The Definition of Mana (1)
“And that concludes the curriculum presentation.”
The moment the rabbit ears poking through the brim of her hat drooped forward, a hush fell over the lecture hall.
Clap—clap-clap—
Clap-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap!!!
From that single, quiet clap that broke the brief silence, a thunderous round of applause erupted and poured over Remillion where she stood at the lectern.
“Whoa…! Fire magic really is the coolest of all the elemental schools!”
“Even just a taste of Professor Remillion’s class looks insanely fun!”
“So cool…”
“The seats won’t fill up already, right? No—forget that, I need to register right now!”
For the new semester, Remillion’s course—Complex Understanding of Elemental Magic—boasted a curriculum that was nothing short of spectacular.
Water, fire, wind, earth. It was a class built around grasping the four most fundamental elemental attributes, then exploring what new properties emerged when they combined and what spells those properties made possible. Remillion had thoroughly seized the attention of every student who had come to hear the presentation.
The crowning highlight was her fire-element work: weaving elaborate, multi-layered magic circles of pure flame, or dialing the heat so precisely that fire danced across her bare hand without singeing so much as a single strand of fur. The students had leapt to their feet and applauded before they even realized what they were doing.
Heh heh. This curriculum is another roaring success…!
“Those rabbit ears are too cute!!!!”
…Right. We’ll just gloss over that one.
Having finished what she herself judged a flawless presentation, Remillion smiled as the applause washed over her from the packed lecture hall that had come to see her.
Prejudice against rabbit beastkin had once made even learning magic an uphill battle for her. Yet pure passion for the craft had carried her all the way to a popular professorship at Scythia Academy.
When the clapping finally died down, she watched students scramble from their seats and bolt out the door to register for her class, then tidied the room with a warm sense of satisfaction and stepped out into the corridor at a leisurely pace.
“Ah! Professor Remillion! Hello~!”
“Professor! I have a question about flame magic among the elemental schools—”
“This curriculum was perfect as always, Professor Remillion.”
“Professor! Would you like a carrot?”
Every time she padded down the hallway with those impossibly cute little steps that practically begged for a boing-boing sound effect, ears swaying gently, people who spotted her broke into smiles and greeted her warmly without fail.
Perfect. My career is only going to keep soaring from here!
Nibbling on a carrot a student had handed her, cheeks puffed out like little dumplings, Remillion hummed a cheerful tune. She was in an excellent mood.
For now she was merely a well-regarded professor—but someday she would rise beyond this academy, earn recognition from the Magic Tower itself, and carve her name into the Hall of Fame. For someone of her modest stature, the ambition was enormous, and she was thoroughly pleased with the steadily climbing graph of her own success.
Twitch—
“Hm?”
She had already decided to head back to her research lab and pick up where she had left off when her ears caught a murmur of voices nearby. She turned her head toward the sound.
Curiosity drawing her closer, Remillion walked in the direction of the noise and found a cluster of students buzzing around a flyer pinned to the notice board.
A Fantastical Magic Show!
I'll Show You Something!
And right there on the board was Felix’s curriculum advertisement.
“Professor Felix is advertising a curriculum…?”
“That deadbeat professor?”
“Did he eat something weird?”
“What even is this? Looks more like a circus flyer than anything…”
On the surface it was a slightly ridiculous advertisement—but the real reason the students were murmuring was that the flyer belonged to Felix.
Felix Evergarden.
At this academy, the mandatory major course for anyone on the magic track—Basic Understanding of Mana—was exactly what it sounded like: a foundational liberal-arts class covering what mana actually was and how one was supposed to use it.
Rather than teaching concrete spellcraft, it focused on grasping the definition of mana and the proper mindset for those who wielded magic—something closer to the ethics classes modern elementary schoolers sat through.
Anyone who entered the academy on the magic track could already handle mana, so in a sense the course was hardly necessary. It had only been established relatively recently, after Honorary Professor Felix arrived at the academy.
And while it was technically a required class, attendance was barely checked. Show up once a week and a B was practically guaranteed. The lectures themselves, delivered by Professor Felix, were thoroughly mediocre.
Faculty and students alike knew full well that Felix had simply thrown the course together as a convenient vehicle for securing a professorship.
So when the same Felix who always half-assed the curriculum, half-assed the lectures, and usually just assigned self-study suddenly started advertising his course, the students who had taken it before were left thoroughly bewildered.
“Hmm… Looks like he actually prepared something this time?”
Recalling the conversation she had had with Felix the day before, Remillion’s ears twitched with genuine surprise.
But then—
“As if that changes how far he can go.”
She snorted a sharp little hmph! and shrugged her shoulders.
