Second year's were a mess. They didn't even notice me enter the classroom.
They had surrounded the podium and were watching two of the students fight. One of them was a knight, he had black hair, dark blue eyes and held a wooden sword in his hands.
His aura was flaring all over his body. It wasn't a fine flow, but the density was enough to overpower the magician, the guy with white hair and grey eyes, with a white robe over his dress.
His casting time was really slow, and the moment he tried to chant, he'd receive a charming punch to his face, shutting him up.
"You fuc- Fight like a man!!!" The magician screamed. "Let me chant! Are you scared of my powers?"
"Let you chant?" Knight cadet growled back. "This is a duel, dumwit, I'm not supposed to wait and have my snacks while you chant, you're just too slow!"
"I'll show you-" And before the magician could even finish his words, he received another flying kick to his face.
'Ohh…that must've hurt,' I thought.
"Lucan is embarrassing us magicians…" I heard some of the girls whisper, so I leaned in quietly.
"I bet my month's savings on him, oh my goodness!"
'The made a bet? What?' I was shocked.
'What kind of students are they? Placing bets when their kin are fighting among themselves?'
'Where can I place mine?' I thought.
"How much did you bet?" I asked, my voice was low.
"Twenty silver!" She replied and then paused.
"Wait… Professor Rile!" She screamed my name, and everyone who was laughing and cheering for the fight up until now stopped.
These guys didn't even turn back to look at me, and just ran back to their seats like some cats caught stealing food.
I looked back at the podium, staring at the bloody hand of the knight, and the bloody mouth of the magician. This was clearly one-sided.
"Uh…this is not what it looks like…Professor," the knight cadet spoke, wiping blood on his white dress. It made the scene look even worse.
"…" Magician was still trying to hold back his tears.
"Back to your seats, both of you," I said, disappointed. Because I also wanted to make a bet.
Both of them nodded and began to leave.
"Take your sword too…" I spoke as the knight ran back to the podium, picked it up, bowed and then left again.
"…" There was silence in the class. No one uttered a single word, yet everyone was glancing at each other.
I sighed and kept the file on the desk.
Leaning on it, I spoke. "Next time, request a formal duel instead of fighting in class, alright?"
"…" There was no response.
"Am I making myself clear?" I clapped with a faint resonance of aura in my palms.
"""Yes, Sir.""" Everyone jolted.
"Let's begin with our class now, shall we?"
"Although most of you already know who I am, since it's the beginning of the new batch…I'm Marcus Rile, and I'll be your Aura Praxis Professor throughout this year."
"What you've learned up until now, whether that be from your family, your personal mentors, or some remnants of legacies that you may have acquired from somewhere, can be completely useless if you can't control what's within you."
"Your Mana, your Aura, may differ in their forms, but they're channelled the same way in all the bodies. The reason you use one for magic and the other for raw power is their density, their nature to bend. Mana lacks density, but it can be trodden finely to form circuits and channel your power to amplification, but Aura…Aura is dense. That's why even the feat of making your sword cover in your aura is considered commendable, but creating a circuit out of mana is the least that everyone expects from magicians."
"First year of your batch covered the theories, yes, but getting past the second year is difficult. Because what you face here is not failures, but a wall. A wall that you need to cross to move on to the next. That's why there are a lot of cadets stuck in the second year, repeating years on years just to pass over that wall. Those who succeed are guaranteed a magnificent future; those who drop, lose their will, accept their failures…they become part of the masses. And there's no value for failures in this world."
"So, I'll say this again. Here at the Lunar Academy. Failure isn't your inability to cross the wall. Failure is accepting your loss. The moment you accept, you can never cross that wall, never pass a certain test, a certain hurdle. You've lost to yourself."
"In this world, losing to yourself is failure. Losing to the world isn't."
"And I expect the cadets under me to have the will to never lose themselves. There will be no rules in this class. But the moment you lot duel with someone, be it from another batch or outside the grounds of this academy, I expect you to win. Because I despise failures."
"Am I clear?"
"""Yes, Sir!"""
"That's the spirit~ Let's begin our lesson now…" Clapping my hands, I picked up a chalk.
These kids… they don't know the fundamentals of the power they're using. Because every aspect of the power they use is originally based on the knowledge of my world.
So, I knew what I had to teach them. No, not the software languages. But fundamentals in their language.
Because no one taught by me should remain weak.
I drew a simple electric spell on the board. It had three symbols on every corner of the triangle wrapped inside a circle.
"What's this?" I tapped on the board.
"…" There was no response. Then, someone at the back raised their hand.
A cadet with long crimson hair and blue eyes. "That's an electric bolt spell, Professor."
I nodded and looked at the knight cadets, "…" These guys nodded, but they clearly weren't sure.
"All of you knights…you better be prepared with basic spell knowledge by my next class." All of them nodded their heads.
Even if they're not magicians. Understanding of magic is equally important for them.
So that when they fight against a mage, time isn't the only advantage they will have. But they'll know where to attack in order to break the circuit.
"Correct, it's an electric bolt spell. But this won't work. The moment you cast it, the whole circle will break," I said and pointed at the group of magician cadets sitting in the last row.
"Can I have a magician on the podium, quick?" I asked.
One of them nodded, fixed their robe and descended to the podium.
"Draw it, and aim it at me,"
He nodded and raised his hand. His mana flared and started seeping into the circular shape of his circuit. In less than five seconds, his magic circuit was visible, with blue silver lines of mana treading across the symbols of the circuit.
But then…the moment he tried to fire it…electricity surged and shot a current in his hand itself. "Ah-"
"Hmm, what do you think was wrong with it?" I asked.
"I- I don't know, it seemed perfect…" He replied.
"Right. Because it looked perfect. But in reality, it was just a dummy circuit. Now, how is it that a circuit which looks exactly the same as the electric bolt circuit, consumes mana, but never fires?" I asked, and there was no response.
"What you've been learning up until now are combinations of different symbols with different meanings in different legacies. You believe that these have evolved over the course of history, but you don't really understand the meaning of these symbols."
"You know what they do, but don't know what they mean," I continued, and wrote on the board.
'Ten-Fold Arrangements'
"All the basic spells in this world depend on this. Just the basics. We'll talk about the advanced ones in third year." I said, tapping on the board.
Tenfold arrangement is just complete bullshit. Well, not completely, it's my way to teach them the complete hexadecimal symbols of this world. But I'll start with the first ten that derive from numeric, not the remaining six that are used in advanced spells.
"I'll teach you the fundamentals of basic spells. I'm gonna make you understand the meaning of those symbols,"
Yes, I know this world is meant to end.
But not on my watch.
There's nothing to gain from gatekeeping my knowledge. And I can't have my cadets remain weak.