"Old man! What're you doing here? This is the Dean's office." I question the old man sitting before miss Alysia and I, he was the same one who'd helped me when I'd passed out due to my system encountering an error.
"...Miss Illionan, please refrain from referring to the Dean of the Alterron Royal Academy, one of the most respected and powerful mages in the empire, as 'Old Man'," Miss Alysia deadpans before sighing and looking at the old man I know knew was the Dean apologetically.
"...eh? EHHH?! He's the Dean of the Academy?? Ahaha~ ..my bad sir. *Ahem* Thank you for helping me last week." I say after getting over my surprise at the revelation that he wasn't just some old man like he'd initially claimed when we first met.
Miss Alysia looks at me speculatively for a moment upon realizing I'd already encountered the dean before, "I hope we're not interrupting anything sir, I'm here with miss Illionan to seek your guidance on how to go about her magical studies. I don't think I'm personally suited to instruct the girl on magic in all honestly sir, today's events have proven that to me. Thankfully the outcome wasn't detrimental to anyone but I worry that won't necessarily be the case if something similar were to happen again."
"Not at all, I was actually expecting the two of you," the dean claims with a slight mischevious sparkle in his eyes, "and it is ok. For the information you had available to you, I think you performed well. I'm thankful to have teachers like you at the Academy on whom I can rely on."
Miss Alysia appears caught off guard by the sudden compliment, "Y-you honor me sir, however, I think that it is really us teachers who all rely on you and not the other way around."
"Woww, from her reaction, I guess Miss Alysia must really respect the dean," I think to myself as I continue to watch their interchange.
"Nonsense, you all have helped me more than you know," the dean reassures Alysia before turning to me, "Child, I'd like you to tell me what you know of magic."
"...Basically nothing sir," I clench my hands by my sides, barely keeping the frustration I so strongly feel from leaking into my words, "I was actually banned from learning or practicing magic because I offended a Royal Official when I was younger."
"Yes, we are aware of your circumstances and we have been permitted to teach you magic so there's no need to worry yourself. Hmmm, let me ask you this as well; why is it that you desire to learn magic? You seem to have quite a talent for the path of the warrior, do you not wish to pursue that instead?" The dean focuses on me, awaiting my answer with a strange intensity to his eyes.
The truth was, I hadn't thought much of it before. Being reborn in this world I just kind of assumed that I would learn magic, especially once I'd been awakened to it. I also like fighting though, I took a lot of pride in learning martial arts and gymnastics in my previous life. Being in control of my body and being capable of doing things with it that others could not was incredibly freeing to me, and those feelings had only been heightened in this world thanks to the internal use of my mana.
So what about magic and spellcraft then?
As I collected my thoughts, I began to speak, "Well magic to me sir has always been the most amazing thing, if.. if this world didn't have magic then I think the world would be a much duller place. A place filled with people who struggle their entire lives just to never stand out from their peers, with people who only get themselves ahead by tearing down those around them, and while they're doing this, the wealthy would do nothing but take and take as they continuously leech off the hopes of everyone else without ever dreaming for anything bigger than the plain world they live in." As the silence began to drag on, neither Alysia or the dean knowing exactly what to say to my likely odd sounding philosophical rant that seemingly came out of nowhere, I hurriedly continued on, "Ahah, sorry I tend to go on tangents sometimes. In short I guess I want to become an adventurer like my parents, and I feel like magic is likely the greatest adventure of all, without it other adventures just woudln't feel the same so I don't want to miss out on that."
"Hahaha, a surprisingly earnest and insightful answer. For a moment it was if I could almost see the incredibly dreary place that your imagination birthed from thinking of a world without magic." The dean laughs jovially, lightening the atmosphere a bit and causing me to blush slightly as I realized I'd been a little too absorbed in thoughts of my previous world when answering his question.
"It's not easy though to just forget a couple decades worth of utter monotony, where no matter how hard I struggled and tried day after day it all amounted to practically nothing in the end," I shook myself from those dark thoughts, "It's ok though, this time I'll accomplish all the dreams which I was forced to leave behind on earth!"
The dean is stroking his beard thoughtfully at the moment before he seems to decide on something, "Hmm, I think considering the circumstances... I shall just instruct you myself."
