“It is my honor and pleasure to meet all of you. I am Syron Forrester.” Syron said with a curt nod. He had considered bowing properly, but wasn’t sure if that would be considered debasing himself. Personally, he didn’t really care if all these noble brats thought less of him for being genuinely polite. Sadly, his mother, staff, or future friends might encounter issues if the world thought “Syron Forrester is a pushover”. The simplest solution to that would be to act precisely how people expected a powerful young scion to act.

“I am an illusionist, as many of you may have heard already. Yes, I can perfectly mimic all of your forms and voices with a little practice. Yes, I am willing and quite able to ruin you if you cross me. I sincerely wish to be everyone’s friendly acquaintance, or perhaps closer. If that is impossible, stay out of my way.” He finished his introduction and took an empty seat in the center of the room. If anyone glared at him, he merely made eye contact with a bored expression. If they seemed interested or friendly, he would smile or even wink.

“Pft. An illusionist he says like he’s proud of it. Like you could do anything to… youch! Does anyone else hear that?” A snooty looking boy in the back row started to say before noticing an extremely high-pitched whining noise. He seemed to be the only person that heard this mystery noise, however, as the rest of the class turned to look at him like he was crazy while he held his ears.

“Oh, that’s my bad.” Syron said nonchalantly as he made the noise disappear as quickly as it came. He then gave the boy in the back a leveled stare.

“I hear a dog barking and my mind automagically goes to ‘dog whistle’. Weird, right?” Syron turned back to the front of the class and ignored the incredulous looks he got from his new classmates. Well, to be fair… he had basically threatened them, and then used magic to assault a boy he hadn’t even properly met yet. He had to do at least this much to make sure there weren’t any problems down the line. If he becomes even more socially isolated… well, he’s already a hated illusionist. What difference does subtracting zero from zero make? Besides… though Syron wouldn’t use a dog whistle on an actual dog because it seems kinda cruel… using it on some noble twerp actually seemed pretty right.

I’m not going down a strange road now, am I?

“Thank you for the introduction Lord Forrester. As you have already heard, I am Professor Neffle. I teach anything pertaining to my own aptitude, which is known as ‘activator’. Though unable to imbue foreign magics onto objects like ‘enchanters’, we are able to exhibit a greater percentage of the original magic’s efficacy.

While Enchanters can only use about twenty percent of an enchanted object’s power, I personally pride myself on being able to use closer to thirty-five. There are even stories about master activators that could use around sixty percent of an imbued magic’s potency. All of this being said, I won’t be able to catch you up on the first half of the semester’s information at the expense of everyone else’s education, so just do your best and try not to interrupt the other students if you can help it.”

The professors request to just sit down and shut up were well warranted as well as completely fair, so Syron had no issues with it. The class, on the other hand, were of a prestigious group known as ‘actual scholars’ and were speaking what Syron interpreted to be ‘actual shibboleth’. There was no auto-language correct for advanced imbuing jargon, apparently, and Syron had quite a bit of trouble even reading the board. He tried to maintain the façade of casual indifference, but internally he was sweating from being found out. It’s pretty embarrassing, after all, assuming that a middle-aged man would be at least as smart as a group of twelve to fifteen-year-olds and being proven wrong. As it turns out, having a college degree that he hadn’t used in fifteen years amounted to very little when discussing the finer points of otherworld magic nonsense. It didn’t help in the slightest that Syron’s own magical applications basically amounted to “I dunno. I want it to happen and it does.” Classic Halloweentown magic was Syron’s bread and butter. This magi-science was a whole different animal.

Hah… at least the board isn’t covered in circles and runes and crap. Looking at that in games always made my eyes cross. Oh, she seems to be wrapping up the lesson on… whatever she was talking about. She’s using more words that I understand.

“As many of you have heard in the past, ‘enchanters’ and ‘activators’ are widely considered to be useless when fighting monsters. If you think about it, it is not all that hard to understand. If a pyromancer trains up their Magic Soul for years and gets to the point that they can kill a basic monster in one spell, they are successful. An enchanter can take that pyromancer’s power into a gem and exhibit only one fourth of their power. In other words, an enchanter would either need four shots to do the same job, or would need to take magic from a pyromancer four times stronger.

“Perhaps the worst part for enchanters is that typically, though I freely admit that no aptitude is necessarily identical, the stronger an enchanter’s magic soul becomes doesn’t change how much power they can exhibit. It only lowers the quality requirements for what they can imbue magic into. A novice requires extremely high-quality materials for storing magic to even train up. A Grand Master can imbue a rock they find on the side of the road, but would still require the assistance of someone with a magic actually worth casting. All those years of assets and diligent practice, yet they are still beholden to another for only a fourth of their power. The end result is as I said, quite easy to understand. Enchanters are no good for monster slaying.

