Title at the End

Yuri woke up refreshed. It felt like a lot time since he had slept in a bed, he should carry one around with him so he doesn't have to be uncomfortable even in a dungeon.

"Alright! Let's go to Destruction first, then practice for a while. Enchanting doesn't happen until three hours after Destruction ends, so I'll have time to get Lightning and possibly mana manipulation skills in that window!" Yuri planned his busy day out loud, before clothing himself in his favorite black getup and dark purple adept robes.

Making his way to his classroom, he was reminded that he still needed to investigate the focal points in the walls for himself and once again set aside time for it after class.

He opened the door to the familiar ED room, and discovered that they didn't have a formation book in front of them at all. The books they were using were a different color than the formation book he brought with him, and looked like they were about Advanced Lightning Control.

"Mr. Nightingale, how nice of you to join us" Quipped Faralda.

"Excuse me?" Said Yuri, not getting the tone.

"Well you've been gone for two days, and we've moved on from the material" Faralda may have been a little disappointed at his attendance, but Mirabelle had told here what Yuri had done for the College in his absence so she offered: "But I can get you a study guide for what you missed and you can keep the book for as long as you need". The students were confused at how nice the generally strict and proud Faralda was being to Yuri.

'Two days? Has sleep become optional for me?' Yuri didn't ever remember getting tired but fell asleep immediately when he wanted to. It's become a force of habit at this rate.

"Here is your next curriculum, we've just started today" Faralda handed him a purple hard-back and two inch thick book with a thunderbolt on the front.

"As I was saying, the reason Lightning magic isn't taught until the expert class is for a very simple reason. It is the most dangerous magic to the self. Hitting yourself with Lightning magic might cost you more mana than the original spell, while in most cases also causing some form of momentary paralysis. The Expert and higher grade spells can even cause blindness, or death if passed through the heart." Faralda warned.

'So they have no understanding of electric current, except its risks?'

"Lightning is natural chaos, and takes a great amount of control to not only contain but throw in the desired direction. This is the reason why lightning spells are more common in staffs designed to help cast and not used widely by mages. Control over lightning is the course we will be taking over the next week, and I will help you in every step from a spells inception, containment, and casting. Before we work on creating a spell, its containment must first be studied"

'I'm glad we're doing lightning spells first to save me time in that area, but she's making it seem like a rabid dog instead of an element. Lightning is very predictable once you know its behavioral pattern'

Faralda meandered on the subject of properly creating a containment vessel using a specialized ward spell before creating a lightning spell, which Yuri spent equal amounts of time tuning into and ignoring to think of his own way to cast it.

Sadly, throughout the entire two hour class, Faralda only demonstrated what a proper containment looks like and only generated a lightning spell as an example without casting it or letting the students try it. Being a tried and tested mana manipulator, Yuri quickly displayed a containment field that wouldn't let even light pass through, then had to tone it down a little. He spent the rest of the class catching up on the scrolls and bundles of papers about Basic Formations. Faralda wanted to get Lightning out of the way before moving on to Lightning Formations and the more complex ones.

Yuri left disappointed, but the day wasn't even half over for him yet so he had high hopes. As he was about to pass a focal point, he sat in meditation in front of it and concentrated on the mana pouring out of it in bright specks of blue light. He steadied his breathing, and closed his eyes while still feeling the mana. He didn't know where his current mana storage was, but he put his heart in that position for now in preparation for the ritual he was performing later.

In several minutes, the only thing he noticed was that these motes of light were getting barely closer to him and he gained nothing yet.

'Let's start off smaller. This mana is visible, it must be too dense for now'

He released his concentration on the visible specks and tried feeling mana in the air in his closest vicinity. Without air guide, the area he could sense with mana was only about five feet, and that was likely due to the focal point allowing it to be dense around here.

It was like a very thin fog, not noticeable by eyesight or even feel if one wasn't concentrating. Within the five foot radius, he imagined himself to be a very large cosmic body, like a sun, using its gravity to pull in smaller objects and eventually assimilate it into its mass, or core in the case of his heart. He stretched his mana control to the limit, and finally noticed the fog within his area begin to react. The problem was, even after gathering all of it his mana didn't even rise by a single point.

He looked to the focal point again, and had an idea.

'What's stopping me from using my own mana to attract or collect more?'

He didn't know where his mana was, but he knew it was inside him. So he deliberately breathed it out. In a dense plume of bluish smoke, Yuri breathed out his own mana toward the focal point and kept his control over it while trying not to waste it. He used the principles of mana construct to do it. The pool in the focus point was disturbed, and the darker liquid in the pool looked like it was covered in a lighter and more solid dust. Yuri controlled the dust to come back to him the same way he was breathing earlier, but tried to hold on to some of the liquid by making his dust form into groups of balls. If one were looking at the process using a microscope, they would find that the finished product he was trying to pull in looked like a completely blue Ferrero Rocher chocolate.

