As Lake walked forward, prepared to start the second lesson, Sylph took this chance to speak to Iris in the Fairy race’s language.
"Hey, Iris, do you still hate Lake?" she asked with big curious eyes.
"I don’t know what you’re talking about your Highness." Iris spoke plainly with a stoic face. However, if one were to look closely, you could see that she was avoiding eye contact with Sylph.
"Hmm... Is that so? Then why do you always look at him as if you want to beat him up?"
"It must be your imagination, your Highness."
"Okay, let’s say it is my imagination, what about Allen. Was there any need to ignore him too?"
"... I just wasn’t feeling like talking is all."
Hearing this, Sylph sighed.
"Fine, do what you want. I already told you it wasn’t their fault that I snuck out. I just happened to come across them on my stroll is all."
Iris wanted to say something when she heard this but Sylph quickly changed the topic before she could bring it up.
"Now that I think about it, where’s my second guard, Bramble? I rarely see him ever since we joined the academy."
As Iris heard Sylph’s words, her originally cold expression turned colder as a look of disgust appeared on her face.
"That brother of mine has been... "integrating" himself with the humans of this world."
"Ohhh! As expected from someone blessed with Charm. I bet Bramble took this chance to finally let loose after being trapped beside my side all this time. If only someone else could learn from his ways..."
"Hah! Nonsense, as the Princess’ guards, we have a noble and sacred job guard by your side no matter what. The fact that he isn’t guarding by your side is a sin!"
Hearing Iris’ rant, Sylph shook her head as she sighed to herself, "You missed the point..."
At this point, Lake had already walked forward and started the lesson.
When Sylph saw Lake talking in front of everyone and how well they listened, no matter how oblivious she may be, she quickly realized that he was the instructor of the event.
"I’m glad to see that so many of you have decided to sign up. Without further ado, let’s begin this lesson."
"As you all know, mana exists in the atmosphere all around us. Some places have denser mana than others allowing for the faster absorption and therefore faster purification of mana."
"As your mana becomes purer, the more you advanced along the Martial Apprentice Realm before, eventually, the mana becomes so pure that it can flow through the pores of your skin unhindered and used to launch devastating attacks, signifying that you have reached the Martial Warrior realm."
As Lake spoke, he raised his arm as mana slowly gathered before forming a ball that floated a little bit above his palm.
When everyone saw this they were all once again shocked. The people who saw Lake cast a few spells yesterday were slightly better off but they were still left wondering at how Lake could release mana from his body.
"Now, here’s a concept you may not be familiar with. Mana in the atmosphere is un-pure due to the many other particles in the air. When you absorb mana through your flow path, what you’re really doing is filtering out the unwanted particles. That’s why as your absorption path continues to evolve under the influence of mana, what’s really happening is that it is simply becoming better and better at filtering out the unwanted particles."
Lake paused for a moment before closing his hand, breaking the orb of mana into several strands that started floating and intertwining above his palm.
Surprisingly, someone raised their hand at this point.
"Excuse, but what does any of this have to do with us getting stronger? If you really came here to give me a lecture on mana, I already had enough of it in Mana Theory class."
Hearing the questions, many people nodded in agreement. Although the scene of Lake playing with mana in his palm had truly left most of the students entranced, some of them realized that he was just spouting theory that they learned in class.
When Lake heard the question, he remained calm as he simply continued with his lecture.
"Alright, here’s a concept you don’t know. Since the mana in the atmosphere is un-pure due to the unwanted particles, what if you skipped the whole process of purifying the mana through your absorption path and directly purified the mana in the atmosphere?"
Many people had questions but Lake didn’t give them a chance to voice them.
Moving the mana strands floating around his palm, Lake set up a small and simple mana attraction formation. However, this action placed a lot of strain on Lake as he had to maintain utmost concentration throughout it as he pushed his level one spellcasting to the max.
As the formation slowly began to take shape in front of them, the group of students instantly quieted down.
After almost half a minute, Lake successfully formed the formation above his palm as a sweat dripped from his forehead.
Soon, the mana in the atmosphere slowly started to flow towards the formation at a slow but constant rate.
Lake used his own mana as the medium to set up this formation which wouldn’t last long or have any great effect as the quality and quantity of the mana he had used to do it was extremely low.
As everyone saw the strange formation absorbing the mana around it, they were extremely shocked.
It was known that in the Grey Dragon Continent, even the top brass had only barely managed to figure out that certain materials collected from rifts and monster parts have the unique property of attracting the mana around it.
It was because of this knowledge that the way people usually gather the mana in the atmosphere was by gathering all these materials in one place.
However, when Lake created the formation just now, not a single outside material was used, he created it with only his mana!
"Now, I’m sure you can all feel at least a little that the mana in the atmosphere is flowing towards the direction of formation I’ve set up."
"The formation won’t last long so pay attention to what I’m about to do next."
With the audience successfully shocked, Lake wasted no time in continuing his demonstration.
The mana that was absorbed from the surroundings had gathered at the center of the small formation in a small and transparent, light blue ball.
"When mana is filled with impurities, it cannot gather and condense properly as the particles block the mana from gathering together. This is also the reason why one must purify their mana first before they can advance along the Martial Warrior Realm. Without pure mana, it is impossible to gather the necessary mana density to advance to the Martial Master Realm."
As Lake spoke, he was already casting another spell with his remaining mana.
Everyone was immersed in Lake’s lecture and listened carefully to every detail. If any of the theory instructors were here, they would be extremely jealous at how well Lake managed to capture the attention of the bunch of rowdy students.
At that moment, Lake raised his hand as he casted a wind barrier spell. It was a simple spell that created a barrier of wind that blocked any unwanted particles from passing through such as poisonous gas and the such.
In this case however, Lake created the wind barrier next to the ball of mana that had gathered at the center of the formation.
Controlling the formation afterwards, he let the mana flow towards the wind barrier. As the mana passed through the barrier of wind, a lot of it was dispersed, but the little that did make it through, floated peacefully inside the ball.
"What I’m currently doing is filtering out the unwanted particles from the mana. The mana that gathered in the second ball is far less than the mana that gathered in the first ball but in turn it is also far purer."
"Now, I’m going to speed up the process."
As Lake spoke, he waved his hand causing the mana gathering formation to work much faster but as a result, burned up the mana used to maintain it far quicker.
In less than a minute, the mana gathering formation had dissipated leaving behind only the second ball of mana contained within the wind barrier.
The ball of mana was less than a tenth of the size of the first ball but it was far more condensed and less transparent. Its color was also a much deeper shade of blue.
"As you can see, the mana ball here is much smaller than the other one but instead has a far higher purity and density than the other one. This is a result of the unwanted particles being removed making the mana purer and allowing it to gather much closer together with little to no particles between them."
As Lake spoke, he pointed a finger at the small ball of mana that was the size of a bead before aiming it towards one of the boulders in the surrounding area.
"Naturally, since the mana has become purer and denser, its destructive power has also greatly increased."
With a loud explosion, rubble was thrown into the air as the crowd of students looked in disbelief at the boulder that was bigger than a horse was reduced to mere gravel.
"That was your first lesson on the theory of mana purification. In the future, I will be teaching all of you about mana and several key concepts that would allow you to greatly increase the speed at which you advance along the martial path."
"What I just showed you is only the tip of the iceberg but for now, we’ll be focusing on controlling the mana within your body. If no one has any questions, we will continue the lesson."
Hearing Lake’s explanation, the students who had originally wanted to ask several questions were left speechless.