"It's alright, I'll study the books on my own," Erwin replied in an indifferent manner.

"If you don't agree to my proposal, then I'm going to yell!" Lana whispered into Erwin's ear. "After that, you'll be known throughout the entire city of Sarus for making a move on the daughter of Prince Lazaar during class!"

Erwin was astonished to hear this, and he was scarcely able to believe his own ears.

"Ah~" Lana suddenly moaned with a hint of displeasure in her voice, and most of the students in the classroom immediately turned around to see what was happening. Taking advantage of this opportunity, she cast an indignant glare toward Erwin, then turned away and refused to look at him.

Erwin's mouth was gaped open in shock as he stared at Lana, who was refusing to look at him. In the eyes of everyone else, he was simply playing dumb to avoid condemnation, and Larwood and the others had also turned around to look at him with sly grins that were tinged with a hint of admiration. Naturally, they hadn't heard what Lana had just whispered into his ear.

"So? Do you want me to do that again? I'm not sure you'll be able to get away with it so easily a second time. Look, even the lecturer will hear us this time," Lana said as she turned back to Erwin with a smile.

Erwin cast his gaze toward the front of the classroom to find that the lecturer had indeed just made his way into the room. In the face of this red-haired demoness, he was truly completely powerless. He wasn't powerful enough to defeat her in battle, and he was even losing in a battle of shamelessness!

Lana inhaled as she prepared to moan again, and Erwin hurriedly begged for mercy with a panicked expression.

"You should've just complied from the very beginning." Lana patted Erwin's hand in consolation, then took away one of his books and began to read it with an intrigued expression.

Thus, Erwin was stuck with the remaining "A Discussion on the Ultimate Damage of Magic". With Erwin's current base of knowledge, it was very difficult to understand the so-called concept of ultimate damage. In reality, the ultimate damage of magic was simply the damage inflicted upon someone after being struck by a spell.

It was common knowledge that when facing magicians in battle, there were many ways to avoid sustaining magical damage. Magic shields and protective equipment were among the most common ways through which one could ward off magic attacks. Thus, this book mainly discussed how to alter one's incantations when casting spells in order to increase the ultimate damage of said spells.

Thankfully, the book was heavily annotated by Professor Hawk, thereby allowing Erwin to understand the large passages of ancient text. The book stated that when the ancient magic language was used for an incantation to cast a spell, even the more ordinary of fireball spells could cause considerable damage. This meant that when chanting incantations in the ancient language, the way in which matter was converted would also change. However, the sentence structures of this type of ancient language was very complex, and even when converting short and simple incantations into the ancient magic language, it was often the case that the resulting incantation would be a massive long passage.

The lecturer was in the middle of teaching the lesson when he suddenly noticed two of his students at the back of the classroom with their heads buried in books. Thus, he made his way toward them down the walkway at the center of the classroom, and all of the students in the classroom also turned around to direct their attention toward Erwin and Lana.

"'The Origins of Arcane Spells'?" The lecturer picked up the book in Lana's hands before taking a look, and it seemed that he had no idea who this red-haired student in his class was.

Lana turned to Erwin with an amused expression, clearly not expecting the lecturer to be so strict.

"What about you? What are you reading? Let me take a look." The lecturer then turned toward Erwin, and with a wave of the lecturer's hand, the book that Erwin was holding flew into his grasp.

"'A Discussion on the Ultimate Damage of Magic'?" The lecturer took a glance at the book in his hand, then directed his gaze back to the two students before him.

The lecturer didn't know who the red-haired girl was, but he was very familiar with Erwin. In fact, he had a very negative impression of Erwin for his unorthodox style in battle.

"If you have time to be reading such advanced books in my class, then I'm sure you already have a very good grasp of the content that I'm teaching. How about you two go to the front of the class and show us what you've learned from these books?" the lecturer suggested.

"Sir, I was severely injured a few days ago, and my wounds still haven't completely healed, so..." Erwin was quite reluctant to oblige with the lecturer's instructions. It seemed that this lecturer was completely unaware of what had happened outside the Redbud Pavilion a few days ago.

"That's not a problem. I can tell that this female student is a magician as well. A battle of magicians won't require much movement, so you don't have to worry about your injuries. Go on then," the lecturer prompted with a cold smile.

During offense and defense classes like this, each sparring pair always consisted of a magic student and a martial techniques student, so magic students were never pitted against one another. 

Doesn't this make this a magic defense lesson? Erwin thought to himself, but it was clear that the lecturer was intentionally picking on him, so he didn't say anything.

Erwin heaved an internal sigh, then cast his gaze toward Lana. In contrast with him, she was raring to go.

Lana naturally had no regard for the academy lecturer. She simply wanted to see that special type of magic that Erwin had used last time again, so the lecturer's suggestion aligned perfectly with her agenda.

