Chapter 74: Chapter 71

The magic academy’s architectural design had obviously taken some level of inspiration from castles. Even though it clearly wasn’t actually a castle, each corner of the building was a turret tower made of stone instead of a more traditional building design. There were even crenels at the top of each tower, to allow defenders to shoot arrows or miscellaneous objects at invaders if need be. The sides of the building also had small slits in them near the top, giving defenders even more options to attack invaders without being attacked themselves. Every single stone of the building was enchanted with Kinetic Magic – Alice had a hard time figuring out exactly what the enchantments were doing, but it looked like it made the building sturdier, as well as… something else? Alice couldn’t figure out the second function at all. It was too far removed from other Kinetic Enchantments she had seen before, but she assumed it was related to defense somehow.

The building was located right next to one of the four gates that allowed entry to the noble quarter at the center of the city, and could clearly double as a military outpost to control traffic and lock down the city if need be. Alice wondered if all of the magic schools in the capital were built like small fortresses. If so, were the buildings structured for defensive ability, or teaching first?

Perhaps both, she mused as she walked up to the school gates.

“Student ID?” A handsome teenager was standing just inside of the gate with a bored expression. Alice wordlessly produced the ID she had been given after registering for the school. Rainbow mana activated near the gatekeeper’s eyes, before he turned towards her. “Please repeat this statement. My name is Alice Verianna. I am the person who signed up for this ID last week. I hold no intent to inflict violence upon any other people in this institution, no intent to sabotage this institution, no intent to interfere with the regular operations of this institution, and do not anticipate these intentions changing before I next exit this building.”

Alice repeated the statement.

The handsome teenager relaxed a bit. “Good to see another first year. When is your first class of the day?”

“Twenty minutes from now. Why?” The teenager grinned at her.

“It’s good that you gave yourself enough time to find your way around. Some people get lost – this building only has a few stairways, and they’re all near the back of the building. Which is pretty inconvenient for [Students] trying to walk around, though it would buy a bit of time and create some nice choke points if a Sigmusi army was trying to storm the school. Anyway, head to the back of the first floor if you’re looking for stairs – a lot of first years get confused by that. Good luck!” The boy opened the gate for Alice, seemingly done talking to her.

The interior of the school was quite different from the militaristic exterior. As if to flaunt the school’s wealth and magical know-how, the walls were lined with a variety of globes, most of which floated in midair and well out of reach. Alice took a step closer to one, before looking up and chuckling to herself.

The first globes she saw were designed to sense the surrounding temperature, and then drop the temperature if it was too hot and boost the temperature if it was too cold. Even on another planet, air conditioning was alive and well. Some of the other globes were pure mana globes, and seemed to be in charge of regulating mana flow inside of the building. Alice guessed it was supposed to keep areas with lots of experiments ongoing supplied with adequate mana. There were several other globes, many of which contained kinds of mana she had never seen before. She spent a few seconds looking at them, but was forced to give up because she couldn’t figure out what they were doing.

The globes were all encased in little lantern-shaped objects made of some sort of clear, thick glass. At the bottom of each lantern were a large number of monster cores, linked together in some sort of ingenious circuit that made it easy for them to supply the enchanted globes with mana whenever they ran out, and also made it easy to replace the power sources needed.

Finally, there were little metal hooks buried in the sides of the walls that were also enchanted. They seemed to be a kind of enchantment she hadn’t seen before, but she was able to intuitively guess the use of them: they were enchanted as a ‘pair’ with the floating lanterns. The knobs themselves were only able to influence the object they were paired with, and the only thing they did was make the globes float in midair and keep them from moving around or falling down. Alice grinned to herself when she observed the floating metal lanterns – she could see where Ezrien had taken inspiration for the device the research team was trying to build. While the two enchantments were very different in scale and purpose, they seemed to share a certain ‘base’ to them. Ezrien’s project was, essentially, a plan to make it easier and cheaper to produce the metal hooks she was looking at, and make the enchantment work without being a paired enchantment. She wouldn’t have realized it if she hadn’t seen the metal hooks, but after a month of working on the kinetic plates, there was no way she would miss the similarities between the two. She chuckled to herself, before she decided to look at the floating lanterns more closely later. She might get more ideas or inspiration from a more detailed examination.

It had been less than a minute since she had entered the building, and she had already found a few types of enchantment she had never seen before. Alice grinned to herself before she continued walking towards the back of the building. It took her a few more minutes before she found the stairs while she eyed her schedule.

