Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

"Come on, imagine a specific shape in your mind, a sphere, half a sphere, a cube, a triangle, whatever is simpler for you to visualise, you begin by forming the edge of it, it needs to be the strongest portion of your construct, then from there, you begin to convert all of the mana within into your own, once that is done, try to maintain it" standing a distance away, Rosemary repeated these instructions over and over again, in a room underground, crystals of mana purifying the darkness element trying to take over the natural energy floating in the air.

To provide a most suitable environment for magical training, the darkness might prove to be a good aid when training outer manipulation, but for something so complex as what Rosemary was trying to teach Helena, it was best to have a neutral environment.

Before, the volcano witch would have never considered teaching the greatest heights of spellcasting and magic to one of her students, the greatly specifics subsections of magic as well, learning about them was important, but mastering all was but a pipe dream for the great majority.

And for the likes of zone, it was an incredibly difficult technique to pull off, requiring exceptional control, to even manifest, and even more to maintain, all of those that had wished to learn this exceptional ability from Rosemary had ultimately failed, manifest a zone for less than a second at most, which was utterly useless and only served to knock oneself out from the strain without any of the benefits.

And that was the most basic, a real zone needed to have a specific spell woven into its midst to be considered the true thing, but trying to do it in one go was only guarranting failure, first, one needed to be the skeleton of the technique working and manage to maintain it.

The likes of Rosemary, Unacunerra or King Nitok were not to be taken as the norm, capable of casting their zones on a whim, move about within and cast complex spells without any issue, change the central spell of their zone at any moment as well.

This was not how it would go for the average user, as Helena was doing right now, standing perfectly still, carefully circulating her mana as she took control of the surroundings, starting by the edges of her formation, she was stuck once again.

Not knowing what shape her zone should have, Helena was a little prodigy of magic, but not one with exceptional advantages, just a regular mage with a particularly good grasp of mana and its intricacies, a pyramid was strong and robust, but it was not exactly suitable for her wind element.

All elements, could accomplish anything in theory, but they had their strongpoints, their weaknesses still, just because you could heal with earth spells, did not mean that it was the best for it, and just because a pyramid was the strongest shape a barrier could assume, it did not mean that it was the most suitable for every zone and every barrier.

Helena only wielded the element of wind, she had only ever trained it, and taking Miss Syklon's advice, she had taken an unbreakable vow to never use any other element with her own mana, essentially closing herself in as an aeromancer for greater performances in her main area of expertise.

She had already tried and failed to even form a zone at all hundreds of times by this point, she simply could not fathom what form, what shape it should take, all that she had tried had failed completely and utterly.

'The wind, wind… Wind? What shape does wind naturally take?' rather than following the conventional way, perhaps she should bend to her element, instead of putting her element into a particular shape, allow the wind to assume the form it wished.

Of course, winds conjured up by her had no inherent direction, only directed by her own will, so instead, she injected mana into the breeze all around, under the watchful eye of Rosemary, who wasn't going to say anything or intervene unless anything dangerous happened, there were more than one way to manifest a zone after all, and although whatever Helena was doing was not one mentioned in the writings, innovation was not off the table.

Stirring the natural breeze into some sort of small storm, Helena only gave the push and paid attention to what the winds would do afterwards, given momentum, replicating it for the shape of her zone, far from rigid, it was constantly changing, expanding and reducing.

Taking in a deep breath, she followed with the next step, without even knowing if she had truly succeed in the first step, but Rosemary was not stopping her, so she simply assumed that all was well so far and went to convert the mana within the storm into her own, that step was easier than the first, having much experiencing in outer manipulation from greater distance, all that was getting in the way was her own nervousness.

That was easily subdued, and the second step was completed without a hick, she found maintaining this zone awfully easy, dreading that she had actually failed from the start, she opened her eyes, greeted by thumbs up from her teacher.

"Did- Did it work?" she asked. Explore more at My Virtual Library Empire

"You formed the shape and inside, you just need to maintain it for a while, and the regular boons should come naturally, can you sense everywhere inside this simple zone already or not?" Rosemary was all smiles, that zone, as useless and crude as it currently was, it was not crumbling like a castle of cards in an earthquake as she had seen so many times.

Up until today, she had only seen failures, and outstanding zones, no inbetween.

Of course, it could not hold a candle to hers or that of the still mysterious earthen mage who was probably an undead, but that did not matter, Helena was to use it against those who could not replicate with their own zones, in that case, even one that was rickety would be seen as an unstoppable force.

Of course, for that the young woman would have to learn her zone in full and infuse it with a spell, for her, she would have to train with each and every spell she would want to use individually, that was to say that only one or two could be learned with any form of efficiency.

With how uncertain things were, Rosemary would recommend to focus on a single one, a spell she knew perfectly.

"Alright, keep going! Maintain it for as long as you can, keep at this level without wavering!"

"If you keep at it like that, you'll be a bonafide zone user in no time!" she exaggerated a bit, but Helena was too focused to question it.