By orders of Professor Gaiane, Flint was not allowed to go for classes after the incident for the rest of the week, even though he felt just fine. Though he was just alright with that since for the rest of the week, the only thing they were mainly doing was breaking through the other students’ barriers. For those who have succeeded, they were just learning to channel their energy by flipping through the pages of their timetables. How hard could it be, right? Thought Flint. He was one of the earliest to break through his barrier anyway. Learning to channel energy should be a piece of cake.
Over the weekend, with his parents’ guidance, Flint was able to make his timetable show him his classes in week two. This was, of course, after Flint made his timetable flip to the very last week of the semester multiple times. It wasn’t as easy as he thought, apparently.
When Flint learnt that his first class of the week was going to be Magical Offence, he was ecstatic. Not only had he not missed any other classes besides Basics Of Magic during the first week, he was going for a brand new class taught by a professor who did not have to put out a blazing classroom because of him.
Flint found the classroom easily enough, and was first to arrive in his class due to his almost-uncontainable excitement. Flint went to sit at the back corner, like he did before. The class began to fill up over time, but the moment the other students saw him, their chattering fell straight to silence.
Flint felt bad. He may have injured some of them, but he dared not ask, not even to Gracey who sat beside him again.
“Good morning, Flint!” Gracey greeted him, a bit too cheerfully judging by the dark looks some of the other students shot her. “How’re you today? I hope you’re feeling better.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” replied Flint while smiling. Gracey returned the smile.
“Good morning, everyone,” a tough female voice said as Flint saw Professor Ouran walk in the door. “Before we begin, I would very much appreciate it if everyone could stand up, push your chairs under your tables, and take a step back from your tables.”
Everyone looked confused and hesitant, to which Professor Ouran yelled “NOW!”
Everyone was up on their feet in less than two seconds.
“Now, observe.”
Professor Ouran raised her arms, and all the tables and chairs started rattling. With a loud bang, they were all moved to the sides of the class.
Professor Ouran let out a held breath and let her arms fall to her sides. “Now, can anyone tell me what I did there?”
A guy with orange hair answered, “You used magic to move the furniture, Professor.”
“Yes, you are correct,” she replied. “But how? What source of energy did I use?”
“The lights?” said the same boy hesitantly.
“If I did use the lights, you would have seen them dim, how much dimmer depends on how much energy I drew from the lights.”
This led to everyone showing expressions of confusion. Some students were just pointing to random things that may or may not have been a source of energy.
“The source,” continued Professor Ouran with a tone that silenced the class once more, “was myself. My very own body.”
Murmuring broke out amongst the students once more, which ceased again when Professor Ouran continued talking.
“The human body is amazing at storing energy. How else are all of you walking around and breathing now? Doing daily tasks use up energy which we gain from food. However,” she paused to create a slightly dramatic effect, “using magic takes up a lot more energy that merely walking around. For the untrained, using their body’s reservoirs of energy can easily lead to death if you dry up the energy in your body, and you just drop dead due to various organ failures. Although, just as you may gain stamina by endurance training, the more you train, the more energy you can store in your body.”
The whole class was completely captivated by her speech. Her voice alone drew attention to her.
“I must stress though, that the body has separate stores for energy you draw from food than the energy you draw from the surroundings. You may tap into the energy from your food sources to be used for magic, but it is almost impossible vice versa. That means, you will not be able to replace eating by just drawing energy from the sun, for example. Only a few, extremely trained magicians who has devoted their lives to the study of energy are able to do this. Over time, you will learn how to tell your body’s food storages from the external energy storages, and it is imperative that you learn this to avoid any deaths in my classroom,” she said this in such a serious tone, no one found it the slightest bit humorous. “But, until you learn that, you will be working with other energy sources. You learnt how to draw energy from fire before, so today we will be working with,” she smirked as she snapped her fingers and little clouds started forming along the ceiling, “water!”
Before they knew it, they were drenched as rain started pouring indoors. Everyone looked absolutely miserable, but made no attempt to cover themselves from the rain, since there was obviously no point.
“Okay, now I want everyone to gather behind me,” said Professor Ouran.