All students were supposed to sign up for anywhere between three and five classes for the year, based on student preferences. Two of them were mandatory classes for first years: self defense, to make sure mages trained in Illvaria had at least a minimal ability to keep themselves alive, and public morals, because Illvaria felt the need to preach about public responsibility. Or maybe the ruling class of Illvaria wanted to make sure that Mages, who had the highest average combat ability in the population, were less likely to run amok and wreak havoc on the country. Alice expected both classes to be rather dull, but since they were mandatory in every educational facility there didn’t seem to be a way to dodge out of the classes.

Apart from the two mandatory classes, Alice had taken theory of mana (since it related so closely to her interests and based on the class description, it was also likely to be heavily related to pure mana), an introductory course to Organic Mana (because it was one of the three consistently repeating mana types she found in System fractals, and she had a seed for the mana type but couldn’t use it), and biology of monsters (because monsters didn’t have access to the System, Alice deemed that they were interesting ‘exceptions’ to her primary topic of interest.) She wasn’t actually sure if she would get anything useful out of the last one, but she figured it was worth a shot. Apart from the fact that monsters ate mana, she didn’t know much else about the species, and maybe she would get some interesting ideas or information from studying them. This lack of knowledge made her uncomfortable, so she wanted to correct it in case she was overlooking something obvious that might help her.

Her first class of the day was monster biology.

Alice finally located her classroom, before she stepped in.

Unlike in her high school at home, the classes weren’t just rows of identical tiny desks shoved together in a room with a blackboard. Instead, comfortable sofas were arranged throughout the room, all of which were surprisingly well made according to this world’s furniture standards. Floating in front of each sofa was a small wooden board. On the floor in front of each sofa were more of the paired metal hook enchantments that kept each board floating in exactly the same spot.

Lounging on the sofas and talking to each other were nine other students, most of which were somewhere between their mid teens and early twenties in age. However, there was one student who was noticeably older – a woman who was in her early thirties was seated near the front of the room, completely ignoring others as she looked through a textbook for another class. Near the podium at the front of the class, a teacher was floating in midair with his eyes closed, practicing balancing himself with kinetic mana.  It was a highly impressive feat of magic, and one that Alice had seen Illa use and had tried (and failed) to emulate herself multiple times. The teacher was also in possession of an Organic seed, making him one of the few people to bother branching into multiple magic seeds besides Alice. The teacher looked to be in his late twenties, and was thus younger looking than the student in her early thirties. Though, since he had denser mana Alice suspected he was probably older than the woman and just had a younger body. The teacher had short black hair and a severe looking expression, and seemed a bit on the shorter side. There was an angry looking scar on his left hand, which made Alice wonder if a vinebear had mauled him at some point in the past and he had never gotten the scar removed by an Organic Mage.

Underneath the teacher’s desk, Alice could also see a spidercrab trapped inside of a cage. There was some sort of enchantment on the cage that Alice assumed was reducing the sound the spidercrab should have made, but it was still throwing itself against the cage over and over again as it tried to escape and eat the students. Alice felt one of her eyes twitch, before she turned her attention back to the students.

“New girl?” asked one of the boys sitting near the center of the room. The group of people he was talking to also lifted their heads, giving her curious glances as she walked in.

She glanced at the boy who had spoken, and noticed that he wearing a gold ring decorated with a symbol she didn’t recognize. He also had a fairly high [Charisma] score. It was probably in the high 130’s or lower 140’s? Maybe he was a [Noble] or a [Merchant]? Otherwise, it would be decidedly odd for him to devote so much time to boosting his [Charisma] and for him to own gold jewelry. Deciding that being polite was in her best interests, Alice nodded at the group.

“Yeah, I’m new. My name is Alice. Nice to meet you.”

“My name is Luka Frien. It’s always nice to make new acquaintances!” Said the handsome boy, giving Alice a cheerful grin.

“My name is Arsi,” said another boy in the group. He was the oldest one in the talkative group. Unlike Luka, Arsi was much more average looking by this world’s standards. However, he had three magic seeds – Kinetic, Organic, and Thermal. The amount of rainbow mana in his body was impressive. Alice guessed the boy was probably higher level than her, despite the fact that he was only physically eighteen or nineteen.

 “Laila,” said the girl. She was relatively pretty, and wasn’t wearing a uniform – instead, she was wearing a red dress that covered most of her body but left her shoulders bare. The dress was funneling rainbow mana into her brain, meaning it was probably boosting either her [Intelligence] or her [Willpower.] The enchantment didn’t look small, either – it was clearly providing a much bigger boost than the puny +2 strength necklace Alice had destroyed earlier. She was willing to bet that it was giving a +15 bonus to the girl’s mental stats, or an even higher boost. Even though the girl didn’t have any outstanding personal characteristics, for a family to give her a dress that boosted her mental stats and the influence to get the girl an exception to the school’s uniform-based dress code meant they were both wealthy and influential. The girl gave Alice a shy smile.

