Anima Academy [Complete]

[Requiem_Jeer]

Anima Academy

Y'all might know me from my previous work, Heroic Chronicles of a Young Man, and this is my original story. Like my last story, there is a significant focus on worldbuilding to make a sensible magic system that produces a sensible world. Also like my last story, it's supposed to be about someone learning to love (again), although in this case it's more of a familial love than a romantic one.

I have a Patreon now, for those who missed it before, and patrons of the five dollar tier or higher get 1 advance chapter. I intend to release a new chapter every Monday (Royal Road posted it early so I'm making it the same everywhere else).

Incidentally, I'm given to understand Royal Road has algorithm-enhanced stuff where putting likes or whatever on my story there will benefit me more than in other places. Please do that.

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"Welcome, class." Casimir said as he walked into one of the many classrooms of the Academy of High Magic. He felt pretty lucky, getting to use one of the original thousand classrooms for his first solo teaching job. The still-living wood grown into the shape of furniture made him remember the wonder he felt when his Master told the story of the school's founding, and the enchantments allowing natural sun and air inside though the woven branches above while protecting against inclement weather made the place outright luxurious as a teaching environment.

Still, he had a speech to get to: "This is Introductory Curse Magic, the first practical magic course in that subject for aspiring wizards." Casimir scanned his students for those who were panicking at his statement. Twenty-two students, so two too many. Staying neutral in tone, he added as if an afterthought: "If you are an aspiring sorcerer, come back in three hours so I can welcome you again." As an assistant professor for that one, but Obidiah is sleeping off a hangover right now so he'll likely pawn the introduction speech onto Casimir anyway. "If you're only here for an academic credit, you're in the wrong room, and I don't know where Olivia has her class, so I can't help you." Both of the students he had pegged as the extras left, plus one more. Ah crap, that meant he had a lost duckling somewhere.

"Moving on, I am Professor Toomes. I'm not as hung up on formality as some professors here, so simply addressing me as 'Professor', 'Mr. Toomes' or any other vaguely respectful moniker will be fine by me." According to his Master, you can tell a lot about a student by how they address you as their teacher, so this way their options were kept open.

"Now, you may or may not have been told that the professors are looking out to pick up personal students among your yearmates, and that's… completely correct." The practice of acquiring personal students is a long and storied tradition in Anima; your Master is like a third parent, and their other personal students are meant to be brothers and sisters, helping each other in all things. "However, I won't be making any decisions on the matter for my own personal students until at least the end of this course, so don't bother asking." Well, adjunct instructors like Casimir were not required to take on such students, but doing so was considered a good step to becoming a full time professor.

Seeing as how Casimir was only doing this as a favor to his Master, and wanted nothing more than to go back to life as an adventurer, it was a tradition he was going to stay well clear of. "Now, we'll begin by going over expectations." The class seemed a bit confused, but this was the kind of thing that killed adventuring teams if skipped, so he'll do it anyway. "First, this may be a basic course on curses, but it is not a basic course on magic."

Casimir started flexing his own mana in demonstration, with space rippling around his hands as the force-aligned mana formed into a basic mana barrier. "You're expected to know the Evoker's Dance mana binding ritual you learned in the basic magic courses, as all conversion lessons will be assuming you start from the force-aligned mana stored by such." His students did seem rather calm at that part, some lingering nervousness but nothing that indicated they were incapable of that feat. Good. "If this inhibits your prowess, you'll need to learn how to adjust the lessons you learn to accommodate, either on your own, from a mentor, or from the advanced mana theory course you may or may not be attending alongside this one."

Suddenly, a disheveled human boy, a little short and scrawny with dirty red hair, stumbled into the classroom, gasping for breath. After a beat, he managed to wheeze out a question: "Is this the curse magic course? With Professor Toomes?" Ah, the lost duckling. Good.

"Sit down." Casimir ordered. Smiling earnestly despite the rude welcome, the duckling sat down at the closest empty desk, right next to Illivere Oathsworn. Casimir was trying not to think too hard on the fact that he was teaching the Archmagus's daughter in one of his classes, even if she was his fifth child.

Mentally referencing his checklist, Casimir continued his expectations speech. "You must be able to cast the five basic spells of wizardry from your previous basic magic courses." He continued. "Detect Magic and Analyze Magic will be extensively used in this course, and Magic Barrier will not be used much at all due to doing nothing to stop curses, but the concepts inherent in all five spells will be used in forming the beginner curses you'll be learning." Casting anything with a target is hopeless without having mastered Move Object or a similar spell, and the principles of Flight were essential for the caster using magic to affect themselves, in particular.

Still, he needs to wrap things up. "The first few weeks are going to be all theory, so if you need some time to brush up on those basics, help each other with that." There. "Any questions? About the class or even curses in general."

As expected, there were several. Old instincts for flattering clients pulled Casimir's attention to the richest students, so he picked out one of the Aviost students in his class, the bird man wearing enough necklaces of gold and pearls to imitate a vest, complementing his white feathers with red accents. Aviost loved jewelry, as a rule, so while seeing that much on one wasn't unusual, gold and pearls were a bit pricier than you usually saw from the ones with 'a bead for every feather'. "Professor Toomes!" He began as Casimir pointed him out.

"Name?" Casimir asked. Theoretically, he was supposed to learn all of their names by having them introduce themselves, but Casimir had already decided to discard that instruction. If he was going to be a teacher, he'll be damned if he remembers the name of a student who does not ask questions.

"I am Ruzum Winddancer." He said, his beak opening at his words and not flapping like a human's would. "Why does this class only cover curses? What about blessings?"

Casimir grinned. The perfect question to start things off. "That's because there's no difference." There were some whispers among the class, but Casimir let it settle in before continuing: "Curse magic, fundamentally, is binding a spell to a soul, allowing it to continue on without the active input of the caster. The most basic curses are generally just some Active Magic that you kind of…" Which metaphor would be best, here? Ah. "Tie into a knot. It'll keep going for a little while, and how well you tie the knot determines how long it lasts until it fades away. The art of curse magic is developing ever more elaborate ways to bind that magic to the target, making it last longer, be more difficult to dispel, and the rest is just expanding your repertoire of curses." And making your curses more efficient and increasing the speed of application, but that's outside the scope of the class.

Casimir used the basic image spell to create the symbol of the Celestial Church. "Colloquially, blessings are curses that are meant to help the target rather than hurt, but that's just propaganda. There's no inherent need for a curse to be negative, and there's no difference, magically, from a beneficial and detrimental effect beyond the normal difference there would be between two different detrimental curses."

"I see." Ruzum said. "Thank you for your insight, Professor Toomes!" He sat back down, his posture still tense in a way that Casimir belatedly realized he was like for the entire class. Kind of high strung, huh?

Who is next? Let's go with one of the elves. "You. Name?" Casimir said, pointing to one of the students who still had their hands up.

"I am Faron Wavecleaver, Sir!" He replied crisply. Military brat? "If that's all curses are, what makes it different from enchantments?" Okay, this one knows just enough to get into trouble. Trying to apply curse principles to an enchantment is usually a recipe for a very expensive explosion spell if you manage to do anything at all.

"From a functional standpoint," Casimir emphasized. "The only difference between an enchantment and a curse is whether you're using it on an object or a living thing." It's why masters of one could quickly pick up some useful stuff from the other… like enchantments that cast curses on those who open the wrong casket. "However, the actual magical techniques involved are very different. It's like…" Hm, perhaps a martial metaphor would suit this one: "Using a stiletto versus using a bow." He slipped his own heavily enchanted stiletto out of his sleeve and formed a force arrow with one of his few mastered Shaping spells for emphasis. "They're both putting pointy things into the other guy, but the methods you use to accomplish this only have a few… points in common." A few students groaned from the pun. "I'll get into more detail in a future class." He added rather than continuing to elaborate. The divisions between magical techniques were always rather arbitrary, so it was not a short explanation.

"Thank you, Sir!" Faron said forcefully, before sitting down and resuming his impeccable posture. Casimir scanned his students for anyone else of similar bearing, but it looked like it was just the two. Usually you see military types in the Shaping Magic courses so they can join the mage-knights, but every wizard needed at least two off-major introductory courses under their belt, so some of them had to pick things other than the classes that helped with mass spellcasting formations, Casimir supposed.

Still, the duckling had his hand up, so Casimir pointed to him. "Name?"

The boy gave an irreverent grin at being called on. "Peter Wood, Teach!" At Casimir's nod of acknowledgement, he continued with his question: "Are we going to learn curse breaking?"

"Yes." Casimir said. "In fact, none of you are going to be casting any curses until I'm satisfied you can break them, first."

There were many groans at that announcement, but Ruzum stood up and admonished his classmates before Casimir could continue. "Don't you see Professor Toomes is only looking after our safety? Magic is dangerous, if you've forgotten!"

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Casimir just didn't want to be the one breaking every single curse they cast while practicing. It was one of the many tips his Master gave Casimir when preparing him for this course. "Yeah, that." Casimir said. "Thank you, Ruzum." When the Aviost sat back down, Casimir elaborated. "All but one of the curses you'll be learning in this class are very basic ones, which are simple to break. A little bit of Negative Magic in the right place and they just unravel." a small number of his students gasped at the mention of Negative Magic.

Casimir glared at those idiot students. "Some of you have had your families hire cursebreakers before, and they may have told you that they weren't using Negative Magic. Chances are, that was a polite lie. The discipline has a really bad reputation, but it's not all soul drinking and death beams." It was really something they should have learned in a previous class, but prejudice is hard to shake sometimes. "Any kind of direct countermagic and many kinds of mana binding rituals are forms of Negative Magic," Specifically, the ones that relied on being in high-mana environments. "and curse breaking is no exception. While there are a few theoretical curses which are designed to remove other curses without using Negative Magic techniques, they were created pretty much just for bragging rights and no one actually uses them." Wizards can get very competitive when it comes to novel uses of magic, and even spells that aren't really useful at all can still get some prestige if it does something neat.

There was only one person left who appeared to have a question. "Name?" He asked as he pointed to the green-haired human girl.

"Ah, my n-name is Hanna, Professor." Ah, the orphan. Brought into the school by Professor Giltblade, her sponsor, her file noted her as having a spirit bloodline, life-aspected. Why Litnah bothered without adopting the girl, Casimir didn't know. Probably some Aviost cultural rule. "I w-was wondering if we'll all be learning the same curses or if we just needed a certain number."

An important consideration for a spirit-blooded, if she struggled to convert her mana type. Usually those types just became sorcerers, but perhaps she wanted more from her magical career than just healing and helping with crops and gardens. "There's a list of twenty useful curses we'll be learning." Casimir replied. "By the midterm, any four will do, but you must be able to cast every single one on demand in order to get full marks in this course. However, there will also be a project at the end for a more advanced curse, which has no limitation on what it could be. I have a list of suggestions, but anything that's a certain level of difficulty will do the job." You could still pass with only being able to cast fifteen of those curses, but good luck getting a Master with only the bare minimum; only about a third of the students get one from the faculty.

Seeing no other questions, Casimir moved on to the final part of the first class. "Okay, so now that there are no more questions, let's move on to the final matter of the first day before we can part ways: The textbook."

Casimir retrieved the stack of hand-sized slim stone slates from his desk, magically moving the ones magically marked with the names he knew to the respective students, while the others floated around the class until each one was taken by the appropriate student. "Take that to the library and they'll loan you a copy of the textbook for the semester. Read the first twenty three pages and we'll discuss them in the next class." The librarians would handle all of the various security measures themselves.

Casimir looked around at his students one more time before leaving the classroom. That went well.

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"So how did the first day go?" said Casimir's Master as she picked him up into a hug. On average, Elves were only about four inches taller than a human, but Gisra Southwind was prodigiously tall even among her own people. Casimir was always quick to point out that five foot nine was the average height among men in Anima, and Anima was somewhat better off mana-wise than most of the humans on Fundament, so he was not short. But next to his six foot ten Master, it rang hollow.

But the matronly elf's affectionate nature blunted any negative feelings on the matter, as Casimir allowed the woman to deposit him on the chair opposite of hers before sitting down, a tea service between them. Her office was also from the original academy structure, the massive tree grown into shape by the founder's immense magic. Her tea table wasn't a part of the room, but instead an intricate bronze piece gifted by Obidaiah, one of her students that was more senior than Casimir was. It was topped with a red silk tablecloth, intricately weaved to act as a teaching aid for a particular spell, although his Master preferred to just use it as a tablecloth as she had little use for giant waves of fire and had the spell recorded on paper anyway. "It went according to plan." Casimir said neutrally. "I'm still not looking for students of my own, by the way." He took one of the teacups and sipped at it. Minty… must be the tea with the traces of mind-aspected mana, Upsi? Something like that.

"I know," Master said, disappointed. "But with…" she paused as Casimir scowled, daring her to say it. "-what happened, the joys of teaching should be just the thing you need to get back on your feet." Casimir drank deeply from the tea, using the mana within to power a minor calming curse on himself. It'll dissipate in a few minutes, but it's enough to help him through the conversation. Mind mana was difficult to convert into when your own thoughts were clouded, which made using it difficult if you didn't have a mind mana binding ritual to keep some handy.

Casimir sighed, allowing the curse to bleed away the dark reminder of why he was here. "I agreed that a year of teaching would be a good way to spend my sabbatical from adventuring, we've discussed this." He was just going a bit stir crazy, spending half of it purely as a lackey to other professors. "Teaching solo certainly seemed better than being an assistant, at least."

"There you go." Master replied, sipping her own tea. "I had to pull some serious strings to get you a class to yourself so soon, you know." Yeah, accepting help from Master Southwind always had some guilt trips attached. "Now, tell me all about your new students."

Ah, maybe he should have actually done the roll call properly.
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[Requiem_Jeer]

Stomp. Swing. Stop. Pump. Punch. Pull. Casimir went through these rote actions step by step, paying the bare minimum of attention as he reached out with his soul and gripped the vibrations of mana each motion generated, pulling it within his soul as force-aspected mana and binding it tightly within his mana heart. Tilt. Turn. Twist. Heave. Hop. Halt.

The Evoker's Dance mana binding ritual was one of the reasons Casimir was a patriot. Anima was the greatest country in the world, and part of that was how despite being situated on the greatest mana well in the world, wrought by will and knowledge from the ocean depths, the most common and first taught mana binding ritual was one that didn't rely on being in a high-mana environment, so their mages could travel the world freely just by hopping on a boat. The borders were open both in theory and in fact.

Strike. Skip. Still. As long as you could move your body, force mana was always easy to generate. More importantly, it was difficult to find a mana type that allowed for a more useful set of basic spells than force magic. Mobility with the Flight spell, offense with Move Object, and defense with Magic Barrier. You could theoretically become an adventurer with just the basics of the basics of magic as taught at the Academy, which was convenient as many poorer students needed to do just that in order to afford further schooling. Flick, Flip, Fall. Kip up, Kick, Kiai.

With his mana heart nearly bursting with strength, Casimir ceased his ritual and used a few motes of it to fetch his waterskin, pouring the refreshingly cooled water all over himself after taking a deep drink.

"Still using the Evoker's Dance?" Master Southwind said as she walked out onto her large balcony, freshly cleaned and in her house robe, watching Casimir as he magically dried himself. "Now that you're back home, I figured you'd use the Breath of the World. It's faster, and I know I told you that you had permission to use any of the mana in the house."

Casimir shrugged. "Habit, I guess." Casimir always felt twitchy for most of the day any time he used a less physically intensive method of binding mana in the morning. Hana explained the issue by saying that anything non-harmful and many harmful things, if repeated enough, could be made into a habit that threw off your soul's equilibrium if you stopped doing it. Casimir frowned as he remembered what happened the last time he spoke to the elf, shortly after the Incident. "How quick would a trip to The Deeps be, you think?"

"Not quick enough." Master replied softly, tracing a curse rune in the air and brushing it onto Casimir's soul from , causing the water to vanish as it was absorbed into the skin. A mere tug of mana unraveled the curse, but his skin was still dry, the puddle underneath him was gone, and Casimir needed to pee. "I'd suggest sending a letter before thinking about a visit to little Hana. See if she ever plans on leaving the ocean ever again first, maybe ask if she managed to get hold of something to replace her legs…" She tilted her head as she reviewed what she just said. "Please let me review whatever you send her, before you send it."

"I know how to be tactful." Casimir protested as he ducked into the restroom. After resolving the immediate issue, he continued: "I figure I'd offer to send her some waterproofed books for her library." The Deeps was a pretty strange place, populated nearly exclusively with introverted druids who use their spirit pacts to be able to survive in the deep ocean. It was a very powerful spirit court, though, so any druids that did act on the surface with their blessing benefited from the advanced spells they provided their vassals. "Just as a peace offering."

Master came down from the stairs, smiling at her student. "That's a wonderful idea. Last time I got to meet your friends, she was rather enamored of my copy of 'On the Formation of Clouds'." She reached out, and in a feat of memory that still baffled Casimir, the correct book flew into her hand from one of the hundreds of bookshelves that covered every possible space in the house. She checked the cover before smiling and holding it out. "You can get it copied into sturdier materials later. Oh, and be sure to read it, so you have something to talk about with her in the letter you'll send."

Casimir took the book and glanced through the spell diagrams within. They appeared to be mostly domain spells, given the notation. A review of the descriptions of each one indicated that they were ways to use a saturation of water mana aboveground and turn it into things like fog, snow, and lightning effects. It didn't have instructions on how to establish or assume control of such a saturation, but Hana probably already has a book about the basics of domain magic. They were all in the back, though, so the book was probably more about the natural magical processes that created clouds. Exactly the kind of book Hana liked. "It does look interesting." Casimir lied. "Thank you, Master."

