Chapter 73.

PART 1.

Once the children were sent to the academy, the residents of the castle breathed a sigh of relief. The kids didn’t have any chance of causing chaos this year; they also thanked Zeko for taking them and keeping them at his house for the entire vacation.

“Surely, they can’t be that bad?” asked Ketu. How much chaos can children cause anyway?

“Your majesty, you weren’t here. They went to war with each other, and considered the castle itself as their territory.” Explained one man, who works in one of the civil departments of the government.

“Yes, I remember. They even took hostages.” Remembers the woman.

“That is interesting.” Said Ketu. Looks like the mages here have gotten used to the comfort of the castle.

While adult mages don’t kill children most of the time, actions like these are usually retaliated upon with swift discipline, instead of quaking in fear. His father needs to know about this. He has been long enough here that he probably doesn’t realize the signs, but he stays outside of the country most of the time. So, he can see the slow rot that is spreading.

Still, hearing about those incidents amused him a lot.

PART 2.

After a pleasant ride on automated carriages, they all arrive at the time of dinner, much like the previous year. “Do you think some invisible horses pull those carriages?” asked Hatori.

“Nah, that’ll be inefficient.” Said Josh.

“Yep. Much better to enchant the carriages to move on their own.” Said Raven.

“How sad.” Said Hatori. “I would have loved to spook those horses.”

“Why?” asked Josh. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”

“You’re getting smarter.” Said Shin. “Sometimes, it is not worth knowing things.”

They get their schedules, and the group immediately leaves, not waiting for the assigned room. Once more they take over a random empty dorm for all five of them, and then they open their schedules. Hatori has only four subjects, so he has the shortest schedule. Raven and Shin have the longest schedules, while Josh and James are somewhere in the middle.

“Why must everything take so long?” asked Hatori to himself.

“You have the shortest schedule, and you’re still complaining?” said Raven.

“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t complain.” Said Hatori. “Besides, I’m not mad like you.”

“Well, excuse me for trying to achieve something.” Muttered Raven.

“Besides, you end up not attending most of the classes anyway. You don’t have anything to complain about.” Said Josh.

“There’s a music class in this miserable school?” Hatori said in a surprised tone.

“What, you thought they didn’t offer that?” asked Shin, the taker of the said music class.

“It wasn’t recommended to us.” Said Hatori.

“Its all about the taler made recommendations.” Said Raven. “The school collects info about us, and then makes the list according to that info.”

“That is distressing. My enemies know about me,” said Hatori.

“What enemies?” asked James, done with reading his schedule.

“Anything and everything outside of this room. Potentially, even in this room.” Said Hatori.

“Don’t worry, there are no enemies here.” Assures Josh. “If anyone tries to harm you here, we won’t sit quietly.”

“Indeed. We’ll protest, very hard.” Said Raven.

Hatori shakes his head. A protest will not save his life. “I’m off to the library. I need to find something.” He leaves the room.

The lightning element won’t come to him by itself.

PART 3.

The transmutation class is the first class for Hatori. Professor Amarjit enters, and the students go quiet. “Alright class, let’s cover what we will be learning this year.” Said Amarjit, looking around at his much shorter class.

The forking of paths in the third year always leaves him with fewer students to deal with, which means he can deal with them on more of a personal level. This is important, lest the students annihilate themselves this year to manipulate the matter around them.

“Now, this year, we will cover the transmutation of living matter to nonliving matter, and vice versa. Which will allow you to do this.” He turned his desk into a crocodile, which hissed at the students before it was returned to its original state of being a desk.

“Now, apart from that, we will move on to conjuring up this year. And our very first lesson is going to be about it,” said Amarjit.

He brings out his notes. He knows this material by heart since he is the master of this art. But he still likes to keep references all the same, especially the general questions which the students ask him every time.

“The conjuring refers to the process of bringing something which does not exist, beyond an ethereal idea in your mind, into this real physical world. This involves the creation of matter, which we will cover this year. This is related to the physical laws of this world, which we manipulate with magic to achieve effects which are normally not possible.”

“Like creating things out of thin air?” asked Hatori.

