R-S Chapter 06

While we were mages, all other classes would get cycled through each other’s class once a week. It meant today we wouldn’t be practicing spells or learning theory but learning how everyone else used the mana in their body. Learning a bit of everything rounded people out. It didn’t make sense to keep everyone one trick ponies. Magic warriors who can only bash things, infiltrators who are only good at killing mages, mages who die to a single arrow, or healers who are completely defenseless were what they were trying to avoid. 

That being said, I could tell I was the only one taking this seriously. Every other mage would allocate the ten mana capacity to body strengthening and move on but I was actually curious about how to get the most out of it. The large teacher was even bigger than Brutus in both height and muscle. His face was covered in a thick white beard and he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt making his missing arm more prevalent.

I knew a little about cycling, I think most people did. It was probably what most people used their mana for as there was a different name for people who were normal and people who cycled. Normal noncycling people were called mundanes and you’d be surprised at how many people were mundane even though spending a short amount of time to learn to cycle would make their lives better they just never bothered to learn.

It was about a 70/30 split for people who were mundane and practitioners. Practitioners were then broken down into several different categories depending on how much mana they devoted to it and for how long. A beginner who put ten capacity towards cycling would be called a low-rank beginner and someone who put thirty and practiced for twenty years would be called a high-rank veteran.

Putting in more than thirty capacity was risky. It would increase the strength your body could output but it also put extra strain on it. People truly skilled could fluctuate between five to a hundred but that was the best of the best and the very peak of magic warriors. We’d spend the first few months just cycling to try and stabilize the amount that was cycling in our bodies.

Once again I was singled out as he explained this. “My name is Mr. Evans but you can call me Gladius, I’d actually prefer it if you did. You there. Ovar correct? Brutus has told me about you. You should try to only use five capacity for now so it will lock you out of fewer spells. I’ll come over and guide you in cycling until you get used to the feeling.” Starting with me first he put his hand on my back and I felt the mana in my body start to move against my will.

He spoke clearly as I felt it twist inside me. “Don’t fight it. Just get used to the feeling, this is five capacity moving in your system now. It’ll be much harder to use this for casting magic but it will strengthen your body when you get full control of it. Five capacity isn’t much, but it could be the difference between breaking your leg or bruising it.”

This was another thing I knew a little about. The longer you cycled the better effect it had on you. A mage who cycled would get less effect than a magic warrior because the magic warrior would constantly be using the cycled mana, tying it more to his body but also getting more use out of it. What would be doubling the strength of a mage could possibly be a 2.5 or 3 times increase for a magic warrior or infiltrator.

Plus they tend to be bigger, with strong bodies the increase becomes more pronounced, and they quickly outscale other classes that don’t solely focus on cycling to increase their strength. A mage that has been cycling for thirty years still might only be twice as strong as a mundane while a magic warrior could be ten if not twenty times stronger, and that’s not counting outliers who go above the thirty mana limit. 

The mana inside my body finally stabilizes and almost wants to swirl on its own as he leaves me to start the next student. Over the course of an hour, he just kept going back and forth between us and kept our mana cycling inside our bodies when it started to slow down while telling us to get used to the feeling and try to accomplish it on our own.

He kept praising Queeny and the Ash girl, it seems both had experience beforehand with cycling. Both seemed to be going for a mixed build already and both were cycling more than the minimum ten everyone else was suggested to do. The next few months would be just this in the magic warrior class until everyone could cycle instinctively.

As boring as it was, I was excited for the boost to my strength and life expectancy from learning it. We went on to the infiltrator class next. The teacher was very short and fat and needed a chair to write his name(Mr. Smithe) on the chalkboard. He was clearly beyond his prime when it came to being an infiltrator, but he was one of the only famous teachers in the school. At least when it came to teaching first years. There was a pretty famous mage who taught third years, or I should say she was infamous.

The man was known for killing one of the mages on the border skirmish by hiding in the latrines until he went to the bathroom. He had many kills to his name but everyone called him the shit pit killer because of that single murder. He explained mana kneading to us. “Mana kneading, out of all magic techniques is the most versatile. If cycling is strengthening, kneading is taking the mana inside your body and pushing it out of yourself like ropes to accomplish many differing effects.”

He held his hand up and a small ball of fire appeared in it. Then he held his other hand up and an orb of water formed. Combining both hands made steam spray out which he quickly swirled into a miniature tornado that he had in his original hand before forming a ball of earth in the other. Smashing those together he didn’t form any more elements but instead held his hand out and grabbed a book off the table before making another dozen books float around himself.

After showing what is possible with kneading he spoke again. “This is just scratching the surface of what is possible. As an infiltrator, you would learn many methods to bypass defenses but as you are from the mage class, you’ll be taught how to put up defenses and deal with infiltrators.” Over the next few months, we would probably learn the very basics as well. Maybe float over a pen or something similarly small, light a tiny fire, or make enough water to stave off death.

He went over the method of kneading after explaining more of the basics. “To start with, I’m going to expel mana out of your body. When I come behind you. Please tell me your main affinity and we’ll do a frontal expel of that element to start with. Try to get used to the feeling before I pull back in your mana threads.” Similar to cycling, kneading felt incredibly odd the first time it was done.

This was the first sign of the difference in our capacities. The higher your capacity and affinity the bigger the effect the threads had before they re-entered our bodies. Blaire, Ash, Gallant, and Oak stood out as the best in our class. My body was still sore from drinking the two-drop Ambrosia and every time my threads were expelled it made me feel slightly worse and worse until I had to quit from the pain before the class was over. I hoped next week it wouldn’t be as painful and I still had the healing class to look forward to.