carl@fire

Before he'd even really had a chance to adjust to being in the classroom with such a great magic teacher, the general clapped his hands together loudly. "Alright, I can see you've had enough for today. Rest up. Tomorrow, we'll start digging a beachhead into the astral body and discovering its intricacies by any means necessary."

The kids immediately began to chatter, mostly about things that were unrelated to the class from what Carl could tell, and he frowned. No freaking way. I gotta at least… He got up and waded through the sort of faceless morass of ungrateful kids teeming by the exit until he reached the platform at the head of the room and stepped up onto it. "Hey, uh, General," he called to the much shorter man, who was staring off into the distance with a look of concentration.

"Hm?" The man started. "Oh, Carl. More questions?"

"I just wanted to say that I'm totally blown away," Carl said, giving the man a firm nod of approval. "Never been in a class where everything was explained so thoroughly and concisely."

The man cracked a quarter of a smile and extended a hand. "Thanks."

Carl grasped it and shook. It was clear to him that the man subscribed to the same Handshake Methodology that a number of executives he'd worked under in the past did—though he was reluctant to even think of those dark days before he'd become a Director during which he'd been forced to deal with all manner of incompetence—which was to say that a strong grip equaled a strong respect. At this moment, he had a colossal amount of respect and did his best to express it over the brief duration of this simple handshake, hoping that he could manage it but then also getting distracted as he started to recall more of the awesome things he'd learned over the past couple hours.

"Um, am I interrupting, or are we…"

Carl glanced over and spotted Rebecca standing nearby, likely as eager as he was to be heading to the next class. "Nah, I was just thanking the general here for having such an awesome class. Really comprehensive and easy to understand." He disengaged from the handshake as he spoke.

"Yes, well. Pleased to have you here for my lecture, Carl," the great teacher said, sounding like he'd been pleased with the amount of respect and appreciation that had been conveyed.

Carl gave him a quick salute as he turned towards the door. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah, this is fun," Rebecca said with a grin. She led the way through the door and into the hallway. "Where to next?"

"Well, if you thought that one was fun, I'm really psyched for the next one," Carl said as they started off towards the stairs, buoyed by her pleased look and continued not-annoying attitude.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yup," he said with a widening grin. "Gonna be Elemental Manipulation back on the seventy fourth. I already learned a little bit of this stuff." He decided to show off a little, imagining that she'd do some crazy light magic in return, and made another water ball on his hand, which set his mind back to the problem of using earth magic that he still hadn't been able to wrap his head around.

Along the way back to their intended floor, he diverted a little of his thought processing power to a short chat they had in which he learned that Rebecca was apparently a big fan of Ir'alith's, but he was already pretty focused now on this whole elemental manipulation thing now that he'd settled in to wait for Vol to show up, especially in getting to the bottom of how to use earth magic—which wasn't even scratching the surface of wind magic, another thing he had yet to really get into. But then they were at the door to the next classroom, which was made out of freaking water, and Rebecca held it for him for a change, which was a small, not-annoying effort that he noticed and appreciated.

He stopped immediately upon entering the classroom. How the heck are we always late to these classes? Like the others, this room was already filled with kids at their desks, and it seemed like the class was underway.

"Names?" asked a rotund—the word being an understatement in this particular case—old, withered woman sitting in an equally old, withered rocking chair at the front of the room, which was, to Carl's untrained eye, a really freaking cool room now that he looked around, with all kinds of awesome displays of magic that, now that he thought of it, he imagined Bobby would probably really like, and so he should maybe mention it to her at some point.

"Carl," said Carl.

"Becca," said Rebecca.

"Sit somewhere and listen," the old woman said, gesturing halfheartedly with one of the knitting needles she was holding.

No sooner had he managed to cram himself into the too-small chair at one of the too-small desks midway back than the old woman started to rev her metaphorical teaching engine—which seemed to maybe be operated with the needlework she was doing while she spoke—after which point she blasted out of the station like a supersonic freight train, giving the distinct impression that questions were not only unwelcome, they would not be tolerated.

That was fine with Carl. He was eager to make this journey, and he was already doing his best to metaphorically shovel the coal of knowledge into the engine compartment of his notepad—or something like that; he was really just way too psyched to put a ton of effort into the metaphor right now.

First up was a too-brief review of the previous class—apparently the classes weren't exactly aligned in their start dates for each 'term' period or somesuch—condensed into about ten seconds, the gist of which was that there were elements, and they could be manipulated by applying magic in various ways.

Alright, that was simple enough, but then things started to get a little crazy, because this old lady just jumped right into earth manipulation, which was apparently the easiest to start with. The key was that you had to circulate magic through your astral body to the point that corresponded to earth magic—which happened to be the left heel for whatever reason—and then from there you just had to extend it outwards, either as some sort of physical manifestation of earth—which consumed the magic that was used—or as some kind of earth-compatible energy that was able to move or alter existing earth—which consumed only the magic that leaked.

Carl made a brief attempt to create a small rock in his hand, but, if he was honest, the explanation just made no sense compared to how easy it was for him to do fire and water magic stuff. With those, he just kinda focused a bit, and then it worked. Well, sort of; it wasn't like he was an expert or anything, but just small little uses were easy enough. This was…

He had questions, that was for sure. Questions like what exactly a physical manifestation of earth was supposed to be in the context of the whole magic circulating thing. Also, if he was circulating through his left heel, didn't that mean he'd just be making rocks under his foot? It seemed… He didn't want to say it seemed stupid given how clear everything else had been, but it didn't seem like it made much sense. And if he wasn't trying to create rocks but was just trying to maybe move one around, what was he supposed to do if it wasn't at ground level? Like if he was trying to climb a mountain, but there was a big rock above him that he had to climb past? Did he have to like, bring his foot up to touch the rock? If not, there was all this talk of leakage, so wouldn't that just mean he'd be stretching this earth-compatible energy—and also what the actual heck did that even mean?—all the way up there to the rock, meaning he'd be losing tons of MP along the way?

