There was a difference between every type of mana. All of them inhabited the world around me, but each of them had their own feel and vibrancy. Earth was stoic, and playful only around those that trusted it. Water mana was slippery and enjoyed spreading cheer to all it came across.

I could feel that from the mana in the cup in front of me.

I took a deep breath and exhaled. I repeated the pattern as my mind went blank, my emotions were put to the side, and my thoughts became silent.

There was only me and the mana.

When I connected with earth mana and metal mana, it was a natural instinct that felt like connecting to a limb I could move at will.

Attuning to an element was a similar process. My mind allowed our connection to form, and…

It didn’t work.

The water mana stayed distant from me. It felt like there was a bridge between us that I couldn’t cross.

I could see the mana, and I could communicate with it, but no matter what I did I couldn’t connect to it. Not in the same way I did with earth.

Had I imagined the tug I had felt in the academy?

I’d thought it might be the mana trying to connect to me.

I sighed and placed the water on my desk. It was worth a try, and more tries in the future. Attuning was more than a single day in the making. Especially to new elements.

I’d been attuned to earth since I could remember. I didn’t know if I had attuned during the first night, or when I’d chosen my first skill. It might have even happened when I was born.

I knew from talking with the headmaster that there was an order to these attunements.

All elements had different reactions to each other. Fire and water would clash when a magician attuned to both, and earth and wind would also clash.

Earth and water were neutral, and according to my affinities this meant that water was the natural next step in progressing.

I took a deep breath.

I wouldn’t spend too much time each day on trying to attune. There was already so much on my plate. However, I didn’t have some of the issues that others did.

The most important advantage I had was that I didn’t have to store the mana of a single element inside me. Or split the amount stored of each elemental mana.

My golden mana would transform into whatever element I needed.

The other advantage I had was my mana pool.

Roxxy had told me that she was focusing on water because she lacked both mana and time to practice. My mana pool was far above my colleagues, and from what he’d said I gathered it was above Gerial’s too, unless he had already chosen his class.

These two advantages together made me confident that I could handle another element on top of my earth and metal ones.

I soon stopped my meditation for the night. I could always try again later.

The moon soon gave way to the sun, and I rose for the next school day.

Double history, double earth magic studies, and double metal magic studies.

It was a fun day.

Most of my earth magic studies class focused on connecting with different earth materials so that we could better differentiate them in the heat of the moment.

A lot of jobs for earth magicians involved fine-tuned work with earth materials to be done. Separating them into their purest forms was difficult, even for experienced earth magicians, but worth the reward.

“Is it possible for me to create a golem without being attuned to life?”

I’d saved my question until the rest of the class had left for lunch break. Gold looked from Tago to me, curious about the answer as well.

Tago of earth turned towards me, his body grinding to a halt.

“Yes. However, the methods to unlock the skill are often kept secret or unlocked through talent and luck.” Tago’s body began to melt back into the surroundings. “Please note that asking teachers for specific skill names and prerequisites will only result in annoying them. Have a good day, Andross.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I hummed as I made my way out of the classroom for my break. There was a way to make golems with my current attunements.

That was great news.

I knew that Tago wouldn’t give me the skill required even if I asked, but it was already nice of him to give me this much information. Usually, skills were never confirmed to exist or not when asked and the questioner was ignored or worse.

A head of red hair and a pair of bright eyes walked into my vision as Amanda made her way towards me.

“You’re looking happy.” She tapped my shoulder lightly. “Did you miss your magic classes?”

“More than you’d believe.”

That feeling didn’t die down over the course of our lunch, and soon Gold and I made our way up the middle tower of the Academy to attend my metal magic studies.

Tago of metal was standing inside the classroom as I arrived. I was the first one in and I could see that the class had been set up with large blocks of metal substances.

Silver, bronze, titanium, and adamant.

Unlike the other metals, the block of adamant was a lot smaller. It had been the same for the tree in Unice’s metal cultivation room.

Adamant was a lot rarer, and it was difficult to not use it once it was obtained, either making or having regents made.

“Andross. You are first. I approve.” Tago of metal turned towards me. “You are curious about making a golem?”

I paused. Then I nodded my head vigorously.

“Yes sir.”

“A worthwhile endeavour, though one that will take time.” Tago of metal placed his hand on the block of silver he’d set up. “There are many benefits to a silver golem, perhaps we will discuss them sometime.”

“That would be wonderful.” I grinned.

His reaction was different from Tago of the earth.

The two golems were virtually identical aside from their materials, and I had never noticed any other deviations in their personalities, but now they were differing on the subject of this one topic.

Why?

Before I could ask, I heard footsteps behind me, and turned around to greet Ouros. Only it wasn’t Ouros behind me.

It was Unice.

“I finally got accepted into the metal magic studies class!” Her voice echoed happily through the room.

“Congratulations, Miss Destin.” Tago spoke.

“That’s awesome.” I spoke. “I’m surprised I didn’t see you here last week.”

