Chapter 10: Extra Lesson! What is Beast Magic?!

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Finally, the end of the volume! There's still the epilogue left to write, but the end of Volume 1 is at hand. Don't worry, I'm already starting to write Volume 2, and hopefully I'll be able to find another picture.

By the way, now that the story for volume 1 is finished, I'll be posting it up on Wattpad along with the cover picture I made specifically for this novel! Hopefully you all will like it. Look forward to the end of the volume!
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It was a hectic night for the Black Witches—the coursing adrenaline fueling their veins, and the sense of dread and panic overriding their senses throughout the battle to determine the better status.

But thankfully, through their hard work and determination to prove that their master trained the best students, the Black Witches have attained victory from the hateful Dark Sorcerers—or at least that’s what Tsubaki saw them as.

After the night passed and the sun dawned on Fatajika city once again, the Black Witches had their morning stroll to their school as part of their daily routine. It would have been a calming stroll, but unfortunately, the only male of the Black Witches didn’t think so.

“Ghh… Gah… Gah…!”

Each step he took sent ripples of pain throughout his entire body. Aches and pains traveled along his very bones and muscles as if he had trained each part of his body all day and night without rest. His body contorted, looking like an action figure with limited movements as Touyo stepped again onto the sidewalk on his path to their school. The pain once again shoots up towards his very being and it made him roar in pain.

“Gah…!”

“Touyo, what happened to you?” Yuki asked, her tone growing in concern while carrying her bag between her hands.

Ever since she met him this morning from behind the gate, she couldn’t believe that he still hasn’t recovered from last night. According to Tsubaki, once after the barrier passed through them, they should have erased every injury that incurred during their fight, even the awful injuries from the boys’ horrendous scuffle.

Yet, Touyo’s state appeared to be even worse than how he ended up after the fight. As if on cue, the transparent being flew out of the pendant hanging around Yuki’s neck, revealing Tsubaki in all her glory, though transparent she may be.

“That’s what happens when you overuse a new kind of magic that you never used before…” Tsubaki said, crossing her arms underneath her naturally large chest while giving a short nod on her explanation.

“A new kind of magic…” Yuki parroted for Touyo’s stead. “So he really did use another type of magic? It wasn’t like another version of the fire spell?”

Yuki would have mistaken Touyo’s new spell—that he used against Jun that marked the end of their fight—as a fire spell from all the torrent of flame-like energy that was shot out. However, deep inside Yuki, it was far too complicated than a normal fire spell.

Not to mention, the fact that wolf heads appearing and disappearing in the energy like each one was ready to devour the one being shot at was a dead giveaway that it wasn’t a natural spell.

“You couldn’t be farther from it,” Tsubaki answered gently which surprised Yuki. “That kind of spell doesn’t even fall under the category of Black Magic.”

“What?!” Yuki flinched, her mouth left gaping from Tsubaki’s answer.

“If you felt it, it was obvious that that kind of spell is way different than any other spell.”

“T-Then, what is it…?” Touyo barely managed to say. “And why do I feel so much pain after using it? I barely got any sleep last night!”

Touyo put in his own complaint. Tsubaki then took the honor of floating in front of them, floating along with them as they walk towards their school. Tsubaki raised her dainty hand and slightly cleared her throat, putting on her teacher mode for her darling students.

“I believe that what Touyo used last night was, in fact, Beast Magic—a spell known as Beast Howl.”

“Beast… Howl?” Touyo slowly repeated, becoming amazed at how powerful the name sounded in his ears.

“Beast Magic… is that some kind of category, like Black Magic?” Yuki asked after making sure that she got this supposedly new category into her mind.

“Correct,” Tsubaki stated, raising her finger upwards with a smile. “Beast Magic is different from Black Magic—because Beast Magic doesn’t just rely on arcana to use its magic.”

“Not just… arcana?” Yuki became stumped—the fact that something else as needed for using magic other than actual arcana confused her.

“Right, it’s confusing. But it’s not all that complicated when you take a closer look at it. Beast Magic is a specialized magic, in a way. It uses not only arcana, but also their ‘ki’, or in other words, physical energy.”

“Ki…?” Touyo could have sworn that he heard such a word before.

“Ah! I know that!” As if on cue, Yuki answered loudly after remembering that word. “It's in lots of the anime that I see! ‘Ki’ is often referring to the power within the human body. With Ki, you can become super strong or really fast, and even have really strong stamina that can last for days on end!”

Offering her knowledge the best she could, Yuki explained with a sense of excitement as if retelling all this knowledge from her favorite show. Touyo finally understood as to why he remembered it. He also watched anime during his free time, and often saw how characters constantly say phrases like ‘I’ve run out of ki’, or ‘His ki is too strong for me to handle’.

