Chapter 20: The Unexpected Observation Class

Lin Yuan didn't care what Tre was thinking; he was already starving. As soon as the students brought the breakfast to the classroom, he didn't hesitate, grabbing his share and digging in.

Just at that moment, the academy's magical clock rang.

"Damn, it's time for class already," Lin Yuan and the students, who were also stuffing their faces, stared at each other in disbelief before he finally waved his hand. "Eat while I talk."

"Today's lesson is mainly about summarizing what you've learned from the tasks you've done over the past month. Most importantly, you need to identify your weaknesses so that your future magic studies can be more targeted and efficient. Hmm... this bun is cold. Lilita, I remember I took this from you. Tell me, what method did you use?"

Lilita, who had been listening to Lin Yuan, was taken aback. She quickly put down her breakfast and replied, "Report to the teacher, I placed a wind shield in front of my hand holding the breakfast."

"Oh, that's a good method, but why is it still cold?"

"I... I couldn't sustain it halfway through..." Lilita's face turned a bit red.

"Couldn't sustain it?" Lin Yuan smiled and said, "Tell me, were you using maximum magical power to maintain that wind shield the whole time?"

"Yes, isn't that necessary?" Not only Lilita, but the other students who had gone to buy breakfast also looked puzzled.

"If your magical power was enough to sustain the wind shield all the way back to the classroom, then it wouldn't matter, but it wasn't," Lin Yuan casually summoned a small wind shield in front of himself. "What do you think of this wind shield?"

Most students shook their heads. Lilita even directly said, "Teacher, this wind shield is too weak."

Lin Yuan nodded. "Exactly, if we were in a battle, this wind shield would indeed be too weak, but you weren't in a battle just now. Why use maximum magical power to maintain the wind shield?"

The students were a bit stunned. The magical education they had received since childhood was to use as much magical power as possible. Was that wrong?

"Do you still remember what I told you at the farm? Magical power is like MONEY; we need to use it sparingly," Lin Yuan pointed to the wind shield in front of him. "Although this wind shield is weak, it's enough to block the wind and keep the breakfast from getting cold. If you can achieve this with less magical power, then using maximum power is just a waste. And even with that waste, you still didn't achieve your goal. Look, now I have to eat a cold bun."

The students burst into laughter, and Lilita couldn't help but smile. Lin Yuan's explanation was very intuitive and easy to understand.

"Of course, controlling magical power isn't something you can master in a day. Like the accuracy of magic, it requires your constant attention and practice. But don't expect me to tell you exactly what to do. Just like there are a thousand different views of Ellis in a thousand elves' eyes, our familiarity with using magic is also different. What works for others may not work for you."

"Also, you need to pay attention to..."

"Knock knock..."

Lin Yuan's words were interrupted by a few knocks on the door.

Looking towards the door, Lin Yuan was taken aback. Standing at the entrance was none other than Old Man Hawk and a group of teachers from Finor Academy.

Seeing Lin Yuan, the group at the door also froze.

At that moment, Lin Yuan was holding a bottle of fresh milk that clearly came from Downing Street in his left hand, and a half-eaten bun in his right, with some bun filling accidentally stuck to the corner of his mouth. Coupled with his exaggerated gestures to get the students' attention, he looked more like a starving ghost than a teacher.

The group's gaze lingered on Lin Yuan for a moment before shifting to the students in the classroom.

They were even more stunned.

Almost identical to Lin Yuan, most of the students in the classroom also had their hands full of breakfast, their mouths greasy. Some even had their cheeks puffed out from chewing, looking as ridiculous as could be.

"Teacher Lin, are you teaching a class?" After a long while, Vice-Dean Kapachi, who was following Old Man Hawk, finally came to his senses and pointed to the students in the classroom.

"This..." Lin Yuan was somewhat embarrassed and could only let out a couple of awkward laughs without answering.

"Teacher Lin, I thought you were well-prepared, which is why you looked so relaxed. I didn't expect... you were ready to have a feast with the students."

Lin Yuan composed himself and noticed that the cold, sneering voice belonged to Cruz-Tre, who had come to provoke him earlier in the morning. He was puzzled as to what he had done to offend this guy so much that he kept targeting him.

His gaze swept across the crowd and caught Katusha winking at him, her eyes full of amusement, which made him even more embarrassed.

