Chapter 6.5 - A word about magic - Magic tutor POV (part 1)

My name is Vatlo Jora Erest and I'm a magic tutor working directly under king Rozulius Rezulius Bellcephora.

As soon as his firstborn son awakened to magic I was ordered to teach him, which was - of course - a great honor!

I don't want to brag but even though my attribute is water my mana reservoir is even more vast than someone's with the fire attribute!

Well... truth be told my disposition makes my magic more useful in the field of research than combat... But on the bright side, thanks to that I became a royal tutor while still in my twenties, which is an amazing achievement none of my peers can stand up to!

Once the young Horeo grew up enough for the teaching to have any sense, it was decided that I will tutor him and his fiancé at least twice a week - sometimes it would be done in the royal castle and sometimes in the duke's Espine manor.

I've honestly struck gold!

If I leave a good impression it wouldn't be impossible to gain the favor of a future royal couple!

It is honestly more than worth the trouble of traveling between the places in these circumstances!

And also, teaching someone with light attribute was already a huge deal, but the possibility of observing someone with wind attribute skipping three whole ranks and being as powerful as light attribute!?

Unprecedented!

Though, it wasn't all gold and glitter...

I wasn't teaching only the children with a bright future in the world of magic...

Together with the future royal couple came attached a black-haired boy with part of his face disfigured.

The bad experience from my childhood reared their ugly heads and made me, let's say, full of prejudice towards that child.

Because of his burns, it was hard to look at him if I'm honest, and the worst part was of course his darkness attribute!

When I first heard about him I was stunned!

He was supposedly already undergoing training to become the attendant of the young lady Espine!

Someone with a darkness attribute!

Darkness was not only the weakest attribute of them all – if that was the only problem with it, being a darkness magician wouldn't carry the stigma that it did in the current world!

Since almost everyone who wielded that kind of magic would stray from the righteous path, most nobles would straight up declare that their children are magicless if they awakened to darkness - to save them and themselves from shame attached to that foul magic!

But the king's order was the king's order, and apparently, the first prince himself has declared that he won't be learning anything - no spells nor manners - if it's not together with the black-haired boy... And there was that thing that the royal magician kept on nagging me about - something about that the prince's awakening to light attribute caused an unprecedented forceful awakening of the black-haired boy.

|One of a kind or not, the darkness attribute wielded by the worst traitors in the history of the kingdom of Bellcephora... that just spells trouble...|

I sighed inwardly when I entered the room when my three new students awaited.

After a short introduction, I have begun to explain the basics to the children, though for some reason the name of the boy with the darkness attribute reminded me of something...

But what could it be...? I had a feeling that it has something to do with the tragedy from three hundred years in the past – it wasn't the name of either of the perpetrators, but...

Unfortunately, the answer had eluded me and I had a lesson to teach, so I focused on that instead.

"As you may know, magic is divided into six attributes. Namely darkness, earth, wind, water, fire, and light. Thanks to the discovery of magic crystals and the development of ways of processing them, we were able to properly measure the average mana capacity that a large group of wielders of each attribute had and the ranks of mana capacity were formed. It is often called the divide of power and since most people refer to it in such a way I will be calling it like that too. I would like to point out that even if the 'strength' of each attribute may be different each of them has things that it excels in or is at least better suited for than others."

Learned from my childhood spent in the lawless province that my father was supposed to govern taught me that I should expect bad behavior from the boy with the darkness attribute - but to my surprise, he was the one most focused on listening to my words and was meticulously taking notes of each word I spoke.

|Well, it's still too soon to judge, he has the darkness attribute after all...|

I thought to myself even though the less reasonable part of my mind was telling me that such a studious boy can't really be bad, and then and continued the lecture.

"We will cover it in greater detail later but for now I'll quickly summarize what are the strong and weak points of each attribute:

Going from the strongest to the weakest.

Most powerful is the light attribute.

It is considered the purest form of magic, its specialty is long-ranged attacks but is also useful in close combat.

It's also capable of the area of effect attacks and – at the highest level of master - teleportation, the level of body enchants used for augmenting the physical capabilities is: strong.

Next, is the fire attribute.

It is considered the most aggressive and offensively oriented attribute.

It shines the most in ranged attacks because of the explosive nature of the vast majority of its spells and because of that it is not suited for close combat and it has almost no defensive capabilities.

Still, it can provide a barrage of powerful attacks laying waste to the enemies from a safe distance, physical augmentation enchants are: weak.

Then we have the water attribute.

It is much gentler than the previous two, although it's possible for the water-based attacks to reach the middle range, they are much more effective at the short and medium distance.

It is possible for a water magician to create a bubble that will defend them against their opponent's magic – but the durability of the bubble is directly linked to the magician's mana reservoir.

Water is best suited for magic defense and can provide some degree of detoxification which is the closest thing to the ancient healing magic.

Physical augmentation enchants level is: average.

Then there is the wind attribute.

Dangerous only at the short distance but very weak at the long and medium distance and difficult to use in close combat.

But it truly shines in utility spells - the ability to send long-distance messages is invaluable on any battlefield similar to their physical augmentation enchantments mostly focused around speed and in their niche are ranked as: very strong but in comparison with light and earth ones they fall down to only strong.

The fifth one in terms of power is the earth attribute.

Good short-range attacks with moderate magic defense.

They are treasured for their utility spells of terrain manipulation which is an indispensable ability when preparing a major defense or offense.

Useful in, or rather before, battle and construction alike.

Their physical augmentation enchantments, except maybe for the speed one, are: very strong.

As you can see, the stronger the magic the fewer weak points it has.

By no means any of the magic is worse than the other, they all just fit in a different niche, but as you have heard, there is mostly only a good side to those attributes since the side-effects come mostly from the incorrect use and their only limit is how much mana you have. After you deplete your mana you will experience the state of mana depletion that is slightly different for every person, in the worst-case scenario you will lose your consciousness but you certainly won't die just because you use too many spells."

"...?"

The children looked confused because of my choice of words, so I took a deep breath and explained what I meant.