Leo looked surprised at Jerry. “Are you sure? Aren’t you tired?” he asked.

“In the end, I didn’t get to cross blades properly so I’m unsatisfied you could say.” said Jarry “You don’t want too?”. For some reason, he looked uncertain.

“No, it’s not like that!” protested Leo. “I just don’t want you to complain afterward that you lost because you were tired.” smiled Leo.

“OH! You said it!” Jerry said as he pulled Leo's cheek. “Now go take a replacement axe and get ready!”

Leo ran to the weapon stack and took one of the few axes that laid here. Since they broke quite often after Leo increased his strength Mr. Etan ordered a few to keep a stock. Steelwood despite being hard it was less flexible than actual steel and broke more easily with heavy use.

Leo entered the arena but suddenly stopped and asked. “But who will activate the absorption field?”

“Ah, that’s a problem…” said Jerry.

“I can do it.” said a voice from outside the arena. Looking in that direction the boys saw the principal standing here.

“Thank you.” said the boys in unison.

“No need, young people should play when they can.” said the principal and started the device. “Now get ready.”

Both boys prepared themselves, Leo already feeling the warmth of his spell.

“Start!”

Both moved at the same time closing the distance between them in an instant. Their axes clashed and a strong wind blew at Leo to counter the force of his strike.

Leo sidestepped to the left and attacked with an upward strike which Jerry avoided by stepping backward and followed in an instant with a downward strike at Leo.

Leo responded with his own strike, weapons clashing again creating a gust of wind.

Jerry smiled, using more mana he sped himself even more and moved behind Leo before the blond haired boy could react.

Gathering more force inside his legs he jumped to the left and rolled alongside the floor barely dodging his opponent blade as it went alongside the winds above him.

Just as Leo stood up, Jerry was already upon him, Leo used more mana to support his frame and meet him head-on with a diagonal slash. Axes clashed and the blond haired boy was forced to take a step backward.

Leo used even more mana pushing his limits, his body felt hot, he attacked from his shoulder to his enemy torso.

Jerry blocked the attack but his arms couldn’t take the force and were blown backward without releasing his weapon. Leo pressed on with a next attack being sure he could get his opponent.

Jerry looked in shock at the strength the younger boy used, in last second he pushed his body with big amount of wind. The desperate attempt was successful and he dodged the blond boy’s axe.

Stabilizing himself and regaining control he looked at Leo. Both of them breathing heavily.

Leo moved again jumping and flying like a bullet. Swinging his axe with all his power at Jerry. The bigger boy responded in common and with all the power that he had left he created a big wind surge that followed his axe.

They clashed again and this time the shockwave was so strong the both of them got pushed away from each other. Both supporting themselves with their axes to stand up.

Leo couldn’t keep up his enhancement at the same level as he had. Feeling some strength leave him he breathed heavily. Jerry too was strained from the heavy use of mana. The fight would be decided in the confrontation.

This time Jerry took the initiative pressing onto Leo with a continuous attack with his axe. Dodging and blocking Leo slowly moved to the edge of the arena.

Jerry brought his axe upward and used all of his strength to perform a downward strike. Leo with shaft of his axe blocked the strike in a last second, it felt like if a giant bolder suddenly fell on him as the wind ruffled his hair.

Leo got down letting his opponent axe hit the floor before sliding between Jerry’ legs and turning around he attacked with a slash from his right to his enemy hips.

Jerry responded in common and attacked from his right, both weapons getting closer to meet with each other. Using last ounces of their mana both attacks clashed and with a loud sound created by clashing wood followed by a beeping sound the match ended.

“The winner is Leo Redmond!” shouted the principal.

At the last second, Jerry mana failed him and he lost control of his wind which caused him to lose in the contest of strength and his weapon was thrown back leaving him open for Leo’ finishing attack.

Both boys fell to the floor and gasped for air. It took them few minutes to calm down.

“Good job Leo. You got strong.” said, Jerry.

“I only won because you were tired from the whole day of fighting.” said Leo.

“Don’t underestimate yourself. You are talented.” said the bigger boy sitting up. “Thanks, it felt great.”

“It was fun.” said Leo still laying down. Jerry laughed and Leo soon began to chuckle too.

“Yes, it’s fun. Well, I asked for this fight also because I wanted to talk with you.”

Leo sat up and looked at him. “Yes?”

“Tomorrow I’m going to move, I decided to join a Military Academy in the capital. I already passed the test.” he proclaimed.

“Huh? So soon? Doesn’t the semester end in the month?” Leo asked surprised.

“In the final year, the year-end after you write the final exams which were this month. The graduation ceremony is in two days though, I will miss it.” he finished.

“So it was last time we had a chance to spar. Congratulations.” said Leo sadly.

“For now. I’m sure we will have a chance in future as long as we don’t stop and thanks.” said Jerry.

“I won’t stop!”

“Me too.”

Both boys smiled. The principal went over to them. “Really, you remind me a lot of me when I was younger, back then I had a friend too, we…”

“Sorry! I really need to go now my parents are probably already waiting for me!” said Leo before running away.