"Sir, Erwin really was severely injured a few days ago, and he almost died from his wounds. He still isn't fully recovered yet, so he's in no condition to be doing any sparring training," Larwood hurriedly interjected as he stood up from his seat. "Would it be alright if I took Erwin's place for this sparring match?"

"Shush! This has nothing to do with you," the lecturer said as he gave Larwood a cold glare.

Erwin gave Lana a wry smile, and the two of them began to make their way toward the long stage at the front of the classroom. All of the students in the classroom were genuinely grateful to the lecturer for facilitating what was undoubtedly going to be a splendid show.

The two of them stood across from one another on either side of the long stage, and Erwin pulled out his darkness-attribute short staff from his waist, while Lana pulled an intricately crafted silver short staff from her cape. Her staff was far thinner than the average staff, and there weren't any magic gemstones embedded upon it, but its surface was riddled with magic runes.

During their last battle, Erwin had been thwarted by Lana's equipment, and looking at the silver staff that she was holding now, he knew that he was most likely going to receive another one-sided beating.

The lecturer nodded at the two students, indicating that he was ready for them to begin.

True to his signature style, Erwin immediately unleashed a flurry of instant-release spells directly toward Lana. The spells were all released in the form of purple light, but it was clear at a glance that there were spells of different attributes intermingled throughout the cluster. Lana was already quite familiar with Erwin's style of battle, and with a wave of her staff, she released several dozen beams of bright green light, which pierced directly through Erwin's instant-release spells before hurtling directly toward him.

Erwin immediately unleashed his space split technique to reach Lana in the blink of an eye, evading the dozens of beams of oncoming green light in the process. Lana seemed to have predicted this course of action from Erwin, and she had already completed the incantation of a spell in advance. Right as Erwin emerged out of thin air, an arrow of light instantly shot forth from the tip of her staff toward Erwin's chest. Erwin's eyes widened in alarm at the sight of the approaching arrow of light, and it came as quite a surprise to him that Lana was able to read him so proficiently.

His mirage necklace was instantly triggered, but the arrow of light pierced directly through the magic mirage before continuing to fly toward him. Taking advantage of the instant that the mirage was triggered, Erwin conjured up a spherical light shield that managed to keep the arrow of light at bay. The arrow instantly exploded, forming bursts of magic turbulence outside the light shield.

This spherical light shield that had been conjured up by Erwin was extremely peculiar in that it didn't resemble a normal magic shield at all. The light of the magic shield wasn't radiating at all, and it seemed to be adhered firmly to the surface of the magic shield.

Lana's brows furrowed slightly as she inspected the spherical shield. She then began to chant an incantation, using solely the complex ancient magic language.

Has she already mastered some arcane spells? 

Erwin was completely bewildered to see this. He looked on as black threads began to appear in an interwoven fashion above her head, and upon closer inspection, he discovered that these were all wisps of magical matter that were giving off a faint sheen.

The black threads converged in a completely random and chaotic fashion, forming a burst of black fire that struck Lana from the air above. An agonized look instantly appeared on her face, as if she were sustaining enormous magical damage. However, she then let loose a loud cry, and a beam of black light erupted out of the top of the staff. If one were to look closely, they would discover that this wasn't a beam of black light at all. Instead, it was a magic black wyrm that was flying directly toward Erwin.

Erwin looked on at the approaching black wyrm with a fierce expression, and in the next instant, the black wyrm exploded upon the spherical light shield around him. Countless black bursts of magic power then began to spread over the entire spherical light shield like a series of chaotic thorny vines.

The speed of time in space isn't constant. 

Following his last battle against Lana, Erwin had done plenty of reflection on himself. Due to his weak magic power, the speed at which he could cast spells was far slower than that of magicians of a higher caliber than himself, so how could he make up for this disparity?

Seeing as the speed of time in space wasn't constant, would it be possible for him to alter the rate of flow of time?

Time was unable to flow in matterless space. This was the most important lesson to be learned from chapter one of "Laws of Time and Space". Thus, the process of matter being replenished within space was equivalent to the process of the speed of time returning to its original rate.

If he could complete the incantations of his spells during the periods in which time stood still, wouldn't he be able to erase the advantage that magic mentors had over him?

Thus, during the few days in which he had lied in bed to recover from his injuries, he had constantly been thinking about how to construct a small, independent space in which time stood still. If he could create such a space, then it would take him no time at all to cast spells. After the spell was ready, he would then open up that space, and that would allow him to overcome his disadvantage.

However, his thought process had been too naïve. The replenishment of matter within space was not something that a mere intermediate magician like him could stop at will.

The spherical light shield that he had just conjured up was an isolated space that he had created by exhausting all of the matter around him, but what he failed to anticipate was the sheer volume of matter flowing through space. In the instant that he created this space, countless types of matter began to surge into the light shield as if they had a life of their own.