I sighed, raising my hand.

  “Stay behind after class,” Professor Somnius said with a sharp look.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man grumbled something to himself before rolling into a lecture about the history of magic. A quick glance revealed a worried-looking Felton and a gleeful-looking Ramius, but I ignored them both in favor of listening to the grumpy old mage’s lesson. At least he didn’t publicly out me immediately, though given how lunch went, maybe that would be better.

  Our history lesson was actually quite interesting. I hadn’t loved studying history in the youth of my first life, too enamored by the prospects of the future to care enough about the past. It was only in my adulthood, as I watched generation after generation forget the lessons of history and repeat the mistakes, that I truly began to gain an appreciation for it. Once the promise of a brighter future faltered, it was already too late to learn from the past.

  Also, from a practical standpoint as a student, history classes were a weak spot for me because of how they were taught and tested. While some coursework could be problem-solved and worked through with logic, introductory history tended to require a lot of memorization of names and dates, which I hated.

  Oh. I wonder if, or how, we’ll be tested on things in this academy. I should look into that.

  Ignoring grading as a concern, though, listening to Somnius’s lecture was still interesting in terms of content to me. I could see some of the other students, who were actually eleven, losing interest and fading, and even some nodding heads, the post-lunch digestion and monotone professor luring them to close their eyes and sleep.

  Mid-afternoon, the content switched, which drew the attention of most of the fading students.

  “Magic,” Somnius said simply, turning and writing on the board behind him. “Spell-work powered by mana, controlled by Will.” He tapped the board, where he had written the same words I had heard before. “The three components of spell-craft are infusion, invocation, and intention.”

  The aged professor circled invocation.

  “All three are necessary to weave a proper spell, but as new students, your focus must begin with the invocation. Until you’ve learned the words to your first spell, you can’t properly practice infusion and intention.” Another few scratches of text appeared on the board. “[Create Water] is one of the simplest spells known to man. It’s well known for being a spell that can be cast, in its most basic form, with a Will of three, which you should all have as part of the entry criteria to this academy.”

  I raised my eyebrows at that, glancing around and seeing some students smugly grinning or soberly nodding their heads. Huh. I wonder how all these kids raised their Will. I had to kill a goblin then stumble onto a tactic to cycle mana manually with my breathing. I suppose the rich and powerful have other tactics.

  Somnius went on to describe what our magical education would look like, to start, which was basically rote memorization. I suppressed a sigh. I had already learned as much, but it was still kind of upsetting compared to what my imagination had been picturing before it was slapped down by reality. Once we all had the invocation memorized, we would begin working on learning vocal mana infusion and then shaping our will and intention.

  That was exciting, but I suspected it wouldn’t be particularly revelatory for me either. [Mana Manipulation] gave me a slight leg up when it came to infusion, because I already knew the base mechanic, and had some control over that separate from human-defined spell-crafting. Still, it would be good to learn the “proper” way to do it.

  Somnius began writing on the board, and when I realized the words were gibberish to me, I recognized it as the beginning of the spell. I moved to begin copying it down, but noticed no one else did, so stopped myself before I did something taboo. Our professor addressed it a moment later.

  “Once you have the spell memorized, you may wish to transcribe it into a grimoire. Or, if you have the funds, you can buy one. The skill of a mage is, in part, the ability to hold the entire spell in their mind. Don’t rely on copying it down: internalize it first. Cast it. Only transcribe a spell in full. If you aren’t entirely confident that the spell functions, do not set ink to page. Transcription errors can compound, and become a wall for a mage who learns the spell wrong. Some spells have even been lost to time due to transcription errors that propagated too widely and the original work was lost.”

  Ah. Not sure I buy that entirely. Kind of sounds like secret society type nonsense, but I guess I can see it. Well, I’m sure we have a copy of the correct spell in the library, if I want to study on my own.

  Maybe I’d just learn [Create Water] in class slowly and focus my self-study on [Create Light]. Will learning two spells at once be a problem? Maybe I’ll ask Somnial later.

  The rest of the class was us reciting and repeating lines led by Professor Somnius. Once the allure of being able to cast magic in the future from learning these lines had faded, this part of class was actually less interesting than history. It worked, though. Repeating the first lines of the [Create Water] spell for an hour made it nigh-impossible not to set it to memory.