"It's been nearly a year, Casimir." Master said seriously. She didn't need to specify what she was talking about. Luci… Magnus… "It's the least I could do to help you reconcile with what's left of your team."

…Time to change the subject. "I'll get started on breakfast." Master was a wonderful woman and like a mother to him, but she went a bit too far when it came to accomplishing mundane tasks with magic. Most wizards just learn some active spells instead of shoehorning their specialty into things…

Immediately, Master Southwind jumped onto one of her comfortable chairs and grabbed a book. "This is why you're my favorite student."

"Because I won't let you turn your food into a slurry you have to curse away your sense of taste to eat?" Casimir asked rhetorically. Mind mana was so very versatile… He opened the icebox and started fixing breakfast. Magnus was a fantastic chef, and his enchanted cookware were fantastic tools, held back only by the fact they were made for a Stone-aspected sorcerer, which was not particularly useful for any part of the cooking process, and thus each one had to be enchanted with high-end spells that accepted no other inputs. But Casimir was a wizard, so it was just an inconvenience to convert the mana rather than a problem.

"Because you make me food I can eat while reading." Clarified Master. Dwarven mealbread, coming up.

Now, when Magnus made the traditional dwarven lunch, he took to it in the same way any dwarf would take their craft: By creating the most beautiful thing possible without sacrificing functionality. Casimir didn't have a dwarf's patience, so the flatbread had irregular browning instead of some fancy pattern, as he couldn't for the life of him figure out how that part of the pan's enchantments worked, and the food that it was wrapped around was just put in lengthwise so you got the same flavors in each bite rather than creating 'a culinary journey to enjoy while you're working'. Every time Casimir thought that hairy bastard had run out of original flavor profiles…

…It still hurts. Casimir took the tea set out and started to prepare more of that mind tea. It was good for pain.

"Oh, by the way." Master said, interrupting Casimir's musings. "You know how I said the Headmaster wanted you to do a few jobs for him in return for the solo class?"

"Yeah?" Casimir asked as he placed one of the enchanted plates near her, letting it float in place with the mealbread on top.

Master tapped the plate, seizing control over the enchantment's direction and moving it to a convenient position for her. "There's a club for students who want to become adventurers and he wants you to help out sometimes."

Casimir did not like the sound of that. "How much help?"

"You're not going to be the faculty advisor, if that's what you're asking." Master said in an attempt to give reassurance. "That's going to be Professor Thorne." Casimir didn't recognize that name. "Ah, he teaches Shaping magic."

"Is he at least an adventurer?" Casimir asked.

"...No." Master eventually said. "He was a mage-knight, though, so he's teaching them combat and monster lore."

Damn it. "If that windbag of a Headmaster thinks I'm going to do anything else for him on top of this, he's got another thing coming." Casimir said angrily after swallowing a bite of his breakfast.

"That's more than fair. I'll make sure he gets the message." Master said. "Maybe you'll find a personal student among them."

"Fat chance."

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Professor Thaddeus Thorne was exactly the kind of man one would expect when one hears the words: 'he used to be a mage-knight'. Old enough to have their hair be completely white, but with a health and vitality that could only be kept at such an advanced age because of the fortifying treatments that all members of Anima's military received during their service. He wore his beard long, and was in the impromptu training field stripped to the waist, showing off his scars and weathered but still solid physique.

"So you're the adventurer ol' Gardener's roped into being my assistant?" Thorne sent via a sound spell the moment he noticed Casimir at the far end of the field.

Casimir used the same spell to convey his quiet response. "Yes. I'm elite-ranked, if it helps." The adventurer's guild had five ranks, half for bragging rights and half as a bureaucratic aid. While there were sometimes tasks routine enough that it was just posted for anyone to take at the guild's job board, it was the duty of the guild to assess the jobs properly and offer the task to whichever team was most suited for it. The ranks were novice, standard, veteran, elite, and heroic. "Between us we should be able to get some survival skills in their skulls." Direct combat wasn't exactly Casimir's strong suit, he was more of an ambush guy, but if Thorne was even half as skilled as he looked, they should be able to handle anything that had any realistic chance of showing up.

The knight nodded approvingly. "I heard rumors of an elite-ranked adventurer being added to the staff…"

"That's me." Casimir confirmed. "So when are the students showing up? You've met them already, right?"

"They'll trickle in over the next half hour or so." Thorn said idly. "I usually set them on mana binding until everyone else is here. Gets the heart pumping."

"I suppose I could top off too…" Casimir said before walking to where the knight had left his gear, divesting himself of his own, packing it together in his magic bag, and activating the security enchantments, giving it a stone shell to disguise it as an ordinary rock.

"Isn't leaving your weapons like that against an adventurer rule or something? We're not indoors." Thorne pointed out. He wasn't wrong, the forest near the academy was as artificial as the entire country was, but this particular forest was used as monster hunting grounds, as they matured and reproduced rapidly in the high-mana environment. The grounds right next to it were far from a safe place.

Casimir drew his stiletto from his thigh holster through the slit in his pants. "This weapon?"

The knight leaned away from the pointy bit of metal. "Is that Verenium?" He said, vaguely disgusted.

"Good eye." Casimir complimented. "This one doesn't have any poison, I cleaned it out." That isn't to say that Casimir didn't have several potent varieties on hand ready to soak the blade in, but ignoring the fact that carrying a poisoned knife was against the rules in so many places, it was far more useful for the magic-absorbing properties, augmenting itself with whatever mana was fed into it or that it was stabbed into. Excellent for penetrating the hides of monsters with powerful mana cultivation or shaped armor before channeling a nasty curse, bypassing the magical parts of those defenses. "Best knife a wizard could ask for, really." Sheathing the stiletto, Casimir patted his other thigh. "I have some throwing knives too. The basics never become useless." Well, Casimir usually used Propel, which is spellweaving, rather than the simpler Move Object when throwing his knives, like he did early in his career, but it's basic spellweaving so it counts.

"Too true." Thorne said, seeming pleased. "I think the kids will be in good hands… and you'll be there too." Casimir snorted as he started to bind the mana he had lost on one thing or another throughout the day. Lesson one for an adventuring wizard: Bind mana at every opportunity.

"I'll admit to having gotten a little lazy with my adventuring habits since I started teaching." Casimir said as the first student passed through the gate that protected the Academy from any spontaneous monster attacks. "So keep the snark to a minimum in front of the students, yeah?"

"No promises." The old knight replied, but with a smile. He's probably trained recruits before, so he should know the drill. Heh, drill.

The first student to show up was, surprisingly, Peter the lost duckling. "Teach?"

"Mr. Wood." Casimir said in greeting. "Just bind mana until everyone else shows up."

"I did that before I came." Peter replied. "Should I not have?"

Casimir stared at the student in confusion. Why would being full stop him… Oh, right. He doesn't know anything. "Alright, I'll have to teach you a little magical exercise then." Okay, his level of excitement at that statement was way too high. "First, let me…" Casimir looked around, saw a decently sized rock, and reached out with his soul to weave force mana around it, building up the power until it hit the critical point, impacting on the mana barrier Casimir erected to catch it with a thought.

"Wow!" Peter exclaimed. "That was so cool, are you going to teach that in class?"

Really? "Of course not. Propel is spellweaving, I'm teaching curses. Are you taking basic spellweaving?"

"...I thought you were a curse wizard." Peter replied.

"I don't know what kind of crappy wizards you've met before, " Casimir said, honestly offended. "But any wizard worth the name can cast at least a few spells from most methodologies, not just their specialty and a smattering of active spells. Multidisciplinary casting is not just for Archmages. I can cast three spellweaves at combat proficiency, personally." Well, come to think of it, he used Flame Stream often enough during adventures that maybe he should consider learning how to weave it into a Fireball. Why didn't he do that… oh. Right. Luci usually handled the big burn jobs. Light mana, especially when used via her divine pact, caused a lot less collateral damage.

Thorne barked out a laugh. "Okay, I believe you now on the elite-ranked thing." And the very expensive knife didn't? Some people…

"Okay, so the actual thing I was going to teach you." Casimir said, forcibly ending that tangent. "Will be to refine your usage of Move Object, and if you do it right, Domain and Negative magic will be easier to learn. First…" Casimir tapped the rock repeatedly, converting some stone aspected mana and using it to cut the rock cleanly down the middle. He repeated the technique until there were thirty-two pieces of rock. "Okay, the ideal form of this exercise is to use the Evoker's dance, and instead of taking the mana generation from your motions, you instead shove it into an active spell matrix you're holding together and move the pieces of this rock, without your mana well depleting at all. Do you understand?"

Peter seemed to have gotten lost somewhere, but he slowly nodded. "I think so, Teach. But… how?"

"One step at a time." Casimir replied. "First, watch me do the whole thing." Throw. Thrust. Throttle. At the third step, where the mana was gathered, all thirty-two pieces of rock shot upwards into the air. Quickly transitioning into one of the dozens of forms of the dance, the rocks started to orbit around Casimir, and with each iteration, the dance of the rocks became more and more complex.

"Monster." Thorne said idly, looking towards the trees.

Taking a glance himself while continuing the exercise, it appeared to be a Titan's Deer, so named due to their immense jumping and stomping ability rather than their large but not particularly impressive size. It must have sniffed the force magic going around and thought it might be a potential mate showing off. "I got it." Casimir said, launching the stones at the deer. As expected, it jumped away from the scattered warning shots.

Casimir looked back at Peter, only to notice that the number of students waiting around had risen to five. "...and that's how that exercise looks when you master it." Casimir said after a pause to register the new people. "Hey Thorne, is this all of them?"

"Not yet. We're only dealing with the new members today, there should be four more." Replied the knight.

Casimir repeated the steps he used to get the first set of rocks, although the rock he found was smaller so he only split it into sixteen pieces. "When you learned the Move Object spell in the first place, you learned it one thing at a time. First you learned how to generate the force mana, how to bind it, and only then did you learn how to impart that mana into the rock in a coherent way. You learned how to lift it, launch it, curve it, each one step at a time. This exercise is no different." Casimir paused to assess the adventurer trainees. They seemed to be following him, good. "First, you must learn how to use magic while vigorously moving, period. Each of you will take three stones, and then you will start dancing, either the binding ritual or something else, I don't care. While you are doing that, you will rotate the rock around you. Once you have accomplished a steady rotation while dancing, we will move on to the next step. We'll keep going for a few minutes after everyone's here, so you all know what to do, then we'll do whatever Thorne had planned."

An elven student that Casimir didn't recognize raised her hand: "What's the point of this?"

Thorne decided to field that question, stepping in front of Casimir to take charge of the situation. "He's teaching you combat casting! Few monsters will let you focus and take your time with your spells, so learning to overcome that weakness is crucial for an adventuring mage!" He turned to Casimir. "Good work, boy. I was going to have them do something similar, so I'll be sure to tell the Headmaster that I'll be keeping you on for this."

At least the favor won't be anything he hasn't done before. David needed a lot of practical teaching before he was able to protect his sister like he wanted to… Not like it mattered, in the end.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

As it turned out, several of the new members of the adventurer's club were students in his solo class. Four of the nine, to be precise: There was Peter, the infuriatingly earnest kid, as well as Illivere, the stoic girl with the very important father. In addition to them, the wannabe Knight, Faron, was in the group, and finally there was Professor Giltblade's spirit-blooded ward, Hanna.

Professor Thorne took charge after the students managed to absorb enough of the training exercise to continue on their own time. "So you brats want to become adventurers, huh?" He began, hardening his voice. "It's hard, and involves learning many skills that don't have anything to do with magic at all. This is in addition to your no doubt rigorous course loads, but adventuring is a dangerous profession." He took the time to stare at each person in the eye. "You may be wondering why I called you newbies here without any of the more experienced members, and that is because much like real adventurers, you are expected to learn together and group up with your peers, covering each other's weaknesses and coordinating your strengths." He paused to look over the students.

Seeing that no questions seemed to be forthcoming, Thorne moved on. "In the army, we referred to adventuring teams as irregular forces, with various subcategories. This is to distinguish them from regular forces, which are trained to more or less the same standard. If you have a soldier in your army, you know about how they'll fight, with the only question being that of veterancy, and armies are organized to make it easier on the strategists to know which forces are how strong. Adventurers, on the other hand, have no coherent strategy, skillset, or composition in common."

Casimir found his attention wandering as the military man continued to wax poetic about adventuring teams, while giving them absolutely nothing useful when it came to actually becoming one. Still, he might as well make himself useful.

As was natural, his attention was drawn to the four students he knew first, as he evaluated them as a team. Faron was a strong-looking elf, darker skin than most elves that Casimir had seen, more like that bitter cocoa drink they favored rather than the more tea-colored he was used to. He was otherwise pretty normal-looking, brown hair and green eyes, normal elf colors. But he was big, so if he was intending to fight like a mage-knight instead of just emulating their behavior, with weapons and armor created, empowered, and manipulated via shaping magic, that would make him a fantastic vanguard for pretty much any team. Assuming Hanna was willing to lean into her bloodline, made obvious with her forest green hair, vividly healthy olive-colored skin, and bright green eyes, she'd be a superb healer, and doing that while still learning other kinds of spells… It would really depend on what kind of wizard she wanted to be, really. Illivere… The Archmagus was kind of notorious as a spirit-fetishist, siring all of his children with spirits rather than taking a proper wife, so she presumably had a strong bloodline as a first-generation spirit blooded, but what was her mana aspect? White hair, pale skin, and purple eyes didn't exactly scream a mana type like Hanna's does. But then again, Casimir wasn't an expert on spirit-blooded aspects.

Was Thorne still yammering? "...particularly useful in rough terrain…" Yeah, he was. Casimir focused his attention on the stoic girl, attempting to analyze her soul's mana. Whatever it was, she had tight control over every mote of mana, or there was an enchantment occluding his senses. She must have some protection imbued into that circlet she's wearing. Normally, a novice wizard wouldn't be able to control the natural leakage of mana that escapes every mana heart or is emitted by those with aspected souls, like spirit-blooded. That must be a high-quality concealment enchantment, much better than the one Casimir had in his choker to help him sneak up on mana-sensing monsters.

Moving on from the enigma, Peter seemed… thoroughly incompetent. However, he seems equally pliable and didn't waver once when it came to putting in the work, so he could be molded into whatever his team ends up needing. He was on the scrawny side, his general scruffiness probably meant he didn't have a family library with secret lore or powerful heirlooms, and his red hair, freckled pale skin, and brown eyes were thoroughly ordinary, so probably nothing special bloodline wise in either sense of the term.

The rest… Casimir knew basically nothing about. Two girls three boys, a dwarf, two humans, an aviost, and a second elf. The lack of information, if there was the intention to form them into groups, was unacceptable.

Thorne was still talking? What could he be talking about? "...kind of like an artillery formation run by a drunk wizard, now that I think about it."

This can't go on. "Alright, I think they get the picture." Casimir said, interrupting the old knight's attempt to talk about adventurers. After waiting a moment for the glazed over eyes to refocus, he began his own talk: "Now, while I'm tempted to arrange y'all in three man squads to organize things, three man adventuring teams generally aren't that common. You usually see teams in the four or five man range. The ones I have seen usually got that way because there was a casualty, and they preferred to adapt rather than recruit a replacement." The students seemed nervous at the reminder of how dangerous adventuring was, but they should be.

"First, I'm going to need to know what y'all can do." How the hell should he do this? What's relevant? Idea. "I'm going to introduce myself, and y'all should provide the same kind of information, okay?" The students seemed vaguely approving of the idea.

Okay, first things first: appearance. He propelled the rock that was hiding his stuff, splitting it before putting on his cloak, finishing off by striking a pose: "My name is Casimir Toomes. I am a curse wizard that prefers ambush tactics. I am proficient in dealing with material hazards, " Which is an adventurer euphemism for traps… which is something they don't know. "Traps, I mean. I'm experienced with disarming traps, picking locks, things like that. Useful when dealing with the intelligent kind of monster." Like liches, or cults, or dragons. "I am comfortable at all ranges, and prefer a skirmisher role in battle. I do not have an inherent mana attunement. I struggle with fighting large groups or swarms." Was that everything? Well, it'll have to do.

Looking back at the students, Casimir smiled. "Okay, now it's your turn."

--------------------------

Casimir, now fully equipped once more, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Okay, so we've got some holes here." Faron was literally the only one of the group that was comfortable at close range. Well, there had to be an amendment to the procedure, they instead mentioned how they wanted to develop their skills rather than the current state of them.

"So the count is six wizards, two sorcerers, and a shaman." Casimir said. "Okay, I knew this one shaman back when I first started that found spirits that were willing to fight physically as part of the spirit pact. He had a team of four spirits that acted as his group's vanguard, collectively." The Aviost shaman seemed rather intrigued at the possibility.

"Teach!" Peter said. "What's a shaman?"