“Me too! It was an honor to study here.” said Jerry bowing before following behind the blond haired boy.

They didn’t want to get stuck here for hours listing to Mr. Alexander. Laughing they ran out of the school.

“Hahahaha… ha. Well, Leo till we meet again. Next time I will surely win.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that! … I will miss you.” said Leo slightly sad.

“Yeah, me too.” he said ruffling Leo’ hair.

The duo parted after that, Leo looked behind at last second and waved. Jerry did the same.

-*-

It was three months later. Leo was sitting in his first magic theory class. Thanks to the fact that there were not too many students in the school nowadays he didn’t have too much competition to get into the class.

Despite this, he only barely passed the test to get into it. Still, he was interested in the topic. He really wanted to get better with mana if he could.

Right now he was sitting next to Mary who also chose this class. When he asked her why she only answered with “Isn’t it obvious?” which left him a little confused but happy in the end.

Fortunately, it seemed that most of the class didn’t know who he was and what he did. And even if there were some rumors most didn’t believe in them.

The door opened and the teacher entered the classroom. Leo stood up shocked, it was Miss Anna, they didn’t see her at all during last year and Mr. Etan stayed as their homeroom teacher until the end.

The teacher smiled at him a little and Mary tugged on his shirt. He looked around and noticed that most of the class was looking at him, embarrassed he sat down for now.

“Hello. My name is Anna Robinson. I will be teaching you magical theory. Nice to meet you.” she said. “Let’s start with a lesson. We will start with explaining what you will be learning here.”

She turned on a 3D projector and an image of two blue balls one with a minus and one with a plus in them.

“As all of you know, everyone is born with an element of mana that they can control.” she said. “Controlling that element in its pure form is possible for everyone if they put work into it as all of you had done till now. What we will learn here is how to use mana in more complicated ways.”

As she said the two balls started getting closer to each other and reacting with themselves, some kind of strings going from one to another. “What you see here is how negative and positive mana react with each other. For example. As all of us know water mana can heal wounds but how does it do that? If we just use water mana normally all we will achieve is to sprinkle the wound with water. Do you know why?”

Someone raised their hand. It was a girl. “Because if you simply use mana all that will happen is that you will control it in its most primitive forms.”

“Yes, exactly. We only discovered that’s water mana could heal wound because sometimes people are born with natural ability to do it and upon examining the way they used mana we could say what was happening.” As she said more balls joined the image creating a complex three-dimensional structure of positive and negative blue balls that reacted with each other connecting with each other with strings. “That is a rough representation of how mana needs to form in order to force cells in our bodies to regenerate. So how does one learn how to do it? Strictly speaking, if you wanted to use simply your affinity to water to reproduce what you are seeing here not only would it take a lot of practice and recreating it on scale that would allow it to heal even small cut is possible only in theory if you did it like that.” she said

“Back when people first discovered this they had no way of telling how the mana formed exactly but they were able to reproduce the spell. They did that by using magic responsive materials, usually from monsters, to record the mana movement with light magic. It was the first time mana circuits were recreated and how what we call today scrolls were created that worked similarly to magic devices meaning if you put mana into them you could reproduce the effects of the spell they had recorded in them.”

The image above her changed into a big circuit with many geometrical figures inside of it that shined in blue.

“Here you see a basic water spell, this would create a simple water ball if you wanted to use a healing spell it would look like that.” The circuit got two times larger and many times more complicated.

“Later on there was a way to imprint new spell into souls so that person could use it at any time without studying but that was stopped because of negative effects it had on a person. Like changing their personality.”

“So how does one learn to use a spell like that?” asked someone from class.

“Nowadays we can use a magic device that will replicate the spell and use it for us and slowly as we use them we can get used to the way magic moves and replicate it ourselves. That takes a lot of practice but it’s possible. You still need an affinity for the element. In past, it was done in a similar way, a person would sit in a room with magic circuits and they would slowly learn how the mana moved.”

“But how are people borns with such spells?”

“That is something we don’t know about. All we just know that soul is already born with certain affinity and a sometimes a spell. Different races are also born with different spells elves are often born with nature magic while dwarfs are born with spells that usually control earth. There is a theory that it depends on the way your ancestors lived but it’s not confirmed yet.”

The class continued on different ways in which you could use mana and circuits that represented it. How fire magic could create lightning, the earth could refine metals or transmute them into different elements and few others spell.

The class ended soon and Leo stood up, walking up to miss Anna, but after it, he didn’t know how to start a conversation and simply looked at her. She looked at him too but smiled after a second. “I heard what happened. I never got to thank you for what you have done. Really, thank you Leo, I don’t have words that could describe how grateful I am.” she bowed to him.

“There is no need to. I’m happy that you are okay.” he said.

“I’m also sorry that I left your class for last year. I… had to do something in that time. Well is there something more you need?” she looked uncomfortable for some reason.

“No. I’m happy that you are back with us.” said Leo with a smile. “Goodbye Miss Anna.” he said before moving out of the classroom.

“Goodbye.” said the teacher, her smile gone after Leo left the classroom. She bit her lip from frustration but calmed down soon after taking a pill from a small box she carried with her.