  It stood to reason that relying on students memorizing spells on their own time would lead to a huge degree of failure. No one liked doing homework and most kids would put in the bare minimum of effort. Dedicating class time to it ensured we were all putting the work in. I figured that would change as we grew in age, experience, and responsibility, with the focus shifting to practical magic. I knew the academy had a training grounds behind the school where the older students could perform spells.

  “That’s enough for today,” the old mage said. “Dismissed.”

  The dam broke, and students began stretching, chatting, and packing up to leave class. I packed up as well, but didn’t get up right away, watching my classmates head out.

  Felton glanced at me on his way out, and gave me a small wave. That was nice. I grinned back at him. Soon enough, the class had emptied out, and I made my way down to the lectern.

  Somnius glared at me in a way that would probably have made a normal child incredibly uncomfortable. I was relatively unbothered, though.

  “So,” he growled. “You’re my brother’s pet project.”

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  I swallowed my immediate response. ‘Pet’ was a bit rude, but no need to make this more difficult for myself by being obstinate. “Yes, sir.”

  Close up, I could see the similarity between Somnius and Somnial. Definitely brothers, I thought. The two old men had similar faces and wore similar beards. Somnial looked a bit more world-weary, probably as a result of his youth fighting the demon king, whereas Somnius had deeper frown lines and brow furrows. I tried to recall if Somnial had mentioned who was older, as I couldn’t really tell, but came up blank.

  “You won’t get any special treatment from me,” he warned, glowering.

  “I don’t expect any.”

  “Good,” he grunted. We stared at each other a bit longer, but eventually, he broke eye contact and picked up his stuff from the lectern. “Don’t disappoint, Tovar. Dismissed.”

  I stepped away, the words chafing at me. What a dickhead. I wonder what his deal is. Whatever it was, the best response was to just out-perform expectations, which had been my plan in the first place, and learn as much magic as I could with this opportunity. I didn’t need my sponsor-uncle to motivate me.

  “Hey,” a voice said as I stepped out of the classroom, surprising me. I turned and found Felton standing by the door.

  “Oh. Hi. Were you waiting for me?”

  He shrugged. “Just wanted to see if you were all right. What did Professor Somnius want?”

  Said professor walked out of the classroom behind me. He gave us a glance before turning and walking down the hallway, doing whatever teachers did at the end of the school day. Though he could still have an upper-year elective to teach after finishing up with us.

  “It was nothing,” I said, turning my gaze back to Felton. “Just needed to have a word about… expectations.”

  Felton’s brow scrunched up. “Did Ramius do something already? That was fast.”

  “Ah, no, nothing like that,” I said. Though that could still happen. “Entirely unrelated. Anyway. You headed home?”

  Felton shook his head. “I’m waiting for Felris. Her afternoon classes run a bit later than ours. We’ll go back together.”

  “Right. Wait. Don’t you two live in Obdorn? It’s that close?”

  “No,” Felton said with a laugh. “We have a small family home in the capital where we’re staying for school. Just me and Felris, though, our parents are back in Obdorn with our younger brother.”

  “Oh. You live by yourselves?”

  “Well, with the help.”

  Ah, right. He might be a minor noble, but he’s still a noble.

  The silence stretched, growing slightly awkward, and I started wondering how to disengage, but Felton spoke back up.

  “You didn’t... need to move,” he said quietly.

  “Sorry?”

  “You didn’t have to change seats. After lunch.”

  “Oh. Uh. I didn’t want to, you know, put you on the spot. Because of Ramius.”

  Felton shrugged. “I can deal with Ramius. He’s a jerk, but he can’t actually do anything to my family,” he said, glancing at me with concern. “You, though…”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I can handle it.”

  “Well… good. I don’t want to lose my first school friend. So… can we sit together again tomorrow?”

  I grinned. “Sounds good.”

  As it turned out, the academy had a library for the students as well, though the grimoires there were locked away and required checking out based on year of admission and qualifying tests to show aptitude. From what I could glean, the spells all had a rating which could be tied to Will. Since people couldn’t see each others Systems in this world, proof of Will was required by completing academy tests. Apparently, the Will-testing orb Somnial had used was rare, so an alternate testing schema was used. For example, if a student wanted access to a 6-Will grimoire, they needed to display aptitude of one or more 5-Will spells for a teacher, as well as being in or above the required year of study.

