Tohrk and his two comrades threw back their shoulders and walked off. Almark watched them go, stunned.
He turned to Morgan, who was still nearby. “Who was that?” Almark asked.
“Tohrk Shifei,” Morgan answered after making sure the trio was far enough away to be out of earshot. “He’s from the Garai Kingdom, like me. Except I’m a commoner and he’s a noble’s son. Commoners and nobles have equal status here at the institute, but Tohrk always flaunts his family’s name. He’s good at martial arts and magic, though, so we can’t say anything back.” Morgan sighed, his pudgy body deflating slightly.
“So we have martial arts class…?”
“Yeah, it’s one of our enrichment subjects, so we have to take it. I’m bad at it, though. But Tohrk is the second-best martial arts student in our class.”
“Second-best?”
Almark recalled Tohrk’s physique. He was much larger than most boys their age, and yet he was just second-best at martial arts.
“Who’s the best student, then?” Almark asked Morgan.
“The class representative, Wollis. He’s on a whole other level. Anyway, let’s get going.”
At Morgan’s urging, Almark rose from his seat.
To get to the magic training area, they had to cross a connecting corridor. Their destination was a large stone building with a ceiling as tall as the hall’s, and inside it was a large, spacious room. It didn’t feel the slightest bit open, however, since all the windows were covered by black curtains.
With nothing but lamplight to illuminate the room, Almark and the other students lined up and waited for the teacher. Everyone else seemed fairly relaxed and chatted among themselves. Almark stood at the back of the line, but he could see Tohrk and his cronies turn around and start whispering about something.
Before long, a very skinny, pale-faced teacher walked in. Unlike Fia, he wore a gray cloak.
“…Let’s begin,” he announced. “Everyone, start by producing light with your mana instead of your staff.”
As the teacher talked, the lamps went out, enveloping the room in darkness save for a few scant rays of sunshine that had evaded the curtains. The atmosphere in the room changed immediately as all the boisterous chatter from a moment before turned to silence. The only thing Almark could hear was the sound of deep breathing.
Almark held his breath and observed what was happening. Within moments, he heard several puffs, and small flames sprang to life in the students’ hands.
They’re magic lights, Almark thought.
He’d seen a mage use this kind of spell a number of times during his travels. Said mage wasn’t an alumnus of the institute, but they’d had a lot of combat experience. Except…
When he realized the difference, Almark’s eyes widened. Compared to the light the mage produced, the flames in the students’ hands were much more delicate. The traveling mage’s flame looked like an extension of a campfire. It flickered when the wind blew on it, with the flame growing or shrinking accordingly. But the students’ flames remained at a fixed size, floating just off the surface of their palms. It felt like these eleven-year-olds had more advanced technique than a mage who was many years their elder.
It was then that Almark realized, albeit belatedly, that these weren’t typical children. Each and every one of them had enough talent to be allowed into this institute. They were prodigies when it came to magic.
The thin, bony teacher walked through the students, wordlessly checking their flames. He occasionally muttered something to a student, probably advice about magic. When he walked past Almark, he stopped in his tracks, noticing he hadn’t produced anything in his hands.
“…Oh, you must be…,” the teacher whispered, nodding. “I’ve been filled in about you. Come to me after classes are over. I’ll give you some supplementary lessons.”
Hesitant to speak up, Almark merely nodded in response.
“Good, you all can stop,” the teacher told the class.
He clapped, and the students’ flames went out. At the same time, the lights came back on. Apparently they were controlled by magic.
“Nice concentration, everyone. Or maybe you wished to avoid making fools of yourselves in front of the new student…” A thin smile crept over the teacher’s lips.
Under the lamplight, Almark could see how the other students were faring. Some looked unaffected, while others were sweating heavily. Morgan was gasping for air.
“Next, we’ll practice with staves. Everyone, go pick one up,” the teacher said, pointing at a wooden crate in the corner of the room.
The students walked over right away, and Almark followed. Sitting in the crates were dozens of staves, each reaching up to about Almark’s waist.
“They’re training staves,” Wendy—who had sidled up to him at some point— whispered into his ear.
“What do we do next?” Almark asked in a whisper.
Wendy handed him a staff. “It’ll probably be wind or stone cleaving. Depends on what Professor Illmis wants.”
And when the students all returned, staves in hand, Wendy’s prediction proved true.
“We’ll be doing stone cleaving today, so prepare your stones,” the teacher instructed.
The students walked over to another wooden crate, picked up flat, palm-sized stones, and returned to their positions. Almark had seen a stone cleaving spell during a street performance in the central plains once. An old man who looked very weak and frail tapped on a hard stone a few times with his wooden staff, after which the stone split in two. The first time he saw it, Almark didn’t know it was magic and assumed it must have been some trick or sleight of hand.
“Good. Begin.”
At the teacher’s cue, the students started tapping their staves against the stones. Unlike the earlier spell, this exercise really displayed the differences in the students’ abilities. Wendy was the first to succeed, her stone splitting with a dry sound. Then, Tohrk did it, with Leila succeeding at exactly the same time. The other students succeeded one by one, but some of them accidently chipped their stone. Morgan and Norish seemed to be having a hard time, though.
After half of the students finished cleaving their stones, they waited for the other half to finish. Some of them tried to split their stones further, or just did nothing and chatted. But among them, Almark noticed one boy who looked strange.
This student looked like he hadn’t successfully split his stone yet, and still had his staff aimed at the stone in his hand, but the way he handled the staff was off. Rather than tapping the stone like the rest of the students had, he was slowly tracing its surface.
What is he doing?
Almark looked carefully and saw a complex geometrical pattern surface on the rock.
He’s carving that pattern into the rock…!
The boy carefully adjusted the amount of mana he invested into splitting the rock, continually outputting a measured amount of force. Just splitting the rock looked like it took great effort, but he was freely controlling his mana to painstakingly carve that pattern. It wasn’t that he couldn’t split it; he had voluntarily challenged himself with an even more advanced task.