Life Hunter

The students broke out in a cold sweat because of the effects of that technique. If it was real, then it would be awfully scary. What if this technique ended up in the wrong hands? Something like that could basically be considered as a sort of suicide bomber. Even a weak villager could become a threat with such magic.

"Of course," Arima's voice jolted them. "I'm not telling you this because I want you to use it. I will teach you this technique for only one purpose. To survive. If one day, you have no choice but to bet your life, maybe this technique will help you."

"The Berserker's Path is not really a technique that kills the user. But it has a good chance of crippling you. Depending on the severity of the injuries, or the intensity of your madness, you may even be able to resist all of the side effects."

"At a later date, I'll teach you the formation for this technique. But I forbid you to try to understand it alone. Unless you want to go mad and be killed as a result," He warned and his students earnestly nodded. Their choice was instantly made. They didn't want to die by doing something so stupid.

"Lastly, I forbid you to divulge this technique to the world," Arima's voice suddenly turned cold and everyone shivered. For a moment, the whole room became filled with a dreadful aura and every recording crystal present was partially wiped. "I just cast a curse on you. If you voluntarily try to speak about it, you'll die in the worst case."

Arima's words pierced the students' ears like a needle and they all paled. Lanya, Karma, Arister, and Night weren't surprised at all and took those precautions as granted.

"Only Ofia among you has the right to impart it from now on. I trust her to give it to worthy people," Arima added and Ofia and breathed in as the huge responsibility fell on her.

"I understand. I swear to even hide it from my family if necessary."

"Good. This is all I have to say concerning Mind magic. Do not forget though that magic theory is still possible with non-elementals. But you'll have to reflect about it yourselves. Anyhow, the next one on the list would be Space. Before I tell you what you can do with Space magic, I need to explain to you what space is."

"Well, 'explaining what is space' is kind of a big way to say it. I don't really know what space is exactly. I'll just teach about the theory which works the better for me."

"First of all, most people tend to see space from a very narrow-minded approach. What I mean by this is that they think of space as a force that surrounds them and which they can employ. That's a wrong way to see it. It's more exact to say that space is the world itself and it does not surround you at all. Humans are part of it. When using Space magic, you cause a deformation somewhere in the world. You don't actually control something to attack."

Arima waved his hand and the outline of a human body appeared in the air. Afterward, the transparent silhouette became filled with dark blue circles.

"Take these circles as the 'space' within us. If I were to use magic to interact with it, this would happen," The blue circles in the hologram joined together to form a bigger circle. It flashed and suddenly moved at high speed from one place to another, leaving blue traces behind.

Arima snapped his fingers and the spheres disappeared. Then, the human figure slowly crumbled into numerous cleanly cut pieces. The students raised their voices at the phenomenon.

"There's also this case," Arima followed and the projection changed. This time, the silhouette was surrounded by blue lights. "The circles here are the space contained in the world around you." A portion of the circles started gathering together and formed a sort of blade that chopped apart the silhouette.

"It's needed to say that space can theoretically destroy everything since the world is built on it. With space magic, you can also create a similar effect to a black hole by creating a sort of shredder and pulling people in," Arima declared and demonstrated it on the projection.

"Well, what I just talked about is basically how to use Space magic as a weapon. Let's continue with something else. Transfer, and teleportation."

"Let's begin with what we call a wormhole. The concept is pretty simple. It consists of connecting two different places with Space magic through a sort of tunnel. In that tunnel, space is distorted and the actual distance between the entrance and the exit is something like a billionth of the real distance."

Arima waved his hand a new image was projected behind him. Actually, two different images appeared. One was a tunnel that looked like it was squeezed in the middle and the other was similar, just that the tunnel was connecting two points which were both placed on the same folded surface.

"The first example here is what I just described to you. The second one is another possible representation of a wormhole. Let me show you a little 'experiment. Take a piece of paper and draw two symmetrical dots based on a vertical axis. Then trace a line connecting them. Each dot embodies a specific location while the paper represents our plane of existence itself. And the line between the two dots is the distance you would have to travel if you decided to go from one point to the other."

"Now, what I want you to do is to fold that piece of paper in two," Arima instructed and the students did as they were told.

"When you have folded the paper, take a pen or something of the sort, and pierce the folded paper with it, so that it goes through the two dots you drew earlier," Arima said and everyone finished the 'experiment'.

"There you go. It's done," Arima smiled and the students looked puzzled at the result they had in front of them. Only some of them reacted differently. Especially Balan, the elf who had mastered Space and Life magic.

"Some of you already understood. But let me recapitulate. The paper is our world, the dots are two different places, the line between the path. Finally, if you compare the hologram, the pen is the wormhole," Arima explained and everyone finally understood what they had in hand.

"That hypothesis is basically this. When you distort the space-time plane, you make two locations superimpose in the fifth dimension, which is a sort of unperceivable layer of the physical world, then connect them with a short tunnel."

