Cardinal: God Spell

One moment Sora pondered how his new spell would match up against spells of the standard magic system, and not long after he got his answer. Sora witnessed Lima take out both of his assailants and then watched Lima spray Hail shards everywhere in his general direction; normally this wouldn't be a problem but 10 shards of the bunch were coming directly at him.

With a heavy frown, Sora took an orthodox boxing stance and raised his guard before getting on the balls of his feet to deal with the incoming attack. Sora sent three Fire-Fist: Flash and knocked three of the shards off course, but not destroying them, weaved the next to and snapped into a Fire-Fist: Drive, getting perfect form and launching a flat knuckle. Sora ended up destroying 4 shards with that one Fire-Fist and weaved the last shard that almost grazed his cheek. Besides the chill and layer of ice that covered the cheek that almost got grazed Sora was fine despite technically being on the receiving end of two Profound spells in this tournament.

Sora was about to relax his stance but heard a whip crack behind him shattering all of the ice shards he redirected. Sora sighed in annoyance before leaping forward, spinning mid-air and launching a poorly aimed Fire-Fist: Flash which blew away the tail end of a lightning whip. Sora couldn't help but wonder why lightning mages were as common as cabbages the higher up you got. He had no problem with it but it almost seemed insulting now for lightning to be the second part of his arsenal.

Sora got annoyed and instead fired a precision spark at the source of the lightning whip; the ambushing lightning mage was struck in the chest by the precision spark and was blasted into a distant tree being deeply shocked the whole way through, the truly shocking part was when the age passed out from the electrocution. Since when could lightning mages be beaten by lightning?

Sora held his frown until the Lightning mage was eliminated properly before relaxing his stance and turning his attention back to the major fight at hand; By the time he fully turned around though his badge radiated a bright gold hue before he was suddenly thrown into yet another transportation spell.

Sora blinked a few times to overcome the mild disorientation and looked around to find 19 other students around him. "Congratulations students, those of you that stand here now are the Elite of Elites that made it through the first round after over a month of intense competition, You will rest for the day and replenish your minds, bodies and mana reserves; and tomorrow the team mock battles will begin, it is advised that you use the next 24 hours of your day wisely... Good luck students", The same voice as the first time announced before shutting off leaving the students on the platform to identify each other thoroughly.

Sora recognised all the faces that qualified from the 4th zone, and frankly, he stuck out like a sore thumb from amongst the group. First; there was Mu Lima who was the fourth-strongest student in the school; next was Jun Wie one of the highest-ranking none elite fourth-year students; next was someone he recognised as Leonardo Colston, an elite third-year student and last was Marcus Sterling, his initial target and the strongest 2nd Year Elite student by far. As things stood now Sora doubted whether Marcus would register as a threat to him anymore, though while he knew that wouldn't likely be the case nobody else shared his sentiment.

"You're that first year, the one I used a Profound spell on", Lima suddenly called out to Sora in familiarity and approached him with a positively surprised smile, "I knew you survived the spell head-on but I didn't think you would last till the end, I mean you barely made it out of that blast", Lima commented with nothing but praise in his heart, thanks to Sora Lima had a bit more faith in the coming generation of mages, little did Lima know that Sora was Scores stronger now thanks to his Sage Series Basic Fire Magic.

"I would be lying if I said it was easy, but I don't recognise any of the other faces around... also there seems to be a trend with the people who qualified", Sora muttered the last part a passing comment as he scanned the 'qualifying' crowd. For each zone two 4th years and 1 of each other year qualified, if this was a purposefully set up format Sora finally understood why the challenge week was so important, it was the public's chance to challenge the Strongest among them when they are vulnerable and not only beat them for power but gain access to resources for it.

"I didn't know you two knew each other", Marcus stated with a look of curiosity on his face, what kind of first year could this be to possibly be worthy of being remembered by someone Like Mu Lima? "Of course I do, this is the only first year in our zone who decided to fight me till the bitter end... and he managed to get away too", Lima said with praise apparent in his tone. "That being said though, this is the group challenge, I won't be having any more insubordination from you", Lima warned with an 'amiable' smile on his face.

Sora understood what Lima was getting at and relented assuring Lima that he would take a back seat for the second round. Sora then asked Lima about the others who qualified from other zones and according to him, including their group; 8 4th years, 4 3rd years, 4 2nd years and 4 1st year students.

From the 1st Zone there was Xiao Feifei from the first year, Han Yunji in the second year, Carlos Shin in the third year, Ji Wenqing in the 4th year and Sebastian Salvatore, the strongest student in the school. 

From the 2nd Zone was Chen Piso from the First year, Xiao Yaya in the second year, Christopher Lance in the third year elite class, Clarence Joules in the fourth year and the 2nd strongest student in the school, Zhu Lingling.

