While Anna quietly sat on her chair without moving a single muscle, with her mind completely in shambles, Noel and Winston were having a decent lunch and continued on with their harmonious conversation.

“Oh, you’re curious about how I did that speed boost thing back then?” Winston wore a surprised look and smiled. “It’s actually pretty simple. Well, not really, it’s a pretty hard skill to pull off, but it’s simple in concept.”

Winston then placed his glass of water on the table and raised his hand. Placing his finger on the surface of the water, he controlled his mana, and tiny pops and bubbles continuously formed on the water’s surface.

Noel, who was analyzing it seriously, widened his eyes with visible surprise in his gait, and he rubbed his chin with his mind rapidly deducing various ideas. Eventually, he landed on the most probable hypothesis that could explain Winston’s mysterious technique.

“Mana… explosion?” Noel asked.

“It’s similar to that.” Winston pulled back his finger and wiped the liquid that splashed onto the table with a wave of formless mana, gathering it all into a perfect sphere of water, and dropped it to the ground with a splat. “You just can’t explode mana on your body and expect yourself to propel forward with such fine control.”

“Of course. If you did something like that, you’d have already torn off your legs,” chuckled Noel.

It was interesting. Really interesting. Noel himself had never thought of such an ingenious way of movement using formless mana. With its nature as a non-structured technique, its utilization could be said to be varied and wide.

“The way I do it is pretty simple.” Winston raised both of his arms and clenched his right fist. “Imagine my left hand as my origin, and my right hand as the destination. Using formless mana as the propulsion force, and the destination as the target, I utilize some of my secret sauce and space magic skills to essentially…” he slammed his open palm to his right hand, clamping down on the closed fist.

“To essentially catapult yourself through space just like the pull-back variant of a recall spell,” Noel murmured with a shimmer in his eyes.

“Yep. And it’s all raw mana control,” said Winston sheepishly. “And you know how impossibly hard that will be without insane spatial awareness, reflex, and reaction speed.”

“Sigh…” Noel was stumped. “That’s indeed impossibly hard to pull off. Even I wouldn’t dare to attempt something as reckless as that, much less utilize it in actual combat. A single mishap and you’re basically dead with how fast you’re moving.”

“But it’s ingenious and practically unstoppable though. Space locks, anti-teleport arrays, they’re all meaningless when you’re dealing with my speed. I can even add some spices to-“ Winston abruptly stopped speaking as he zipped his mouth shut. “Whoops, I don’t want to reveal my trump cards now to someone who I can’t beat in a fight.”

Noel chuckled and took a sip of his tea before he then leaned forward with a grin. “So, it looks like it’s my time to explain how my magic works.”

“That’s right, baby! Now come on, I wanna know how you defeated me with that bullshit of yours!” Winston grinned enthusiastically and leaned forward to listen better.

Anna, who just woke up from her dazed state, almost lost her mind again upon hearing that Noel was actually going to reveal his secret… Okay, maybe not the whole truth, but it’s still a significant thing for her to process.

“First of all, what do you think a miracle is?” Noel mysteriously asked.

“A miracle?” Winston hummed the word and furrowed his brows. “A miracle… is when something impossible happens, right?”

“Well, that’s what you would call a true miracle, where the impossible does happen through some godly intervention… but if it can happen, then was it truly something impossible in the first place? Perhaps we just deemed it impossible because of our own inability to do such things,” Noel chuckled. “That’s a thought for me to solve later. But no, miracles are when something highly improbable happens through sheer dumb luck.”

“Just like how you were born, or how we’re in a world thriving with life, or how magic exists; it’s all sourced to a near impossible event, a cause, that had bloomed itself into a miracle.”

“So miracles are everywhere, is that what you’re saying?” Winston asked thoughtfully as his brown eyes glowed with a tinge of gold.

“Yes. If you think about it, everything is one big miracle,” Noel muttered with a grin.

“Now that’s a unique perspective indeed!” Winston crossed his arms and nodded his head.

“So, if a miracle is just an event of extreme impossibility occurring… Then controlling miracles is just controlling probability.” Noel smiled. “And that’s Miracle Magic.”

“Oh, wow…” Winston nodded his head sagely, paused, then smiled teasingly. “ So you’re a massive fan of the Archmage of Miracles, huh?”

Anna, who was listening in on the conversation, expected that Winston would act more shocked or curious as to how a mage can control fucking probability, which is basically stepping into the realm of the divine.

Instead, Winston focused on this little tidbit.

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

“You could say that.” Noel sipped on his tea and raised the cup to the sky. “But back to the topic.”

“If it’s all just probability, then that means I have practical control over any event that can occur as long as it’s not impossible. For example.” On Noel’s wrist, the white wristbands covered in runic symbols released a dim glow, and Noel chanted, “This cup will land on the table perfectly.”

…

Just like that, time quickly passed and school had already come to an end.

The sun was setting on the distant horizon, dying the land with a warm orange afterglow.

From the gates of the academy, Noel and Anna, who were standing side by side with each other, disappeared abruptly as space warped.

There was also Melvin, Leo, and Simon who rode on a gorgeous carriage and disappeared into the far-off distance. And, if one looked closely before they entered the carriage while the door remained open, they would have seen a mysterious lady of voluptuous build and a dazzling face reading a porn magazine with a bored look.

Alice, Kain, and strangely Rhett followed suit with them wearing battle-ready outfits. They seemed to be preparing for another dive down the labyrinth below the royal capital, as the monster infestation remained as rowdy as ever.

After them were Rob, Holly, and Elaine. They each carried a strange paper bag storing pots full of dirt, a clock, and even some mana crystals.

Lastly was Winston, who walked out of the school with a mysterious grin.

