Chapter 17: Chapter 17 – Training

After I had finished sitting through my advanced abjuration lecture, I made my way to the training room that I was going to book out for the rest of the day so that Hannah and I could do some training together. However, as I was walking down the campus pathways, I couldn’t help but think back to the class I had just sat through and how my time felt like it was completely wasted. The professor giving the lecture had started on a new topic, one with which I had no previous experience, and yet some part of me, deep inside my core, felt like trying to learn this stuff was redundant. The weird part was I wasn’t quite sure why I felt this way. Or at least that was the case until I had a conversation with a certain voice inside my head.

What you’re feeling is not entirely wrong, Alek. Allure spoke up as I was walking to my destination and slightly startled me because the goddess had been quiet for most of the day so far, so quiet that I had forgotten all about her. 

What do you mean by that? I responded back as I focused on keeping my head down while walking so that no one passing by could have seen the facial expressions that leaked from this secret conversation going on inside my head.

Although mana and divine power appear very similar on the surface, they are fundamentally different. Allure began to explain. Mana is the lifeblood of the world; it gives life and purpose to everything it touches. When the gods created the world, they never meant for mana to be harnessed and used in the ways the arcanists have. 

Divine power, on the other hand, is a fundamental force of the universe that predates even the oldest of the Gods that ever lived. It is an energy of pure creation and emotion that possesses boundless possibilities and countless facets. One of the core principles of how this energy behaves is that it always seeks out more of itself. That’s actually why you are able to absorb sexual energies and empower yourself. Strong emotions always contain traces of pure divine power and that power is drawn towards the stronger source of divinity contained within you.

That’s all really interesting, but how does it relate to my feeling like attending class is a waste of time?

Oh, right. Sorry, I got a bit carried away there. I don’t really get to talk much about this stuff anymore. Allure replied and if a disembodied voice in my head could blush, she definitely would have. What I was trying to get at was that because the natures of the two powers differ, so do their uses. While spell crafting requires the study, understanding, and hard work you are familiar with, performing miracles is much easier.

Divine power wants to be put to use. It wants to create something. All you really need to do to perform miracles is to infuse your divine power with a purpose and then guide it to where it needs to go. It will take care of the rest. A simple way to think about it is that for mana you want quality over quantity, but the opposite is true for divine power.

I remember casting a cantrip last night. My mana still behaved mostly as mana should, but it was a bit faster and more precise than normal. I responded to her, but in truth, I was mostly just recalling what I had observed, which I thought may or may not have been relevant now.

That is partly because your mana hasn’t been entirely converted to divine power yet. It’s about halfway there at the moment, but with more sex, it will soon be all the way there. Still, though, you can use your mana as if it were divine energy, it just won't be as efficiently used as if it were pure.

Additionally, you should take note that divine power can mimic how mana works. All the runes you draw and calculations you make to cast a spell are essentially just giving the divine power you put into the spell a purpose. It’s a bit of a crutch, but it is something you could rely on as you get used to your new powers. Later on, though, it will be faster and more efficient just to perform miracles the way the divine power wants to be used.

Thanks for the heads up. I’ll keep all of that in mind when I practise. 

As I found my way into the building containing all of the academy’s training rooms, my conversation with Allure drew to an end there. After speaking with a clerk at the front desk, I reserved a training room for the rest of the day and instructed them to direct Hannah to it when she arrived. Wanting to get a head start on training and test out my new powers, I headed to that room immediately.

The training room was a fairly sparse place with a course sandy floor. The entire room was eight metres wide and three times as long. There were no windows along any of the smooth grey walls so that those practising could have their privacy, but there were a series of benches along each of the side walls to accommodate multiple people sharing the one room. Lasty, On the farthest wall, there were four dummies standing in a row for students to sling spells at.

