After wandering for a few minutes, Jeb found himself amidst Enchanting Professors’ offices. Most of them were propped open, and Jeb saw every variation on a room with a desk that he could imagine, and more than a few that he couldn’t. As he kept walking, though, he failed to find Bearson’s office. On his second time through the same hallway, Candidate Therese stuck her head out of a doorway.
“Jeb?” she asked, tone full of confusion, “what are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for Professor Bearson,” he replied.
“Do you have an appointment with him?”
He shook his head, “no, but Professor Quicksilver said that I should speak with him about an independent study.”
Therese gave him a strange look but helped him find the Professor’s office. Professor Bearson was reading a book and taking detailed notes when Jeb knocked on the door. He looked up, and cocked his head, clearly trying to place the student in front of him.
“Good afternoon, Professor Bearson,” Jeb said.
“Good afternoon. Did you have an appointment scheduled?” he asked, pawing through a schedule.
Jeb shook his head again. “You may not remember me, but my name is Jeb. You taught my Theoretical Enchanting courses when I first came to the Academy. I had an Enchanting project in mind that Professor Quicksilver seemed to think would be something you would be willing to supervise as an independent study.”
Understanding sparked in the Professor’s eyes. “Ah,” he said, letting out a long sigh, “I remember you now, Jeb.”
His eyes flashed, and Jeb was suddenly reminded of the Professor’s size. Just for an instant, Jeb was reminded that there was a food chain somewhere, and that humans were not always on the top of it. The feeling faded as quickly as it had come, and Jeb was once again looking at his affable Enchanting Professor.
“I will ask Dean Aquam what he thinks would be administratively best for this independent study,” he said.
“Thank you!” Jeb replied, turning to leave. That had sounded like a dismissal, and Jeb did not want to start off on the wrong foot with his new study advisor.
“Where are you going?” Bearson asked.
“Um,” Jeb replied hesitantly, “I have a course this afternoon that I do not want to miss again.”
Bearson nodded. “I will meet you at the Library when your courses are finished for the day. We can begin the study then.”
Jeb went to his courses for the day, trying his hardest to pay attention. Unfortunately, the combination of his having read ahead and being excited for the independent study meant that he struggled to follow more than the vaguest outlines of any of the lectures. When the courses concluded for the day, he debated stopping by the cafeteria, but decided against it. Surely there will be time for food after the study, he thought to himself.
Bearson was standing beside Margaret when Jeb entered the Library.
“Good evening,” Jeb said, nodding to the two of them. They exchanged greetings, and Margaret led the two of them to Jeb’s desk in the Stacks. The books on the shelves seemed to be much more interested in being opened during this trip, and Jeb was able to read almost all of the titles. Most seemed to relate to Enchanting, though more than a few were related to wildlife, which Jeb assumed was due to the fact that he wanted to Enchant his farmland. He was certain that there would be environmental factors that he would need to consider, even if he was currently unsure what they would be.
When they got to his desk, Jeb was surprised to see that the books on it were completely different than they had been the last time he sat there. All of the tomes on Alchemical Brewing had been taken away, along with the books that he had never gotten around to returning on every subject he had taken a course in. Heart breaking, he turned to Margaret, who rolled her eyes.
“The rest of your books will be here when your independent study concludes,” she said. “I took the liberty of making space for the texts that Professor Bearson thinks that you will need for your current project.”
Jeb looked at Bearson, who nodded, letting out a low rumble of a laugh. “Truthfully,” the Professor continued, “if you had not come to me about this project, I am certain that I would have ended up working on it in a few years. The Republic does not seem at all willing to begin negotiations with the Druids, and the Alchemists will continue running their supplies lower and lower. With that in mind, I spent the afternoon working with this fantastic Librarian,” he nodded respectfully at Margaret, who gave a somewhat joking curtsy, “to find tomes that may be relevant for this project. Tell me, how much do you know about agriculture?”
Jeb beamed. He hadn’t realized how much it felt like nothing from his life before getting a Class mattered at the Academy until just now. All of the years he had spent learning to take care of the land suddenly seemed unimportant to everyone when he was able to do Magic. If he was being honest with himself, though, Jeb could admit that a lot of the change was precipitated by him.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
He shook himself out of the sudden realization, realizing that he had not answered the Professor. “A fair amount,” Jeb hedged. “I grew up on a farm, and until I became a Classholder, I and everyone around me assumed that I would end up becoming a Farmer of some sort.”
Bearson straightened at that, clearly growing more excited about the project. “I understand that you have Skills relating to agriculture as well?” he asked hopefully. Jeb nodded and went through his Skills, which the Professor noted on a piece of paper that he pulled from his sleeve. Margaret and Professor Bearson exchanged a look, and Jeb swore that the Professor seemed a bit sheepish as he nodded. Margaret cleared a few of the more basic Primers on soil management away.
“Now then,” Bearson said, “tell me what your specific goals are for this study.”
