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I snorted awake as I heard the dinner bell ring and went down to get some dinner before going to my first night class for Languages of Power.

I was the first to get to class, so I got to see the room slowly fill up, and like my Array Architecture class, the first thing I noticed is the age demographic, but this time, besides myself, the youngest person in the class looked to be in his late 40s, and the oldest looked like he was going to kick the bucket at any moment.

As the adults mingled while waiting for the professor to arrive, more than 1 elderly man and woman gave me candy and head pats like I was their grandkid after we introduced ourselves to each other.

Soon, the time came for class to start, and the classroom door opened to reveal a short, slightly hunched old lady wearing glasses and walking with a cane/mage staff.

As she entered and closed the door behind her, she glanced around the classroom, and for a split second, I could have sworn her eyes locked onto mine, and for some reason, all the hair on my body rose as I got goosebumps.

And then, as she addressed the class, an unexplainable feeling of calm came over me.

I must just be tired from the sparring I did with the instructor, yeah… all I need is a good night’s sleep and I will be right as rain.

“Good evening class, as I am sure you all know, you are here for the course, Languages of Power, and I will be your teacher for this course, Professor Sageira Drackot.” She said as she nodded to her students, some of whom were most likely as old or older than her.

“As for the curriculum for this course, we will start with a language of power that many of you are familiar with, Runic script or Runic Language, but for simplicity's sake, I will refer to it as Runic script. All of you here use Runic script in the spells you cast, but it is so much more, it is a language unto itself, and if you know how to use it correctly, you will be able to go beyond just mixing and matching different runic script in the spells we use every day to get a slightly different result. If you know exactly what you are saying in Runic script, you can literally cast custom spells on the fly, like so.”

She then lazily waved her hand at the stacks of textbooks on her desk while chanting, and as she chanted, I recognized some of the words she chanted. I recognized the words for distance, velocity, target, and a few others, they were the same words that I memorized when learning 0th circle magic.

After a few seconds of chanting, the textbooks levitated to the over 60 students and gently landed on our desks.

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At first, one might think, ‘Big deal, she floated some books, I could float some books with wind magic.’, but when I really think about it, in the span of less than a 7 second chant, she imbued the spell with instructions to target more than 60 objects and move them to over 60 different locations, and the finesse of the wind magic applied was so refined that I almost mistook it for telekinesis if not for the gentle wind buffeting my hands on the table when the book came close.

As I looked around the class, I could see that most of the class came to realize the same significance of what Professor Sageira just did.

Seeing the look on our faces, Professor Sageira nodded and continued, “And that is just Runic script. Besides Runic script, for this year we will be touching on Sylvan Language, which is a language spoken by forest spirits, fey creatures, and nature deities. Sylvan scripts are used for communicating with nature, casting nature-based spells, or entering the Feywild. If any of you know the elven language, you will realize the two share a lot of similarities due to the elven language being an extremely striped down version of the Sylvan Language.

After that, we will finish off with Elemental Script, and I specifically say “script” because besides high-ranking elementals, elementals cannot talk, they mainly communicate by sharing concepts and emotions with each other, but they can still communicate with Elemental Script that they all know, there are a number of different elementals but we will be concentration on the main 4 Scripts associated with the four elemental planes (earth, air, fire, water). Elemental scripts are used to control elemental forces and cast elemental spells.”

After the introduction of the curriculum, we started our lesson with Runic script and were instructed to open our textbooks. The rest of the class went along very much like my Elven Language class, learning the words, their meanings in different contexts, and even grammatical structures.

By the end of the first class, I was bursting with ideas on how I could augment or edit the spells I currently knew, and I would have tried it the moment I exited the classroom if not for the warning to not experiment with new spells without supervision.

That last comment was obviously aimed at me, which started some good-natured old people laughs at my expense.

As I stood up, I expected to stay around to do some polite socializing, but for some reason, everyone had some kind of glazed-over look on their faces as they started saying things like, “I have an early start tomorrow.” or “I have another engagement I need to get to.” in a monotone while quickly making their way out of the classroom.

Seeing this creepy as fuck situation, I decided to make myself scarce and quickly walked after the others, but was stopped by the voice of Professor Sageira.

“Luke Ironcrest, would you mind staying back for a while? I need to have a word with you.”

At those words, my body froze in position mid-stride, I tried to shout for help, but my body did not respond, the only thing that was working as it should was my mind feaking out and my heart being on the verge of exploding from beating too fast.

When the last of the night class students left the classroom, I felt the mana warp the classroom, and there was utter silence, the only sounds I heard were my heart beating and Professor Sageira's slow methodical breaths.

“Now, would you do this old lady a favor and come over here, let me take a good look at you.”

Hearing her, my body moved on its own as I turned around and walked towards Professor Sageira. She still had the guise of a kindly old lady with a gentle smile, but to me, it looked like I was walking towards the maw of a monster.