Love Gazz's expression in panel one. Looks so smug.

That's a death glare if ever I saw one. Shouldn't give it to her, she's your boss.
It's your own fault anyway, you said to cross it and never said how. He fallowed the letter of it if not the spirit.

But wasn't the task crossing the river using spirit only?

Veda is truly evil. I mean, Felix supporting?!?! The point is to learn spirit, he failed. Clearly, she has no interest in these children actually learning anything.

Garth is a teacher and cares about kids learning what they're supposed to learn. Veda is an investor and only cares about getting the desired results; not about the ways they're obtained.

Veda don't get on the wrong side of Garth it doesn't end well

@szmol: I went back and checked, he did explicitly state spirit. Sorry, I misremembered it as with magic. So yeah, his ability was a no go then.

Bad cop, good cop routine, very smart, Ms.Veda. This way she can made Felix her personal minion in future.

Also, I agree that she probably doesn't really want the programme to succeed. At least not in the way the Empire envisions it. She probably has her own hidden agenda (I feel like Cpt.Obvious writing it, but who knows ;))

"Why not give him points, Veda? Because he basically CHEATED. You don't reward cheating."

@Jack: "Using spirit"

So, here's the question. Are you using spirit when you use your own brand of magic, or is spirit divorced from Pandemonium/free magic applications?

Or, in English, is Spirit the free-est brand of magic, and some individuals just have knacks for it that are big enough to be visible?

So, for an example, we've got two individuals with a knack for magic potential, one for offense, one for defense in here. Could a normal human gain the capacity to utilize spirit in the same way, and these two are just more skilled at it in the same way some people learn how to swim or read earlier then others?

Or is it possible that Felix actually -did- achieve even -that- stated goal of the programme? While it was a very low investment of spirit magic (at a guess, given how much storage and releasing he can do), it DID fulfill all the rules of the particular question, and he did get across the river, using explicitly magical sources.

@chameon

As far as i understand, spirit is just the core energy, the basics. "Using spirit" would mean only that, manipulating the spirit in you to achieve various result, not the actual magic that comes farther down the line.

And visibly spirit has multiple applications so it stands to reason some part of it come more naturally to different people.

except Felix, Felix gets nothing :P

Maybe Veda is re-evaluating the usefulness of Felix's powers?

Felix is getting negative points because:

1) He used his ability when Garth had said to use only spirit.

2) he was being cocky about it

3) THE PURPOSE of all these exercises is to make the students survivable: All Felix is proving is that he has to rely on his power to do anything.

4) also if it is either running on water or masking underneath it there is a stealth element Garth would wan to teach them to maintain

In conclusion, give Felix all the negative points you can now to teach him to be more awesome later.

@Chameon; If I recall correctly (it's been a while)Abilities are called pandemonium and are unique to the person, spirit is the basic form of magic that anyone that can use any form of magic can use. There's also free magic that is much more versatile. Even if you can use other forms of magic you will still want spirit, at the very least for the defense it provides.
The ability to use magic seems to be something you either have or not, someone who can't, won't ever have it (that's the impression I got anyway).
The point of this exercise is to learn basic spirit techniques, what Felix did was like using floats to swim. While it works he doesn't gain any experience from it and if deprived from them he won't know what to do without them.
For your last point, it's all magic yes but the distinction lies in how it is used. There was a distinction made between spirit and the other forms.
Remember the pirate lady with the magnetic powers? She stood up to Burk not because of the magnetism but because if her insanely powerful spirit defense. If she just had her magnetism she wouldn't have even got that far. That's why it's so important that Felix learn to use spirit and not just rely on his cards.
If you want to get into semantics, I'm sure there is someway to twist his words so that Felix passed but that still leaves out the intent of the instructions.

Welcome to Justopia, where the powers are made up and the points don't matter!

This plan, to train the magical children to use their magic in the empire's service is a good idea, there a lot of hostile magi users out there, like the elves.

But letting Vader, sorry, Veda anywhere near them feels like a catastrophic mistake.

Best case? She's the sort of idiot who'd get a lot of them needlessly killed. Case in point, her support for Felix. He himself is an idiot who'd get his classmates killed with his incompetence and recklessness. And she's maintaining he's done brilliantly despite obviously failing, so she can claim the children are ready for operation certain death. Felix has started endangering the others already.

Worst case? She's building a Trojan horse and making the empire pay for the horse. High casualties may even be the point of the operation she has planned.