"B-but sir! What of all the nobles who you've told that you'd never take another apprentice again?! Won't this just put a huge target on her back?" Miss Alysia immediately protests against the deans proclamation.
"Relax Alysia, I certainly empathize with your worry for our students but you forget your place," the dean reprimands as Alysia hurriedly stammers out an apology, "I would never suggest something that may needlessly put one of our students in danger. Also I'm not planning to become the girls master, although her unique affinity may in fact prove to be compatible with my own in the future, my intention for now however is just to flesh out her basic magic education."
"While obviously I won't refuse such an offer sir, isn't teaching someone the basics of magic a bit too far beneath you?" I can't help but ask in response, "It's like having a brilliant physicist or something teaching a class of toddlers what 1+1 is..." While I'd like to think that I could at least learn faster than a preschooler, the analogy still felt like an apt one considering my experiences and the mishaps they'd led to thus far.
"Indeed, I'm sure many will scratch their heads and wonder to no end at why I'm doing such a thing. I have my reasons though, so don't worry about inconveniencing me child," the dean smiles kindly at me before continuing on more seriously, "I will warn you though, Miss Alysia's concerns aren't unwarranted. And while I personally believe you'll be able to handle whatever situations may arise as a result of my teaching you, it still remains that the pressure of other people's criticism and dissatisfaction can have a way of getting to you and wearing you down over time."
"I appreciate that you both seem to care. I think I'll be ok though, I'll just have to work extra hard in the future to prove myself apart from the people who're jealous of me," I say in reply, "Seriously though, if I let the jealousy of some children get me down then my previous life was definitely wasted."
"Good good, I hope you will maintain that attitude going forwards," the dean says appreciatively before he turns, seemingly to look around his office for something.
His office appears surprisingly mundane at a glance, being shaped like a two story hexagonal prism, lined with towering bookshelves on all of the walls... No that wasn't quite right, the bookshelves weren't on every wall because when we'd walked in the dean had been sitting at a large wooden desk that lay nestled in an alcove along one of the walls... And I'd somehow almost forgotten the spiral staircase off to my left which naturally had to be there so you could get up to the balcony which ringed the second level of bookshelves. Turning towards the other wall, I noticed the dean was continuing his search for something in a room off to the side that from what I can see is also hexagonal in shape and lined with various objects inscribed densely with unrecognizable runes, of course the room had always been there so his office was more like two hexagons combined along one edge. Looking back to my left I see what looks like the magical equivalent of a Keurig on a counter, where I thought I'd seen a staircase a moment ago... "What is going on??" I thought as I blinked and sure enough the spiral staircase was right where I'd seen it, my mind somehow feeling like it'd been there the entire time. "Um.. is your office like built in the 4th dimension or something?" I ask with a nervous gulp, "Seriously though, who uses like weird spatial / dimensional magic just on a personal office??"
"Hmm, 4th dimension?" He looks up from a moment from where he'd been searching, "You could say that, though it wouldn't quite be accurate... it's more like three dimensional space has been reflected back onto itself, it all technically exists in the same plane but you're just more or less aware of certain parts of it at any given moment. It's great for saving space, since anything I need is simply a room away. I wouldn't think too much about it for now, though if you're curiousity is insatiable I can try to properly explain it for you in more depth later. I'm surprised you even noticed it your first time in here to be honest, most of the time our minds have a tendency to just understand things in whatever way we subconsciously find most convenient despite the reality of the situation."
"Like with optical illusions," I quickly respond, "So if it all technically exists in one plane then that must mean it's a matter of relative perspective... is it like some sort of spatial kaleidoscope then? The hexagonal shape of your office is constantly reflected somehow along the edges of the room but if your personal perspective isn't aligned properly then the expanded spaces attached to it would be cut off from your ability to perceive them? So what serves to 'rotate' the kaleidoscope so that you can perceive all the various perspectives that're normally being cut off.. it's almost like it's intuitively controlled by my thoughts?"
At this point Miss Alysia is looking at me like I'm some sort of alien. "W-what, how could you possibly understand all of that at a glance?? The [Kaleidoscape] spell is considered an incredibly complex spatial manipulation spell, which only a few mages in the entire Empire are even capable of casting..." she sputters out. This was my first time ever seeing her composure slip so much.
