Magicapita

The moment he set foot outside his room, he could sense people's attention on him. The very moment he emerged from his dormitory room, he found himself confronted by whispering students hanging out in the hallways of the dormitories, stealing glances at him as they whispered about him in a hushed tone.

Everybody had long learned about what had happened between Serulia and Miranda and how Cæ had intervened to save Serulia like a hero. Unbeknownst to Cæ, it had increased his popularity in the magicademy campus, particularly among the young ladies who found him to be even more attractive than they already did.

Even he could notice the change in the way that the girls in the Senior Program looked at him. They stole glances at him with even greater intensity than before, not that he particularly cared too much. He was far too preoccupied with other matters, and it reflected. Some of the girls looked like they wanted to approach him, but his unfriendly demeanor and temperament were uninviting.

He was unapproachable, causing the crowd of students to make way for him.

"Cæ!" Natana called to him as he emerged from the senior dormitory with Kelton tagging along with her.

Cæ's expression softened as he ran into them. "It's been a while."

In reality, it had been a few days at most, but it felt like it had been a month since he saw them. So much had happened in the span of a single day that time seemed to have slowed down from his perspective.

Natana beamed at him with enthusiasm as she swept her neatly knitted pigtails behind her, tying her hands behind her with a coy expression. "We heard about what you did, you're so cool!"

"I gotta admit," Kelton remarked with an admiring grin. "You're a hero, boss!"

Cæ huffed, shaking his head lightly. "You think too highly of me. I was just doing what anybody would."

"Nah nah nah, that was incredible. To jump in the way of a powerful attack charged with a lot of magical energy to protect a damsel in distress, you truly are the epitome of man!" Kelton flicked him a thumbs-up. "All the boys in magicademy wish they were like you!"

"Hah, as if any of you boys could compare to a man like Cæ," she huffed at him with a hint of contempt in her voice, before turning back to Cæ. "So are you going to get some award or something by the magicademy?"

They followed him as he walked to class, eagerly awaiting his response.

"Of course not," Cæ replied calmly. "They don't do that, nor would I want them to."

"Kuh…!" Kelton stumbled like somebody had punched him in the gut. "You're so damn cool man!"

Cæ heaved a tired sigh.

He liked the two of them, but the adolescents had far too much energy and excitement for him, though he didn't blame them for it, considering that they were only seventeen years old.

"I heard Miranda got fired right away," Natana remarked with an intrigued tone. "I also heard that she got accepted into another magicademy right away with some affluent girl friends of mine. She got accepted into another branch of the Elendir Institute of Magic."

Cæ paused, turning towards her with a serious expression. "What did you say?"

His tone was heavy, frightening Natana as she took a step back.

"U-um… I heard that from someone who is very well connected that she got accepted into the Laenar Branch right after she got expelled," Natana remarked with an uncertain tone.

Cæ's expression darkened with a hint of displeasure.

It infuriated him that people in power could just get away with attempted murder in front of literally fifteen witnesses and continue about life like nothing had happened. Of course, the point of the criminal trial against Miranda and the testimony that he was going to give was to get him put in prison.

Still, it was not pleasant to see how easy it was for people in power to fight back against rather straightforward justice. It reminded him of how Lilia died, which put him in an even worse mood.

"Um… Cæ, are you ok?" Natana's frightened tone drew his attention. "…you look scary."

"Sorry." Cæ lightly shook his head. "I was just a little frustrated that she gets to go about magicademy after brazenly attempting cold murder."

"Yeah, it does suck, doesn't it?" Kelton muttered. "The worst part is what it says to the affluent kids in this magicademy? That you can commit attempted murder and potentially get away with it because you have a big, powerful family? I don't think they're going to run around murdering as regular kids, but they certainly won't be too careful about how they treat us."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Cæ hadn't even thought about that, but he had to admit that Kelton had a good point. This wasn't a good message about what was a red line that couldn't be crossed, and what wasn't. He especially wasn't hyped about the fact that there already was some existing prejudice from affluent students against the others, and this was bound to send a bad signal.

Thankfully, he was no longer subject to this problem nearly as much. For some reason, perhaps because of his performances and other instances of fame in the magicademy, he had gained a rather high amount of popularity such that nobody voiced visceral hatred against him on the basis of his background anymore.

"Stay safe, you two," Cæ turned towards them with a hint of concern in his tone. "If anybody is giving you trouble, be sure to let me know about it and I'll handle it."

