fight again. If you are dead though there is no next try. The first thing you will learn is to defend yourself and survive. To do that we want a magical defense, because even the best steel armor doesn't help a lot against a fireball."

"Each of you has the task now to create a shield and keep it up against an attack as long as possible. Not all of you have the same amount of magical power available, but the idea is to make whatever power you have count. Do your best to make your shield efficient, but use enough power to not have it break against the attacks."

One by one the students cast their shields and their instructor engaged them using various spells to attack their defenses. Once their shield broke or they could no longer support it with their power they would stop and discuss what could be improved.

"Instructor Zoran? Can we use any type of shield?" a young girl that was next in line asked. She looked rather worried and the instructor was already wondering, how a person who was already worried about such a simple exercise would want to graduate here.

The young girl was Myra, but she was not worried about failing or getting hurt. 'What if I hurt the teacher?' she wondered, but as the instructor seemed very confident she decided to just go along with this training and use the simple invisible shield she always used to protect herself.

"Just use whatever shield you like miss. Just make sure it has enough power to defend against an attack and not break right away." the instructor explained. What he did not really know, was that Myra's shield was a little bit different from what they would call a simple shield.

The lightning spell zapped through the air, hitting the slightly opaque shield that Myra decided to make visible. It was after all training, she thought it would just make sense to actually see what's going on. As soon as the spell hit the shield, the instructor prepared to stop if the girl's shield breaks, or to cast another spell if it would still remain stable.

Unexpectedly though, once his spell hit the shield, it was reflected back and its power increased drastically. For someone watching the mock fight it looked as if the instructor had tossed a lightning ball at the girl, but it was suddenly changing direction and was shot back as if fired from a ballista. The instructor barely managed to raise his own defensive barrier before he was knocked back by his own reflected spell more than three meters and then landed on his backside.