“[Create Water],” Somnius began, standing in front of us on the training grounds. “At the core of the spell, that’s all it is. The creation of water from mana. Invoked with basic infusion and no intent, your mana will materialize an orb of water before you.”

  My mind drifted as I listened to Somnius’s lecture. If mana was literally converted to water and other tangible elements, was the world gaining mass over time? Mana decomposition turned matter back into mana, so it probably evened out, but mana decomposition only applied to living things as far as I knew. What about the magically formed stone? Did it just persist, while the world lost carbon to mana? But the creation of dungeons displaced stone. Where did it go? Maybe that was the balance: the dungeon ate the stone, and created new carbon by way of monsters. I shook off my thoughts and refocused on what Somnius was saying.

  “The most common use of intent is to control where water is created. Once something is made from mana, it becomes subjected to the forces of the world, and will fall to the ground like anything else, but intent can also apply force to your creations as well.”

  He demonstrated by chanting the spell at, quite frankly, a preposterous speed, launching a [Create Water] up into the sky. It dispersed into the air, and we were showered by a fine mist. Fortunately, it was late afternoon and the sun was out, so it would dry quickly despite the early fall chill.

  I thought back to how I had figured out how to anchor [Create Light] positionally to myself and Felris in the dungeon. The light hadn’t been affected by gravity, so it hadn’t sunk to the cavern floor, but the light had still obeyed a much more complex set of rules than just a vector of force. I raised my hand—my left, naturally—and Somnius pointed at me to ask my question.

  “Can you not use intent to keep an orb of water hovering, continuously?” I asked.

  Somnius nodded, then demonstrated with another casting. The orb of water materialized in front of him, but instead of falling, it floated in front of him, rippling slightly from the breeze.

  “With a higher level of Will and the right intent, you can control your makings even after the cast is complete—to a point. Different mages refer to this with different names, but generally, we call this extended intent. Another common term for it is after-cast control. There are actually two different methods of accomplishing something like this.

  “The first is intent instruction. This is really just an advanced form of what I showed you with the applied force example. The instruction for that spell was a simple initial force upwards. This doesn’t require much more Will than a default casting. But say I wanted the spell to keep traveling upwards with the same force to reach even greater heights. I would need to instruct the spell to continuously apply force over time, not exert all the force right at time of creation. This ongoing instruction requires a higher Will and the caster to channel more mana into the spell. Your coursework this year will only cover basic casting and intentional casting. In second year, you’ll start to learn intent instruction.”

  That sounded like what I had done in the dungeon. I had a Will of 9 at the time, and had pushed a lot of mana into each cast, for what was only a 3-Will spell. I was a bit pleased with myself for being able to do that right from the start. Presumably any classmates who were still at only 3-4 Will would struggle with that, and would need time to grow into it in second year.

  “But there’s a second method when it comes to extended intent. This won’t be covered until you join the senior classes in fourth year, and even then will only briefly be covered in the core classes, though there are elective classes you can take if you’re capable. This method is usually called continuous intent, or sometimes continuous casting, though that’s a bit of a misnomer.”

  Somnius’s floating orb of water began to move, falling into an orbit around his head.

  “Not all mages are capable of it, and it's not as well understood. Obviously, the casting is long finished, which is why I don’t like the term continuous casting. However, if you can continue channeling your Will and mana into a spell construct after completion of the cast, you can exert ongoing instruction until the spell collapses.”

  My eyebrows raised at that. Something to experiment with later.

  Another student raised their hand, and Somnius pointed to them. “What about controlling existing water?”

  “Ah, that’s actually the basis of a different spell. [Create Water] doesn’t affect existing water at all, you need to learn [Control Water] for that. Of course, many mages point out the similarity between a spell like [Control Water] and continuous intent with a spell like [Create Water]. Learning control spells may give you insight into continuous intent when it comes to creation spells.”

  Somnial’s impressive spell in my family’s fields, back in the early spring, must have been a control spell. I raised my hand again, and Somnius grunted, but pointed at me. “What other sorts of spells are there besides creation and control spells?”

  “Oh, there are many specialized spells that don’t fit into those categories. Healing spells, for example. Most of which is well outside the junior curriculum,” he said, eyeing me before looking over the class. “This term’s focus will be on mastering the basics of [Create Water] on training days. Once you can consistently cast it without error, you can begin adding intent. By the end of the term, I’d like to see all of you able to shoot an orb of water at a target accurately. On classroom days, we’ll begin studying [Create Fire]. That’ll be the focus of the winter term. You’re expected to have a handle on both by the start of your second year here.”

  The class split up into individuals or small groups and began practicing their spellwork as Somnius did laps of the students, preventing them from slacking off or fooling around. I stood with Felton and watched him work through his chant.

  An orb of water materialized in front of him before immediately dropping to the ground, splashing our shoes.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “We should probably get waterproof boots,” I muttered. Felton chuckled.

  I cast my own [Create Water] spell, and gave it just a small pop of force. It materialized with a small bounce before splashing onto the grass.

  “Show off,” Felton said with a grin.

  As Felton began crafting his next spell, I thought about what Somnius had said about continuous intent. I didn’t know any control spells yet, but based on what I had learned about [Mana Manipulation], I theorized that at its core, control over an existing element or a manifested construct was ultimately an instance of mana circuit extension.

  When Felton’s construct appeared, I focused my attention on it and tried to sense whether or not it came into existence with a mana circuit. In the brief moment after it manifested, I thought I could sense one, but it immediately collapsed, at which point the water fell to the ground, further soaking our socks.