But now after hearing Tsubaki say the word, Touyo became astounded that he actually had it.

“Beast Magic requires both arcana and ki. Without arcana, the magic itself will not form, and without ki, the magic’s potency will decrease and even waste more arcana just to keep up with the cost.”

Tsubaki showed them the example of using her hands to create small energy drawings out of bright purple light. The drawings showed an example of a man extending his hand out forward, and shooting something out.

There were two examples—one man didn’t even get anything out, and in the other example, the man could barely create the spell without becoming completely tired and bending his knees in exhaustion.

“So it won’t work without the two working together?” Yuki further explained the best she could.

“Exactly. Using Beast Magic is special because it requires the equilibrium between two natural forces. It’s actually fairly difficult to do, and even experienced mages of many years could barely handle the after-effects of the spell.”

“L-Like I am right now…?” Touyo groaned, acting like a prime example of the after-effects of the Beast Magic spell.

“Actually, your own Beast Howl is impressive. No other mage could make such a large and powerful Beast Howl, and even then they still suffered the serious after-effects.”

“S-So Touyo is able to use powerful magic! That’s so cool!”

Yuki clasped her hands together, her eyes becoming sparkly from the idea. Touyo could feel her enthusiasm when she looked back at him, her facial expression saying that she looked forward to Touyo’s newfound strength.

“Right!” Tsubaki responded with a bright smile. “Touyo, you have the makings to be a Beastmancer!”

Touyo’s head rose up, ignoring the pain aching from that action. His eyes began to glow after hearing those words in earnest.

“What’s a Beastmancer, Master Tsubaki?” Yuki asked after Touyo was left silent.

“A Beastmancer is a mage that specializes in Beast Magic. There are a very few that could use this kind of magic—not many can handle such power.”

“S-So can I use it too?” Yuki wanted to know herself, clutching her fists in excitement.

“Unfortunately, it comes varying differently. The reason why Touyo is able to pull it off like that is probably because he has more Ki than we realized. You, on the other hand, has so much arcana—it’s not that surprising if you turn out to have incredibly low Ki in exchange for that.”

“Eh?! No way!” Yuki raised her arms in shock, her face whitened up like a sheet of paper.

The fact that she couldn’t use the spell as well took her by surprise. Touyo turned to her side, eyes widened that Yuki couldn’t actually able to use the spell. Somewhere inside him turned warm with excitement—he finally managed to use a spell that Yuki couldn’t use.

“C-Can’t I at least try it out to see?” Yuki closed up to Tsubaki’s face, her expression showing eagerness in using the spell.

“Well, you could…” Tsubaki craned her head upwards while putting her finger on her lips. “But you might go through a lot of pain like Touyo is going through now.”

“I don’t mind! I want to try!”

Yuki answered with a positive attitude, raising her fist while her eyes showed the same kind of ferocity you would see in a blazing fire.

“Well… alright…” Tsubaki, for once, didn’t seem so keen on teaching her this, but the look on Yuki’s determined expression caused Tsubaki to scratch her cheek in reluctance.

After reaching to their school, the Black Witches muddled through the classes and finally made it to lunchtime. They hurried towards to the roof where they usually hang out to have their private lesson on magic.

Up on top of the roof, the winds blowing their hair as they were high up the top of the school, the Black Witches watched their newest member Yuki try out the spell.

Let’s make this short—it turned out to be horrendously awful.

“Oooowww! It hurts! It hurts so much…!”

Yuki contorted in pain, her body rolling over left and right as she held her arms tight and huddled her legs to try to stave off the pain. Unfortunately, it was practically raining down on her.

It put a frown on the two Black Witches’ faces to see their adorable member contorting in pain, but they couldn’t do anything about it. Tsubaki let out a sigh as she had to bear through Yuki’s screaming while Touyo looked up at her floating by while holding her head with one hand.

What happened was that Yuki used the spell perfectly—she had the correct form and imagined the spell the best she could. And as expected of her talent, she was able to bring out the Beast Howl spell—only to see that it was barely a huff of azure gas with a pocket-sized, insignificant puppy’s head coming out just once.

To make it even worse, the distance shot out from Yuki was barely a few feet, not like a couple of meters shot out by Touyo before. Once after the spell was released, when Yuki was complaining about how she did everything like she usually did and it turned out like this, her body suddenly flinched and fell to the ground, and began the cycle of pain she is going through now.

“Oooow! Ooow! Ooooowww…”

Yuki groaned, hissed, and even wailed as her body goes through the pain. Each part of her body ached in pain like it was ready to burst.

