Magic Styles

“AHAHAHAHA! I told you, you could do it young man!” Ezekiel’s voice bellowed out as Yoruhi slowly came to.

He looked up to see Nene’s face staring down at him, holding an empty mana potion in hand. He could feel a clear blue liquid dribbling from his mouth.

Yoruhi slowly sat up, his head still dizzy but feeling a lot better than the moments before he had fainted.

The entire wall had been blown apart in front of him, and Mizuki was slowly putting out the remaining embers using her Storm Magic. Standing beside her was Arien who kept apologizing over and over again, and Cedric furiously writing stuff down on his clipboard, summoning new sheets of paper as needed.

To the left of them was Tatsuko and Vivian who stood with her arms crossed looking out at the outside world.

“Oh he’s awake!” Tatsuko said, pointing to her brother.

Vivian turned around and let out a low whistle.

“Nice work kid,” she said. “That’s something I haven’t seen before from someone your age.”

The sound of kids fighting outside the training room could be heard, and Yoruhi turned around to see the students from the dojo trying to break through the entrance while Hayate tried his best to block them off.

“Can I get through?” Ryuji asked amongst the crowd, to which Hayate allowed him and the shouts and complaints about it being unfair could be heard.

He squeezed through the door and ran up to Yoruhi.

“Are you okay? What happened?” he asked.

“He blew a giant hole in the wall!” Tatsuko shouted, walking up to them.

“As in like, he used magic?”

“Yup! That’s what mommy said at least.”

“Woah… that’s kind of scary… but so cool! My parents and your daddy say that I won’t be able to use magic for a few more years.”

“That’s what my teacher says too.”

“That’s because you can’t, kid,” Vivian cut into the conversation. “Your brother is a rare once in a primordial vampire’s lifetime occurence.”

“And how long do they live?” Tatsuko asked.

“Like 500 years probably.”

Vampires exist in this world too? Yoruhi asked, slowly recovering from his haze.

A strong arm suddenly gave him a gentle smack on the back.

“See? You’re a caster after all, young man,” Ezekiel said.

“Haha, I guess I am,” Yoruhi warily murmured. “I guess that means I won’t be seeing you anymore.”

Ezekiel gave him a strange look.

“What are you talking about? You don’t want to learn how to master that enhancing skill of yours?”

“I do, but… I thought we can only use one sort of magic style once we learn it.”

“Haha, now where did you hear that from? Sure our elements are limited, but we’re able to learn as many magic styles as we’re capable of doing.”

“Oh… so how many magic styles are there in total?”

“As many as there are elements, so seven. Other than Casting and Enhancing, there’s also Detonation, Summoning, Healing, Imbuing, and Weaving.”

“Weaving…” Yoruhi recalled, “I think I heard Arien mention that before.”

“Did she now? I’m assuming it’s because she wanted to be able to stop your little fireball but she couldn’t. Haha! If only I was here, I would’ve been able to stop it.”

“You’re a weaver?”

“Indeed I am,” he sat down.

“But how does Weaving stop the fireball?” Yoruhi asked.

“Because Weaving is the act of controlling magicules that are already turned into an element. As long as the element we’re trying to control matches an element we have, and as long as no one else is trying to fight over control of it, we can freely control it. For example, since one of my elements is fire, I would’ve been able to control the fire inside of your fireball and force it to dissipate or weaken. If not, I could use my other element of Earth to do this instead.”

He pressed his palm on the ground, causing a small pillar of dirt to rise from the ground.

Ryuji and Tatsuko watched silently, captivated by the sight in front of them. Even though they had no magical prowess yet, they found the things the man was teaching to be interesting. They seldom saw magic in their lives because Tatsuko’s parents were swordsmen and Ryuji’s were a retired fighter and prop master.

“What about the other magic styles?” Tatsuko asked. “What do they do?”

Ezekiel looked around the room and thought for a moment.

“Hm… I believe there’s at least one person in here capable of each magic style. I think they would be better at explaining them to you than me.”

He looked up at Vivian who, in respect for her elders, shrugged and pulled out one of her concealed daggers.

“This, is Imbuement Magic,” she said before causing ice to form around the blade. “As you can see, it’s the simple act of surrounding something with an element.”

She looked over to Tatsuko.

“I will be teaching you this when you come of age, so be ready.”

She nodded eagerly, before looking over to Nene who had been packing up her bag of medical supplies.

“Nene, you know Healing Magic don’t you?” Tatsuko asked.

“Yes, but it’s tricky,” she admitted, “Healing is using the magicules in and outside of the cells of the body to replicate and fix what is broken or cut. This means you have to know how skin and bones heal to do it properly.”

“That sounds hard,” Ryuji said.

“It is, and it takes years of studying on top of the regular practice you have to do.”

So that’s why it’s taking so long to heal Altair, Yoruhi thought. Because we don’t know how the parasitic flower is made. If only we could get a copy of it somewhere to study…

“But anyway,” Nene continued. “I think I saw that beastkin boy over there use Summoning Magic.”

They looked over to Cedric who continued scribbling something on his clipboard. Beneath him was a large stack of paper that had piled up while he was writing.

“Cedric! Get over here and teach the kids about Summoning.”

Cedric looked up from his clipboard and quickly made his way over.

Pushing his glasses up, he said, “Summoning is the hardest type of magic style to learn. It’s similar to Healing in that you have to know the properties of something before replicating it using magicules.”

“Wow, that’s a surprisingly simple explanation from the nerd,” Arien said, listening in on the conversation.

“Arien!” Ezekiel said. “Right on time. You’re also capable of using Detonation Magic aren’t you?”

She smiled a proud smile.

“Of course. It’s similar to Casting, except instead of firing it off like a projectile, you force the gathered magicules to explode. You need a lot of spatial awareness to be able to pull it off though, especially as the explosion radius increases.”

“Hmph, now who’s sounding like a nerd, talking about the ‘radius’ of something in front of the children,” Cedric said, quickly scribbling something down on another piece of paper he summoned.

Arien attempted to bonk him on the head with her staff, but he swiftly dodged it before handing the sketch to Yoruhi.

“Take a look at this,” he said. “It’s a depiction of the magic heptagon, which shows you which magic styles are the most similar to another. The ones left and right to a magic style are the magic styles that are the most similar to it.”

Yoruhi looked at the surprisingly well-drawn sketch and noticed a heptagon with the names of the magic styles at each vertex.

At the top was Casting, and following that to that right and going around in order was: Detonation, Summoning, Healing, Enhancing, Imbuing, and Weaving.

“Since you’re a caster, if you want to know more magic styles, then based on this picture, you’ll want to figure out how to weave or detonate first,” Cedric explained. “You can also jump a tile over and skip to Imbuing, but I wouldn’t recommend it the other way around since Summoning is the hardest to do for anyone.”

Yoruhi nodded his head, and attempted to place the paper in his pocket, only to realize it had been torn from the explosion.

“Haha, serves you right,” Arien said with a yawn.

Tatsuko and Ryuji laughed while everyone else gave her a stare to which she just responded with a shrug that said ‘what? I’m telling the truth aren’t I?’

“Anyway, it seems I will be your main mentor from now on, Yoruhi,” Arien said. “Just try not to cast a fireball at my face next time, okay?”