“Isn’t this a tier four spell?” Meron blurted out in surprise.
‘How can something so simple as darkness fusion require something so complicated?’ He thought.
“Headmaster Marth invited me as a lecturer for the fourth year trial anatomy course that he plans on making mandatory and this was my gift for him.” The study of the human body was part of the legacy that Lith had left as a student first and then as an Assistant Professor.
Marth wanted to make it official not only to train better healers but also in the hope that by recognizing Lith’s contribution to the healing arts, the people of the Kingdom wouldn’t be scared anymore of his nature as a Divine Beast.
The goal of the Headmaster of the White Griffon was to make Mogar better for Dhiral, Elysia, and all the future hybrid children. To spare them in the future the harassment that their parents were currently enduring.
“It requires combining a diagnostic spell to locate the pain centers and a darkness spell to suppress them. Otherwise this might happen.” Lith chanted gibberish and then put two fingers on Meron’s right hand.
It fell limp and incapable of moving, but when Lith pinched it, Meron felt pain.
“Ouch!”
“This is because I used darkness magic to mess up with your motor function ‘by mistake’. Using solely darkness magic could also cause this.” The King’s right arm went into a series of painful cramps, the muscles losing coordination.
“I get it.” Meron gritted his teeth in evident discomfort. “A simple yes would have sufficed.”
“Not for the students, though. I needed them to understand how dangerous it is to experiment on themselves with darkness magic.” Lith gave an apologetic bow to the King before taking a long stare at the students’ seats.
Then he passed more scrolls to the Headmasters and the Archmages that used it on themselves first and then on the students. The entire room burst into an uproar and it took a while for everyone, even the Royals and Vastor, to calm down.
Narcotics created addiction, could cause allergic reactions, and very few could be used on pregnant women. One spell to solve all those problems.
“As you see, the first effect of darkness magic is destruction, but if carefully calibrated, its effects can disrupt the bodily functions even of its user. In this case, I targeted the nerve centers that control the stimulus of pain, suppressing it.”
While his students mumbled to themselves or discussed what they had just learned with their neighbors, Lith took a short break to let his words sink. The Queen was the first to try and experiment with first magic of the six elements, studying their effects with the same curiosity as a baby with a new toy.
Once the room returned to silence, Lith stepped forward from his desk and Ryeja Alama, Headmaster of the Earth Griffon raised his hand.
“I still don’t get what you did with your bolts of lightning earlier. In your book, you say that earth and air control space, yet I’ve mastered both of them years ago and found no evidence of it.
“Dimensional magic controls space, not air and earth.”
“No.” Lith shook his head. “Dimensional magic is just an extreme application of gravity magic which also is based on air and earth. Yet what you said is partly correct. Air and earth don’t control space so much as the space between things.”
“I don’t follow.” Alama replied, his face a mask of focus.
“Since my previous example baffled you, let me turn things down another notch. Everyone knows what magnetism is, correct?” The classroom nodded for Lith to continue.
“Great. Then, Headmaster Alama, split this for me.” Lith handed Alama a big magnet attached to a metal plate.
The Headmaster needed just a bit of strength to succeed.
“Do it again, please.” A wave of Lith’s hand shattered the magnet into many smaller pieces.
Once again, Alama did as bidden no question asked, focusing instead to understand the purpose of the exercise. The class didn’t stand twiddling their thumbs either. Their bodies were still whereas their minds were spinning at full gear, thinking about Lith’s words and what they would do were they in the Headmaster’s position.
It took Alama just a few minutes to complete the task, but they felt like hours. Not because it was boring or challenging, but because he kept feeling stupider by the second.
‘I don’t know why but this is humiliating. Couldn’t Verhen just get to the point instead of treating me like a boy?’ He thought.
“Well, that’s not how I would have done it, but good job.” Lith shrugged, taking two bags out of his pocket dimension. “Now, do that again.”
He emptied both on the desk of the Headmaster, revealing their content. One was filled with a fine ore sand while the other with a magnet broken down in fragments just as small.
The two piles moved toward each other before Alama could do anything, forming a spherical lump of earth full of bumps. The Headmaster had to choke a heartfelt swearing as he tried and failed to separate the two kinds of sand.
“This is impossible. The single fragments are too small and I can’t see them properly. I give up. Happy now?” He said with a snarl, feeling even more humiliated by being forced to admit his failure in front of his students, peers, and even the Royals.
“Why should I be happy?” Lith cocked his head. “I’m your Professor and I’m teaching you. If you had problems with the exercise, all you had to do was ask.”
Lith attached another big magnet to the metal plate, removing it with a snap of his fingers. The same happened to the fragments of the first magnet once he let them stick to the metal surface again.
“The first two exercises were no waste of time. They were meant to give you a practical demonstration of the forces influenced by Void Magic on a scale big enough for you to easily perceive them.”
Lith had the magnet’s fragments attach and detach themselves from the plate non-stop, doing in a second what had taken Alama time and effort.
“This, instead, is the exercise that all of you need to master if you want to understand how to apply Void Magic to earth and air, just like you asked me. You see it like this…” Lith pointed at the ball of ore and magnetite, changing its shape and size with earth magic.
“But it’s actually like this!” A wave of his hand magnetized the ore, creating a repulsive effect that turned the solid sphere into a thick mist crackling with jolts of electricity.
“The concept you have of earth magic is wrong. Sure, mud and simple rocks don’t conduct electricity, but only in their natural state. What if I told you that all matter, if you break it down enough, it’s no different from the materials used in this exercise?
“That there are forces that keep everything together? As a mage, you must learn to feel those forces, manipulate them through earth magic, and amplify them with air magic.
“Only once you master them both will you discover that they actually work the same way and that dimensional and gravity magic are just different applications of the same principles. With the help of the other elements, of course.”
