Agnisotra: Origin Tails

The week passed and everything was set up so Greg and I would become professors and Raishin a first-year student with special needs. This amused Greg and me.

Raishin didn’t seem to be happy to be treated as a student with special needs. Greg had no issues setting everything up to start his probably boring lectures, but I did have difficulties. It seems that purely practical are not the norm so I had to fight to get this done.

Forget the students falling asleep, I will probably fall asleep too! Maybe I could take a nap with the students, I wonder how long it will take for other professors to find out and getting me into trouble. I had no plan. I would probably improvise every practical for half a year. Suddenly half a year sounds extremely long.

I don’t think they will master it in half a year so I should be fine. I could just start kicking their asses when all fails and have them survive as long as possible. I am confident that I can get away with that.

I sat down in the field where I would hold my practical. It had enough water to the side so there shouldn’t be any issues. I took a target on a pole out of my dimensional pocket and stuck it in the ground and started to read a book about mythology that I had swiped from the library.

I hope for Greg that he doesn’t need this book for his lecture because I think he’s giving mythology right after mine ends. They did assign 3 blocks of ‘study hours’, which is 45 minutes each. What the fuck am I supposed to do with all that time?

The author of this book has no idea what he is talking about. It started off with stating that dragons are noble and intelligent creatures. Has this guy ever talked to one? Vinny is an outlier and Inyr probably too. Inyr is a battle freak though so it might not be as apparent, but I can imagine that he would be a pain in the ass to deal with if I didn’t want to fight him and get my ass kicked. So, in that regard he is just a typical dragon.

“Excuse me, is this ‘Disruption and Evasion’?” A random guy with short black hair addressed me.

What?

“It is yeah, don’t worry you’re at the correct place, what are you reading Agnis?” I looked up from my book and saw Crissy and Hayley.

4 people approached that looked familiar and a bunch of other faces I didn’t recognize.

Wait this is Disruption and Evasion? Am I on the wrong field?

“No… this is what your course is officially called, you might want to tell everyone that you call it something else.”

Ah ok . I continued reading.

“Hey, where is the professor?” I heard an unfamiliar voice. “Hey, excuse me, do you have any idea where the professor is? He is supposed to be a well-known adventurer.”

So well-known that you can’t recognize him, eh? Well, I got my passive skill to blame which makes me seem relatively unimpressive. You’re talking to your professor.

“Huh? That’s not funny! Where is he? You’re just a student like us!”

Randy approached this clueless chick and showed him something on his tablet.

“Wait he is the Silver Torrent?! How come I didn’t recognize him?!” She looked at the screen and then to me and it started to dawn on her.

It seems my passive still works. Randy seems a very helpful guy.

I got up. Right, this is probably just as confusing for me as for you guys but I will be your professor in ‘Crowd Control’

“Disruption and evasion…”

Thank you Crissy, that’s the boring name. the name I will use is Crowd Control, because to be honest if you can shut someone down effectively you don’t have to bother with evasion. Now evasion is useful though. Now there is one problem…

I looked over at the students that had gathered. There seemed to be 67 students.

I had made sure to make the description as boring as possible so that there wouldn’t be so many of you… Why are there so many of you…

Someone adjusted his glasses. “Well, the name of the professor in charge always gets attached to it. No matter how boring the description, ‘Silver Torrent’ as professor is going to attract attention.”

Ugh, this again. Well thank you for the explanation, Francis, did I get it right? I did, right? Well, I don’t believe in lectures because I will likely fall asleep just like you will. So, this is mainly practical. If you find it boring you are free to nap, just don’t be surprised if I come to kick your ass. I am bad with names and faces so don’t expect me to get your names correct the first 5-6 months. Any questions?

“Can we touch…”

No touching my tail! Next question!

Francis adjusted his glasses. “What will this first practical be about?”

To be honest I have no clue, it depends on you guys. See this target here? If you can destroy it with ranged magic, we will progress the class. You guys probably think your magic is special. Maybe it is for human standards but as you can see, I’m not exactly human. Humans will be the least of your problems in truly difficult situations. So, this is the first assignment: destroy this target.

Francis adjusted his glasses again. “Isn’t this on the level of elementary class?”

I don’t know what you humans learn in elementary class so show me what you’ve got.

I sat down and continued this fraudulent book. The students talked under each other and the first magic circles got formed. I twirled my finger and interrupted them all without looking up from my book.

“What?!” The students were shocked. I bet nobody ever invalidated their magic without looking up.

“Hmm, this is the ‘Disruption and Evasion’ course after all. It is plausible that he wants us to use magic that is difficult to disrupt.” Thank Hourai for Francis, maybe he should become the professor.

