Chapter 14: Giving Up

"Look it's that squib again. Why's he wasting his time?"

"Heh! People should know when to give up."

During the past three weeks of the semester, Markus would punctually arrive at the public practising grounds at 7 am and would diligently run through a list of spells provided by Teacher Larks.

Over time, he had grown numb to the jeering remarks his so-called peers would throw his way. They'd call him a squib. A waste of time. A stray. Sometimes they'd get creative and direct their insults to his deceased family.

He didn't know why they did these things. What had he done to deserve this? That's when he realised that this was how the world worked. Only those with power were allowed to hold any ambition. What's the use of dedication?

In the beginning, Markus had a drive. That one day he'd grow, and rise above his "peers". But with every failure, his drive was punctured, until it reached the state it was in right now.

Meeting Teacher Larks, and studying under him gave Markus a way out of the mire. Teacher Larks' unorthodox views thawed into Markus' jaded heart. He felt for the first time that his diligence wouldn't go to waste. He realised that not everyone saw the world as an unforgiving jungle.

The first week under Teacher Larks' tutelage, Markus worked in overdrive. Whenever he was given a new spell to try out, he'd try casting it again and again. In the end, he went through over 30 different spells, without success.

'No matter,' he told himself. 'Teacher is still searching for more options.'

The second week was approached with less enthusiasm, but it was equally bright for Markus. This time, he went through 15 spells, without success.

It wasn't that he was unable to cast them. He could very easily form the circle with his will, but when he activated it by feeding it mana, it would simply collapse with an inaudible poof.

Near the end of the second week, the insults and remarks that were directed his way, which he had initially tuned out, started to resonate inside him again.

'Did I raise my hopes for nothing?' He questioned. 'No. There's still more, there has to be a solution!'

The third week was catastrophic. He practically ran through a single spell every day, only to face utter disappointment by seeing the circle poof before him.

'That's it!' Markus exclaimed internally. 'I give up!'

And he marched back towards the library. He ran through a speech in his mind. He would first apologise to Teacher Larks. He would then thank Teacher Larks for the efforts. He would then go to the administrative department and drop out. Markus was physically and emotionally drained.

With firm resolve, Markus stepped into the library. He knew where Teacher Larks usually set up shop and made his way there with long and confident strides.

But just as he approached the shelf before his teacher's spot, he overheard a conversation.

"You've looked through all the books Guy. There is no solution. There is nothing you can do. That child Markus just isn't meant to walk the mage's path."

That voice belonged to the librarian, Al Jeeves. Markus was acquainted with him. Mr. Jeeves usually never paid attention to the students that came and went, unless they caused trouble or caused a ruckus. But after Teacher Larks built a nest of books and metaphorically settled into the library, Mr. Jeeves and his teacher had built an informal relationship. After that, Mr. Jeeves would always offer words of encouragement to Markus. Sometimes he'd even give him some of his delicious home-cooked meals.

Markus slowly inched closer to the shelf and pushed his ears closer. He heard his teacher's reply, "I get what you're saying Mr. Jeeves. But it isn't fair."

Markus sighed, but he quickly covered his mouth. He didn't want to interrupt.

"If we follow the orthodox logic, then only the people talented enough to walk the mage's path are worthy to be invested in. Those that don't have the inherent talent should resign themselves to their lives.

But what about those that don't want to resign themselves to their fates? Is it right for us, as teachers to tell them to just give up? Tell them that 'life just isn't fair, deal with it!'?"

There was a long pause, after which his teacher continued, "If the student is unwilling, then as a teacher it is my job to support him all the way, Al. I promised Markus that I would find a way for him to advance, and I don't plan to give up."

Markus could feel his nose itch as tears started to flow from his eyes. He felt inadequate. Here he was, ready to give up and throw in the towel, while his teacher was giving it his all.

Markus was ashamed. He quickly turned and ran out from the library. His emotions were in turmoil, and he felt that he was going to bawl.

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With great effort, Markus suppressed his emotions and returned to the public practising grounds. He had regained his frame of mind from three weeks ago. He would never give up. Not until his teacher decided to do so. Someone was willing to believe in him, and that was sufficient!

The other students at the grounds were disdainful when they saw Markus leave. They felt that he was simply wasting time. He clearly had no future, why was he putting in so much effort? To them, his very presence and unbending attitude were sufficient to receive their scorn. His failures made them feel superior, and so they vented on him. Little did they know that if Markus left, the next one on the spotlight would be one of them. It was an unending cycle of violence and trauma.

Markus didn't give any of that his attention. He began his routine.

With new vigour, he even revisited some of the older spells to see if he could implement any changes in the way he cast the spells. Maybe feeding mana more slowly would work? No? What if he activated it in pulses? Not that either? No matter, there are many more possibilities.

He kept going, all the way till sunset. As the sky gained a vibrant red hue, the students at the grounds started to vacate. He was the only one left. He was going to continue for another half an hour and call it a day.

Just as he was about to cast a spell, he heard a familiar voice calling his name!

"Markus! I did it!"

A man with an excited smile plastered across his face, with his eyes bulging in his sockets, was running towards him.

It was his teacher!

____

Guy had completely transferred all the spells constructs into his computer and programmed a simple image recognition and decomposition algorithm that ran through the contents in a folder.

He was currently focusing on fire-based spells since he felt they'd be easier for him to visualise and draw comparisons.

As the algorithm ran, it would copy snippets from those spells into folders in a different location and categorise them with labels indicating which spell they came from. The algorithm also added a cross-reference to the original image, so he could check out the context of the spell. This was in case there were dependencies, and the shape required another one to run.

With Mast roiding up Guy's dingy last generation laptop, the algorithm finished running almost instantaneously. Guy was awestruck by the efficiency of this computer.

'If only I had something like this back in my world,' he lamented. His old laptop had travelled the world with him. And inevitably, it had become a shadow of its former self. Even starting it up was a monumental effort.

Guy recollected a fragmented memory from his past when he tried to run a Bill Nye the Science Guy video from his computer, only to have it loop at the theme song, "Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!"

He shook the thought immediately. He didn't want the song to get stuck in his head again!

And so he began to peruse the decomposed images. As he opened the directory holding all the folders, he was assaulted by a truckload of data.

'Oh Shit! That's a lot!'

There were innumerable distinctive shapes within the spells he fed into the algorithm. Guy realised that this brute force strategy may not be as efficient as he had thought.

Guy was thankful that he was currently inside his consciousness. He feared that if he saw this sight in real life, he would have sweated through his outfit.

Rather than waste any more time, he started to come up with a more efficient strategy to tackle this problem. It wouldn't make sense to go through each and every single geometric shape that the algorithm flagged. There were no guarantees that the shapes had any substance to them, for all he knew they could be random figures with no purpose.

Instead, it would make more sense to start with the component shapes that were most common between the spell constructs. Logically, all the fire-based spells should contain some base structures that defined them. If he had surmised correctly, Guy theorised that these archetypical shapes would become the boilerplate template that formed every fire spell in existence.

With that in mind, Guy changed the sorting parameter from alphabetical order to frequency and saw the folders rearrange themselves before him in real-time.

Guy exhaled to calm himself down and psyched himself up. 'It's OK! You can do this Guy!'

He opened up the top-most folder and viewed the component shapes stored within.

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