A aching headache forces me awake, i shoot up from my bed. My head collides with someone. Nura one of my class mates was standing over me really close to me. She must have been taking care of me while i was recovering.

"Ouch" i rub my head. Looking down, i notice my body is covered with healing bandages. At this moment, my head is flooding with memories of what happened. I had sex with my master and at the end of it the room was truly destroyed.

The academy must have noticed the explosion and they must also have brought professors to find out what happened. I rub my head half in embarrassment and a real pain.

"Darrel, why did you do that" Nura is tearing up, rubbing her forehead and is red all over from embarrassment. I sense that she is relieved to be distracted.

"Why, am i here." I ask her, she is one of my closer friends. I have a friend circle of 4 people 2 girls 1 guy.

The guy is the son of a major marquise, The other two girls are not nobility. One is the daughter of the fox man chief, one of the barbarian tribes in the Wildlands. The other girl Nura, she is just a talented peasant. Very similar to the way i got enrolled to the academy.

"Uhm..." Nura proceeds to explain the situation, stuttering when the story reached the point where we were found naked on top of each other. I stop her as i understood the situation enough.

She holds her skirt, seeming like she wants to say something. i ask her what is it. But she says it's nothing and leaves the room.

I rub my head for what feels like the hundredth time. If this continues, i might develop callouses on my forehead. After a bit more time, I moved on from the situation. its time to see what I got from yesterday's main event. How much did my magic improve.

I gather affinity-less mana at the tip of my finger. It moves as fast as it always did, it reached a 0 circle cantrip's mana amount. A faintly blueish haze in a perfect sphere gathers at the tip of my index finger. The gathering speed is exponentially increasing. The ball reached a 1st 2nd 3rd and 4th and finally 5th. circle amount.

Oh goddess, thats a big amount. my previous capacity was about only 1 5th circle worth of mana. But now I can now do 5 times that amount. Don't let the circle numbers confuse you, every circle is on average double the amount of the previous level and the fact that I have enough for higher levels doesn't mean I know how to cast those higher levels.

With bloodshot eyes, my heart's beats with excitement to go out and test my magic out. There is so much potential, I feel full of endless power that need so to be vented right now

I instill my will in the ball, compressing it to allow it to dissipate slowly. I flick it away. This is common practice to insure that you dont over saturate the environment. Large gathering of mana of any kind is dangerous.

Unbeknownst to anyone. As the ball rolled into a corner never to be found for many years. The energies were infused with a will that has a hint of divine energy allowed the ball to crystallize into a mana stone after many years. Eventually being found by prospective young mage and turned into the core of his staff.

I walk to the battle/testing grounds. A place for all the mages to go somewhere open to test their magic. Of course professors and high level mages have private magic towers or something massively better than the massive open fields.

I go off to a corner, there is a tree that i go to. The students being as they are. The tree i am next to is marred with scars of fire and slashes, but nature finds a way. Its still living in this ecological warzone. That no student care abouts.

I am no better. Preparing a magic structure of soul shackles. A 3rd circle curse, The dark dirty energy of curse magic coalesces into the spell. Shooting a chain towards the tree. Using magic sense, the nature mana that plant has completely stopped. the natural circulation of all mana inside the tree stopped. Even the leafs on the branches stopped moving as if time was put on pause.

Soul shackles is easily countered by other mages, but the point of the spell is to stop them from moving and distracting them. I pull my second magic structure. Death throes of the mad, another curse. That does the absolute opposite of the shackles. It speeds up mana circulation to a dangerous level. mages use it on themselves to suicide and kill their enemy with better magic.

The tree has bits of bark flaking off. the tension of both curse is causing alot of stress. I start forming my third spell. Mana of the wilds. a nature spell that you can channel to heal and promote the growth of nature. You have to form a connection with the plant and continue providing them with mana until you decide to stop.

I am not going to stop, the previous two curse will feed off the energies of the tree like all curses do and the mana of the wilds will constantly empower the tree. I want to do theory i had for a while, but never had the mana to do.

The tree visibly heals all its damage, i push more and more mana to the tree. Uncontrollable shaking is happening all around the ground the stem and the leafs of the tree are no longer stuck in time. The tree desperately wants to grow and release the energies that it cant handle. but i order the curses to keep it restrained. the previous stress is completely healed but the high mana amounts are starting to form burn mark that are also instantly healed.

Now here it comes, i loosen the restraint in one of the branches. It instantly grows much like elephant toothpaste. I quickly restraint it again, moving a string a of mana to guide the growth. I slowly start carving runes on the branch and force growth to cover the previous engraving. Doing this over and over, i manage to layer magic assistants into the wood. forming the base of my new magic wand.

I wipe sweat off my brow, relieved to have the finished the scary part. Its scary, not because i put alot of effort. its because  If i stop my hold over the tree for even a second, the high amounts of mana will grow out of control and kill me in an explosion of splinters.

I just need to slowly move the natural energies of the tree and concentrate them into the staff, also moving the whole overgrown curse to the staff. I carefully lower the input to the mana of the wilds spell, the tree slowly loses its new luster. Eventually pushing down everything-

"Darrel the Dean wants to speak with you" I jolt almost losing control of my magic, turn over and see the academy custodian. He must not have noticed the danger, thinking that i was only doing a low level nature spell. The mana very hard to notice because of the empowered curses and him having low magical talent.

"Uhm, yeah. Give me a minute to finish up." I just realised how reckless, what i did was. Such untested magics with deadly failure potential. Will get me sent to the discipline pit.

He nods his head and leaves me. I start rushing, sweat from the process has the sweat of stress added on top. I whip my forehead and force the magic to move in a more brutish manner. Breaking branches and making leafs fall off. As the last bit finally gets contained. The attached branch completely disintegrates. Making a perfect staff fall out. Like a ripe fruit finally falling from its branches.

I fall on my ass. ready to fall asleep right there. But duty calls.

Hehe doo-dee.