Chapter 334 - Basic Notions Two lifetimes, fifteen years of struggle from the bottom rung, more brushes with death than could reasonably be counted—all to end up behind a school desk. Kai sank into the hard wooden chair, unable to shake the sense of strangeness that had gripped him since he woke up. Should I say that I’ve made it? Or that I’ve failed completely? From the top of the lecture hall, students streamed in from ten sets of doors, filling the rows of seats; half of them already wore the burgundy first-year robes. Contrary to what Alden had said, the front seats hadn’t been contested until more than half of Beryl Hall had filled. He spun his dad’s pen between his fingers beneath the desk. The golden clock above the podium ticked down the last four minutes before the lesson began. And this is why I don’t come early. The academic atmosphere felt somewhat familiar yet different. Teens with imperious bearing chatted about spellcasting; mana and runes thrummed through the floor beneath his feet. The massive hall, covered in polished stone, exuded a presence and elegance unlike anything on Earth, rising in semicircles to accommodate one thousand seats. It would be wildly impractical if not for the higher Perception, allowing even the last rows to see the podium clearly. Kids on Earth can’t fling fireballs from their hands, or crack desks with their fists either… “Something up?” Rain gave him a glance from the seat beside him. The siren’s gaze flitted over the sea of students, unable to hide his giddy fascination. “You smell… melancholic. Have you been to a school before?” “It’s my first time at an academy. I’m fine. Just… overwhelmed, I guess.” Rain nodded, his eyes still scanning the hall. “I never imagined masters would tutor such large classes. Everyone from the Winter Intake must be here. It’s quite crowded.” A snort came from behind them. “It won’t last. The halls will empty once the trials start thinning the numbers. How can someone come late to their first lesson?” Kai turned to see a boy fidgeting with a wristband of rubies. The young patrician looked over to them, seemingly content to have aired his grievances without saying more Just as the hour was about to chime—latecomers trickling in to fill the remaining seats—the door behind the podium swung open. A man marched in, punctuating each step with the tap of a staff topped with a sculpted lion’s head. Golden scrollwork decorated the sleeves and collar of his indigo robes. Despite his white hair and beard, his face was remarkably smooth, showing barely any wrinkles. Kai stood to greet the professor, grateful for Valela’s warning. The mage paused before his desk, hands clasped behind his back. He regarded the hall with a cold scowl, prompting a shuffle of chairs and feet as distracted students scrambled to stand. The lively chatter faded till the last chairs screeched into a silent hall. "You may sit." The man’s voice carried a deliberate drawl. With a tilt of his head, the doors to the hall swung shut. "Welcome to Guide Fundamentals. I’m Professor Albeus Rowenni Lysander, High Magus of Mana Theories. You may address me as Professor Lysander. As new students, today will be the first and only time I’ll be lenient on your lack of decorum." A hardass, like Rob said. Uhm… Why did I even sit in the front row? Kai nodded along at the spiel on the importance of a mage’s manners. Chin raised, the man paced on the raised dais, his tone dry. "As you should know, if you’ve read the papers delivered with your schedules, Guide Fundamentals is one of seven basic courses you must pass within the next two months. Your time at Raelion will be remarkably short if you must retake more than one test. We have little time to waste..." Despite the drowsy cadence, the introductory speech was brief. Moving into the lecture, Professor Lysander took a crystal cube from the fold of his robes, setting it on the desk and tapping it with his staff to channel mana into the runes. The top face glowed, drawing the words he spoke on the wall above the podium. “Since many of you have yet to receive your course textbooks, I’ll keep this lecture to the fundamentals.” He smiled thinly. “I recommend you take notes. Anything mentioned will be on the test at the end of our lectures…” A rustle of paper and muffled groans spread through the hall. Few students seemed surprised by the floating words. Once the writing filled the wall, the first line faded to make space for the next set of sentences. The projection itself was a simple application of Light Magic; Kai was more intrigued by how the enchanted cube registered and translated speech into text. Just imagining the necessary runic matrix made his head spin. At least several interlocking arrays with thousands of runes each… Professor Lysander’s sweeping