Classes were fairly boring to Nagisa on the first day. Instead of talking about the basic spells and the ancient spell language, Leim decided to teach the students about the nature of the elements. Something Nagisa already had an excellent understanding of due to Kagero's teaching.

After classes ended, Nagisa quickly followed Leim for the basic spells that he needed and made his way back to his "Dorm". "Hey, new guy!", Nagisa suddenly heard someone call but didn't react.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!", Nagisa silently sighed and rolled his eyes when he felt a hand landing on his shoulder. He had already recognized the person by his voice, it was the same boy that made fun of him who didn't wear the school uniform.

"Oh, it's you.", Nagisa just replied blandly, "Something the matter?".

"Some people from the other classes wanted to see the talentless water dragon I was talking about, so come with me.", Nagisa was slightly amazed how he was able to say that so naturally.

"No time.", Nagisa just shook his head, took the hand from his shoulder and continued walking.

"I wasn't inviting you.", the boys face instantly turned dark, "Do you know who I am?".

"No.", Nagisa sighed again when the boy stepped in front of him and stopped him in his tracks.

"I'm the son of Duke Jeremiah Larson!", the boy announced proudly, "So you better know what you're supposed to do."

"…Duke? Jeremiah Larson?", Nagisa raised an eyebrow in confusion. He knew that there was a Duchess named Micaiah who was also the emperor's sister, but he had never heard of any Jeremiah.

"Hmpf! Should've expected this from such an uneducated race. My father has been promoted recently directly from an Earl to a Duke!", the boy bragged loudly, "And I am his one and only son, Raphael Larson, a stage 2 level 8 earth mage with the age of 13!"

Nagisa instantly stopped moving after hearing what Raphael had told him as something suddenly rushed through his mind… A few years ago, minor nobles like me were asked if we had any interest in it, they had p-promised me the Viscount title if I worked for their goal… As for Raphael's mana level, Nagisa had subconsciously ignored it

A promotion from an Earl straight to a Duke didn't make any sense! And there wasn't any kind of celebration or announcements for this promotion! Everything had just happened so silently that Nagisa couldn't help but suspect this.

"I see you understand now.", Raphael grinned satisfied since Nagisa's sudden reaction there looked like shock in his eyes, "Follow me.".

"No time.", Nagisa gave him the exact same answer again and proceeded to walk around him. He wasn't going to be in this class for long, so he really had no intention of getting in trouble with one of his classmates in that short amount of time.

But Nagisa had misjudged the situation. Trying to avoid any kind of interaction might work with normal people, but to a conceited noble like Raphael, avoiding or rejecting his offer was an act of huge disrespect!

"Guess I'll have to make you.", Nagisa heard how Raphael said behind him and starting to chant a spell. As soon as the chanting had finished the sound of something flying through the air approached him from behind.

- Are you kidding me… and on my first day?! -

Nagisa let out another sigh before swiftly rolling to the side to dodge the attack coming from behind him.

With a loud crash, a rock about the size of his head crashed into the ground about 50 meters in front of him.

- WOAH! He was aiming for my head with that! That could've been fatal! -

As a spoiled 13-year-old kid who had gotten everything he had ever wanted since his birth and rarely got into any fights, Raphael, of course, had no idea what was appropriate in a situation like this. To him, Nagisa was a stage 2 mage as well and a dragon nonetheless, so in his mind, if he wanted to subdue Nagisa, he had to give it his all. Nagisa dodging his attack only made him more convinced of himself. Little did he know that any other student in their class would've at least been badly hurt or most likely killed with that! Most of them don't have any combat experience after all.

"Are you crazy?!", Nagisa finally snapped! Even if he wanted to avoid getting into trouble, there was no way he could just act like nothing had happened after someone had tried to take his life!

"Heh, don't call yourself a mage if you can't defend yourself against that!", was all Raphael answered as he prepared his second spell.