"Hahahaha~," the deans laughter booms out as he walks back towards us with some sort of metal disk that's covered with various runes in hand, "Your insight is incredible child, to be able to understand the true nature of my office at such a simple explanation and a brief look around. I find myself looking forward to our lessons in the future, who knows perhaps you'll end up teaching me a thing or two."
"Oh nooo~, I was just a bit of a nerd when it came to space and shit like that on earth so I couldn't help but voice my thoughts about how the spatial magic may have worked. I hope they're not going to think I'm some sort of genius now, I may seem like one in some topics compared to other 15 year olds, but once I hit the limit of my knowledge from my previous life I'd probably barely be considered as having above average intelligence at best," I mentally chastised myself for the hole I'd unintentionally wound up digging for myself.
Congratulations! For impressing those who stand far above you on the path of Spellcraft, all stats will go up by 1.
Extra stat point retained for further distribution.
"A fucking 'all stats up' just for impressing two people??" I briefly stood there shocked before pulling up my status screen.
Name: Syllara Illionan Current Title: Natural Disaster (1 bonus effect) Stats: Affinities: Strength: 12(+2) Air: 2 (+22%) Dexterity: 17(+3) Water: 1 (+10%) Constitution: 11(+2) Earth: 1 (+10%) Intelligence: 17(+2) Fire: 1 (+10%) Wisdom: 16(+2) Light: 2 (+22%) Charisma: 12(+2) Dark: 1 (+10%) Mana: 999(???) ???: 11(max) (+220%) Total Points: 1,084 Total Affinity Bonus: 304% Unspent Points: 1 Mana Stat Bonus: 99.9% Level: 21 Total Magic Bonus: 403.9% Personal Skills: Mana Drafting
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My stats were slowly getting closer to pushing me to level 22, once I decided where to put my unspent point I'd only need 15 more to level up. I'd noticed it before already but the "(+x)" next to my individual stat was already included in the number next to it, I guess it just served to display any sort of bonuses I'd acquired to my stats. As I'd gotten older and my physical abilities had increased, the number just direcly added onto the total without also showing in the parentheses next to it so I knew anything that added to the number in parentheses was a little more special than just naturally increasing your aiblities. I'd probably put the unspent point into dexterity again, but for now I would hold onto it until I had more time to think about it.
"Before you leave for the day, I'd like for you to put a small sample of your mana into this Protodisk. It should help me to understand your unique mana type a bit better, at least as it relates to the other stable elements," the dean holds the "Protodisk" towards me, "Just place your hand on the central portion of the disk and allow some of your mana to leak out of your palm."
The disk appeared like a circular piece of some type of matte blackish grey metal, the top of it was slightly convex and around the center of it where I was instructed to put my hand were an assortment of runes forming two dimaonds which shared vertices at the left and right sides and had lines connecting the top sides to each other as well as to a smaller circle in the center, nine of the vertices and midpoints of the formed shape were raised and formed some sort of hollow node at each of them.
I placed my palm in the center of the disk and held my breath as I poured a small amount of mana into the strange disk, "Don't explode or turn into some death frisbee or something please." Thankfully my worries proved misplaced for once, as my mana embedded itself into the center portion of the disk it just began to softly glow there without doing anything else for the moment.
"That should be enough child, thank you. Tomorrow I'd like for you to meet me here instead of going to your normal classes so that I can begin your instruction on magic," the dean dismissed Miss Alysia and I as he turned his focus towards the disk which now contained a portion of my mana.
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Dean of the Academy's POV:
As Miss Alysia and my new student left my office I began my examination of her mana through the use of the "Protodisk". The purpose of the disk was to store an individuals mana and determine the efficiency at which it could be converted to any other stable form of mana and then back again. This should give me a basic idea for how her mana functions as well as which types of magic she should more easily and efficiently be able to cast once she learns how to control her unique form of mana. "Let's just hope her mana doesn't end up forcing her to create an entirely new school of spellcraft like mine did," I sighed to myself before activating the disk.
