Abuse Of Magic

"This will train you many times faster than lectures, or we wouldn"t be doing this. When the spell ends you will lose access to my knowledge so focus as hard as you can to learn everything as quickly as possible. Anyone who slips into a mage trance, I will turn to stone for the duration of the mage trance, so if you wake up as a rock, just wave at me and I will release it. Otherwise, if the seventy of you all slip into a mage trance for several days, the doctors would have to clean up after you and that would be gross.

"I can maintain these spells in my sleep, so if I"m not awake when you wake, just wave anyway and Stella will nudge me to wake up and release you from BODY OF STONE.

"Remember, you will have my knowledge only for the duration of the spell. You have to go through it as thoroughly and as quickly as you possibly can, to get the most benefit out of it.

"Now does anyone have any questions before we do this?"

Joseph looked out over the top of all the students. With over 50,000 people here, even at 3%, there are almost 1500 with magery and 512 had magery 2 or higher.

Chug"s nephew, who was born last week, was actually at magery 3, along with 2 other children, but they weren"t ready for training just yet.

Maintaining so many spells was going to be hard, and as funny as it seemed to him, he was both hopeful and worried over how many people might be triggered into a mage trance.

x.x.xxX

It was exhausting. Two days in, and it seems mage trances were normally cancelled by the physical body reaching a limit, because n.o.body had woken up yet. Joe could only hold all the spells they were maintaining for a few minutes at a time, so Joseph could jump in and check on everyone ridiculously quickly, to insure they didn"t lose themselves like he had almost done before, when Selena brought him from the world of FIRE.

Of course, every single person hit a mage trance within two hours of starting. Could this be because he was an awesome teacher, a brilliant researcher, or a glutton for punishment?

"Cookies and juice?" asked Stella, offering him a plate. They were still hot from the oven as he took one and bit into it. The edges were crisp and the middle was still gooey. They were perfect.

"I hope you don"t ever forget how to make cookies," he said around his mouthful.

She smiled as she set the plate down and glanced around.

"Everyone should hit advanced at this rate in another day, going by what I"ve seen so far."

"How many trees have you sacrificed for mana?" she asked, noting the plot he had just grown with CREATE PLANT. The trees were ridiculously dense to provide as much mana as possible in as small a s.p.a.ce as possible.

"I know, I"m abusing it," he sighed, "But I have to keep going. Don"t worry, I"ll use ESSENTIAL EARTH to replace the diminished soil."

"I wasn"t worried about that. I was wondering if the craftsmen have appreciated the ma.s.sive amount of wood you"ve generated."

"They"ve loved it."

"When do you plan to sleep?"

"I"m their king. I can"t back down. I"m so proud of all the effort they are putting into this. I"ve seen what we are up against, and have lost nine years to make sure I was strong enough to deal with them. I can"t allow my people to be weak. They need to be able to fight back if there is an attack. Especially if the attack comes when I"m not here. I know that the elven forest needs me, but they"ve been like that for thousands of years."

"You miss people," she said with a small smile.

He chuckled. "I do. I want to take a little time and spend it with everyone before I start back. My first priority, though, must always be my people."

x.x.xxX

Finally, the fourth day after they started, enough people had awoken that he was able to sleep.

The newest to magic were the ones who ended their trances first. They needed practice, to put what they had learned firmly into their minds. The few who woke first, had progressed from basic, to high intermediate, and one of them had already practiced enough in the past few days, to reach advanced.

All of this had been hard on Joseph, but it had definitely been fruitful for the mages selected.

Most of the spirit mages had been making huge amounts of progress just from being near the forest he kept remaking over and over. Tekaun reached the equivalent of advanced. After the first half woke up, he borrowed her skill in spirit magic, and added it to his mastery of thaumatology, then gave it to another ten spirit mages. They started their own trances. It was interesting to watch them either acquire more spirits, or to watch the spirits they already had ascend into higher forms. Tekaun"s former wolf changed into a six-foot tall great wolf and then acquired more magical abilities. The spirit mages that had the magical crocodiles, showed their spirits exhibit the biggest changes in size, amount of crystal on their hide, or color. One even grew longer legs and short wings. He was looking forward to its progression.

It took a full week before Derek woke up. Stephan woke up right before midnight of the fourth day. Sixty-eight reached advanced in the rune he had them training, according to what they needed per a.n.a.lYZE CREATURE. Due to how long he maintained the MEMORY spell, four mages gained the lowest level of photographic memory, that the system had granted him, but they apparently already had good memories before then.

Becky and the other nurses were so grateful they didn"t have to clean and care for all of them for the duration, but just had to help them up at the end, that they thanked him with teary eyes.

(YOU HAVE CONDUCTED INTENSIVE MAGIC TRAINING UNPARALLELED IN THIS REALM AMONG YOUR SUBJECTS.)

(YOU HAVE GAINED THE t.i.tLE SAGE.)

(YOUR TEACHING SKILL HAS PROGRESSED TO ADVANCED.)

Now all his mages needed, was time and practice.