小嫂子的味道

All the students stood in rows on the concrete floor inside a large, spacious room.

It was much bigger than our classroom—maybe four times bigger. It was open and empty and had no furniture besides the human dummies that took a stance at the far end of the room.

The walls were thick, with layers of concrete and bricks infused with magic to increase their durability and at last, was a metal sheet painted over the bricks that gave them a vague glossy look. The ceiling probably used the same formula as it was similar in look but had flat strips of magic lights that illuminated the whole area.

Right now we, the whole of class 1B, were in a room specifically made to practice magic. This was one of the many rooms which were located in the Mains rather than in Instrs and were similar in design.

These types of rooms were named Bunks and were used to practice spells. The only thing making them different from the training facility was that they were not to be used for a single student but for the whole class at the same time—multiple classes too, if necessary.

That was also one of the reasons why they were built in the Mains and not in the Instrs—to make them easy to access. Since it would\'ve been a pain if the whole class had to walk over to the Instrs every time they had to learn something which required the use of spells—taking into account the distance the two buildings had and the maze of hallways the students had to go through.

To avoid all this, multiple rooms which were durable enough to bear the destructive force of the magic spells were built and named Bunks. As of now, I don\'t know how many Bunks there are, nor do I have the time or will to find out, but the one we were in was named 2C.

And in the group of class B students, I stood in the middle of the last line, watching Ryfin as he explained to us the context of what today\'s class is all about.

Apparently, today was the day when he was going to teach us the first custom magic spell since now everyone in the class was able to use basic elemental magic with the use of a magic circle—except me, of course.

Despite that, it had taken them a whole month and a half to get to this point. I don\'t know if this was due to the difference in skill but I\'d seen some of the class A students use magic circles which looked like custom magic. It might not be irrelevant to say that their class had already gotten over this stage.

But then again, it was our fault to begin with, not the academy\'s. If we learned elemental magic faster he would have waited a month for nothing and had begun teaching us elemental magic.

"Now, now, enough with the explanations. I will now show you the spell you all are going to learn, so watch carefully," said Ryfin as he clapped his hands and gathered the attention of all the students—including those who were talking and ignoring him until now.

He then turned his back to us and faced the human dummies which were kept far away, at the end before the wall. He signaled one of the three workers who stood there with his hand. He went near the dummies, held one with both his hands, and put it forward, at a distance from the others. Then ran back to the side.

Ryfin turned toward us to make sure that all the students were watching. Satisfied, he faced the dummy again and stretched out his right hand, and unfolded his index finger.

What we heard next was not what we expected, as it was the sound of Ryfin reciting an incantation. I\'d say it was a clean one; with short and organized words and it wasn\'t so long either.

"Spark Pulse," he ended with those words.

A line of white and blue broke out from his index finger, it was a beam as thin as a pencil. It was violent, thundering, and loud. The line of electricity went straight and pierced into the chest of the human dummy.

A hole appeared in its chest as the dummy\'s green slimy skin burned with the heat produced by the lightning. Several small branches of thunder parted from the main beam and hit the dummy in multiple spots, leaving behind burned wounds.

Then after a few seconds, it disappeared and Ryfin dropped his hand.

"What you saw just now was a lighting-type custom magic spell. However, it was not that powerful. Can anyone tell why?" he asked as he turned in our direction.

"It\'s obvious. Because it used an incantation and not a magic circle," one of the students from the front row responded.

"Correct. Casting a spell with incantation could be easy but it comes with many cons. First of all, it wastes too much mana. For example, if 10 mana is required to cast a certain spell, an incantation will use up 12 and those 2 will be wasted in the process. Although if the same spell was activated via a magic circle, it will not only not use more than 10 mana, depending upon how good the circle is, it will use that 10 at its fullest. Minimizing the input and maximizing the output."

Ryfin took a good look at the crowd of students. "Didn\'t get it?" he asked as he glanced at the students who were trying to look like they understood everything but, in reality, were clueless.

"Well, it might be easier if I just show you the difference," he said as he turned toward the dummy again—which, by now, had healed itself.

"I\'m going to use the same spell but with a magic circle. Watch closely," he stretched out his right hand in a similar manner; however instead of unfolding his finger, he opened his palm.

I could see his mana materialize in a mist-like form before it turned into a complex mixture of runes and patterns, in short, a magic circle. It was sky blue in color and shone brilliantly.

The next second what he heard was exactly what we had expected. It was a loud, roaring sound of thunder. A bolt of lightning busted out from the magic circle and headed straight for the human dummy.

This bolt was totally unlike the previous one. It was wide and uneven, it looked like those you saw in the sky during a thunderstorm.

The dummy\'s chest split open as the bolt collided with it. Some of the green slimy substance the dummy was made of, dropped on the floor when a big hole, wide enough that you could see through, opened in the dummy\'s upper body—beginning from the neck and ending just before the abdomen.