gaze brought Kai back from his daydream. He quickly scribbled the projected words and gave his best impression of a dutiful student. “…under the blessing of the Seven Moons, the Guide grants us endless possibilities for growth. It’s up to us not to waste this gift.” His voice rose, echoing with the shadow of passion. “Millennia of experience and research have gone into understanding the potential of our status. Yet we grasp but a sliver. You’ll continue studying the paths for growth throughout your years at Raelion. And beyond, if you have any sense. For the purpose of this course, we’ll focus on the basics.” The mage gazed over the hall, disdainful. “Each year, I see students claiming they’ve already mapped out their profession and skill paths with their family’s repositories, thinking themselves above these basic lessons.” He punctuated the word with a thud of his staff. “And year after year, I see hundreds of those same students fail to specialize a skill, miss the evolutions they wanted, and fall into dead skill paths. At the first pitfall, their road to Green crumbles into dust.” His attention shifted from student to student as if he had already seen their failure. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. “Your skills, professions, boons, and attributes. Everything in your status is interconnected. A window to your being, of all you have and will achieve. And like the roots and leaves of a tree, every part serves a purpose. Every decision affects the larger whole. A single crack, a missed specialization or lower attribute, can cripple the tree’s growth and cascade into a failed path. “Though let’s start with something simple: a general skill. The first addition to your status in childhood. Even easier, let’s pick a skill you’re all familiar with: Mana Sense. One of the cornerstones for those studying the arcane. “If you’re enrolled at Raelion’s Mana Studies, you must have evolved the skill to Yellow. Some of you might have even reached the level 50 milestone, but let’s rewind the clock to when you first learned Mana Sense at Orange.” He tapped the crystal cube. The words above faded, replaced by a branching skill tree with over twenty specializations for the level 50 and level 75 milestones, connected through a web of lines ending with ten evolutions at level 100. Are there really so many? Though the exact wording sometimes differed, Kai recognized the specializations he had chosen, along with several others—a web of thick, dotted, and double lines connected every option. Choosing not to specialize Mana Sense kept the most paths open, though few evolutions were completely cut off. “... specializations that increase your range, acuity, elemental sensitivity, and many more. Each combination will impede or favor certain evolutions like Advanced Mana Sense, Mana Sight, Mana Awareness, Elemental Vision, or one of the rarer versions like Mana Observer, Arcane Sense, or Etheric Perception,” Professor Lysander said. “While this tree lacks the more esoteric branches, it should contain all the options you’ve encountered.” “I expect you to map your orange skill path for the next lesson. Even two people with Advanced Mana Sense may experience subtle differences, depending on the path they took to get there. And those differences will affect their skill path to Green.” The professor let his words hang in the hall with a stony face. There are so many possibilities… Kai was too focused on copying the skill chart, adding his own observations to care. He never imagined people had researched skill progression with such detail—a stupid assumption, in retrospect. A whole world had opened up, and he was trying not to get swept up in the implications. Taking advantage of the respite to stretch his neck, he noticed several bored faces around him. A few students furiously scribbled like him, though most seemed not to care despite the professor’s warnings. Did everyone already know all of this? Besides him, Rain was taking notes with a thoughtful frown. At least someone sensible remained. Kai was about to give him an approving nod when he noticed the contents of his friend's notebook—doodles of a squirrel riding a caricature of Professor Lysander. The page before had a bird and an octopus dueling with spears. Before Kai could shake his stupor, the lecture demanded his attention. “This is the most basic example of a skill path,” the professor said. “Unfortunately, skills don’t exist in isolation. They’re influenced by each other, their core attributes, and your boons. First, we’ll add another variable you should be familiar with—Mana Manipulation…” Google seaʀᴄh novel⸺fire.net The words projected on the wall shifted, doubling the specializations and evolutions, and tripling the paths connecting them. Kai blinked at the chart, his