While walking home, Holly couldn’t help but take the occasional glances at Rob and blushed hard upon remembering the events back in lunch.

There’s no way he knows, right? Holly desperately thought as her heart raced.

“Hey, Holly,” Elaine whispered to her ear. “You want me to help you hook up with Rob? I know some ways to nudge you two a little closer.”

“N-No!” Holly blushed harder as she stepped away from Elaine.

Elaine laughed teasingly upon witnessing her reaction, while Rob remained unfazed by the two’s boisterous behavior and continued walking on the slightly crowded street.

“You know, Alice and Kain really are a goofy couple,” Rob murmured.

Elaine, who was busy trying to tease Holly, turned to look at Rob and nodded her head like a wise old sage. “Indeed they are!”

“Goofy?” Holly awkwardly scratched her cheek and looked away. “I guess they are a bit strange, but they’re good people!”

“I never said they were bad people, just… unexpected,” Rob explained with a smile. “Anyways, today’s lunch was pretty fun all things considered.”

“Of course it was!” said Elaine. “I get to eat all kinds of food for free because of them!”

“What an opportunist brat,” Rob groaned and ruffled her hair. “You better use all the energy from that food to train hard tonight.”

“Ugh!” Elaine moaned helplessly. “I get it! You don’t have to say it all the time!”

“I think Elaine’s working hard enough,” said Holly. “Or maybe I’m just being too lenient.”

Elaine, who was about to hug Holly from her kind words, stopped and glared at her. “It’s not like you’re any better!”

Rob chuckled at her outrage, but he seemed to have remembered something as he asked. “Elaine, do you have any plans for Saturday?”

“Saturday?” Elaine raised her eyebrows. “Yeah? I plan on visiting a concert by Trixy!”

“Trixy? That mysterious masked singer?” Holly inquired.

“The one and only! The rising star who has taken the capital by storm with her wonderful music that can shake the hearts of many! Rumors say that her voice is as captivating as a mermaid’s singing and perhaps even better!” Elaine joyfully explained as one could feel the excitement radiating off her.

“Then, I guess that only leaves Holly…” Rob murmured as he looked at Holly with a smile.

A foreboding feeling came over Holly’s heart at that moment as she felt her breathing stop when meeting Rob’s gaze.

Rob then approached her and, with a casual grin, asked, “You want to go on a date this Saturday?”

“…”

Just like on their afternoon lunch, the two girls descended into sudden silence as Elaine’s face morphed into one of pure shock, surprise, and chaos, like a psychedelic mirage of expressions.

Holly, on the other hand, had her mind metaphorically explode into bits of goo. At that moment, not a single thought ran through her mind.

Rob didn’t seem to mind her silence though as he continued, “You don’t have to go though if you don’t want to, but it’d be a little lonely for me to celebrate all on my own in the weekend.”

“Wait, wait!” Holly finally woke up from her trance as she felt her heart tremble rapidly. “I’ll go!”

“Really?” Rob smiled widely and squinted his eyes. With a subtle golden glow, he asked another question, “You’ll really go on a date with me?”

“Y-Y-Yeah! Sure! I-I’ll go-go on a d-d-date with you!” Holly stammered with a face flushed red.

“Wait a damn minute!” Elaine, who was also stunned from shock, regained her composure and pulled back Rob. “Why do you want to go on a date with hers anyway?!”

“I just feel like celebrating.” Rob shrugged his shoulders.

“Celebrate what exactly?” Elaine asked.

“My success, duh,” said Rob with a look that gave off the feeling of someone staring at a stupid monkey.

“I know that! But what success are you talking about?!” Elaine harrumped and stomped her foot on the ground.

“If you really want to know, then listen closely, because I’m only saying this once.” Rob smiled.

Elaine and Holly, hypnotized by his alluring tone, approached closer with perked-up ears.

Rob, now having captured their attention, squinted his eyes that glowed brighter with a golden tinge, and continued, “Let’s just say that after Friday, if things go as planned, then the whole world will fall right under my thumb..”

“Bruh!” Elaine clicked her tongue. “It’s just another one of your stupidly cryptic answers!”

“What can I say, I just love being mysterious.” Rob laughed. “A great thief would obviously know that becoming a mystery is a trait one needs to have to be successful in the field of stealing.”

…

Winston Champ, an ordinary young man with an ordinary appearance, with the only distinguishable and special trait of his is him being a student of the prestigious Vizwel Royal Academy, walked up to an empty house and turned on the lights.

“I’m home,” he called out to the darkness and took off his shoes.

He then went to the kitchen to grab a cold glass of water, went up the stairs to return to his bedroom, and plopped down on his plain white bed. With one last look at the plain ceiling above him cloaked in shadows, Winston chuckled and mumbled, “Sweet dreams to me.”

And so, he slowly closed his eyes and regulated his breathing. His heart slowed down, his breathing became rhythmic and steady, and his body stopped moving completely.

The next moment, Winston opened his eyes to find himself completely submerged in a sticky colorless liquid.

Remaining calm and unmoving, he watched as a man with a body akin to the dark abyss, wearing a white lab coat and an ordinary pair of glasses pressed some buttons, and the tank he was in opened up.

Winston burst straight out of the pod and he coughed loudly to expel the liquid within him, before finally feeling alive and refreshed.

“Fucking hell, I hate your pods,” Winston grumbled and slowly stood up. His body felt alien and strange, like a strange humanoid lifeform with warped senses. There was also the weird feeling of his skin touching the fabrics of space and time as if he could physically touch this previously invisible field.

“Having fun with your new body?” Mammon asked with a smile, returned to his desk, and took a sip of his coffee.

“Yeah…” Winston chuckled and looked up, revealing the interior of an incredibly large lab filled to the brim with equipment and those damned pods.