He was rewarded for his efforts. In the status bar, his Mana count with the amulet on went from 200 to 201. While he still lacked mana control and a mana rich environment aside from here, this type of practice would have to do. He would have to improve it in the future. He still had over two and a half hours before Enchanting practice, so he spent the next 45 minutes in meditation and brought his mana count to 216.

He then made his way to the target practice fields once more. He didn't believe Lightning magic needed as many steps as they were taking, otherwise the coolest element would be the least desirable, and he couldn't have that!

He stood in front of his next victim, the man shaped target, and swung him out to 100 feet with the lever. Faralda didn't go into detail about the concepts or knowledge needed to create lightning yet, but being hit by lightning magic himself, and skimming the book, he knew what he was getting into. He only coated his hand in a very small shield similar to the ward, and created what he perceived as lightning.

Lightning to him was very simple. He wasn't a rocket scientist, but he knew that lightning was a force of nature designed to let a world balance its positive and negative charges between the atmosphere and the ground. Lightning searches for a conduit to discharge its energy quickly, and forks out in every direction to do so while falling to earth. In its flight, eventually the earth will give it a positive stream from the ground to guide its strike before it lands. Slow motion videos of lightning strikes are very cool. He didn't want to perceive lightning as chaos to be forcefully contained and directed. He wanted to be the one who would teach this force where it needs to go. To reprogram its nature as striking an opponent instead of the ground, to let it perceive him as a cloud. And to do that, he needed to mark one first just like the positive stream.

With his left hand, Yuri imagined not a scientifically accurate positive stream, but a marker that his lightning alone would perceive as the prime area to unleash its energy. He launched it to the target, and with a 'bzzz' it landed on its chest.

[Unique Lightning Spell Created: 200 RP]

Yuri then used his right hand to allow the lightning to form in his hand while fully believing himself to be its father cloud. His entire right arm adopted a white haze up to the shoulder, and insulated his torso from the charge. He poured mana into the thunderous stream as it wildly arced out from his hand he was holding away from himself to the ground. The cluster of blue lightning was obeying him and staying put while greedily absorbing mana. Yuri was excited, and he didn't see any danger in giving it more. It looked exactly like Chidori! After 40 points, he felt it was approaching a critical explosion, and instead swung his arm and let it go like a pitch toward his marker.

For a single moment, it seemed all light in the vicinity was overtaken by a single furious bolt. With a blinding flash, it exited his hand and connected to fast that all he saw was a steady hundred foot stream. Yuri couldn't see the aftermath since he was blinded, but he could hear it. A BANG was all he could hear at first, followed by a rolling and thunderous roar echoed, the ground under him shook, and it took several seconds before the sound traveled outside of his range in repeated drones. It felt just like he was at the epicenter of a real lightning strike from the storm of a century, and he was grinning like a fool while being blinded with ringing ears.

'Maybe 15 mana will do next time'

It wasn't long before Faralda and three more mages in Master Robes stormed into the room with a mixture of fear and anger at such an outrageous experiment. The whole Destruction Hall was shaken, and perhaps further.

They noticed a boy in Adept robes giggling on the ground, a charred line all the way toward one of the targets, and absolutely nothing else. The target was gone, and it looked like the enchantments on the wall gave out at the last second before the wall got itself charred as well.

A heavyset man with a huge white mustache and a bald head noticed the Adept robes and charged forward wagging his finger in reprimand.

"ADEPT! Since when does the College authorize the use of lightning magic at this level without a Master present! You will follow me to the Detention Hall this instant for interrogation and punishment will be..." He was about to continue in his gruff voice, before Faralda interrupted.

"He is my student in the Expert class, Gunthur. Allow me to handle this" Normally Faralda would either join him or agree silently, but this was perhaps the one student to whom lenience would first be given and motive questioned later.

"And if he was mine I would be saying the same! The boy could've gotten himself or anyone else in the field hurt had they been present!" To this, Faralda had no comment. Yuri may have checked the room, but as far as she knew, he had no basis to try this yet.

"That is enough, both of you." Sounded a new voice. It appears Savos Aren arrived with a teleport to clear this up.

"""Arch Mage!""" Said the three Masters around Faralda, while Faralda herself wasn't surprised he came.

"Yuri has been given a number of special privileges thanks to his talent and contributions. I will take care of this and ensure this doesn't happen again. Please return to your classes and keep a lid on the details." He said, not really asking.

"Yes, Arch Mage" They intoned, before taking note of Yuri's face and identity for the future.

Yuri's hearing had come back at the point of Savos entrance, when he discovered he had been snuck up on by three old fogies! And Faralda!

"Faralda, how far along in Lightning manipulation are you in class?" Asked Savos.

