Chương 33: Chapter 29: Second First Term

Nothing else disrupted Suria before the term officially started, and as soon as classes began, the campus slipped into its routine. She was still woken in the night occasionally, but it became easier to record what she saw and go back to sleep, and she didn't go try to confront anyone else. With other matters handled or put out of mind, Suria could focus entirely on her classes.

The term started with Foundations of Modern Spellcraft, which was sadly all review, so she only listened with half an ear while she did runic training on a piece of stone in her lap. Her second scheduled class, however, was Combat Perception, which she had been looking forward to. Its room was in the second floor of Oculon Hall, and as soon as Suria walked in the door, she knew that this class was going to be different from the others.

There weren't hundreds of seats focused on a central podium, just a cluster of chairs, three of which were filled. Suria sat down, wondering if she was too early and not wanting to ask. The class grew to about a dozen students before Orinyan himself strode into the room - he was no longer wearing his librarian's crest and looked professional in his official robes.

"Nice to see I actually have some people this term," he said as he dropped into a chair the same as theirs.

"Wasn't sure how many we'd lose, with the department throne gone. So why are you here? Is it a class requirement or did it just seem like a good idea?" His bluntness seemed to take the group of students off guard and they glanced between one another. Suria was surprised that she was actually the first to speak: "I feel like my biggest weakness is not being able to grasp everything that's going on around me."

"I can help with that!" Orinyan pointed at her as he spoke, then flicked his finger upward, creating a runic diagram with light in the air.

"Usually scrying is treated as this mysterious ritual, but the fundamentals are actually necessary for awareness of your surroundings. And if any of you aren't interested in combat, many of the same inscriptions can form the core of analysis spells, depending on how you augment them." And that was how the lesson started. Suria had no idea if that was what Orinyan had planned to do all along or whether he'd actually chosen his lesson in response to her answer...

she supposed that she could find out if she took the same class in the next loop, but right now she was mostly eager to get started. The fundamental inscription he taught them wasn't as straightforward a concept as "fire" or "shielding", instead representing "information" as a general concept. It needed another unique inscription in an augment in order to transfer that information to the spellcaster, which meant that they had two inscriptions to learn immediately.

"Okay, keep practicing those," Orinyan told them.

"I want to make sure everyone grasps the fundamentals, then I'll leave you to master the inscription between classes. I expect everyone to have it figured out by next class or you won't have much to do."

"Are there other information inscriptions?" someone else asked.

"Of course, but most of them are derivations of this one, so it's best to learn it first. Some of them can actually be used as a sort of passive analysis, letting you remove the sensory augment, but that's advanced stuff. Ah, that's not quite the right curve, try it this way..." Of all the professors Suria had met so far, she thought Orinyan was best at teaching inscriptions, and she liked how informal the class was.

As the minutes passed with everyone experimenting, the other nervous students calmed down and seemed to absorb his attitude toward the class.

"Hey," another student spoke up randomly, "what's the most powerful perception-based spell?"

"That's an interesting question." Orinyan leaned back in his chair until he was staring at the ceiling.

"By some standards, it would be the spell that can scry the most of the world at once, while others would argue that it's the spell that can scry through the most defenses."

"Come on, that's not what I mean..."

"You want the big one?" Orinyan smirked at the class.

"There's a spell that has many names: the mage's star, the crimson lens of battle, the temporal sun, the manaburst. It allows someone to think and act at a far faster speed than a normal person. There's no archmage on the planet who doesn't use some variation."

"Can you show us?" Suria asked, getting excited despite herself.

"I can't cast it myself, and there are endless variations to the glyph. I'm afraid that's one thing that we won't be covering in this class. But rest assured, we'll move on to more than just the basic sensing spell we started with..." When their allotted time was up, Suria was sad it was over. Since some of the others wanted direct help working on their inscriptions after class, she simply smiled at Orinyan and then headed back down the stairs to her room to finish mastering the strokes.

She had a feeling that she was going to enjoy Combat Perception. By contrast, Exploration of Runic Capacity was quietly disappointing even if it was useful. The professor didn't seem very interested in teaching the class and simply shoved books at them. That alone wouldn't have put Suria off, since some of the texts were quite interesting, but it seemed like the class was going to build up gradually to the theory that she wanted - likely too slowly for the loop.

