As Ves’ra left her room late in the next morning something was different. There was a restlessness in the air that she had not seen so far. At first she panicked, thinking that the humans knew what she did last night, but she noticed her worries were unfounded soon after, they didn't even take notice of her.

When the human working at the inn brought her her breakfast she spoke up.

“Did something happen? Why is everyone so excited?”

“You just woke up huh. Well, there was a big fire in one of the buildings near here.”

“I thought your buildings were protected against fire?”

“Yeah, me too. That's what everyone is worried about too, especially because the building’s owner is a noble from a nearby kingdom, the people worry they will use the accident as the reason to invade.”

“You humans are strange? Why’d you want to kill each other over every little thing? It’s not like there isn't enough land to go around all around us, why would you want what others have?”

“I'm not sure, I'm just a small waitress, I don't know what those in power think. I’ll have to go back to work though.”

As Ves’ra moved out of the inn she couldn't help but wonder why the house owned by a foreigner was the base of the criminal organisation. It was pretty obvious that the spell attached to the man she killed caused the fire, so she wasn't really wondering about that. Well, it didn't really affect her, she was an adventurer and not a mercenary so she didn't worry about being conscripted into the human army.

With a spring in her step Ves’ra entered the adventurers guild for the first time in a week. She knew what she wanted to do, find a powerful monster to hunt, and seeing that the guild was the prime location to find monsters and would even pay for the unimportant parts of her food she saw no reason not to use them.

Just as she was about to walk over to the request board she saw a bunch of young humans entering the building. They were too large a group to be actual adventurers, so she was intrigued. Ves’ra went over to one of the older humans observing the ongoings within the guild.

“Hey, what are all these hatchlings doing here?”

“You're new? Well, it’s no secret, the guild offers every new or prospective adventurer a lesson on essential knowledge like tracking, a few mana spells and basic knowledge.”

“Oh, I'm new too, so I could join in? Do I have to sign up somewhere? How long are these lessons?”

“Not really, you can just follow that group. And it’s more of a single five hour lesson, if you want to be successful you’ll have to use and further the basics yourself.”

“Thank you.” Ves’ra ran after the group of young humans, just managing to follow them. She was really interested in what the guild saw as basic mana spells, as the only one she really knew was telekinesis, so she was understandably interested in learning more of those.

The first part of the lesson was quite boring, she didn't learn anything new about tracking, so she lost her focus for a bit. Hearing talk about common monsters was quite interesting, and some did sound delicious, so she made a mental note to look for quests involving them.

It took about two hours before the adventurer in the front left the room and they had a small break as another entered the room and started giving out several objects to each of them. A few minutes later the man clapped loudly, stopping all conversation.

“Silence. … Good, you can listen. Now, a little about me before we start. I'm an B-ranked adventurer, a watermage and will be teaching you a few essential mana spells. As you know mana-sorcery is something every awakened can do, with enough practice.

Of course, mana-sorcery isn't instinctual unlike normal magic, so you shouldn't expect to be good at it without practice. Now, we’ll start with the easier spells and do the more difficult ones later. I know some of you have yet to awaken, so you can either leave or watch anyways.

Let's start.

The first spell I want to teach you is one of the easiest and at the same time most important spells, something every mage will need. Afterwards we’ll talk about some of its most common uses, and perhaps one of two harder ones.

If you fill anything with your mana - even a bunch of air - and will your mana to connect to the material you will be able to control that object with your mind.

There are some important things to note, first of all you're using your mind to lift something, but your body will still experience strain, the weight of the object will be distributed over your whole body, but the stronger a being's body the heavier an object it can lift. It feels like gravity magic, so you're just getting heavier all over.

Secondly the range of telekinesis is limited by both your control over your mana and the power of your mana. That's true for most of the spells I will show you, because unlike elemental magic mana gets exponentially harder to control the farther it is from you.

Now I want each of you to try and levitate the block of wood I set down in front of you before we continue.”

As she was already proficient at telekinesis her block started levitating only moments after the teacher stopped talking. She was soon followed by about a third of the people in the room. About half of those remaining didn't seem to be trying - obviously not yet hatched a second time. Once everyone who tried managed - something that didn't take long as it really was easy - the man continued.

