You throw your shield back up, now deploying it off to one side of you, and Leon raises his hand toward the shield.
Leon: "Light this time."
There's a moment where you think you see a glitter in his hand, then suddenly a line of white appears, stretching from his hand to your barrier.
And, straight through it. It streaks into the distance, and is gone by the time you're done turning your head to see where it landed. In some trees, you think.
Checking your spell, it still seems to be at full charge. Tapping your fingers against it, they're blocked like you'd expect. Still working.

Leon: "...Hm. Went right through. Did that even use any mana for you?"

Leon: "Maybe. Dark is weird. Closest thing to an anti-magic element."
You put the shield back up, and Leon fires a dark spell. It's a projectile instead of a beam this time, and it looks very strange, like a ball of anti-light flying through the air. It hits your shield, the darkness momentarily flaring, and-
Woah. The entire barrier spell sort of, flickers. That did not happen with any of the other spells. The mana drain is also enormous compared to the others, easily half the mana you filled the spell with is gone.

The flicker has you a bit concerned, so you take a closer look with your magical senses. The barrier spell still looks intact, but... hm. It looks sort of, 'ragged' or 'rough'? Spells are very even and uniform when you form them normally, this one included.

You pull the mana out of your shield, letting the effect vanish, and form a duplicate spell in your other hand. Holding the two close for comparison, you look them over.
You do confirm that yes, the fresh shield has smooth surfaces and curves. The older one is... pitted, maybe? Pitted, but smoothed out at the same time. It seems worn away, like old stone.
You cautiously insert mana into both shields, and they both come to life identically. Hm.
Now that you look closely, actually... This shield spell does seem to have a, shell? A thicker portion of mana that seems non-functional or at most connective tissue, covering the end that projects the shield. That's the part that got roughed up, the internals are untouched.
The rear half of the spell doesn't have any shell, and your ice and heal spells don't have anything like that.

Leon: "Hm. So that's what it does. They told me that the dark spell was mostly for anti-magic, guess that's what they meant. Could shoot spells right out of the air with that.
So that just leaves ice. I have a guess what that might do to the shield..."

He raises his hand again in the now familiar motion, and you see a small spot of white mist form before it.
Leon: "Ready?"

Popping the new shield back up, you put it off to the side and Leon fires the ice spell at it. It hits and the air puffs into white mist around the shield, but... hm. Not much mana drain at all. About the same as the light spell. You wave your hand through the air in front of the shield and-
Holy ♥♥♥♥ that's chilly. Ok yeah, the spell definitely worked.
Leon: "Let me guess. Barely any mana drain?"

Leon: "I mean, the shield would push that aside, so shouldn't be too bad.
The shield blocks things from moving through it, and cold slows things down and freezes them in place. So, they're sorta doing the same thing in a way, preventing motion. So, that's why it doesn't take much mana!"
Karina: "Wow! Really?"
Leon: "Probably! I didn't learn a lot of theoretical stuff at the Wizard Academy. They mostly taught me some spells and, uh. Well, taught me spells."

Leon: "Uh. Well. I was, kinda a special case. But, that was planned yeah.
It's just I sorta, left, before they had a chance to, when Karina sent me that letter."
Karina: "Well, adventure is important! Otherwise you wouldn't have come!"