Once inside, I took up a spot opposite the dummies and started to cast the simplest combat cantrip there was and the only one I knew, mana bolt. As I watched the golden glowing lines of mana trail from my fingers and the runic array that took shape, I put in extra effort to pay attention to how the divine power mixed in with my mana made the process behave differently. Because of the fact that my attention was so focused on watching the cantrip’s casting, when I cast the spell it was wildly inaccurate. Although the fist-sized blue orb I conjured was sent hurtling down the room, it ineffectively stuck to the flat of the wall over three metres from where I was aiming.

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Twice more I cast the mana bolt cantrip as I normally would have, but this time I paid more attention to aiming the spell, and thanks to that, I was able to actually hit the target I was going for. The enchanted wooden dummies took my cantrips well when they were struck by them, and other than a slight sway from the impact, they were completely undamaged. Like the walls around them, the dummies were reinforced so that any spells of the 3rd level or below would be utterly ineffective against them.

Once I had cast the cantrip three times, Allure spoke up with a suggestion, beating me to what I was going to try next anyway. Now try drawing your divine power out of you and imbuing it with the same purpose as that cantrip, but without all the fancy flourishes and runes.

Doing as she suggested, I outstretched my hand so that the palm was facing toward the dummy opposite me. As I pulled on the divinity-tinged mana in my mana pool, leading it through my body towards my hand, I closed my eyes. In my mind's eye, I imagined a mana bolt forming in front of my hand moments before it was sent flying off at the dummy. After a few seconds of concerted effort to merge this image in my head, with the mana flowing through my veins, something suddenly clicked, and a loud explosion rocked my training room.

My eyes instantly shot open and I witnessed the cloud of dust swirling around the dummy that I had been aiming for. Since mana bolt normally only had a little bit of concussive force behind it, it took me a couple of seconds to realise it was I who had just done that.

The laughing voice of Allure spoke up to congratulate me. Well done, Alek. You’ve taken to performing miracles much faster than I could have ever imagined. It seems like you might be a natural at this, but you still have a long way to go before you reach the level of a god.

Once the dust settled back down and I could see the dummy again, I cast- No, I performed the low-level miracle again, but this time I kept my eyes open to see it happen for myself. As the ball of energy formed in front of my hand, it glowed with a golden radiance that was brighter and purer than any I had seen before. It was clear even to someone of my measly understanding that this was no mana bolt, but a holy bolt.

When the holy bolt was sent flying from my hands, it stuck the dummy with unerring accuracy before exploding in a burst of blindingly bright light. The concussive force of this explosion was just as powerful as the last, so much so that it even reached the two dummies next to it. Although this miracle used just as much energy as the cantrip I had cast earlier, it was so much more powerful that it was kind of mind-boggling.

Moving on from the mana bolt cantrip, I decided to try and see what other cantrips I could turn into miracles. Both the cleanse and the mage hand cantrips were easily performed with the methods used by divine power, but they didn’t see as huge an improvement as mana bolt did. While cleanse had an increased area of effect, it didn’t clean things any faster and the mage hand was only really able to hold a little bit more weight than it normally would be.

Since I still had a handful of minutes left before Hannah’s class was let out, I tried to convert a couple of the 1st-level spells that I knew into miracles, but they were much harder to achieve. The only one I actually managed to accomplish was the shield spell, and even then, I don’t know if the miracle I performed was really the same as the spell.

The 1st-level shield spell would normally create a translucent bubble of mana around the caster that would deter attacks, but I was unable to stretch my divine power that far while still keeping it at a strong enough thickness to withstand attacks. I was able to achieve something similar but still quite different when I spun the threads of energy into a more traditional shield shape.

The circular disc of golden energy I created when I did this was about two feet wide and looked at a glance as if it was woven together like the sides of a wicker basket because that was exactly how I had constructed it using threads of my divine power. When the disc I had created was imbued with the image and purpose of defending, it became more solid than a structure of pure energy should have any right to be.

However, other than banging my hand on the shield, I had no real way of testing just how solid and sturdy it really was. Of course, that was only until the perfect candidate to help me test the shield came into the room.

As such, I greeted Hannah upon her entry not with a hello or a how are you, but with a demand. "Hey, shoot me with a mana bolt."

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