"Lin, tell me, what are you doing?" Old Man Hawk, who had been surveying the classroom, finally spoke up.

Tre, who had been about to lash out at Lin Yuan for ignoring him again, had to bite his tongue when the Dean spoke.

"I'm teaching," Lin Yuan quickly thought of an answer, raising the bottle of fresh milk in his left hand. "I'm instructing the students on the finer points of magic usage."

"Oh? How so?" Hawk looked at Lin Yuan with interest, waiting for his explanation.

Lin Yuan glanced at Katusha's encouraging look, Tre's sneering expression, and the others' uncertain reactions, then smiled. He propped up the bottle of fresh milk with his left hand and channeled his magical power.

In no time, the milk inside the bottle, which had long gone cold, began to boil. Lin Yuan uncorked the bottle, and a thick, milky white steam billowed out.

Watching Lin Yuan take a sip of the heated milk with a satisfied expression, everyone in the room, both teachers and students, was stunned.

Everyone present had a certain level of magical prowess and could sense that Lin Yuan had condensed fire elemental magic inside the bottle, created a small fireball, and then controlled it to spin around inside the bottle, reheating the milk.

Neither the teachers at the door nor the students in the classroom had ever thought that magic could be used in this way.

"Students, I've always emphasized to you that magical power is like MONEY," Lin Yuan couldn't very well eat his bun while lecturing under the gaze of all the teachers, so he put it down and continued. "You must treat the magical power within you as sparingly as you would the gold coins in your pocket. Of course, this frugality doesn't mean you shouldn't spend it, but rather that you should be economical when you do. First, you should never spend what you don't need to. For example, if a fireball can solve the problem, you should never consider using a firestorm spell; that's a huge waste. Second, when you do spend, make sure it's effective. In other words, once you've expended your magical power, it must achieve its purpose. To put it simply, magic should never be cast in vain, which is the accuracy I emphasized to you at the farm."

Glancing at the teachers at the door, who were also listening intently, Lin Yuan breathed a sigh of relief. Judging by their reactions, these people must have come for the freshmen teaching observation. But why did they choose him first? Lin Yuan scanned Tre's face and knew he must have had something to do with it.

"Besides the above points, another thing to pay attention to is the precise control of magical power, which needs to be explained in the context of a specific spell," Lin Yuan picked up the bottle of fresh milk again and with a wave of his right hand, a fireball the size of a human head appeared in mid-air. "For example, if I wanted to heat this bottle of fresh milk just now, using such a large fireball obviously wouldn't work. Not to mention whether the bottle could hold it. Even if it could, the milk would probably be gone the moment it touched the fireball, and I'd be left with just the bottle to chew on."

The students laughed again, and the tension from the sudden arrival of the Dean and the teachers immediately dissipated.

With another wave of his right hand, Lin Yuan shrank the human-sized fireball down to the size of a thumb.

"And a fireball this size is just right. It won't evaporate the milk, nor will it be insufficient in heat. This is where the control of magical power comes into play."

"Faced with different situations, the magic we need varies, and if we only have one spell to choose from, controlling the amount of magical power we input will yield different results. For example, when only 1..." Lin Yuan suddenly paused and turned to Hawk, asking, "Your Excellency the Dean, what is the unit of measurement for magical power?"

Hawk was taken aback. "What unit of measurement?"

"I mean... when we buy things, we have units like pounds or liters to indicate the quantity. What do we use to indicate the amount of magical power?"

The teachers at the door and the students were stunned once again. How many more surprises could Teacher Lin have in store for them?

Hawk was also stunned for a good while before he shook his head and said, "There isn't such a thing... The magical power within each mage is different, and so are their attributes. It's impossible to establish a universal system of measurement."

"Oh?" Lin Yuan, however, disagreed. After last night's experiment, he distinctly felt that although the attributes of water and fire elemental magic were indeed different, they possessed a common elemental power. In the piece of shattered stone hit by the fire-and-ice ball, or rather, within the fire-and-ice ball itself, since the water and fire elemental magic could balance and touch each other, it meant that in that small space, the energy of the two elemental magics should be indistinguishable. In other words, different-attribute magical elements could be measured and converted through this method. Naturally, the magical power within a mage's body could also be measured in a similar way.