"You're doing worse than you did yesterday. Is sothing on your mind?" Tina asked as she stared at the fiery orange chain wrapped around her.
However, despite its complex creation and the artistic detail put into making Lloyd's flas take the form of dense chains, it was far too weak for Lloyd to do anything but trick his opponents into thinking that he had a thod to entrap them.
"No... Its fine." Lloyd spoke through gritted teeth as he tried his best to keep the chains in their form without losing concentration since doing so would an that they would dissipate into thin air.
"Maybe we have to do a little bit of comprehension training? That usually increased soone control over their elent." Tina began to speak to herself, but after thinking for a mont, an idea entered her mind.
With twinkling eyes, she tensed her body and destroyed the chains that Lloyd was trying so hard to maintain, yet before Lloyd could even start complaining, Tina spoke first.
"How much do you know about arcane magic!?" Tina asked with the most exciting voice Lloyd had ever heard. It was almost adorable how she had perked up like an excited child.
"Uhm... Not much, I guess? I've seen a few people use it before, but I've never used it myself.
"Do you at least know how mana works?" Tina asked with a slightly disappointed expression.
"Well, of course, I do. I know how arcane magic works too, but since I don't have a class or ability based on arcane magic, I can't really use it, can I?" Lloyd raised a brow.
"That's where you're wrong, and let explain.
Arcane magic is like any other magic, but it has what we arcane mages call a a neutral property. It can beco a beat of energy if we concentrate it on a single area, or it becos a blanket or bubble that covers us whenever we want to block an attack or contain one, depending on the situation.
Arcane magic is the most malleable form of magic, and despite only arcane mages and artificers using it, if you break it down, it is literally just mana. Every awakened has mana, so why can't you use it?" Tina asked, and once Lloyd processed the question, he could not help but raise a brow.
"We can use things like mana sense and release a magical aura, both of which rely on pure mana. So why shouldn't we be able to use arcane magic? It's clearly not like an elent where so people simply don't have an affinity for so of them." Lloyd asked himself.
"Exactly! It's just that having the ability for it makes it a lot easier to control it and, at the sa ti, makes the spells we use much less mana consuming." Tina smiled widely.
"You've been calling your abilities spells all this ti. I thought that it was just another word for ability, but now I'm a little confused." Lloyd scratched the back of his head.
"Think of spells as the magic version of martial arts techniques. They are ways that you use your abilities to make sub-abilities. Of course, these can vary; for example, you have several shadow abilities that could be considered spells.
All you would need to do is find a way to combine them when you reach the first commandnt and make them into sothing simple like shadow control." Tina explained before continuing.
"Having only arcane magic is both a blessing and a curse. I am one of the most malleable mages. I sotis call myself a 'Jack of all trades, master of none.'
I can manipulate the elental particles to create a spell from any elent that is abundant in the area I am in, but it also makes it so that I'm not specialized in any of them, nor can I use them if the elent isn't abundant in the area.
Lastly, my elental manipulation only extends to basic elents, so I can't use darkness, light, and all their other sub-elents. I can go on and on, but just think of it as only being capable of using the main elents like water, lightning, air, fire, and earth." Tina explained while Lloyd tried his best to absorb to information dumb that she had just laid on him.
Tina and Lloyd continued speaking for a few more hours about the theories of mana. For the final two hours of the session, Tina chose that the best course of action would be to teach him since teaching and training soone to manipulate pure mana is almost the sa as teaching them to manipulate all the elents despite most elents having one key feature that made each and every one of them different.
Water is cool, smooth, and calm, while fire is brash and quick, representing its user's rage.
Wind represents a human's constantly changing emotions, while earth represents a powerful and sturdy mind. Each elent represents the person's state of mind, which ans that as a person becos stronger over ti, they are more likely to represent the characteristics of his elent...
This is why only one question lingered at the back of Lloyd's mind at the end of their conversation...
'Is that why most void walkers go insane? Is it the curse of becoming too strong?'
"Hey! I need you to listen here or all of this will be for nothing." Tina shouted while snapping her fingers in front of Lloyd's face.
2 hours passed in the blink of an eye as Tina tried her best to teach Lloyd how to manipulate pure mana, yet with so many things lingering at the back of Lloyd's mind, it beca nearly impossible for him to concentrate.
"Well, I guess that's the end of our session." Tina sighed as she created a fireball in the palm of her hand and incinerated one of the monsters that remained outside even after the sun had risen.
"Should I start then?" Roderick asked after having appeared out of nowhere.
The group had split up into three different groups. The front group was a few ters in front of both Lloyd and whoever was teaching him at the ti, and the back group stayed a few ters behind the middle group.
This thod was mainly used to accommodate Tina since she didn't feel comfortable speaking around anyone except Rex and Lloyd and since Roderick didn't want to make her feel weird about it.
"Y-Y-Yeah..." Tine stuttered before jumping to the back group where Rex was.
