I wake up realizing something disturbed my sleep. When I open my eyes I nearly scream. Krell is sitting perched on the end of my bed. “You sleep to deeply, especially in an unknown place. You didn’t even setup any wards to warn you.”

I blush and retort. “Is this place so unsafe that I need to.”

“While we are training you should take nothing for granted. If I thought you would learn a valuable lesson from it, I would not hesitate to kill you.”

I felt a chill run down my spine with how matter of fact Krell sounded.

“Get up and let’s get something to eat before we continue training.”

I follow Krell to a different room. This one is twenty feet wide and tall, but 100 feet long. There is a side table with sandwiches and we both eat standing. There is a pot of hot tea and we both drink several glasses. I am feeling more awake now. “Today we are going to continue to build up your Air Domain spells. You are currently using Shield to protect yourself, but this is a very inefficient spell. It uses raw mana to create a shield, which is a lot less efficient that using elemental energy. I want you to walk half way down the room and turn to face me. I am going to fire spells at you and I want to you summon a wall of air I can hit. You will experiment with different types of walls to get the best at absorbing damage. Now go.”

I walk half way down the room and summon an air wall big enough to cover my body. I frown as I finish creating it. Now that I have Air Sense, I can feel the wall is thin and hard. Krell hits is with a blast of focused mana, which shatters it and hits me taking 30% of my health. I mentally curse. That hurt. I cast minor heal until I am back up to 100% and summon a different wall this time. It is more like the air blasts the elementals fired at me. Thicker and squishier. When Krell hits it this time it holds, though not by much. I create a new wall and this time I try to make it less squishy more like a series of layers. This holds much better when Krell hits it. We spend most of the morning doing this between recharging my mana. Krell also started using different spells, so that I could feel how the shield handled different attacks. He wanted me to create a generic defense that would protect against several attacks. As I got better, he had me form it around my whole body just like the current shield spell I use. Then he started using area affect spells. By lunch time I got the notification he was no doubt expecting.

Air Shield, Level 3, Basic Level 1 (0% progress to next level)

This spell creates a shield of mana infused air to protect the caster. The shield will absorb thirty points of damage plus ten points per skill Tier level.

Range: Self

Duration: 1 hour plus 1 hour per skill Tier past Basic

Cost: 25 mana

This is more mana efficient that the Shield spell and absorbs more damage.

“Very good, we will use this in your training after lunch.”

Krell pulls more sandwiches and another pot of tea from his inventory. After eating in silence, he takes me back to the training room we used yesterday. “We are going to work on your Dodge skill today and the new shield spell you learned.”

“Isn’t leveling Dodge very time intensive?”

“Not the way I teach it.” Krell’s tentacles are wiggling excitedly, which I don’t think is a good sign for me. “Now I am going to create six energy spheres. Each will project blasts of a different elemental energy at you. You will try to Dodge them. You can move anything except your feet. We will use air step to climb the wall and maintain yourself on the same wall until I tell you to switch. Summon an air shield and get up on a wall, your choice.”

I climbed a wall and Krell created six spheres about the size of basketballs. I stood ready when the white sphere fired a blast of light. Needless to say, I failed to Dodge and took it on my shield, which failed. I took 15% damage to my left leg. I healed myself and got ready to dodge again and this time I succeeded. We continued training and I noticed something strange is going on. My Dodge skill is very low, so I shouldn’t be able to dodge that much successfully. It took me awhile to figure it out. Krell is aiming at a very specific area of my body, which focuses all the damage and improves my dodge chances. When he hit though, I suffered several debuffs like crippled limb until I healed myself. My skill with air shield rapidly increased even with the improvement in my dodge, because of how many times I was hit. We finally took a break for dinner, which was more sandwiches and tea.

After eating, Krell said we would practice the Lightning spell, which I have had since the starter area, but not used much. His version of training it of course would not be as easy as just repeat casting. Krell gestures and a portal opened. A midnight black shaggy dog like creature stepped out into the room. When inspecting the creature, it was a Wind Runner, but I got no other information, which usually indicates it was much higher level than me.

“You will try to avoid the Wind Runner’s attacks and use only lightning to fight it.” Krell went over and scratched it behind the ears, which it obviously enjoyed, but it kept looking at me the whole time. It even started to purr. Krell walk to the center of the room and sat down. “Begin.”

I barely got into the air with the Wind Runner chasing me. It was very fast and could walk and jump in the air with ease. I could sense the flow of air around it and it was a lot smoother than my own air steps. It started to dispel my steps much like the elementals did, but it was even quicker. I didn’t even have time to cast a Lightning spell at it. I had a hard time just staying ahead of it. I finally got a chance to get off a spell and that’s when things really went bad quickly. When I hit it with lightning it formed a connection and started to draw more and more mana. The Lightning kept shooting out of my hand hitting the creature and as more mana was drawn the bolt thickened and got brighter. There was a snap and over half of my mana pool was now gone. The creature then opened its’s mouth, which began to glow and small lightning bolt began to arc between its teeth. I must admit I panicked a little then starting to zig zag like crazy, which is probably what saved my life. The Wind Runner spat a bolt of lightning that crossed through the air craving a line in the wall stones several inches deep spraying rock shards everywhere. I almost made it, but it clipped me shattering my shield and smashing me into the wall followed by a short fall to the ground as my limbs danced to the electricity cracking through them.

