David stood before the classroom doors, in the hall of the academy. Despite the unpleasant conversation with Sophie, he had slept well, as if his body knew he would need it.

  The doors were slightly ajar, muted whispers audible from inside. David took a deep breath, trying to still his heart. The day before was just a tour, but today, it was going to start for real and with all that entailed.

  He could barely imagine himself struggling with the studies themselves, especially with Aura’s and Dolen’s previous tutoring and his own skills and smarts.

  That’s a stupid way of thinking. I should really humble myself somehow.

  The inside of the room didn’t match the rest of the academy. Bare stone walls covered in barely shining sigils, dim candlelight, and a faint chill that clung to the corners of the rectangular room.

  A semicircle of wooden benches occupied one end, with no sign of comfort beyond functionality.

  He hesitated, as the sitting students turned to him, eager to see who had just entered.

  There were fourteen of them, in total, all wearing the same standard black robes, but the group still varied massively. David himself was the youngest looking participant, but they all ranged from eleven to, seemingly, fifteen.

  Polbran, the boy who tried to insult him, sat with the same people he surrounded himself with the day before.

  Wonder why they’re not wearing their gold today? Maybe they noticed the disgusted looks some nobles sent them.

  A few long seconds had already passed and he was no closer to understanding the rules by which the students sat, so he bit the bullet and walked up to the nearest empty seat.

  It was by a girl maybe a bit older than him, with a mask covering half her face. She wore the same robes as everyone, but the luster of her hair and the health of her skin announced her status loud and clear.

  David gulped inaudibly and offered a small nod. "Is this seat taken?"

  She blinked at him, momentarily stunned, then tilted her head ever so slightly. "No. You may sit here."

  He slid onto the bench, trying to take up as little space as possible. “I’m Marco.” he muttered in her general direction.

  “Diana.” She whispered, without looking at him. Her lips were slightly curled, but through the mask and his unwillingness to stare at her, he wasn’t sure if it was a smirk or a frown.

  Great. He’d been here minutes, and already made some social misstep. Would getting up and finding a new spot make it worse?

  Before he could decide, the classroom door creaked open, and a tall woman entered. Her black robe was nearly identical to the students', but it was covered in a soft blue gleam.

  Lady Greine. She was lean, with dark hair that seemed to be an extension of her robes. She said nothing as she entered, merely nodding to a pair of younger men who followed behind, each struggling to carry a crate.

  They placed it on the floor in front of her and evacuated the room.

  “I see you all made it here on time. And here I was prepared to whip punctuality into you.” A noble teenager chuckled, but quickly cut off under Greine’s cold eyes. “Moving on. Today you’ll learn to sense mana and channel it. Rudimentary knowledge for any practitioner of the magical arts, whether they be a caster, an artificer or a knight.”

  David exhaled some of the stress he’d been bottling up. He already knew a lot about all that, so he would have some time to get used to the new place in peace.

  “This,” Lady Greine picked up a small wooden cube from one of the crates, “Is your first practice cube. It will shine if you manage to fuel it with mana.”

  With her other hand, she picked up a potion in a blue vial. “And this is a sensing potion. It will greatly speed up the process of sensing mana for the first time. You will sip it throughout the day.”

  Hearing that, Polbran immediately grimaced, but David thought he was overreacting. Aura had fed him a similar potion ages ago, and it wasn’t that bad.

  “That’s it from me for now. Usually, we’d cover theory now, but there isn’t much point learning about mana until you feel it for yourself. Step forward to receive a cube and a potion.”

  David almost stood up, but held himself back at the last moment. Only Diana and two teenagers walked up. Once they returned to their seats, Polbran’s group walked up for their implements, and the boy himself shot David a curious look.

  Only then, when everyone else who remained got up, David moved. Out of curiosity, he focused on his mana sight and inspected both the items he received.

  The cube felt vaguely magical, but in a way that gave him no insight whatsoever. The potion, on the other hand, had a very strong mana signature. Leftovers of the one Aura had given him back then looked nowhere like that.

  Interesting. Did she dilute it for me because I was a child?

  He seriously doubted that Aura, an expert alchemist that she was, would struggle with a seemingly cheap potion.

  “Lady Greine,” Polbran stood up as he spoke, looking a bit pale. He waited for the teacher to look at him before continuing to speak. “If we can already sense and channel mana, do we have to drink the potion?”

  “No. But on that note, feel free to demonstrate.” She held the cube and made it shine very brightly.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Polbran tensed and focused on his cube so hard, a drop of sweat rolled down his young face. The cube started to shine, but nowhere near as brightly as Lady Greine’s.

  “I’m sorry, I’m normally capable in this regard…” He stammered.

  “It’s the expected result for someone who has learned today’s lesson. Making it brighter is a different exercise altogether.” She thought for a second. “You might be able to do that if you knew how. Try to figure it out today.”

  The boy lit up at the comment and slumped back down in relief. He placed the potion as deep under the bench as he could.

  “Anyone else already capable of sensing?” Lady Greine continued.

  David looked around, worried if he should reveal himself or not. Diana and the haughty-seeming, auburn-haired girl had stood up.

  Alright, it’s not that rare.

  He stood up, mimicking the pair already up. Both him and the unknown girl were getting a lot of stares from their classmates.

  “My, my. I’m familiar with Young Lady Diana, but who are you two?”

  “Lia.” The auburn-haired girl spoke.

  “I’m Marco, Lady Greine.” David said, trying to copy Polbran’s way of speech. The boy had an atrocious sense of taste, but he seemed to know the social rules well.

