Chapter 28: Mana gathering class
Dialogue "sample"
Thoughts 'Sample'
Techniques [sample]
Author notes -sample-
Chapter 28
Mana gathering class
The next day, Siegfried arrived at a new tower. It was called the Tower of Meditation, this is the place where they will have the 'mana gathering' class. This class only existed for the first years as a way of orientation.
He was one of the first ones to enter the classroom, only Hilda Vance and Iris Castel were there. He gave them a nod as a greeting and they did the same.
The classroom itself was quite peculiar, it was a perfectly circular room with the center spot reserved for their teacher.
There were no chairs or tables, instead, they had some big cushions placed on the floor.
'I guess we are not doing any writing in this class.' Siegfried concluded.
He took a seat a few places away from Hilda. He sat down in a lotus position since that seemed to be the way you were meant to seat in these cushions. Hilda and Iris seemed to agree since they did the same.
Soon enough the rest of the class arrive and of course, Edward sat down next to Siegfried after greeting him.
Siegfried didn't mind the presence of the other boy. He wasn't too noisy and knew a lot of useful stuff.
The last to enter was their teacher.
"Wow" Edward could not help himself from exclaiming.
Siegfried did agree with the sentiment. Their new teacher was an incredibly striking woman. She had a beautiful but mature face with a pair of small glasses that rested on her nose, a tall and slender body, and a magnificent pair of breasts that were barely contained by her black robe. But, the feature that Siegfried found the most fascinating was her hair. She had a very long mane of light green hair tied in a low ponytail.
'Where did all of these crazy hair colors come from?' Siegfried wondered if they had something to do with the use of magic. Because during his time, humans only had normal colors for their hair. But now He has seen several strange ones, like Astoria's silver one or Iris with her dark purple hair.
'I do remember that some elves were born with strange hair colors like green or blue, but I never saw one of those myself since elves rarely left their forests.'
"My name is Olivia Sinclair. I will be your teacher for the magical gathering class. What you will learn in this class is how to properly gather mana into your body and what to do with it. I will teach you how to start your journey to go from apprentices to Official Magus."
The teacher then threw some pamphlets in the air and these flew to the hands of each one of the students without fail. A technique that reminded Siegfried of the one used by the Headmaster.
"Written in there is the mana-gathering technique given freely by the academy. It is called Blue Jade and it was created by one of the founders."
Iria Monet rose her hand in the air. The teacher nodded to her as a sign of 'go ahead'.
"Some of us have already been given meditation techniques from our families. Would that conflict with your teachings?"
"Of course, I know that most if not all of you already have something that should be better, after all, the Blue Jade is a very basic technique that is meant for apprentices to reach the rank of Official Magus but little more after that. I believe the intention of the founder who created it was for the students to forge their own path after becoming Magus. "
Olivia then looked at Iria.
"As for your question. No, the Blue Jade will not interfere with any other technique that you have been using. But it will serve to teach you the proper way to meditate."
"I see. Thank you, Professor Sinclair." Iria smiled.
"Do we really have to use this garbage?" Charles scoffed after reading the pamphlet.
"The Blue Jade has been common knowledge around the State since the founding of the academy. You can buy one of these for a few copper coins in the street." Explained Edward.
Siegfried had given it a thorough read. The technique was very basic, but it did cover all the necessary steps for cultivating and it was well explained. It was also very generic so it would work, no matter your elemental affinity. He was honestly impressed that they would make something like this, public knowledge. In the past, cultivation techniques were well protected and would never be freely distributed, even the most basic ones.
"If this is public knowledge. Cant a commoner just pick one of these and become a Magus?" Asked the petite, Iris Castel.
Charles rose an eyebrow and looked at her with disgust.
"Are you an idiot?." He spat.
Iris got angry and was about to yell at Charles when Edward intervened.
"What our impolite classmate over there is trying to say is that, even if a commoner by some miracle has enough elemental affinity to get that far, there are several stages that an apprentice needs to get through in order to reach the level of an Official Magus. Gathering mana alone, will not be enough."
"That is correct. Very good Mister Aston. Now, can someone name me what those stages are?" The teacher asked.
Iria Monet once again rose her hand.
"There are three major stages for an apprentice."
She rose one finger.
"The first one is the mana gathering stage where have to learn to gather mana into our bodies."
Two fingers.
"The second one is the mana vein opening. There are 64 mana veins in the body, but only 9 of them are opened at birth, the rest will need to be manually opened."
The rose the third finger.
"The third one is the mana core formation. We condense all the mana that we have gathered and form our core where we will, later on, engrave our first magical circle in order to become an Official Magus."
Siegfried was listening with interest.
'Those stages that she described are very similar to ones found in body cultivation. Other than the body strengthening stage, they are all there, just with different names. But, for what she said, the core formation stage would just be beginning…how interesting.' Siegfried smiled at the idea of surpassing his old self and rising to new heights.