“Then what of activators? As they get stronger, the amount of potential they can draw out of an imbued object increases. This coincides with many combat aptitudes that also get more effective with an increase in Magic Soul strength. However, I am considered quite talented in the field. Enough so that I am the dean of the Activator department within Avia. As I stated earlier, the giants capable of bringing out the greatest bits of magic from imbued objects could still only do about sixty percent. For every one monster a pyromancer instant kills with one spell, an activator must still use two. At the end of a long life’s journey, paving the way with extreme amounts of money and cultivation… an activator is still beholden to an enchanter to make their objects to cast with, as well as the caster that can use the spell the enchanter is imbuing in the first place. Once again, the end result is that activators are also no good for monster slaying.

“So what do I do? What can I do? If the capacity for melting monsters is the only metric by which an aptitude’s worth can be measured with, why bother studying at all? The answer is that there is more to life than fireballs, children! What we do not bring in quality of heat, we bring in quality of life. Our utility of being able to use a wide ranging assortment of spells means that we can have many things that make our lives more comfortable, without a need for carrying around a pyromancer for every time we want to ignite our stoves. How many houses have cryomancers? That number is far lower than the number of houses that have freezer boxes. Even the lights in this room were off until I turned them on when we arrived. Every family might not have a dedicated caster for every type of spell under the sun, but every noble house represented by this school certainly has an activator on staff at all times.

“Who makes all these wonderful items but skilled enchanters? Sure, getting a creature gem for every light in a house would be horrible… but what if the enchanter could do the same spell on a block of powdered bonemeal glued together with adhesive made from that same bone? Suddenly the price went way down, and we have lights over our dinner tables.

“I guess what I am trying to convey, students, is that no matter what your aptitude is… don’t lose heart. Our powers are all useful, just maybe not in the ways we initially thought they might be. There is more to life than slaying monsters, and I sincerely hope that if you do possess an aptitude thought to be ‘useless’, remember that you decide how to feel about your magics and no one else. Class dismissed.”

By the end of her lecture, Professor Neffle was absolutely staring directly at Syron. It was actually a pretty kind gesture, given the parallels with how he was told the original Syron felt about his aptitude. The current Syron didn’t have such hang ups, but he did still appreciate the teacher’s attempt at… what… comforting him? Before Syron could quite figure out how he felt about the parting notes, however, the boy from the back of the class had stepped in front of his sight. The professor looked like she was about to leave, but sighed and acted like she had another few papers to pack away to bear witness to the coming crap storm.

“Forrester.”

Not certain exactly where this was going, Syron just made eye contact.

“I may have been a little… rude about my comments pertaining to illusionists. Clearly, you have a lot of control and there are a lot of obvious applications to combat against fellow human beings.”

“No need to apologize. I’ll freely admit I was a little harsh to shut you up with a high-pitched ringing and then allude to you being a mutt. For that, I am legitimately apologizing.” Then Syron bowed his head for real, not that fake half nod he gave when he entered the classroom.

“I get it… no need to bow your head or anything. Shall we declare our offenses equitable and strike them from any ledgers of debt? I am Brekt, by the way. First son of House Alpers. My father has always told me that aptitudes were everything and unfortunately I do not possess one he finds… pleasing. I disagree with him, of course, but I still struggled at the first opportunity to not just spew out his words from my own mouth.”

The hell is a ledger of debt? I feel like he’s being nice… but roundabout and strange at the same time. I don’t really get it.

“Well, you’re being… not at all what I expected about this. I agree. Let’s call it even. As I said, I am Syron, First son of House Forrester. My mother has told me recently that in terms of trouble, it is better to kill a man than humiliate them. I think… well, I think we both have issues to work out, don’t we?” Syron laughed grimly.

Brekt gave a half-hearted smile.

“Whelp! I’m off to meet up with Rue. We made plans to meet up today after first lessons to begin work on… well, no need to spoil it, you’ll know soon enough. I’ll see you around Brekt!

“Eh? Rue as in…?” Brekt seemed pretty surprised. What, he’s not one of those ‘I’ll only talk to you unless you are of equally highborn status!’ kinda people, is he? Ah… well that’s a disappointment.

“Yeah, Rue. I hang out with whoever I want. I’ve been surrounded by nothing but women for almost half a year, and damnit, I’m making a male friend!”

Unbeknownst to Syron, that wasn’t precisely Brekt’s problem with Rue.