“I see you’re working hard, Wollis,” the teacher told the student in passing.
The student looked up at him and smiled. He had long, golden hair and a face that even in the dark was clearly handsome. This must have been the class representative Wollis whom Morgan mentioned earlier.
Wollis was speaking to the teacher with a calm smile, but when he noticed Almark was watching him and their gazes met, he suddenly narrowed his eyes. Almark got the sense that there was something more behind the look on Wollis’s face.
“Hey, new kid,” a voice suddenly called out beside Almark.
Almark turned to see a tall, large student standing there. Tohrk.
“You’ve got a staff and stone. Why aren’t you doing the exercise?” Tohrk asked with a sneer.
“It’s just, I don’t know how—”
“I’ll teach you.”
Almark stared into Tohrk’s eyes, and Tohrk haughtily met his gaze with a provocative smile. Almark nodded.
“Good,” said Tohrk. “It’s easy enough. First, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Sense the mana within your body.”
“Sense my mana?” Almark looked up at Tohrk. “How?”
“You can’t even do that?” Tohrk snickered. “What, don’t you have mana in your body?”
“Huh.” Almark cocked his head. “I dunno.”
“I hope you don’t,” Tohrk whispered, his expression darkening. “That way you’ll be out of here without causing any trouble.”
Almark frowned at the explicit animosity to the boy’s words. Tohrk then continued his explanation, hiding his enmity with an animalistic grin.
“I don’t know if you’ve got mana in you, but if you do, you should be able to sense it. Envision your mana focused at the tip of your staff.” Tohrk tapped the floor with his own staff. “Then breathe out sharply and imagine your mana passing through the other side of the stone, and that’s when you take your staff…”
He hit the stone in front of Almark with the tip of his staff. Apparently he wasn’t trying to split it, only poking it hard without using any mana. The staff produced a dull sound when it made contact with the stone.
“Understand? It’s simple.” Tohrk peered into Almark’s eyes with a taunting smile. “Try it.”
Almark nodded.
This was a good opportunity. He couldn’t say he liked the person teaching him, but the method he described didn’t sound wrong. And he was bored of just watching.
I’ll give it a shot.
Almark followed Tohrk’s instructions, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.
The mana within me…
He couldn’t imagine what that felt like, and Tohrk didn’t seem inclined to explain it. Almark tried to imagine it as a second bloodstream circulating through his body and tried to focus it in his hands, gripping the staff before directing the mana to the tip of the staff. That felt like the right way to go about it.
Okay. Now.
With the image solidly in his mind, Almark breathed out and tapped the stone with his staff.
He heard a hollow sound.
Opening his eyes, he saw the stone was completely unchanged. Not a fragment of it had chipped off. Tohrk, who had watched him in silence, could no longer hold back his laughter.
“Keh-heh-heh, w-wow, you’re hopeless. I’ve never seen someone fail to even chip their stone. You’ve got absolutely no talent.” Laughing, Tohrk patted Almark roughly on the shoulder and whispered into his ear, “You came all this way and you’ll probably just leave after one year without getting to the intermediate division. Might as well quit while you’re ahead, you know?” He then added in a low growl, “You’re dragging everyone else down.”
“You really seem to have it out for me for some reason.”
“Huh?” Tohrk looked back in surprise at Almark, who was utterly undaunted, and scowled. “What did you just say?”
“Why are you so hostile toward me?” Almark asked calmly. “Is it because you’re a noble and I’m not?”
“Ha!” Tohrk scoffed at him, the scorn clear in his voice. “Yeah, that’s part of it. I don’t like having more nobodies like you who crawled out of the boonies in our school. You’re an eyesore.”
“An eyesore,” Almark repeated. He nodded and fixed his grip on his staff, tapping it a few more times stubbornly. “Are you and me really all that different?”
“What?” Tohrk stared at him. This was something a Southerner would never say. “Did you just ask if we’re different?” Tohrk instantly puffed up arrogantly. “Of course we’re different. How can a total nobody like you match me? I’m Tohrk of House Shifei.”
“Is that—?” Almark started, preparing to ask if that was supposed to be impressive, but Tohrk cut him off.
“For starters, are you even trying to become a mage? You came two years late and trying to cut corners. Because of ‘family reasons,’ was it?” Tohrk said in a poor imitation of Fia. He scowled. “We’ve all got family reasons of our own, but we still started here at age nine. And then you get to come two years later than the rest of us. What, was leaving your mommy and daddy that hard for you?”
“Yeah,” Almark said, reminded of the morning when he said goodbye to Reiz. “It was hard.”
Tohrk scoffed at him again. “Well, life isn’t easy enough to baby kids like you. Mark my words, you’ll flunk out and leave before long.” He then looked at Almark angrily. “And personally, I think you’ll just be wasting my and everyone else’s time until you do.”
Having said his piece, Tohrk turned around and went back to his spot.
…I really thought I could break that stone, thought Almark.
He prodded the stone with his staff a few more times before finally giving up.
Well, it was my first time.
This made sense to him. Tohrk’s taunts and intimidations didn’t faze him at all. Compared to the profanities that flew around the battlefields of the North, he was almost outright polite. And he did teach Almark how to do stone cleaving, so Almark should probably have thanked him, but he got the feeling Tohrk didn’t much want his gratitude.
When the last remaining student, Norish, finally split her stone after being covered in sweat from effort, the class ended.
As the students prepared to leave, Almark said to Wendy, “Everyone’s so impressive. I’ve never seen such precise magic up close like this.”
“Really? I’m sure you’ll be able to do all this soon, Almark,” Wendy replied happily. “Professor Illmis told you to stop by after class, right? Don’t hesitate to ask me if you need help.”
“Me, too! I’ll help, too!” Morgan, who had run up to them from behind, called out.
“Thanks, you two. I’ll work hard to catch up to everyone.” Almark smiled gratefully.
But when the students left, and the training area was completely emptied, a dry snap filled the room. The last stone Almark poked, sitting inside the wooden crate along with all the others, suddenly cracked around the spot where he tapped it. The crack spread, and the stone split into two halves that rolled away.