"So... You two have been really hitting it off." Roderick tapped Lloyd's shoulder with his fist while giving him a grin that most n could understand with a single glance.
"No."
"Oh, co on! She's cute. She's a little older than you, but age doesn't matter after age 20 since most people over the second commandnt stay that way until their early hundreds." Roderick shrugged, yet Lloyd still shook his head, yet he had a weirdly warm smile on his face.
"Tina is nice, and she's cute. She had the enthusiasm of a hundred scientists combined, and she is one of the hardest workers I know." Lloyd spoke, making Roderick widen his eyes.
While Roderick knew that there might be a chance that Lloyd might have liked Tina, this was the first ti in the 350 hours of knowing him that Lloyd had truly complinted so much in such a short span of ti.
"Soooo... You like her?" Roderick gave Lloyd the sa grin while poking his elbow into Lloyd's side.
"No, and even if I did, I woudln't go for it." Lloyd sighed.
"Why not?!"
"A girlfriend is a commitnt I am not willing to have right now. I am 16. I have my entire academic life ahead of , and I need to focus. Otherwise, everyone else will suprass ..." Lloyd shrugged.
'Doubt it...' Roderick inwardly thought before sighing a beginning his lesson.
Their lesson felt much longer than it usually did. While Roderick didn't mind teaching Lloyd since it was a way to pass the ti, Lloyd, on the other hand, had too many things on his mind to truly take in anything that Roderick was saying, and they both knew that.
"Do you want to take a break? Your mind seems a little cluttered right now." Roderick comnted with a hint of worry in his voice.
Of course, Roderick still thought that there was a possibility that Lloyd was a Void Walker, yet until that suspicion is proved to be correct, which he hoped would never happen, he wouldn't act upon it in any way, shape, or form.
To Roderick, Lloyd was just as human as everyone else, and that opinion only strengthened over ti as Roderick watched Lloyd work day and night to improve himself and be of worth to the team. How could he not respect Lloyd after seeing that?
"It's nothing... I'm just a little exhausted." Lloyd sighed.
"Don't worry about it. Even I'm tired, so I can only imagine how you feel." Roderick sighed and patted Lloyd's back, yet before he could continue-
"Incoming!" a voice cut through everyone's conversations, causing both the front and back groups to rge into the center, blocking Lloyd from all sides.
*Clang*
A silent gust of wind smashed into Lloyd's face before the sound of two tallic objects clashing entered his ears.
Looking forward, Lloyd saw a talon pushing against Veronica's blade before it was forced away as a gust of wind hit both of the creature's wings.
With her open palm outstretched, Veronica's eyes glowed with a fierce crimson before three words left her mouth.
"Blood Control - Cripple"
The sound of soft flesh tearing from the inside squelched into Lloyd's ear as a shiver went down his spine.
He could see and hear the creature's blood bubble and boil before the pressure from within caused them to explode, and within the blink of an eye, the creature was falling to the ground with blood leaking from its orifices.
*Thud*
"Well... That was brutal." Lloyd chuckled, yet the creatures were clearly not done.
Dozens of piercing blue eyes stared from within the shadows of the forests, and while the rest might not have known how many there were from only glancing at the shadows of the trees, Lloyd saw right through them and widened his eyes.
"There are a few second commandnts. I've never seen or even heard of this monster species, so we don't know what makes the special." Roderick inford.
"Nope... We've seen it before; you just didn't pay attention to it." Lloyd retorted while tapping on his watch and opening a hologram with two drawings of the owl-like creature on it.
The creature was quite large, yet Lloyd knew it could be larger since the size clearly varied from adult to adult to adult within the species.
"The first one we t was around the size of a cow. On the other hand, this one was a little larger, yet for so reason, it was weaker than the last one I saw." Lloyd inford while quickly scanning the page he had created on the creature.
"Its fast and almost completely silent. Its feathers might seem white, but they can beco close to transparent. From what we've seen, they use their talons as their main weapon, but that could change if we fight a few more." Lloyd continued.
"Thanks for the info." Hi thanked before releasing a spiritual aura that Lloyd didn't recognize.
While the color of the aura represented a many things, the color itself was a play on the mind. It didn't really exist, yet because anything with a soul could sense it, the body is tricked into thinking of it as sothing normal eyes could see.
"Orange?" Lloyd muttered.
"The warrior's aura, Battle Intent. You can think of it as a way to show soone's fighting spirit without having to spell it out for them. It can also be used as a weapon, but that's a lesson for another day." Rex patted Lloyd's shoulder.
As Hi's battle intent spread throughout the forest before her, all the owls retaliated, sending out their own killing intents to clash with Hi's aura and push it back.
"Now!" Hi shouted, causing everyone except Lloyd to act on her command.
"I guess we're really doing this, huh..." Lloyd sighed as he slowly sank into his shadow with his eyes flickering violet with an excitent he felt like he hadn't truly felt in a very long ti.
The excitent of a real battle.
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