  First year students had no access to any grimoires, which made me glad I had resources at the manor to lean on. The library also held non-magical books, though, as well as places to sit and study. I left Felton there, where he would wait for his sister to finish up for the day, before making my way out of the academy where I found Byron waiting for me with the carriage to return to the manor.

  * * *

  “How was your first day at the academy?” Somnial asked over dinner.

  I glanced up from my plate, surprised. The old sage was looking at me, as opposed to his book, which was a rarity. Aww, he actually cares.

  “It was fine,” I responded, shrugging slightly. “It’s a lot more academics and less magic than I expected.”

  “Well, you are still a child. It takes a while to build up the necessary know-how to cast spells, as well as the Will. Usually.”

  Right, my revelation was an outlier. “Speaking of,” I started, remembering what I had gleaned at the end of classes. “How do kids normally gain the initial Will needed to enter the academy?”

  “There’s no one answer,” Somnial said, placing down his utensil. “But generally, natural growth is a result of mana osmosis.”

  “I haven’t heard that term before.”

  “Hmm.” The sage leaned back in his chair. “Do you know what happens when too much mana concentrates in a location?”

  “Uh… isn’t that how dungeons come into being?”

  “Correct,” the sage said, with a small nod. “And because of that, dungeons are places of high magical concentration. You mentioned that you improved your Will with breathing exercises. I presume you stumbled upon a method to absorb and concentrate mana.”

  I nodded, and the sage continued.

  “It’s well known that having mana forcibly injected into an untrained individual can accelerate Will growth. At least, in certain circles. One example of this is healing spells. If a child is repeatedly subjected to healing spells, they are likely to gain a point or two in Will. Mind you, most mages who spend their lives studying healing spells aren’t willing to waste their efforts unnecessarily healing healthy children just to accelerate their growth, and would charge a fortune for it.”

  I suspected I knew where he was going with this, but I’d let him explain it. “What does that have to do with dungeons?”

  “Dungeons have high levels of ambient mana. That’s the reason they come into existence and why they spawn monsters. Naturally, this makes them incredibly dangerous places for children to go, but if they’re sufficiently protected, just spending enough time in a dungeon can help grow a novice’s Will.”

  “Right. That makes sense.” I had used my breath techniques to gather local ambient mana and concentrate it, which forced my mana circuit to adapt, but even just regular breathing in an area where the ambient mana was high would cause a similar adaptation. It might not be enough to push them all the way to five or six without my techniques, but it could be enough to get a child to a Will of three.

  “There are other ways, as well. Mana-infused food. Magical artifact use. Exposure to repeated spell-craft. The principle all ends up being the same. Magic begets magic, more or less.”

  Of course, that required access to magic, and thus money. No wonder mages didn’t spontaneously pop up in poor villages like Redding. Magic wasn’t inheritable like genetics, but it was inheritable like fortune. Ramius’s family could either afford to leverage a mage that knew healing until he gained a couple of points, or maybe they had access to some kind of artifact, or specialty food. I wasn’t sure his family would risk sending him to a dungeon, but if they did, they could afford reliable guards. I wonder what Felton did to get his Will up.

  The conversation lapsed, and we returned to our meal.

  “By the way,” I added, a few minutes later. “I met your brother.”

  “Ah.” Somnial sighed. “And how was Somnius?”

  “Uh… fine? Seems... competent, as a professor. He did kind of... single me out a bit?”

  Somnial and Byron glanced at each other, and I raised my hands.

  “Nothing I can’t handle. I just have to do well in school, which was my plan anyway.” I paused, chewing my lip a bit, debating whether I should ask. “So… what’s the deal with you two?”

  The old sage chuckled softly. “Just ancient family drama. As you said, all you need to focus on is performing admirably. I take it you’re learning [Create Water]?” I nodded, and Somnial stood, his dinner finished. “I should have a copy of that as well which you can study.”

  “Is it wise to try and learn two spells at once?” I asked, thinking of the progress I had made already on [Create Light].

  Somnial shrugged. “That’s up to you. They’re about the same difficulty, and both 3-Will spells. Read through [Create Water] in full and decide for yourself.”

  I followed Somnial to his library, where he retrieved the grimoire and handed it off to me. I took it back to the room, and set it next to the first, looking back and forth between the two spells.

  Well, let’s get to studying.