  “Well then, go ahead.”

  David looked to Diane and saw her picking up her cube in two fingers.

  Her eyes locked onto the cube, which lit up at once, dimly. She looked at it from different sides for a moment, the light flickering on and off, but it never moved past that initial level.

  David was next. He felt little resistance when moving the mana inside the cube, and it lit up effortlessly–but not very brightly. He tried pushing it more, but the light never increased past the initial threshold.

  David cut off the flow, worried about breaking the item.

  Well… On par for a beginner exercise I guess. Making it brighter seems like a curious challenge, though.

  Lia was the last to attempt the test. She clutched the cube in both hands as if to crush it. It lit up and stayed that way. Nothing was happening, yet Lia was breathing hard, with beads of sweat covering her forehead.

  All magic items had their limits, that’s one of the things Aura taught him, and David wondered if Lia knew.

  She did not, apparently.

  A few moments later, a loud crack filled the room and the cube split in two, without ever crossing the light threshold. The stored mana erupted into a shockwave… then immediately dissipated.

  David stared wide-eyed. For all he knew, Lia should have crashed into the wall, yet she stood there unharmed.

  “Student Lia.” Lady Greine sighed, “I did not expect you to overwhelm the cube. You’ll have to wait for assistants to bring you a new one… Though it’s a good occasion to inform you all about mana overload and our precautions against it.”

  After the trio who had attempted the cube sat back down, Lady Greine started her impromptu lecture.

  The explanation was simple, rather short… and mostly already known to David. In short, If you lose control of mana, it rampages.

  But also, destroying a magical item basically sets all the mana inside loose, so it has the potential to be catastrophic in consequence.

  That might explain why Calland’s amulet was so surprisingly effective as a grenade back when I used it against the predator. The amulet itself got fried, so If I assume it broke down and added to the explosion… Yeah.

  It wasn’t very useful knowledge now, since he didn’t have many artifacts laying around to use as explosives. Just the one he looted from... Nevermind. A useful tidbit of understanding.

  What he didn’t know was that one could create rooms warded specifically to dissipate rampaging mana and shield learning students from harming themselves in their experimentation.

  Obviously, they were presently in one such room.

  After finishing her part, Lady Greine called for someone to bring Lia a new cube and promptly removed herself from the room, leaving the students to their own devices.

  As soon as the door closed, the room’s mood shifted. With the authority figure gone, whispers resumed, some loud, others cautious.

  An invisible pressure stopped David from focusing on the cube, though. While most people were focused on Lia, due to her antics, David didn’t escape scrutiny.

  Oh-ho.

  Polbran and Diana were focused on him, though the noble girl averted her eyes quickly after David had noticed her interest.

  Polbran had no such reservations and walked up to him, in a confident swagger.

  “Marco, right? I’m Polbran, sorry for my comments yesterday.” The teen extended a hand towards him.

  “It’s fine. I believe Mister Rafiel had already denounced you for it.” David stood up and shook it.

  “Yeah, he kind of did. No big deal. He is a good friend of my father.”

  David raised his brows. Diana turned toward them, too, ever so slightly.

  “Oh, you didn’t know?” Polbran smirked. “My father teaches golemancy here. It’s already certain I’m gonna be the best artificer this academy has ever seen!”

  He’s one of those, huh?

  “If you say so,” David said, keeping a respectful tone. “Is there something you might need from me?”

  “I am just curious. Where did you learn to sense mana? And with elegance, nonetheless. Don’t get me wrong, but…” he lowered his voice into a whisper. “ Lia is much closer to what I’d expect of a self-learned contracted child.”

  Diana was not-so-subtly trying to listen in, so David decided to speak slightly louder for her comfort. He had treated the conversation like a public thing from the start anyway, and such information wasn’t much of a secret to begin with.

  “I did not sign a contract. I paid the tuition up front and in full.” David smiled. It felt good to say that. “My mother is an alchemist and she taught me the basics.”

  “Wait, seriously? Then why do you keep letting contract-bound go before you everywhere?” Polbran’s voice adapted a slightly disgusted tone. “Are you one of those anti-order people my father keeps grumbling about?”

  “I’m sorry, I have no idea what any of that means. I have a rather tenuous grasp of city rules, coming from a small village.” David admitted freely, eager to end the conversation.

  Diana stirred a little, too. Perhaps with some sort of understanding.

  Hopefully that will give her more patience toward me.

  “But you do speak eloquently, so your mother must be well educated. Was she such a poor tea–” Polbran started, in an abrasive voice, but stopped mid word as David’s face involuntarily contorted into a scowl. “Sorry, it seems my brashness got the best of me yet again.”

  Polbran was slowly crossing from annoying to insulting, especially with possible comments about Aura. David didn’t let it show and simply shrugged. He’d been doing a lot of that lately. “Anything else? I’d like to start working with the cube.”

  “Didn’t you get it to light up instantly?”

  “Sure, but not brightly. I intend to do so by the end of the day.”

  “Well, it seems I'm not the only one with a sense of humor.” Polbran chuckled, but David’s face remained impassive. “You’re serious? Huh. We could treat it as a duel then! Not much of one, since I’ll surely win but good luck! You’ll need it. ”

  David nodded and sat down, eager to be done with the distractions. It’s not that he wanted to stand out with his skill. Not yet at least. But curbing Polbran’s arrogance, even if only a little, sounded fun.

  In the end, Diana didn’t take part in the conversation, content to discretely listen in from the sidelines.

  I wonder how long that will last. Not very, knowing my luck.