I interrupted the complex magic skills and dispelled the simpler ones mid-flight. This book was praising the mythological creatures. It didn’t have any information that seems useful in finding Hourai or to teach. I took a rock out of my dimensional pocked and threw it at the foot of a guy that decided to cheat and tried to smash the target with body augmentation. He faceplanted and embarrassed himself. After that nobody tried to cheat.

I didn’t finish my book but I had enough after an hour. Half of the students had given up and the other half were still trying.

I stood up. Right, that is enough.

I briefly blasted the area with frost magic to eliminate all magic circles in construction and magic skills firing off.

You there bulky guy, about 1.8m, short blonde hair. What is your opinion on this assignment and do you think this is an elementary exercise?

“Hmm, the assignment was simple, yet none of us succeeded. I am impressed with your skills in interrupting and dispelling our magic without looking up but what is this supposed to teach us?”

It is to illustrate that your magic is nothing special. The ability to interrupt and dispel mana is directly related to how complex it is. The simpler it is the easier it is to disrupt it. What I’ve illustrated here is that none of you have magic complex enough for me to look up from my book.

“But isn’t that because you’re overpowered?”

A good point Hayley, did you all come here to become normal? Or are you here because you want to become overpowered? Who here wants to become a normal person, indistinguishable from a random person you meet on the street?

Nobody? Thought so. Now who here is able to interrupt their own skill?

Only 14 seemed to be able to do so.

Ok 14 is a bit much, you 3, shoot the magic you can interrupt or dispel at me. Once should be enough but if I don’t get it I will ask you to do so again.

“Ehh, are you sure?”

How often do you get to fire magic at your professors without consequence? Just go for it!

I got a [Fireball], [Flare] and [Wind Lance] shot at me. I made sure to remember the magic circles they used to fire those off. I also easily dodged them.

Ok, you three, pay attention. I will send these back to you and your job is to make sure it doesn’t hit you. You can interrupt it, dispel it or evade it when the other 2 fail.

I had to make sure I would slow my magic circles down because else they didn’t stand a chance. I sent the exact same skills with the same runic structure at the students. One managed to interrupt the skill, the two others dispelled it. One came close to having to evade but he made it in time.

It takes a lot of focus; you can get a 1 or 2 minute break if you want. The first time is always extra taxing.

The students took their break and talked about the assignment.

I want the rest of you to pay attention. This is something that all of you are expected to do at the end of my courses. You should know the exact structure of your own attacks; this means that you should be able to interrupt and dispel it when someone sends it back to you. If you can’t do this, I would advise you to take a good look at your magic spells because you will be for a tough ride if you can’t even do this.

I repeated the same thing. This time all 3 were able to interrupt it. I went twice more and they seemed comfortable in interrupting.

Right, don’t get too comfortable, I will slowly and subtly change the magic circles, which will make It harder for you to interrupt and dispel.

I introduced small but realistic variations in the magic circles. While a [Fireball] in one family might be identical or similar, the [Fireball] of another family could fire the same [Fireball] but have a different magic circle structure. They can still be recognized as a [Fireball] but it makes a huge difference if you attempt to interrupt both of them. It might be easy to interrupt the [Fireball] of one family, but extremely hard to interrupt the [Fireball] of another family.

This extends to any magic skill known. There could be variations per individual, per family, per settlement, area, country, or race. So, knowing the basics on how to disrupt and evade is knowing what you can disrupt and knowing what to evade. Evading wastes stamina and possibly also mana so disrupting is always preferred over evading. I told the students this while I was slowly changing the magic circles and the students started to visibly struggle with interrupting and dispelling. I called forth more and different students to get a feel of this too. And that’s how I filled the rest of the assigned time. It was hard to read how the students found my improvised lesson.

“That was eye-opening…”

Oh, hey Crissy, so tell me, how bad did I do?

“I don’t think you did bad it’s just… most of us take pride in our strength and that we got into this uni, you just demonstrated how weak and normal they are… It was also a wake-up call for me. I can’t even interrupt my own spells… I have a long way to go…”

“Ugh, you really put me through the wringer there Agnis,”

Well you should take Crissy as an example, if you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

“Well, you deserved it Hayley, flirting with him during the lesson was not very smart of you… even after he had told us about how he views us and all…”

“But I want to touch his tail too! It’s not fair that only you got the chance!”

“You had a chance to play with Raishin’s tails!”

“Crissy look at Agnis’ tail! Do you see how fluffy it looks? There is no way they’re the same!” The chicks started to bicker again.