"Well, it's always better to know different theories so I showed you this. But the theory I will develop more is the other one. Much simpler, since it's just the tunnel itself," Arima stated and mused.

"For convenience, let's call those small spheres 'space particles'. Now, I want you to imagine a tunnel made of those particles," Arima said and a new illustration replaced the previous images of a wormhole. It was a perfectly straight tunnel without any variation to speak of. It was a perfect cylinder.

"Now, we need to get a wormhole from this. You have to picture the space particles being pulled toward the very center of the cylinder."

The projection gradually changed. The cylinder was 'shrinking' at its middle as if it was being compelled by an external pressure.

"The cause of this phenomenon is the space particles which the cylinder is made of. They are getting close to each other, trying to gather a single point in the center. Thus, the walls are pulled inward and everything else is stretched. In the end, the original structure is kind of saved and we end up with this."

Arima waved his hand and zoomed on the projection. The cylinder had turned into the typical tunnel you call a wormhole. "Due to the 'compression', the 'shrinking', and the 'stretching', the wormhole is able to connect two places with a smaller path than normal. You can also say that the efficiency of a wormhole depends on how much you stretch it."

The students were overwhelmed by the theory and could only listen agape while scratching their hair.

"Evidently, the thing you all must be wondering about now is what happens to a human when he passes through this. Well, watch this," Arima pointed at the projection. At the same time, the room was plunged into darkness.

At one of the entrances of the wormhole, a human figure emerged. With his appearance, the space particles were once again visible. The human advanced and took the first step into the wormhole. And, although it was really faint, the blue spheres inside his body moved a bit.

After that, with each step, the space particles in the human's body slowly got closer to each other, with the belly as the center of attraction. Hence, the started shrinking along with the deformed walls of the wormhole.

The students exclaimed in surprise when they saw that. They finally understood. In short, the already shrunk wormhole will affect the space particles entering it to match its current state. As Arima said earlier, humans are part of space. Then, obviously, along with the space particles, the body would also be minimized and stretched while going through the wormhole.

As they were thinking this, the human was already at the exit of the wormhole. He had traveled through the narrow section very quickly.

Arima smiled and snapped his fingers. The hologram was dispersed as light illuminated the classroom again. "Wormholes can be very useful. Since it's a pure physical transfer, you can even directly send back the opponent's magic. It's also how I teleported at first. People who work on Space magic should have used this at least once. Of course, the magic can be cast even if you don't understand the theory behind it, but the magic in itself won't give satisfying results and even could be dangerous."

"Next. What I will talk about now is 'true' teleportation. Not a 'bridge' between two locations. Don't worry, it's not that complicated," Arima said then smiled wryly. "As long as you have magic at your disposition of course."

He created another projection of a human shape filled with space particles. "The teleportation I'm referring to is something we can call biological separation. In other words, you separate your physical body into several parts, move it while it's in a semi-ethereal state, and rebuild it somewhere else."

"As to how it works, I think an image is better to describe it," He said and pointed at the projection. The space particles suddenly froze in place and then started to vibrate strongly. The human figure slowly transformed into a blue light composed of many separate dots. Then, those dots flew off and reconstructed the body somewhere else.

"Easy, right? Well, scientifically speaking, teleportation is achievable but it's impossible to use the theory of space to do it. Magic is magic in the end." Arima shrugged.

"Anyway, this is the fundamental way of teleporting someone or something, and it's also the fastest. Because, yes, even teleportation isn't actually instantaneous. It's just that space particles, or molecules and atoms if you prefer, travel even faster than light. It's most likely impossible for anything in this world to be instantaneous."

"That's all for teleportation. But there's still a huge subject we have to talk about regarding Space magic; storages. Well, it's a different concept, but it shares similarities. For instance, when you want to expand the size of a room, it's the opposite of the wormhole. You have to make the space particles recede from each other."

"Therefore, to make spatial bags or containers, you can do the same thing, or you can also shrink the objects before storing them. Your choice."

"That's not the main type of storage of though. The one I want to talk about is this one," Arima said and extended his arm. A shadow covered it and a banal sword appeared in his hand. He lifted it and showed it to his students. "That's what I call self-supplied storage. 'Self-supplied' because it's the caster himself that gives a place for objects to be stocked."

"Storages are often combined with elemental magic. Because with just Space magic, you have nowhere to send the objects. You need a 'place' to store it. So, you use elemental magic. To be exact, you use magic theory to create a separate dimension then send objects in it through Space magic. I personally use darkness as an intermediate because the theory is perfect for this kind of thing. Also, usually, the size of the storage depends on the size of the mana pool."

"Well, there are actually other ways to create a separate storage," Arima affirmed and chuckled ominously. "And I'm sure some people died because of it."

"Huh?"