“Yes.” Said Amarjit, chuckling with the kids at the quip. “Now, conjuring is good, but it has one big problem. Mainly, if you conjure up some item, it tends to break down and disappear over time. The solution to this problem is to put more energy into conjuring the item in question, but this kind of energy can make you quite weak, especially at your age. For now, we won’t focus on doing permanent conjuration, but we will cover it in the future.”

“Can you give us any examples, professor?” asked a student.

“Certainly.” Amarjit shows them his empty hand. “You see, there is nothing on my palm. It is empty. I assume Professor Bali taught you how to reveal invisibility?” At their nods, he continues. “Then I suggest you cast some revealing spells on my palm, to check that I’m not lying to you.”

Several revealing spells later, Amarjit moves to the next part of his example. “Now that we have established that my palm is decidedly empty, see this.”

Hatori senses what is happening before the result can be seen. Where there was an empty palm of their professor in front of them, there was a needle that was coming into existence slowly.

“Of course, needles are hardly interesting. So, here’s another example.” This time, the process was completed quite fast.

In no time, there is an empty glass on Amarjit’s desk. “Once you get good enough, you can even conjure up living matter, like this.” He conjures a rat, which starts running around the class, causing a lot of shrieking and squealing from everyone.

Hatori sits alone calmly in the chaos, unaffected by the rat, even though it scampered up to his desk, and tried to pounce on him. He just sent it flying with a Knockback spell. No need to waste energy on a creature that he suspects is going to not live for too long anyway.

Professor Amarjit confirms Hatori’s thoughts. “The living conjurations break down the quickest. Only sorcerers have conjured permanent living conjurations so far, but their methods of madness cannot be taught, as you will learn about them later.”

PART 4.

The classroom of magical rituals is different. There’s some smell of incense burning in the room, and the class does not have desks. Instead, all the students sit on mats after removing their shoes at the entrance.

“Welcome to class. I am Professor Mantar. I will be teaching you ritual magic.” The professor introduced himself.

Hatori is amused to hear his voice. The guy sounds like a monk who is here to impart his knowledge. But judging from the assigned book for this class, there won’t be any peace or nirvana in this class.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Now, do any of you have any previous understanding of rituals?” he asked, but the students shook their heads.

“Not to worry. By the time we’re done with our first lesson, you will be good enough with general theory, at least. Here is what we will cover this year. What exactly are rituals, what different types of rituals are there, what are the items needed in rituals, and what runes and symbols are used in rituals? Those are very important. If you somehow ended up not taking runes with this class, you will have a very hard time, I’m afraid.” Said professor Mantar.

‘Jokes on you. I already have that class!’ screamed Hatori in his head, while the other students screamed exactly the opposite.

“Today, we will learn about what exactly are the rituals. So, let’s begin. Please do open page nine of your books; there are some illustrations there, which will help you in understanding my explanations.” A few seconds of page ruffling later, the professor starts his lecture.

“Rituals essentially are the use of magic to achieve the effects which are not possible with standard magic. the components of other magical disciplines are also important in this branch of magic, since potions, runes, and even math are important.” While the professor lectures, the children look at the drawings in their book, which display all the things that Professor Mantar has just told them are in use.

“Rituals often require their place, for the effects of other kinds of magic can pollute them, and can give you disastrous and unpredictable results. Rituals should not be interrupted, for it can result in a disastrous and unpredictable result for the one who was performing the ritual, and the one who interrupted it. I cannot stress this enough; do not take rituals lightly, because even a small mistake can result in an accident or your death.” Professor Mantar points out around the classroom.

“The dangers, I’ve just told you all, are the reason why this classroom is underground. Now, let’s see what kind of rituals are done in the world. The first is the summoning ritual; we have an example of it when our king defended his claim to the throne, where his opponent summoned a water spirit to fight the king. But we have a live example, right in our class.” As soon as he said those words, all eyes turned to Hatori.

He gets a prickly sensation on his body, and his hand's ich to attack, to respond with overwhelming violence, to make them turn away, to make them look away from him.

“Then, there are fertility rituals, for both crops and the humans.” The illustrations caused the whole class to blush, while Professor Mantar continues without a care.

