Max's POV
It has been a year since I went to live in Miriam's mansion. My sword style is getting sharper and more polished. I am making progress with mental magic too. Recently I am having these dreams about some strange people again. By now I have become used to such things. All I know that this strange knowledge I dream about always helps me rather than hurt me. This is the first time I have dreamt about multiple people at the same time. Some of their names are Dynamo, David Blaine, David Copperfield and Derren Brown. What I know about them is that none of them possesses any magical powers but could create miraculous events using tricks and mind manipulation. Sleight of hands, vision manipulation, hypnotic suggestions, focus manipulation, optical illusions and many such concepts put me in awe of these individuals.
I began to extensively research these topics. I couldn't find much information in books except for some records of a vague experiment done decades ago by an eccentric academician. So I had to perform my own experiments. The servants of the mansion became my test subjects. I spent weeks fanatically researching these tricks, so much so that I had to be reprimanded for not completing my assignments a few times. As I got used to the tricks, the feedback I got from my test subjects also become more amusing. Wonder, excitement, eagerness and in some of the more timid ones even fear. As I read their reactions, I got more experience in reading surface thoughts.
Seriously though, it is a great pain figuring out what someone is thinking. Every person has different methods to visualize their thoughts. The most annoying ones were the ones who thought in colours. This pattern generally occurred in more naive and younger females or very young children who couldn't formulate complex sentences. I had to spend some time figuring what colour corresponded to which emotion. Even then the colour scheme was not consistent among all them. Generally, the deeper shades corresponded to stronger emotions like greed, lust, rage, consternation or despair. Brighter shades correspond to glee, pleasant surprises or anticipation. The lighter shades were more troublesome as they corresponded to lighter emotions - both negative and positive. I had to spend hours in public places observing thousands of people to finally come up with this colour scheme.
The next worst on the list of troublesome thoughts would be emotions and images. Usually; bards, artists, angsty teenagers, promiscuous and fickle people think in emotions or images. The problem with this was there was no definite thought structure and their thoughts were highly susceptible to external stimulus. For example, the older girl who loved to tease younger boys. She teases for the sake of teasing and the sense of superiority it gives her. If you ask her if she has any romantic feelings for her targets, you will find out that the answer is not constant. It may depend on her mood and a thousand other things that I couldn't be bothered to explain or think about.
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The best targets for mind-reading were the intelligentsia. They were educated enough to form complex but rigid thought structures in their minds. They subconsciously form opinions and prejudices on most topics based on their acquired knowledge. These biases act as axioms upon which they build their daily thoughts. This helps them to think and make decisions faster but also leaves them particularly susceptible to mental magic. This was why I liked these type of people as they were the easiest to read.
In the end, the average middle-class adult used a combination of the aforementioned thought types to live through their daily. Reina was a combination of complex structures and colours while Miriam had some simple structures but depended heavily on images. This made me trust more in Reina but be a little guarded against Miriam. Marvin did not visit us anymore so I could not get a grasp on his thoughts but this problem was solved when Miriam suddenly asked us to accompany her to the academy.
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We arrived at the academy early in the morning. Miriam left us to our own devices as soon as we reached the gates. I asked Reina if she had anywhere specific she needed to be. She told me that she had to greet the children of prominent families. I didn't wish to accompany her so I left her to her own devices and made a promise of meeting at the practise grounds in a couple of hours. After she left I began to wander around in the campus. This was the first time I had the opportunity to properly explore the campus of the academy. I asked Nyx to cast a special spell that causes people to ignore my presence. It was a complex spell that tampered with the brain's processing of the optical information that the eyes capture. It categorized me to similar priority as a wayside stone or a fallen leave. Unless I do something flashy to capture their attention, most people will ignore my presence.
The first place I visited was the library. It was huge rooms with spanning multiple floors and housing thousands of books. I skimmed through the spines, searching for anything interesting. Suddenly I saw the light of a lamp at one of the tables. As I carefully approached the table, I found a solitary figure hunched over several open books. I recognized the face, it was Fred, one of the four who were summoned to Headmaster's office on opening day. I remembered to Fred was an orphan and commoner who had fire and lightning perfect affinity with adept mage potential. When I first met him, I thought that there was something wrong with his eyes but looking at him now I felt that I had underestimated the weight of his feelings before. His skin was pale as if he had imprisoned himself in the library for days. HIs figure looked to be that of a man possessed. I did not know about his reasons, but my instincts told me to give him a wide berth if I didn't want to get involved in something troublesome in the future. I quickly left the spot and after fooling around for about 45 minutes, left the library.
I wandered through the school grounds as students started to come out of their dorms and went to their classes. They greeted their acquaintances, friends or lovers as they made their way to their classes. All of them completely ignored my presence which allowed me to overhear their gossips. Most of them were about pretty girls and handsome boys. Some were talking about Reina. But there were a significant number of people talking about a certain black-haired boy which was making me extremely uncomfortable. But at the time I didn't have any idea about how close I was to meeting that very boy and how troublesome the morning was going to be.