"The first day, Arch Mage"

"The first day..." Savos quietly digested.

"Yuri, your talent is disastrous and the classes aren't satiating it. You already have access to the Arcaneum, but from now on you will be my personal apprentice and have access to the back practice area instead. You are to drop all classes except those in the Illusion and Restoration fields and Enchanting effective immediately, and report to my tower daily." Savos declared righteously, as if he had waited for an opportunity like this.

Thanks to Mirabelle, Savos had little to do in the way of administrative work. Taking Yuri as an apprentice would not only allow him to speed up their plans to go to Labyrinthian, but also raise up a right hand man for his contacts across Skyrim.

The reason for the class change was simple. Savos Aren was a Grandmaster in the Schools of Destruction, Conjuration, and Alteration and a master Alchemist himself. He was only an Expert in Illusion and Restoration, and knew nothing about enchanting.

"Really?" Asked Yuri, still a bit dazed bit excited by the prospect nonetheless, even if Savos had his own plans for him. What Savos didn't know what that he had his own plans too, and needed to be a dragon killing beast in 11 months anyway.

"Correct. Now you can continue with your practice for now and report tomorrow, but if you pull something like that again, I'll have to ask you to come to my practice field instead."

"No, no I'll be contained for now" Yuri didn't have much time before Enchanting started, and didn't want to waste it walking. He slowly got up and dusted himself off.

"Thank you for the opportunity, Arch Mage!" Yuri exclaimed. Faralda shook her head and walked off.

"Yes, yes, report tomorrow after breakfast and we can discuss your curriculum." Savos ended and walked off as well.

Yuri was finally alone again, and had an element to work on.

After some practice while making his arm behave somewhat like a cloud and shooting lightning in various shapes and lengths, like balls and arrows and such, he was running out of ideas to get his skill for the manipulation.

"I've already created plasma with fire, so how about a solid shape?"

But this was much harder than he realized. Lightning behaved correctly for him because he gave it the intention and design to be launched, not held indefinitely. Like Faralda mentioned earlier and Yuri didn't want to believe, Lightning wouldn't take any shape the holder wanted.

So he came up with a different idea. He created not a single marker, but two of them that also had the ability to bounce the received lightning to the other marker, making a feedback loop.

Once he had the two markers floating like marbles above his hand and surrounded his hand with a small thunder ward, he charged the air above his palm with lightning and they immediately went to one of the two markers before bouncing between each other. For a while, it looked like he was holding the tip of a thundering triangle. After charging 10 points into it, he released and the triangle became a single line between two points he perfectly controlled. Before he could even throw his makeshift spear:

[Basic Lightning Spell Created: 100 RP]

[Skill Created - Basic Lightning Manipulation: 1000 RP]

"Neat, but I can do better. Lightning isn't very malleable, but with higher mana control I wouldn't even need the markers or the shields. That being said... onto Pure Mana Manipulation!"

Yuri didn't even know if it was even possible, which is why he used the last hour he had before class to try it out instead.

"So what haven't I done with mana construct, yet? I made a gas with it when I meditated earlier but I still didn't get the skill. I haven't made a liquid or tried to make a very dynamic motion with it. Let's start there"

Making a liquid with his pure mana was easy. He visualized his mana condensing like the focal point liquid and coming out of his 'core' like a faucet, then through his hand. While it wasn't mentally taxing, it was certainly much more physically draining. Beads of sweat were forming on his head while a viscous pool not dissimilar to the focal point juice was coming out of his palms and onto the floor.

60 points of mana had already been wasted like this before he stopped horrified. No spell had been created, since he essentially just leaked himself.

Yuri panted for a while, realizing he only had 70 points left. He had to either get creative with this last one, or get going.

Dynamic movement it is.

His first thought was making a gun purely out of mana construct parts, but there were two problems with that. Introducing a gun to this world in front of a certain creepy portrait was a bad idea, and he had no fucking idea where to start anyway. He had only touched a gun once or twice in his life, let alone known how it was made. If he had one, he would've used that to kill himself instead of jumping off his workplace.

Anyway, he had one more idea.

He made an energy core with the properties of bright ionizing plasma out of mana with 10 points. He then made the core spin as fast as he could and it started to let small strings of very light mana come off and spin with it. He also made a small and thin mana barrier to contain it all. He filled the ball with the core and net with gaseous mana that spun in the opposite direction of the air strings inside, which made it much more dense and made the core look like it was a black hole collecting the strings and mana. Finally, he did this till it stabilized and capped off at 30 mana points.

He grinned, hoping this would be as cool as he hoped. In his right hand he held this spinning monstrosity, and he charged toward another target to his left that was 50 feet away. He jumped, and lunged with the orb still in his hands before shouting!

"RASENGAN!!!"

{A/N: You're damn right I always wanted to do that}