She'd attuned to metal but hadn’t been present for any of the classes so far. I hadn’t known there was a process to be accepted into the class.

Unice and I sat down as we talked, and I set up my silver on the table.

“Ugh, yeah. Apparently, there’s a long process for getting materials and course preparation.” Unice tugged at her collar. “I think the final pushing point was when I unlocked metal manipulation. Thanks for that by the way!”

I raised an eyebrow at her questioningly.

“After your visit on Fue I had a breakthrough.” Unice smiled sweetly at me. “I knew that watching you would help me.”

“Even more congratulations to you.” I gave her a thumbs up. “Welcome to the club.”

We settled down and once Ouros arrived the lesson began in earnest.

Now that all of us had our proficiencies, the work focused on manipulating as much of our materials as we could and doing so in different ways.

We also had to try to break each other’s manipulation using ‘lightly’ distracting methods. That meant no physical contact could be used to distract each other, and instead, I was spending the class talking with friends.

“So Cresp is coming, and obviously Roxxy, so that makes ten of us. Maybe thirteen. I’m losing count now.” Unice’s words floated into my ears.

I could barely hear her.

It wasn’t an issue of volume; I was just finding it difficult to focus on her words.

It was more difficult than I realised to maintain my metal manipulation at its maximum capacity and talk at the same time.

I found myself drifting away from the conversation topics several times, and halfway through the class my forehead broke out in sweat.

“You may now let go of your materials. Please place them down gently on the floor.” Tago called out.

Relief swept through my body as my fingers tapped the ground and the silver reformed into a block on the floor. I’d held the metal manipulation in place for two periods straight.

“Please tell me that’s never going to happen again.” Unice complained.

Even Ouros looked out of it, his breathing shallow, and his voice hoarse. He’d spoken the least out of all of us but had carried the most.

“Should you take a job in construction you will be required to maintain metal manipulation for periods of up to ten hours a day.” Tago looked at us. “Most occupations and scenarios will require you to manipulate metal within environments with many distractions.”

Even using metal manipulation for a few seconds during my fight with Amanda was tough, let alone maintaining it for hours.

Usually, I took breaks and practiced other skills during that time.

Gold hopped onto my shoulder, and we made our way out of the classroom.

“So, you’ll be coming to Alexis’ on Crijik?” Unice asked.

“Definitely.” I nodded. “Am I supposed to bring a gift or anything?”

“Bring yourself.” Unice grinned. “I’ll be bringing Ouros, so I guess my gift counts as a negative.”

“Hey!” Ouros shook his head and walked beside us. “Just because we’re practising a lot more together now, doesn’t mean I won’t ditch you to level up on my own.”

I laughed, the two cousins sweeping me into an argument that was half banter and half bragging competition.

Lunch and the rest of the school day went by quickly, and the feeling didn’t stop for the next couple of days.

[Symbol Inscription has reached level 3.]

Training, inscribing, school. It was all starting to blend together.

The highlight of my days were the after-school arena sessions with Amanda.

We had our second duel on Ength.

It ended with me being pummeled into the ground by four claws. Amanda grinned down at me from the sky, her body surrounded by stone pillars that had been trying to hold her down.

“You did it.” I grinned.

Amanda glided gently downward, golden wings spreading their light across the arena. The tips of her shoes touched the ground and waves of fire swept over me as she undid the spell, Agni appearing in her hands.

“I did it!” She pumped her fist in the air excitedly. “No jolts, or crashes. Ugh, yes! Thank you!”

She crushed me in a quick hug and Agni chirped happily from her head. Gold flapped down towards me and we took our usual water break.

This was our last practice session together before she fought her brother.

“So, this’ll be your secret weapon tomorrow?” I could see her improvement over the last few days.

She still risked spinning out of control and crashing, but if she could hold her own against me, she could fight against Alexis while in the air.

“Hopefully. My brother hasn’t seen me flying.” She sat down and leaned back. “Even if I don’t win, I’m hoping that I can put up a good fight.”

“Who says you can’t win?”

I gave her shoulder a light tap with my fist.

“My dad doesn’t want me to.” Amanda shrugged. “I honestly don’t think it’s that much of an issue, after all, Alexis will still be the head after tomorrow no matter the outcome.”

“I’ll tell you what, no matter what the outcome is, let's go get something nice.” I tilted my head. “Do you guys have ice-cream in Koshima?”

They had the dessert in my home city, something that I’d been delighted to find out at the time.

“We’re city folk, not savages.” Amanda smoothed down her blazer. “Of course we have ice-cream here. And heck yes, I’d love to get some. Alexis still doesn’t know how to control his own heat properly I swear-”

The conversation shifted from there and the day passed by quickly.

My eyes blinked open as the rays of the morning sun hit me. I felt a small ache in my body from the exercise yesterday, and several glasses of water lay on the floor beside my bed.

It was Inné.

The day of Amanda and Alexis’ fight.