The First Spell: Fire
Magic classes in this other world were dumber than I expected.
At least, that was how they looked to me.
“Your strokes are shaky! Again!”
Crash!
The red characters floating in midair shattered like glass. At the same time a small flame burst outward, and one of the students tumbled backward onto the floor.
“Aaaagh!”
“Failure. Next.”
The professor did not so much as blink. An old man with a white beard hanging to his chest tapped the floor with a long staff and swept his gaze across the students. Every one of them swallowed hard.
Fair enough. This was the Magic Academy—the place that only took the children of the most distinguished families in the world. And right now I was standing in the middle of it, holding a broom.
“Hey, you. Custodian.”
“Yes?”
“Clean up the debris.”
“……Yes, sir.”
I swept the scattered red crystal shards across the floor. Three days since I had fallen into this other world, and I still had no idea why I was here. When I came to, I had been lying in a back alley behind the Academy. Luckily the language worked. Even more luckily, I had been hired as a practical-hall custodian before I could starve to death.
The unlucky part was that I had nothing else. No status. No money. And wasn’t an isekai supposed to come with some special ability?
“Status!”
I had called it hundreds of times. Nothing changed. No magic, no sudden strength—nothing.
“A lowly outsider like you shouldn’t even think about learning magic.”
That was what the steward who hired me had said. So I had decided to keep my head down and just sweep. At least until this morning.
“Basic Ignition Character, Form One.”
The professor slowly raised his right hand. Red light flowed from his fingertips and drew a line through the air.
“This character is the foundation of every ignition formula. Memorize the shape. Do not reverse the order. Do not force mana into it.”
The students nodded with tense faces. The professor spoke with solemn weight.
“No one can decipher the Ancient Scripts of the Shindae era.”
I stopped sweeping. The red character at the professor’s fingertips finished forming.
Fire.
I rubbed my eyes. It was still the same. The Chinese character for fire—something even an elementary-school kid would know.
“……What?”
I muttered without thinking. The cleaning assistant beside me jabbed my arm.
“Quiet. It usually takes three years just to draw that one properly.”
“That?”
“What do you mean ‘that,’ you idiot? It’s the basic ignition spell. Draw it wrong and your fingers just fly off.”
I looked at the character floating in the air again. Fire. Fingers fly off? From that?
Well, it was magic, so of course it could be dangerous. Other world, other rules—I could accept that much. But something still felt off. The students were staring at the character like it was a geometric diagram, not a letter. They trembled over every stroke, every angle, every length. Not one of them said what it meant. They were simply memorizing it the way you copy a picture.
“Next. Rayan.”
“Yes, Professor.”
A blond male student stepped forward. His uniform was immaculate, and a sword with silver fittings hung at his waist. Pure noble at a glance. The students around him whispered.
“If it’s Young Master Rayan, he’ll succeed for sure.”
“I heard he already mastered the ignition character before enrollment.”
“Bloodline really is different.”
The student named Rayan smiled with easy confidence. He raised his right index finger and began drawing lines in the air. Blue mana trailed after his fingertip. First stroke. Second stroke. Third stroke. It was clearly Fire—except something was slightly off. The final stroke curved just a little.
In that instant a faint set of characters floated up before my eyes.
REVERSE FLOW CAUTION
I froze. What?
Red light began to swell at Rayan’s fingertips. The professor’s brow twitched.
“Reduce your mana.”
“I’m fine.”
Rayan spoke through clenched teeth. “I can control this much.”
No. You can’t. That thing is about to blow. How did I know? Because I could see it.
REVERSE FLOW CAUTION
The characters blinked small and insistent beneath the Fire Rayan had drawn. To everyone else they must have looked like decorative flourishes; no one paid them any attention. Then the center of the red character warped black. For the first time the professor’s expression hardened.
“Take your hand away!”
Too late. The character inverted. Flame sucked inward, then prepared to explode outward. Students screamed.
“Get clear!”
“Rayan!”
I dropped the broom. My body moved before my mind caught up. Why? I still don’t know. It was just—really just—that a person was about to explode right in front of me. I threw myself between Rayan and the blast.
“You lunatic, get out of the way!”
Someone shouted. I reached into the air. It was hot. Flame licked my fingertips. Yet somehow I felt I could touch the character itself. I wrote one more character over it.
Stop.
In that instant the red flame locked solid. The mana that had been about to detonate cut off clean. The Fire floating in midair shuddered, then shrank as if crushed beneath the Stop I had pressed on top of it. The fire never exploded. Instead the entire practice hall went quiet—unnaturally, completely quiet.
I lowered my hand. “……Did that work?”
No one answered. The students stared at me with their mouths open. Rayan sat on the floor, pale and trembling. The professor was the same. He gazed for a long time at the Stop still hanging in the air, then slowly turned his head toward me.
“You.”
“Yes?”
“What did you just do?”