“Then, there are combat rituals. These are all wide topics, so this year you will only get an overview of them. Next year, should any of you survive, we will dig deeper into them. But of course, these aren’t the only rituals; but these are sufficient for you for now. We will be performing some practical magic in this class, so be ready for that.”

PART 5.

After that, the final class for the day is runes. The class of rituals and potions is put on alternate days. Arriving in class, they find Professor Krodhatma waiting for them, already in class.

“Welcome children, to the runes. This class will teach you to use the magic of symbols, and how important it is in the development and research of magic. not to mention, how necessary it is for the rituals, which I presume you’ve just returned from, judging from the incense smell coming from your clothes.” The children laughed at this observation.

When Hatori met Professor Krodhatma last year, he seems irate all the time, as if the world has wronged him personally. Though he seems calm now, Hatori senses his magic boiling deep within. This calm façade is nothing more than a cover to hide the rage within.

When Hatori hears about what they will be covering this year, he is disappointed. He already knows the basics of runes; he does not need a primer on them anymore. the standard script just doesn’t look as great as it once did, since Zeko taught him his rune script.

As the class was being let out for the final time of the day, the professor approached Hatori. “How is my favorite student doing?” he said, favoring Hatori with a smile.

“Good.” Hatori is uncomfortable with this blatant favoritism. “Now, I already know you have experience with runes, so I won’t bore you with these plebian beginner projects. You can look forward to special projects for you, specially designed for you by me. I warn you, though, they won’t be easy.”

“I look forward to them, professor.” Said Hatori with a smile.

“That’s the attitude.” Then, someone muttered the forbidden word.

“He must be mad.”

“I’m not mad. I am angry! Professor angry is what I’m called, you understand?” His magic fills the classroom, promising pain and destruction.

The students flee, while Hatori moves calmly. These people get spooked so easily. Which is probably why Zeko is not teaching them. They would be nothing more than a gibbering mess if he taught them.

PART 6.

In the library, Hatori is reading about the lightning element. Though it has only been one day since he arrived at the Academy, he is already reading up on this element and plans to start training to use it. The element seems difficult to use. Much like water or fire, lightning doesn’t exist by itself. But producing it and controlling it seems harder than those two.

“I like students who learn things on their own.” Said professor Dhiraj, taking a seat in front of Hatori.

“Professor.” Greeted Hatori. “I didn’t know you came to the library.”

“While it is true that we have our sources of books built in our living areas, sometimes, we need certain books or articles which are available here. No need to increase our already unwieldy book collections in that case. Wouldn’t you agree?” said Professor Dhiraj.

“Yes, of course.” Said Hatori with a nod. It makes sense when you think about it.

“Now, I see you’re looking at the lightning element. It is a difficult element to master since you need to know the laws of electricity, how it works and reacts, and how to bend it to your will. The last part is the hardest to master.” Said Dhiraj.

“You know a lot about it, professor.” Said Hatori.

“Of course, I’m a master of this element.” Said Dhiraj. “I suppose with potions and lightning, I can catch the lightning in the bottle.” He said with an amused grin.

“I don’t know about any bottles, but I want to learn this element.” Said Hatori.

“Good. You will have to be stubborn if you wish to learn this element. I can teach you the basic things about it, what do you say?” offered Dhiraj.

“No problem professor.” Said Hatori. After all, this would make his life much easier. How could he refuse such an offer?

“Though we’ll need to have those lessons on weekends. I suspect we won’t have time otherwise.” Said Dhiraj. “I will see you this weekend then.”

“Thank you, Professor Dhiraj.” Said Hatori, and Dhiraj walks away.

This does not mean that he just left the text he was reading on the lightning element. Hatori continues to study it, making sure to come back to it once he gets his first lesson from the professor of potions.

‘And then, I’ll find out why I’m so attracted to this element.’ Thinks Hatori.

It hasn’t escaped his notice that lightning seems to play a prominent role in his magic. When his magic was awakened, he talked with lightning; that’s what he felt like. When Ramya bothered him, he shocked her by accident. Come to think of it, he hasn’t seen her ever since.

‘I don’t have time to find out what she is doing.’ Hatori shakes his head to get rid of the distracting thoughts.

For now, learning the lightning element, and making it his own is the most important. Then, he can have his unique element among his friends.

(End.)