"You have to be kidding me… stop that! You'll cause way too much damage!", Nagisa couldn't believe his ears when he heard a few words of the spell Raphael was chanting! Words that meant split, crack and spread were contained in the spell!

The spell was called Fissure, a basic spell that earth mages used throughout their entire career since it was a spell that evolved depending on the mana input. The spell could create cracks in the ground that would rapidly spread out. The depth, size, and number of the cracks would increase with the mana input.

Usually, the spell would be absolutely harmless in the hands of a low-level mage like Raphael, but the problem was that they were still near a bunch of buildings. While the cracks he could create weren't that huge and deep, it could still easily make an entire building collapse if it would hit the wrong spot. Since classes had just ended, there were still a bunch of students and teachers inside these buildings!

"Hehe, just run if you're scared!", Raphael completely ignored Nagisa and was acting all high and mighty thinking that Nagisa was fearing him.

"Idiot…", Nagisa grit his teeth and was about to use his aura. Even though Nagisa's mana level was slightly above Raphael's, he didn't know any spells to stop him with. As for his Unique Skill, he had never used it on a mage before, so he couldn't guarantee how effective it would be.

- Just a slight nudge to the stomach should be fine… -

Nagisa thought to himself as he was just about to covered his legs with his aura to boost his speed to the maximum. "That's enough!", but just before Nagisa was about to lunge at the Raphael, a person suddenly appeared right behind the spoiled noble.

With a single flick of his hand, the man had used his own energy to interrupt Raphael's connection to the surrounding earth elements and neutralized the changes that were about to be brought to them, thus canceling Raphael's spell as if it had never been there.

"What were you thinking?! Casting a large area destruction spell inside the academia?!", now that the danger was gone, Nagisa finally took a better look at the unexpected help that appeared. The man had short and spiky black hair, had a tall and solid figure and had a stern look on his rather handsome face.

"V-vice principal Karasuma.", Nagisa first thought that he was seeing things, but after rubbing his eyes and looking at this scene again, he was shocked. The spoiled and arrogant brat was shivering slightly while fear and respect were showing from his eyes.

- Vice principal? …He looks pretty young. –

"And you! What is a combatant like you doing in the magic department?" Karasuma questioned Nagisa calmly but somehow Nagisa was feeling some immense pressure coming from him.

- D-did he sense my aura?! No… it can't be! I didn't even have the time to cover my legs with it! It barely left the pool! -

"I'm a second-grade mage student, sir.", Nagisa gulped silently and answered with a strong voice while his mind was a complete mess.

"A mage?", Karasuma frowned slightly and eyed Nagisa suspiciously, "That stance you took did not look like a stance a mage would take to cast a spell."

"I ehh, I started off as a combatant… I know some basic martial art.", Nagisa simply decided to grit his teeth and lie his way through this.

"Hmm… you already managed to create aura and then switched over to a mage?", the suspicion in Karasuma's eyes was fading but now he had a disapproving look on his face instead.

"Y-yes…", Nagisa's smile looked a bit awkward as he answered, "I found out that I had more talent in being a mage." Nagisa forced his explanation out and released his mana from his pool as if to prove a point.

"I see… the academy will give you some kind of compensation for this incident, in which dorm do you live?", Karasuma finally nodded and Nagisa suddenly felt all the pressure surrounding him fade. Breathing also felt a lot easier than before.

- That's… scary. -

Nagisa let out a long and relieved breath before answering: "Ehh, I'm living in the principal's mansion right now, with his nephew."

"Hmm, I see.", Karasuma simply nodded and turned his eyes back to Raphael who was still shivering while Karasuma had a hand on his shoulder, "You're coming with me, if it were to me I would expel you on the spot, but I'll ask the principal before that."

"What?! Expel? I-I don't understand, what did I do wrong?", the color on Raphael's face instantly faded.

Instead of answering, Karasuma just shook his head disapprovingly and then simply disappeared from the spot with Raphael.

