After thirty minutes of waiting, the doors of the training room swung open and a figure stepped inside.
The instructor is here. I thought, pulling myself out of the light nap I had drifted into while sitting in the corner.
I stood up and walked towardsss the door to greet them, but stopped mid-step.
I blinked. Looked again. Rubbed my eyes with my fingers just to be certain.
The view did not change.
What the hell?
I was not looking up at my instructor. I was looking down.
Standing in front of me was a kid. Around one and a half meters tall, green hair, matching green eyes, wearing what looked like a plain grey training suit. He looked up at me in complete silence with an expression that gave away absolutely nothing.
Why was there a child in here?
Now, to be clear, I was not jumping to any conclusions. I was simply observing that the person in front of me was, by every visible measure, a child. And there was no way this child was my instructor. I refused to entertain it. I dismissed the thought the moment it crossed my mind.
Though I did briefly consider the possibility of a dwarf. Dwarfs existed in this world. But every dwarf I had seen before was older, broader, built like someone had compressed a full-sized person down by about a third, like when a can of soda is squashed. This kid was skinny and looked completely human. So not a dwarf.
I was still working through the list of possibilities when a voice interrupted my thoughts.
Deep. Serious. The kind of voice that belonged in the chest of someone much larger.
"Brat. I'd strongly suggest removing whatever non-pleasant thoughts are currently in your head before I turn you into a pulp."
I flinched hard.
"W-wait. Are you seriously my instructor?"
"What does it look like?"
Like a kid. I very wisely did not say that out loud.
He just looked at me with both hands in his pockets, expression flat, and apparently, my face said it for me anyway because the next thing I knew, a crushing weight slammed down onto my entire body and drove me to my knees.
"Krrhg!"
The pressure was enormous. I pushed mana through every part of my body trying to resist it and it barely made a dent.
Then it clicked.
This is gravity.
I grabbed the gravity element and pushed it outward, trying to counter the force pressing down on me. For a brief moment it actually worked and the weight eased just enough to let me pull in a breath.
Then it doubled.
The ground under me cracked in a spreading spider pattern as the pressure ground me deeper into the floor. I tried pushing back harder, tried bleeding more mana into the counter, but it was like holding back a wall with one hand. My reserves were draining fast and the force was not budging.
I could not breathe.
"Hoh. You can use gravity to counter already. Not bad." A flicker of something crossed his face. "But—"
The pressure increased again.
I coughed blood onto the cracked floor beneath me.
"It is not enough. And next time—"
My bones were starting to go. I could feel the pressure moving inward, past muscle, pressing against things that were not supposed to be pressed.
"Think carefully before you judge someone by how they look."
Then it was gone.
I collapsed forward on my hands, coughing hard, spitting blood, breathing in sharp ragged pulls.
Yeah. I immediately and completely regretted every thought I had entertained in the last two minutes.
"Call me Instructor Mordredt. I will be teaching you the gravity element." He said, voice as cold and level as if he had just told me the weather.
Guys, let the record show. It is not only old men you should never underestimate. Kids are also on that list now.
Because this one was strong. Very, very strong.
After Mordredt healed my injuries I apologized without being prompted. What he did had been excessive by most reasonable standards, but I had also been standing there silently deciding he was a child while he waited for me to greet him like a civilised person, so I was not exactly innocent here.
I was still a little annoyed. Nobody actually enjoys getting flattened into a floor. But I kept that to myself.
"Kids these days have no respect, tsk." Mordredt said, clicking his tongue. "If I did not already know who you were I would have simply killed you."
Over that?
I looked around the training room briefly, at nothing in particular, just to collect myself.
What is it about this palace that attracts people like this? Is there something in the water? Is there a selection process specifically for people who are missing at least two screws?
"I may look like a child," he continued, apparently reading the question directly off my face, "but I am forty years older than you."
My jaw dropped. And if it was physically possible, it would've probably touched the floor right now.
He was fifty-five.
Fifty-five years old and he looked like he was twelve. Arthur, who I was sure to be well over a century old and even he did not look like a child. This was something else entirely.
"Close your mouth before I do it for you." Mordredt said, his green eyes glowed suddenly.
I closed it.
He has the exact temperament of a grumpy old man. Which, to be fair, is exactly what he is.
"Let us get to it. Three rules. You speak without raising your hand first, I hit you. You stop paying attention, I hit you. I give you something to do and you fail to do it or do not do it at all, I also hit you." He looked at me steadily. "Understood?"
I wanted to say several things.
I said none of them.
I sighed in defeat and replied. "Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes, Instructor Mordredt."
"Good."
I sighed internally. Another one. Another complete lunatic added to the growing collection of people apparently dedicated to making my life physically painful. At this rate I was going to start keeping score.
"Now then. From what I can see you already have some working control over the gravity affinity. Do you know any spells for it?"
"No. I only know the martial arts application. No spells yet."
That was Virgil's fault entirely. The lazy wolf deity had looked me in the eye and essentially said figure it out yourself before going back to sleep. Incredibly useful sponsorship from a deity.
"Show me what you can do then. Give me your best."
I reached out with the gravity element and pushed it down around Mordredt, increasing the pull on him.
He stood there with his hands still in his pockets, expression unchanged, completely unbothered.
I pushed more mana into it. The floor under his feet began to tremble faintly. A thin crack split the stone near his left shoe.
He did not move. Did not shift his weight. Did not even blink.
"Is that all?" he said.
It was genuinely irritating.
"I do not think increasing it further will change anything." I said.
"Good that you recognize your limits."
I do not recognize my limits. I am simply choosing to be patient about it. One day I am going to press you into the floor the same way you pressed me and I am going to be very calm about it.
I kept that thought entirely internal while Mordredt frowned at me anyway.
"Anything else?"
"Yes. I can also pull objects toward me, or pull myself toward objects, by manipulating the gravitational force between them."
I raised my hand toward my sword resting against the far wall. It lifted cleanly off the stone and sailed across the room into my palm without a sound.
Then I turned the gravity element on myself, reducing my own weight until my feet left the floor and I rose a couple of meters into the air and hovered there.
This was one of the things Virgil had actually bothered to show me. By adjusting the gravitational pull acting on your own body you could cancel out the weight that kept every living thing pinned to the ground. Actual flight. Or at least the beginning of it. Right now I could only hold it for a couple of minutes before the control became unstable, but with enough practice the ceiling on that would keep rising.
Every person at some point in their life has thought about what it would feel like to just leave the ground and go. I was standing in that feeling right now, and even doing it imperfectly it was still something.
I brought myself back down and landed softly.
Mordredt watched all of it with the same composed expression he had worn since he walked through the door.
"Your martial arts foundation is decent. But that is not why I am here." He said. "I am here to teach you gravity spells. Which is an entirely different discipline."
I nodded.
"Then we start from the beginning. As you should already know, every magic spell is built from its rune of origin..."