Chapter 25: Critical Thinking

There were many practising fields distributed across Radiant Academy's campus. They were generally quite wide and could accommodate multiple students at a time.

Most students would spend the majority of their free time at the practising fields to brush up on their martial arts or spellcasting.

The fields were built specifically to be highly resilient to damage, and they also had multiple wide-scale ritual formations to aid in that endeavour.

For instance, one of the most common ritual formations embedded into the practising fields could distribute any concentrated source of damage across the entire field's surface. By doing so, it reduced the amount of destruction caused by potent offensive spells.

It was also not uncommon for students to cultivate in the practising fields. However, this was mostly undertaken by students whose cultivation methods were especially volatile and were prone to damaging the environments they cultivated in.

One student, for example, had a cultivation method that was geared towards explosion. Essentially, the method converted the student's blood into a potent primer. The student's mana is converted into an activator which, once infused into the blood, initiated a brilliant explosion. While the student cultivated, they would constantly exude contaminated blood from their pores. This would inevitably get infused with the mana the body released during cultivation. Because of that, the student was forced to cultivate in such reinforced spaces like the practising field.

For others though, a place that was constantly filled with a cacophony of different spells exploding, training dummies shattering, and adolescent boys and girls grunting was not typically conducive to cultivation. So it was natural for the students that were present to throw awkward gazes towards the corner of the field where a student was seated in the lotus position, surrounded by a stack of books.

Many were tempted to go there and ask the boy why he was reading books here of all places when there was a less noisy library readily available in the academy's campus? But they scrubbed that thought. They were here to practise, not waste time.

However, Markus was here at the field for an important reason. For the past few days, Master Larks had been handing him different spells that were within Markus' capacity. Most of them were similar in nature and were derived from a base spell. In the end, the sheer quantity of those spells exceeded Markus' expectations.

While he was excited at first, Markus quickly realised one key problem. He had to memorise all the spell constructs so that he could cast them at a moment's notice. He didn't have the luxury to pull out the sheet displaying the spell construct in the middle of a confrontation.

And so Markus decided to squat at the practising field with all the spells his master developed for him and cycled through a set every day until he internalised him properly.

Unfortunately, the memorising marathon had been interfering with his other studies. Especially the additional work Master Larks provided in the form of a workbook. He had managed to complete one or two experiments and read through one theoretical section in the book. But for the past few days, his progress had stagnated.

Markus stored a stack of spells into the folder marked "Memorised" and pulled out the next stack to start memorising.

His process was simple. Each spell on the stack had a specific name or identification assigned to it. Some spells were similar and so their names would also include a descriptor that differentiated them from the others. Markus would first flip through the stack in hand and examine each spell carefully. He would keep his eye out for specific features in the constructs that differentiated them.

He would then cover the spell construct, revealing only the name and descriptor. He would go through the stack again, but this time he would try to recollect the spell construct just based on the name and descriptor and see if he could cast it successfully. If he failed to do so, he would remove that particular spell from the stack and move on.

After an initial run-through, he would revisit the stack that was removed after the first run and repeat the same procedure until all the spells were memorised.

Once he finished, he would test the entire stack once again to make sure that they were internalised properly before moving the spells into the "Memorised" folder.

It was a time consuming and arduous process, but Markus figured there wasn't an alternate strategy. This was how everyone was taught from the beginning.

Basically, a mage's basic training revolved around three things: cultivation, spell casting, and martial arts. These three were linked together with the cultivation method at the centre.

The cultivation method was an indicator of what types of spells and martial art were compatible with the mage. Obviously, it wouldn't make sense for a mage with a fire-type cultivation method to learn water-type spells. Similarly, water-type mages would be attuned to martial arts that had a fluid nature.

These factors made it so that the mage didn't have to memorise a bunch of irrelevant spells. They would only keep the spells pertinent to their cultivation, and ones that would complement their martial arts.

Markus was in an unfortunate and special situation where he didn't have a cultivation method or martial art. Therefore, he was forced to memorise a plethora of spells that spanned all the elements classified as basic such as fire, water, earth, and air.