"… What the hell.", Nagisa let out a long and tired sigh, "There goes my plan of keeping a low profile…", Nagisa muttered while looking at all the surrounding students that were staring at him and whispering between themselves. "Just great…", Nagisa muttered a bit frustratedly, turned around and continued to head back to the mansion.

"What happened here?", a young girl with long wavy green hair tapped the shoulder of a student who had been watching the entire scene with Nagisa and Raphael.

"Wha- Woah!", the student she was talking to seemed extremely surprised by her presence, "Ehh?! What are you doing here senpai?", the boy asked a little bit confused. The girl that was talking to him had 3 stars on her badge that she was wearing and there for a third-grade student.

The girl was clearly younger than the boy she was talking to, but age didn't really matter in this academy, people were called senpai as long as they had a higher mana or aura level.

"I was heading back to the dorm but heard some commotion here, what happened?", the girl asked rather coldly.

"I'm not sure, but a second-grade student called Raphael attacked a new student out of nowhere, you know, the son of the newly promoted Duke?", the boy explained, "I think he was about to unleash a large-scale spell, but the vice principal showed up in time and stopped him. They're now heading to the principal."

"Newly promoted Duke?", the girl muttered while a small frown appeared on her face.

"Oh, I don't know the details, but somehow he got promoted from Earl straight to Duke, guess he must have done something amazing.", the student just shrugged, things like this didn't really matter to the average student.

"Hmm… what happened to the new student?", the green haired girl seemed to have thought about something but quickly followed with another question.

"Oh, that water dragon? Nothing happened to him, but it's weird, I know that he was a second-grade student as well, but it didn't look like he was going to use any spells to defend himself.", the boy questioned.

"Maybe he was too shocked?", the girl suggested.

"I don't think so, he was still dodging and talking fairly calmly, well until Raphael was about to unleash his last spell.", the boy shook his head.

"Hmm? I see, thanks.", was the last thing the boy heard before it seemed like the girl had just disappeared suddenly. When he turned around, she was already fairly far away from him while casually walking on the side of the street. What astonished the boy was how unnaturally fast she was moving, and that there were no audible footsteps coming from her while strange whirls of winds were gathering everywhere she had laid foot on.

"Jo, Nagisa! Only the first day and everyone's already talking about you huh? You really are interesting.", when Nagisa opened the door he was greeted by Karma who was sitting in the living room's couch and polishing a huge broadsword.

"Not by choice if you will please…", Nagisa sighed and dropped himself on the armchair next to the couch, "I thought you are a mage? What are you doing with a sword? And such a huge one?"

"Ahh… this is my staff.", Karma shrugged casually while lifting the blade into the sunlight for observation, "See the mana crystal on the hilt?"

"…Why in hell?", Nagisa was extremely confused, "What's the point of that?"

"Can't tell ya, not sure, but I guess there is a chance you'll get there as well.", Karma simply played it off while resuming to polish his blade, "Let's just say only a certain few students have to do that."

"…Hmm, the idea isn't bad though.", Nagisa quickly sunk into his own thoughts, since he was both a mage and a combatant, this sort of weapon would suit him fairly well.

"Well making these isn't easy, materials that can transfer mana and are sturdy enough to be used as weapons are quite rare.", Karma just shrugged again while putting his broadsword aside, "Wanna try making that smokescreen bullet?"

"Hmm sure, I have nothing else to do at the moment anyway.", Nagisa thought about it for a second and agreed.

"Nice! Comon!", Karma grinned excitedly.

… BOOM!

"JESUS!", Nagisa and Karma stormed out of Karma's room alongside a huge cloud of smoke while coughing like crazy.

"Urgh… I think I swallowed some.", Nagisa knelt down to the ground and grunted while gagging slightly.

"Damn… so still a no go huh.", Karma simply let himself fall on his back and sighed, "Ahhh and it looked so good as well.", Karma scratched his head a bit frustrated.

"Well… how long was it? 5 minutes?", Nagisa asked after getting back up and opening a few windows.