The aching pain Touyo was going through turned moot as it couldn’t be as worse as what Yuki’s going through.

“Oh boy… this is why I didn’t want her to do this…” Tsubaki said, reminding Touyo as he recalls Tsubaki warning her that this is not the right call to do.

“Tsubaki, why didn’t you stop her?” Touyo realized that he is also to blame for this, but asked away anyways.

“Yuki is bound to try it anyways even if I say no. She’s crazy about magic, after all. So that’s why I want to teach her a lesson on the consequences of using spells that her body’s not capable of doing.”

“Then, the Beast Howl spell…” Touyo switched his gaze downwards. “It really can’t be used by someone like her either?”

“It’s a special spell. And there are dozens of spells like that for Beast Magic—powerful ones even stronger than Beast Howl.”

“Even stronger?!” Touyo nearly flinched at the fact that he could do more powerful spells.

“Well, I will say that I don’t want you to keep using the Beast Howl spell. Though you could get used to it, I don’t want you to go through this kind of pain while in a fight. Best to practice it when you can and only use it if you’re sure you’re getting the win from a ghoul.”

Tsubaki raising her finger and showed a somewhat solemn expression. She was serious about Touyo not using the spell whenever he felt like it.

After looking behind Tsubaki to see Yuki aching and groaning in pain, a bead of sweat rolled down his head as he nodded.

“Y-Yeah…”

“Good,” Tsubaki floated back up, changing her posture to that of a resting one like laying on top of a bed. “But man, you guys sure impressed me. I’m so glad that I could get to see that embarrassed look of shame Adrena put on after seeing her precious students beaten down so easily!”

Tsubaki snickered as she recalled the expression vividly in her brain, kicking her leg up in the air as her chuckles resounded in the air

“Well, it wasn’t that easy, Tsubaki…” Touyo let out another sigh. He didn’t want to remember the night where he nearly got killed by the crazy show-off.

“You should be proud, Touyo!” Tsubaki floated back down to him, a smile on her beaming face. “You beat a genius from the Dark Sorcerers! Yuki did too, but you did it as well!”

Touyo Tsubaki could have phrased it better, the jubilant look on her face showed exactly what she felt. Touyo knew that Tsubaki was honestly praising him, so he took it in as a furious blush showed on his cheeks.

“Y-Yeah…” Touyo answered awkwardly.

“This is what I expect from the Black Witches! At this rate, we’ll move high up the hierarchy, and even beat those bastards from the Dark Sorcerers! We’ll be the greatest organization in the underworld!”

Tsubaki raised both hands high in the air, and before he knew it, energy shaped like confetti came out of her hands as sounds of pops and explosions could be heard from it. Touyo let out a wry chuckle at the excitement showing on her face, but the idea of them becoming as strong as an organization like the Dark Sorcerers sounded interesting.

“Well, if being part of the Black Witches can make me into a powerful mage, then I’m in!” Touyo said while pointing his thumb at himself. Tsubaki looked back at him with a warm smile.

“M-Me too… I’ll aim to become the greatest … magical girl in the… world!”

Though Yuki is still in agonizing pain—at least for her—she still managed to lift herself up in the air to proclaim her dream.

“That’s what I expect out of my students!”

Tsubaki said before joining the two students together and hugged them, eventually making the both of them wail in pain from the after-effects of the Beast Howl.

Once the school day ceased and the final bell rang throughout the campus, the students ran out, each one heading towards their homes and to their clubs. Usually, the Black Witch students would head straight home, but now, they were too busy with their own club meeting, as they say.

They walked side by side with each other out of their building, ignoring the suspicious stares from the other students who happened to get them in their view. Touyo and Yuki came out with smiling faces, looking at each other as they conversed energetically as they came out.

The students who watched this didn’t bother to say anything this time, and just let it go as they walked away.

They traversed the sidewalk, the sounds of cars racing by and the harmonious sounds of conversations of students filling the air. The Black Witches’ conversation took precedence most and foremost as if they were in their own little world.

A magical, fantasy-like world for them alone.

They eventually got to Touyo’s home, and being by themselves, the Black Witches started their lesson.

“Alright, everybody ready to learn another spell?”

Tsubaki turned back around by spinning in the air, her hands on her hips and an excited grin on her face, facing her students who have just put on their uniforms.

“Yeah!” Touyo responded energetically, clutching onto the hem of his glove with a grin himself.

“Let’s start already!” Yuki answered with an excited smile, clasping both hands together near her chest.

“Alrighty! Then let’s begin!”

With that, Tsubaki raised her fist high in the air, prompting her students to do the same as they headed out of Touyo’s house to begin their next lesson.