“Erkki Peniten,” said the last boy, giving Alice a friendly nod. He had three rings on his fingers, all of which were enchanted. However, they didn’t look professionally enchanted – they looked kind of like Alice’s enchantments. Homemade and not professional, but good enough to work, even if they were a bit crude. He had the lowest [Charisma] of the group, and looked to only be fourteen or so. He had above-average mana in his body, though it was nowhere near Arsi’s mana level.

“Nice to meet you, fellow classmate,” said Luka, picking up the reins of the conversation again. “What’s your background? Noble? Commoner looking to join the army? Something else entirely?”

“Errr…” Alice felt a little nervous. Milo had said that the [Nobles] of this world didn’t bother picking on commoners when she had talked to him several months ago. According to him, it was a stupid action for them to take if they wanted to hire Mages for the sake of their territory in the future. However, she still felt a little nervous about just outright saying she was a commoner who could barely afford to enter the academy.

“I take it you’re a commoner then,” said Arsi, giving Alice a relaxed grin. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have hesitated to talk about it. Don’t worry – I know some commoners really hesitate to mention their backgrounds, since sometimes there are ridiculous stories about nobles bullying commoners for their ‘noble pride’ or other kinds of nonsense. However, you don’t have to be nervous. There is almost nobody stupid enough to do that in real life – if nobles actually acted like that, they would lose the loyalty of their soldiers and citizens before getting overthrown in a rebellion. If their retainers didn’t just loot their house dry by embezzling and sneaking funds around first. I’m a commoner myself, but I’ve made a name for myself because of my high competence in various fields of magic. And even before I made a name for myself, I was never treated poorly.” He gave Alice a mischevious grin.

Since Arsi had pointed it out, Alice didn’t see a reason to hide her background anymore. “Yeah, I’m a commoner. I’m sponsored – I don’t want to join the army, and there’s no way I would be able to afford magic academy this year on my own.”

“Oh? Sponsored? That’s quite impressive. Not many people actually manage to get into a magic academy that way. What do you specialize in?” asked Erkki.

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“Enchanting and research. I know some kinetic Magic for self defense as well. But mostly, I’ve been learning enchanting.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of you in any enchanting circles. Are you new to the city?” asked Erkki. However, Alice noticed interest in the boy’s expression now. He was giving Alice an excited grin. Based on the rings on his fingers, Alice guessed that he was an enchanting enthusiast.

“I’m recently baptized. I just became a mage half a year ago, give or take a bit.”

The interest in Luka’s eyes sharpened. “To merit a patron with only half a year of magic behind you is very impressive. How did you come this far in half a year?”

“Luck?” Alice frowned. To be perfectly honest, a lot of things since she had come to this world had been based on her luck. She had survived a mana baptism from broken mana, which dropped the already low odds of survival even further, and had been lucky enough to get a high rarity Achievement for making some simple observations. Those had let her snowball into getting more Achievements, levels, and Perks, which had then let her keep snowballing things until she had reached where she currently stood. While she was glad she had made it this far, she definitely didn’t think that it had been due to her innate skill or otherworldly knowledge – by and large, she had gotten this far because she was lucky. She had been able to make use of that luck with her own hard work, but luck was what got the ball rolling.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. But I don’t believe that you could get the abilities to pull a sponsor with just luck” said Erkki, his polite smile from earlier transforming into a more genuine one. “I didn’t have a sponsor during my first year here – I was originally on the military track before I impressed a Marquis with my abilities and he paid for my continued education. I’m glad to see another talented [Enchanter] in the school. Let’s get along well, all right?”

“I don’t know if I would say I’m talented – I’m still figuring out how to do things on my own. I’m working on it, though,” said Alice as she reflexively grinned a bit.

The five continued to chat for a few minutes, waiting until the official start time of the class. Alice learned that Luka was the third son of an Earl, but had no interest in governing and wasn’t in the line of succession. Instead, his older brother, who was highly competent and motivated, was set to inherit the territory. However, Luka was set to work for his older brother and lead the Mages of the territory, so he had subtly formed this group of people based on a desire to get to know other mages.

Erkki was the son of a fairly well known [Enchanter] in the city. His father had an excellent reputation, and Erkki had inherited his father’s talent for both magic and enchanting. He was steadily making a name for himself.

Arsi, like Alice, had been born a nonmage. He was a former kid from the slums, and while he was on the verge of starvation, he decided that it was better to gamble on the four percent chance of surviving a mana baptism than the much smaller odds of finding food for the next day. He managed to survive his mana baptism and became a mage, and was now on track to join the military. Alice was slightly baffled by the fact he was present in the research focused academy and not the military focused one, but since Arsi didn’t mention it, she decided not to ask. If they got to know each other better in the future, maybe she would bring it up.