“Very good, I see you managed that. Now as you noticed it did take some of you quite some time to fill the block with your mana, so there are a few tricks possible. Most objects you’ll want to use telekinesis on will be solid, so if you are looking for speed rather than control it’s easier to only connect to a small part of the object.

There are a few thing to note about that though, if you want to keep the orientation of the object you're affecting you’ll need to actually need use some of your mana otherwise the center of mass will always be under the point you are holding it. Try to only connect your mana to one of the corner of the block.

…

…

Very good, as you can see that's a lot faster, but you won't have nearly as much control over the spatial orientation.

Now, see if you can connect your mana to two different corners of the block and try to move them apart.”

It took a little mental gymnastics to get that right, but once she did manage she immediately noticed the intense mental strain as her mind fought against itself. After a few seconds the block of wood gave up and splintered apart.

Every eye in the room came to rest upon her, making her sink deeper into the seat she was in.

“Very good, you need quite the experience to manage that. I usually have to demonstrate that myself. Now that our small friend managed to do that I’ll let you try that for a bit more, before we continue.”

Other than her nobody else managed to break the block apart, though one of the humans did manage to collapse.

“Don't be discouraged my young friends, telekinetic fighting is something even some experienced mages have problems with. As you surely noticed your mind will feel quite queasy if you try to apply a force against another force.

As you can imagine telekinesis is incredibly useful to increase the power of a warriors strike, so usurping his control over his weapon is a skill that could save your life one day. I’ll go over one other essential use before we continue with other spells, I want you to spread your mana and form a shield in front of you. Then you’ll bond the mana to the air and command it to be at a set distance from you.

Once you're ready call out and my helpers will test your defense.”

Ves'ra was intrigued, she had never actually tried to control air - air just was - but it shouldn't be hard, energy easily spread through air, far easier than through solid matter. She engulfed her front with a spherical shield of energy a few handspans from her body and connected said shield to the air. After calling out one of the people that entered the room with the mage suddenly started throwing stones at her, at first she didn't even notice the impacts, but after he was sure her shield would hold she physically felt the impacts. It wasn't much, but considering the force of the last stone managed to nearly tip the chair she was sitting in she was sure she’d have been heavily injured if she didn't block the throw.

The other managed the same, and soon there were stone flying all around her. She decided she’d keep the shield up, there was no reason to risk getting hit by a bouncing stone.

The mage stopped the fun soon after, starting to show them more or less useful spells only achieved with mana. There was a spell similar to her cloud of detection, though it was less useful as she lost control over the mana as soon as it touched another living being. She was happy though, the telekinetic shield alone was worth the invested time. She really would have liked to learn how to create chains out of mana, like the adventurers that killed one of Arvog’s parents did, but it seemed she was out of luck - the lesson would end in ten minutes.

“Now, we don't have time to practice anymore spells, and even if you were faster I wouldn't be able to do more than tell you about it. Being able to conjure mana objects is one of the skills needed to surpass the normal rankings of the guild. Most mages that actually intend to climb in the guild will practice that skill as soon as possible.

Creating objects out of mana is, as you can guess, incredibly useful. You would never run out of arrows as an archer, never lack weapon or armor. There are downsides to all these points - mana has no weight - but the skill is too versatile not to have it.

The first thing you need is mana, a lot of mana, the second thing you’ll need is a precise image of what you want to create, be it weapon, armor or something else. Then you’ll have to force that image upon your mana, not unlike normal magic. It doesn't have to be created in one go - you can add as much mana as needed - as long as you manage to keep the image in mind.

Now, if that was all it wouldn't be too hard, but your mana won't be useful like that, it’ll just be a light blue outline of whatever you wanted. No, while keeping both image and mana in control you’ll have to force the mana into a semisolid stage. That part is the hardest - mana is either weightless energy or a hyperdense crystal, so while it’s possible to force your mana into that state of matter it’s hard, really hard. About one in a hundred mages ever manage to have enough control and willpower to solidify their own mana.

Now, you can practice that on your own, perhaps you’ll manage in a few years. Thank you for your attention and good luck in the adventurers guild.”

Ves'ra skipped out of the room moments later. The last few minutes had been worth all five hours. She hadn't managed to solidify her mana like the mage had described, it just did not want to be in that state of matter, but she was sure she’d manage in time! She’d have to practice every day until she was able to do that, it just sounded too useful not to use it.

She left the guild a few minutes later - her search for a snack long forgotten by plans for the next weeks.