  Across the training ground, there was some commotion as a smug-looking Ramius cast a sizable orb of water, splashing some other students as it burst. He and Pellia and their lackeys laughed at their wet, grumbling peers.

  “Don’t soak each other,” Somnius warned belatedly. “If you can’t control your magic well enough to keep the other students dry, it’s weakness, not strength.”

  Ramius’s laughter turned into a scowl, but he and Pellia behaved after that.

  On my next attempt, I still had to concentrate on the actual invocation and infusion, and I only had a moment to try to spot the circuit of my spell once it was created. I was almost positive there was a mana circuit, but it dissolved so quickly. Maybe once my casting was second nature so I could split my focus I’d be able to extend into the circuit.

  “No intent on that one? Let me try with intent this time,” Felton said, focusing up on another spell.

  Felton’s orb of water materialized with a little bounce, and as I focused on it I felt like the circuit took longer to decay.

  “Nice,” I said to the smiling boy, but my attention was still on what I was trying to decipher.

  Hmm. Maybe intent is like life. It binds to the spells existence, and when the intent expires, that’s like death—that’s when the circuit decays. In that case...

  My next spell was cast with a longer bit of intent, pushing more mana into it with my larger Will.

  Instead of pushing an intent for the magic to do something, I instead intended for it to survive. My intent was specifically for the orb of water to persist long enough for me to sense the mana circuit.

  Surprisingly, when the orb materialized, it didn’t drop immediately. It rebelled against its own death, and the mana circuit stabilized. As the mana pulsed through it, I could see it rapidly bleeding out, and I knew that when the intent mana was gone, it would fail to persist. Before that happened, I extended my own mana circuit from my body towards the orb and connected them.

  Now the orb of water was being continuously fed by my mana, keeping it alive, though it was still bleeding mana into the atmosphere. The orb of water wasn’t actually alive, after all, and without a real living body it naturally wanted to disperse. Using the same techniques I used to keep my right hand’s mana circuit intact, I took control over the orb, and I realized that from there, I could likely channel continuous intent.

  I looked up, and saw Felton’s look of surprise that my orb was holding steady, so I immediately disconnected and dropped the orb with a splash. Nervously, I glanced around to make sure no one else was watching, and found Somnius glaring at me from nearby. He scowled, then turned away.

  Oops. Hopefully that looked more like an impressive amount of intent instruction, rather than continuous intent.

  “Show off,” Felton grumbled again, a little less jovial that time. He focused hard on his next spell, but my attention was pulled to my System, which I had sensed something from after succeeding at connecting to my spell.

  I exhaled slowly, trying to keep my face steady instead of breaking out into a wild grin.

  * * *

  Back at the manor, I duplicated my earlier results with [Create Light]. Once it was leveled up, I found I could push it even farther. With continuous intent, I could also brighten the light, strobe it, even influence color.

  After exhausting myself playing with my light magic, I meditated to replenish my mana, then began experimenting more with my water magic.

  With control over the external mana circuit, I pushed the water around the room, forced it to take on new shapes, twisting and dancing in the candlelight. This was more like real magic, truly enforcing my will on the world around me.

  My System agreed.

  I glanced at my desk. I had started learning [Create Fire] already last term on my own, not knowing it would be the next spell we would be learning in class. I was pretty close to having it memorized, which would make the inside classes with Somnius pretty boring, but it freed up some mental energy to teach myself something new on my own time.

  In the library, Somnial gave me his blessing to take a new grimoire back to my room, and I sat back down at my desk with the tome for [Control Water].

  Was I overeager? Yes. I’d learn this in time at school, and getting ahead of myself wasn’t without risks of drawing too much attention or pissing off Somnius, since I had no idea what exactly his problem was. On the other hand, my life so far had taught me that at any time, death was potentially around the corner. I wanted to make the most of the time I had, just in case it was cut short.

  True, much of the risk to my life had been the results of my own actions. Fighting the goblin was my choice, as was entering the Obdorn dungeon. I could act much more conservatively when it came to risk and probably live a longer life, but it wasn’t guaranteed.

  Toldan hadn’t gone looking for trouble, and he was still killed by the goblins. If they had killed Hildan as well, the village might not have been warned in time, and goblins could have overrun us.

  Had I not fought the goblin and leveled up, I wouldn’t have been able to grow my Will and gain magic. With no financial resources and Hildan’s lost arm, I might have starved to death this coming winter.

  That might be an over-exaggeration, since my village and community wasn’t likely to let that happen to my family. But even now, Argadia’s conflict with its neighbors was growing in scale. Somnial had told me very little about it, but rumors were starting to spread about our conflict with Dulth potentially escalating into war. Redding was a small village near the borders of Argadia, quite close to two other countries, and Dulth was one of the countries on the other side of said borders, which was increasingly a source of concern for me.

  The point was, nothing was certain. Simply trusting that I’d have years to study at the academy with no obstacles was not the smart choice, not when I had so many resources at my disposal. I should double down on soaking up as much knowledge and gaining as many skills and stat points as I could so that if I lost this life, I’d be going into the next with as much of a head start as possible. The stronger I got, the safer I would be.

  I cracked open the grimoire and began to study.

  Patreon are continuing to enjoy those rewards. I think we're all excited (me included!) for once we're multiple lives in and really seeing it all start to come together.

  extremely appreciated! Thank you!