Casimir stared at the boy. "Okay, brief summary of spirit magic: Spirits can grant spells to people by bonding with their soul. This bond draws energy from the spirit mage, allowing the spirit to sup on that person's mana over time. In return, the spirit provides their contractors with spell matrixes, handling the actually difficult parts of casting in the spirit mage's place. Just provide mana and direction, the spirit handles the rest." On review, some of the other students seemed to appreciate the explanation as well. "Spirit magic generally comes in three flavors, depending on the type of agreements made. A shaman contracts with any spirit they can convince, but avoid ones that demand they contract with no other spirit. A druid contracts with a group of spirits, referred to as spirit courts. Usually they're associated with a particular location, and demand that they form no pacts with spirits outside of their group. Finally, a priest contracts with a single, usually powerful, spirit that they support exclusively." Hm. Casimir probably shouldn't be encouraging his students to offend priests… "They get really irritated when you call their magic spirit magic, though, pointing to the various nuances divine magic has that other kinds of spirit magic doesn't have, but the only reason priests of less powerful spirits are called warlocks instead of priests is because of the politics of the whole thing." Wait, that probably wasn't very discouraging. "Don't go around pissing off the priests. It's not worth it." There. Life lessons passed on. The funniest thing about the whole process is that the gods don't even get mad if you acknowledge the commonalities. Luci's insight into the nature of the divine pact…

Moving on. "Okay, so I can probably get a letter to Gareth asking for tips about how you can find those kinds of spirits, so we have two vanguards… sort of." Casimir used gestures to split the two vanguards from the group into two separate spots. "Life aspected mana can't reliably heal spirits, so Hanna, you're with Faron." The girl jumped a bit as getting singled out, but quickly shuffled over to the elf's side. "We have two aspiring enchanters, so Illivere, Foros, you two get split up."

The two wizards looked at each other, but rather than discussing things Illivere walked towards Faron's group after seeing the indecision on the elf's face.

"Any particular reason you picked that group?" Casimir asked. She was so hard to read…

The white-haired girl coolly met Casimir's eyes. "Healer and knight is a time-tested combination. The superior option was obvious in comparison to the legion of maybes." Yeah, that was definitely a line of logic that someone mainlining mind mana would use. But it's her bloodline, so he couldn't exactly tell her to stop.

"Right. Domain magic can work wonders with spirit allies, so Durna, you're with Hashi and Foros." Really, all Casimir was doing was trying to remember the compositions of veteran and elite-ranked teams and trying to figure out where the synergies were. "So we have the twin lightning sorcerers and the curse wizard. While normally I'd insist that overlapping specialties separate… You two are family and keeping those together is wise. Also, I happen to know that cooperative lightning magic can get crazy, so good job on picking that specialty." Casimir doesn't really work much with lightning mana, but there was this one pair of Aviost… "Hey Thorne, do you work with lightning mana? I don't." Sure, he could probably improvise a few curses with it if he had some on hand, but only simple stuff that didn't need much accounting for the mana type.

"Lightning mana doesn't shape well." Thorne contributed. "It's wild and doesn't take to being controlled. Like water mana, you have to… lead it, making a path it wants to follow instead of pushing it." To demonstrate, he shaped metal mana to materialize a sword and then made the edge glow and spark. "Two-part shapings with metal are the most stable, and even then it's a struggle to hold it back so it doesn't discharge the whole spell the first time you actually cut someone." He tilted his head, before flashing a grin. "Of course, when it comes to single-strike offense with shaping magic, accept no substitutes." He converted the spell-blade into wind mana and let it disperse, an advanced trick that the mage-knights use because it's easier than learning enough negative magic to reclaim it.

"Also, I'm going to have to do some research on making them proper sorcerers." Casimir added. "Currently, they're just stubborn wizards." Some particularly arrogant wizards deride sorcerers for the lack of precision and versatility they have by only learning how to use a single mana type, but that limitation allows them to gain a rather large advantage in raw power, by attuning their soul to automatically convert and generate that kind of mana like a spirit-blooded does.

Thorne frowned. "You don't know how that happens? We just need to find a lightning spirit willing to make a deal."

"Not in Anima we don't." Casimir retorted. Needing a spirit to do magic for you? In the most magically advanced nation in the known world? Nonsense. "That's just not a curse you use without triple-checking your work." Well, you could, but then the resulting sorcerer had a pretty high chance of coming out weaker than you intended, or just reject the curse and end up severely damaging themselves from resisting it. Given that the amount of mana used in that curse could generally kill someone ten times over if you turned it to more conventional offensive magic, survival would be a lucky outcome for such an event. "I said I don't usually work with lightning mana, didn't I? I'll need to read up on it."

"Have you made a sorcerer before?" Thorne asked, looking skeptical. "You're like, what, thirty?"

Casimir crossed his arms in annoyance. "Yes, I've done it before. No one gets past Standard rank without magic, " Although there were plenty of ways to use magic without needing much education, they were just inferior to the refined expertise of wizardry. "...so I had to teach our staff fighter enough force magic to keep up with the rest of us." Why David never just contracted with a church like his sister did never made much sense, but even neophyte sorcerers can apply large amounts of power to the simple spells, and it didn't get much simpler than Wallop. "It's a complicated bit of magic but it's not like I'm innovating anything." Come to think of it, how would one use lightning mana to create one of his… specialty curses? Well, that's one way to learn a mana type.

"Well, that'll simplify things, if you can do it." Thorne said, before clapping to seize the attention of the students. "I'm standing by Casimir's assignments, and seeing as how lightning sorcerers would be excellent at ending a fight quickly, Peter gets put with the mage-knight and spellweaver. That puts you as a solid assault team, while the other team is more of an artillery team."

Casimir considered trying to persuade the man otherwise. For a military irregular unit, having a defined role was good. For an adventuring team, on the other hand, it was less useful. No one can handle all challenges, and having the curse wizard added to the team that can already handle large crowds would be better when they ran into powerful monsters that curses were more effective against, while giving the team that had an effective front line the ones that could deal serious damage against all targets but were weak defensively would allow for them to take on a wider variety of jobs.

But then Thorne shot him a glare, and it was understood that his words were final. Besides, the current setup wasn't necessarily final, and while ideally they would stay together for years to come, it was not required. Further, until Hashi actually contracted with spirits willing to travel along and fight personally instead of the mud and dirt spirits he currently had helping him out, his more terrain-oriented toolkit was quite suited to setting up targets for a pair of sorcerers who may not be capable at aiming their spells precisely yet.

"We'll spend another half hour on the combat casting exercise." Declared Thorne. "After that, we'll call it early and let you kids get to know each other better. Once I'm sure you can fight without doing the monster's job for them, we'll get some over here for you guys to fight." He turned to Casimir. "You can handle that part, right?"

"Easy." Casimir replied. "A mind curse to lure them over, and however many debilitating ones needed to lower the difficulty enough for the kids." There were some dangerous monsters in that forest, but nothing he couldn't hex down to size.

---------------

"Hey, teach." Peter said as Casimir was packing up his teaching materials for the day's lesson. Illivere, Hanna, and Faron were behind him, idling until he had finished his question, as the group always left together since they were put in a team last week. "We were talking about adventurers, and we realized something: elite-ranked adventurers usually have a fancy title, right? Do you have one?"

Casimir grinned. "I do, in fact." It was a bit grim, but it was fairly earned.

After a moment, Peter tried again. "What is it?"

"I don't see how that's any of your business. I'm on sabbatical, you know." Casimir replied. "If I told you, you might do something untoward, like claim that you've been trained by me." Peter flushed with anger at the strategic insult. "Now, maybe I could tell you…" Peter's anger vanished into the ether as he perked up at such a simple thing. "...but only if your group became something I wouldn't be ashamed to call an adventuring team."

"We're like that now!" Peter insisted. After only a week? Please. "Test us, teach! We'll impress you, I know it."

Casimir glanced again at the other members of the team. They were definitely paying attention, and seemed pretty resolved. "...Do you agree with him? All of you?"

All three, even Illivere, nodded at the question. "Progress has been rapid, Mr. Toomes. An assessment will allow us to see whether our efforts have borne fruit." …Huh. That was surprisingly brief, for an argument from Illivere.

Standing up from his desk, Casimir started to walk out, gesturing for the students to follow him. "I've seen this before." He said gravely. He just hoped his amused smile didn't show in his voice. "Fortunately, there's an old adventurer's remedy for this kind of thing."

"Remedy?" Peter asked, worried as the group followed him to the forest gate. "What's the problem we need a remedy for?"

Casimir remained silent as Peter continually requested that he clarify his ominous statement, and when they had finally crossed the forest gate, Casimir turned to face them, face in a furious expression, arms tensed and loaded, legs spread and bent, every inch of him radiating threat.

To their credit, they actually assembled into a formation, Faron in front, Peter at his left, Illivere at his right, and Hanna in the back. Maybe they're not hopeless. Casimir relaxed, and finally answered.

"As the expert here, I can only prescribe one remedy for this amount of ego: One asskicking. The treatment will begin immediately." He gestured cockily at them: "Show me what you're made of!"

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Some adventurers tended to mock Casimir when he insisted on referring to beneficial curse magic as such instead of saying less accurate but more informative things like blessings, wards, or buffs. One of the reasons he did so was to remind himself of the core legends of his discipline: curses didn't just… go away when they were well made. They could be cast but lay dormant for years until the proper trigger was provided, from a set of words, being splashed with water, or even touching something owned by the caster. With a bit of mind mana incorporated into the curse, it could be anything the target could conceive of, with their realization of the trigger being what actually triggered it.

As such, he didn't even need to do more than will it for the spells he had long ago stitched onto his soul to activate, allowing them to drink from the mana within his mana heart to invoke their effects. His body warmed as his blood flowed faster, his lungs took in more air, his movements sped up, the world around him slowed down, and his movements rippled with force. He wouldn't call himself elite-ranked in physical combat alone, but he got by.

It was probably overkill… but they might have something up their sleeve. It's safer for them for Casimir to not have to worry about his own safety in the battle.

Faron proved that he wasn't entirely stupid by proving that he could cast the basics of his discipline, shaping a Force Blade and Barrier Shield before charging forward, using Fly to close the distance quickly with a shield bash.

Still, a fist empowered with a Wallop spell shattered the construct and allowed Casimir to grab the hand that still held the sword, gripping it to cause the wannabe knight to drop the blade. With contact severed combined with the two shocks to his concentration, the blade dissipated with a pop. "Your spellblade was still unstable." Casimir criticized as he spun around and flung the boy towards his teammates. "It didn't even hit the ground before it lost coherence."

Casimir plucked from the air the training knives the other members of the team had used Move Object on, leaning out of the way of the one Hanna used Propel with as a finishing blow. "Going straight for the kill. Wise." He commented, testing the edges of the blades to confirm their dullness. "Try again." He got into a combat stance with the knives, twirling them around his fingers before settling just for fun.

Illivere brought out an iron-capped staff from her magical bag, it was definitely enchanted, but not by her, too professional. Peter had more knives, but instead of wielding it completely telekinetically, he instead synchronized it to his physical movements and had four of them surrounding each fist. Faron shaped a new force blade and took a more maneuverable stance before Hanna propelled a sling bullet, the signal for the rest of them to charge while Casimir moved his knives to block the projectile.

Four seconds of frantic action later, Casimir was balancing one of the knives on his finger while sitting on the groaning pile of his students. "In order: having a Wallop enchantment on the iron caps of your staff doesn't do much if your enemy knows not to touch the metal part and is skilled enough to follow through with that knowledge, the knife-fist trick looks cool and helps you block and deal damage, but not hit your opponent, and Faron, you would have been more effective if you instead formed only your shield and worked to distract me so your allies could get hits in." He let that sink in for a moment. "They still wouldn't have scored a hit, mind you, but it would have been smarter."

Hanna kneeled next to the pile and started focusing on mending the team's wounds. "How was our performance, Mr. Toomes?" Illivere said, unbothered by her position at the bottom of the pile despite the wheezing tone her voice took on from it.

Casimir stood up, pulled Faron off the pile and let him drop back onto the ground. "Y'all planned for me to fight you." He observed.

"We reasoned that it would be a likely method of testing us." Illivere said demurely.

Hm. Yeah, it was pretty predictable, wasn't it? "Well, you did okay." He eventually said. "Not great, but it was good progress seeing as how half of you are still doing bookwork for your specialties." Spellweaving and shaping studies went into practical application pretty much immediately, but enchanting and curse magic required targets, so a more thorough understanding was preferred before they got started on those.

"So do we get to hear your awesome title then?" Peter asked, hopefully.

"Hmmm… nah." Casimir replied, which was met with groans from the group. "Once you guys can land a single hit or force me to use a proper spell, then I'll tell you." It'll give them a clear goal to work on. Motivation is a precious resource when you're still weak, after all. Wait… he used Wallop earlier. Eh, they probably didn't notice. Besides, calling Wallop a proper spell was like calling walking a martial technique. Toddlers could pull it off if they were spirit-blooded.

"So, I have to help teach the class of sorcerers soon, so I'm going to get going. Just keep up the exercises and when you think you've gotten strong enough to impress me, we'll do this again." Kicking student asses, that is.

"We'll beat you, Teach!" Peter said, still as determined as before his asskicking. "Just you wait!" Faron said something loudly in Elvish to agree with the sentiment. Illivere stood with them with a calculative expression, but her proximity was a statement of its own. Hanna was standing beside them instead of hiding behind Faron, so it looked like they were in agreement in this.

Casimir gave them his most sadistic grin. "We'll see."

----------------

It was the start of the third week of classes, and Casimir gets to talk about one of the most exciting parts of being with other wizards: debating spell choices. "Today, class, we will be learning about one of the fundamental limits on curse magic: Inherent Magical Resistance." Casimir said, revealing his pre-prepared soul diagram. "Who can tell me what that is?"

As usual, three people raised their hands: Illivere, Ruzum, and the dwarf in the back that carries twice as many books around as everyone else does. "Horace." Casimir said to call on him.

The dwarf stood up, stroking his coal-black beard. "It's a soul's resistance to binding curses and certain other kinds of magic into it. Resistance varies based on how dangerous a curse is, which is why directly lethal curses aren't particularly useful."

"Correct." Casimir said. "To be more specific, let's use an example of a life curse that stops someone's heart." He sketched out the spell matrix to the side of the soul diagram. "If you actually used it, it would be fought with everything the soul had, which would have one of two results: Either they fail and collapse, dying swiftly from the stopped heart, or, more commonly, they break the spell, stumbling a bit from the interruption of their heart's normal pace, and with some chest pain, but in the end that's all you've accomplished." Noticing someone with a question, he pointed to the student. Hey, he never asked one before, neat. "Name?"

The boy hesitated. "Ah, I'm Steven Cooper, Professor. It seems to me that interrupting someone's heart would be pretty useful even if it doesn't stop it."

"Correct." Casimir said. "However, using lethal curses that the target takes damage to shake off is generally a pretty mana intensive way of fighting and there are much easier methods. Now, there are advantages; if you wanted to, for example, harvest a particular body part of a monster you overpower significantly, you could just keep casting lethal curses that target a completely different but essential part of the body, until they keel over, giving you a low-risk way of ensuring that it's in the best possible condition." By now, the class had learned that Casimir usually used monster hunting as his go-to when giving examples. "Incidentally, the name of this curse-" Casimir taps the spell matrix he sketched on the board. "-is actually Heart Tremor, to reflect the fact that it almost never kills the target, which is what it's theoretically designed to do." He erased the diagram.

"The usual method of managing this, with debilitating curses, is to deliberately constrain the curse into being something that impedes the target but without being directly lethal." He drew a similar but different spell matrix. "This variant of Heart Tremor instead restrains a heart, ensuring that it remains at a steady, even pulse. When the target is just sitting there, this does nothing at all, and is actually a bit relaxing." Which made it fantastic as an aid to an ambush, as it could be cast on mana-blind beings without them noticing anything amiss. There weren't a whole lot of those among monsters you usually send elite-ranked adventurers at, though, so he's had to pivot to more overt curses since his last promotion. "But when they start getting excited, scared, start fighting? They'll find themselves light-headed, their muscles will tire at a greater rate, and eventually the curse becomes dangerous enough for their soul to fight it off, causing the Heart Tremor effect." He erased the curse again.

"These two curses use approximately the same amount of base mana, but while the first tremor is more potent than the second, the difference isn't that big." He wrote some mana equations on the board, the ones from the textbook about how to calculate the strength of a resistance reaction, before circling the part related to the mana drain of the curse's normal effect. "While the damage from a resistance reaction is nice, your curses will always be more effective if they work as designed instead of relying on the damage from the reactions." Well, assuming you had a good selection of combat curses and used appropriate ones, but this was a class for wizards; that was a given.

"One of the more fascinating parts about inherent resistance reactions, in my opinion;" Casimir continued, "-is that the soul's ability to detect the lethality of a curse declines if you use more roundabout methods. Roughly, the more complex the curse is, the further it can go before the reaction occurs. For example, let's go back to the heart-stopping curse." He sketched out a larger and more complicated spell matrix. "Can anyone here identify the type of mana I'm using here?" Their ability to read curse diagrams was still pretty limited, but they've been working on it for two weeks, so they should be able to tell this much. He used Magnify to increase the apparent size of the chalk sketch, the active light spell being quite useful in scouting.

A few hands up, good. "Illivere." Casimir said, pointing at the white-haired girl.

Illivere's reply was emotionless and without inflection. "Water, Mr. Toomes."

"Correct." Casimir said. "This is called the Blood Thickening curse. It also increases stress on the heart, and produces the same rough effects as the Steady Heart curse in similar circumstances. But it's less subtle, as even when calm a vigilant target can notice something amiss. This means it's easier to detect and break with active curse resistance techniques, which are usually just willing an inherent resistance reaction to happen and focusing their own mana to reinforce whatever area the reaction would damage." Really, the spell had many downsides, which was why Casimir usually didn't cast it. "However, a proper inherent resistance reaction occurs after a greater degree of impediment, and the reaction's damage will usually create a larger health problem than skipping a beat or two of the heart."

