I enter the classroom and find a seat. Right next to Violet as is usual. “Fuck off, you annoying pest.” Her usual greeting is super friendly and nice. It's always nice to hear it.

  “And a good morning to you as well. Let us have a very productive education today.” It's a bit of a weird greeting for a dear friend, but that is who she is.

  “Why can you not sit anywhere but over here?” She points around to the entire classroom – which has plenty of open seats. “Just fuck off already.”

  “Nah, this is the best seat in the house. Plus, don't you want a seat buddy that can actually use magic?”

  “If I did, I would choose anyone but you.” She grumbles, but then just starts ignoring me. Oh well, maybe I can get her to acknowledge me with my overwhelming magical talent. Though Moxie the chief magical genius is also in this class, and appears to be hiding from Stephen and Liv.

  The class starts and a very short woman with green hair walks up to the front lectern. Maybe there is some correlation between great magical potential and short stature. I should conduct a survey at some point.

  “Greetings Cadets, I am Professor Wis.” She says, eliciting a few chuckles from the class. “Yes, yes. Wis, wizard, get your laughter out of the way now. Many of you in this class are probably wondering why you are here. After all, if you cannot cast spells, why take a magical theory class? Well very simply, in order to defend against magic, you must understand magic. To be able to recognize at least basically what magic is being thrown at you is essential to any cadet, mage or not.”

  Wis moves to the wall behind her and sketches a very simple pattern. “To prove my point. Everyone dodge.” The class immediately erupts into panic as the runes start to glow and shoot out beams of light. Everyone ducks under desks and tries to hide behind others.

  However ten people – Violet, Moxie and myself included – do not move. The beams of light harmlessly touch us. Nothing more than a fancy light show. The class quickly realizes what happens and returns to their seats.

  “Now, do you all understand? For those that have clearly done some research into magic, it was apparent that the spell was completely harmless at just a glance. Such a skill is imperative in battle, to determine if a monster is about to throw a fireball at you or is healing an ally.” She erases the runes and moves back to the lectern. “Now, who can tell me what magic is?”

  “Use of Mana!”, “Control!”, “Cool Explosions” several students shout.

  “Wrong, all of you. While those are all definitely components or effects of magic, the truth of magic is something far different.” She draws a picture of a dragon on the wall, and inside of it is a core near its center and a bunch of weird constructs around its brain area. “This is a dragon. Every part of a dragon is highly specialized to channel energy, aether energy that is. Simply put, mana is a less dense aether that humans are able to innately channel. Magic is the process by which humans and dragons can mold aether into various effects.”

  She draws a diagram of a human, similar to the dragon. “Obviously, humans are far more complex than dragons. But as you can see here,” She points to the core around where our hearts are, “humans also have a core of sorts. This is both where mana is generated and stored, as well as aether. Now, aether is far more dense than mana, at about 100:1. But should you ever run out of aether, your mana will stop regenerating. Now, most of you do not have to worry about mana. But as previously stated, this is important to know, can anyone tell me why?”

  Cadet Gran, The same girl that identified the fissure inscription, answers, “If you are able to drain your opponent’s aether by forcing them to use other skills, you could disable their magic.”

  “Very nicely done, you must have been studying quite intently, cadet.” Wis smiles at Gran, which seems to please the girl immensely. “That is correct, if you can somehow force your opponent to drain their aether, their mana will stop regenerating. While this may not have much actual use, this is just another demonstration of how magic theory can apply to non-mages.”

  Wis then spends the rest of the class going over the basics of runecraft. Thanks to Moxie, I already know it all. So I spend a while watching Violet as she studiously watches. She is quite cute when she is thinking, it's almost as though I can see tiny gears whirring inside her head.

  Wis gives us several demonstrations of different spell types. From super flashy light spells that can cut steel to advanced fire spells that can penetrate even black aetherium and burn a monster from the inside out.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Now lastly, I would like to talk a bit about inscriptions. Though none of you will be able to do it until you get a rank 2 mage path, it is still important to know.” She draws a complicated diagram on the wall, this time it seems to be impressed into it rather than runes simply attached to it. “This is a very basic inscription, it will open up a temporary portal to a destination that has a similar inscription on it. Allow me to demonstrate.” She touches the inscription and pushes a bit of mana through, all of the lines start to light up a nice blue color. Then, a rectangular hole seems to open up, almost as though reality is simply being cut out, and in its place is a window of sorts into the central annex.

