The demonstration performed by the class was interrupted by Ethan's display of something that was apparently quite interesting. The professor seemed confused as to why everybody had stopped the display so suddenly. His eyes dragged across the room before they finally found Ethan standing with the pen, its nib currently glowing an intense shade of orange. He let out a yelp and came bounding over.

  “The note I received from the headmaster said some aspects of your class should remain secret." Professor Marsh kept his voice to a whisper. "Is this something you wish to reveal to the entire class?"

  Ethan looked at the surprised faces of his peers and shook his head. Based on the description of his class in the pen, he knew he needed to use it in order to take the next steps. If he just sat there watching the students perform the spells without trying to use his pen, nothing would happen.

  "I understand it would be prudent to keep some of these things hidden, but I need this to advance my class.”

  "Well, if that's not a secret, may I tell the class exactly what it is?"

  "I think they might already know." Ethan chuckled.

  Professor Marsh looked around the room and chuckled. "Well, I suppose you're right. Class… Ethan has given me permission to elaborate on the first secret of his class. Some classes begin their journey with nothing more than attributes and an ability, while others start with something like this. This is a soulbound item. What do we know about soulbound items? Anyone?”

  A fox-like person spoke up first. "The items are literally bound to a person's soul. Each one is different, and it's impossible to know if they're useful or not. The one thing they share in common is that they can never be removed from their master, and they can be stored in the user's soul."

  "Textbook definition.” Professor Marsh pointed and nodded at the student who had answered. “Another interesting thing about them is that they typically grow as their users grow. That makes them incredibly valuable. Mister Walsh needs his out for his class. That’s all he’s going to tell us for now, so we just have to deal with it. Back to work!”

  The students all nodded, getting back to summoning the barriers. That's when Professor Marsh turned to Ethan and lowered his voice once again. "Something you're not going to be able to hide about that pen is the type of mana that's accumulated on the tip. I know this is your second or third day in the academy so you wouldn’t know, but that mana is Celestial Mana, which is quite rare."

  "What's so special about Celestial Mana?" Ethan asked.

  "Think of it as primordial mana. It is as close to the roots of the tree as possible."

  Ethan knew exactly what the professor was talking about. He had already heard that analogy from Headmaster Vesper. He just hadn't expected his pen to show the signs of his class so clearly. But there was nothing he could do about it. If he wanted to advance, he needed to use this thing.

  When the blonde-haired elf had exhausted her mana, she came over to strike up a conversation with Ethan. He had been observing the students practicing, holding his pen in his hand as though it would suddenly tell him what to do. But it hadn't.

  "You could try infusing it with mana," she suggested. She was sweating from the exertion of casting so many spells, but still held a smile on her face. "I'm Amelia, by the way. Amelia Hearthbrook."

  “Ethan Walsh.”

  "Barry. No surname.” He did a quick flex and a wink.

  "Very nice to meet you both. Have you practiced mana control yet? I know showing up at the academy can be disorienting, but you got here two days ago? That must be horrible. We were given a month of preparation before we started classes, so I can't imagine your situation. My situation is… Well, I’ll say that it isn’t the norm."

  "Thanks. I appreciate it.” Ethan wouldn’t admit how disorientated he had been. Holding on to this concept of decoding his class was keeping him sane. That and the dam. "And no, I know absolutely nothing about controlling my mana. The best I can do is visualize my soul."

  "That means you're halfway there. Barry, do you want to participate in this?" Amelia paused, waiting for Barry’s response. He nodded. "Right. Well, you can think of your mana as being inside your soul. So, if you can already visualize your soul, then all you need to do is move the mana from within it. People consider this an advanced technique, but I'll be honest, if your class is based on using that pen, you'll need to figure this out sooner rather than later."

  Ethan was once again struck by the friendliness of the people in the Academy, but he agreed to accept Amelia's help, and she got to work right away. Much to the joy of the professor, who clapped in excitement at the collaboration. They started simply by visualizing their souls and trying to do anything with them. After only a few attempts, Ethan managed to separate mana from his soul. It wasn't as though it came naturally. Amelia was simply an excellent instructor.

  “Once you have the mana separated from your soul, you simply need to pull it through your channels and into the pen. If you visit the cultivation academy, they'll teach you all about this. No matter how disconnected the academies seem, they have more in common than you’d think. I'm giving you the rough version. What I will say is, don't push yourself too hard. Make sure your soul is at full brightness before you try this; otherwise, you could ruin something inside you. Do you understand?”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "I got it. Don't drain my soul until it's empty.” Ethan turned his attention to moving mana through unseen pathways. If he moved it in the wrong direction, he felt it sting against his insides as though somebody had poked a needle into his spleen or something. But eventually, he felt the mana working its way up his arm and into the pen.

  Ethan didn't know when the entire class's attention had turned to him. Perhaps it was when he sat there for ten minutes straight, concentrating and sweating under the effort, or maybe it was when the pen began glowing with a brilliant gold color that washed out the sun coming through the windows. Through some instinct driven by the pen itself, he moved it through the air. He dragged it, creating a line that hovered there. The students clapped, and Professor Marsh hooted with excitement.