Well, time to move on from this tangent. "Now, this is not a combat curse class, so clearly these examples may not be suitable for all of your future careers. But inherent curse resistance also applies to more beneficial curses, in particular ones that are meant to cause a permanent change. Regeneration, for example." The simplest method of healing exceptionally grievous wounds was using curse magic to slowly correct the damage over weeks or months. There were some ritual spellweaves that could do it over seconds, but those required… a lot of mana. Also, there were… ways to prevent both of those spells from working properly.

Will Hana reply to the letter, or feed it to a shark? Wait, what was happening? Oh, Hanna has a question. "Yes, Hanna?" Casimir asked.

"Um… the textbook said something about spirit-blooded people being un-unusual with inherent resistance?" Hanna said, softly and unsure.

"Ah, right. Knew I was forgetting something." Casimir said, pretending his distraction didn't happen. "Because spirits, and by extension spirit-blooded, have aspected mana composing their souls, although spirit-blooded have only a portion of their souls like this by default, they have a unique relationship with hostile mana effects." Should he draw the chart? …nah. "The specifics of mana interactions is beyond the scope of this course, so we'll leave it at 'spirits are harder to curse' for now." If you knew what you were doing, you could do some interesting things to a spirit, but as they lacked things like normal organs and muscles, you needed to use specific kinds of curses to affect them, and depending on what you wanted to do, you had to change what mana type you were using to either oppose or complement the spirit's own nature. "Fortunately, one of the primary differences between monsters and spirits is that monsters have proper physical bodies that can be disrupted like an animal or person's system. Just don't try and curse spirits until you know what you're doing."

Peter raised his hand. What now? Casimir pointed to him. "Teach, what was the nastiest spirit you've cursed?"

He should really stop humoring these off-topic questions. But then again… "Definitely the rockslide spirit. Dual-aspect spirits can be harder or easier to curse than single-aspect types, depending on how synergistic they are. Force and Stone mana are not terribly synergistic, as it turns out. A bone-weakening curse twisted to use stone mana combined with an inverted strength-increasing force curse caused him to break apart every single stone he was controlling into dust. We dealt with him before he was able to shake off the curses." Normally that combination wasn't quite so dramatic, as it was hard as hell to get the bone-weakening curse to properly settle in, and both get shaken off at the first broken bone… "That's an example of using curses effectively to get around inherent magic resistance, by the way. The magic that spirits, and true sorcerers, use can be treated as an extension of themselves, in some ways. Curses can affect their spells in ways that just don't work with other kinds of mages, due to the separation of soul and the mana heart." He clapped his hands. "And once again, the complexities of curse magic and spirits is beyond the scope of this class."

Where was he? Explanation, example, why studying it is important… Oh right. "Now, all curses have the potential of being fought off by an inherent resistance reaction, if you cast them poorly. If the spell is beneficial, this means you not only waste mana, but also hurt your ally." As it turns out, shoving mana into people's souls is dangerous! Who knew? Not as dangerous as proper offensive magic, mind you, but dangerous nonetheless."So we're going to spend the rest of class going over how to calculate how dangerous a resistance reaction would be, going over each of the curses you're going to be learning with those equations, and discussing why the answers differ for each one."

Most wizards could talk about their discipline for hours. Teaching was really just putting that boast to the test, and Casimir was happy to say that he had passed it with flying colors.

-----------------

Most of the time, teaching was 'okay' to 'kind of nice'. But at others…

"I cannot read this bastard's handwriting." Casimir groaned, slumping over the pile of papers. "His beautiful, absolutely incomprehensible handwriting." Fucking Horace…

Master lifted up his head and snapped up the paper. "Hm… yeah, dwarves can get pretty elaborate with their calligraphy." She agreed. "He's using dwarven symbology in his equations, though, so that's probably most of the problem. I'll grade this one, and you can read one of my books on the subject for later." She took a moment to scan her shelves. "Did I put that under art or language…" Eventually, she gestured and a thick, intricately decorated tome flew out of a shelf and into her hand. "It was in the language section." She said, nodding to herself.

It would be pretty easy to spot a book written by dwarves, wouldn't it? "I'll make a note for him to use the symbols taught in class, and to tone down the flourishes. Magnus got offended, but he always listened when I argued that he was compromising function." Just because dwarves preferred to blend form and function in their crafts… doesn't mean they always struck the correct balance.

…Casimir grabbed his Upsi tea and drank it.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

The Adventurer's guild building in the city of Academia was on the small side, but that was true for most of Anima. There just wasn't much adventure on the island nation, so most members quickly found themselves leaving for one of the continents in short order.

That said, there were still regions that were deliberately left clear of habitation so monsters could spawn away from civilians and the farmland, and thus there was steady, if unexciting, work for adventurers. As Casimir understood it, it made it a good place to settle down for an adventurer that was getting on in years and wanting to retire but unable to afford it.

He approached the front desk, recognizing the old woman sitting as the receptionist. "Hey Harriet." Casimir said in greeting.

"Mr. Toomes, welcome back." Harriet replied kindly. "How's teaching been treating you?"

"It's okay." Casimir said. "I'm expanding my repertoire, relaxing, and earning some decent pay while living rent-free." Master refused the offer of paying for the use of her guest room in the strongest possible terms, which was fair. If he had a nice cottage in the wealthy part of town, he wouldn't think of charging her rent either.

"You seem… improved." Harriet commented. "You're not using calming spells like warming spells in winter anymore, at least. Should I be sending out feelers for any elite-ranked teams with an opening, come the end of the school term?" Casimir winced at the reminder of why he was forced to go on a sabbatical before joining a new team. "Or are you here on other business?"

"The end of term is still a long way away." Casimir deflected. "I promised my Master that I wouldn't commit to leaving just yet."

"I'll be discreet, then." Harriet said, understanding what Casimir meant.

"Thanks." Casimir said, smiling. "But I am here on other business. I'm assuming you at least know about the adventuring club at the Academy, but I was wondering how involved the guild was with the whole process normally."

"Ah." Harriet said, her wrinkled face crunching up with a smile. "Well, it depends. Some years the new students register as a novice-ranked team, some years they don't. We do bend the rules a bit when the students get involved, as a favor to the Academy, so non-member teachers can tag along with the students to protect them, or a higher-ranked member can assist with the jobs even if we'd normally forbid such a thing." One of the guild's functions was to prevent high-ranked adventurers from taking on large amounts of easy jobs and leaving nothing for the lower-ranked ones to do, while also leaving the higher ranked tasks undone. One of the reasons adventurers were called that was because of how the guild functioned, as generally, an adventurer was forced to wander throughout the lands because there just weren't any jobs in the local area. The guildmasters managed all of that with large amounts of discretion, but as long as all the jobs got done and no one got cheated the regional offices didn't much care how the branch offices were run.

"That's about what I was thinking." Casimir said while nodding along. "I've been dragged into helping with the club, so I figured I should ask if my… current status would cause any problems."

Harriet took a moment to think about it. "I don't think Guildmaster Purz would give you any trouble over it, but I'll be sure to discuss the matter. Just come along when the students register and check back then."

"Will do." Casimir said. "Now… you wouldn't happen to have seen David recently, would you have?" Casimir scanned the lobby again, double-checking the face of every man there.

"Last I heard, Mr. Smith was doing guard work on a ship in the Elven Archipelago." Harriet said. "At least, that's where I sent him the last time he came to visit his sister." She frowned. "He's still telling stories about you, you know."

Casimir winced. "How bad is it?"

"Pretty bad." Harriet replied, putting her hand on Casimir's shoulder. "I try to set people straight, but he's angry, and you never had the kind of reputation needed to have people dismiss him out of hand." Yeah… effective curses tended towards the cruel and torturous side of violence, and using that as a primary combat tool doesn't make many friends.

Well, this sucks. Even if there was an elite-ranked team that would take him, they might reject it based on the rumor mongering that meathead has been spreading. "Thanks for the information, Harriet. Here, get the grandkids something nice." Passing the old woman a pair of silver coins as a tip for her work, her smile widened considerably as she waved him goodbye.

Well, time to face the music.

-----------------

The church of Helel, the goddess of light, was a common sight in human-controlled lands. While they were fairly insular and specific when it came to their priests, Helel demanded generosity from her followers, gathering tithes of mana from their prayer-rituals and spending it on charitable works, in particular the free distribution of healing magic to any who walk into their doors. The whole organization was more complex than that, but remaining in the good books of your local Helelites was vital for the health of your average citizen of half the nations in the known world.

But Casimir wasn't here for that kind of thing. Instead, he walked down into the catacombs underneath the cathedral. He's never been here, but he knows exactly where to go. The map was right there at the entrance, with each of the hundreds of shrines labeled with painstaking care. Even in the deepest depths of rationality, when making this trip seemed like the most ridiculous act possible, he still found himself at that map at least once a week.

But those curses are gone now. For months, really. The only thing stopping him from visiting since then was just cowardice, an old friend. But today wasn't about that friend, it was about another, a more recent abandonment.

The shrine that Casimir approached, ignoring the guards that followed him in, was one of the more elaborate ones, reserved for priests that attained some personal notoriety. The complex enchantments were meant to allow for a priest to guide a group of people in a mana offering ritual to tithe additional power to fuel Helel's miracles, but just supplying light mana into it did the job just fine.

The alcove's sconces flared to life, illuminating the area as if it was high noon. The marble walls with gilded patterns gleamed, each depicting a scene from the life of the priest the shrine was dedicated to. But Casimir only had eyes for the centerpiece of the whole thing: a statue commissioned into an exact likeness. Before his eyes, letters formed slowly, a mote of light dancing in the air to create every stroke.

Luci Smith
'The Guiding Light'
Crusader of the Faith
Fell in battle against The Soul-Devouring Dragon​

He should probably say something. So much was left unsaid… but she wouldn't hear it. Even if you accepted the premise that the shrines safeguarded the souls of priests who fell in Helel's service, Luci still wouldn't be in there. He should know, he was there when she died. When her soul was shredded and sucked in like it was one of those fruits she liked.

The fact that she was given a shrine like normal without a care by the church said quite a bit about the truth behind them. No different than the normal gravesites his family has tended to for generations.

Casimir waited, continually converting and feeding mana into the shrine to keep it lit while he contemplated why he was there. The guards eventually stepped back, satisfied that he wasn't there to cause trouble.

He glanced once more at the murals, noting how each one had Luci in the center stage, calling on the miracles of Helel while facing the toughest monsters alone. Needless to say, there was quite a bit of artistic liberty, although he did recognize each event as a real monster they dealt with together, which was more than he expected to see. He'd complain about not being in the murals, but really, the real tragedy was that Magnus wasn't depicted either. They'd likely give Casimir a goblin nose or something out of spite, so his absence was probably for the best.

Spite was one of the few ways for a spirit to work for free, and the ones with churches were no exception to that. They just liked dressing it up a bit. They had plenty of reasons to hate him, some of it even true.

Eventually, his mana heart emptied, and the lights dimmed. Only the faint illumination from the hall sconces provided guidance to the exit.

He left like he arrived, without a sound.

-----------------

Casimir walked into the field the first year adventuring club members were using. The other years didn't really need his help, he just followed them into the forest while they practiced monster hunting, making sure they didn't get in over their heads. He wasn't even the only teacher helping with that, so most of his responsibilities with the club amounted to just the nine first years, split with Professor Thorne.

Thorne was gone, presumably having taken the bigger team along for some kind of exercise. "I know that the enchantment and curse classes start on practicals at about the same time, so it's time for you two-" He pointed at Peter and Illivere. "-to show me what you've got working." Hanna was going along nicely with her spellweaving, near as Casimir could tell. She could use Battle Healing, Fireball, Propel, Leap, and Overgrowth, which was good for eight weeks into the semester. Three mana types was solid progress, even if her Overgrowth was kind of all over the place, supposedly it was a pretty tricky spell to master. Faron, on the other hand, had more expected progress, focusing more on being able to use his spells well rather than rushing to learn more. Weapon training took up a lot of time, after all.

Peter remembered Casimir's warnings against cursing people with dozens of long-term curses woven into their soul, and walked forward from the lineup with Faron, the one playing test subject.

"Here goes…" Peter said as he concentrated on Faron, touching him on the shoulder for easier casting. He didn't tell Casimir what curse he was using, which was poor form, but Casimir could tell just from focusing on the mana what he was trying to accomplish. "...there!"

Faron flexed, punching the air as the motions created little cracks of air, despite the speed not being anywhere near enough to do that. Casimir nodded before leaning in, his eyes glowing with Analyze Magic. "Good, good. Let me have a look…" It was, as expected, a very clumsy example of Strengthen. Clumsy… but it looked like it would last over ten minutes, so that was better than Casimir expected. The class would be tested on being able to successfully cast a curse of their choice later this week, so it looked like Peter was going to pass that, at least. "Adequate." Casimir said. "Do you have anything else?" With a brush of mana, Casimir cleared Faron's soul from the curse.

"You bet, Teach!" Peter said confidently, emboldened by his success. He started converting his mana into Life mana, which was interesting. Casimir bet Hanna helped him with that. As expected, the spell he decided to pick up second was Invigorate, the basic healing curse that helped with exhaustion and soreness.

Casimir examined this one as well. "Not as good as the last one." Was his eventual judgment. "It needs work." He added. Another brush of mana and the curse was removed.

Turning to Illivere, Casimir gestured vaguely. "What do you have working?"

The emotionless girl pulled out some arrows out of her quiver. "I've enchanted these arrowheads with extra durability, and the shafts with acceleration, to increase the potential damage output and armor penetration." Basic enchantments, but useful. Casimir noted that the shafts were feathersteel, which was much easier to enchant than most woods. "In addition, I have successfully managed to brew potions of both mind and life mana, although I've yet to master the enchantments."

Casimir nodded in approval. "Alchemy is tricky, but very worth it." Bottling mana was the easy part of alchemy, depending on the quality of ingredients you use. Master Alchemists could piss liquified mana if they wanted to show off, even. The complex part was the enchantments on the bottles. It shaped the mana as it came out of the stopper, creating a magical effect that was basically a curse as the mana was absorbed into the body. Mages could just manipulate the mana themselves though, so it was still handy to have even without the fancy bottles. "I know how to enchant bombs, so we can go over that in a bit." It wasn't difficult, the hard part of making alchemical bombs was making it so that any mage with half a brain couldn't set it off with a glance. He knew enough, but he also needed the expensive magical reagents if he wanted to make bombs powerful enough to matter in the kinds of fights he got into. He knew a few cheap options that should be fine for novices, though.

Still, it was acceptable progress. "I think it's about time for your first monster." Casimir announced, which immediately seized the attention of all four students. "But first, a quiz: What distinguishes a monster from an animal?"

Faron stood at attention, immediately reciting the textbook answer: "Monsters spontaneously form from environmental mana." Monster populations could also breed to expand their numbers if left unattended, but that was something they had in common with animals.

"Good." Casimir said, creating an illusion of a Titan's deer and a regular stag. "A monster can resemble an animal, or even a person in the case of goblins and such, but it's important to remember that they are not. They are far more dangerous, and they hunger to eat any being with a soul. You will never see a monster fight another monster, with a few exceptions. The extermination of monsters is an adventurer's primary duty, which is why they are not merely mercenaries with delusions of nobility." Casimir gestures to the forest. "The formation of monsters isn't entirely understood," Specifically, it was a matter of spirited debate among academic circles. "-but it's understood well enough that they don't really form in places where they can be seen. Thus, Anima has created these wilderness areas specifically to allow monsters a place to form that isn't in the middle of farmland and such. It's worked, for the most part." Monster parts were valuable to tanners, carvers, alchemists, and certain other artisans, and stopping their formation was not yet something that could be done reliably. "It's a common practice, actually. Elves leave certain parts of their islands undeveloped so they can get materials for their heartstring shirts." Casimir gestured to Faron's tunic, light and airy but near impossible to cut or pierce. "Incidentally, you should get one when you can afford to, it's a fantastic investment." Casimir pulled at the collar of his dragonhide armor, pulling out the light green cloth of his own heartstring shirt.

"Good idea, Teach!" Peter said, blatantly sucking up. "Now about that monster?"

Casimir chuckled. "In good time. First, do you have properly sharpened weapons or do y'all only have blunted practice ones?"

A brief overview of their equipment commenced, and Casimir quickly sharpened the cheap knives Peter and Hanna had, and Peter's axes. With the kids as ready as they were going to be, Casimir moved a variety of mana types into his soul to be soaked up by the curses he had, augmenting both his travel speed, senses, and reflexes. With a single great leap, he flew into the forest, on the hunt.

He had checked the quest history of the forest that morning, and knew that there shouldn't be many monsters around. However, 'not many' did not mean 'none', so he was able to locate a Barbed Bear. It was a bit strong, but it didn't have any natural magic beyond the kind that allowed it to exist. He could work with this.

First, Casimir placed a curse on the thing's mind, making it utterly fearless. Monsters didn't have much to begin with, but this monster wasn't going to chase him half a kilometer without having second thoughts if he didn't. Barbed Bears were mana blind, so Casimir shaped a metal arrow, sharpened it, and then propelled it, severing two of the looser thorny vines the beast was covered in and creating a bloody gash. The bear roared in anger and pain, which drew the attention of a handful of Swoopers that were sitting in a nearby tree, who promptly started to suicide charge Casimir, as was their nature.

