I ate outside the academy for the next two days. I'd rather avoid dealing with the nobility there, and it was worth the minor expense of eating elsewhere. Still, I missed their cuisine.

I found my classrooms ahead of time, so I couldn't get myself lost and end up late on the first day. Introduction to Magic had me excited. The first steps on my journey were finally beginning. I arrived a few minutes early to find myself a seat before the room filled up. There were only a few students so far, mostly congregating around the back of the room. I chose a seat on the rightmost wall, away from the entrance.

My classmates streamed into the room slowly before class started, and I recognized one face. I locked eyes with Rodriguez Mateo. His stride faltered momentarily as he made his way to a seat across the room from me.

[Rodriguez POV]

The last few months have been hellish, but I thought starting a formal education would be a welcome reprieve from the pain. Mother and father had never quite accepted me for who I am. Still, I wasn't aware of just how much my older brother's presence in the household affected their behavior. Since Santiago disappeared, things have steadily gotten worse.

At first, things were manageable. Snide comments about my interest in men or my lack of fighting prowess I could handle. Santiago had continuously stood up for me, but he wasn't always around, so I had to deal with this treatment now and then. When he had been missing for over a month, something inside mother snapped. She lashed out at me physically.

I wanted nothing more than to have my brother back, yet I had very little idea of what happened to him. My only tip was my mother screaming something at my aunt about a man named Trace.

Losing our heir caused our prestige as a noble house to be massively injured. It was no secret that mother could not bear more children in her age, and rumors about me had spread plenty. What use was an heir who could not defend their family's honor in combat, or who would not contribute willingly to continuing the family line?

*

I found a perfect situation to begin to improve my standing in the public eye while also showing my parents I would be attempting to do my best for our house. A strange man had decided to sit in the wrong part of the dining hall. Asking him to move aside will be the first of many necessary power plays here at the academy. I'll prove myself to my parents one step at a time.

He was a rough-looking figure, and I had to fight down fear while I approached. Anxiety slowly built within me. I briefly considered sitting in the only available seat across from him but rejected the idea quickly. That would be the same as putting myself on his level, which I would be mocked extensively for. The man likely didn't deserve rough treatment, but I can't let this opportunity pass. Certainly, if I apologized and explained my situation later, he would understand.

"You're in my seat." He wasn't listening to me. I put on my best entitled noble act to convince him to move. "Low-born, you will get out of my seat, or there will be consequences. I am Rodriguez Mateo, second in line to inherit the Mateo barony." I established my name and rank to the table powerfully and confidently. This could set a decent first impression, distinctly different from rumors about myself. The man slowly turned towards me. His face looked like a man utterly full of dread. My apology later may need to include some minor form of payment for the inconvenience.

Then, something completely inexplicable happened. He turned back towards his plate and took another bite. Shock was the only emotion I felt. For a moment, I became angry, which was uncommon for me. "Hello, are you LISTENING TO ME?" I immediately regretted my outburst. At least half of the room's attention was now on me, while I was being humiliated by this commoner.

"No." My mind went blank. He continued eating.

"Wha- I... Are you an imbecile?" I was lost, completely. The man, whose name I had yet to hear, actually stopped eating for a few moments as though he was considering my question seriously.

"No, I don't believe I'm more idiotic than most people." Absolute insanity, that was the only way to describe his behavior. By the time my thoughts were organized enough to be aware of my surroundings, he was gone.

*

I had managed to avoid returning home after that disaster. Still, I couldn't escape the snickers and comments that followed me everywhere. The talk had started to die down when my first class rolled around, Introduction to Magic.

[Trace POV]

I'm glad the kid was choosing to ignore me; I wanted today to be about learning. The instructor walked into the room. She was a short and round woman with bright red hair and pale skin. "Good morning students, I am professor Morrigan. I'll start today off by calling each of your names; raise your hand to indicate your presence." We all did as directed.