So she still didn't know exactly how runic capacity grew, but at least the books suggested a few exercises. The one she could first grasp simply involved making pentagonal glyphs, which she hadn't had much reason to use so far. Even though she didn't know any inscriptions suitable to pentagons, she could still gradually increase her runic capacity by testing out the shape. Unlike triangles and squares, which felt very stable, the magic forming a runic pentagon threatened to collapse unless she focused absolutely.

The day after that, it was finally time for Magical Analysis In Depth, which would be her first opportunity to get close to one of the top professors. As expected, the lectures would be in the Cerulean Sanctum, so Suria had to return for the first time since the encounter with Maut-mai. Thankfully, the Water Society only occupied part of the building and she didn't run into any of them on her way to class. It actually required her to find a staircase down, putting her beneath the water level of the lake.

That was easy to ignore while in the center of the building, but it made her nervous walking along a corridor with only glass between her and the water. When she found the classroom, it was even deeper and lit primarily by the sunlight that filtered through the water on the other side of the wall-length windows. Suria was starting to think that there were two kinds of professors: those who arrived early to get everything in order, and those who showed up at the last possible second.

It seemed like Lia Huen Rei was the latter, because even as over a hundred students crowded into the chairs, she had yet to appear. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Welcome to Magical Analysis In Depth." There was no warning, no sound, and no glow of magic, Professor Huen was simply standing in the front of the classroom.

"I must begin by saying that while I have great overall respect for Darkmoon University, we disagree regarding this course. They believe that all students should begin with a deconstructive analysis of spellcraft, whereas I believe that this level of analysis requires mastery." As the professor spoke, Suria got a better look at her, since this was one time no one would think her strange for staring. Lia Huen Rei was a strikingly beautiful woman, yet compared to her portrait, the real thing had a lethal edge to her.

Her dress, a complex pattern of red and gold, cloaked her body instead of displaying it. The care she clearly took on her makeup, pinned hair, and painted nails seemed more like armaments than accessories.

"So I will teach the course as required," Lia Huen Rei continued, "but I will not lower my standards in any way. Most of you will not be able to continue to the end of this course. If you depart before the first major examination, this course will not appear on your official records. If you continue, I will grade you based on absolute accuracy, not a curve." She paused at the end of her speech but no one in the class dared to speak up.

After letting the silence linger for some time, the professor nodded sharply and then waved her hand. A scroll appeared in midair - not an illusion or a form of light, apparently an actual scroll - and unrolled itself to reveal a list.

"These are the books I require you to have read before the next class. There's no point in trying to have a discussion or lecture until you understand at least the basics. If you're worthy students, you should already have read many of these, and I expect you to correct any gaps in your education during this course." With that, Lia Huen Rei disappeared again, setting a new record for the shortest class Suria had experienced.

She joined the other students in crowding forward toward the floating scroll and made a copy of all the book titles. Suria had read exactly zero of them, and most of the books had rather intimidating-sounding names. Unlike some classes that provided books, this one seemed to leave them on their own to find the volumes. Surely the library didn't have a hundred copies of all those books... Suria wondered if that was also part of the test.

Despite what the professor had claimed, Suria was fairly sure that this was all a test to weed out students she considered unworthy. Well, Suria could try to play that game, and even though she wouldn't win at first, she would get another chance. If the course really could teach her advanced magical analysis, much less something like the soul talisman, it would be worth it. On her way back from class, Suria pondered the professor and what role she might have had in the conspiracy.

In the meeting she had been quiet, analyzing everything. She had been the one to confirm the laws regarding Hrakik the Irredeemable, probably because she specialized in magical law. But other than that, Suria knew next to nothing about her. The class hadn't taught her much more, and it didn't seem likely that Lia Huen Rei would be engaging in heart-to-heart chats with her students.

As soon as she got back, Suria shamelessly used her connection to Orinyan to get some of the books pulled for her, then began struggling through them. Over the next several days, Suria did her best to read as much as possible, even if she was afraid some of the magical theory was going over her head. She completely stopped doing runic training in Foundations of Modern Spellcraft, instead sneaking in one of her books and getting through a few more pages.

If she was honest with herself, she wasn't sure how much the reading prepared her. All she really learned was more about how names in Nau Qin Nau worked: the woman's given name was "Rei" and the proper way to refer to her was "Professor Huen" - the "Lia" was a sort of name they didn't have in the Westlakes. Nothing else was as challenging as the reading load, though Suria was finally pulled up short in Combat Perception.

