“Let’s see, let’s see… blah, blah, blah… to change the frequency of mana to perform basic healing, precise control is necessary in order to avoid worsening the injury,” Gaius rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Unless the frequency is aligned with the target of the healing, their body will reject your mana… I guess there is some kind of refusal, since the mana of the healer is alien to the patient.”

  The refusal wouldn’t be on the same level, but Gaius imagined that if the caster wasn’t cautious, his mana could cause harm in the same way as when people receive blood incompatible with theirs.

  Gaius tried to recall what he had heard about it. Since his sister was a medicine student, she refreshed his memory a few times. If the blood type received doesn’t match, the recipient’s immune system recognizes the foreign blood cells as invaders. Specifically, antibodies in the recipient’s plasma will attack the donor blood cells.

  The immune response leads to the destruction (hemolysis) of the donor red blood cells. This can cause a rapid release of hemoglobin into the bloodstream, which can damage the kidneys and other organs.

  Aside from visible damage to the skin, Gaius also read that failed treatment can cause chills in the patient, hard breathing, and symptoms that were similar to low blood pressure… it was indeed very similar to receiving incompatible blood from a donor.

  Gaius kept reading the whole afternoon, and he lost the notion of the time since he got kind of interested in the subject… it also took him that long to finally find some exercises that he could do to change the frequency of his mana. He flipped a few pages ahead and eventually found the lesson that Arlana gave that day.

  “Finally, some progress…” Gaius thought and then sighed. “I guess with this much, I will be fine.”

  Gaius looked around and found a lot more people in the library. As usual, he was being avoided, but it was fine since he had done some studying thanks to it. Gaius checked the parameters of the kids around and while theirs were pretty high, despite their low levels, they had magic and wisdom between 50 and 150.

  “It must be because of their studies…” Gaius rubbed his chin thoughtfully after he closed the book. “I can’t take this with me to the bedroom, but… wait a minute, where am I supposed to sleep?”

  Gaius forgot about it, but he imagined that the instructors would tell him that… one of them did it. Maybe he should just look for an empty bed or something.

  Since he had some time before dinner time, Gaius decided to check the bedrooms… he was starting to feel like a moron since he kept his things all the time before finding where he should put them in the first place.

  When he got to the underground sector, Gaius found the path splitting to the sides. He saw some guys heading left and the girls heading right, so he obviously went left while he saw some of the boys looking in the opposite direction.

  “I guess even mage boys are bound to think with their lower heads.” Gaius shrugged.

  Soon enough, Gaius found the bedrooms for the boys and they were big enough to house four of them. They also had names of those who lived inside… he found his room at the end of the corridor, weirdly enough, he only found his name there… even though he found other rooms with three students in them.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Well, more room for me.” Gaius shrugged and then got inside.

  The bedroom had four beds and a bathroom as well. Instead of just a shower, he found a bathtub and a shower there as well alongside the toilet. There was a weird symbol on them, and it was blue… when Gaius touched them, he felt his mana being drained and then some water filled the bathtub, coming from the symbol.

  “Oh… is that a rune or is the bathtub an enchanted tool?” Gaius smirked with interest.

  Enchantments are magical infusions or spells directly placed on an item, typically by a skilled enchanter. The magical effect is imbued into the tool itself, becoming part of its essence.

  Runes are symbols or glyphs carved or inscribed into the tool, which channel or store magical energy. Each rune carries its own specific meaning or power based on ancient magical traditions.

  Gaius could see some weird lines as if they had been painted by a special type of ink, and there were some small symbols on them as well, so he imagined that those were runes. Usually, an enchanted item would only activate when the user passed their mana on them, but runes could take mana automatically… or so Gaius thought. He wasn’t entirely sure.

  “Well, let’s take a nice bath and relax,” Gaius thought and then began to undress.

  In the end, Gaius had the chance to relax for half an hour, but then eventually the water began to evaporate… it looked like water made out of mana had a duration to its existence, or maybe the rune just worked like that since Gaius only felt a bit of his mana being drained. In any case, that only got him more interested…

  “I need to study runes myself… I can’t wait for a year,” Gaius thought as he began to put his clothes back.

  When Gaius left the bathroom, he found a piece of paper behind the door with the schedule of the lessons as well as what he could do during the day and night. At nine, they had to be in their rooms to sleep and they couldn’t leave until six in the morning. The cafeteria was open from six to eight in the morning, eleven to one in the afternoon, and seven to nine in the evening.

  “Great, I have plenty of time then…” Gaius rubbed his chin in satisfaction. “With this much freedom, I can study in the library for almost ten hours a day. What the hell am even thinking by planning this?”

  Gaius wondered if he ate something bad that made him think of studying that much… he had a complicated relationship with books, after all. Still, he hadn’t eaten anything since morning, so perhaps the atmosphere was affecting him instead.

  In any case, Gaius decided to go to eat earlier, but most of the kids were there since they were hungry as well, so he had to take a long line and deal with some stares… at least the food was great and that was how his first day at the magic school ended.

  One week passed in the blink of an eye, and Gaius began to get really pissed… he had read the entire book that taught the basics of healing magic and three spells with it. He had tried a bunch of exercises, but he didn’t make any progress that week.

  Arlana didn’t ask the students to show their progress, but she told them to practice the exercises in the book as much as possible. Considering how much wisdom Gaius had, he could practice more than all students, so he failed more than any of them as well, and that was annoying the heck out of him.

  “Maybe that guy was right… I have no talent and such a thing is necessary for magic.” Gaius furrowed his eyebrows when he closed the book in the library. “Still, giving up after the first obstacle is even more annoying.”

  Gaius closed his eyes and then his arms and then took a deep breath. If he does that now, he will keep doing it… he couldn’t allow that to happen. He had to force his way through that obstacle in one way or the other.

  After looking at his hands for a moment, Gaius recalled that he didn’t have any weapons with him, but he still could create one with mana. Creating one in the library wasn’t a good idea, though.

  “I had to force myself to learn this… through pain,” Gaius thought and then created a small mana arrow and then made it pierce his palm.

  Gaius hissed in pain as the burning pain spread from his hand. His resistance was low, so even though he held back, the wound that he created in his hand was quite deep… not that deep or wide, just enough to make him practice the most basic healing spell.

  “It would have been much easier if I could just say: blah, blah, blah, magic!” Gaius thought.