The runes on the disk which formed the pathways to convert mana lit up before her mana began to be sequentially funneled out from the center along the paths. The longer it took to fill up the raised nodes on the disk, the less efficient the conversion from its original form, and since the mana had been separated and sealed from Syllara her individual affinities shouldn't affect the speed either. This meant the protodisk was capable of measuring just the the mana itself, I could also later have her actively provide mana while it ran to see which affinities her innate talent lay more in the direction of though I'd be willing to bet it was towards lightning considering who her family was. The speed for each conversion would be measured between 1 and 10 seconds, with the maximum time being 90 seconds and the minimum being 9 seconds, this corresponded to each of the 9 proven stable forms of mana for humans.
First Light: 1 seond
Second Dark: 1 second
Third Air: 1 second
Fourth Water: 1 second
Fifth Earth: 1 second
Sixth Fire: 1 second
Seventh Lightning: 1 second
Eighth Ice: 1 second
Ninth Magma: 1 second
"Interesting... all 9 in the minimum time, just what exactly is her mana... Even though I know it's impossible, I almost wonder what would have happened if I could use a Protodisk capable of converting mana to all of it's 26 theoretical forms?" I mused briefly, but sadly even with the help of the elves such a protodisk was impossible to create unless you somehow got a dungeon to make such a thing for you. For millenia, human mages had only been able to stably use 9 forms of mana. The most common other sentient races, Dwarves and Elves, had access to 12 and 18 stable forms of mana respectively. While only dungeons and perhaps some rare mythical creatures (thought this was unproven) were truly capable of using all 26 forms of mana. Reigning my thoughts in for the moment, I prepared the disk to convert her mana back into its original form , the efficiency of the return conversion wasn't measured by time but by how much mana remained left over at the end. A mage's ability to convert mana back to whatever its natural state was within them determined things like how efficiently they could recover their mana, how quickly they could do things like chain cast, how efficiently they could reshape residual mana from previous spells into new spells, create their own magical domains, and how much they could exert their magical influence via the use of non spell driven forms of kinesis.
As I once again activated the disk, waiting and watching with anticipation for the results, I was surprised to see that all of the mana simply vanished upon the disk's attempts at converting it back. "Well, that's a little foreboding isn't it?" I hoped it was just an inadequacy on the Protodisk's part which prevented it from returning her mana to it's original form and not that it was actually just impossible to return her mana to it's original form. If the latter were the case then it meant that any mana which she expended could never be regained, and if she ever ran out she would die.
"Hmm what to do about this..." I sat in my office stroking my beard for a long time, deep in thought.
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As I made my way back to my dorm room after leaving the dean's office and parting ways with Miss Alysia, my mind was churning with all the thoughts of things I may be capable of in the future, "If the dean is just casually using spatial magic for his office, what other things could it be used for... Storage rings & bags of holding? Warp drives? Teleportation gates? Interdimensional travel? Perpetual motion machines? Black hole power plants?" The possibilities seemed endless, "It'd be cool if I could I become a planeswalker... y'know this all makes me wonder what a fantasy world's equivalent of high fantasy is?" I was equally excited to have been given the chance to learn magic direcly under the dean of the Academy, even if it meant I'd likely end up with quite a few enemies amongst the other students, "Though since it's known that I'm an Illionan, unless my 'family' in the capital doesn't acknowledge our relationship, whoever ends up holding a grudge against me likely won't try to involve their families... I hope." My mind wandered as I continued my trek through campus, thoughts of various "arrogant young master trope" encounters playing in my head, I realized that I may have read too many translated cultivation novels on earth, "Oh well, even if this world turned out to be more Xianxia/Wuxia, so long as I never encounter the MC I should be fine... it may be best to avoid any so-called 'geniuses of my generation' as well though, which means I'm fucked considering I'm attending the top Academy in the entire Empire. Honestly picking between cultivation and magic would be tough, they're both things I never thought would be possible to experience after all. But if magic exists, then why not cultivation as well somewhere else?" I decided that if I ever became a planeswalker or capable of visiting other dimensions, then I'd try to find somewhere with cultivation and attempt to learn it.
.
.
"Are you not going to be attending the magic classes anymore Syl?" Ella asks me with a concerned look after I'd stated in the morning that I wouldn't be going to Miss Alysia's class.
"Don't look at me like that, it's not like I'm giving up or anything serious," I say to reassure my friend, "I'm just going to be studying under a different teacher for now, I may also be missing the third week of duels as well since Miss Alysia didn't seem keen on having me duel anyone at the moment. I think I'll still get to participate in the 4th week's class battles though since I'm our class representative."
