A Trip Forward

“Uhm, isn’t class supposed to start tomorrow?” Akiko asked.

“No,” he said. “It is today. Yesterday was the orientation, meaning today is the day classes start.”

Wait, if yesterday was the orientation then that means we must’ve been knocked out for an entire day.

“Sorry,” I jumped in. “We just woke up and are still recovering from a Magical Duel.”

“Must have been some duel then—to knock the both of you out for this long.”

“Yeah… it was.”

“Thanks for letting me know, I’ll inform your teachers of this, but please get to your next class after the bell rings.” He let off a smile before walking away. The smile seemed overly friendly, as if he was one of those creepy dolls with a fixed smile. Something about it seemed eerie.

“Wait!” I called out. “Where do we find our schedules?”

“Through the crystals. Just add a bit of mana to them and everything else should be self explanatory.”

“Thanks…”

I kept my eyes on him until he walked out. Once he did, I immediately leaned towards Akiko. “Do you think there’s anything wrong with him?”

“W-what?” she leaned back, “Why do you ask?”

“I just get a weird feeling from him. You do too, don't you?”

“Now that you mention it, he does seem a little scary at times. But that’s probably because of the aura he emits.”

“Yeah maybe, but something about it seems weird. Like evil weird.”

“Oh, you must be talking about his negative mana then.”

“Negative mana?”

“Yeah, he’s said to be the only one in the world to be born with that type of mana.”

“Does it make him evil or something then?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “Not exactly. Negative mana lets him bend ascended elements into their opposites.”

“Opposite?” I asked.

“Yeah. Radiance turns into dark, celestial turns into void, aegis turns into ruin, primordial turns into eternity, aether turns into dominion, and genesis turns into decay.”

“Can anyone use that type of magic?”

“It’s possible for someone to use any type of magic. The only thing holding them back is their imagination. No one is able to completely grasp the idea of negative magic unless you’re bone with it, so it makes him the only wielder of those elements.”

“Do you know what his blessing is?”

“It said that he’s able to use multiple.”

“What? Isn’t that impossible, I thought the body can only handle two ascended elements.”

“I’m not sure how he can do it, but he can.”

“His body must work differently because of his negative magic. But I heard that it’s a law placed by the Gods for no man to wield more than one blessing.”

“Some said he was born to surpass the Gods. At first, people thought the celebrated generation had come early, but as the years passed no other children were born with that type of power. From then on it became clear, he alone carried the strength of an entire generation.”

“That’s insane…”

If someone that powerful was born, then couldn’t he just take out the Demon King alone. It makes it hard to believe that all of us are needed with someone like that around.

RING RING

“Oh crap that’s the bell, we’ve got to get to class.”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

I imbued the crystal with a bit of mana, and a holographic screen flickered to life. It felt jarringly futuristic for a world that otherwise looked medieval. It was like holding a smartphone. I tapped through the menus until I found my schedule. Turns out Akiko and I were in the same class, so we headed there together.

Walking across campus hit me with a rush of nostalgia. I hadn’t been on a campus this big since touring the college I was supposed to attend. The chatter, the energy on everyone’s faces—it felt alive. Most people dread school, but I’d been excited for it. It stung, remembering I never got to go. If she had taken my side… if I hadn’t gone to prison… if I’d just swallowed my pride. Too late now. All I can do is move forward and learn from my mistakes.

Ignoring all the bad that happened to me and trying to find a way to bounce back. This way of thinking sounds overly optimistic, doesn’t it? It feels weird that that thought came from my mind. Maybe I sound like this now because I was reborn and given another chance. I’m not sure if I could’ve kept this mindset back in my old life. To be honest, I probably would’ve given up eventually. No one can find a reason to keep going when everything that they do is meaningless. Well, maybe there’s someone who can but not me. I’m not strong enough to keep going on forever.

I shook the thoughts away and let my eyes take in the campus. Stone towers rose over the paths, students rushing between them, laughter and chatter echoing off the walls. I’d been so caught up in my head I hadn’t realized how alive this place felt. Maybe that was the point, I couldn’t change what happened, but I could choose to focus on what was ahead. And right now, that meant class.

The walk to the magic building wasn’t bad, it was the closest one to the diner. The place was massive, and it had to be. Each room was more like a lecture hall than a classroom, with a full stage at the front, a giant chalkboard, and even training dummies for spell demonstrations. Seeing it all actually got me excited to start class.