Just as Markus started going through the new stack, a familiar voice interrupted him.

"Markus! You're still here? It's time for lunch," Guy exclaimed as he made his way towards Markus' corner.

Markus scratched his forehead as he smiled wryly, "I guess I lost track of time..."

Guy shook his head in defeat as he instructed, "Nourishment is important for an active mind. You're only holding yourself back by doing this."

Markus nodded his head vigorously and started to arrange the sheets and books before him.

As Markus was floundering to retrieve some of the papers that were out of his immediate reach, Guy observed the mess before him.

Furrowing his brows, Guy asked, "What are you doing here anyway?"

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"I'm memorising the spells, Master."

"Why?" Guy asked in a stern voice.

Noticing the shift in his master's tone, Markus answered carefully, "So that I can cast them without having to refer to the sheet with the spell construct."

Guy shook his head and clarified his point, "You don't need to memorise them. You're only wasting your time by doing it this way."

"I don't?" Markus exclaimed in shock. "But then what about all of these sheets," he continued while raising a massive stack in his hand.

Guy chuckled, "I was only showing you some examples. Do you still have the workbook I gave you last time?"

Markus nodded and pulled out the workbook from his backpack.

Guy shuffled through the pages and commented, "You've only finished these many chapters?"

Markus lowered his head and said, "I'm sorry, Master. I couldn't manage my time properly."

Guy waved his hand and pointed at a page in the book, "Look here."

He continued, "You finished the experiment on understanding combustion, but you didn't look through the entire chapter."

"Do you remember the first spell I showed you? The one that used coal to ignite a fire in your hand?" Guy asked.

Markus nodded and retrieved that spell from his backpack.

Guy placed the sheet next to the workbook and turned the page. In this section, Guy had included a copy of the spell construct which was broken down, with explanations supporting the different sections of the spell.

"The spells I gave you are all modular. They are different from the ones in the library, in that you have more control over what you want them to do. Take this fire spell, for example, there are a few key components in the spell that determine its function."

Guy pointed at the decomposed spell and said, "This is a Source Component that pulls in the oxygen from the environment. As you already know from the experiment, oxygen is necessary to sustain the combustion reaction. This Source Component derives the carbon from the coal to act as fuel. You can see here that these Action Components act according to what you learned from the experiment, to sustain the fire."

Guy reached into Markus' memorised folder and retrieved a few fire-type spells. He laid them on the floor and continued his explanation, "The reason I gave you these spells was to show you how you can use the information from the experiments and theoretical chapters, as well as the relevant components described in the sections after, to put together your own spell to fit your need.

You must have already noticed that most of these spells are similar. That's because I am modifying, adding, or removing some components from the spell."

Markus nodded as he digested all this information, "I have disappointed you, Master. I was too hasty..."

"It's mainly my fault. I am used to teaching in one particular way and failed to consider your approach to learning. As a teacher, it is my responsibility to tailor my teaching style to suit the student, not the other way around.

But I do want to point out, that if you had taken the time to read through the workbook, you would have figured out my purpose much earlier."

Guy then tapped Markus' nose and chuckled, "To be successful, you need to work smarter, and not work harder. It is very easy to develop tunnel vision when working on a problem singlemindedly. To avoid that, you must always consider all the resources available to you and derive smarter solutions."

Markus nodded his head resolutely, "I will keep that in mind from now on, Master."

He then resumed packing up all of his things. But halfway, he paused, as he remembered something.

"Oh, right! Master," he called out, "I was so immersed in memorising the spells that I forgot to inform you-"

He then dug through his folder and retrieved a few sheets.

Handing them to Guy, Markus stated, "I can't cast these spells. I can form these constructs, but I can't activate them by channelling my mana."

Guy's forehead wrinkled as he perused through the spells. He was confident that the spells were functional as he had tried them before handing them to Markus.

With a confused frown, he muttered, "What's wrong now?"

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