The next major inscription that Orinyan wanted to teach them sounded like one she needed, but it required a runic pentagon, and despite her training, she struggled to make them consistently. When another glyph imploded on her, Suria sighed and gestured for Orinyan. He pivoted his chair on one leg to move closer to her and smiled.

"What is it?"

"I guess I need a remedial lecture," Suria said as she looked at her ruined glyph.

"It would help if I understood the core runic shapes better. I get why the strength of a spell is determined by the number of runes, but why should it determine the nature? You can easily have 'fire' inscriptions for triangles, squares, or pentagons..."

"So why do the different shapes specialize?" Orinyan finished her sentence with a nod.

"It's an outgrowth of that increasing amount of power. You can cast a spell from a triangular glyph, and there are even advanced methods that use that as a component, it just tends not to work as well. A square glyph can support a wide variety of inscriptions, so people tend to think of it as the base of normal spells."

"But a pentagon is even stronger, right? Why is it reserved for special cases, instead of for stronger spells?"

"You can do that, but think about it. A square glyph with an augment on each side uses twelve runes total. You could use those same twelve runes to make a pentagon with only three augments, and even if you had more, none of them would be facing each other, which is a problem for-""Augments like inversion." Suria nodded as she abruptly understood a little more.

"I know that some augments need to be paired with one another."

"Actually, pairing augments is a good strategy in general," Orinyan corrected, "it's just that some effects are so potent that they require it. But you see the problem, right? A pentagon doesn't have any paired augments unless you drew it wrong, and you've seen what happens to those."

"But a hexagon wouldn't have those same weaknesses. Does that mean they can be used for stronger versions of normal spells?"

"They can, and they are. A hexagon of runes is powerful enough to support even more elaborate inscriptions, so sometimes it's associated with those, but they're still used for all kinds of spells. Now, can you put this all together?" Suria stared down at her pentagon as she thought about what she'd learned. The theory wouldn't be made for a new student like her, it would be designed around powerful mages who could create a full glyph.

That would mean a pentagon with a powerful central inscription and five augments, none of them paired... Just the previous class Orinyan had taught them a sustaining augment that made spell effects last longer, which didn't require being paired. Once she thought about it that way, she realized that she already had her answer. It wasn't so different from what the textbook had said, but now she'd made the understanding her own.

"Pentagons are better suited to sustaining effects," she said slowly, "because the core inscription is powerful enough to last, but you can't magnify it too much. Instead you have five different modifiers, which are better suited for complex effects."

"Sounds like you understood it after all," Orinyan said with a grin.

"There's nothing stopping you from making a fireball with a big fire inscription in a pentagon structure, but most mages will use it for a sustained flame, or fire wall, or something like that."

"So it's the perfect shape for a spell to increase your awareness. It can be sustained in the long term, and you can modify it for exactly what you want to be aware of..." Now that she better understood the theory, Suria found it easier to apply the inscriptions she'd learned, and it even seemed a little easier to make stable pentagons. She was working on a spell that would give her a stronger awareness of her surroundings so she couldn't be ambushed again.

If she got a working talisman, she intended to sew it into her robes or her satchel or something else that wouldn't leave her, so she could easily activate it. The second time Suria went to Professor Huen's classroom, the session was only marginally longer. Half the students didn't even return, and more left when the professor required them to write an essay on what they'd learned.

Suria wasn't very confident in what she wrote, but her goal wasn't to impress anyone this cycle, just to gain as strong a foundation in the challenges of the course as she could. Once that was done, Professor Huen read the essays with clear disapproval, then assigned them a new list of books. There were fewer this time and Suria was glad, until she realized that these books contained traps: they referenced other concepts or texts that she would need to read about before she could even begin.

Finishing everything by the next class would be a struggle. Meanwhile, Suria continued to record intruders to Oculon Hall, even though there weren't many. It was during one of her meetings with Jeilin that he offhandedly ruined her plans by mentioning that the campus staff were going to go through the tunnels soon to exterminate the weevils. She had run out of preparation time without even realizing it. Technically she could have put it off until the next cycle, but Suria didn't want to dodge the challenge.

Instead she looked over the mess of books, talismans, and papers she had collected... had she learned enough?