Our class was called Fundamentals of Pure Elements, basically a crash course on the ascended elements. Since all this was new to me, I listened harder than I ever had in any class back in my old life. Maybe it was because, for once, I had a real reason to learn. Something beyond keeping my asshole parents off my back. Akiko was just as focused, which surprised me. She always seemed talented enough to already know this stuff, but maybe she just wanted to do things right. Most of the other students, though? Talking, dozing off, like this was just another day. Which was insane. We’d all been sent here to die, and they couldn’t even bother to pay attention?

The professor summed up what Gareth had told me on our way to the academy. She ran through them pretty fast since all of us were expected to know it. Then what she told us to do made me nervous. She told us to demonstrate each one of the elements so that she can gauge our progress. Everyone was able to release each and every one of the elements, everyone except me of course. I was the sole exception. The professor couldn’t believe her eyes, she just stared at me as if I couldn’t do something as easy as one plus one. It was humiliating, and especially in front of everyone too. Luckily, I had been practicing radiance before this so I wasn’t a complete dud. After seeing my shot of radiance, the professor told me that I had great potential so that was nice at least.

Once class ended, Akiko insisted that we immediately go train. I, of course, agreed since I only had a month to beat Gareth. I just know that at my current level, it isn't anywhere near him so I had some catching up to do.

Throughout the campus, there were a lot of training grounds. Whether it’s target practice, a small arena to spar in, or weapon training, this campus had it all. We decided to go to a sparring arena to train.

Once we got there, Akiko got straight into business. “Alright, can you show me how you trained?”

“Yeah but only if you show me how to use the ascended elements too.”

“Of course, that was our agreement.”

“Okay then. First, you need to practice your mana control. You do this by suppressing your mana.”

“Mine’s already suppressed.” she said.

“Suppress it a lot more, as if you’re trying to conceal all of your aura. But before you do that, release all of your mana.”

“Okay.” Akiko clenched both of her fists and her aura flared out. She had immense power so her aura felt dense and heavy.

“Now suppress it. Do it so it’s not leaking out of your body anymore.”

“A-alright.” Her aura slowly shrinks as she focuses on suppressing her mana. Until it suddenly stopped.

“Are you doing okay?” I asked.

“Y-yeah. It’s just hard to suppress this much dense mana. How do you do it so easily?”

“I’m not really sure. I guess I’m just used to it.”

Thinking back, I’ve only struggled suppressing my mana when I first did it. After I got used to it, I just did it instinctively. Even as I got stronger, I didn’t even have to think when I suppressed my mana. I guess starting out without a lot of mana made it easier for me to get used to suppressing mana. Thank goodness I did it when I was a kid. I got to thank my mother and father for their training once I saw them.

“If you can’t suppress it, then pump it into your muscles.”

“Okay.” That advice was able to shrink her aura a good amount but there was some still leaking out of her. Maybe it would’ve been better to start at her base instead of telling her to release all her mana at once like that.

“So what do I do now?”

“Hold your mana like that but turn the mana you have in your muscles into fire mana and apply its attribute. This way you can train your muscles while training to suppress your mana. Do this until you use up all your mana.”

“My body feels stiff, everything feels like it’s burning. I can’t believe you did this when you were only a child.”

“Yeah, I felt the same way at first. But it was probably easier to do because I was a child. With less mana to suppress, I was able to get the hang of it pretty quickly.”

“Th-that sounds nice.”

“Yeah, but I still have a long way to go.”

“W-what are you going to do while I do this?” she asked.

“I’ll join you. I know you can’t teach me in this state, it takes too much focusing so I’ll wait till you tire yourself out before I start on the other training. But I’ll use my malif instead.”

I stood beside her and released a good amount of my malif, then immediately suppressed it. It felt a lot easier to suppress this time. I also did some sword training along with suppressing my malif. I was used to this type of thing so I didn’t have to solely focus on suppression. But I wish someone was here to spar with me though, it would make this training a lot more efficient. On top of the sword training, I also practiced shooting out radiance. With each and every blast I could feel myself improving. I guess all of the mana control training is paying off.

After forty minutes passed, I heard a thump. Looking over, I saw that Akiko was laying down on the ground with her face down.

“Uh, Akiko?”

She didn’t say a word.

She must’ve exhausted her mana and passed out.

I walked over to her and healed her up using malif. She immediately woke and sat up. “Is this what you did while you were younger?”

“Yeah. You’ll get used to it after a while and stop passing out.”

“Great.”

“Now it’s time for my training.”

“Okay, so what do you want to learn?”

“Right now, I think I have a pretty good handle on my radiance so what other element should I learn?”

“Hm…” Akiko placed her hand over her mouth and looked down at the ground. She stayed quiet, like she was thinking about something important until she said, “I think your next element should be celestial.”

