“Kye, what have you done?!” Alethea was panicking when Kye walked back over. Balls of various elemental magic types were flying every which way.

“Hmm?”

“Don’t you act dumb! This is chaos!”

Kye shrugged. “They seem to be doing what I told them.

“All of them throwing fireballs and such at once is... not exactly... okay shut up and fix this chaos!”

“Heh.” Kye formed a fireball and threw it, joining in on the chaos.

“I regret this.” Alethea turned to Liliana and Aliana, but they were no help. Aliana was exasperated at the situation and Liliana was standing there blank-faced. “Well...”

While she appeared to be having fun, Kye actually was looking for students that were succeeding in two or more simultaneous casts. Soon, she called their attention and asked, “Has anyone managed four?”

“Me!” said two students. One was Astrid and the other was a second-year student.

“Great! Show me.”

Astrid nodded. “Wind Blade!” She released four crescent-shaped blasts of wind. “And now the good part!” She stopped and pulled them back. “How’s that?”

Kye clapped. “Very good. Adding that last part is not required but certainly encouraged!” She turned toward the second student, who completed the exercise with earth magic, but without the extra phase that Astrid performed.

“Sorry, I couldn’t stop all four of them at once,” he said.

“Hey, no worries. Doing that is a tall order and as I said, it’s not required.”

“I can do two, but I’m having trouble going any higher,” said a boy from her class, Colton Becker. “Do you have any advice, Miss Kye?”

Kye thought about it for a moment and gestured at her pink-haired girlfriend. “Alethea, do you have any advice for our dear classmate who is having trouble handling more than two?”

Alethea nodded and began explaining, “You use earth magic, so let’s try a relevant exercise. I prepared for the mana control exercise, but Kye here didn’t let me in on her magic exercise ahead of time, so...” She thought for a moment. “How about a realistic example? Do you know of the recent asteroid threat to Alcanus? It was just a few years ago.”

“Yes.”

“An archnoble put on a space suit and flew out to meet it. Risky business. The asteroid ended up being rather brittle and broke apart into two pieces as soon as the person tried to adjust its trajectory. That panicked our hero and he immediately flung both pieces, simultaneously, in different directions, each missing the planet by a large margin. Now, this person could handle manipulating two objects at once in a dire situation like that, so why don’t we replicate that situation with you standing in for the planet?” She formed four rocks out of mana. “The only difference is that you are your own hero. Stop them all or it’s gonna hurt!”

She released the four rocks, and in a hurry, Colton put his hands in front of him, as if to protect himself, and managed to stop three of the four. The other missed his hands and headed straight for his face. It stopped only an inch from hitting him.

“What? Did I...?”

Alethea shook her head. “Not quite. I stopped the last at the last moment, but you did overcome your limit of two.”

“Hold on a moment,” Kye said. “Didn’t you cast Rain of Stone during the test on our first day of class? I remember you controlling all the shards and only hitting the dummies.”

“Yes, but I mentally ran through the incan... huh.” His eyes suddenly had stars in them.

“There’s a light bulb.”

“Yeah, I’ve got an idea. Let me just...” He held his hand out and thought for a moment. Suddenly, four rocks appeared around him and shot forward. Then, they stopped and started flying around the walls.

“Looks like you got it. Well done. Now explain to everyone what you just did.”

He nodded and ran through his mental process. He adjusted the incantation to fit four rocks but didn’t stop there. He mentally imagined what the incantation would do, and instead of thinking the incantation, he imagined the spell as it was happening.

“See? Visualization is key!”

Soon, everyone was able to do it, some able to go on to five, six, or more. Once everyone completed the exercise, Alethea clapped her hands and announced to the class, “Well done, everyone! Today’s class is now officially over. Please be sure to use what you’ve learned today to ace your classes! If you don’t score high on your next test, I won’t forgive you!” She had an evil smile on her face after her announcement.

“I’m sorry! I promised him I’d help as soon as we fully recovered.” Kye was pleading her case with Alethea at the food court. She wasn’t able to help Doran after using Overdrive and wanted to make up for that. “You can come!”

Alethea sighed. “I’d rather not. I know how you look at him. I don’t want to be the odd one out.”

“You could never be the odd one out!”

Alethea raised her eyebrow but said nothing.

“I promise! You’re-”

“It’s fine.” Alethea wasn’t about to be fooled. She knew exactly how Kye felt about the redheaded royal. “This world allows polygamy and if you want to go after him, I won’t stop you.”

“But I don’t want to do something you don’t approve of. If you don’t like it-”

“Of course, I don’t like it! I don’t want some boy corrupting my beautiful Shi-chan. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, but you’re romantically stupid! Remember how we got together the first time?”

Kye looked away with a reluctant expression. “Heh...”

“The great and wondrous Shiori Sakaguchi, leader of the rebel army who would one day topple the tyrant Emperor Shiro Shikigami, was utterly incapable of building a personal relationship. A certain Sayaka Miyasaki had to approach the legendary leader, frightened as she was, and-”

“Okay, okay! I get it!” Kye turned to mush in Alethea’s hands. “Saya-chan!”

Alethea smiled at her. “Go meet that boy and help him. If you really think he’s special, then invite him to the food court this evening with us.”

Kye stood up and saluted. “Yes, ma’am!”

“...”