Monsters weren't stupid, normally. They weighed the danger they were in against their other impulses, like hunger, pain, and rage. But with the handy curse Casimir put on it's mind, there wasn't any question in the monster's eyes that he could take the tiny mage. It also failed to change that opinion after a minute of failing to hit Casimir as he dodged attacks and killed those pesky bird monsters that kept diving at him, assessing the beast's strength.

"It's fresh, that's good…" Casimir mumbled to himself as he figured out which curses would be best to weaken it. Idly, he backhanded a Swooper who thought he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings."Definitely too strong for the kids. Well, it's bound to get pretty sluggish by the time we get there if I…" Casimir cast one of his old standbys, shaping air mana into a choking curse that drew the mana from the air the beast breathed into itself, reinforcing the curse rather than sustaining the beast. It didn't grab all of it, but it should be enough to make the beast tired by the end of the chase.

Still, the thing was so big… Well, the problem was less the size, but instead the weight. Which was a problem that could be solved. Normally, a weight reduction curse was used to enable retreats, due to making it much more difficult to both deal and take damage. But it should do the job. One curse and yet another dead bird monster later, and the bear only had one fourth of its weight behind its blows. Casimir stood in front of a tree to test the bear's strength. Ducking out of the way of the attack, he frowned as he saw the bark stripped and gouges cut into it. "Still too strong." Casimir jumped out of the way of another attack. "Too fast, too. Still, I think I can do this in one more curse." But first, kill that damn bird. Casimir tuned his senses towards mind mana and sniffed, glancing at the direction where the Swooper's hive mind was thickest in time to spot the Flightmaster spawning another minion. With another propelled arrow, it was time to return to the matter at hand.

Strengthen was in the basic package of useful curses. The twenty on the curriculum was all beneficial effects, but one of the fundamental laws of curse magic is that anything you can strengthen, you can weaken. Another is that a beneficial and detrimental curse can sometimes just be a matter of perspective. So a Weaken curse made it so that each motion of the monster was opposed, rather than helped, by a bit of force mana. After seeing it make two more attacks, Casimir nodded to himself. "This looks good. Okay Mr. Monster, we're only halfway there, it's time to double-time it!" One last mind curse attuned the monster's senses to Casimir's soul, allowing it to know Casimir's position unerringly as long as he could theoretically see, hear, or smell him. With that, Casimir started running.

Now, for the fun part.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

It's my birthday this week, so I'm taking next update off, just a heads up.
-------------------------------

[Faron Wavecleaver]

Faron gave his force sword a few extra practice swings, getting his blood pumping while they waited for Professor Toomes to return from his monster-finding hunt. They had approached closer to the trees, peering into them in the hopes they could find out sooner.

At first, Faron didn't think much of the curse wizard. He seemed reasonably confident when teaching, but had a tendency to get distracted by tangents, scrambling to get back to the lesson in time for everything to get covered.

Then he showed up to the Adventuring club, supposedly as an elite-ranked adventurer. Faron was skeptical at first, but Sir Thorne acknowledged his skills, so Faron followed suit.

Peter's stupid idea to extract Professor Toome's epithet from the man by fighting him rather than something more reasonable, like asking around at the adventurer guild, did manage to prove to them just how large the gulf between students and an elite-ranked adventurer was. He played with them, not even casting spells as he broke whatever formation they devised, dodged, deflected, even caught the projectiles they used, and counterattacked with fist and whatever training weapons he stole whenever they tried closing into melee.

He eventually explained, after their fourth attempt, that experienced curse wizards can cast a blessing on themselves and make it inactive without removing it entirely, a method of magically augmenting soldiers used by Crusand's Hex Warriors. Master wizards created the blessings, while the warriors knew just enough to generate mana and guide it into their blessings. There were apparently many 'shortcuts', as he called them, to gain magical power beyond studying, and most of the good ones end up being used in one army or another.

This made sense. Anima may rely on a mixture of mage knights, formations of cooperatively casting mages, and heavily enchanted ships for their military, but most countries didn't have quite as much magic to work with, and a lot more manpower. It's fortunate that Anima's terrain, being an island, made invasion via overwhelming numbers more or less impossible.

Now, should he shape a force sword, or a spear? Force swords were superlative cutting implements, and would be good against many of the monsters Professor Toomes informed them of. Force spears, on the other hand, were excellent herding tools, the mana's nature making it shove more than pierce. Well, sometimes it blows a giant hole into whatever you stab instead, but that's usually a preferable outcome. According to Sir Thorne, the only real choice when it came to choice of weapon in shaping magic was thrust, smash, and cut. There was some nuance, but for the most part all thrusting weapons worked the same within the same mana type, whether it's a spear, arrow, or dagger. So Faron listened and trained himself in the standard Anima military examples: The short spear, the mace, and the longsword. His mother tried to convince him to learn the harpoon, the war club, and the cutlass instead, but he wouldn't disrespect Sir Thorne by using different weapons than he did, elven culture be damned.

He'll wait until the monster shows up. If it was a large beast, the spear would be better. If it was a swarm of Swoopers or some fast beast, the sword would be superior. He wasn't quite used to the explosive power of the force club, and if he tried it would likely detonate at the wrong time. It would be better against smaller or more lithe targets if he could, though.

Peter's voice cut through his musings. "We've got this. We're strong, and Teach said we were ready." He stretched vigorously. His next words had even more bravado. "Just make sure you get some monster before I defeat it all first!" Ah. he was trying to encourage them. It was unnecessary, but the girls shifted their weight too, gripping their weapons and preparing their spells.

The boy of no notable bloodline may be deluding himself into thinking that he was their leader, but it was times like this where he proved that he took that duty seriously. It was why Faron indulged him in that belief. He focused further on sensing the approach. His vigilance was rewarded, as the sounds of cracking branches and the pounding of feet reached his ears. Whatever Professor Toomes was looking for, he found it.

----------------

[Illivere Oathsworn]

Mr. Toomes has been gone for seven minutes thirty-two seconds. At his demonstrated speed, accounting for forest density, he should have been able to search 35-40% of the forest's area, depending on the search pattern.

The Verdigis Forest was a well-maintained monster hunting location, with quests every ten to twelve days to cleanse the area of monsters so alchemists can harvest the magical ingredients within. Ms. Riversong mentioned that she doesn't take office hours on those days, so the last one was yesterday. Therefore, the monster population would be minimal.

Nevertheless, the odds of him not having found a monster by now is low. Illivere readied her bow, ready to focus her mana on enhancing her aim and reflexes at a moment's notice. Possibilities include Titan's Deer, Serpent Vine, maybe a Screamer? Barbed Bear would be improbable, but possible. Illivere hoped he didn't draw in a swarm of Swoopers.

Peter fidgeted, as he was prone to do when waiting. Illivere tried to tune him out. But it was so difficult to focus, with Hanna's invigoration curse bolstering their endurance. Normally, focus was something Illivere had in plentiful quantities, but her muscles didn't normally twitch like this!

Mr. Toomes has a documented habit of letting his students run into non-dangerous problems themselves rather than warning them, was this a test? Did he add extra time to his search because he assumed they'd use augmenting curses the moment he left?

…It was a logical decision, if it was. Mr. Toomes was unusually rational, Illivere noticed. One of the manifold benefits of being born from a memory spirit was a sense of when mind-aspected mana was doing things in the area, and Mr. Toomes… stank of it? It was something Illivere had never sensed before. While he did occasionally have some minute mind magic going on as he entered class, probably referencing some lesson plan from a memory spell, even when he didn't, there were… echoes of it. That wasn't normal, in Illivere's experience. It was too faint to be an affinity like her own, but she had no frame of reference on what it could mean.

Mr. Toomes almost certainly knows what the residue is. The ease he shows in speaking about the soul in academic terms during tangents shows more about his grounding in the subject than the basic lessons he's teaching.

Peter started on some pointless words, distracting the group for irrelevant reasons. Illivere was about to ask him for silence, but then Faron noticed something, his long ears twitching as he tensed. Illivere drew three arrows in preparation, nocking one and idly testing her bow's drawstring. The Strengthen curse that Peter passed around was still there, making the draw seem ten pounds lighter. Rapid firing should be easy, with that advantage. She had discarded the staff she had brought from home during these exercises, instead enchanting a copy once she learned the necessary skills. It wasn't as good, but she couldn't manage to tag Mr. Toomes with it anyway, so the inferior enchantments were irrelevant to the purposes that she put them to. Her archery skills were superior, anyway.

Mr. Toomes leapt from a branch onto the field, all smiles. Illivere wasn't fooled for a moment. He had something planned. She would be ready.

-----------------

[Hanna ????]

Hanna couldn't believe it. Were they ready for a monster? She didn't think so. The Professor was nice, when he was teaching curses, but when he was training them to be adventurers? He became so mean… insisting on adding an extra lap every time they took laps, criticizing every little thing about the magic exercises, and when their bodies were exhausted? He just zapped everyone with life magic and told them to start all over again. At random times, he tossed a big dart that he mocked up into a Swooper at one of them, as 'awareness and reflexes training'! Who does that? What's worse, every time he did it in sight of Professor Thorne, the old guy just nodded approvingly, and now he's started doing it too!

Peter had kept bothering the Professor about fighting a monster over the last week. Was this The Professor's revenge? Where he pits them against a monster that was way too strong, then rescues them at the last minute? He wouldn't even need to worry about injuries, he could heal them personally! Hanna's mind filled with the possible messy deaths they could get from the various species of monster the Professor had taught them about.

It's all for The Forest Father, Hanna. Professor Giltblade is going to a lot of trouble to make sure you can get strong here. Monsters that you'd find here in Anima are weaklings in comparison to what needs to be faced, so ready up!

She touched up the Invigorations she had on the team. Hanna checked the newly sharpened throwing knives, enchanted by Illivere for extra acceleration. She checked the vials of life mana, the nightroot infusion practically glowing to her senses. Converting alchemically provided mana was supposedly difficult, but Hanna didn't find it any harder than converting her natural mana so she could store it in her mana heart. Illivere could do it too with the mind mana infusions, so it was probably just another "bloodline" thing.

The group was oppressively silent as they waited for the Professor. Even Peter remained quiet, his normally exuberant energy snuffed by the dread of facing a real monster. After the moment stretched on, he started giving everyone a pep talk. It was nice of him to do that, but monsters were… monsters. They weren't ready…

Faron tensed up, and Illivere did the same right after. What did they… Oh! The Professor was back! And he's alone, without any monsters. What a relief. He must have not found any, which didn't make much sense but Hanna was too busy being happy to question it. He started talking, but Hanna didn't pay attention, taking deep breaths of relief.

Suddenly, a monstrous bear shot out, it's body covered in thorny vines that whipped to and fro as the monster moved, jumping onto the Professor's body and crushing him into the dirt. The monster roared in triumph as the only thing between it and the very tasty students was dealt with.

Oh no…

-----------------

[Peter Wood]

Peter swallowed thickly as Teach leapt into the woods, easily mistaken for flight, but they knew better now. They were totally ready. The Teach said so.

It's not like he's lied to them before. Like saying he'll leave them be while instead going to get a pile of Swooper dolls to toss at them. Were they really that dangerous? Teach explained that the Swoopers that attacked weren't real in the same way most monsters were, but instead echoes of the Swooper Flightmaster, who had the actual magical core that all monsters had and created more copies whenever it had enough mana to. Diving at people beak first at suicidal speeds was just how that monster killed people.

"Monsters don't have an innate way to coordinate, as they don't speak or use mind magic to communicate." was one of Teach's lessons on the subject. "Some do, and even more have distributed consciousnesses like Swoopers do. If you ever saw multiple Swooper Flightmasters in a single battle, you'll be able to see the difference." Peter thought it was kind of cool, having one mind in multiple bodies. "But most of them will attack anything another monster is attacking in a fit of opportunism, only fighting each other after all other non-monsters have died. Swoopers in particular are both local to this forest and are some of the most opportunistic bastards you can find." Forcing everyone to run ten laps every time someone fails to deflect or block the Swooper dolls was still unfair. He throws more during the laps!

Wait, is he going to throw dolls when everyone is fighting the monster? He wouldn't… would he? He's the one who said monsters are dangerous, distracting them on their first one would be cruel!

Peter looked at his teammates. Illivere was beautiful as always, cool and collected, but Hanna seemed pretty scared… It was time for some leadership! "We've got this. We're strong, and Teach said we were ready." There.

Peter bled off some energy by stretching out. He had already limbered up earlier, but all this standing around… Hanna doesn't look inspired enough, so… "Just make sure you get some monster before I defeat it all first!" Yes, confidence is how you lead. Good job, Peter.

After another agonizing moment of waiting, Teach leapt out of the forest, alone. Peter relaxed, chuckling as he realized there wasn't going to be any monster fight. "Hey!" Teach shouted. "I knew they were wiped out yesterday, but I swore I could have found something. Ah well, I guess y'all get off easy, today."

Wait, that was it? What happened to the hell teacher? Peter lifted his weapon, ready to tell him off for scaring the crap out of them wasting all of their time. Before he could start speaking, a giant bear covered in vines leapt out from the forest, leaping further than bears should be able to and driving Teach into the ground so hard the dirt gave way, leaving a mound of dirt.

"Charge!" Peter shouted, crossing the field with steps that were boosted by Strengthen. One of the stupider things Teach went over early in the club's exercises was teaching them a particular way of running, but when he got Strengthen working… it made sense. With the odd stride, it was a simple matter to adjust to the greater power exerted by the curse-augmented steps. Faron charged ahead, even faster as he shaped a force spear and prepared to attack.

After the disastrous first fight against Teach, Peter had learned better methods of attacking than just magically affixing knives to his fists. Specifically, he learned how to use a pair of axes to attack things that flinging knives at with Move Object won't work on. With the sharpening Teach gave them and the extra strength his magic was providing, Peter started by chopping at the vines the bear had surrounding it.

Meanwhile, Faron stabbed the arm that was reared back to attack, unbalancing the bear and sending it crashing onto its back.

Illivere and Hanna both filled the bear's torso with projectiles, the arrows penetrating deeply while the knives cut open large gashes.

Peter attacked the bear's legs, going for the joints like Teach said to when fighting monsters. After a few seconds of that, the vines of the bear animated suddenly, swinging out and forcing Peter to raise a barrier and back off, dropping his axes in the process. Even Faron backed off as the bear continued to flail with the thorny vines, taking deep, ragged breaths.

After it calmed down, Faron charged once more, deflecting the whip-like crack of a vine with his shield and striking the sluggish bear with his spear, knocking it down again. Three more arrows and another knife from the girls put even more wounds into the bear's body.

The bear choked on something, spat out a wad of blood, and went still. Peter focused on the mana, and saw the remnants of the bear's soul dissipate as it died.

The group was silent as they processed what just happened. The monster was dealt with… but at what cost?

The silence was broken by the sound of clapping from behind them, which caused the girls to bolt forward as Faron turned to charge the new opponent. Peter Moved his axes back to his hands, a trick he was quite proud of, while berating himself for not doing it sooner.

Right there, a little dirty but unharmed, was the lying bastard that sent that crazy monster. Peter roared in aggravation as he charged the teacher, who plucked the axes from his hands like flowers, and before Peter even knew what was happening he was on his back, Teach's foot holding him down.

"So, y'all did pretty good." The bastard said. "You panicked, of course, but you managed to firm up and engage in combat despite that. Now, any questions?"

Peter has one: What the hell was that? Faron spoke up first, though. "How did you survive the bear falling on you?"

The teacher scoffed. "Please. That thing was tiny as bear monsters go, standard-grade at most. It'll take more than six hundred pounds of fur to have a chance." He stomped on the ground, making the ground ripple like water. "Swimming in dirt's a pretty standard stone magic exercise, I hesitate to even call it a spell. Incidentally, quick tip: for an adventuring wizard, always seek any opportunity to learn new things from your allies, temporary or permanent." He did that on purpose! That asshole!

Illivere hummed in thought. "I see. One of the Adventurer's virtues is taking decisive action when things go wrong. This was a test to see if we would rescue you or run away." Illivere was so smart…

The teacher grinned at Illivere's intelligence. "You got it. Now that I know y'all won't crumble the first time things go wrong, I think we can go straight to getting you guys some real quests." Of course they were ready for that. Time for a payday!

After a pause, Teach waved his hand vaguely. "Well, next week we'll do that. I still need to teach y'all some stuff before you embarrass me at the guild. Also, the day before, we'll do another battle, y'all against me. If I don't see some improvement from today on your skills, we're not going." What? That's bullshit!

"Reasonable." Ilivere responded. Of course it was, they barely dealt with one monster, a quest could involve multiple. Being stronger was the bare minimum.

He can't wait!

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

"Come on, ducklings." Casimir said as he walked into the guild. "We need to get you registered." Their readiness was questionable, but Thorne was getting really annoying with wanting to begin the "exciting" parts of the club activities, and the students weren't entirely hopeless, so he decided to get things started.

The students followed him in, lining up single file as Casimir walked them to the front desk. "I'm here with the newbies, Harriet. Nine sets of paperwork, please."

The old woman smiled as she brought the stacks up from behind the counter. Casimir warned them the previous day, so they had plenty of time to prepare for this. First up was… Hashi the shaman.

