CHAPTER 221: STUDYING THROUGH THE NIGHT.

After taking attendance of the students, the class began. In this class, Alex learned that just like normal language used in everyday life, formation also had its own language and forms.

Like alphabets and numbers, formations had their own languages which one needed to learn to create formations.

The basics were runes and symbols. Just like when kids started to learn how to read and do simple maths, runes and symbols were the basics of the formation language.

There were more complex forms when learning about formation but the students were told that they would learn about those in the future. As for now, they should try to memorise the runes and symbols first.

The students needed to write these things down, there were over a hundred different runes and even more symbols. It would probably take months to remember all of it.

Even Alex thought that the number of runes and symbols was too many to remember within a short time, what if one tried forming formations without needing to remember them?

But the reason why that was a bad idea was soon explained by instructor Henry who told the students that each rune and symbol had a different reaction to the elements and energy in the air.

If one wanted to get a good result when attempting a formation, they had to be certain of what they were doing and not mix things up because lots of runes and symbols might react similarly in some cases, causing them to be easily mistaken for one another.

But if mixed up even in the same situation, it could result in a terrible disaster that could cause serious harm.

It was just how "K", "CK", and "CH" would produce similar sounds but were not the same thing. If one wanted to spell "Dark" and went on to use "Darck", even if it ended up sounding the same, it would be easy to tell that the spelling was wrong if one looked at it.

But now imagine if this were a formation where a reaction was expected instead of just a sound, it might lead to a disaster.

Trying to form a simple protective formation, only for the energy and elements that your runes were interacting with to clash and explode in your face.

For this reason, Henry sternly advised against anyone attempting to create a formation until they had memorised everything.

Alex silently nodded from his seat, Henry’s explanation opened his eyes to the hidden danger behind formations which he hadn’t even thought about.

After some more minutes had passed, the class ended, and students began to leave for their next class.

In Alex’s case, this was his last class for the day so he was free to do whatever he wanted for the rest of the day.

But he didn’t have any plans for the day. Alex returned to his room in the dorm and brought out his formation class note. He had found the formation class the most interesting and enjoyable, he even had the thought of chasing after instructor Henry to ask for more, but he held back.

He wanted to memorise these runes and symbols first before approaching the instructor for more.

So while other students went for more classes, Alex was locked in his room, trying his best to drill the images of the runes and symbols into his memory.

Before he knew it, evening had reached. A call from his mother was what broke him away from his memorising session; it was only when his concentration was broken that Alex realised that so much time had passed.

He had literally gone through the day without lunch and it was almost getting past dinner time.

But Alex didn’t really need to eat at this point so he wasn’t bothered.

He picked up the call and Freda’s gentle voice came from the other end of the call.

They ended up making an hour-long call as Freda asked about Alex’s well-being and if he was having any difficulties. She asked about his first day of learning, if he had made any friends, or if he was eating well.

So many questions that could be summed up into a single sentence, but Freda was just meticulous with her checkup, which only made Alex smile with warmth.

He got the chance to speak with Zoran and the others after Freda was finally satisfied, Alex talked with Zoran for a bit before talking with Emily.

The girl was very excited about her awakening period that was coming when she finally turned 16. Although her birthday was still some months away, Emily could already barely go a day without thinking about it.

She reminded Alex to come back to Balon City when the time came and to always remember the Elemental concentrated awakening stone he had promised because she wanted to awaken the same element as Alex.

After talking with Emily for a bit, Alex got the chance to speak with Alicia as well.

He asked some questions as if wanting to know how Alicia was coping with school and other things but his real goal was to know how well the windrend was doing her secret bodyguard job, and if his family had encountered any troubles lately that they didn’t want him to know about.

Alex learned from Alicia that everything was actually going very smoothly over there in Balon City and no one looked for his family’s trouble.

He told Alex how Emily’s school was still looking after her and the Union was paying special attention to the environment where their family’s shop was located.

Seems like Clint was doing this to protect Alex’s family business. Alex nodded, feeling satisfied.

After chatting with everyone else, the phone went back to Freda’s hand.

They talked for some more minutes before Freda finally ended the call.

Alex then went to take a bath before coming back to his bed to continue memorising the runes.

He ended up doing this till morning, he had spent the entire hours of the night studying these runes and symbols.

Alex was astonished to find out that he could barely recall half of the runes correctly after studying for the whole night.

"This is...interesting!" Alex exclaimed as he closed the book and went to get ready for today’s classes.

Some time later, Alex left the dorm section and headed for the lecture area.

General mana knowledge class was first just like yesterday. Ellie called attendance first before she started teaching.

Unlike yesterday, students didn’t stand up to call their names. Ellie would read out the names in the file instead and the students who heard their names would answer to signify that they were present.

Today’s class was still on the origin of Mana, Ellie talked about the source, and some surprising places where mana could be found and collected from.

Some of these sources were very popular such as a Mage’s soul sea, mana cores, and in the air. But in situations where an area was devoid of mana, one could access it through the corpse of a magic beast.

Yes, the flesh of magic beasts contained some amount of mana that could be extracted in critical situations when one was short of mana and needed an urgent supply of it.

The stronger the magic beast, the larger the amount of mana that could be extracted from their corpse.

Other sources were trees and some special kinds of plants that grew around bodies of water.

As long as one managed to find a body of water in a place where mana was scarce, the plants that managed to grow in such places would contain some amount of mana that could be of help.

While this was new knowledge to Alex, it was useless to him. One reason was that he was almost never short of mana, and another reason was that he had the mana regeneration skill from the system.

After the class ended, the next class was General Knowledge on Magic Beasts.

It was another mixed class, so the students didn’t need to leave; the instructor came into the lecture hall instead.

Their instructor for General knowledge on Magic beasts was a petite instructor who looked like a little girl of around 13 years old. She wore a long robe that reached the ground and a pair of large, round, transparent glasses that covered her cute, large blue eyes; her long, blue hair was styled into two long ponytails.

She hugged two large books with one arm as she walked into the hall under the gaze of the students.

Many of them were surprised to see this instructor and felt that she looked cute. Alex frowned, seeing another mage with a childish appearance.

He wasn’t deceived by the instructor’s cute appearance like the others, he could see that this instructor was an Archmage!

Reaching the front desk that was meant for instructors, the petite instructor dropped her books before facing the class.

"Hello everyone, welcome to the General Knowledge on Magic Beasts class. I’ll be your instructor for this class for the rest of your first year."

"You can call me instructor Zoe,"