Lastly from the 3rd Zone was

Yu Narong from the First year, Xavier Sterling in the second year, Felicia Park in the third year, Romero Salvatore in the Fourth Year, and the third strongest student in the school Chen Ningxue.

Sora stared blankly at Narong for a moment before shaking his head in pity, he sighed at her current situation and ignored her. It might look like she was sticking it to him on the surface but he was willing to bet his life on the fact that she would be tossed aside like a torn-up ragdoll if she ever failed to make good on the responsibilities that the wealthy families gave her, and for someone like her who was the only rare talent her family ever knew she couldn't afford to mess up; He almost felt bad for the ass-whooping he was about to hand out but acknowledged that he would embarrass everyone who agreed to slander him the way they did by the end of the year. That aside, they had 24 hours to recover their mana and make preparations for the group fight and the way Sora saw it he could do one of two things, He could mitigate the weakness of his current fighting style by applying his Basic Lightning magic theory, or he could try to master the 3rd stage of his Sage Series basic fire magic.

After a few moments of deliberation, Sora decided to work on the lightning element, even if he managed to complete the third stage his magic would still have the same weakness it usually did, his lack of Mobility to keep up with his firepower; Him recognising that very weakness when he was almost ambushed was what gave him the idea for his lightning magic spell. If you thought of the body as an infinitely versatile machine, if there were 'pivots' in the system, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume there would also be 'pistons' in that same system, There was already evidence of such a thing in his strike theory, to build up and shoot out magic there had to be some sort of function of mana arteries to precise pump exact amounts of mana through it's 'channels' like a piston.

The reason this was even Important was that his Sage series basic lightning magic would be based on Parkour. He would create a unique mana path in his legs than the one he created for the Fire Fist, besides the fact he simply could, the main reason he did this was so he could utilise both the Fire Fist and his potential lightning spell simultaneously without any sort of overlap that messed the structure and efficiency of either spell. This new path would place 'pistons' at either side of his hips, his shins, the balls of his feet and his toes; he would then place 'Pivots in both of his knees and both of his ankles. The reason Sora structured his new Mana path this way was to recreate the effect of a 'stride', this way the ideal motion for his lightning magic spell isn't simply limited to a specific type of motion like a punch, kick, head butt or anything like that; this way he could sprint, jump, kick and even redirect himself mid-air if the need came up.

Sora decided to try his idea for the new Lightning spell's first stage so he left the Group waiting area and went to the open training area, He took his boxing stance and bounced on the balls of his feet with a sigh; In a moment of intense focus Sora tried opening the new mana path first, he found it easy to do first time since he no longer hand any limits on his basic mana core's mana flow and cast his new basic lightning spell. Being a practitioner of the orthodox boxing style he tried using his left foot to drive his spell but easily lost balance and crashed face-first into the ground, He got up and dusted himself off after spitting out a mouthful of dirt and coughing it all out of his system. The essence of the spell was perfect and it worked as intended, the problem was that he had no sense of balance while in motion; forget trying to throw a fire fist mid-stride, he couldn't even keep himself upright.

Sora returned to his original position and took his boxing stance once more, this time he practised the motion without the spell and immediately noticed what the first problem was; He was still upright when he tried driving forward meaning his centre of gravity was already off, and when he drove the stride he would end up over leaning into the stride and face planting like an idiot. First, he decided to practice driving off his supporting right foot and found the movement a lot more natural to complete, he then tried tucking in slightly before striding and found that it allowed him to build power into the jabbing motion; instead of practising his spell, Sora ended up practicing standard boxing combinations for the next few hours to get used moving like this, in this time he had found the inspiration for his new spells new name; his new Basic Lightning spell was going to be called the Sage series, Thunder stride. 

Sora decided to try out his new spell's first stage one more time before he called it a night, he had been at it for the better part of 12 hours; Sora got in his boxing stance and formed both his fire and Lightning element mana paths simultaneously then tucked before launching off of his right, he successfully shot off like a bullet with lightning covering his feet the whole way, he covered 15 yards in a second before catching himself on his left foot and throwing two consecutive Fire-Fist: Flash spells and stepping hard onto his left foot and tucking so he could transition into a Fire-Fist: Drive. The whole combination was clean and went without error, hell the boulder he was using as a practice dummy seemed to almost soften up when the two initial punches landed and were thoroughly decimated when the following straight landed, not only blowing a hole three times the size of a human body through the Boulder but creating a 10 foot wide and and 10-foot tall trail of of destruction behind the boulder creating a 3 foot deep 25 metre long trench of sulfur and ash on the training ground. Sora nodded at the result with a grin as he stood upright before an ache overwhelmed his abdomen and he dropped to one knee clenching his gut. The pain was lengthy and gut-wrenching enough that Sora didn't notice the student who was watching his little practice session with a heavy grimace on their face before walking away, leaving Sora to suffer.