Reborn With a Magic System

Fire leapt from Damion's sword in an arc from his slash and to Damion's great satisfaction the fiery slash struck the test dummy in the chest. Damion let out a triumphant shout when he saw his strike finally land on the dummy and he turned to Ms. Teft to receive her praise.

Ms. Teft, however, appeared less than impressed. In her hands was a tablet and she was looking at it with a furrowed brow.

"So, how did I score?" Damion asked Ms. Teft. He knew the tablet was connected to the test dummy to register his hits.

"Charge your blade and strike the test dummy directly please," Ms. Teft instructed.

Not sure why Ms. Teft wanted him to strike the dummy when he was supposed to be learning to master the sword's ranged attack, but he walked up to the dummy to do as she asked. After channeling his mana into the blade, Damion struck the dummy with as much force as he could.

"How very odd," Ms. Teft said as Damion's attack registered on the tablet.

"What is it?" Damion asked.

"Your direct slash registers the power of your attack at 165, but your ranged strike only registered at 42," Ms. Teft said absentmindedly.

"Isn't it because with the direct strike I am hitting with a solid object and it does more damage that way? Or would that be because I'm not very good with the ranged strike as opposed to the direct strike?"

"The dummy is just registering magic power, not physical power," Ms. Teft replied. "And while your second theory is possible, usually an attributed attack is much greater than a non-attributed attack."

"You mean the fire slash should register a higher magic power because it is a fire attack and not just raw magic?"

"Precisely. Even if you are not very good at the attack, which you aren't yet, the numbers should be much closer together. The magic power of the fire slash is much greater than just the magic the blade can hold, that is why such enchantments are added to weapons. Even if you can barely use it, you should be doing at least half the output of the direct attack with the fire slash."

"Does this mean my sword is defective?" Damion asked as he looked over the spatha his parents had just gifted him.

"No. I examined the blade thoroughly on behalf of your parents before I even recommended it for them to purchase. This is something else."

"What should I do then?" Damion asked, though secretly he was wondering if the Magic System having locked portions of his magic had something to do with it.

"For now, practice. I've already said you have to be able to hit the dummy with a power of at least 100 with the fire slash from 10 meters before I will let you take on a mission. Just because there is something odd going on, doesn't change the fact that you need that much power to safely do the lowest levels of missions from the Association."

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Damion gave Ms. Teft a nod before returning to his attempts. To Damion's credit, he no longer missed the dummy with his fire slashes. After each slash, Ms. Teft reported the magic power registered behind the attack. As he continued his practice it became easier for Damion execute his attack, but the slashes were all registering around the same initial number, sometimes slightly higher sometimes slightly lower.

Late in the afternoon though, the number began to slowly creep up. By the time Ms. Teft called a halt to Damion's attempts, which he was grateful for, Damion could consistently put up a number over 70.

Ms. Teft had considered ending Damion's practice sooner, but when she saw he was not exhausting his mana supply, she decided to let him practice until he did. As the practice went on, Ms. Teft, realized Damion had quite a bit more mana than the average mage. When Damion started showing signs of fatigue, she waited for Damion to make a few more attempts and then called a stop to the practice.

Learning one's limits and learning to overcome them were essential lessons. What Ms. Teft did not realize though, was that Damion was periodically activating Mana Absorption in order to keep going. Sure, he had more mana than most, but he was also pouring more mana into the glyph on the sword than normal to boost the damage of the attack.

"Meet me at the north gate of the City tomorrow morning," Ms. Teft told Damion. "Make sure you get a good night's sleep. Your training tomorrow will be just as demanding."

Damion did not know how true Ms. Teft's words would turn out to be. The next day, not only did he have to continue to try and reach the goal of striking the test dummy from range with a sufficiently strong strike, but Ms. Teft forced him to do it on the move. Ms. Teft's reasoning was simple, in most real-world scenarios, Damion or whatever he was fighting, was not going to be standing perfectly still.

To this end Ms. Teft made Damion perform his attacks while doing different movements. At first Damion just had to be running towards the test Dummy and unleash his attack outside of 10 meters. Once Damion got the hang of that, he had to start moving in and attacking in different ways. Attacking while circling his target, running a zig-zag pattern before attacking, running away from the test dummy, and then turning and attacking.

At first Damion struggled with each new scenario Ms. Teft gave him. But after a few tries at each, he was able to start landing his attacks. Once Damion felt confident in his attack accuracy, he began working on his attack power. The power of his attacks had dropped down into the 50s when he was working on attacking while moving, but once he gained confidence, his strikes started to rise in power as well.

By the afternoon, Damion was drenched in sweat and his body ached from all the physical exertion. When Ms. Teft called time, Damion was almost too tired to be happy the day's training was over or that he had managed to score a 92 magic power hit on the dummy. He only managed to break into the 90s once, but it showed he was nearing Ms. Teft's goal.

The third day of training was even more exhausting for Damion. Now, Damion had the goal of not only hitting the target while moving but avoiding attacks from Ms. Teft. As Damion moved to make his strikes, Ms. Teft would send balls of water at him.

The balls of water Ms. Teft attacked Damion with did not have much magic power in them, but she shot them out quite quickly. Damion found them hard to dodge and the speed at which they struck him made them sting quite a bit.

What made Ms. Teft's attacks truly difficult for Damion, was that whenever he was hit his concentration broke and all the mana he had charged into his attack dissipated. It took Damion until the afternoon to be able to dodge Ms. Teft's attacks and land a blow on the test dummy.

After Damion successfully dodged and landed an attack, it took him another hour before he landed the next. With two successes under his belt, Damion's confidence started to rise and it was not long before he added a third and a fourth. On Damion's fifth successful dodge and strike Ms. Teft announced something that caught Damion off guard.