"Ok, then I guess I'll just wait to see how you lead us to victory in the 4th week's competition." Ella smiles back at me, her complete faith in me making me determined to not let the angelic girl down; before we each head our separate ways, her to our regular classroom in the eastern wing of the Academy's central tower, and me into the main part of the tower to where the Dean's office was located about midway up the building.
.
.
"Come in Syllara," the Dean's amiable voice sounded from within his office after I'd finished knocking.
"Goodmorning Sir, thank you again for giving me the oppurtunity to learn from you. I'll do my best to live up to whatever expectations you have for me," I offer the wizened old man a slight bow to show my sincerity.
He smiles in return and motions for me to sit in one of two chairs around a small table I hadn't noticed being in the office from the day before, "I'm sure you'll do fine. Come let's get started, there's much you need to catch up on if you hope to compete with your peers in the coming months."
The Dean then launches into his lecture on the basic nature of magic, explaining how mana essentially makes up all things and how magic, put simply, is the manipulation of ones own mana in a way that can shape the rest of the world. Strangely enough, almost everything that he explained rang true with the laws of physics from earth. I imagined mana as like an additional building block of the universe alongside atoms, or maybe it was even smaller and existed alongside the quantum particles such as quarks, neutrinos, muons, and positrons. Mana naturally aligned with various elements and could shift between them, similar to how you could melt a solid into a liquid and then evaporate it into a gas if you added enough energy. These translations of mana could occur from the mixing of other types or the adding or removing of energy, and this was magic at it's most basic form. The concept of spellcraft however sought to expand upon this, using the natural power of the mind to provide structure and guidance to magic through the creation of specific spells. So spells were like an executable program which your mind was capable of running, and mana was the power supply needed for it. What was cool was that spells could seemingly be as rigid or as loose as you were individually capable of making them, this was because your subconscious mind served to guide the spell. So for those with a clear sense of imagination for what they wanted to accomplish, they could potentially learn to cast incredibly powerful spells by simply imagining it. At the same time though others could also condition their minds via mnemonic exercises, spell chants, spell circles, casting materials, and the use of tools like wands or staffs to alow them to spellcast with machine-like precision. These two distinct styles, which used to be referred to as "Image Casting" and "Sculpt Casting" used to be completely split, but modern spellcraft now favored a combination of both styles, which was now called "Refined Image Casting".
Refined Image Casting of spells typically used the combination of one's imagination alongside calling out a spell's name, for more complex spells one would construct spell circles as well. Apparently Refined Image Casting became standardized practice throughout all of the Empire after the last Great War, although I didn't know anything about this war I still made note of it for now. Spells were further divided into eight schools based on their purpose, surprisingly these were almost identical to what I knew from D&D on Earth, with one in particular being different and apparently created by the Dean himself. The eight were as follows:
> * Conjuration
> * Illusion
> * Evocation
> * Abjuration
> * Transmutation
> * Divination
> * Enchantment
> * Soul
With Soul being the unique one, replacing what would've been "necromancy" if this were D&D. The Dean doesn't immediately go on to explain any of the schools in detail at the moment so I'm not 100% sure that the other seven excluding soul are what I would be familiar with. He instead goes on to briefly explain how affinity's for certain elements in combination with certain personality traits tended to equate to an affinity for one of the seven schools of spellcraft, which I thought was really interesting. I always loved psychology, and psychology's impact on the development of spellcraft seemed like it could be particularly fascinating. He says we'll have to get more into that later though as he's out of time for today.
"Thank you for taking the time to teach me sir, I feel like I've learned more today than I have in the past decade..." It's hard to keep the emotion out of my voice as I profess my thanks, I was feeling pretty choked up over whatever stroke of luck had landed me as the Dean's personal student.
He looks intently at me for a moment, a strange pressure seems to fill the air from his gaze before it's gone so quickly that I barely even registered it. "You're welcome child, we will continue our lesson tomorrow on the 8 schools as well as on what types of people tend to be best suited for each."
As I lay in bed later that evening I finally remembered something important I'd forgotten, "Ahh dammit! I forgot to ask about the 'Protodisk'."