“Thanks, but I meant what kind of trouble you have while practicing Void Magic.” Lith needed sheer willpower to not laugh like the rest of the room.
The poor girl was already tearing up because of her blunder, looking around like a trapped animal.
“Enough!” Sylpha’s roar brought the room to silence again. “If you find it so funny, let’s see if you can do better. You there, what’s your name?”
She pointed at a girl who had laughed hard and meanly enough to stand out in the crowd. Now that the classroom was looking at her, she found neither the situation funny nor her voice.
The squeaky noise that came from her mouth couldn’t be called words nor made sense of.
“I asked for your name, not a magical breakthrough. Is it so hard to remember?” Sylpha crossed her arms, her gaze turning even colder.
Feeling that the mockery of the entire room now weighed on her and aware that the moment she spoke her name it would become a joke throughout the Kingdom, the girl burst into tears.
“See? It’s not so easy when you are the one in the crossfire.” The Queen clapped her hands, bringing the attention back to the girl with red streaks. “You were about to share with us your troubles with Void Magic, miss…”
“Tyla Garhem, Your Majesty.” The blonde girl replied while giving a perfect courtesy. “I have read the chapter about fire and water magic multiple times, but I can’t understand how the two elements can be correlated.
“I mean, fire generates fire and water condenses the humidity in the air. The first is useless when the air is thin and the second when it’s dry. It would make more sense to me if they were connected to the air element instead of each other.”
“I have a similar issue.” Another girl, this one with orange streaks in her hair stood up. “No matter how much I try, I can’t turn air into earth nor the other way around. One is ethereal whereas the other is solid.
“The only thing they have in common is their affinity for water which conducts electricity and softens the ground. Are you sure that the elements are not connected in sets of three instead of pairs?”
“Same here.” One of the few boys carrying the blessing of the gods of magic in the form of silver streaks amid his hair stood up as well. “Except that light and darkness have no middleman.
“Unlike the other pairs of elements, everyone knows how to make them work together but I can’t find any similitude between them either. One heals and the other one destroys. They have nothing in common.”
Murmurs of approval filled the room as the students nodded to each other.
“I fare just slightly better.” Sylpha undid her updo, letting her hair down and revealing the seven streaks. “I can brute force the elements to switch, but it always feels unnatural and I waste lots of mana even for the simplest trick.”
She shifted a speck of energy into its opposite for all the six elements, proving to the rest of the class that Void Magic really existed and worked despite its difficulty.
“I see. The root of the problem is that when I wrote the textbook, I never considered that my readers would confuse between the cause and the effect of each element.” Lith nodded. “The good thing is that it’s not hard to fix that.”
His words made no sense and his confidence made even the Archmages feel dumb.
“Here, let me show you the real Void Magic.” Lith raised his right hand, conjuring a violet flame that made the air hot until it suddenly froze into a wavy ice crystal that dispelled the heat.
When he raised his left hand, jolts of lightning coursed from his wrist to his fingertips. The current increased in intensity until it suddenly was replaced by a thick layer of conductive rocks that kept growing up to Lith’s elbow.
Then, he took several rat skeletons out of his pocket dimension, reanimating them into lesser undead before turning the darkness into a hard-light sword and using the rats’ bones as a scaffold for the construct.
“I wish I could show you a tier four spell as well, but I still have trouble working on a single element. Switching two of them at the same time while keeping them stable and making them work in harmony is still beyond me.” Lith gave them an apologetic bow.
Yet seeing him triple casting Void Spells was an impressive feat even to Sylpha who could still handle only one elemental spark at a time.
“What do you mean, cause and effect?” Unlike the other Archmages, her thirst for knowledge wasn’t blinded by pride and she felt no shame in admitting her ignorance.
‘I must say that Verhen is quite the cunning youth.’ She also thought. ‘By referring to himself as a Professor and to us as his students, he avoided all the issues regarding whose standing is higher between the Royals and the Supreme Magus.
‘Also, he allowed everyone to save face since he put us all on his same level. He is learning from us and we from him. Verhen asked us questions first so it’s only natural for us to do the same.’
“It’s easier to show than tell.” Lith took out a simple glass and lifted it in front of the class. “Based on what you said earlier, this is what you think. This is water.” A snap of his fingers filled the glass.
“And this is fire.” A small flame appeared right beside the glass without touching or interacting with it. “Correct? They are distinct and apart.”
The class nodded for him to continue.
“What about this, then?” Another snap of his fingers made the flame disappear.
In the span of a few seconds, the water in the glass started to steam and boil.
“You used fire magic to heat the water.” Sylpha said as her mind couldn’t help but wonder that even though the question was simple, the answer was actually complex.
“Correct.” Lith nodded, making most of the class furrow their brows while only a few like Sylpha raised them in sudden understanding. “Let me be clear and do this step by step.
“I did this.” A second glass started to boil by itself.
“Not this.” A third glass appeared but this time the flame was placed under the glass like on a stove.
“So answer me this. If the fire element just produces flames and the water element can’t work in absence of humidity, then where is the fire that made the first two cups boil?” Many opened their mouths to answer just to shut them up as the realization dawned on them.
“That’s right. As I said, you are confusing the cause with the effect.” Lith turned around the class to make sure that everyone was following his reasoning. “The fire element produces heat, not flames. Just like the water element generates cold, not ice.
“Have you ever wondered why mages are immune to most of their own spells? Like a fireball doesn’t burn a single hair on our head yet the shockwave blasts us away and makes the air unbreathable?”