  "I'm thrilled," the professor shouted, jumping up and down. "I have absolutely no idea what that does, but I will say that I'm excited to see it. So, you have some kind of scribing class, right? I wonder what exactly it does.”

  “I wish I could tell you.” Although he couldn’t keep the smile from his face, Ethan was confused.

  “We’re almost out of time, folks,” Professor Marsh announced. “Can we get someone to run Barry through some exercises while Miss Hearthbrook is busy with Mister Walsh? Thank you!”

  After only a few times pulling mana to the pen, Ethan was exhausted. “How do you people do this all the time?”

  Amelia laughed. “We don’t. With our system, the Mage class grants us access to something called the Spell Book. This lets us use easier modes of casting. We can chant magic words, create the symbols with our hands through somatic gestures, or channel the spell directly into our soul. What you’re doing is the hard way. This is the way that I learned how to cast spells.”

  “So, what are you? Some kind of prodigy?” Ethan asked with a smile.

  Amelia laughed and then shrugged. “Top ranked in Gale House and in the top 100 in Tariat Academy.”

  “Oh. So you are a prodigy. Sorry. I mean, thanks for giving me a hand.”

  "Helping other students is just as important as improving our own skills.” A soft smile spread across Amelia’s face. "That's the goal of every academy on this planet. Not only does it help us understand what we already know, but it also strengthens the student body. Since our mission is to not only defend the local sector once we graduate but also to spread out and help distant worlds, it only makes sense."

  Ethan couldn't help but return to the analogy of comparing this place to Earth. That would never happen at the university he had attended. Yeah, study groups were a thing and there were many helpful people, but it wasn’t rewarded like it was here.

  The class finally ended, and the group was released. Everyone filed out the door after rearranging the desks and chairs. Professor Marsh made sure to let Ethan and Barry know he didn't expect them to succeed in creating the barrier spell, but he did expect them to try. When they left the class, there was a lot to think about, mostly related to Ethan's new system.

  Based on the description of his class and the arrangement of his ability and celestial pen, Ethan had an idea of what he needed to do first. If he treated this like a problem he faced on Earth, he could assume that progress in his class would not move forward until he had resolved at least one error. Like a program that threw an exception the moment he launched it, he could never hope to do anything within that program until the error was resolved. Based on his observations and things Headmaster Vesper had told him, he was convinced he needed to first resolve the first error in his class description.

  "You want to get some lunch?" Barry asked, stretching as they walked down the busy street.

  Ethan shook his head. "No, I'm going to go work on something. I'll meet up with you for dinner, though."

  "Fine by me. I need to get some more meat in me."

  Ethan worked his way through the city, finding his way to the docks mostly by smell. The coastline was piled with rocks, no doubt intended to help break oncoming waves and keep erosion at bay. He moved northward until he found a particularly flat rock he could sit upon and look out to the ocean. The weather today was pleasant, somewhere in the mid-70s, and without a cloud in the sky. The warmth of the sun prickled against his skin as he watched the waves crash against the rocks below.

  There was one fact Ethan had going for himself. He knew that he could unveil the error in his class description. The one at the top was likely his attributes, which, from what he understood, was a representation of aspects of himself, like in video games back on Earth. He also knew that his pen would be the key to unlocking those things. The steps in between would be a problem, though.

  After an hour of fruitless pondering, Ethan checked the list of interesting locations he had been given and found something that might help him bridge the gap. He made his way through the city, funding his journey to one of the many libraries. He didn't need anything crazy and entered the library tower. To his surprise, there was no issue getting access to the first-floor books. He simply scanned his badge and was allowed inside without question. There, he hunted for a book, eventually finding what must have been a baby's first introduction to systems.

  It was a leather-bound book simply titled X-13. Ethan found his way to a quiet place near a window, sitting at a desk and scanning through the book. He found exactly what he was looking for. It was a definition of the X-13 system's attribute scheme. They had access to five attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, and Wisdom. Better than that, there was an explanation of how a person could advance those attributes and what each of them meant.

  The X-13 system was broken into levels and ranks. A person gained a level when they performed enough actions related to their class. When they reached that level, they were granted a single attribute point which they could allocate anywhere. Putting a point into Strength would make a person stronger. They could hit harder and so on. If they put a point into endurance, they would be more resilient to damage and would generally heal faster. The theme continued with the other attributes as well, but this gave Ethan an idea.

  Each attribute in the X-13 system created a circle of competency. Strength made a person hit harder, sure, but it also influenced the effectiveness of their related abilities and skills. Ethan infused his pen with mana and drew a circle in the air. It lingered there, hovering and putting off a faint light.

  “Strength,” he said, watching as the circle shifted its shape. The line became more intricate, devolving into connected sigils. He drew another circle which did something similar. “Agility… Dexterity… Hmmm, this just might work.”