“Okay. But is there a specific reason why you want me to learn this one next? You seemed to be thinking pretty hard earlier so I doubt it’s just a random element.”

“Yeah, I noticed in our fight you weren’t able to use the split step. You might’ve been able to win the fight if you knew how to use that ability.”

“Yeah, maybe. But how does it relate to celestial?”

“That technique was created through the use of radiance and celestial.”

“So how does it work?”

“Celestial has to do with space and radiance is with light. So you use both of those concepts to appear in a specific location. It’s like altering space to make you disappear and reappear in a spot. The radiance helps power this ability and give you the speed to teleport instantly.”

“So it’s not really teleporting but moving at the speed of light to a location?”

“No, it’s a form of teleporting but it’s imperfect. The perfect form can only be done through a blessing.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You know how you could sense the mana before someone reappears right? Well, in its purest form, when a person teleports, you can’t sense any mana from them. Only when they reappear can you start to sense it. Also with the split step, there is a slight delay while reappearing. You can reduce this delay by adding more radiance mana.”

“I’ll worry about that later then. For now I’ll focus on getting celestial down.”

…

“Uhm, so how does this work? I know it’s the ascended version of water but how does water relate to space and stuff?”

“Celestial isn’t just space, it’s also flow. Like the flow and balance of the universe along with the universe itself. I imagine water being shaped into a whirl pool through the use of malif. Imagine that whirlpool becoming a galaxy.”

It was an interesting way of thinking but for some reason it made sense. I closed my eyes and focused on creating a galaxy.

Okay okay, I got this. Water then whirlpool then galaxy then release. Easy.

While having my eyes shut, I could feel the mana building up in my hand then something came out. When I opened my eyes, I saw something I didn’t expect. What I was expecting was a blast that looked like stars and stuff but instead, the area in front of me looked distorted. It was like looking into one of those weird filters.

“You did it!”

“Really? Is that what it’s supposed to look like?”

“Yeah, that’s the most basic version of it. Remember, celestial isn’t just about stars and space, it’s about the flow of the universe. And the flow just happens to look like that. If you don’t apply it to a spell then it’ll look like that. Just like how radiance in its most basic form is only a flicker of light.”

“Okay then. I was kind of expecting it to take at least a week to get a blast out.”

“If you’re able to perform at least one of them then the rest should be a lot easier to learn. Train by repeatedly shooting out this element but shaping into many different shapes. Normally you would use earth mana right?”

“Yeah”

“This time, don’t.”

“Then how am I supposed to shape it?”

“Celestial mana alone has two forms: flow or spacial, and astronomical. Spacial is what you release, but astronomical is when you condense it into its form and release as power. Train by rapidly releasing both of these attacks by switching back and forth. Do this until you can release them without focusing on their form.”

“Okay.”

We stayed in the training arena for the rest of the day. She trained by suppressing her mana and I trained by releasing celestial magic. I wanted to challenge myself so I trained using radiant mana too. So I shot out in the order of spacial, then radiance, then astronomical. Doing this made it a lot harder since I’m changing through different elements, not just form. I guess Akiko saw how hard I was pushing myself so she felt like she had to do the same. She tried to force herself to walk around with her suppressed mana instead of just standing still.

We kept this up until it was nighttime and we both fell over from exhaustion.

“I think we should call it a day.” I said.

“No, I think I can go on for a little more.”

“You aren’t even able to get up.”

“Can you heal me again then?”

“No way, I only got enough malif to heal one person.”

“Can you split it between the both of us then?”

“I can but I could probably only heal our bodies so we won’t have enough mana to keep training.”

“Oh, okay.”

“It’s fine, we can continue tomorrow.”

I quickly healed myself up and walked over to her to heal her. She got up and stared at me for a little.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.

“No, it’s just that I had fun practicing with you. I never really had many friends so it’s nice to do something like this with someone.”

“Yeah… I had fun too.”

“Oh and can I get your contact information… In case we need to meet up to train again or something.”

“Yeah, sounds like a good idea. So how do we do that?”

“We just tap each other’s crystals and it should send over.”

When I tapped on her crystal, I could see the mana surging through the crystal. The crystal lit up. It probably meant that the data or something was transferring over. Then it stopped.

“Did it work?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Nice.”

“Okay then, thank you for helping me train today. I—I hope to see you tomorrow.” She bowed quickly and darted for the door. Halfway out, her legs gave out and she went sprawling. Looks like her body hasn’t fully recovered yet.

“Y-you didn’t see that!” she yelped, scrambling back up, face burning.

“I didn't!” I lied.

“I’ll see you in class tomorrow! B-bye!”

“Cya!”