Danny didn't see his two new friends at breakfast and he later found out why, when he discovered them already studying in a corner of the library.

"Hey guys," Danny greeted them.

"Hey Danny,"

"Danny"

Danny had already read the initiate level books and didn't see why he shouldn't start on the adept books. He asked his friends to watch his bag and headed over to the front desk to wait in line. The initiate at the front desk looked skeptical at Danny's question, while looking at Danny's brown vest, but he pointed out the adept bookshelves. Danny wandered over and discovered the adept level books took up just one bookshelf, but there were not as many copies as the initiate. There was no way he was going to be able to compare notes with Peter and David, and read through these at the same time. Grabbing a few books he went back to the table.

Peter and David were reading in a couple of books, when Danny sat down. Seeing they weren't going to start discussions, Danny picked up one of the adept books and started reading. This one was purely different runes to use with healing spells. Instantly fascinated he continued reading. He finished the book, a lot of the runes used could go into applications for other elements as well. He suspected the other books would have repeated runes. If you were just going for one element, there was no need to read about of runes you couldn't use.

Looking up he noticed his two new friends staring at him confused.

"What...," Danny said equally confused.

David turned to Peter as if to say, it's your turn. Peter sighed and nodded his head.

"Danny, that book was for adept healing spells, you know that right," Peter said with controlled patients.

"Yeah, so," Danny replied.

"First, you are still an initiate. Second, your affinities are fire, earth, and air. So, why are you reading an adept book on healing runes?"

Danny looked at the book then looked back at Peter and said, "Why not?"

Peter stared at Danny a few seconds, then turned to David as if to say, I did all I could.

"Alright, if you two are done staring at each other, could one of you explain why you are reading if there are so few initiate level books? You both have been here over a year. You have had more than enough time to get through them all," Danny asked.

"Danny, we are reading books on theories about our elements. Practicing the spells and understanding the element you are working toward are the two ways to increase your affinity. There is one shelf for initiate spells and one shelf for adept spells, the rest are elemental theory," David explained.

Danny blinked a few times and said, "Elemental theory?" At their combined nods Danny continued, "Well that's easy. David, did you know that air is similar in nature to water except thinner? So if you were to watch how water moved around your hand or other objects you could get a pretty good idea of how air would move around those same objects. There are a lot of other subtle nuances to it than that but that should be a good start for you."

David sat there a moment before saying, "Umm, thanks, I will look into that."

Danny turned to his other friend, "Peter, the earth is made of many different layers, and it is much more complex than air. I would pick a different element."

Peter's eyes opened wide, as he screeched, "Seriously!"

"Nah, I'm just joking. Let's see, there are a few types of rock, and I only remember two of them... The first comes from cooled lava, which is superheated rock once it comes from below ground. The second is formed from other types of rock being broken down into tiny pieces. Then those tiny pieces end up collecting in a location, where they are compressed by... oceans, if I remember correctly. Rivers or lakes wouldn't probably have enough weight to do it. Sorry I think there is one more type, but I can't remember it."

Peter said, "Thanks Danny, I haven't read that in any of my books yet."

Peter and David asked a few more questions before going back to their book. Danny picked up the second book he had grabbed and started to read. This one was on fire affinity. Between answering questions from his friends and reading through the fire affinity book the lunch bell soon rang. Nothing really surprising came up in the new book. There was a lot of repetition on the runes he had already seen in the healing book. It didn't appear that there were that many runes. The good ones were either saved until wizard level or they hadn't found them yet.

They went and had lunch together before breaking up for the rest of the day.

Danny went and checked into a generic training room and donned his casting gloves. Today he was going to continue dual casting and find out what his limits were. Starting with simply casting two spells at once, Danny cast fireball and water blast without any issues. Next he attempted to create a stone spike while using air sense on the area. He successfully started to use his mana for the two tasks, independently, but since the mana he was using was occupying the same space at the same time, it merged. Changing tactics he started creating stone spikes while throwing out blades of wind. Without the area affect getting in the way, he successfully created both with mana manipulation.

Danny probably couldn't use mana manipulation in the adept exams, and it go unnoticed. On the other hand, he didn't want to stop gaining levels in mana manipulation. He was also pretty sure he wouldn't gain affinity levels as quickly with just spells. He decided to split his training times evenly between the two. This would help him not get bored from a full half day of spells.

Danny took his customary position in the middle of the floor and tried to decide what he wanted to do with mana manipulation. He had previously wanted to try and create spinning mana. Maybe it could make attacks more powerful.

Creating a ball of mana above his hand, Danny tried a few things to get it spinning. He tried willing it to spin. He tried waving his hand in a circle. He tried adding more mana to one side, like shooting a ball on the edge with a water hose.

Coming up with a new theory, Danny tried activating air rune while continuing to pump mana into the ball. With the addition of the new mana he willed to spin. The ball of air began to spin before the air could fully burst forth, as it would if he had just cast air without the new mana. The spinning ball of air got faster the more mana he added to it. He then changed the order for the new mana from spin to launch. The spinning ball of air flew towards the wall he was focusing on. Rock exploded from the wall, jagged pieces of stone flew everywhere. Including into Danny's head, arms, and body. Luckily, Danny had the wherewithal to cover his head at the last second.

With pieces of stone in his body, Danny started to cast the healing spell, when he realized this was a good mana manipulation opportunity. He knew how to manipulate mana in his body, but he never tried using just the healing rune to heal from within. At first he started to try and ignore the pain in order to focus, but instead he focused on it and used that pain to locate problem areas. Danny tried isolated the mana lines and mana stored in the flesh, but he would have to empty his body of mana. He had no way to remove mana stored in specific places in his body. He gave up on healing from within using mana manipulation, for now. Casting a healing spell with the method rune for self, he could feel his cuts, and wounds heal. Like mana manipulation, healing himself with spells still used all the mana in his body and tried to heal everything at once. There was a sound like sand falling, as bits of stone fell out of the healing flesh.

Having felt like he had reached the halfway point, Danny switched to casting spells. He needed to familiarize himself with how long it took to cast these spells. Going through the list of initiate level spells he cast them one at a time. The current method spells he knew consisted of four types. Cast on self, cast on target, cast on touch, cast in shape. Air for example would have, cast carry voice on self, cast wind blade on target, cast carry voice on touch, and cast wind in cone. Carry voice allows one to project one voice as far as the wind you create can carry it. Range depends on the amount of mana you put into the spell. Cast wind blade where you were focused on when it was cast. Now if the target is moving it will not follow them. Carry voice on touch does the same as on self but for someone else. Lastly, cast wind in cone, creates a concentrated cone of wind, intended to knock a target down.

Powering spells was pretty straight forward. In order to use some of the method runes, one would require a minimum power level. When casting a single spell multiple times using the power runes, Danny discovered that the levels increased the time needed to cast a spell by a factor of two. Having no way to determine damage output he could only assume they did the same amount of damage per second of mana output. Considering all things equal, the only reason Danny would use a higher power level would be if a spell required it. That being said, Danny's current mana flow rate was not the highest and it would take him too long to cast some of the higher level spells to be effective.