“Huh?” Alec exclaimed and tilted his head. That was the best act he could muster up at a moment’s notice. Seeing his reaction, Ms. Rebecca sighed and took off her glasses before leaning forward, closing the distance between their faces to mere centimeters.

“Are you sure you don’t want to answer?” she asked, her breath rough and shaky. A deep frown settled into Alec’s face as he pushed himself as far away as he could from her, which was not much. He hit the headboard of the bed not long after.

“Is this... Is this sexual harassment? I’m sorry but this is too much for a student and te-” Alec was about to reprimand before Ms. Rebecca put her finger over his lips.

“Shushh...” she said. Alec was getting more and more uncomfortable and an involuntary reaction escaped his lips.

“Eurgh...”

No matter how attractive his professor was, her coming on to him like this was, in many ways, disgusting. Alec’s body was barely 19, and god knows how old this mage professor was. As far as he knew, she could be hundreds of years old and using some kind of disguise magic to look young.

“Did you just...” she muttered as she quickly pulled back. Noticing her absent-mindedness, Alec jumped off of the bed artistically and escaped as fast as he could, leaving the master healer dumbfounded and alone. “You just ‘eurgh’ed me! You fucking bastard! Don’t ever let me see your face again!”

Listening to her shouts slowly fading away in the distance, Alec increased his pace and clicked his tongue.

‘That didn’t make any sense. She wasn’t this kind of person before. It’s as if her personality has completely changed for some reason,’ Alec reminisced. Ms. Rebecca had always been a cold person, there was no reason for her to do a 180 like this. ‘The fact that she has let me go means that she doesn’t necessarily know about The Author’s Pen. If she did, she would’ve done everything in her power to either kill me or take the artifact away from me.’

Once he was outside the infirmary building, Alec relaxed and slowed down.

‘I should go back to the dorms for now...’

***

“Ahahaha!” Evan held his belly as his laughter reverberated throughout the room. Tears trickling down his face, he continued. “She actually did that, and you said... You just eurgh’ed to her face!?”

“Yeah, man. Didn’t you laugh enough?” Alec asked. It took Evan quite a bit of time to calm down. Wiping away the last drop of tear from his eye, Evan coughed away the tightness in his throat.

“Okay, okay,” Evan said. His facial muscles relaxed briefly, forming an ugly expression before returning to his normal, resting face. “Why did she go that far anyway? What was she asking?”

“It was some weird question I don’t really want to talk about,” Alec answered. “Anyway, do you have any idea why she might’ve acted like that?”

“Honestly, if this isn’t some sick fetish imagination of yours, I don’t really know,” Evan answered, which caused Alec to cross his arms. However, Evan’s face suddenly lit up, as he joined his hands together under his chin. “Now that I think about it... She seems to have a dubious past. Although none of the students have seen the master healer from back then...”

“Stop being cryptic,” Alec urged him. Patting his shoulder, he continued by saying, “Just explain.”

“Well, it’s not really from a reputable source but...” Evan muttered. His shoulders lowered. Looking around as if there could be someone listening to them, he continued. “There were some people that said she was a... different person before starting her work here as a professor. She was working in a different kind of industry.”

“Huh... But that isn’t confirmed?” Alec asked. However, before Evan could answer, he raised his hand to stop and said, “That’s just a rumor... This wasn’t useful at all.” When he said so, Evan slapped him on the back of his head.

“Don’t ask if you are not going to listen,” he said. “Whatever, you took the classes I told you to, right?”

“Yup. Right now should be...”

“Arcana 201?” Evan asked, which Alec promptly confirmed by nodding.

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Leaving the dorms and heading toward the lecture building, the two managed to arrive at their destination in less than fifteen minutes.

“It’s a miracle you can navigate this place so easily,” Alec commented. The Academy grounds were very spacious. So much so that in its entirety, it was probably as big as a small city in the modern world. ‘What’s more is,’ Alec thought. ‘This entire place is surrounded by walls. Magic must have made the building process much easier.’

“Although the academy might be pretty big, you get used to it quickly. Most lecture halls are pretty close to each other after all.”

“Mm.”

Opening the sliding door, the duo entered the lecture hall. It was a classic, amphitheater-style lecture hall with wooden seats and desks. The place had been equipped with soundproofing magic arrays, manifesting as geometrical shapes made of faint, blue lines on the walls.

