Chapter 31: Stress Induced Learning

They managed to study smoothly until mid-afternoon, when they were both too hungry for more research, and they headed down for an early dinner. "I should practice my stamina training and then meditate for the evening to improve my mana, but can I come visit again?" Dana asked with a gentle smile. "I would love to have you over anytime," Karl agreed. Studying was much more pleasant with her around, and she knew the strangest things. It was good to have a friend here at the Academy, and the more he learned about the way Mages advanced, the more ideas Karl got about how he could expand his own skills. Meditation sounded like it might be worth something as a technique. The crystal ball in the train car said that it could look into his beast space, so there should be some connection between that and the method to improve it. If everything was driven by the monster inside, it would be totally contrary to the other elites, whose whole goal was self-strengthening in some way. *What do you think, Hawk? Is meditation the way to improve the space you're in?* Karl asked. *Dunno. But if it can be bigger, with trees and mice, that would be good. Don't forget the mice.* Karl was not about to put mice in the space alive, as he was worried it would bond them to him, and he would end up with a tortured Earth Mouse as a companion, right until Hawk killed it. That would be unfortunate, to say the least. So, when he returned to the garden after lunch, he lay down in the hammock in the shade of the pair of coconut trees and closed his eyes to focus on the beast space. At first, nothing seemed to happen as he tried to envision a pine tree for Hawk to rest in. The space was just there and empty, but Karl could feel that it had the potential to be more; he just didn't know how. The next thing he tried was focusing energy into the space, like when he wanted to use *Rend*. Adding energy while meditating might improve the space somehow; the energy had to go somewhere, or so he assumed. It felt like that was doing something, but even after an hour, the changes weren't visible. *It feels better in here. Keep doing that,* Hawk encouraged. That led to Karl channeling energy and meditating on the image of the tree that he wanted to create for Hawk to live in. During hour two, there was a sprig of a tree growing from the ground near the nest, a single pine branch in the darkness. It really was working, just not instantly as he had hoped. At the end of the night, the tree was almost as tall as he was, but Karl felt refreshed and empowered, as if the improvement had granted him some extra energy. That would be easy enough to test; today was a class day again, and his first lesson was in skill control with the mages. The weekend seemed to have done them all a world of good, and they were all looking much fresher and more ready to practice today than they had been the last time he saw them on Friday. "Welcome back, everyone. We have an extra defender with us today. Along with Karl and Hawk, we will have Tori from the graduating class here to help motivate you all," the teacher announced with a smirk. Tori was a tall blonde girl around eighteen years old, the graduation age for the Academy. Ascended Rank, according to her bronze badge, so she would be stronger than any of the students in this class individually. She wore her hair in fancy ringlets, along with the short pleated uniform skirt that was somewhat rare among the students, as almost everyone preferred pants. She looked like the sort of girl that should be extremely popular in school, but from the looks on the faces of the students here, either she was one of the "Mean Girls" or she was hated for some other reason. Of course, it could be because they struggled in their classes that made them resentful. But she was graduating as an Ascended Mage, so she wasn't some super prodigy that made everyone feel inferior about their skills. "Now, are we all ready? Excellent. Begin when you are ready." Karl called Hawk, who flew up into the air, while Tori began to form small blue spheres, one after another, which floated around her in a circle. It was fascinating to watch; she just formed them in her hand, then let go, and they hovered around her, slowly orbiting. Then the attacks began, and Karl realized why everyone in this class disliked her. The orbs released small bolts of magic that intercepted the spells and knocked them off course, or in the case of the weaker mages, nullified them entirely. But the orbs didn't dissipate; they kept slowly sending out more attacks, and the number of them increased as she worked to form more spheres. Karl quickly noticed that they did very little to the fire and water mage attacks, but the solid attacks and the magic missiles had a terrible time trying to stay on course after she intercepted them. The water attacks were fine; Hawk had a personal vendetta against them for flowing around his *Rend*, and that left Karl to deal with the Fire mages. After a dozen spheres, Tori stopped making more and had to focus on just maintaining the spell. It would only be a matter of time before she was exhausted, or the spells needed to be refreshed, but currently, a solid three-quarters of the attacks made by the class were being intercepted. Karl was working on pacing himself as well. He didn't need to overpower the spells to block them; *Rend* tended to split apart attacks and destabilize them even at lower power outputs. That allowed him to use far less than full power and still accomplish the blocks. With super vision and a bit of practice, he was getting very good at defending against attacks, but Hawk was improving even more quickly. The small bird was making a mockery of the water mages' attempts to land a hit, and they were starting to get creative in how they used their magic. Finally, one of the mages managed to turn his water bullet into a collection of small raindrops, which hit the target like a shotgun after the *Rend* attack only took out a third of them. The mage had mastered a new spell entirely on his own out of pure frustration.