Now, the adventuring guild and the Academy didn't actually get along all that well. As such, there wasn't any formalized method of inducting students. Registering properly required some kind of assurance of competence, either tested by the guild (for a fee) or by a member of at least veteran rank in good standing vouching for it. The Academy had no authority to either administer their own test, nor vouch for competence as an institution. They needed adventurers that were on staff that were willing to risk their good standing in the guild for them, which was probably the main reason the Headmaster was willing to let Casimir teach solo, to be completely honest.

Thus, the personal test that he had them go through the day before. While Thorne and Casimir had more or less divided up the groups between each other for combat training, Casimir still needed to make sure that Thorne wasn't encouraging bad habits, like having a clear chain of command. An adventuring team was closer to a family than a military unit, with each member implicitly trusting the rest to act in the group's best interests, and leaving decisions towards whoever was the subject matter expert. Having a clearly defined leader did help, but rigid adherence to the leader's commands is a weakness. They seemed fine, so Casimir gave them a pass.

Registering as an adventurer was simple enough, paperwork-wise. As an Elite, Casimir could theoretically endorse the lot of them to be higher ranked, but instead he just signed a form for each one saying that they were capable enough for novice rank, and walked them through filling out their own form which listed their class, which was something of an adventurer custom that distilled their specialties and magical skills into one or two words, half bragging but there was enough convention surrounding it that you needed to be pretty weird to make something new and not get mocked. You could change it, usually when you got promoted or had to re-do your paperwork, as your registration does expire every three years, so Casimir was currently listed as an Assassin. Now that he was a teacher, perhaps he should change it? Worth thinking about.

It also had the basics for any travel papers, as an adventurer's registration also functioned as a passport. Name, a physical description, place of origin, occupation, rank, etc. Standard stuff. Also a vitae pattern recording, which was mostly so there was a baseline to compare against if anyone accused you of being a monster in disguise.

After the ninth set of forms, Casimir collected the stack and formally handed them over to Harriet. The kids, who had sat at a set of tables as he went through each form, perked up at the sight of him turning in the paperwork.

Casimir savored the defeated looks on their faces when Harriet then passed him the forms for registering an adventuring team. "You know, I was wondering why you asked me to hold on to those until you were done." Harriet commented, giggling at the student's suffering. "It's just going to be a few more minutes, dears." She half-shouted towards the kid's tables.

Casimir just efficiently filled out the forms with his enchanted pen. They didn't need fancy names, so he just put them down as Thorne's troop and Toome's team. Right as he finished, he looked up to see the Guildmaster come through the door from the back rooms.

Guildmaster Purz was a stern Aviost, tall with feathers that were multiple shades of brown in a mottled pattern. It reminded Casimir of an owl he saw on an adventure once. Of course, that view was reinforced by Purz's distinctly predatory beak. Casimir didn't usually work in the plains on the mainland, so he was a little unclear on the meaning of the beak shapes, but supposedly they mattered. He walked up to Casimir, looming close enough that Casimir needed to look up to meet his gaze. "Mr. Toomes." He rumbled, opening his beak the bare minimum to allow the air to leave. "You're sponsoring these children?"

Casimir relaxed. If Old Purz was referring to Casimir by his name rather than butchering his title with an insult, he wasn't too mad. "Yes sir." He replied simply. "I've tested their combat readiness, and they'll have minders for the jobs they take while in school, like any of the other Academy students."

Purz hummed, which was more a musical trill given his beak. "You seem sane enough." Was his eventual judgment. The usual indignation rose up, but it was easily quashed. "Harriet, give them the flower job."

"Yes sir." replied the receptionist, taking out a pile of papers from beneath the counter and rifling through them. After a moment, she brought out a specific bundle of pages and handed it to Casimir.

"Thanks." Casimir said idly as he perused the job request. Pnuma flowers, huh? That's a big order. Yeah, this looks like enough work for both groups to take. "Perfect." Turning to the students, Casimir waved the paper as he started to walk to the exit. "We're done here, follow me." Now, where was Thorne?

------------------

As expected, Peter was the one complaining the most about the job, once they arrived at the site and Casimir explained it. "I can't believe we're just picking flowers…"

Casimir snorted. "Novices don't get monster hunting jobs." He said, balancing the rolled up job notice that he had shaped a thin metal band around. "Novices get sent to areas where there might be monsters to harvest alchemical reagents, or to clear out regular animals that are being pests, stuff like that."

Pnuma flowers were actually one of the prettier flowers to use as alchemical ingredients, in Casimir's opinion. They were fairly large flowers, somewhat similar to roses, and their constant but imperfect absorption of all light mana around it creates an effect similar to a starry sky, an illusion of infinite depth in the darkness with one to three points of light per flower. While it was impossible to find them close enough together in nature to accomplish the effect, the great gardens of the Grand Cathedral of Helel, on the mainland, managed to create a river of constantly shifting constellations, a truly beautiful sight.

After a brief lesson on which flowers they had to pick and which ones were too immature to be useful, on top of proper harvesting instructions, Casimir went on a bit of a patrol to see what the local dangers were. One can generally get a feel as to what kind of ingredients and monster types there are around by the taste of mana in the air. Surveying mana was a subject complex enough that it had its own dedicated class, between the techniques to make sure you had a complete picture and the hundreds of hours of studying to interpret the information.

After following a faint trail of mind mana, he found his quarry: "You'll do." Casimir said as he spotted a flight of Swoopers resting on a tree. Normally, it was pretty difficult to curse a swarm monster like a Swooper, but while each body had its own pseudo-soul, the connections between them were purely mind magic, which meant that once you get past the inherent difficulty of cursing a monster with its greatest mana affinity, it easily propagated among the various bodies. Swoopers weren't mana blind, so while there wasn't much stopping them from knowing about the fact that Casimir cursed them… that was just a matter of finesse. Only the most disciplined adventurers and intelligent monsters were capable of shaking off something as harmless as a simple mana sensitivity curse, tuned to make light mana more obvious (and thus, seemingly more potent) to their senses.

Sneaking away, Casimir resisted the urge to cackle as the first of many monsters starting hunting down the Pnuma flowers, defending their "grand treasures" with their lives.

On his return, Thorne was scratching his head as he looked over the corpse of a Bolt Rabbit. "I've never seen any of these milk runs rustle up so many monsters." He explained when Casimir stared in pretend-ignorance at the fine wooden bow Thorne had shaped from life mana. "They're weak ones, sure, but it's weird." He gave Casimir a warning glance. "Aren't you supposed to make sure they didn't get bothered?"

"What? No." Casimir said. "I was supposed to make sure nothing that they couldn't handle came to bother them."

Frowning, Thorne looked pointedly at the Marsh Boar, which was definitely not a monster novices would normally handle. "And that?"

"Was weakened enough for them to be able to handle it." Casimir retorted.

The veteran soldier looked at the various monster corpses that were left in the group's wake as half of each group assessed the flowers while the rest stayed on guard. "...Genius." He eventually said.

"I told you I was going to curse monsters that were too strong for them until they weren't." Casimir said. It was weeks ago, did he already forget? Casimir put his palm on the Bolt Rabbit's corpse, focusing the mana of the beast into the monster core. Within seconds, the flesh and fur turned dark and melted away, the Negative magic technique accelerating the natural process of decomposition. The monster sludge sublimated seconds after the core was removed from the pile.

"Yeah, for exercises." Thorne said to excuse his forgetfulness. "This? This is as real as it gets. Also, this is the most fun I've had in weeks." He shaped a force arrow and fired it at the Barbed Bear that Casimir found earlier, hitting it in one of its back knees. It roared in pain, but the kids took advantage of that injury to swiftly defeat it. "...Are you worried about them getting the wrong idea on how strong those monsters are?"

Casimir snorted incredulously. "Monsters aren't of equal strength to others of the same kind, even if they appear to be. Assessing the strength of their opponents is a vital skill I'll need to instill in them eventually, but for now, they still need to get used to combat in general." In particular, the monsters of Anima are quite powerful in comparison to most in the mainland, so he was even less concerned. It was why only the small ones were able to be defeated by the kids without help. He started to extract the other monster cores, condensing the mana in the monster's corpses to slightly improve the quality of the resulting cores, but more importantly it minimized the mess. "Honestly, leaving behind this stuff, rookie mistake." The fertilizer merchants paid good money for monster cores, it was the best way to grow crops with a high mana content. "Then again, I suppose they'd have had time if I didn't pull half the forest in their way."

The group, having finished with the clearing, started to move as a group to the next one on the map that the quest form came with. Back to the grind…

------------------

"-and the last clearing, the big one? There were four fish-apes guarding it! Naturally, I ordered them dealt with at range, and two were slain in the first volley!" Peter was telling the story with grand gravitas, exaggerating only slightly as the old guys were listening with amused expressions. The students had ordered food and were busy devouring their pay while the local church alchemist for the Helelites, Shawn, appraised the ingredients collected.

Harriet didn't work this late in the day, so Casimir turned in the monster cores to the evening receptionist. "It should be about thirteen silver's worth, in total." It was a pretty standard haul, but not really enough to make the trip worthwhile on it's own unless Casimir decided to rob the student's shares. "If Grant goes below eleven, he's cheating you. Shawn confirmed the value." Granted, the only reason monster cores were worth even that much in Anima was because of the killing merchants made on exporting the bloody things to less mana-rich areas, but that doesn't mean they can get away with paying even worse prices.

"Yeah, yeah." Pina said flippantly, stashing the bag beneath the counter without checking the contents personally. Casimir frowned at the unprofessional behavior from the younger receptionist, but she did seal the bag, so she adhered to the letter of the rules at least. Unlike most Aviost, she had the uncannily human habit of moving her beak with each syllable, which gave her voice an even chirpier tone. "Anything else, Gaspy?"

"No." Casimir said as he scowled at her, unsure if he was more annoyed at her referencing his title at all, or for the diminutive. At a glance, none of the students heard it, so he let it be. Returning to the alchemist, he noted that he was almost done assessing the flowers. "What's the final tally?"

Shawn hummed, his bright yellow eyes illuminated with mana as he looked at the last flower. "Very little damage, all told. Good freshness, although a few more immature samples than the usual suspects bring back." He put the last flower into his basket, the deep black petals much less interesting to admire after leaving the soil. "The first bonus pay, I'd say." His eyes faded back to their normal amber color as he stopped channeling mana to the Analyze Magic spell.

Fifty silver coins for everyone? That was okay. Gathering quests could get messy when it came to pay disputes, but the local Helelites were good people, fair in their dealings, so they got a good amount of trust when it came to valuing their gathering materials. A neutral appraiser was easily accessible, given how many alchemists were around in the University, but that option was rarely exercised. Also, no one would dare to try to bullshit an academy professor on something like this. Too large of a risk for too little potential profit.

Casimir looked at the students. Should he have brought them in on this part? …Maybe next time. Killing their spirits with bureaucracy and their hopes with economics and negotiations should be done in stages.

-----------------

After the class started on the actual curses, the lectures became a lot shorter, with most of the class time dedicated to supervised practice, mostly so Casimir could give individual instruction to make sure everyone was progressing. "Today we'll be talking in a little more detail about natural curse defenses." Casimir said to start things off. He wrote out the mana cost equation for curses, drawing an arrow from the 'total resistance' variable to a new equation.

"As I explained before, souls are complex things, constantly in flux, but there's enough underlying structure that embedding curses is possible." There was some interesting research on the subject of souls that lack any such structure, but it's mostly theoretical. "Most of the mana cost of a curse is spent in circumventing these defenses. The defenses correspond to the various physical defenses a person has, so they're named as such: The skin, the meat, and the bone."

Casimir turned over his chalkboard to point at the diagrams he had drawn out in advance. "The skin is the first defense. Some would call it the weakest, and it is for most non-mage, non-monster ensouled, but it's also the part that can be most easily reinforced, either literally through mana cultivation, or metaphorically through the wearing of armor that's been properly enchanted." Casimir gestured to a few equations from the spellweaving classes, pointing out how the variable he had outlined was shared between them and the curse equations. "Unlike the other two defenses, this one also matters for calculating the effectiveness of other kinds of magic, as it's just a matter of it being a physical barrier that also inhibits the transmission of mana." To emphasize his next point, Casimir brought out his stiletto, twirling it on his fingers. "While it's possible to bypass this defense by casting through an injury, a hole in the skin's protection, that's an advanced technique that's only used by adventurers and surgeons." As much as the practice disgusted him, cutting open a patient to more precisely apply healing magic to their insides was a perfectly valid way to increase the robustness of the spell matrix, allowing greater mana throughput and control.

Questions, excellent. "Jenny." Casimir said, pointing to the blonde girl.

"Why is it called skin, meat and bone? That's gross." Was her question. Was the knife not clear enough?

"Because it's literal." Casimir said slowly. "The mana you use to curse people travels the distance between you and your opponent, through their body into their soul, then from there it affects their body. The skin is something everyone has everywhere, so it's an important consideration. Stick your hand in a gaping wound, or channel it through a knife like this one, and the skin defense is ignored. As mentioned, channeling a curse through a weapon is an advanced technique that will not be covered in this course."

He pointed at the word 'meat' on the chalkboard with his knife. "Now, meat is basically the same; the more mass and the more mana infused in that mass, the higher the resistance, but it works a little differently. Instead of blocking your mana, it instead… soaks it up. This is bad, of course, but not as bad, as a person's body can only handle so much foreign mana, and once it's hit that limit, the meat might as well not even be there." He put the sub-equation of the 'meat' variable in the mana resistance equation below the symbol, noting the sub-variables of 'capacity' and 'foreign mana total'. "It's why cursing the same target twice will consume less mana than cursing two separate targets, although remember the lessons on inherent resistance, if you're going to do that, make the curses weaker. This also goes into medical magic, as ritual healing fully suffuses the patient with foreign mana beforehand to prevent this kind of interference."

"The bone resistance is the last ditch defense of the soul. It's basically impossible to work around, and you can't wear it out, so it's all or nothing." Casimir shrugged. "It's just the cost of casting curses."

Casimir pointed to another student. "Faron?"

The elf stood up crisply. "Is this why casting curses is so inefficient in direct damage? Because of all the resistance, sir?"

"Exactly." Casimir said. "If you want to hurt people, use more direct magic. I'm giving you precision tools here to help your friends and impede your enemies, not weapons. You can still hurt people if you really want to, but it's not the best tool for the job."

Alright, that was all he needed to talk about. "Now, pair up, and start practicing your curses. I'll be going around and giving tips." Just another day on the job, really.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

Everything had started to settle into a routine as the months passed. Teach classes, run the adventuring club through combat drills, kick their asses on the day before the weekend, run them through a job during the weekend. Occasionally, spend hours failing to say anything to Luci's shrine.

This week's job was a gathering quest to collect Pyre Roots. Thorne's troop was out getting Cloud Lotuses instead, so it was just Casimir and the team. He couldn't range out as far without another teacher to watch the kids while he was rustling up trouble, but he still ensured that things didn't get too boring for the kids.

Idly, he wondered whether he should let them have a job without monster attacks for once. Show them how a normal day as an adventurer goes. Eventually, he concluded that he'll just get someone else to take them on a job, so he didn't have to be there.

…Something wasn't right. This was the third time Casimir had babysat the students at this location, so he had gotten pretty familiar with the normal mana profile of the area through his mana-attuned senses. The sounds of bubbling water mana underground, mixing with the sharp smells of fire mana as the geysers built up power for an explosion, the thick roots of the pyre flowers gathering that power and slowly converting that mixture into pure fire mana, a process that tasted almost, but not quite, like a salt lick.

But there was… an odd tone of whistling air mana, one foreign to this area. Something was using magic… Casimir looked around, hoping to catch something with his eyes. The advanced fusion of Detect and Analyze mana, Mana Symphony, had two layers: it allowed one to detect mana with their non-visual senses, but analysis was still mostly limited to sight, so he needed to lay eyes on the caster to get a true idea of what was going on.

Naturally, the instant things seemed off, Casimir leapt into a crevice he noticed on one of the stone walls and concealed himself as best as could be, quietly killing the bird that was previously living there.

Where was it… there! Casimir detected a nearly-invisible silhouette, and from the incredibly subtle pattern of concealment, Casimir knew exactly what he was dealing with. "Why in the depths is there a Cloud Slicer here?"

This was bad. Cloud Slicers were elite-ranked monsters, the penultimate assassins. They were intelligent, nigh-undetectable, fast as hell, and with attacks lethal enough that even heroic-ranked adventurers could easily get killed if they were caught by surprise. The good news is that they were assassins in more than just ability, but also attitude. They attacked anyone who got near the clouds where they formed and lived, but they only descended when convinced by another intelligent monster to kill someone specific. This meant that it would only kill its target if given the opportunity, prizing escape above all other priorities once it accomplished that.

The question is… who was the monster targeting? Was it him? Or one of the students? Or was there someone else here, and the assassin was a coincidence? Casimir didn't like this at all.

Well, there was one way to test things. Casimir cast his best decoy illusion, a combination of light and wind mana that created a pretty-good facsimile of Casimir's own appearance. Cloud Slicers had good senses, but it would not be the first time Casimir's had to deal with them, so he had a pretty good idea on how good an illusion has to be to fool them.

As Casimir had feared, that subtle eddy in the local mana burst into motion, the languid movements accelerating into a tornado of cutting winds, utterly shredding both the illusion, a nearby boulder, and two yards of ground. What had put a hit out on him?

Still, Cloud Slicers did have one big weakness: the glass-like material they were made of was fragile as all hell, so a propelled sling bullet right as the winds died down shattered the thing's head, and the magical concealment immediately ended, revealing an incredibly fine pile of crystal that, while difficult to see, was far from undetectable. Very valuable crystal, so after scanning the area for a second Cloud Slicer, Casimir took a few seconds to section it and stuff it into his enchanted loot bag.