"Today, we will mostly be going over the very basics of what magic is. The history of magic is primarily not understood and hotly debated, so I won't teach that." She wrote the words 'what is magic' on the board. "Magic is the power to enact your willpower on reality without using any known physical means. Some believe magic is an entirely physical process, and we simply do not yet understand how it works. Most, however, view magic as an unknowable force." She stopped for a moment to write a shortened version of what she just said onto the board.

"Are there any questions?" No one responded. "Very well, there are several aspects of magic upon which you can allocate your Stones. Does anyone have examples of these?" A few students raised their hands, and a girl to my left was called upon.

"I think one of them is how much force you can apply to something."

The professor nodded in response and wrote the word 'impact' on the board. "Yes, we call this impact, which roughly equates to the amount of physical action or strength required to complete a magical act. A person with low magic impact can still affect things on a large scale with enough knowledge. Knowing how leverage works can make moving objects vastly easier. Whenever you learn a new concept that applies to a situation, your magic will automatically use this new concept. Does anyone have another example like leverage?"

Another hand went up. "Friction" What the shit was friction?

"Excellent example, understanding friction can make moving objects and starting fires much more effortless." I need to visit the library after classes today. These rich kids had obviously spent years in tutoring before coming here.

She wrote 'leverage' and 'friction' under 'impact.' "The next aspect is commonly known as range. Range can't be impacted by knowledge as far as we know. It takes exponentially more impact to use magic the further away the caster is from their target." She began drawing an odd image. It contained a straight line from left to right connected at the left end to a line that went straight up. From the intersection of these two lines, she drew a nearly flat line that turned rapidly into a slope. The line seemed practically straight upwards after a short distance. What the fuck was this shit? "Anyone here who hasn't taken algebra and geometry classes should be sure to attend them next semester." More stuff on the to-do list. "Investing Stones into impact will also increase the distance at which you can use magic, but not remotely close to as efficiently as range will."

"The final aspect of magic is continuance, which is very similar to physical endurance in its nature. Continuance is the amount of time you can spend using magic and the rate at which you'll regain your magic after overuse. Again, increasing your impact can technically allow you to last longer. However, it is incredibly more efficient to invest in continuance, and impact will not affect your regeneration rates." It seems like impact is an alright catch-all. Continuance and range both found spots on the board. "Okay, are there any questions?"

The rest of the class was spent with the professor going into various pieces of knowledge and applying it to magic. Apparently, taking a physics class alongside more advanced mathematics courses would greatly benefit my magical ability. Throughout the class, I caught side glances from Rodriguez. His gaze seemed to carry significant malice, which could prove to be a considerable annoyance.

*

Algebra was boring, incredibly so. Using letters in math was both genius and incredibly annoying. It seemed mostly useless to me for now, though the professor mentioned algebra would be essential in future courses.

Biology of Flora was much more interesting to me. However, Rodrigues was also in this class and proved to be very distracting with his glances. The professor showed the class use of magic called micro-observation or microvation. He explained that "Light can be distorted to cause the tiny to appear much larger" and used magic to slowly adjust the apparent size of a leaf.

He also revealed some quite astonishing facts to me, though most of the class seemed to understand these things already. Evidently, the air was made of not one but many kinds of invisible substance. Among these are two types notable to plant life; oxygen and carbon dioxide. The plants intake carbon dioxide and release oxygen. It was genuinely unbelievable. Yet he proved the statements to some extent through a demonstration using fire, which also required oxygen, and a small plant contained in a glass dome.

I thought that would be the highlight of this class, and then he showed us cells. Plants are made of tiny building blocks that support each other through various means. I felt the images were similar to multiple farms and businesses supporting a city. Life held much more nuance than I had ever expected, and now I was eager to visit the library.

*

The library was unquestionably the largest room I had ever been in, and it contained several floors. Over a dozen staff members were seated at desks near the entrance. As I made eye contact with each of them, they looked away except the last one, a young lady with long blonde hair and a tan and pink dress with matching stockings. She smiled brightly at me, "Is this your first time here, sir?"