He bade farewell to them as they split paths between the apprentice and senior programs within the magicademy, heading his way to the first class of the day, mana-motive force training.

It was one of the two most important and fundamental aspects of magic training, training the amount of mana one could mobilize for one's magic spells. And it was what he had spent immense energy grinding at to increase his growth in this particular parameter.

He particularly loved this training session because it was the most concrete and noticeable way of growth. His rate of growth when it came to mana-motive force was incredible, considering that he had only begun learning magic a little over a year ago.

It was one of the most euphoric parts of his growth as a mage. The best part about mana-motive training was that it was largely autonomous, meaning he didn't need to be monitored by a teacher strictly; he simply needed to get in, take a training station for himself, and begin training.

It was not unlike a gym for bodybuilding; the comparison was far more apt than comparing it to what one might expect from training in a university or even in the military.

Cæ would have loved nothing more than to head in and go about his business unbothered, but the moment he entered the facility, he found himself drawing the attention of every single person in the vicinity.

He paused halfway through the glass door as he directed a brief sweeping gaze across the people who stared at him with unapologetic directness. He heaved a sigh, directing a glance across the various stations in the mana-motive training facility, spotting an empty one.

The facility itself was comprised of rows of stations that were each the size of large, spacious cubicles. Within each cubicle were enchanted, levitating transparent spheres covered in glowing runes and magic circles, brimming with magical energy.

They were known as fortifs.

These were enchanted items designed for the sole purpose of training mana-motive force.

CLACK

Cæ closed the door to an empty station, finding relief in the isolation. Mana-motive training was a deeply personal and internal process. The current model for mana-motive training was based on the Drive-Anchor Method, a model developed on the observation of the correlation between mana-motive force and drive, willpower, determination, and perseverance.

There was good reason to think that the mana-motive force, the force that moved mana the way that motors moved water, was strongly related to such attributes.

And such attributes could be trained, usually by pushing them beyond their limits bit by bit, just the way that progressive overload allowed muscles to be pushed past their limit, making them grow bigger and stronger.

A similar principle was applied to mana-motive force through the Drive Anchor Method, which used once drive, determination, and perseverance to strengthen one's mana-motive force.

PAT

Cæ put his hands on the sphere, causing it to glow with magical energy, scrolling through some rune-like buttons that appeared on the surface, serving as an interface, scrolling through the settings that he liked.

Soon enough, he got himself ready.

He closed his eyes as his expression darkened.

The air grew heavy while the atmosphere tingled with a hint of peril and danger.

His demeanor grew profoundly intense.

And then, he began. The fortif brimmed magical energy, casting a magic spell on him in accordance with its enchantments. The way that it worked was by forcing him to try to cancel its spell by using an interference field.

The spell that it cast, however, was a spell of pain. The pain that it forced one to feel increased the desperation and the drive to cancel out the spell, pushing one's mana-motive force to the very limit and even a little beyond.

"Rrh…" the slightest grimace escaped Cæ as he pushed himself to the very limit at the maximum pain settings in the fortif, pushing his endurance, perseverance, and drive to the limit.

However, the pain was only half of the process.

The other half was anchoring one's mana-motive force to a powerful emotion, drive, or motivation of some kind. Because of how immensely correlated the mana-motive force was to those psychological forces within one's mind.

For Cæ, that was his desire to destroy the world and build a better one. The visceral hatred and anger that he felt towards the world became the anchor for his mana-motive force.

It was a powerful source of growth since he pushed himself farther and farther than every single person in the world. Thankfully, however, the fortif was unable to discern what his anchor was, allowing him to indulge in his without any fear.

He had been doing mana-motive force training everyday for the past year ever since he began learning magic, it was one of the two core training paths that all mages needed to go through compulsorily, after all, while Magia training was the other.

His expression crumpled with pain as he struggled to deal with the visceral amounts of pain that the fortif was inflicting on him. He pushed himself to an unreal amount of suffering just to squeeze out the most meager gains that he got by doing so.

Most students were motivated to make the most of their mana-motive force training.

Most students, however, did not want to push themselves to the brink of sanity and on the verge of incurring trauma for maximizing their growth rate.

Cæ, however, was willing to do what it took to get himself to his goal, including maximizing the yields of his training by being what everybody would consider unreasonable.

And yet he did it in the hopes of gaining the power that he sought to achieve his goal.