Because of the soundproofing, the transition from the silence of the corridor to the chatters in the lecture hall was dizzying. Even though spacious, almost every seat was taken. Alec could count more than two hundred students taking the class, which made him wonder if this was because it was one of the mandatory courses that a second-year student had to take.

The students in the front rows saw Alec coming in, and most looked at him with awe and surprise.

“He’s back already?” One of them whispered to the other. The one who was asked the question wasn’t more knowledgeable than the one asking.

“Wow. Mr. Celebrity is back at it again, I guess,” Evan said with a shit-eating grin on his face. He also didn’t forget to poke Alec’s side with his elbow, which made Alec shove him away.

“Shut up. I just want to get through the classes,” he said. Picking themselves two seats from the middle rows, the duo started waiting for the professor.

While waiting, Alec started thinking about his further pursuit of magic.

‘As I have seen from my duel with Iris, I have to change my method of approaching magic,’ he thought. Even with all the training he had done during the past month, all the doping he did with his potions, and his little trick of carrying magic circles on paper with him, he had barely managed to draw close to a tie. Iris had higher firepower, a wider range of utility, and an overall better knowledge of magic. ‘I wanted to wait a little bit more and train before starting on the upgrade potions but... It seems that I have to accelerate my progress.’

As he contemplated, the professor, a man of middle age with bright blue eyes and jet-black hair entered the room. He wore a black jacket on top of a white shirt, making him look more like a student than a professor. If not for the stubble on his chin and the crow’s feet forming around his eyes, Alec wouldn’t have been able to tell he was older than him at all.

“I’m Andrew Walker. I doubt any of you know me, as I don’t teach first-year courses. During my class, call me Mr. Walker and don’t disturb others. As long as you do that, I don’t care what you do with your time,” the professor said. His voice was being amplified by a voice-enhancement magic, suppressing all the other voices in the lecture hall.

As the professor’s introduction faded back into his mind, Alec went back to his line of thought.

‘I should be capable of writing upgrade potions for all the different stats on the system,’ Alec thought. ‘I have to start with very low upgrade potions and make my way up there. Assuming their costs are the same, I should be capable of creating one of each every day, and maybe a few extra. I don’t know how long they will keep their effectiveness, so I’ll have to experiment with that.’

“Hey,” Evan whispered, distracting Alec. “The class is starting, listen.”

“Oh...” Alec exclaimed before nodding along. After Evan’s attention was back on the professor, Alec looked around the lecture hall and saw that every single student was listening intently.

‘Huh. This place sure is filled with nerds,’ Alec thought before putting his hand inside his jacket’s inner pocket. From there, he pulled out a vial filled with very low grade focus potion. ‘Heh...’

Downing the potion in one go, Alec shifted his attention back to the professor.

“As you can see,” the professor said. Folding one of his sleeves, he revealed a tattoo of incredibly complicated geometric shapes, all forming into a triangular, magic circle-like shape. If Alec had to count all the individual pieces of the tattoo without the aid of a focus potion, he would probably graduate before doing so. “This is a mana brain. It helps mages with their calculations. Spellcasting in the middle of a battle is never easy, and people with less magic-focused specializations can divert their attention more into reading the enemy’s movements.”

Alec’s ears perked up at the mention of the term mana brain. Opening a notebook, he started noting down every word of the professor with vigor.

“I’m sure you have experienced this before. You are trying to cast a spell, and the opponent is on your tail. What do you do? Do you focus on actually casting the spell, or do you divert your attention to respond to your opponent, jeopardizing your spellcasting process?” Professor Andrew asked. Students kept their mouths shut as if they were listening to an important advertisement.

“Neither. You become a better mage and use a mana brain,” the professor made his point before glancing over the excited students. “Of course. Using the mana brain comes with some difficulties,” the professor continued before raising his arm to show the students the dormant mana brain tattoo on his arm. After that, the mana brain lit up with mana, glowing in blue.

“When active, a mana brain will partake in your mana pool. It doesn’t have an active cost, but it does lower your maximum capacity,” he continued. “You might think, ‘Oh, I’ll just put more points in mana when I level up!’ but it doesn’t work like that. You see, these mana brains are literally copies of your own. So the thing is, the higher your mind stat is, the higher their effectiveness. As a mage, what you have to do is figure out the most effective distribution for yourselves.”

When the professor finished his sentence, Alec’s heart skipped a beat. The surrounding noises faded into the back of his mind, a mental chuckle made Alec clasp his hand over his mouth.

‘Oh no... If only there was a way for me to increase both the mana stat and the mind stat at the same time...’