The students should be fine… but Casimir rushed towards them anyway.

-----------------

Things were not fine. There were five thugs in the area when Casimir arrived, large men with thick muscles and rough appearances, although the battle had paused into a standoff as one of them held Illivere in their grip, knife pointed at her throat. Hanna was downed with her front covered in blood, with Faron desperately pouring the bottled life mana down her throat.

Peter was standing as still as possible, glaring at the man with Illivere but taking no other action. One piece of good news was that three of the men seemed to be in pretty bad shape themselves, the one free man more focusing on healing his downed allies (poorly) rather than attacking Faron and Hanna.

After taking a second to assess the situation and everyone's sight lines, Casimir glided quietly along the ground, getting ever closer as Peter and the hostage taker spoke.

"Now, drop the axes on the ground, brat." The man said condescendingly. Gritting his teeth, Peter started to tense, but deflated at the man moving his knife even closer to Illivere's throat. Slowly, he let his axes fall from his hands, defeated.

"Good boy." The man said, grinning as he relished in the power he had over the kid. "Now-" Peter's eyes widened as he finally noticed Casimir standing behind the stranger, which was as good a time as any.

Casimir grabbed the arm of the hostage-taker, wrenching the knife away from Illivere's throat and breaking the arm with a surge of mana enhancing his grip strength. For her part, she immediately seized the opportunity, escaping easily and taking a defensive position near where Faron was trying to keep Hanna alive, passing him an additional vial to assist. As expected, she was able to remain calm and composed even when her life was threatened.

The thug started to scream, but a choking curse reflexively applied killed the noise before it could inconvenience anyone. Afterwards, he modified the curse's parameters, turning the strangulation into merely impeded breathing before the inherent resistance could kick in. Then, he compounded it with his newest mastered curse: a lightning mana curse that induced spasms in his throat muscles, disrupting any attempt to breathe evenly. "Do you like my hiccup curse, asshole?" Casimir said.

"*Th*hic* Last Ga*hic*" The guy choked out, kneeling down and cradling his broken arm.

"So you do know who I am." Casimir spat, kicking him. He spared a glance to the other men, who were trying to escape. With a gesture, he cast choking curses on them too, each one collapsing one after the other, pawing at their throats as if to ward away the spell. After the last one fell, he relaxed the curses, like he did for the first one. "Sit quietly and don't make me chase you, or else." He thought about using a brief fear spell to reinforce the threat, but the mind mana wouldn't convert properly, so he instead created a menacing rumble in his voice with force mana on the last two words. The men settled down, cowed by the threat.

The first man had acclimated to the hiccup curse, focusing on his breathing as he awaited Casimir's judgment. The enemies handled, for now, Casimir moved on to Hanna, examining her injuries. Life aspected spirit bloodlines had many advantages when it came to recovering from injury, among them was a natural recovery speed comparable to weak regeneration curses, ones that only accelerated natural recovery instead of guiding it. The "potions" poured into her wounds and throat certainly helped keep her alive, but it would take hours for her to recover from injuries this severe.

Still, this was an easy fix. Casimir didn't have the time or attention to use one of his top quality healing curses, but for Hanna, he doesn't need to be nearly as careful. He laid a web of life mana on her soul, reinforcing the soul's image of what she should be, and linking it to the pools of undirected life mana, on top of pouring a portion of his own mana into the recovery process.

Seconds after Casimir pulled Faron and Illivere away, Hanna's eyes burst open and she leapt to her feet, muscles bulging as the last of the spell induced a mana rush before dissolving. "Okay. Casimir said. "Now that the immediate issue is resolved…" He detonated the hiccup curse intentionally, with the thug jerking and twitching from the electrocution, but he stopped his incessant hiccuping. "...what in the world were you idiots thinking?" He kicked the man towards his buddies, following him so Casimir could address them as a group. "Did you think I'm less dangerous than whatever monster hired you?" If they were working in tandem with a Cloud Slicer, it had to be a monster calling the shots.

Before Casimir could get creative with threats, the one that was healing his companions cracked, waving his hands to emphasize how unarmed he was. "Don't kill us, we're sorry! It wasn't anything personal, man, we're just following orders!"

Casimir scowled. "What orders, and from who?"

The guy was quick to answer. "We needed the girl! As for the boss… Uh oh." The enchanted chest armor the thugs had, light as it was, started to surge with mana on all five thugs, leeching their mana to fuel the effect. Casimir knew he didn't have time to disable them, so he leapt towards the students, creating a magic barrier just in case.

As he had feared, the five thugs burst into blue-hot flames, incinerating in moments. After a moment to gather his bearings, Casimir started metaphorically kicking himself for his reaction. Of course they had enchantments set to kill them. If he had his mind all in order, he would have remembered to check for things like that. This was why calming spells were so useful, they prevented you from making stupid mistakes like that.

Bah. Casimir created some water and washed away the ashes of the thugs. Turning to his students, he looked them over. Now that Hanna was back up, she had administered healing to the rest of the team. "Okay kids, this job's gone to shit. Follow me and we'll get this done quickly." After twenty more minutes of walking straight to the mature roots and scooping them out of the rock, which was originally going to take at least two more hours of careful searching, testing, and extraction, Casimir led the group out of the forest, slaughtering the one monster that bothered them on the way out and leaving the body to rot.

The silence was oppressive, but the students were safe.

-----------------

When they were back in the guild hall and seated at a table, Casimir finally relaxed. "Okay, now we can talk about it." He said.

Peter, Faron, and Hanna's questions all stumbled over each other, but they eventually calmed down, with Illivere immediately starting her own question: "So you're The Last Gasp?"

Casimir nodded. "Yep. I know, I don't really live up to the rumors." Most of his current rep was either David talking shit or from his short stint as a solo adventurer before his sabbatical, which was when he was… not himself. "I'm not some emotionless killer, " anymore. "... and for the vast majority of my career, I was part of a team. But I assure you, I can set a breathing curse on someone with any mana type I've bothered learning to use. I've earned that title."

Peter pointed his finger at Casimir in challenge. "Stone mana."

"Coughing curse, creates grains of sand in the throat." Casimir said immediately.

"Fire" was Peter's next challenge.

Easy. "Thirst curse, it makes breathing painful." One of the less useful ones, honestly. "If you do it right, they end up coughing blood." People's bodies tended to crack open if you used fire mana to dry parts out. Quite nasty, actually. "One more before we move on."

Peter struggled to come up with one, but Faron provided it for him: "Metal."

"Metal mana doesn't work well with curse structures." Casimir explained. "That said, one of the things a metal curse can do is induce stiffness, and breathing requires enough motion that a metal curse can impede it in that way." That one was more for bragging rights than anything Casimir has ever had the desire to use. Metal mana was rather… dense. It wasn't an efficient option for most uses. But there was a reason he learned how to use metal to conjure lockpicks and arrows with shaping magic, and that was because it was useful. "Now, any other questions?"

Hanna spoke up next: "D-did you let us fight them? To test us?"

"Nope." Casimir said bluntly. "They sent an elite-ranked monster against me. It was a distraction, but an effective one." Well, the thing was stealthy enough that if Casimir wasn't actively searching for monsters, he probably would have missed it and died. There's such a thing as being too honest, though. "That's why I'm sure they're working for a monster, like a devil or dragon." There shouldn't be any living examples of those that would have a grudge against Casimir, so the thug's insistence that they were after Illivere seemed true. But why? "Monsters don't do the bidding of humans, but the reverse can be true. The suicide enchantments proved that none of them was the boss."

Peter seemed incredibly interested in the mention of 'elite monster'. "What was the monster? Was it cool?"

Casimir shrugged. "It was a Cloud Slicer. Don't usually see them on the ground, normally they just attack people who fly too high. Their bodies are basically glass, they typically get used in high quality potion bottles." The material allowed for the easy containment of more volatile alchemical preparations. "Next question."

"Should we inform my father of this?" Illivere asked, as if the information conveyed was no more pressing than her taking a small vacation.

Casimir didn't like that idea. "He may end up banning you from the adventuring club, or withdrawing you from the school altogether." It was a smart move, honestly, but it resembled failure too much for Casimir's tastes. No adventurer liked to be told that they weren't good enough, after all.

"Ah." Illivere replied. "...He can be illogical sometimes, when it comes to my safety." Casimir rather disagreed on how illogical it was to remove a vulnerable target from the dangerous place after a failed attack, but he kept his peace on the matter.

"We have to attack!" Peter insisted. "Let's kick their asses the next time they come sniff around and get their boss, that'll show them."

That was dangerously optimistic. "We don't know enough about their resources. That could be the most they could bring to bear, a gamble, or that could have been a half-assed probing strike. If it's the former, it could be months before we see a hint of them. If it's the latter…" The Academy has numerous defenses that prevent assassin-type monsters like Cloud Slicers from getting close enough to their targets to do anything without getting detected, but whether it would be more likely to try another stealthy approach or to instead do something more brute force… Casimir hated bodyguarding. "...we're going to put a hold on further quests."

The students seemed to be expecting that restriction, as they nodded sadly rather than fight him on that. Hanna raised her hand, speaking once Casimir turned his attention to her. "How long do you think we should wait?"

Good question. "...You've done enough jobs that getting more done doesn't help much for your skills, so I'm going to say 'when I'm confident you can hack it at standard grade'." Which will probably take… the rest of the semester at least, if not that then the rest of the year.

Better get started.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

"That's a tough situation, Casimir." Master said as she searched among the bookshelves that pretended to be a staircase. "I mean, those sounded like high quality suicide enchantements, if it burned so thoroughly, but that's not narrowing the possibilities that much." Not in Anima, at least. Having a society where learning to use magic at least a little bit is nigh mandatory sounds nice, but it did have its disadvantages.



"Yeah, they weren't even strong thugs." Casimir groused as he helped his teacher look for the book on the slanted bookshelf that acted as the banister. "Don't get me wrong, the kids aren't as weak as I'm leading them on to believe, but they were outnumbered and still nearly won. Those thugs were bottom of the barrel, and I think they were foreign, too." It was difficult to determine who was and wasn't a foreigner in Anima, given how each of the founders brought along a few hundred settlers from the various nations that they were from, but it seemed like the only magic user there was the healer, and it looked like spirit magic rather than anything learned. "I've been trying to place the accent, but then I realized they had a seaman's accent and gave up."



Wait, there was a thought… as if reading Casimir's mind, Master Southwind hummed at that tidbit. "Do you think they were pirates?" She gave up on the staircase and moved her attention to the bookcases on the wall of the staircase.



"Probably." Casimir agreed. "They just needed to find some swabbies that ran out of money before shore leave was over and make them an offer." Where was that book? This whole section was spellweaving, it had to be around here somewhere. "Thinking about it, they might not even know they were hired by a monster. Any that are cunning enough to do a kidnapping plot for political gain probably can get themselves middlemen." Ones skilled enough to be willing to create those enchantments, as the list of monsters that learn enchanting is very small. Even then, it tends to be crude, and the triggered effect was anything but. "So that narrows things down… but not enough to be useful." If only he still had his mind curses… retrocognition spells were iffy at the best of times, but memory enhancement as it happened was one of his old standards. It was dismantled for a good reason, but it was still very inconvenient to go without now.



"Ah!" Master declared, extracting a book from a shelf. "Found it. 'The skilled hunter's treatise on live capture magic, by Rekira Flamegust'. I told you I had a copy." The book was bound in leather, with etched enchantments preserving the tome from insects and general rot, like all of the books in the arrangement of bookshelves Master called a house. This was in addition to enchantments meant to keep conditions nice carved into the house itself, of course.



"I didn't doubt it, Master." Casimir said deferentially as he took the offered book and leafed through it. "Yeah, this is just what Hanna needs." She could already use Growth to try and bind things, but these more specialized matrices will vastly increase her ability to limit movement in a way that would complement curses from Peter.



"Excellent. I'm glad to see you're taking your personal student's needs seriously." Master said, a teasing grin on her face.



Casimir groaned. "Don't rub it in." He said instead of disputing it. As it turned out, part of a student's tuition was reserved as extra pay for whatever teacher took them on, so when Master had pointed out that he spent more time tutoring them in the club than most professors spent with their personal students, he bit the potion cork and formalized it. "Did you know the Archmagus added nine times the personal student allotment for Illivere's tuition to her teacher? Who does that?" More importantly, why didn't anyone else snap her up just for the money? Casimir resolved to ask her later.



"Extra bribes to the staff to incentivize such a thing is pretty common." Master said airily. "Your own family offered your teacher a free spot in the Archmage's mausoleum, statue and all. I turned them down, but it was a nice gesture." They did? She wasn't even an Archmage then… "I didn't tell you because you should accept a student on their own merits, not because you wanted some extra money. It's not something they're supposed to do, anyway." Yeah, the extra pay from the tuition was nice, but it's not really worth the extra time unless you're doing it for other reasons. Like being paid ten times that amount.



"Well, I figure I should spend the extra money to get the kids some armor and other equipment." Casimir said, to his Master's approval. "As much as I'd like to limit them to what they have earned or created through their own efforts… it's not practical."



"To be fair, " Master chided. "...you didn't exactly go without a helping hand yourself." It took a moment for Casimir to figure out what she was talking about, but then he remembered the enchantments Master had placed on his gear back when he had first become her student. It wasn't quite the same, given that he was already standard-rank at that point, but close enough.



"Yeah, yeah." Casimir said, waving off the point. "If they're going to be exposed to the risk Illivere's relationship to the head of state provokes, it's only fair they get the benefits, that's all."



Master Southwind gave Casimir an indulgent hug, her massive size making her grip inescapable without violence. "Aw, are you sad that you can't make your students think you hate them anymore?"



Casimir scowled at the address, but relaxed as his Master wasn't letting go until she fulfilled her hug quota. "Learning is faster if you think you're in danger." Casimir insisted, his voice muffled by her embrace. "I learned so much more about inflicting curses by using them on monsters than I ever did in training." Really, the only one that didn't benefit immensely from live combat was Illivere, but even she was learning how to blend her magical and physical skills into one cohesive whole.



Releasing him, Master picked up the other book they had searched her house for, a book on incorporating enchantments into shaped equipment that she had personally annotated. "Well, here you go. You should bring your students back here some time, I'd love to meet them in person."



Casimir took the books from his teacher, snorting at the idea of bringing them over. They'd lose all respect for him when they saw his Master mothering him, Casimir was sure. Not going to happen.



-----------------



Final Exam season is always rough on the students. It was the first time Casimir's seen half of the people in front of his office for his office hours, and the sheer number was the main reason he just commandeered a regular classroom to let everyone fit.



"Okay, the twenty curses we set you on is intended to do three things: Provide an understanding for all of the primary mana types you're expected to learn during any of your classes, give you grounding in all of the simple categories of curse, and finally give you a decent repertoire of them even if you take no further education on the subject." Casimir began as he addressed his students in the 'bonus lecture'. There were students from both of the classes he taught or helped teach on the subject, so there were a few sorcerers in the crowd.



"As such..." Casimir drew a large grid on his chalkboard. "First column: Force magic. Strengthen, " and its counterpart, Weaken, "-is a full body curse, Weight is a non-physical curse, Muffle is a mana-interaction curse, and Bounce is an auto-function curse." In each row, he sketched out the spell matrix representation of the mana type on the first row, and the structures in the columns, then the names of the curses in the intersections. "In fire magic, we have Warmth in the full body column, and Resist Fire in the mana interaction column. Water magic: Sink is an auto-function curse, and Water Breathing is a mana-interaction curse. Life magic: Invigorate is full body, Purge Toxin is auto-function, Seal Wounds is in the fifth column, variable focus curses, and Burst of Strength is a non-physical curse." That last one could actually be really dangerous if you altered it just right, although it wasn't efficient or reliable enough to make it into Casimir's usual arsenal.



Casimir moved on to the rest. "Mind magic: the Calming Curse is non-physical, Sharpen Sense is variable focus, and Mind Shield is mana interaction. The only stone magic curse we require of you is Stoneskin, which is variable focus. Wind magic has the mana-interaction Steadiness curse as well as Fresh Breathing as an auto-function, and finally, light magic has the full body Glow curse and the non-physical Blur curse." He pointed to the sorcerers. "Naturally, the lot of you are required to cast a curse of each methodology with your chosen mana type." He got to work circling the ones he listed for the wizards, before filling in the rest of the chart with the spell names for the sorcerers, including adding a row about Lightning mana for Kate and Kyle.



Turning back to the collected students, he clapped to get the attention of the ones who had zoned out while he was writing. "First, if you're here to get tips on mana conversion and manipulation, raise your hand." Last semester that was the big obstacle for a good chunk of students that Professor Watcher was teaching, so Casimir was not surprised to see two thirds of the wizard contingent raise their hands. "Okay, group up and try to help each other, I'll go over there after I get these others started."



Gathering the eleven students that didn't join that group around him, Casimir went through the various methodologies used in each curse category. The thing about using magic, is that after a few weeks of casting spells, it's not really a matter of being clumsy with the mana. That's the easy part. The tricky bit was remembering what the mana needed to do in order to achieve the desired effect.



