I return to my dorm with some time before it’s time for me to sleep, so of course, I visit the library.

After learning more about mana, I head back to my dorm. As I head in, for a second, everything feels off before I remember that I’m in a new dorm.

Ustos is sitting in his seat with his eyes closed, looking like he’s asleep, although he isn’t. It’s odd; he’s been doing that a lot lately.

Although, when he hears me come in, he looks up at me with a tired face and looks back down. Lazy bastard, what the hell does he have to get tired about? All he ever does is sit in his little seat and consume food and water. Some commoners would even call that a comfortable life.

Whatever, I walk past him, get undressed, and go to bed.

The next morning I wake up, and I go through the usual routine. Afterward, I depart for the main building to go to my first class of the second year: mana theory.

Heading into the same class as last year, I see that I’m quite early, as always. I sit down in my usual seat, which has moved from the back row to the front row, and wait.

After some time, the students start rolling in. I’m cursed with seeing their disgusted faces look my way—these people never grow up. My already bad mood gets worse seeing the annoying woman who makes my brain rot with every word she says.

She, of course, takes a seat right next to me and starts a conversation. “So, are you done unpacking your stuff?” Ah, she’s talking about the excuse I used to get away from her yesterday.

“Yeah, I’m finished. It took a while. It’s annoying doing it alone.”

“Oh, I could have helped.”

“No, I don’t need help. It’s done already.”

“Alright… Although, now that I think of it, I’ve never been to your dorm, have I? What’s it like?”

“It’s nothing special. Anyhow, do you think they are going to actually teach us how to cast spells now that we're in the second year?”, I try to change the subject.

“Yeah, I heard that they will, s—” Before she could continue, I see the mana teacher walk into the classroom.

He walks up to the teacher's desk and takes a seat. “Hey, everyone, I hope you all had a lovely break.” “I know I didn't,” I hear him mumble to himself.

“Right, now that it’s all of your second years, it’s time for all of you to fill out your majors,” he took out a stack of paper and asked each of us to take one.

Reading through, it asks me to choose what I am going to major in out of these four: alchemy, artificing, battle applications of magic, and magic history. I chose artificing as planned, although the others look interesting as well, except magic history. Why would anyone waste their time on magic history?

I return my sheet to the teacher and walk back to my seat. After everyone got done with their choices, the teacher started talking again, “All right, now that we are all done here, let’s get to our lesson.”

“Last year we learned about runes and the creation of magic circles. Now I am going to test all of your knowledge. Today I want all of you to make me the earthball spell from scratch using your knowledge of runes and magic circles.”

He gave us all a blank piece of paper.

I take out my ink and quill and think about the rules of creating a magic circle. First, I need to draw two concentric circles.

Then I need to add a rune to the top of the circle, which states what element it should use. Considering that the spell is named earthball, it probably uses the earth element. So I add the rune that symbolizes the earth element.

Now I need to specify what the magic circle is going to do. On the bottom, I add the runes that stand for condense, which will condense the earth element mana. Then I add a rune for a sphere, which then tells the mana to condense into a spherical shape. Next, I add a rune for forward movement, which specifies the direction of the force that will act on the mana after it condenses. Finally, I add a rune for speed, which just specifies the strength of the force applied to the condensed mana.

The last and final step is to add a shape that is circumscribed by the outer circle of the magic circle, representing the amount of mana that will go into the spell. I add a star shape because an earthball should need around the same amount of mana as a fireball, and that’s the shape a fireball uses.