Chapter 80: The Mirror Mage.

"Mana is a fundamental force but the form it takes is never decided by mana itself. Just like how a dye can color water in countless ways, a person’s soul can determine the shape and colour mana ultimately takes."

A beautiful woman with a voluptuous figure, long brown hair and crimson eyes spoke as she wrote across the blackboard at the front of the World-Class classroom.

She wore a pitch-black dress as her crimson eyes drifted toward me once every few minutes.

I did my best to ignore them.

"Mana can manifest in many different forms. Some awaken as Reinforcers, allowing them to strengthen their own bodies while others awaken as Emitters, enabling them to project mana beyond themselves and weave it into different spells."

"Beyond that, mana also takes on different properties depending on the owner’s soul and we call these properties Affinities."

Her soft voice echoed throughout the spacious classroom.

"They can be as common as the four basic elements — fire, water, wind, and earth — or as advanced as lightning, ice, storm, gravity and countless other rare elements."

"There are even elements said to belong only to the Gods, staying beyond the reach of mortals forever."

"We call those... Divinities."

"And sometimes, the Gods are benevolent enough to bestow a part of these divinities to their most faithful servants."

"Then there are the unfortunate few who awaken without any Affinity at all but while an Affinity can certainly make wielding mana easier, even those without one are capable of performing miracles if trained enough."

She casually raised a hand as a massive magic circle appeared into existence behind her and from its center, a colorless chain of mana shot forward through the air.

"As you can see, I have no Affinity either but that hasn’t stopped me from becoming one of the Elites across all the three continents."

She smiled as the chain around her vanished into light particles.

"So... does that give me enough authority to teach you, you arrogant Ruinbringer who has been ignoring me ever since I walked into the classroom?"

Her eyes settled on me once more as I finally let out a sigh.

This insufferably boastful woman...

...was someone I knew.

She was my aunt.

The younger sister of my cold arrogant father and the woman who had been exiled out of the family because of her origins and talents.

And, she hated every child who carried my father’s blood but even among them she hated me with passion and honestly, she had every reason to.

Born a bastard, raised as someone unwanted only to be cast aside the moment she awakened without any Affinity.

Even her talent was dismissed as mediocre.

Meanwhile, I, who was born under almost the same circumstances, had never shared that fate.

So, she hated me.

The moment she walked into the classroom, I did my best to avoid meeting her eyes because in my previous life, the moment our eyes met, she had given me a speech almost identical to this one only in a very different context while calling me disrespectful and arrogant for meeting her gaze.

But even after I deliberately avoided looking at her this time, she still ended up saying the same thing.

She was the professor assigned to the mandatory course, Mana Applications. Not because she needed the position but because she wanted to remind every future Ruinbringer exactly where they stood.

Alya Von Ruinbringer.

That was her name.

Now that the first few days had passed, two more mandatory subjects were finally added to the curriculum.

And one of them was Mana Applications.

If basic mana theory was to teach us theories around mana, this class was meant to show us ways to utilise it creatively.

I looked at her with a smile.

"I meant no disrespect, Ma’am. I was simply so overwhelmed by your radiant presence that I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at you."

I lowered my head slightly.

"I sincerely apologize if that made you feel uncomfortable."

She looked as if she already had an entire speech prepared for me but instead, my apology caught her completely off guard.

"You are quite smooth with your words." She narrowed her eyes. "But that won’t be enough to save you the next time I catch you slacking off or ignoring my class."

"Understood, Ma’am."

I gave a small nod as she resumed her lecture.

"So, as I was saying, most of you already know what mana is and my job is to teach you how to use it properly."

"For the next six months, I will be overseeing all of you while teaching you how to further develop both your elemental and non-elemental mana."

"Since this is our first class together, I won’t burden you with anything too difficult."

"Instead, I have a small exercise for everyone."

"Whether you’re a Reinforcer or an Emitter, efficient mana control is essential."

She took out a small metalic cube from her storage ring.

"This object before you is called Looping Maze Cubes. Each one of them contains an intricate maze carved entirely from mana and hidden within that maze is a small token."

She continued in the same calm tone.

"If any of you can successfully guide your mana through the maze and retrieve that token, I will personally reward you to the best of my abilities."

With those words, she took out a basket from her storage ring filled with many similar cubes.

The countless small cubes resting inside the basket rose into the air all at once before flying across the classroom, each landing neatly on a student’s desk.

A wave of excitement spread across the classroom.

Most of the students thought she had simply used telekinesis to make the cubes reach students, an Affinity in its own right but I had clearly seen the countless threads of mana attached to every cube.

Rather than using true telekinesis, she was merely replicating the principle behind it and that was precisely why she was known as the...

Mirror Mage.

As long as a spell didn’t rely on an elemental Affinity or some abstract concept, she could reproduce it with ease using her seemingly mediocre Talent.

That very Talent was the reason an Archmage on the verge of reaching the Transcendental Realm had accepted her as a disciple.

If I were an Emitter, I would have tried to copy her talent without hesitation but as a Reinforcer, it was completely useless to me.

Still, I activated my [[Eye of Usurper]] on her as her status window appeared before my eyes.