Soon, in the Farlands...

“Thank you for meeting with me, Lady Kye,” Doran said. “I really appreciate you taking the time to help with this project.”

She nodded. “You took an interest in one of my spells, how could I say no?” He smiled in return. “But... why is she here, too?” Kye glanced at Michelle, who was staring off into space.

“She’s... clingy, I suppose is the way to put it.” Doran gave Kye and apologetic smile. I can’t tell her the truth about us. Nobody knows outside our group... even though Dani, Lizzy, and Mike don’t approve...

“Well, okay. Michelle!”

“Huh? Yeah? What’s up?” She perked up. “Do you need something?”

“I was just wondering if you had a spell to work on, too. I could try to help if you’d like.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be okay. I’m just going to watch today.”

“Oh, okay.” Kye turned back to Doran, wondering where to start. Saya-chan is right. I’m completely out of my element here. I don’t know what to do. I’m supposed to help him, but I’m distracted by how cute he is!

“Shall we begin?”

Kye nodded and tried to pull herself together mentally. “Show me what you can do so far. You mentioned you were able to form three?”

“Yes.” He held his hands out after activating Dragon Force and concentrated as much as he could. Soon, a ball of radiant fire appeared, then another, and another. “I can’t manage four at once yet.

Kye examined the three and noticed right away that two of them weren’t sufficient. “This one and this one will not work for Detonation. The first one is fine, but these two won’t resonate.”

“So that’s why I never got a big explosion. They just act like regular Fireballs when I launch them.”

“Yes. Get rid of the two bad ones and focus on the first one for a moment. Really feel it.”

He nodded and dispersed the second and third Fireballs and began examining the first.

“Note how it pulsates. Regular Fireballs don’t do that. This pulsating indicates that it has the necessary mass. Detonation catalysts are extremely difficult to control due to how much fire you have to compress into the tiny ball. The difference between a regular Fireball and a Detonation catalyst is night and day.”

“I think I understand.”

“Do you know much about celestial objects? Like stars and stuff?”

He nodded. “Think of a catalyst like a black hole. Those have a gravitational pull so powerful that it pulls in radiation, visible light included. Because?”

“They are far and away more massive than stars. Even neutron stars, as massive as those are, don’t trap visible light.”

“Yes. Now imagine you are making... well a black hole is probably too far now that I’m thinking about it. Imagine if a regular star has the right mass for a Fireball, and a neutron star has the right mass for a Detonation catalyst.”

Doran’s eyes lit up as he quickly formed a second pulsating ball of radiant fire.

“Yes! That’s right. It only takes two, so let it go!”

“Right.” He prepared himself with a quick deep breath. “Detonation!” He launched the two catalysts into the distance, and just as Kye expected they generated an enormous explosion. She cheered while he looked on mystified at his handiwork. “I casted an ultimate-tier spell...”

“That’s right, good work!”

“Wow, it worked.” Michelle planned to stay quiet, but even she couldn’t after what she witnessed. “That’s incredible...”

“What would happen if you only could do one?” Doran asked.

“It won’t result in a Detonation-level explosion. It’ll just be a more grandiose Fireball. Basic-tier, technically, but still requiring a great deal of control. Hmm... would it be basic-tier?” Kye formed a Detonation catalyst and a large, regular Fireball with the same amount of mana. She shrunk the regular Fireball to the same size as the Detonation catalyst, and it began to pulsate, too. “Huh. I guess it would be. This is simply what you get when you put that much mana into a basic-tier spell. And Detonation is just casting multiple of them... uh oh. I just taught the students earlier how to insta-cast multiple basic-tier spells at once... that’s literally how to do Detonation. Heh.”

“So, what about doing that trick with wind?” Michelle asked. She activated Dragon Force and formed two balls of wind with as much mana as a Detonation catalyst. “Oh, they’re pulsating.”

Kye had stars in her eyes. “Do it! See what happens!”

Michelle nodded and threw them just like Doran did moments ago. Once they collided, it generated an immense shockwave with countless blades of wind scattering out in every direction. Kye had to raise a barrier to protect them from the onslaught since it was even more widespread than Detonation. “Wow...” The three of them were wide-eyed after that display.

“Okay, so that’s good to know. Congratulations, Michelle, you just invented an ultimate-tier wind spell.”

She was skeptical. “I don’t know if I can take credit for that... all I did was apply your spell with wind instead of fire. You should probably-”

“No, it was your idea to try it with wind. Derivative spells count!”

“Well... okay. I’ll report it. I gotta think up a name for it now.”

Kye nodded. “You can do it! Good luck!” Michelle sighed.

“Thanks again, Lady Kye,” Doran said. “I understand the spell much better now. And that was a great discovery! You’re amazing!”

I could die happy right now. Tell me more!

“Please allow me to thank you properly. Are you free this evening? I would like to invite you to dinner.”

Right, I’m supposed to invite him... but he’s inviting me?!

“Yes, I’m free tonight. But, would you mind if I bring Alethea? She and I were actually planning to invite you to eat with us.”

“Oh?”

A chill went up Kye’s spine and she saw Michelle glaring daggers at her. Doran chopped her on the head and kept smiling at Kye.

Is she...?

“Well, alright, that sounds great. I’ll arrange everything.”

Kye nodded. “I look forward to it!”