"Yes, it is." My curt response didn't seem to dissuade her. She stepped around the desk and stood next to me. I was surprised at her height, which matched mine.

"What exactly are you looking for?"

"Are there any books relating to the soul or the study of consciousness?" She looked upwards for a moment at my question, with a finger on her chin.

"Hmm, that's a tough one, follow me," and she was off.

My hopes diminished when we arrived at a dusty and out of the way shelf. There were three books under the description tag of 'soul.' "I believe the lack of books on the subject is because we haven't actually been able to prove the existence of souls. They're mostly regarded as religious matters." She turned to face me and took in my distress. "Oh my, well, the bright side is you may be able to complete the primary research into the subject if you work hard enough." She did not sound convincing. "There's a much larger section on religion, but most of those are analysis of religious texts and stories."

"Thank you for the help. I'm Trace, and what was your name?"

"Felix." The bright smile was back.

"Well, Felix, I'm going to read through what's here. I will be sure to seek you out when I need help in the future." She gave a slight bow before leaving. It was a nice change of pace to be treated decently here, most students avoided me, and the staff was often indifferent. I found a desk and sat down with my meager pile of books.

*

The information on souls was essentially nonsense, from what I could tell. Like Felix had said, there was no proof for the existence of souls. Most of the books cited various religious practices and beliefs, which were un-proveable. There was one entry about multiple methods of using magic to observe dying and recently dead individuals in an attempt to view a soul leaving the body. The only conclusion was about average times until organ failure set into an individual.

I wasn't going to give up here. There was still plenty of time to learn from this academy and many more learning centers in the world to visit. It was getting late into the evening, but I had a few more hours before I should get some sleep. Felix directed me to a much larger section of books tagged 'physics.' Evidently, this was where I could learn information about things like leverage and friction.

The book I picked up about leverage was titled 'Six Simple Machines.' It described the use of the lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw. These objects massively reduced the amount of force required to perform various actions, so I was certain my magic workload would be heavily affected. I tested using magic to move a book with and without a magic lever and was pleasantly surprised at the result.

My reading on friction was much more complicated. There were differences between dry, fluid, lubricated, and internal friction. These types each held within them various factors that affected the ease at which something could move. Most of the logic followed with my observations of the world around me. Still, I had a more difficult time grasping the impact this would have on my magic ability.

I got up to leave the library when I noticed Rodriguez speaking with Felix across the room. I chose to ignore both of them and head to bed.

*

Of course, I placed two steel axes against the door, as was tradition. The practice had already saved my life once before.

Now came the time to consider my Stone allocations between impact, range, and continuance. Impact was the only of these three which could be affected by my knowledge, and thus the only one that could grow without more Stone use. Range was undoubtedly useful in combat situations, but not much else, and magic was supposedly relatively ineffective in combat. I had my doubts as to whether that was entirely true.

The act of bending light around your opponent's eyes to blind them seemed reasonably easy to do and lethal in a fight. I can see the appeal to commoners of allocating the seventy or so hurlock Stones magic would take into their physical body; doing so would make them a force to be reckoned with. It's possible that individuals who went through the extreme or costly lengths of collecting those Stones and not use them to become stronger were rarely the type to seek battle. It's also possible that magical combat is kept as a secret among the nobility. Either way, I'd like to experiment on some hurlocks soon.

After range, there is continuation. Again, there is a massive appeal to combat-focused magic and not too much else. The ability to consistently perform unexpected feats during a fight would be amazing. I pulled the nine yellow and six yellow-green Stones from my backpack. I had somewhere near a hundred and thirty hurlock stones here. It was easy to use them as a frame of reference for me. I used three yellow-green stones on range and three on continuation; forty-eight hurlocks each, damn. The remaining nine yellow Stones were used on impact; thirty-six hurlocks. I'd test the new limits of my magic tomorrow, for now, sleep.