He's heard so many different ways to describe it. Like learning the steps of a dance, or notes to a song, that was a pretty common metaphor. Magnus liked to equate curses to cooking, of course, with each type of magic being a different technique. He liked describing the full-body Petrification curse as frying something in oil, while using the auto-function Rock Climb was more like delicately mixing food to create a specific experience instead of a homogenous mass. Each wizard or sorcerer tended to have their own ways to remember what to do, using their previous understandings to make learning something new easier.



Casimir preferred thinking of string and mechanics, equating knots, snares, and locks to the magical techniques when he was learning, although by now he had moved beyond metaphor when it came to curse magic, he was more likely to describe something else as being similar to curse magic rather than the reverse, nowadays. He liked to think of it as a mark of mastery.



After helping the students who wanted more review for the final, Casimimr moved on to the last students, the ones who wanted help with their project grade, earned by learning a curse whose scope was outside of the basic lessons. Either a new mana type, new methodology, or one that incorporated an advanced technique of some kind even if it was theoretically within the chart. They had a whole extra week to take that, so it was a lower priority.



Noticing that three of his personal students were in that category, he brought them aside after helping the other two students who wanted assistance with that. "Okay, first off, do any of you know where Illivere is?" Casimir asked once they were away from others.



Hanna nodded. "She's more worried about her shaping grade, so she's over there." Makes sense.



"So, what's the trouble?" Casimir asked. "You're working on Regeneration, I know that Hanna, Peter's got Attune Senses mostly working, and Faron, you've been trying to do that conditional activation thing, right?" At each address, his students confirmed his recollections.



"Actually…" Faron said, coughing. "While I would appreciate some extra instruction on the quiescence structures, the real reason we're here is because we think we've found a lead on who was targeting Illivere." Really?



"I'm surprised." Casimir said, concealing the tension that suddenly gripped him. "I tried to track them down too, but the trail went cold." He did manage to find the pirate ship that the thugs entered the country on, but that was a dead end. As was the search for potential dungeons in the vicinity of the port, to find a boss monster who may have posted the job. Even the search for the middleman didn't end well, as no one had ever heard about them before the job was offered or since the failure, and that lack of reputation was why no one that was actually dangerous took them up on the offer.



Peter frantically nodded. "Yeah! I was working on my sense enhancement with Illivere, and I saw someone spying on us! I played it cool, of course, and afterwards we followed him to his base in the woods!"



"Which was when Illivere sensibly called off the pursuit and we agreed to get you before continuing." Faron cut in. Yeah, that sounded like Illivere.



Casimir smiled at the news. "That's great news! Tell me where this place is, and I'll check it out."



Peter was not willing to be so reasonable. "No way! We're coming too." Ah, Casimir was afraid they'd say that.



"Listen, Peter, I know you want to be involved, but…" Casimir was likely going to murder them all after extracting every scrap of knowledge of the conspiracy out of them. "...you're just going to slow me down."



"We're ready." Peter insisted.



Hanna spoke up as well. "We're already involved."



Faron nodded resolutely. "We're stronger than before."



Casimir took a calming breath. Of all the times to get stubborn, they pick the time when they actually had some leverage. "...Is Illivere behind you guys in this?"



At the three synchronized nods, Casimir groaned. "Okay, fine. We'll make this a bet. One more fight. I win? You give me the info and let me go without interference. If I use a real spell, you're strong enough to come with." Ever since they had learned of his title, the regular testing battles went away with the quests, so in the months since then, they haven't had a proper battle, just drills and sparring.



His students all tensed in excitement for the action, so Casimir made sure to grin as he raised his finger. "But first, I have to finish out my office hours. Now, do you two actually have something you wanted help with, or just Faron?"



Final Exam season waits for no one, after all.

 

[Requiem_Jeer]

There was one rather large difference between this battle with his students than the one previous, and it was something immediately apparent as the students looked at him.

Previously, he just wore what he called his 'city gear', which was some light armor made of padding and leather, more enchanted for comfort rather than actual protection. This was because it was polite to dress appropriately to your station, and for the notoriously paranoid adventurer profession, that meant that you had some form of protection as well as some small weapon. Assuming you could walk confidently enough to make it clear that it was no costume, thieves would generally avoid your pockets and those who need some odd job completed know at a glance that you'll at least hear them out. When that armor is made of dragonhide and padded with tormenter silk, they also know not to waste your time with just a few silvers.

No, what Casimir donned for this fight was his real armor, that he hasn't worn since he got put on sabbatical. The under armor was the same materials as his city gear, just enchanted a little differently, with light metal plates adding an additional layer of protection where it wouldn't interfere with his flexibility. It wasn't the kind of comprehensive protection you'd expect from a knight's armor, but it provided numerous extra surfaces that Casimir could safely block with, and his vital organs were covered by his breastplate. The preferred metal for this kind of thing was verenium-backed stuburium, with the stuburium layer enchanted for durability and magic resistance while the verenium was given enchantments that helped reduce the damage that got through the armor. In the case of Casimir's set, physical attacks would be converted into force mana that the verenium would soak in. Casimir could then tap into that mana to use force magic, although the point of that was more to clear it out rather than because it was a good source of mana.

"Uh… Teach?" Peter said nervously as Casimir stretched in his armor. "What's that you're wearing?" Also unlike the previous fights, this battle was held within the bounds of the academy, on the sports field. None of the equipment was outside, so the only notable terrain feature was the sturdy poles they mounted the baskets on for battleball, beyond the track that was surrounding the field.

Casimir stared at his students. "Unlike before, I'm not trying to push you. You have something I want, and once I win, I'll be leaving immediately. Thus, I'm wearing my good armor."

Faron's brow furrowed as he realized the unspoken implications of that statement. That frown evolved into a scowl as he hardened his resolve. "Peter? Illivere? Forget what I said." Well that was ominous.

The start of these fights were pretty much always one of two things, because it was their best opener. This wasn't a problem, because it was a rarity that adventurers fought the same thing more than once, and when they do… they're usually the ones that learn more. The Soul-Devouring Dragon can attest to that.

The first option was Faron charging, with both Illivere and Peter close behind, and Hanna using some kind of control magic to bind Casimir's movements. It never works. The second and more frequent opener, when they were fighting Casimir, was for Faron to brace himself in a defensive posture and the other three all launching some longer range offensive magic. This also never works, but it performed better than the first option.

Which was why Casimir was caught a little off guard when all four charged forward, with Illivere's latest enchanted weapon, a long spear this time, leading the group. Further, Peter and Faron were both fanning out, going much faster than Casimir's seen them go without tripping over themselves.

Still, a quick scan of the spear indicated the enchantments. It wasn't actually a spear, it was an alchemical bomb on a stick, the sharp smell of fire aspected mana thick with power. Any kind of close combat dodge would be foolish, he'd have to disengage… which Peter and Faron were already cutting off. Dozens of possible plans of action were invented and discarded, as most of them required him to cast a new spell instead of relying on his long-term curses.

Most… but not all. Casimir leapt backwards at an even faster pace than Peter and Faron's all-out sprint to cut him off, running up the five meter pole to the top and allowing the group to surround him. Casimir hummed to himself. "I might be in trouble here." It was a logical move, and he suspected he knew what Faron was talking about.

Under the last agreement, if they had altered their tactics to reflect the fact that their opponent was aping a mana cultivator rather than a true wizard, using any tactic that Casimir had pointed out as being vulnerable to other mages, like alchemical bombs, would have been smart, but also against the point of the exercise, to assess their general competence. Well, that's how someone like Faron would interpret the situation as, who still saw the mage knights as bastions of honor rather than pretentious mercenaries. But now that the stakes were real…

Casimir thought about what to do while the kids launched a variety of deadly projectiles at him. Hanna sent wooden thorns, which were dodged or blocked on Casimir's armor without issue, Faron sent a lightning javelin, which was a new trick, but Casimir just empowered the lightning conduction curse he had woven into his cluster of mana interaction defenses, channeling the attack into the pole and ground harmlessly. Peter… tried to land a weight curse to slow Casimir down, but a flex of his own weight curse shattered Peter's probing mana, leaving Casimir's weight still under his complete control.

It was times like these that he kind of felt bad for the kid, because pretty much any spell the kid could master was basically impossible to hit Casimir with, as the various protective and enhancement curses that were already on Casimir's soul made it difficult to latch on any more, and if it happened to be the exact same mana and effect type? It was nigh impossible. Casimir, as skilled as he was, could lay four or even five curses on the same body part, but he needed to use different mana types to get the room, as even theoretically redundant curses had some notable differences in structure that gave each one some breathing room. Heh, breathing room.

All of this still occupied some of Casimir's precious focus, which meant that Illivere unleashed her own advanced curse. Casimir's first reflex against Crushing Despair was to tap into his long-term mind curses… which haven't been long-term for his entire sabbatical. They had caught on to his condition!

They must have connected the dots after his lecture on the subject…

----------------

"Today's lecture is on the subject of Mana Burn." Casimir said, flipping his chalkboard to reveal the term. "Yesterday, we talked about how long-term curses go into active and inactive states, and roughly how the structures of the spells allow for this. However, even well-made curses can be dangerous, if they're strong enough, due to this affliction."

Casimir glanced over his students, who were well-trained enough to know he was checking to see if anyone had read the assigned pages. "Horace." Casimir said, pointing.

The dwarf stood up on his chair and recited his answer like he was a politician addressing a crowd. "Mana Burn is when a soul is damaged by a specific mana type dominating in the system for an extended period."

"Correct." Casimir said. "While it's theoretically possible for a wizard to catch Mana Burn just by using the exact same mana type exclusively, even a full night's rest and solid breakfast clears out your system enough to make that nigh impossible." He shrugged. "That said, it's why it's important that a Sorcerer attunes themselves to their chosen mana type, because if done improperly or not at all, they'll eventually suffer from Mana Burn." After a moment of thought, he added: "Well, it's also possible to get Mana Burn by using exceptionally large amounts of mana for extended periods, regardless of type, but as long as you make sure to cast most of your magic from your mana heart it's not a concern. Domain Wizards can suffer this problem if they have to maintain a domain for too long, which is measured in hours." Well, assuming they didn't try and maintain a water domain in a desert or something equally crazy. Then it could maybe go under a full hour.

Damn, he got on another tangent. "But the type of Mana Burn we're focusing on today is the kind you get from having active-state curses be in place for an extended period." Some of the students who had relaxed after his tangent started focused their wandering attentions on him again. "The type of mana takes a big impact on how much is needed. For someone with a spirit bloodline, it's nigh impossible to mana burn on your specialty, but it's a lot easier to mana burn on anything else. For those without such a trait, the easiest mana type to burn on is metal aspected mana. The hardest type? Life mana, of course." Ironically, it's still the most common type to burn on, solely because of the condition's other name, 'Potion Sickness'.

After fielding a few questions about roughly how difficult various mana types were to suffer mana burn with, Casimir moved on. "The effects of Mana burn can vary, but for the most part, it manifests as various gut illnesses, you end up vomiting your food, a little dysentery, and horrible stomach pains on top of that. In addition to those, you can see headaches, dizziness, temporary blindness, burning or freezing sensations, sweating… pretty much anything you can think of when you say 'that person's sick'. Anything more specific than that is beyond the scope of this course."

Time to take it home. "I tell you this to warn you against trying to create a long-term curse before you're ready. There's a reason you don't have curse wizards selling permanent Strengthens on a street corner, and it's not because it's below their dignity." Well, for most wizards that's a pretty good reason, but not all, but even Crusand ensures that their Hex Warriors get enough education to be able to handle themselves without needing checkups every other day. "It's because it's a restricted magical trade." For most magical trades, the training you get to learn it in the first place is considered a large enough barrier that there wasn't any need to further limit the practice. You totally had novice enchanters selling their inferior goods in market stalls to make a quick silver, after all. "It would not be difficult for some shady curse mage to cast a stock standard strengthen on someone, make it last two days and claim it would last two months, and be out of town before anyone was the wiser. Worse, they could actually make it last two months and the guy ends up with so many minor injuries from Mana Burn that he can't even track down the hustler and put the boot to him." Thus the illegality.

A few students had their hands raised. "Ruzum." Casimir said, pointing at the Aviost.

Ruzum spoke as if he wanted desperately to salute or point, but kept his arms as still as a statue despite that. "Professor Toomes, how can we make use of long-term curses without breaking the law?"

Casimir shrugged. It wasn't that big of a deal, honestly. "Mostly you just have to check in on them or make sure that the people you're using the curses on can do that themselves. The construction of the curse can make a big difference as to how disruptive the curse is to the systems of the target." He glanced at his chalkboard, debating whether or not to draw a diagram. Nah. "Remember how spellcasting is a little more difficult if you're cursed? It's because y'all are still new to spellcasting. People who are new to walking on boats have the same problem, eventually you barely notice yourself compensating for it. The same factors that cause that interference affect the rate of Mana Burn in that curse. Keep in mind, the thing that makes a curse long-term is that it draws on the mana of the target, which is crucial for causing Mana Burn. The stuff you learn in this class will never cause Mana Burn, but it's important to know about it far in advance of being able to cause it." Well, some people like calling Inherent Magic Resistance reactions as a form of Mana Burn, but while they were similar, it wasn't in the textbooks and honestly there were a few holes in that comparison.

Moving on. "Now, most cases of Mana Burn are relatively benign and short term." Casimir said. "However, there's a subset of Mana Burn known as Mana Addiction. It's when someone becomes reliant on certain magic, like healing magic, that while the mana isn't enough or pervasive enough to injure the soul, an imbalance is created that lingers." Master forced him to read everything there was to know about the topic when he moved in with her, reading all of it every day until he could recite the relevant facts every day for a week. Only then did she get him the teaching gig. "Life addicts have trouble dealing with injuries without magic and occasionally just start bleeding randomly. Fire addicts will simultaneously shiver and sweat regardless of the current temperature, and Mind addicts will randomly forget things, have massive mood swings, and will basically be constantly drunk." Crying for hours, spontaneously thinking you're years younger after remembering something from that time period, confusing the people around you as completely different people… The list went on. "These symptoms only arise when they're not under the influence of the mana in question, mind you. It takes specialized therapies to recover from such a state, but it is possible. Even then, there are still some metaphorical, and in the case of Life Addiction, literal, scars involved. Your curse resistance will be permanently lowered at least a little bit, as the lingering mana clogs up your meat's mana absorption, and against the type in question?" Casimir scoffed instead of providing a real answer. "Yeah, you're in trouble."

----------------

"I'm in danger." Casimir said in a monotone as he fell off the pole, landing heavily on the ground. He could have landed on his feet, but why bother? It wasn't dangerous, after all. A flash of pain cut through the fog of existence, which gave him the energy to stand back up as some weaklings decided to wave their weapons at him. WIth the minimum amount of effort, he turned one of his armored sections onto each attack, deflecting the damage without much trouble. Why was he doing this, again? It seemed like such a good idea to kick their asses before.

Right, Luci's not around anymore to tell him when he's being stupid. So, how is he getting out of this? Casimir idly disarms whatshisname again, launching the fire sword at the girl approaching with her bomb stick. The sword curved in mid-air as it was reclaimed by the wannabe knight, and the kid with the axes has started on his own attack routine. It saved energy to just break the things, so he parried the blades with his armor forcefully, shattering the cheap weapons. As the knight kid reached out to catch his fire sword, Casimir brought out his knife and stabbed it through the kid's forearm, cutting straight through the weak force armor he had erected in an attempt to stop other disarms. The fire sword exploded as his concentration was shattered, catching both boys on fire and causing the bomb girl to jump back to try her approach again.

He could just let them win, send them on their own. That seems like less work. He just needs to cast something to lose. But what to cast? …He'll have to dispel this curse eventually, might as well do that. With a pulse of mana, Casimir assessed the situation. For a combat curse, it was a lot better made than Casimir expected it to be, but all it amounted to was requiring two negative fulcrums to dissolve the structure instead of the expected one and a small vortex mixer to co opt the now free-floating mind mana into a quickly dispersing but polar opposite curse: Hyperactivity.

In a burst of speed, Casimir removed the knife he embedded into Faron's arm, extinguished the fires, and went back up the pole. "You got me!" He shouted, the energy from the curse starting the fade. "You didn't play fair, and I respect that."

Casimir's students cheered at their success, although Hanna had to interrupt the celebration to heal Faron's bleeding arm.

"Was winning really that simple?" Peter asked once Casimir leapt down. "I can't believe we never tried to curse you!"

Casimir smiled at their anger. "Well, in any kind of real fight it would be a pretty stupid move, to try and curse a curse wizard that you don't totally outclass." Casimir explained. "I can counter any curse you could name faster than you could cast them… the issue was, if you did so in a mana type I didn't currently have a long term curse running for, I had to use a spell to break it. Which means you win." It was a good choice of mind curse, too. Crushing Despair was actually a relatively weak curse, as any kind of life or death danger to yourself or others generally breaks it, but given that there was no such immediate danger, it instead had the full effect.

Hanna, having finished healing Faron's injury, smiled widely as Peter hooted and hollered in celebration enough for all four of them. "We'll be able to help attack the ones who tried to kidnap Illivere, then?"

Casimir winced, but nodded. "Yeah, yeah. Come on, we have preparations to make. Follow me, I have some gear ready for you."

"New axes?" Peter asked, intrigued at the idea of new gear.

"New everything." Casimir clarified. "It's time I teach y'all how an adventurer prepares for a dangerous mission." It was a bit advanced of a lesson, given how they wouldn't normally have the budget for this lesson, but the Archmagus was effectively picking up the bill, so… "My Master and I have been enchanting them over the last couple of weeks, so it should be mostly ready anyway."

It was time for their first real adventure.