A bone-chilling breeze—strong enough to claim the life of an ordinary person in a single night—battered against the lecture building's temperature arrays. The sky cast down a gloomy, grayish light, draping the academy grounds in a somber atmosphere.

With exams and the mid-term holiday behind them, classes now bustled with more students than ever. Alec could have sworn there weren't this many people at the academy just two weeks ago, but he had no way to prove it. Lacking evidence, he decided to set the thought aside for now.

To his side sat Evan. His gaze was breezing through a book in his hands, seemingly taking everything in at once.

'He seems to have changed lately,' Alec thought to himself. There was a hard-to-ignore glint in Evan's eyes nowadays. He felt different from the other students as if he had something that they didn't have. He also seemed bored during most classes, which was uncharacteristic as Evan was a pretty studious person. 'It feels like I am talking to a professor when I try to communicate with him...'

"What are you reading?" Alec asked. He had taken Evan's interest in him for granted for too long and only now noticed when he seemed more absorbed in his own endeavors.

"Hm? Oh," Evan exclaimed. He closed the book and placed it down with its front cover facing the desk. "It's this novel that has lately been circulating around the academy. Nobody knows who is writing it."

"What?" Alec asked, confused. He knew that the books being admitted to the library were screened pretty tightly. Although they did accept some pretty dubious books, they made sure to include an author when they did so. "What is it about?"

"Actually? Pretty much nothing," Evan said. "I was expecting it to be something interesting, but it’s just your classic underdog succeeds at the magic academy type of thing. I have already read the first ten chapters and nothing of interest has happened yet."

"Huh... Why is it so popular then?" Alec asked with his brows furrowed.

"Hmm..." Evan looked at the book's cover for a few brief seconds. His pupils shook in agony. He then turned back toward Alec. "If you are asking me for a critique of the book. It is pretty simple. The author seems to be masterful at manipulating tropes. It's as if he has written the same thing over and over again. Just slightly better and more memorable every time."

Alec flinched, his eye twitching as each and every one of Evan's words hammered at his heart.

"Ugh... Disgusting..." He muttered. Evan let out a small chuckle in answer and went back to reading.

Shortly after, a familiar face entered the classroom, making everyone calm down immediately.

"What the fuck..." Alec muttered as quietly as possible. He turned to Evan, who was rightfully surprised as well. He leaned in closer toward him and whispered. "Since when did Professor Howard start giving the Fire 201 classes?"

"Since never. This is the first time," Evan said. He then sighed deeply and opened his notebook before continuing. "The first time as far as I know, at least. Professor Howard has been dealing with school affairs since the headmaster disappeared."

"Huh..."

Straightening his posture, Alec looked straight ahead.

The white-haired middle-aged man clad in gray and red robes walked into the middle of the classroom and looked around. Whenever his gaze passed over a student, the said student would either freeze in terror or shake in excitement.

Alec was neither one of them, as Professor Hunter's gaze never settled on him. However, even still, the man was intimidating even if he didn't want to be.

From what Alec knew, Hunter Howard was currently the strongest person in the academy after the headmaster. He was about to reach the legendary level, and more importantly, specialized in fire magic.

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Once his inspection of the students was done, Professor Howard stepped back and stood in front of the blackboard. With a flick of his hand, a nearby chalk stick disintegrated into little white particles. Those white particles flew up and around the man, looking like snowflakes.

Then, a small group of those launched forward and attached themselves to the board.

[Fire 201]

The words read. Alec, and possibly many other students in the class, gulped loudly at the intimidating show of magic.

"So now, we start learning fire."

***

"That was... That was something..." Alec muttered. He doubted that he had seen such a well-prepared class before in his lives.

"Yeah..." Evan muttered. Even his now aloof attitude had seemingly broken down. "It would have been much better if he were teaching classes all this time. I wonder why they make him take care of internal affairs all day."

Alec shrugged in answer and started packing up. He was done with his classes for the day after all.

"What are you going to do now?" Evan asked.

"I have to go and talk to Professor Andrew. It seems like he has achieved some progress about the stuff we were dealing with the previous semester," Alec answered.

"Great. I hope it goes well for you," Evan said.

After parting ways with Evan, Alec walked to the special Professor labs. Professor Andrew had been making him do all sorts of menial labor around the academy, and Alec honestly couldn't blame him. Even though he had managed to recover a lost piece of gravity magic, that was all thanks to The Author's Pen. He himself wasn't that well endowed in magic, and Professor Andrew had somewhat understood that fact during their time together.

Still, Alec was a fast learner with high stats. He didn't despise studying like most students his age would, found magic to be fascinating overall, and also had a mana brain, which gave him an edge.

Knocking on the door of Professor Andrew's lab, Alec waited for about two minutes. This was nothing new, as the man would go into a sort of "zone" whenever he studied something.

"Come in," his grumpy voice resounded from inside the room. Alec took a deep breath and pulled on the door's handle before letting himself in.

"Welcome, Alec. I called you in today because I seem to have finally finished," Professor Andrew said without waiting for Alec to answer.

Nodding, Alec looked around the room and noted there to be papers scattered all around. He couldn't help but wince at the amount of trees wasted on those papers.

"I compiled what you have found in your papers —which were all very badly written— and managed to make them somewhat presentable," the man said without lifting his head from the book in front of him. "And not only that, but I also managed to extrapolate some of the reasoning you used and started chipping away at the third part of the magic circle."

"Huh, that's neat," Alec said in answer. However, it was obvious from his monotone voice that he wasn't that excited about it, which caused Professor Andrew to become strangely animated.

"Neat? That's all?" he asked. Alec realized that he had made some sort of mistake, but had no way of taking his words back. "With this, we have made at least fifty years of advancement in less than half a year, Alec."

Then, however, he quickly calmed himself back down by looking at a framed magical photograph on his desk.

"Never mind. Here, come check them out. I have already submitted it to the academy journal and will have to do a thesis defense the next week. I say, they are repressing the news but I think this will create huge commotion in the academy," he explained.

Alec nodded in understanding and walked up to The Professor's desk. Then, a bundle of papers flew up into his hands, startling him in the process.

When he started flipping through the pages, however, Alec's brows rose in interest.

"What?" Professor Andrew asked, annoyed. Alec raised his gaze to meet his and then looked back down again.

"Nothing... I just never thought you could do it like this," he thought to himself. Inside, however, Alec was having a crisis.

'This is all wrong! How could he go in such a wrong direction? Everything he has written is self-consistent, but this isn't math! Gravity magic wouldn't work like this,' he thought. 'And why do I know that these are wrong? This isn't a simple hunch, I just know that it isn't supposed to be like this. As if I already know the magic circle...'

When Alec flipped to the last page, he noticed his name to be under the co-author section.

'Holy fuck... Any other time, this guy would try his best to exempt me from taking any credit for this... And now, he added me as a co-author! He will take me down to hell with him!' Alec shouted mentally, in horror.

He then read through the entire thesis once more. He felt his legs getting weaker and decided to sit down.

'No no... I'm thinking about this wrongly. He doesn't care about his pride or anything. If this thing gets published, someone will eventually notice how wrong it is, and that will affect both of us. Hell, it will affect him worse...'

"Um..." Alec opened his mouth. "Is there any way you might... Take down these papers?"

"What? What do you mean?" Professor Andrew asked with a raised brow.

"It's just that..." Alec muttered while pulling on his necktie. "They are very, very flawed."