"Anyways class, let's get to it!"
"As you all know, mana is the energy we refine to create mana cores and temper our bodies in order to go above human limits. Each human usually has an affinity, although the Apex Network does not tell us the quality of your affinity, through the years we have understood that sometimes people with the same rank and affinity have a certain knack for learning and adapting to skills of their affinities."
"What do I mean by this? Well it has been recorded that people with the same affinity that learned a skill on their own with the same notes provided by someone else, actually understood faster or slower, and in the end, even the spell quality was better or lower. Now you may ask, how is this possible, it's the same skill is it not?"
"Well that's where affinities come in, there are a few fire mages in this class, and even in the same rank I can guarantee that some flames will burn hotter than others, this also helps in mana consumption, having a better affinity allows the user to cast faster and consume less mana."
Whispers started going around the room, some have heard these terms before, others have not.
"Now you may argue that some people have it easier than others and that you will never keep up, well to a certain degree it's true, but the good news is that you can train your mana circuits to reach a certain level that can match or surpass someone with a better affinity than your self."
Amara suddenly condensed a fireball in her hand that usually takes a second to cast, but this time around it was cast almost instantly.
"See my casting speed for the fireball spell is around 50% better than what a normal caster would, and this is because I have practiced the fireball skill so many times that with time my mana circuits adapted to how it felt almost as if it was done by muscle memory. This is something you achieve only with hard work and training."
"Now if we go over improvement on quality, who says you can't superimpose a skill?"
Suddenly, the fireball got a bit bigger and the flames felt hotter.
Then it happened again.
And again.
And again.
Everyone in the class was stupefied at the display.
This simple fireball which was an F rank skill, had the fire power of possibly an E rank or even D rank skill after being superimposed five times.
"Now of course this consumes a lot of mana, but that why you train your mana circuits to create that muscle memory that allows for faster casting and cheaper consumption, in the end it circles back to hard work. Now... Superimposing skills, although sounds simple, I assure you it is not. If it was, anyone could just cast a skill multiple times and do it, but this is something that takes practice, and involves your trained mana circuits as well, if your circuits aren't used to doing this, then instead of superimposing the skill, the skill might just explode in your face before you know it, and that's just for the first round of re cast, if you want to do it five times like I did, it takes years and years of practice."
Suddenly, Calux raised his hand.
Amara raised an eyebrow but signaled for him to talk.
"Professor I understand the theory and even the goal, but for that matter, if you understand your affinity enough, instead of casting that skill five times and having to go through that muscle memory training, why not understand your affinity better and instead of limiting your self to cast a fireball skill that uses five percent of your mana, create a ball of fire to which you can add even fifty percent of your mana, won't this essentially do the same or better?"
Amara looked at Calux as if she was looking at an alien.
"That is stuff that we teach at second and third years, students at this level don't understand their affinities enough to create their own skills, hell I my self have only created three skills on my own, and what you described although is not a skill, requires understanding of your affinity enough to not depend on the Apex Network to cast, it's not as simple as just creating a ball of fire, it requires concentration and time, to which you can get through the training I mentioned and superimposing the skill your learnt."
Calux went silent for a second.
He wasn't scared of letting people know he had created a skill already, but now he was wondering.
Is it really that difficult? Void thought me to fire understand my affinities and I used my skills to understand them better, is this not what people do first?
"Professor, but if we think that way aren't we relying completely on the Apex Network to cast skills instead of using the skills provided by our bloodlines to understand our affinities and then create our own skills? At least that is what I learned and was able to create a skill of my own.."
If I say I created two I'll be shooting my self in the foot, so let's keep it at one. Yes, one.
Suddenly a laugh rang out.
It was Max.
"Please Calux, don't make me laugh, you probably used your house treasury to get to C rank in two and half months, you telling me on top of that you had the time to learn a skill just by understanding your affinity? Bleh!"
The mocking tone was enough for Calux to narrow his eyes, half of the class chuckled, the other half remained silent.
"I don't need to prove anything to someone who hasn't broken through C- rank in three years, but to indulge you."
"Void Arrow."
Suddenly an arrow was shot to one of the legs of his chair, it severed the connection between the two pieces and with the weight on the chair, caused Max to fall down.
Then before Max could explode in anger, Calux looked forward to see Amara looking at him with sparkling eyes as if expecting him to continue.
"This skill is a self created skill called Void Arrow, when I created it I had the Arrow Rain skill in mind, but of course I don't have the wind affinity, nor use a bow. Therefore understanding my affinity through my skills, I used both space and void to create this skill."
"First of all to create the arrow I shaped it using my void essence, it took me a week to be able to achieve and mold the essence to what I wanted, but there was still the issue of moving the arrow, since the essence of void is to annihilate, it's not something movable or tangible like what fire and water is to which after creating a fire ball or water ball you can throw it and achieve the damage of whatever you cast. Therefore I decided to create space tunnels that essentially direct the arrow to the destination, and although it looks as if I just fired and arrow and sent it away, as you heard, I had to use both my affinities to get the skill to work."
Everyone in the class was dead silent, even Max who was originally fuming was shocked into silence.
Karina on his side looked at him with admiration.
Seraphiel on the other hand was used to this therefore it was new to her, listening to him talk about his affinity as if he was talking about cooking a steak.
"Marvelous! Calux I have to say, you are certainly a genius!"
Amara literally shouted.
"However class I don't want everyone to be discouraged, this here is a perfect example of affinity. This just proves that Calux has an extremely high affinity to both void and space, considering he just gave us a master class on creating a skill using not one, but two affinities to reach a common goal. This takes both talent and affinity."
She then looked at Calux.
"If I tell the academy's A rank spatial mage what you just told me, he'll probably flip, oh my god I can't believe I have such a wonderful student on my class!"
"Anyways... Let's continue..."
Like that the class allotted time passed, and absolutely everyone stayed quiet the rest of the way, no one dared to look at Calux in a funny way, and any and every conversation was always towards the professor, Max had been shut quiet all the way as well.
To Calux, there was no better satisfaction than this.