Chapter 7: Student Instructors (4)

~7.4~

*****

“Shi-chan, what have you done?!” Alethea was panicking when Kye walked back over. Balls of various elemental magic types were flying every which way.

“Hmm?”

“Don’t you act dumb! This is chaos!”

Kye shrugged. “They seem to be doing what I told them.

“All of them throwing fireballs and such at once is… not exactly… okay, shut up and fix this chaos!”

“Heh.” Kye formed a fireball and threw it, joining in on the chaos.

“I regret this.” Alethea turned to Liliana and Aliana, but they were no help. Aliana was exasperated at the situation and Liliana was standing there blank-faced. “Well…”

While she appeared to be having fun, Kye actually was looking for students that were succeeding in two or more simultaneous casts. Soon, she released a pulse of mana to cancel all of their magic, then called their attention and asked, “Has anyone managed four?”

“Me!” said two students. One was Astrid, and the other was a second-year student.

“Great! Show me.”

Astrid nodded. “Wind Blade!” She released four crescent-shaped blasts of wind. “And now the good part!” She stopped and pulled them back. “How’s that?”

Kye clapped. “Very good. Adding that last part is not required but certainly encouraged!” She turned toward the second student, who completed the exercise with earth magic, but without the extra phase that Astrid performed.

“Sorry, I couldn’t stop all four of them at once,” he said.

“Hey, no worries. Doing that is a tall order and, as I said, it’s not required.”

“I can do two, but I’m having trouble going any higher,” said a boy from her class, Colton Becker. “Do you have any advice, Miss Kye?”

Kye thought about it for a moment and gestured at her pink-haired girlfriend. “Alethea, do you have any advice for our dear classmate who is having trouble handling more than two?”

Alethea nodded and began explaining, “You use earth magic, so let’s try a relevant exercise. I prepared for the mana control exercise, but Kye here didn’t let me in on her magic exercise ahead of time, so…” She thought for a moment. “How about a realistic example? Do you know of the recent asteroid threat to Alcanus? It was just a few years ago.”

“Yes.”

“An adult archnoble put on a space gear and flew out to meet it. Risky business. The asteroid ended up being rather brittle and broke apart into two pieces as soon as the person tried to adjust its trajectory. That panicked our hero, and he immediately flung both pieces simultaneously in different directions, each missing the planet by a large margin. Now, this person could handle manipulating two objects at once in a dire situation like that, so why don’t we replicate that situation with you standing in for the planet?” She formed four rocks out of mana. “The only difference is that you are your own hero. Stop them all or it’s gonna hurt!”

She released the four rocks, and in a hurry, Colton put his hands in front of him, as if to protect himself, and managed to stop three of the four. The other missed his hands and headed straight for his face. It stopped only an inch from hitting him.

“What? Did I…?”

Alethea shook her head. “Not quite. I stopped the last at the last moment, but you overcame your limit of two.”

“Hold on a moment,” Kye said with a classic thinking face. “Didn’t you cast Rain of Stone during the test on our first day of class? I remember you controlling all the shards and only hitting the dummies.”

“Yes, but I mentally ran through the incan… huh…” His eyes suddenly had stars in them.

“There’s a light bulb.”

“Yeah, I’ve got an idea. Let me just…” He held his hand out and thought for a moment. Suddenly, four rocks appeared around him and shot forward. Then they stopped and started flying around the walls.

“Looks like you got it. Well done. Now explain to everyone what you just did.”

He nodded and ran through his mental process. He adjusted the incantation to fit four rocks but didn’t stop there. He mentally imagined what the incantation would do, and instead of thinking the incantation, he imagined the spell as it was happening.

“See? Visualization is key!”

Soon, everyone was able to do it, some able to go on to five, six, or more. Once everyone completed the exercise, Alethea clapped her hands and announced to the class, “Well done, everyone! Today’s class is now officially over. Please be sure to use what you’ve learned today to ace your classes! If you don’t score high on your next test, I won’t forgive you!” She had an evil smile on her face after her announcement.

*****

“Yeah, I promised I’d help them today!” Kye pleading her case with Alethea at the food court. She had agreed to help Doran learn with a high-level spell, but didn’t mention before. “You can come!”

Alethea sighed. “I can’t.”

“What? Why not?”

Alethea shook her head and gave them a fake smile. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Go have fun.”

“Love, what’s the matter?” Kye grabbed Alethea’s hand and squeezed lightly.

Alethea gave her a genuine smile, then sighed. “I have to go with my mother to speak with some of the archnoble rulers in Realm 1.”

Kye raised an eyebrow. Alethea had never needed to do that before. “Fill me in. I’ll help any way I can.”

“No royal has voiced any such dissent, but many archnobles across the empire question my legitimacy.” The pink-haired girl sighed again. “They’re not wrong to question it. I’m not an imperial by birth.”

“That’s a horri-”

“But!” Alethea looked up at Kye, who was taken aback by the determination in her partner’s eyes. “If I’ve learned anything from my past lives, it’s that blood ties are not what matters!” She stood up, having finished her food. “I’m going to put those treasonous archnobles in their place! Challenging my legitimacy is challenging my mother’s authority! I will not stand for anyone to wield my adoption as a weapon against us!” She clenched her fist. “They think I have no right to be heir? I have ruled more nations and conquered more planets than they could imagine! None have more right to rule…”

She looked away, her mind flashing back far into her past lives. In her memory, a white-haired silhouette sat upon a similarly white throne. She muttered, “save one,” and vanished.

Save one?

Kye shook her head and returned to her meal.

“Will you not go after her?” Louise asked.

Kye smiled and said, “No. She wants to take care of this problem herself, and I trust her more than anyone else.”

Louise giggled. “If I didn’t know better, I might think you two had been together as long as the elder royals.” Kye smiled apologetically. “By the way, what was that about past lives?”

The blonde princess’s eyes widened.

*****

Revised: 12-2-2023