Jeb had been expecting a question like this, and so he answered quickly, “I want to automate as much of the process of growing plants as I can. It feels like a waste to have the land that I do and not use it, and I know that there are at least a few Professors who have explicitly told me that they want the crops that I grow. However, I know that I do not have the attention span right now to plan out exactly how to care for every plant that I put in the ground, especially if I want to grow more than one. Right now, I’ve been using the entire field for a single plant, which works, but feels inefficient. So, I guess that my ideal case would be a set of Enchantments that will make sure that whatever I plant in the field grows well and then is harvested appropriately.”
He paused, amending himself, “actually, I think that my ideal Enchantment would also plant the crops itself.”
Bearson nodded. “I am glad to hear that the reports of your lofty ambitions were not exaggerated. What would be the minimum the Enchantment could do that you would consider a success?”
Jeb hadn’t thought about that question, and he froze as he tried to think of an answer. “I suppose that I am comfortable doing the planting myself. I could do the harvesting, especially if there’s some sort of a notification that lets me know when the plants are ready to be pulled. I suppose that right now I’m able to monitor the plants sporadically, so something that makes it less vital for me to constantly check on the plants would be the lowest goal I have for the project. When I forget about the field for a day or two, I don’t want the plants to wither.”
“That is a much lower goal than I had expected,” he said. “I believe that we will be able to do far more than that. Now then, how much have you been keeping up on your Enchanting since you stopped taking my course?” His eyes glittered, and Jeb knew that the Professor already knew the answer to his question.
Jeb sighed. “Not very much. Even in the Emporium, Declan has been doing most all of the Enchanting that we need. I’ve been much more focused on-”
Professor Bearson cut him off, “on whatever project your flight of fancy takes you towards. Yes, Dean Aquam made that very clear when I met with him. With that in mind, we will be starting from the basics.”
Jeb had been unsure what this independent study would look like. When he had worked with Quicksilver, it seemed to be as much a place for Jeb to learn what questions to ask as Quicksilver explicitly instructing. This was nothing like that. Professor Bearson seemed to be treating the independent study as nothing more or less than a single person classroom. Jeb demonstrated that he was still capable of drawing each of the fundamental runes for a few dozen different Enchanting sets. Something about the strokes he made felt off, though, so he stopped the Professor from moving forward with the lesson.
“Is something the matter?” Professor Bearson asked.
“I don’t know,” Jeb replied honestly. “These runes just don’t feel quite right to me.”
A predatory gleam sparked in the Professor’s eyes, and Jeb was reminded that none of his Professors had been anything less than completely devoted to their craft. “Go on,” he said, gesturing at the page.
Jeb tried to articulate what he meant. “I don’t quite know what I’m trying to say,” he admitted, sketching out the runes again, “but it feels like this is not actually a complete set.”
He frowned. “No, that isn’t quite right. It is more than a fundamental set? It seems like these two,” he quickly drew two of the runes, “should be able to do anything that this rune is capable of.”
“Can you demonstrate what you mean?” the Professor asked, tone carefully neutral.
Jeb tried, drawing a quick script to light up when Mana was poured into it. The first time he wrote it, he used the allegedly fundamental rune. It took no more than a few minutes, and it glowed the way that he expected it to. Starting to work on the other one, though, Jeb was instantly stumped.
He was able to draw the initial Enchantment, but when he finished the script, he saw that there was a gap in the script that would cause the Mana to circulate incorrectly. Fixing that created its own set of errors that he needed to account for. By the time that he had finished, the single line of script had ballooned into nearly four full pages of densely scribbled exceptions to exceptions to edge cases. Jeb was certain that he could make the Enchantment at least a little smaller if he were to create it again, but it would not be anywhere near as short as a single line.
“Interesting,” Professor Bearson said as he flipped through Jeb’s Enchantment. “I would not have thought to prove the redundancy of this rune in this manner, but you are correct. Is that the only redundant rune in the set?”
Jeb drew out the set of runes again, this time excluding the rune he had considered extraneous. He frowned.
“It seems like these three runes,” he pointed, “should be able to do everything that this rune can do.”
“Go on,” Professor Bearson nodded along.
Jeb crossed the rune out and continued staring at the sheet. He frowned. “I feel like all of these runes are modifiers to each other,” he finally said. “As long as I have at least three runes, I can recreate the effects of any other rune.”
Professor Bearson nodded. “So, why do we describe the other runes as fundamental?”
Jeb paused. After thinking about the question for a few minutes, though, he could not come to an answer. “I don’t know,” he replied honestly.
“Let us look at the first example you produced,” Bearson said, laying a hand on the two different Enchantments. The first line of script started glowing all sorts of colors, from reds to violets and beyond, and the other one seemed to as well. Just as Jeb was about to ask what he was trying to learn, however, the page caught on fire.
“What does this show us?” Professor Bearson asked.