Born in apocalypse

Everyone needed a bit of advice on how to fight physically, whether they were a mage, warrior, assassin, or anything else. However, the same wasn’t true for magic training. That’s why even the mages were listening to Thala’s theoretical knowledge. But listening and implementing that knowledge were two different things.

They had listened to Thala’s words, but it didn’t necessarily mean they would be trained in that department. Dhruv wasn’t going to be overly concerned about that because he knew the more they would fight, the more battle experience they would gain. He just wants them to know where they have to focus, that’s all.

Dhruv looked at the line of people in front of him and realized their number had reached at least one hundred and fifty. He didn’t waste any more time and asked, "So, what do you know about casting spells?"

In response to his question, almost everyone raised their hand wanting to be the one to answer the question. Dhruv randomly selected one of them and signaled for him to answer.

"For us to cast a spell, we have to fill the corresponding blueprint with mana and the blueprint was provided by the cosmos." He spoke.

"Is everyone agreeing with him?" Dhruv said as he looked at everyone else.

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

"..."

Everyone voiced their support for the fellow’s answer. Satisfied with their response, Dhruv continued, "You are absolutely right, and we do need a blueprint to cast our spell, but do you know we can do many things with that blueprint?"

At the mention of being able to do many things with the blueprint, everyone had a surprised expression, as if they didn’t know about this at all.

"Yes, we can do many things with the blueprint," Dhruv continued, "For example, we can decrease its size, increase its size, add more mana than it requires to make the spell stronger, or even compress mana in the blueprint to make our spell go faster than usual."

"We can even duplicate a blueprint and cast two spells at the same time, or many other things that I might not even know about at the moment," Dhruv explained with a smile on his face.

Gasp!

When they heard this information, everyone gasped in unison. They hadn’t tried or even thought that this was possible. All they thought was that the blueprint was permanent, and they just had to fill it with mana to cast the spell. They didn’t have any reason to tamper with the blueprint itself. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"If you don’t trust me, then look at this," Dhruv said as he conjured a metal bullet in his hand.

Signaling everyone to focus on the bullet, Dhruv said, "Look at this, this is the standard spell of metal magic: Metal bullet, and this is its default size. Now, look at this carefully."

With that being said, Dhruv began to decrease the size of the spell by absorbing mana from the blueprint, without breaking or destabilizing the blueprint. The more mana he absorbed, the shorter the length of the bullet became.

"Look, it’s really decreasing."

"Wow, I didn’t expect you could do that. Should I try it as well?"

"Wait until the end of the lesson, and then we should try it ourselves."

"His excellence is truly talented, no... hardworking."

"Man! I couldn’t have thought about this on my own."

Everyone said different things when they witnessed the result. Looking at the feedback from the crowd, Dhruv was sure that everyone had seen it. Now it was time to increase the size.

"You can decrease the size by simply absorbing mana from the blueprint. Now, how will you increase its size?" Dhruv asked as he began increasing the size of the bullet.

"...By adding the mana, perhaps?" a woman answered with a hesitant voice.

"Absolutely correct. It is nothing but a ’play of mana,’ and you are the controller," Dhruv said with a chuckle.

After a moment, the bullet, which was originally the size of a sniper bullet, now turned into the size of a tank shell. Dhruv could have increased the size further, but he stopped there and asked the crowd, "What do you want to see now, duplicating the spell or increasing its speed by compressing the mana?"

"Duplicate it..."

"Speed, I want speed."

"Compress the mana..."

"Make another one..."

Everyone voiced their opinions, and they couldn’t come to a single conclusion. So Dhruv decided to show the compression effect of the spell first, as it was more flashy, and who didn’t love flashy things?

He launched the spell to let everyone experience the normal speed of the spell. In truth, it wasn’t normal speed either, as the more one’s control over mana increased, they would by default cast the spell with more speed than a newbie. But this time, Dhruv had tried to maintain the speed as similar to his early days as possible.

"So, that was the normal speed of the spell, without compressing the mana," Dhruv said.

"Now, I’m going to compress the mana and cast the same spell," Dhruv said, indicating everyone to focus on him.

Dhruv prepared the blueprint and began to fill it with as much mana as he could. He was going to break his previous record of adding twice the mana in the blueprint.

He continued adding the mana while also keeping it stable. After the mana reached twice its original amount, Dhruv began to feel that any more mana would break the blueprint, yet he persisted and continued adding it.

After just three more seconds of adding mana, he knew that even an ounce more would completely destroy the stability of the spell, so he stopped.

"Now, focus," he said as he turned around to face the sea.

Dhruv lifted his hand and cast the spell...

Swiiiisssh!

Boooooom!

The spell traveled and hit the sea with full force. A giant body of water splashed due to the impact of the spell, attracting everyone, meaning absolutely everyone’s attention.

"Shit, what was that?" one of the men from the crowd said.

"Did we just get attacked?" another man asked, who was just minding his own business and doing his work.

"So, that, my friend, is the power of a compressed, or in my words, enhanced spell," Dhruv explained with a grin.