Finally, Laila was the daughter of a wealthy merchant family. Both of her parents were nonmages, but she had won the genetic lottery and ended up with a talent for Magic. She didn’t seem to be particularly passionate about magic or enchanting, or selling and buying things – instead, she seemed content to drift through academy, never failing but never excelling as she did things at her own pace. But even though Laila didn’t seem particularly motivated or enthusiastic, she was pleasant enough to talk to for a brief conversation.

Finally, as more students streamed into the classroom, the total number of students in the class reached about forty. The teacher stopped levitating himself in midair and opened his eyes when the time for class came, before he took a good look at the classroom.

“So, you’re here to learn about monster biology. I’m professor Esaiyas, and this is introductory monster biology. Can anyone tell me about monsters? Yes, you – the tall girl with black hair.” He said, pointing to a girl near the front of the classroom.

“They’re violent and universally hostile to humans.”

“All right, a good start. What else?”

“They eat mana.”

“They aren’t very intelligent, and in the past the church has sometimes claimed they’re manifestations of human laziness or evil.”

“They can eat broken mana, even though broken mana is usually dangerous for humans.”

“Good. Then why study monsters?” asked the teacher, once he was done collecting student responses. Without waiting for anyone to answer, he launched further into his speech. “We study monsters because doing so gives us a better idea of what we might encounter in the wild. There are a lot of other reasons why one might study monsters – however, knowing what might try to kill you tomorrow is definitely one of them.

“Humanity lives on two of the three discovered continents – monsters live on all three. In mana-dense areas, monsters are strong. The species of monsters are so strong and numerous in mana dense regions that even an army of Immortals would avoid those areas. South of Illvaria is the great unknown, because human explorers don’t live if they try to explore those areas. The Western Continent is even worse – the number of humans who have successfully set foot on that continent and returned to tell the tale number less than twelve in all of recorded history.

“Studying monsters pinpoints their strengths and weaknesses, and ways we can survive encounters with them. Of course, they can also provide valuable insights into scholarly studies. Studying monsters has given us valuable insights on how vital mana is to life, for example, and monsters can serve as valuable test subjects for experiments that we can’t test on humans for ethical reasons. There are many reasons to study monsters.”

The teacher walked over to the cage that held the spidercrab, before he opened it. The spidercrab leapt out of the cage, before it froze in midair. Belatedly, Alice realized that the man wasn’t using kinetic mana on other parts of the spidercrab, nor had he been using kinetic magic on the hairs of the spidercrab’s legs. He was just using kinetic magic on the spidercrab’s skin, and paying for the massively increased cost and difficulty of using kinetic energy on a living being. It was the same thing he had done when levitating himself in the front of the classroom earlier. How big were his mana reserves?

“The lowly spidercrab is one of the most common monsters in the world. They are stupid, even for monsters, they breed quickly, and they have minimal fighting power. Even a normal farmer considers a solitary spidercrab to be more of a pest than a real threat. The only exception is during spring, which is breeding season. During that time, spidercrabs group up around females and form packs, forming threats to solitary humans and children if they aren’t dealt with. However, on the whole they’re the most common and least threatening species of monster on the two inhabited continents.”

The spidercrab that was hovering in midair suddenly tore in half. In two neat motions, the teacher’s mana tendrils flooded the spidercrab’s body with kinetic mana. With a neat twist, the spidercrab was ripped asunder in midair. Instead of bleeding, all of its blood and guts hovered in midair, as the teacher carefully turned the halved spidercrab innards to face the students.

“In this class, I’m going to show you what a variety of monsters looks like. We will observe them in their natural habitats, we will dissect them, we will discuss their strengths and weaknesses and how to neutralize them if you find yourself in a fight with them. We will discuss their uses in magical and nonmagical branches of study, observe their organs and innards in detail, and learn how to kill them. Welcome to introductory monster biology.”

The teacher gave the students a manic grin, as some of the students grinned or cheered. Alice noticed, with some surprise, that there weren’t any squeamish students who flinched from the monster guts frozen in midair. The effect of a completely different cultural mindset in this world, perhaps?

The teacher spent the rest of the class going over a more routine syllabus – it was something Alice was used to seeing in her former high school classes. How grading was done, what classes would look like, etc. However, the floating spidercrab corpse, as well as the very brief display of where a spidercrab core was located, gave Alice the feeling that the class might be very different than her expectations.

After the class, Alice had something to do before her next class started. She had three hours of free time before her first mandatory class of the day, Self-Defense, started. A short enough period of time that going back to her inn room or going to Cecilia’s workshop would be a waste since she needed to spend forty minutes walking to and from the academy, but a long enough period of time that she needed something to occupy herself while she was waiting.

And luckily, she had something she had been looking forward to for a long time.

It was time to visit the academy library.