Kai's Crusade - A New World - Book 1

Kai's Crusade - Chapter 7 - Magic and dissapointment

Spells. I had been looking forward to this. I've had little interaction with mana itself. From what Soleos had told me so far about them, spells are just mana formed in different ways so they can do different things.

For example, the flame thrower spell is shaped like a fire. Also, spells also need a certain amount of mana. The flamethrower spell would need more mana than a hover spell would need.

I walked through the door into the spells room, again, I sat at next to Olivia and Aaron. Immediately she started asking about the lesson before.

"How did you do that? You didn't tell me you were a master at combat!"

"I guess... it... it just slipped my mind." I replied, trying to figure out how to explain that I had not mentioned I was so good at combat. Olivia looked at me disbelievingly, but dropped the topic.

"Welcome, everyone, to spells class... My name is Professor Dragonhorn... " A short, bald man with thick-rimmed glasses walked out from a side-room and glided to the front of the class.

"Today, we will be learning one of the most basic spells... It is, the gust spell. Now, all you need to do is form a straight line with your mana, with just a little mana, and then push it through your palm. You must have your palm splayed out, it is inconsequential with this spell, however with something like a flamethrower spell you will burn off your fingers... Begin."

Intrigued, I stood up swiftly and began practising immediately. Form a line... Yes, OK that was easy. Now... Push it through my arm and out my palm. Come on...

This is where I failed, and continued to fail, for the next few attempts. But finally, on my 17th attempt, I managed to produce a strong gust of wind that managed to blow my book off the table.

"Yes!" I shouted.

The teacher hurried over. "Well done! Did you move that book?"

"Yes."

"You must've used quite a lot of mana. I suspect, about half of it?"

"No, sir. I'd say about a tenth."

"A tenth?! Ridiculous. That isn't possible."

"But it's true sir."

"Come over here, to the mana meter." He guided me over to a large, metallic object. It looked like one of those strength meter games you see in arcades where you have to hit the hammer as hard as you could, and the thing would go up the measure. It was the same, but the numbers weren't there. Instead, every foot was a symbol that I could not read, and there was no button to hit, it was a bowl with water. The water itself, was unusually reflective, and emitted such a powerful aura that I was forced to believe that this was not actually water.

"Channel all your mana into your hand, then place your hand into the water."

I did what he asked, and a misty white fog clouded the pool of water. After a second, I could no longer see my hand. A ding sounded out, I looked up, and saw that I had already reached the 1st point.

And soon, I had reached the second, and the third, the fourth, the fifth, all the way up to the 12th point.

I realised that this was extremely good, for my classmates gasped. I was grinning to myself, I looked at the teacher only to find his mouth ajar and his face frozen in an expression of bewilderment.

"Wow... even I only came up to the 11th point. Of course, when I had not started cultivating yet." Soleos said, making me jump with surprise.

"Cultivating?" I asked, intrigued.

"Blimey! I forgot you know nothing about this stuff. I'll tell you later."

I looked around at the teacher, "Sir, shouldn't we be getting on with the class?"

He shook his head, as if coming out of a coma. And looked round at the class, "Right... Yes, carry on with your gust spell... Kai, come with me." And without another word, he walked off, I hurried to follow him.

"We're going to a rather special room, something you wouldn't see until your second year here. However, in your case, I find it to be almost mandatory for you to see this straight away."

I followed Professor Dragonhorn to a set of rotted, dark oak doors. He pushed them open and entered the room swiftly, I stayed close behind him, immensely curious as to where we were going.

The professor suddenly stopped, then turned to me. Please, channel all your mana to your hand, and place it here. He gestured to a dark glittering orb. If I had to describe it, I would say it looked like it contained the darkest night, where the stars were the brightest.

I placed my hand on it, once again channelling my mana into my hand. The orb pulsated, each time, it was a different colour. Until finally, it rested on a dark, blood red.

I stared at it, mesmerised by the easy intensity the colour gave off. I turned to Professor Dragonhorn, only to find his mouth agape, and his whole body shaking, his hands convulsing, bending at weird angles.

"Out..." he whispered. "Yes... you need to go. O-Out, out now. Go back to your room and stay there until the Guild master comes. I shall inform the Guild master at once!"

I hastened to obey; I had no wish to go back to class anyway. Everyone would just badger me with questions about where the Professor and I were going, and anyways, I could practice the gust spell in my room while waiting.

****

I had been in my room for about an hour and a half before, finally, the Guild master came into my room.

"Well, now... Despite how magically talented you were at first glance. I did not expect you to stun Professor Dragonhorn so thoroughly in your first lesson! I mean, he's been working here for all his life! 640 years!"

Again, my mind was blown, however, I had gotten used to surprises like these in my short time here at the guild.

"First, you deliver a gust spell rather quickly, and rather powerfully. Then, it turns out you use only a fraction of your mana to do this, then it turns out that your talent may even be beyond Soleos', and you turn out to be a fallax. Now... well now... it is a shock; however, it is not necessarily a good one..."

So far, I had received nothing but praise from every peer I had met. Now, there seemed to be something wrong. And it instilled a quick-spreading fear in me, for I desperately wanted- no – needed to succeed in magic.

"W-what's wrong with being a fallax?" I asked, desperately hoping that it wasn't something detrimental enough to hinder my magical power.

"Well... a fallax it's a Magi. You see, magic is not as simple as it is taught to first years. When you get to second year, you will learn all about this... however, since you asked... Magi's are different types of magic. There is the base magic, a gust spell would fall into base magic, and all future spells you learn in your first year will be base magic. The rest of the Magi focus on specific spells, like fire, earth, wind stuff. Y'know the usual. There's also telekinesis and astral bending. They all come under different names of course. And fallax is basically illusions... literally, it means deceptive. They're good use for distractions... but not much else..." he said all this cautiously, as if he was scared that if he was not gentle and kind when he said this then Kai would explode with anger.

On the contrary, Kai wasn't angry, just sad. After all this excitement, after leaving his own world, after everything he had given up. His magic, turned out to be useless.