All the students shuffled their feet through the water that was gathering on the floor of the classroom, until at last everyone was at the front of the class behind Professor Ouran. Flint noticed that no water was escaping the classroom from the crack under the door, probably due to a small barrier Professor Ouran conjured below it.
“Now, fire was easy peasy,” continued Professor Ouran. “All the energy that you needed was right there in front of you. Water, on the other hand, is a bit more tricky. Have you ever thought of water as a source of energy? If it’s boiling water, then maybe. But what of cold water such as rain?”
A lanky boy raised his hand. When Professor Ouran acknowledged him, he said “The forces holding hydrogen and oxygen atoms together, as well as the forces holding water molecules to each other, both contain energy.”
“Good, Matthew!” Professor Ouran looked rather impressed. “The forces holding the hydrogen and oxygen atoms within one water molecule are called intramolecular forces, while the forces holding the water molecules together are called intermolecular forces. Under normal circumstances, we would have to provide energy to break these bonds. But with magic,” Professor Ouran raised her hand and the room filled with steam as some of the water evaporated, “we can absorb the energy straight from the bonds, causing them to break. Oh, you should also know that breaking intermolecular forces like I did earlier would form water vapour, as the individual water molecules are still intact. The steam produced will be cold, of course, because we did not input any energy to break those bonds. If you split the bonds between atoms, however, oxygen and hydrogen gas will be produced, and hence won’t be visible. In combat, both serves a different purpose, and you will have to figure out which suits the situation best.”
“Now, one by one, I want all of you to use the energy from the water to bring your tables and chairs back to where they once were,” Professor Ouran smirked to the class, “any volunteers?”
When no one came forward, Professor Ouran called a very nervous-looking Matthew up. Flint didn’t blame him. No one in this class knew how to do anything with magic besides work a timetable with a candle, and now they were supposed to be moving furniture.
As menacing as Professor Ouran looked, she tried to calm Matthew down as a mother would to her child, “You already know how to channel energy, now find the energy within the water and use it like how you did with the fire. Once you get the hang of it, it’ll be second nature to you.”
Matthew raised his right hand, obviously concentrating on drawing energy from the water. All the other students watched on intently. The rain had now been reduced to nothing more than just a drizzle, probably the doing of Professor Ouran to help Matthew concentrate.
A whole minute passed. The only thing audible was the patter of raindrops and the occasional sneeze.
Then, a puff of steam erupted from the pool of water on the class floor while a chair moved to the middle of the class, and stopped. Everyone was about to cheer when a table followed soon after and parked itself right behind the chair.
The class exploded with cheers and congratulatory wishes. Matthew breathed a sigh of relief.
Everyone was a lot more confident now after seeing how Matthew managed it without much difficulty. One by one, the students volunteered.
After fifteen students successfully accomplished their task, Flint was full to the brim with excitement. When the next student was done, completing about three quarters of the class’ arrangement, he volunteered.
Flint walked up to the front and closed his eyes. He focused on the water, and he could see. He could see every single molecule, every single atom. He could feel the energy flowing through them. There was so much energy right there in front of him, and he knew that.
He wondered which bonds he should break to draw energy from.
Why not a little bit of both?
The practice wouldn’t hurt.
Flint then drew energy from both types of bonds, the ones holding the atoms together and the ones holding the molecules together. He only took a bit of both. When he thought he had enough energy, he opened his eyes and focused the energy to his chair and table.
He expected them to move towards where they were before. He expected them to move slowly, as all the other students' did. But that was far from what happened.
Instead, everything in front of him - tables, chairs, the paintings on the walls, and even the water - levitated and gathered in a huge bubble of water, right above where Flint sat at the back of the class. Flint panicked and tried to stop the flow of energy, which resulted in a loud BANG.
Everything in the bubble flew out in random directions, and would’ve hit Flint and the other students behind him if it wasn’t for Professor Ouran’s quick barrier-conjuring.
Flint was relieved that he didn’t injure anybody. But the barrier was created too quickly, too sloppily, without hardly enough energy to withstand the blast. At the very last minute, a loud CRACK was heard as the barrier shattered, letting a single chair fly past.
Flint heard a scream behind him, followed by a thud, of which silence followed after. He felt his heart drop. He knew who the chair struck. He recognised the voice that let out the shriek.
Gracey.
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