"Yeah, somewhere about that.", Karma nodded.

The experiment had worked pretty well at first, with Nagisa controlling the temperature of the room, Karma managed to merge and stabilize the Smokescreen and Fire Bullet spell together and actually produced a few pitch-black bullet shaped smoke projectiles.

Thinking that they've succeeded, Nagisa stopped manipulating the temperature inside the room while Karma was still playing around with the new product of his spell.

In all the excitement, they've both completely disregarded the changes inside the bullets as the temperature of the room started to rise again. The bullet quickly started to become unstable again as the fire elements started to return to their wild and explosive nature without the restraint from Nagisa.

So in the end, the bullets simply exploded while they were still discussing how they could improve the new spell.

"The issue is still that you insist on them being containable and pressed into the size of a jellybean. It would be so much easier if you would make it the size of the palm of your hand.", Nagisa suggested, "The energy is way too concentrated with that tiny amount of space."

"Naa that won't do.", Karma just shook his head in denial, "People can't swallow something that huge by accident."

"…Ah, right.", Nagisa deadpanned, he had completely forgotten Karma's initial reason for trying to create this spell, "Ehh… crap.", Nagisa's tone suddenly changed mid-sentence.

"Huh? What's up?", Karma shifted around to look towards Nagisa. He was shocked for a second, but it soon turned into an annoyed grunt, "You have to be shitting me…"

Nagisa on the other side had already sat down and had both his eyes closed while a visible swirl of elements started to surround him. Due to his unexpectedly huge use of mana on his last mission and again for Karma's experiment just now, his breakthrough came a lot earlier than he had thought.

"I'm pretty low on mana myself you know…", Karma rolled his eyes and complained knowing that Nagisa probably wasn't listening anyway, but still sat down behind him and placed both his hands on his shoulder.

What Karma didn't know was that this was the first time Nagisa had had any assist during a breakthrough. At his first time, Kaede had a fever by chance and therefore couldn't provide him the support. The second time was with Kagero, while Kagero had a really high rank, he was a pure combatant and had no mana at all.

"H-huh?", to Karma's surprise, Nagisa showed close to no reaction to his pool being forcefully expanded by his spinning mana which was supposed to be extremely painful. What he didn't know was that Nagisa was in awe himself. He was used to rough and painful breakthroughs, but right now his mana pool was still expanding at a decent speed, but it was so easy to actually control the process!

"Whoo! That felt great!", Nagisa opened his eyes and exclaimed happily when he had finally completed his breakthrough. Rather than exhausted, which was how he used to feel after his breakthroughs, he felt strangely refreshed and energetic.

"Wait? You're done?!", Karma who was still sitting behind him on the floor with his hands on his back looked at him dumbfounded. Which was an extremely rare expression to appear on his face.

"Yeah! Huh… oh, so you've been assisting me huh? That explains a lot, thanks Karma!", Nagisa quickly put the pieces together as expressed his gratitude.

"Dude! You took 15 minutes!", Karma looked at Nagisa like a monster.

"15 minutes?! So long?", Nagisa was equally shocked, his last two breakthroughs barely lasted for more than 5 minutes.

"LONG?! Breakthroughs usually take around an hour! You just finished within 15 minutes, and with such ease on top of that!", Karma removed his hands from Nagisa's back and shouted.

"An hour?! How is that even possible?", Nagisa eyes widened in shock.

"Normally, you have someone with a much higher mana level to assist you in your breakthrough, which I usually would have, but I've used up most of it in our experiments, so I could only offer limited support in slowing down your expansion… so I had to let your pool expand at a faster rate than usual, but you didn't seem to mind at all, or rather you seemed so relaxed?", Karma started to rattle on while sinking into his own thoughts. "It's as if you're used to this… but that doesn't make any sense…"

"Wait… you slow down the breakthrough that much?", Nagisa who was listening and taking mental notes the entire time finally asked after Karma had finished, "I've never had someone assist me before so I don't really know."