  Many students on the other side stop for a moment and stare confused, until they realize it's just a demonstration portal and continue on their way. Wis steps through the gate and back, the inscription staying powered the entire time. “As you can see, it could come in quite handy. One of the most important uses is to escape fissures that have become far too dangerous. Inscriptions can be useful for anything from greatly enhanced versions of normal spells, to rituals that would be impossible for a single caster to control. Alright, that is it for today. Class dismissed.”

  With that, the entire class files out of the room. Once again, Violet manages to escape me. How unfortunate, I was really hoping to test out some of my new stats, maybe I could actually land a solid hit on her.

  Disappointed, I choose to focus on magical study today. I head back to our quarters and find Moxie already deeply immersed in a stack of books. Even though she couldn't have arrived more than five minutes before me.

  “Heya Moxie, have you made any cool spells recently?” I take a seat across from her and her mountain of books.

  “Must read, brag later.” She seems to be very invested in her books. So we simply sit and read. The room is quiet aside from the occasional shuffle as we grab a new data book or a spell activation.

  I finally manage to get relatively consistent with my spell activation. I have been really struggling to both keep the rune materialized and push mana through at the same time. It is a careful balancing act, and any small miscalculation can cause it to fail or worse, backfire.

  I cast a simple spell that creates a ‘glove’ of darkness around my hand. When Moxie sees, she claps in celebration, but then immediately goes back to her reading. I wave my hand around and it feels weird, almost like the darkness is a cold liquid moving over me, but it is mostly intangible. I would need to add reinforcement or condensation runes to make it useful as a weapon, or a shield.

  The key to my success was a manuscript written by Leax, The silly scribe. She really was quite silly, always creating truly absurd spells in her laboratory. From tiny dragons that floated about and delivered messages using a device called a ‘spring-loaded cannon.’ Whatever that is supposed to be. But she was not without her moments, when she did get serious, her inventions changed everything.

  Her crowning achievement was by far the fissure gate system. Very simply, we are able to harness the same mechanism that monster hives are theorized to have access to. By creating rifts from the aether, we can instantly travel to any place in the normal universe. However, it comes at a great cost, and only those with bonded dragons can withstand the journey. In addition, it requires a strong anchoring signal, usually a large clustering of monsters.

  But suffice to say, the fissure system has become critical in the war effort. The universe is vast, and if Dragon Guard had to travel to every single front and place where monsters appeared, humanity would have fallen long long ago.

  After I enjoy the book, Moxie finally looks up from her own studies. “Brag time.” She has a confident look, like she is about to do something awesome. She walks over and grabs onto my sleeve, practically dragging me out of the room and into the gym – which has a section that is mostly magic proof for training.

  Moxie sits down on the ground, crosslegged and motions for me to stand backwards a bit. Then, seemingly out of memory she creates dozens of very complex looking runes that float around her. They form a large circle with her at the center. The runes activate with a whooshing sound and a big gust of air rushes past me, causing me to stumble a bit.

  Then suddenly the wind stops and the circle around Moxie begins to glow intensely. Her brow furrows as she concentrates deeply, a few beads of sweat appear on her forehead. Then, defying gravity itself, she begins to float into the air.

  It is short lived, but she manages to make it about half a meter off the ground and stays there for about a second. But then the circle suddenly shatters and she falls to the ground and bends over, breathing heavily.

  I rush over. “Moxie, are you okay?”

  “Fine. Not enough mana, but flight spell. I am awesome.”

  “That you are! You are super duper awesome in fact.” I grab Moxie up in a hug, which she seems to be confused at for a moment before realizing what is happening. “That spell looked pretty complex, I can't imagine any other cadets are able to even manage something a tenth as complicated.”

  She frees herself from my grasp and then smiles at me. Her red hair seems to be a bit more vibrant than usual, or maybe it's just the gym’s lightning. She does seem quite pleased with her work. “Tired, must sleep now.”

  “Fair enough, that looked like it was quite exhausting. Our bodies probably aren't ready to control magic like that. But you must've gotten a lot of stat increases from that.”

  She shakes her head. “Mana stat maxed. I need more levels.” Damn, she must be practicing a lot to have maxed her mana stats out. Mine are only about halfway, and she has the medic path which must give her even more to fill out. Though on a positive note, my physical stats are nearing their limits. So there is that at least.

  Moxie heads to sleep. I decided to get in a bit of physical training before I collapse into my own bed. Naturally, Lemon immediately tries to occupy a space one would think impossible for such a small dragon. But nonetheless she does.

  Before I pass out, I check my next class. Apparently I have a ‘special observation’ at 12:00 tomorrow. That must be the special training room and scholars that Professor Dirge mentioned needed to test out Lemon’s abilities.

  But, that is a problem for tomorrow. I sink into a deep sleep, content in my progress so far.

  Next Chapter: Vixelos

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