I froze, my fingers tightening on the doorknob. “Mr Martinez.” The worry that was stuck in my throat prevented me from speaking as I struggled to make a sound. I heard a cane tapping the tiled floor. “May I ask why you’re trying to enter my office?” I turned around carefully.

“I-I-um-I-w-was-” I tried to answer.

“Perhaps you were looking for these,” he said, rattling a pile of papers in his hand. I had to stop myself from audibly gasping. They were the test papers. Then the picture of Marcus’ grave pierced my mind, and the sound stopped on my lips.

“Um, no actually, I-” My eyes darted around the room looking for something that could help me. A notice on the wall. “I just wanted to talk to you about trying out for the fivish team.”

“Really?” His smile crept all the way up to his eyes. “It’s always nice to see former students want to participate in school sports.”

“I know, sir, thank you. I didn’t want to interrupt your lessons, as I know how busy you are.”

“No problem, shall we go in?” he said, as his eyes crinkled a bit.

Ten minutes, while were sitting down and he kept telling me details about the school team, including the captain and such, I tried to see if his eyes would stop looking at the test papers on the desk opposite him. “Ah, let me just find a list of the players,” he said, getting up to walk to a cabinet opposite him. At that moment, I moved slowly around the desk. My hand grazed the shelf just as he was turning around, and I was going to make a run for it, despite whatever security precautions were waiting for me.

He ended up knocking a small key, or what looked like a key, to the floor. If a baby had been dropped, I don’t think Mr. Solomon would have reacted so quickly. His hands dropped the papers he held and I barely managed to close the shelf in time to see him give a sigh of relief as he placed the key back.

“In any case Mr. Martinez, here you are,” he said, moving his hands over the papers in order to have them shift around. “You will be in a team with Mr. Felton.”

“That sounds great, sir, I can’t wait,” I said, shuffling the papers together to mix them, hoping he hadn’t noticed anything. Now they were both together, the test papers and fivish papers. There was no way Marcus could fail.

Back home, I sat down to cycle mana for a little while. In order to increase your mana reserves, you would have to cycle mana hundreds of thousands of times, meaning the level of mana you would be working with was fixed. The main way to advance was to increase the ways you could use your mana instead. For example, say you had an affinity for fire mana. At first, you might be unable to even create a small spark. However, after a while, you could light up multiple fires from a distance, and use that in order to single out in the wilderness. Some mages lacked the pure offensive strength needed to win out in combat, but there were always other ways of approaching things.

One of the most popular methods of combat was summoning creatures to attack the enemy. That could be anything from making a simple dog or wolf from the latent mana in the air, to opening up portals to allow fiends of fiery fury to descend upon our world.

You could also set up powerful formations beforehand, which would trigger when a hostile presence was detected. Many powerful mages used these to prevent unwanted intrusions.

I smiled. It was incredible to see how my teachings fused together with whatever knowledge remained in my mind to grant me insights into how mana worked. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to remember half of what I was reading had I not already learned it in the past.

While walking to the shop to see how much multiple spell forumals were, I saw a girl running towards me. “Fernando!” she cried, still running at breakneck pace. Seeing it was Maria, I’d been hoping she’d run right up and hug me, but she miraculously managed to slow down a few meters away. “I heard you signed up for the fivish team. That’s great. I’m applying for captain.”

“Oh... um really, well, I mean... congrats, I’m sure you’ll get it no problem.”

“You think so? That means a lot. There’s quite a few good players competing this year, but I think we could make it.” She stopped for a second, catching her breath. “I didn’t even know you were into fivish.”

“Huh, well, you know it’s really a way to...” I said, trying to think of something, when Marcus unexpectedly ran up to both of us from my yard. “I was looking for you all lunch man! Where were you?”

“Ah, just working on the farm, as usual.”

“Really? Your uncle said he hadn’t seen you.”

“He’s been busy himself too you know, the harvest festival is coming up soon, less than a month to go.”

“Hum, I suppose so,” he said, looking off into the distance. “Are you going with Maria then?” He grinned, and gave me a light shove.

“What! No, we were just talking-” I insisted, pushing him away, and trying to get him into a headlock.

“I don’t really mind. We could all go.”

“Really?” we both said at once, letting go of each other.

“Sure, I’ve got to take Linsey for a walk, but I’ll see you guys around,” she said, walking off while giving a little wave. A faint memory, almost like a dream, was upon me, but I shut it down willingly. I just wanted to rest for a bit.

After many cycles, I felt I finally had a grasp of my mana ability, and could learn a simple incantation. The one I decided to learn was ‘Brevis Inferno’ which lit up a small flame right in front of you, which you would supply with your own mana. This would also let me know how much mana I had to work with.

After a few minutes, I could feel the mana flow rising in pace, managed only by my steady breathing. So at least a few minutes worth of a level one spell. Generally the indicated level was about how many months of learning with that incantation had taken place, so that a level three spell required about six to seven months, and a level ten spell about a lifetime.

Levels beyond that were hard to reach, as you started tapping into the strength of the soul. They were only a rough guideline, and there were instances of even complete novices able to fire off a level four incantation. In any case, even a simple flame could save someone’s life, but I knew that there was a long road ahead if I wanted to study the art of magic, and that natural talent would only get me so far.

With that in mind, I bought another spell book with the money from my chores, and tried to learn more incantations. It was unlikely any of them would even scare the Amrita off, but I needed a backup plan. No matter what would happened at the festival and before then, me and Marcus would survive.