"… Come again?", Karma blanked out for a second and asked, "Like not at all?"

"Yeah, all the two breakthroughs from before.", Nagisa nodded, "So it felt really easy this time with your help."

"I see… that would make sense. Your pool got used to such aggressive actions… does that mean I could increase the stability of my pool by doing breakthroughs without any assistance?", Karma frowned a little, "No… that wouldn't work, the expansion would straight up burst my pool, it only works because you started doing that right from the beginning when the expansions were still rather small, you built up the sturdiness of your pool step by step… Jo Nagisa! From now on, try doing every breakthrough with the minimum amount of assistance possible."

"Huh? Why?", Nagisa asked. Now that he had seen how relaxing a breakthrough could be with just a tiny bit of assistance, he never wanted to experience that pain of a breakthrough without it anymore.

"Through your rough breakthroughs, your mana pool has become a lot sturdier than any other mages pools. Traditionally, every mage's first breakthrough has to be assisted by a mage that has at least reached the fourth stage to make the first breakthrough as easy as possible.", Karma started, "That's why this knowledge is unknown to even our academy right now because every single mage that studies in this academy had received the assistance of another mage."

"Okay…?"

"But apparently, having your first breakthrough without, or with a limited amount of help, strengthens the sturdiness of our mana pool immensely! That means you can unleash way more mana instantly than your average mage.", Karma continued, "Since their pool wouldn't be able to withstand that much strain and pressure."

"Hmm, wait does that mean!", Nagisa gave Karma's explanation a bit of thought and finally caught on.

"Yes! Theoretically, you have to potential to forcefully use spells that are usually beyond your current level!", Karma nodded, "It's too late for me now, since I can't start over and strengthen my pool with the smaller expansions of the earlier breakthroughs, if I start using this method now, I would only damage my pool permanently."

"So you're saying that I could technically use rank 4 spells now?", Nagisa asked excitedly.

"Technically yes, but I wouldn't try doing that on a usual basis. Usually using spells that are beyond your current level would either burst you pool and ruin your career as a mage or instantly kill you. I'm not sure how much sturdier your pool is than normal, but you should definitely be able to use a higher ranked spell without having your pool taking permanent damage. But it could still render you useless for that moment."

"I see…", Nagisa nodded, "but I could keep it as a last resort."

"Exactly!", Karma agreed, "That's why I'm saying that you shouldn't have too much assistance in your future breakthroughs even if you can."

"Hmm, I see, thanks a lot Karma!", Nagisa grinned while giving Karma a light punch against his shoulder, Nagisa wasn't showing it in his actions at all, but he was astonished by Karma's knowledge, he was pretty sure that even official teachers would need more time to explain Nagisa's special case let alone reveal the advantage of his past actions. Nagisa already knew that Karma was really intelligent, but it seemed like Nagisa still underestimated just how intelligent Karma really was.

"Don't mention it! I'm interested to see to what extent the effects of your action it will actually have.", Karma just shrugged it off, "But what you should do right now is to report in that you've broken through, the office closes in a few minutes… unless you still want to go to second-grade classes tomorrow."

"Crap!", was all that Nagisa said when he jumped on his feet and stormed outside.

"…A stage 3 combatant?", Karma simply sat there and waited until Nagisa was out of sight when he muttered silently while staring in the direction Nagisa had left in. "This guy is getting really interesting."

There we go! Finally managed to write a new chapter! I've been so busy lately that I didn't get the time to write anything at all! I've started an internship recently so I've got my studies and work on top of that to worry about now! Also, my family came back to Germany so I have to spend time with them as well.

I can't really say that I'm back since I still can't update like I used to do, but I will try to bring out a new chapter every now and then. Just know that I will never give up on my stories, that much I can promise you!

Tell me what you think about this chapter? It turned out longer than I had expected.

And as always, thank you so much for your support, sorry for the lack of updates, and I'll see you in the next chapter! ;)