Chapter 74 - Academy Days

The next day I early morning I went to the Elder in charge of teaching mediation and got myself the complete instruction manual for the meditation exercise I had chosen and also someone to help myself get started on its practice. The exercise I had chosen to begin with was the one which improved the physical strength of my body. It felt right to me to improve my body physically before I move on to the magical side.

The exercise was sitting in the lotus position and circulating my magic inside my body in a specific pattern and keep doing it till I reach the next stage in the exercise. After reaching the next stage, the pattern in which magic is circulated is changed and the process continues. Each stage was designed for specific parts of the body. The early stage was for bone strengthening.

The instructions and the help from the guide made it possible for me to get started on the exercise. The exercise removed the tiredness from my body but did not show any noticeable change in the physical strength after the first day of exercise. It was going to be a slow process.

After meditation, it was time for duelling classes which passed more or less in a similar way to that of yesterday. I again lost all except 2 duels but this time I made my opponents work a little harder for the win. There were no instant knockouts on my side. Other than the mock duel, today instead of dodging practice, we had to block spells sent by Elder Akash by bringing stones in the path of the spells. I was able to block a lot of spells at the beginning but when he sped things up, it became too much for me.

After duelling, it was back to reading the ȧssigned medical books. Despite there being large number of books my reading speed was fast due to the fact that I already knew the concept and just had to memorize the Hindi names for things.

In the same manner, the next two days passed by quickly.

On the third day of practicing the meditation exercise, I was able to feel a slight increase in my bone strength. This made me quite happy and I continued practising the exercise with renewed interest.

My duelling skills improved by quite a lot in these two days. I was able to defeat 6 members of my group in the mock battles. The four new wins were long drawn out battles but I did win in the end. With others also I had long battle but I was not able to defeat them. Elder Akash was quite impressed with my improvement.

My control over mage sight had improved considerably. I was now able to easily toggle between different modes and also keep it it that mode indefinitely. I liked the new modes since it made my sight much more clearer in highly magical areas. I had started up on the seeing through walls thing but it was still a work in progress.

Coming to the ȧssignment I had been ȧssigned by Elder Yamini, I had finished reading and memorising all of the books on the list. It took some time since not everything was same as what I had read back in Hogwarts. There were quite a number of different and new practices that were followed here. These included improvements on quite a lot of old medical practices that were still being used in Britain.

This was due to many reasons. Unlike Britain, India did not lack good Healers. While Britain was losing good potential healers due to Snape's poor teaching of Potions and also due to the ministry banning some good potion by declaring them dark, India had quite a lot of Master healers and the number was growing every year. Due to the high numbers they were not over worked and had a lot of free time to focus on medical research to invent new things.

One thing I liked most in the improvements by Indian Healers was that they had found ways to make the potions taste good. I am sure if I bring this method back to Britain, many people will start worshiping me. The Healers here had found certain species of magical plants which when added in already prepared potions acted only as a taste enhancer while not ruining the potion or reacting in any way with the potion. I am of the opinion that this was a much needed improvement in the potion making sector. Due to the bad taste many patients reluctantly drink only small amounts of potions or vomit some of the potions. This leads to ineffective treatment in many cases.

The Indian healers had also invented spells that could track viruses and get rid of them. They did this by getting inspiration from the muggle medical instruments and imitating their effects with magic. This practice was not available in Britain as per my knowledge. This was due to the fact that magical people were highly resistant to viruses. The magic inside people usually killed the viruses before they can cause any harm. But this was changing in the recent times. Indian Healers had found some viruses inside people that had evolved to resist the magic.

Due to the fact that I had completely memorized the books that were listed to me, I passed the Elder Yamini's test had given me after I went to her with flying colours. She was so impressed that she wasted no time in recommending me to her disciple, Healer Sesha who worked full time in the academy hospital.

Healer Sesha was only 35 years old but still was a respected healer in the academy hospital with many accolades to her name. She asked me some questions to confirm my medical proficiency and after she was satisfied with knowledge in the field, made me her apprentice in the hospital. All I had to do was follow her around and do some small tasks while she looked after her patients. I could still watch her treat patients and learn from it. I also had to help her in some of her ongoing medical researches. I did not have to brew potions for her which I was very happy about since I was not too confident in that department yet and did not want to make mistakes which could lead to the death of a person.

She ȧssigned me more books to read and I had to finish them as soon as possible so again I did not have time to start reading the old English books in the library which I badly wanted to read.

After being made a apprentice to Healer Sesha, my days became very hectic. I was busy everyday with Duelling classes, helping Elder Sesha out and reading more and more books that were recommended to me by Elder Akash and Healer Sesha.

Despite the hectic schedule, I did not have any complains since this was what I wanted and needed. Also the meditation exercises helped me a lot during these days by clearing my tiredness away, soothing my muscle soreness and also increasing my endurance. Due to this, I was very satisfied with my decision to practice this meditation exercise first.

I became a little free when my classes with Elder Nainesh finished after a week. I was still not good at the seeing through walls thing. I had been able to activate that ability and see through the wall in front of me and see the magical things in the next room but that was it for now. I will need many days of exercise to increase that distance. Elder Nainesh was also able to gain something from teaching me and conducting experiments. He said he had found a way to hide the signs that showed when he activated mage sight but the method needed a lot of practice before he could use it effectively. I was that he gained something because otherwise I would have owned him a favor for helping me and I did not like owning people favors.