Crusader King

As Cades awoke the next day the bad feeling was gone, as if it had never even been there.

Cades didn't pay it any heed as he went down to the kitchen, absentmindedly noting that his parents seemed to still be asleep and readying himself to fly to Unulria and finally have his first real lesson in artificing.

He didn't even eat breakfast because he was just so excited.

Not even looking around, Cades quickly started his half hour commute to get to Unulria.

While he was flying Cades was thinking about everything he would learn from the teacher and about everything that he would be able to create.

He also thought about the magic shop that he was planning on running once he graduated and earned some money.

After thinking and dreaming of his possible future life for a while he landed on the already known uneven dirt campus and walked into the old, wooden building.

The teacher had already arrived, so he greeted him and just took his seat, it was at the front, right in front of the teachers desk.

Nelia came a few minutes later, Cades was happy when he saw her.

However, Nelia seemed kind of besides herself, her face was normally very telling about what she was thinking and right now he could tell that something bad had happened.

Instead of sitting down in the desk besides him she went up to the teacher and quietly told him something, this was followed by the teacher nodding and her walking away once more.

Cades was confused as he saw her leave, as everything had been fine yesterday.

Why would she suddenly need to go without any warning ?

Cades wanted to ask Mangel if he knew what was going on later but that thought process of his was interrupted as the rest of the students arrived, seemingly all having passed, just like him, and sat down.

Once they were all seated the teacher began his lesson with the same monotone voice he had used yesterday.

" Welcome back, I am very pleased to see that all of you passed the entrance tests.

We're going to start this class with a very simple artifact that all of you probably already know, the mana container, also known as a ujo.

The "ujo" is made by taking a container or an conductor, the size of which doesn't really matter, in opposition to the material which matters a lot. 

One of the best materials for this purpose is silver, which we are going to use today to make our own magic containers.

All of you probably already know the basic runes, such as the exchanging rune, the mana absorption rune, the holding rune and some others that are mainly used for sequencing, especially at your level."

While Mr. Hartz was explaining all of that Cades started thinking about the utilization of the runes the teacher was talking about.

The exchanging rune was also known as the conversion rune, it was a rune that caused one kind of energy to be converted into another.

For example kinetic energy into heat, or conversely heat into kinetic force.

On the other hand the mana absorption rune was very similar to the holding rune, it had the function of absorbing mana and utilizing that energy to power another rune, for example heat, cold, kinetic, levitation or something akin to that.

In some rare cases it could also be used to absorb mana and strengthen ones own body, but that was incredibly painful and rarely used.

Lastly, the holding rune had the power to hold mana that is given to it by, for example, the mana absorption rune or just the power of a magician.

After the teacher finished talking about the ujo he went to a wooden box that he had brought with him.

The box contained parts that could be used to build a ujo, such as a magic scalpel and a few basic silver rings that glistened in the light that shone through the tinted glass windows.

Mr. Hartz went around, gave everyone a magic scalpel, one of the silver rings and told them to start working on the ujos.

The task wasn't really difficult, it took all of them about ten minutes, Cades asked Mr. Hartz for a few simple tips and actually managed to build a exchanging rune into the container that allowed it to glow in the dark if he put some extra mana into it.

After that Mr. Hartz made them do it multiple times with different materials, like wood, quartz, bone and some others, as well as by utilizing some alternate runic sequences so that they could get used to doing the same with other artifacts as well.

Once they were done Mr. Hartz told them to get a few notebooks and paper for blueprints until next time.

Unulria had a fairly short first day so that the students could take a break after the exhausting entrance exams, so they only had magic theory class after that.

Macrabe, the magic teacher and a burly old man with surprisingly big muscles and a face without any kind of facial hair, told them about the basics of condensating mana and using it in a physical form.

Cades didn't really pay much attention because they already had to utilize it when they we're makimf making the ujos and even just passing the entrance test.

However, the teacher had to tell them about it because of a safety regulation related to magic.

After the teacher was done they gave everyone a list with the things they needed to get for all the other classes as well as the time plan for when the students were going to have what class.

After the class ended Cades went up to Mangel that was seated opposite to him in the classroom and asked if he knew what had happened with Nelia.

Mangel, visibly saddened, said that there was an incident at home and that she had to go there to meet up with her parents.

After talking to Mangel for a bit, trying to calm him down, get more information and asking him to send her his regards Cades walked away, ready to finally go home after a exciting but also exhausting day.

He felt horrible for Nelia, but he wasn't able to do anything right now.

The flight home was refreshing as always, he was looking forward to the small celebration his parents had readied for his admission.

As he finally saw the house everything went dark.