The Demoner Series: The Trails

Chapter Eighteen - Manart

In a flash, Zack's index finger lights up in green and draws a jagged circle in the air, pushing threads of mana through and a large rounded green screen forms out in a brilliant flash. The blink of light set the students to a chorus of amazed "wow"s.

  "This is the Mana Shield spell," Zack says as he wields the defensive item, "As you can see, it is formed by drawing a spiked or jagged circle and pushing mana through. A spell is difficult to make as you need to control the movement of mana to and through the imprint."

So that's how Chloe use the spell before.

"We will start with learning the Purite, or just raw mana," Zack continues,"Just channel the mana to your finger then out from your finger." As he says those words, the human sized protective accessory vanish into thin air.

   Zack lights up his finger once more, releasing threads of mana to hang in the air. An attractive force seems to appear in the centre of the swirl of light as the web of mana smash and shape into a round sphere. The ball of greenish gleam bobs above Zack's finger.

  A snort sound comes from the other side of the class. My vision swipes to the direction of the source. Yitrus is leaning  towards Jessica, putting his hand to cover a side of his mouth. "That's so simple, even we know how to do that."

  Jessica giggles and reacts by shielding her mouth to speak to Yitrus. This time, she has lowered her voice so that she speaks in a softer tone than Yitrus. Her speech is almost inaudible from my distance but the words are clear enough to understand. "Father had taught us that since we were ten. It's child's play."

  Could they be related? Jessica has mentioned "Father" in the speech. Could it be that they have the same father, which is the Provost of the academy? But who is the Provost?

Zack decides to ignore them, unable to withstand the temptation of rolling his eyes. His finger drops to his sides, leaving the ball to elevate in the air. It begin an excited flights of swift manoeuvres, beginning with course of spiralling before zipping around like a bird from a cage set free into the world. All eyes follows the light's flight. The background seems to blur and focus, keeping the orb at the centre of sights as it continues its speedy moves.

  "If you are skilled enough, you can even control the size and shapes without giving or taking mana from it," Zack says. The ball slows down to a rest at Zack's shoulder level. It starts to changing its shapes, starting off with the shape of a small eight-legged hairy creature with fangs of a vampire, crawling around the class which showed no reaction. One boy tries to disturb it and attempts to poke it. As if fed with a powerful pill of vitamin, the green miniature creature seems to grow into the size of a human's hand.

  Its eight eyes stares back at the class, threatening us as it jabs its fangs outwards and making loud screeches. We involuntarily shuffle and shift away as we recognise the arachnid. It's a spider.

  I look warily at Zack. He's enjoying this. A smile forms on his face as he witness the reaction of the class. The screeching sound becomes more distinct and I switch my gaze to the spider. The spider is beside me, its eyes looking dangerous and evil. It makes its last call before jumping towards my direction, its legs spreading out in the attack.

  Screaming in fright, My hands fly to my face. Any moment now. I hold my position, my muscles tightening around my body.

  Nothing happened.

  I lift up an eyelid slowly, holding my breath and imagining that the menacing creature will eat me alive. Instead, a large majestic bird stands beside me.