The frown on his face wasn't going away anytime soon, but it also didn't seem like this knowledge train was making any stops at all no matter how he raised his hand, and it wasn't like he was about to interrupt seeing how polite everyone else was being and the awkwardness he imagined he'd feel if he did.

No, the knowledge train he'd been tied to the front of was barreling forward at an incredible speed, to the extent that his hand looked like a blur as he tried to keep up in his note-taking. This lesson seemed like it was going to be entirely focused on earth stuff, and actually so were all the lessons for the next week, apparently, because there was a lot of ground to cover—pun maybe intended.

Now there was some detail being given about various densities of rocks, a number of which were conjured by the woman while she talked to provide visual aids. The density of a type of rock corresponded to quantity of magic required to manipulate it, which was an interesting but entirely expected fact, especially after all the things he'd learned about substrate lattices earlier on, which was sort of similar in a metaphysical sense.

Carl was laser-focused on all this rock stuff now, but rocks weren't the only type of earth. No, there was also stuff like sand, and dust, and dirt, and then there were metals—and not just the alloys, but the amalgams and the crystals too.

Sand and other particulate forms were tough to work with, apparently, because they required concentrating on each individual component that comprised the whole, whether for manifesting or just manipulating, which sounded super annoying and not at all like something he'd be interested in.

Metals, by contrast, could be super easy depending on impurities. If you wanted to make a pure metal, you only had to keep in mind the metal you wanted to work with and then do the calculating—because there was apparently lots of calculating involved for this sort of thing if you were interested in knowing whether you could manage a given effect before you started trying to do it or if you wanted to know how much manipulating you could do for a given task—to figure out the volume, weight, and shape accordingly, which were all pretty simple for someone with even a basic understanding of physics and chemistry, though the old lady tried to make it seem way more complicated than it was.

Then again, if you were working with impurities, like, for example, trying to create a sword using magic based on an alloy—which was technically an impure metal—then all that got thrown out the window, and you had to fall back on that whole Nearest Material Neighbor deal, which really seemed like overkill for just combining a couple metals so he could make a sword that shot lasers.

Now, in talking about shapes of all this stuff, there were apparently formulas that could be used to calculate the minimum possible leakage when working with certain types of regular-ish shapes, which was useful if you were going to be doing a lot of earth manipulating in one sitting and wanted to make sure you'd actually be able to get through the whole of magically plowing your field or whatever without running out of MP.

All of this was well and good, and he was absolutely continuing taking notes apace—though he'd accidentally snapped one of his pencils with his ten million Strength in the course of trying to keep up—but he'd also begun to wonder if any of this was related to why he couldn't manage to do earth stuff using Ir'alith's method, which, on the whole, was just way easier. It wasn't surprising to him that she'd have some tricks to make magic-using better. Power-gamers were always gonna figure out and optimize for the best way of doing stuff, so it stood to reason that someone as apparently famous as her was going to be a head and shoulders above the teachers in what was maybe just the noob zone for starting mages.

At last, the class started winding down as though the old woman had run out of steam, and Carl decided that now was one of those opportunities to try applying what he'd learned. He held one hand over his desk and once again focused on being a rock like Ir'alith had said, but this time he also considered things like the type of rock, and the density, and the shape, and the size, and a head-sized gray rock thumped down on his desk. He wasn't really sure what to do with it, so he chucked it into his inventory, which made the kid next to him flinch when it disappeared right in front of him.

"Sorry," Carl whispered on reflex.

"It's okay," the kid whispered back, not making a big deal out of it.

The class ended, and everyone started to get up, chatting among themselves in the process, but Carl wasn't paying attention to any of that. He'd finally gotten earth magic to work in a substantial way, and that was really freaking awesome. "Did you see that?" he asked Rebecca, momentarily forgetting that she was Rebecca and not someone he might actually be interested in talking to—though that wasn't really fair considering how mostly not-annoying she'd been since they arrived, sitting through each of the classes with an interested gleam in her eye and then making pleasant enough conversation between them without trying to be disruptive when he was taking notes.

"Yes, it was a great use of magic," Rebecca said with a cheerful smile. "How'd you manage such a working?"

Carl struggled free from his desk, feeling a little jealous at the smoothness with which Rebecca took her feet, owing to her smaller stature. "Well," he said, starting to rub his beard as he made for the exit, "I was kinda trying to figure it out for a while, and then some of the stuff from the class clicked."

"That's great, Carl," she said, continuing to smile up at him as she glided along next to him through the hall. "You know, I'm really glad you're here with me."

"Yeah, uh, it's been pretty cool having you around too," Carl said tentatively. I suppose it has? Kind of a fresh experience overall to be taking an in-game class like this, and she certainly hasn't made it worse. Can't really imagine Vol sitting through something like this. And if Mina or Bobby were here, I'd probably be getting distracted making sure they were doing okay with all the material. Tim's probably already an expert on it all, so he and Ir'alith are probably out. Obviously Annie's gonna be my top pick to take a class with, but making-an-effort Rebecca is surprisingly cool to—

"But tell me more about how you made that magnificent rock," she said in an enthusiastic tone as they rounded a corner. "I've certainly never made one so large."

He chuckled. "Okay," he began as he got back into focusing on magic stuff, "so it's part of this trick I learned…"