A Scholarly Week (10)

Sitting in a large hall packed to the brim with students, Cyrus stood out like a sore thumb due to the fact that in a sea of bright colored mage robes he was the only one with one as black as night.

"Not only is my apparel in stark contrast to my fellow students but my reputation appears to have preceded me by quite a bit" thought Cyrus, as he looked upon the empty seats that were all around him even when every other seat was filled without fail.

His keen hearing also picked up murmurs and whispers all around. Bored as he was, he decided to isolate specific conversations amongst the sea of noise that was the lecture hall.

"Look, its Quintus Cyrus. He is the maniac that was responsible for a dozen students getting their limbs sliced off, doing so without even a change in his expression"

"I heard he even threatened to outright kill students, those threatened were so sure that he would follow through that they dared not challenge him after that."

"My friend in another department told me that he loves to taste the flesh of young girls…"

Cyrus would soon regret doing this because each whisper was even worse than the last.

"They started out close to the truth if not exactly correct but the more each rumor spreads the more twisted it becomes. I imagine that after a few more days of these rumors spreading I will become the ultimate villain and root of all evil. I foresee many more conflicts arising in the future, perhaps a constant series of ambushes until I find a way to permanently dissuade them"

Thankfully, Cilla eventually walked into the room which silenced any and all whispering among the dozens of students present.

"Good evening students, welcome to my lecture. It is nice to see so many here, I even see some familiar faces from my earlier lesson. I hope you are here due to my beauty and charm and not because you were not paying attention earlier" said Cilla, eliciting a round of laughter.

"The difference between Professor Caligo's teaching style and Professor Cilla's style are already night and day. What I really care about, however, is how effective they are in transferring knowledge to the student."

Now at the head of the room, standing behind a podium, Cilla began her lecture for the day.

"Vita magic is often thought of by the common folk as simply a method of healing and rejuvenation. While it is true that a large part of it is so, you will be in for a surprise if you decide to underestimate an accomplished Vita mage due to this misconception. Even for those who do not have years of experience, the combat potential of this domain can still be rather surprising. The proof of this would be Glacies' very own ranks, where the student with the third most combat potential is a member of my own department. So, instead of teaching a method of healing today I will explain the basics behind increasing the combat potential of a Vita mage."

Cilla then tapped a small pouch that was hanging from her neck and produced a rock the size of a fist.

"Observe this random rock I picked up outside, see how sturdy it is" began Cilla, dropping the rock onto the floor next to her with a thud and then picking it back up.

"See how it did not even crack whatsoever even after being dropped like so, this is no weakly constructed rock! Now…with a small application of my domain on my finger" said Cilla as she extender her index finger and aimed it from above towards the center of the rock.

She then flicked the center of the rock, causing a loud bang to be heard which to a blind person may have caused them to believe that it was not a finger that impacted the rock but instead a hammer being smashed down with the full force of a burly man.

The rock completely shattered from this flick, erupting into a cloud of rock fragments that spread out along the podium it was resting on.

"By storing a vast quantity of life essence and carefully attaching it to the bodies naturally produced one, I can exert far more force than I should normally be able to. This is known as Vita Viribus, which is an entire branch of application that is centered around strengthening the self for combat purposes. Of course this has its drawbacks since the essence that you manipulate is slightly different than the one in the body, which makes it a rather inefficient interaction as well as a painful one if you do not condition yourself properly to be able to handle the technique."

She then clapped her hands twice, awaking everyone from their awe of a single finger containing such force.

"To learn this you must slowly connect outside life essence to the life force within the body, which is arrayed like a complex set of roads inside your body. Through careful research and experimentation, we have discovered that most of these complex paths are tied to actual physical structures that we can see and interact with. They are as follows: Blood vessels, Capillaries, Bones, and Muscles."

"The Archmage of Bountiful Life in the north has also theorized that there is another structure within the human body that life essence can path through, one much more efficient than all the other ones mentioned but that information is not available to you at the moment. Not because its some kind of grand secret, but simply because trying to access it without extreme training tends to leave the practitioner brain dead for some reason" lectured Cilla, her voice not losing its cheer even when describing people having their heads explode or the mass graves that had to be dug when the Archmage first released their discovery to the public.

"While it may sound dangerous, you have to understand that practicing any form of magic is inherently dangerous. This is especially so when dealing with a spell that effects your own body, so make sure that you test complicated spells on test subjects first to perfect it before trying on yourself. This spell, however, so long as you only use your bone structure to connect to your natural life force the risk is minimal even if you were to somehow fail. Upon failure the bone would rupture, which is painful but so long as it is not your femur or spine it can easily be fixed up even if treatment is delayed."

Cilla then turned around and pulled down a wrapped up painting that was on the wall behind her, unwrapping it and bringing it to its full length then pinning the bottom half to the wall to keep it from rolling back up.

"Here we have the entire bone structure of the human body, the one on the left is for females and the one on the right is for males. They are almost identical, but not completely as you can see here. In order to start yourself on the path of Vita Viribus you will start with the tip of your finger and work your way up to the upper arm. Once you can interact with all of the bones involved with the arm, with you being able to add the smallest outside life essence to each areas own life force, you can move to your legs" said Cilla, her tone suddenly becoming more serious as she continued,

"Do not mess with the upper portion of your leg unless you are in the presence of myself or in the healers wing because you can and will die rather quickly if you shatter a bone in that area."

Dropping the serious tone as fast as it had come, Cilla finished her piece:

"Once you can connect to each bone, the final task is to slowly increase the amount of outside life essence your body can handle. Make sure to do this as slowly as you can because if you go too fast the entire limb you are manipulating will rupture, let's keep my room clean!"

"When you are in your own room or in one of the school's experimentation or training grounds you can go faster for better training results. Today just make sure that you can at least get up to your hand. You do not have to worry about any injuries since I am here to patch you up. Having a Master Magus watching over you should alleviate any worries you have, now, get to it!"

Cilla clapped twice once more, prompting the students to try their best with a smile on her face.