Right, stop fighting, I need to return this scam book. This author clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

I returned to the library and tried to return the book when I saw a panicking Greg.

Yoo, looking for this? I handed him the mythology book.

I should’ve known, you’re an asshole!

The book is a scam so be careful what you reference from it, good luck!

Greg nodded as he ran off with the scam book. I decided to locate some books that were interesting. Maybe could give me ideas for my next group which is in 2 hours.

I’ve been looking for almost 2 hours and this library has nothing interesting. The Misha library was many times more interesting than this one. Humans are so useless when it comes to magic. I have 15 minutes. I could drop a [Dimensional Anchor] here, go to Azu’s house and raid the Misha library and be back on time. I decided to do that when I’ve exhausted all my options.

I did the same as I did with the first group, this group seemed a bit more aggressive and incompetent. It seemed to have a lot of troublemakers.

“You’re the same age as us, maybe even younger, what can you teach us!” Random delinquent student #4 said.

You might have missed that none of you could destroy the target…

“And what’s that supposed to teach us, eh? Aren’t you just showing off?!” This time it was random delinquent student #6 who said this.

Trust me, you have no idea what it looks like when I’m showing off, can anyone tell me what this illustrated?

No one? Tough customers.

Even though it was supposed to be a practical I had to give a small lecture. Only half of the group seemed to understand it.

“So, what happens if we beat you up? Do we pass?” A group of clowns, I mean students with multicolored dyed hair approached me.

They looked intimidating but I didn’t care. I always thought that these types only appeared in movies and series.

Right, it seems I have to edit the curriculum a bit for this group. How about this, if you can beat me, you will automatically pass the first test that I will give in a month.

“Don’t come crying when you die!” Random delinquent #1 and the leader of these clowns seemed to have instigated all this.

How aggressive! And how am I supposed to cry if I die?

What’s wrong guys, this applies to all of you, not just these idiots.

The whole group started going after me. I used [Eternal Winter] but I made the magic circle appear for 7 seconds, which is a very long time. I evaded during this time and all the mana got wiped out. I didn’t freeze the students.

“What?! I can’t use mana!”

“What is this!”

“My mana is getting sapped…” Random delinquents #2, #3 and #5 said. These three seem to be quite close.

The whole group was confused. I made a chair of frost for myself and sat down.

What’s wrong? Don’t you want to pass that test?

Those that didn’t give up rushed at me while augmenting themselves. I slipped all of them and froze their pants to the floor. Since they deserved it, I decided to mix a rant with a lecture.

“Whoa, what is this!?” A random professor approached. Half the students still had their pants frozen to the floor.

Oh, these idiots thought that they could pass a test by beating me up. I gave them 7 seconds to prevent that but all of them failed.

“I came because I was interested but it does seem like they are controlled yeah… how are they supposed to learn from this though?” I explained what led up to this situation.

“I see, they might get the idea because of your age yeah, but I assume this lesson here might be enough for them to realize to not mess with you. My name is Helen, by the way, I teach water magic.”

Uh oh.

This woman seemed very friendly but also tired. She had long black hair with some grey streaks in it. I haven't seen many older people that wear their hair that long. Or are those streaks a special trait? She looks like she’s in her late 30s or early 40s. Humans age so strangely.

“Do you mind if I attend your lectures? And do you mind attending mine? I’m struggling just as my students are with water magic.”

As you can see, slipping them up and freezing their pants to the floor works 9/10 times. Ugh, I’m not a fan of this idea, but maybe we should combine our classes, water users could benefit a lot from what I try to get these dumbasses to learn.

I removed the [Eternal Winter] effect and let them examine their own magic circles for the duration of the time I was supposed to teach them stuff.

“Hmm, well I only have 7 student’s so I guess that could work, I will see whether this is possible, do you prefer the morning or afternoon classes?”

The morning group is nicer and more well behaved so I prefer you join that; I will probably have to whip these slackers into shape more than once.

So even on a big and well-known university like this one has difficulties teaching water magic and pulling students that are interested. This country’s education system seems to be failing if they don’t create incentives. What would happen if water users go extinct and with them most water magic. The continent would be quite screwed.

I went to my room. My first day was over. I only had 2 groups so I was done for a while. The next class would be on Thursday. Now I don’t have off till then because Greg in all his wisdom needs me for ‘Seals and Barriers’.

Luckily one falls on when I have class on Thursday so I only have one session tomorrow. I got my tails out and brushed them. I then realized something. I had signed Raishin up for my morning class but I didn’t see him. What is he doing… but that is not my problem.