“Uh……” I searched for an answer. A reverse-flow caution popped up, so I wrote stop. I almost said it, then shut my mouth. No matter how I looked at it, that would sound insane. The professor stepped closer.
“What was the character you just added?”
“Just……”
“Just?”
“It means stop.”
The professor’s pupils wavered. “Means?”
That single word changed the air in the practice hall. Students looked at one another. Someone muttered under their breath.
“Means?”
“Ancient Scripts have meanings?”
“No, how would a custodian even……”
The professor’s face grew rigid. Did these people really not know? That Fire meant fire. That Stop meant stop. That the Reverse Flow Caution that had just appeared was a warning?
“Impossible.” The professor spoke low. “The meanings of the Ancient Scripts were lost. Even the royal archives of the Academy contain no method of interpretation. Only form and pronunciation have been handed down.”
I blinked. “And?”
“And yet you just added an Ancient Script on the spot.”
“I wouldn’t say added…… I just wrote it.”
“Just wrote it?” The professor’s voice cracked. The students murmured louder. Rayan managed to push himself upright. He tried to glare at me, but the end of his gaze trembled.
“Who…… are you?”
Asking who I was put me in a tough spot. I didn’t know why I was here either.
“I’m the custodian.”
“A custodian rewrote an Ancient Script?”
“I didn’t rewrite it—I just told it to stop……”
“That is rewriting it!” the professor roared. I flinched. “Ignition Character Form One is a completed formula. Overlaying another character onto it and stopping the flow of mana is something that cannot happen.”
No. I really just wrote a Chinese character. But I didn’t say it out loud. Saying it now would only make things more annoying. The professor slowly regulated his breathing. The look in his eyes had changed. Until a moment ago I had been the practice-hall custodian—the guy who swept up the shards of failed magic circles. Now the professor was looking at me the way you look at a test subject.
“Name.”
“Pardon?”
“What is your name?”
I hesitated a second. Was it all right to give my name?
“Han Seok-beom.”
“Han…… Sek-beom?” He broke it apart as if it were the name of some exotic beast he had never heard before.
“Han Seok-beom.”
“Han Sek-beom.”
“……Close enough.”
Faint sentences floated up before my eyes.
NAME RECOGNITION
Han Seok-beom
I held my breath. What was that just now? Neither the professor nor the students reacted. So it really was visible only to me. The professor carefully pronounced the name again.
“Han Seok-beom……”
The sentence faded. In its place clearer characters appeared.
FIRST COMMAND CONFIRMED
Goosebumps rose over my entire body. The sentence hung in empty air—not a magic circle, not something anyone had drawn. It simply appeared in front of my eyes, as if the world itself were speaking to me. Stop. The character I had written had been recognized as a command. Which meant this world was accepting the Chinese characters I wrote as spells.
“Han Seok-beom.” The professor’s voice dragged me back to reality. “From this moment you are no longer a practical-hall custodian.”
“Pardon?”
“You will come to my research laboratory.”
“Wait a second. I was just here to clean……”
“Clean?” The professor laughed as if the idea were absurd. “A man who reads Ancient Scripts, rewrites them on the spot, and stops a runaway formula—cleaning?”
The students’ stares burned. Rayan was grinding his teeth. Some looked at me as if I were a monster. Others wore completely different eyes—admiration, fear, suspicion, and jealousy. Under every one of those gazes at once, a single thought formed in my head.
I’m screwed. I had just wanted to sweep quietly and earn meals. I was screwed, and properly so.
The professor seized my wrist. “Follow me. I need to verify the principle behind the character you just wrote.”
“Um, Professor.”
“What is it?”
I looked at the faint characters still lingering in the air—the residual traces of the Fire Rayan had failed, and beneath them the warning that still blinked.
REVERSE FLOW CAUTION
I spoke without thinking. “Next time you use that, you might want to be careful.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s written right there.”
“What is written where?”
The professor stared into empty air. He could read nothing. Only then did I become certain. The spells of this other world appeared as Chinese characters to my eyes alone. And the mages here did not know what they meant.
“……They’ve been chanting spells without even knowing what they mean.”
My mutter was quiet. But the practice hall was too silent. The professor heard it. The students heard it. Rayan’s face went rigid.
“What did you just say?”
I shut my mouth a beat too late. The damage was already done. The professor’s eyes flashed sharp.
“Han Seok-beom.” He spoke in a low voice. “You have just insulted the entire magical system of this Academy.”
No. I hadn’t meant to insult anyone. But honestly, I didn’t think I had said anything wrong either. Just now Rayan had shoved mana into Fire without knowing what it meant. He hadn’t been able to read the warning that floated beneath it. If he had kept going in ignorance, it wouldn’t have ended with a few missing fingers. Chanting a spell without knowing what it means was far more dangerous than it looked.
That was when it happened. The Stop still hanging in the air glowed faintly. The character I had written had not yet vanished. And beneath it a new sentence appeared.
SECOND COMMAND STANDBY
I slowly looked down at my fingertips. The world was waiting for my next character.