Krell is chuckling petting the Wind Running. “You did much better than I expected.”

“Better than you expected. I just lost 60% of my health.”

“Like I said you are doing great. What is your Lightning skill at now?”

“Holy… it went up a whole skill tier.”

“Yes, Razor here really pulled on the mana to feed the spell allowing you to deepen your spell channel much faster.”

“You call him Razor? What is a spell channel?”

“Yes Razor.” Krell says while scratching behind Razors ear again. “No one told you about spell channels, by the Gods I am amazed you are still alive. Ok have a seat and I will go over that before we continue your training.”

After we both take a seat Razor lays down by Krell. “When you learn a spell, it imprints in your mana opening a channel for that type of spell. Then when you cast it the mana flows through that channel until enough mana fills it and then the spell manifests. As you cast the spell it increases how clearly you visualize your spell channel. This process is called deepening your spell channel and is tracked by the System as spell skill level progression.”

“So, when the connection formed with Razor, he pulled mana out in a continuous stream keeping the spell active allowing me to gain a much clearer focus on the spell, which is why I got such a quicker spell progression.”

“You’ve got it, so let’s get back to training.”

“But, then why did he try to kill me, he could have just shot the lightening into the wall, couldn’t he.”

“He could of, but he doesn’t like you. I wouldn’t take it personally though, he doesn’t like many people.”

I think to myself that Krell is more than a little crazy, but he does get results. I stand back up and Razor jumps back to his feet. I don’t even wait for Krell to say go and I am off. This time I try to focus on maintaining my lead on Razor. I try to strengthen my air steps to prevent Razor from disrupting them, but he is to strong. Next, I try throwing up air walls in front of him, but he just disrupts those just as easily. I finally grit my teeth and hit Razor with a Lightning bolt. This time my hand aches with the amount of mana being drawn through it. The only good thing about it is I do manage to avoid being hit this time and Krell signals to rest to regenerate my mana. Almost 70% of my pool is gone this time.

I ask Krell about the big increase. “Your tier went up to the next level with the spell, which allows more mana to naturally flow, increasing the total amount Razor could draw from you.”

Krell has us get back to our game of dodge and fry George. After two hours of it I suddenly get a new notification that I check out while I am regenerating my mana.

Congratulations

Your Lightning spell has been upgraded to Enhanced Lightning.

Enhanced Lightning works the same as the Lightning spell, except that it can be cast continuously on a single target. The casting cost changes from a one-time cost to a cost per second.

Interesting this will do a tremendous amount of damage quickly to one target. Krell seems to be aware of my upgrade and creates a portal that Razor walks through.

“You now have a good set of basic skills and spells in the Air Domain, but now you need to stretch to get the most out of your general skill in Air Shaping. To do that you are going to get up to the center of the room. I will then create stones that will be hitting you and you will hit them with lightning to destroy them. You cannot dodge, but you can use Air Shield. I will be creating some barriers that will cut off your line of sight, but you should still be able to use Air Sense to detect them.”

I take a few air steps to get up the center of the room. Krell summons panels of pure darkness in irregular shapes and sets them throughout the room in multiple layers. I close my eyes and can sense infused air pockets moving toward me at a steady pace. I try hitting one through the planes of darkness, but the darkness just absorbs the damage. I try to rack my brain on how I can stop the stones. There are now several dozen and they are not moving too fast, but they will all be coming around the last barrier at the same time and even if I destroy the first couple, I don’t think I can handle them all before they start to pummel me.

“Why do all of my students always think in straight lines.” Krell says below as he stands near the door.

I suddenly get it, I need a curve ball, except with lightning. I sense the closest infused air pocket and try to curve the lightning around the barrier. I don’t succeed before the first stone comes into view and I destroy it. I keep trying until I am hit hard knocking me off my air step platform. I recover before I hit the floor, but Krell indicates I should land and recover my mana. While I am resting Krell moves the barriers around and resets the stones. I situate myself back in the center of the room and continue to try to bend my lightning around corners. It takes several more stone beatings before I finally figure it out. I was over thinking it.

The spell works on a single target and I know where the target is. I just have to think about hitting that target and the lighting naturally flows around the barrier to strike the stone. It is so easy. I start destroying stones left and right, so Krell begins to make it more interesting. He begins to move the barriers around me. Also, if a stone comes into line of sight, he shoots it at me with a burst of air, so I can no longer sense a shell of mana infused air around it. I did sense something cutting through the air around me as it got close. The stones also started to move faster and there were more of them.

We continued training until midnight again and even though he lets me recharge my mana I am mentally exhausted. He gives me a fruity drink which is really refreshing before I go to bed. It only took a few moments to fall asleep as I wonder how Nora is doing with her training.