throat dry, using Split Mind to copy it while listening to the lecture. “…simplified chart. Adding only Mana Manipulation, we have a hundred and forty-eight permutations to grow Mana Sense from Orange to Yellow. If we then factor in the influence of attributes and another Perception skill, the number increases…” So basically, I’ve just been winging it… Whenever the Guide gave him options, he spent considerable effort considering every angle and implication. But how could a kid compare to millennia of research? A whole damned field of research he had ignored till now. Sweat drenched his back and palms. His mind stretched in a dozen directions to grasp every new fact, straining Split Mind, and still failing. Few facts kept him from panicking. From what he could see on the chart, his path to Mana Observer seemed decent enough. And if Dora, Virya, and Elijah had never mentioned any of this to him,7 he trusted that any decision he’d made couldn’t screw him over too badly. I’m gonna strangle them regardless. Just need to find them first. Was it too much to give me a little warning? Whatever the answer, Professor Lysander’s incessant drawl kept his thoughts from spiraling unless he wanted to miss the lecture. Huh, why has he gone silent? Already overwhelmed, his mind took a moment to realize the hall had gone silent. Lifting his eyes from the page, Kai saw the old mage staring at the rows of seats above him with an icy glare. “You, you, and you.” The professor gestured with his staff toward three groups of students more than fifty rows back. “I do not tolerate guffawing during my lessons. Five demerits each. And you’ll submit a three-page essay on this lecture.” “What—” A single voice rose in protest. “Ten demerits for you, Caspiam Karvenne. If you think your father will argue for your sake, think again. I expect those essays by tomorrow, unless you want to double your punishments. All of you. I never forget a face.” Uhm… he has a funny idea of his first day leniency. Kai used the breather to order his notes. Even with his focus on the lecture, the chatter couldn’t have been that loud if he hadn’t noticed. Ten demerits on the first day. He had read about them in the first sections of Raelion’s Codex. Like debt, demerits had to be repaid with Credits of Merit. Then they had the added little downside that if you accumulated a hundred over the course of a year, you’d be expelled. No matter if you repaid them—they stacked up. A tenth of the way to getting kicked out. Poor guy… The rest of the lesson passed in a blur as Kai filled page after page with notes, recording the expanding list of interlocking factors. His hand ached from trying to keep up with his thoughts, unused to the speed of writing. From what he could tell, he hadn’t walked into any of the egregiously bad skill paths–-or still had time to correct course. While the journey from Orange to Yellow mattered, going from Yellow to Green was where the foundations became set in stone—at least, according to Mr. Scowls. He had already been planning to restructure his status, ditching a couple of skills, like Treasure Senses and Advanced Hunting. They had served him well in the Sanctuary, but now he had to survive a very different kind of environment. He had asked Valela what skills would be more useful at the academy to confirm his ideas. “…manage for now. At the lowest rungs of Yellow, there are still many paths open. Even a fool can stumble onto a solution. But now is when you set your foundation for the rest of your life,” Professor Lysander reiterated. “You might still reach Green if you’re lucky, but without a solid and comprehensive path, you’ll never move beyond the early stages. Once your skills evolve to take too many skill slots, it’ll be too late.” Kai paused, his pen hovering above the page. That almost sounded like skills at Green could take more skill slots. Information about the grades beyond Yellow was extremely scarce, but surely someone would have told him. He looked at Rain, who was nodding along, unable to contain his question, whispering. “Do skills take more skill slots at Green?” “Uh, usually yes,” the siren said without lifting his eyes from his doodles. “It depends on the skill and the evolution.” A chime marked the end of the two-hour lecture. “That’s everything for today.” Professor Lysander tapped the cube, deactivating the projection. “I’ll remind you that you’ll need to submit a path for your main magic skills to pass this course. And I don’t mean whatever your family or tutors gave you. I will not approve any plan if you can’t justify your own decisions.” With that, the old mage thumped his staff on the way out, his scowl firmly in place. Kai stared at the white plaster of the wall. He had done one lesson, and his mind was already a boat lost in a storm.