“Guess the pressure finally got to him.”
Knowing full well the behavior Felix had shown so far—and that he was a fraud of a professor who couldn’t even handle mana—Remillion found the whole display nothing short of laughable.
Yesterday’s pressure had clearly spurred him into doing something, but the result wasn’t going to be any different.
If he had simply given up and let go of his stubborn pride, that would be one thing. Instead he kept clinging on, thickheaded to the end—and inside Remillion’s private ranking, Felix’s stock was only plummeting further.
“This should be entertaining, at least.”
He would go through the motions of a curriculum presentation, sure—but he couldn’t even understand the textbook when he read it. Forget a proper lecture; she could already picture him stumbling and stammering his way through a simple reading of the page. The thought alone felt like a long-blocked pipe finally clearing with a satisfying pop.
“…Maybe I should go watch.”
The idea struck her then: seeing Felix’s pathetic performance with her own eyes, lobbing difficult questions mid-lecture, and driving his pride straight into the dirt sounded like excellent fun. She slipped a glance between the gathered students and checked where and when Felix’s curriculum presentation would begin.
“Figures.”
Time passed. Standing in the lecture hall where Felix’s curriculum presentation was scheduled for the day, Remillion nodded to herself and muttered under her breath.
Compared to the packed hall that morning for her own presentation, the room set aside for Felix’s was desolate.
The handful of students scattered through the spacious lecture hall looked about as numerous as the last stubborn strands of hair clinging to a balding scalp.
“Haaawn…”
“When’s this even starting?”
“What is that airheaded professor planning to show us, anyway?”
And even those few students had zero interest in the curriculum itself. They had come purely to watch Felix squirm.
“Looks like I can add another line to my résumé after this. What kind of class should I run once I take it over?”
Surveying the scene, Remillion was already savoring her complete victory and pondering what she might teach once she pushed Felix out and claimed the liberal-arts slot for herself—when footsteps approached.
Step—step—
Twitch—
“Oh, you came. I wasn’t sure you would. Always nice to see a familiar face.”
“…I only came to watch you make a fool of yourself.”
“Haha. Don’t be too disappointed if things don’t go the way you expect.”
The lecture-hall door beside Remillion—who had been standing at the back with her arms crossed—swung open, and Felix appeared with a bright, sunny smile.
What? Why does he look so relaxed? I don’t like it.
He must have seen the cavernously empty room, yet not a trace of tension, anxiety, or resignation showed on his face. An inexplicable unease prickled at Remillion, and her brow furrowed ever so slightly.
“All right! You’ve all been waiting. Welcome to everyone who came for today’s curriculum presentation. I’m Felix Evergarden, and this semester I’ll be handling the liberal-arts major course Basic Understanding of Mana.”
Brushing lightly past Remillion’s pointed disregard, Felix strode to the lectern, surveyed the room, and introduced himself.
“Before we dive into the curriculum proper, I’d like to ask one question.”
“What do all of you think the definition of mana is?”
“The definition of mana…?”
“What is he talking about?”
Felix raised a finger as he posed the question, and the students watching him wore expressions of pure bafflement at the sudden non sequitur.
There wasn’t a single person in the room who couldn’t sense and use mana. Being treated to a lecture straight out of childhood basics was bound to leave them nonplussed.
“Would anyone care to answer? No one?”
Undeterred, Felix kept scanning the hall, waiting for a response.
“….”
“Ah, yes~ Professor Remillion.”
“Huh? It’s Professor Remillion!”
“Why is the professor here?”
The silence stretched until Remillion, standing farthest back, raised her hand with deliberate arrogance. Felix pointed her out at once.
“Mana is one of the fundamental components that constitute the world—or rather, a root element—and it is the energy, that is to say the resource, consumed when casting magic. I fail to understand why you would ask such an obvious question.”
Called upon, Remillion pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her middle finger and delivered the definition of mana, tacking on a pointed barb at the end as if looking down on him.
“Exactly right. The very first page of the textbook you’ll be studying for this course states the definition of mana quite clearly.”
Unfazed by her sarcasm, Felix simply pointed to the major textbook in his hand.
“Mana isn’t only required for casting spells. Warriors who reinforce their physical strength use it, as do magical tools—mana is woven deeply into our daily lives, even for people who aren’t mages.”
“In other words, even a professor who can’t use magic can still play at being one by relying on magical tools, is that it?”
“Heh heh!”
“That’s a fake professor for you.”
“At the end of the day he’s just making excuses because he can’t use magic, right?”
“Isn’t that so, Professor?”
As Felix continued explaining mana, the students openly snickered and giggled among themselves.
With someone as well-known in the academy as Remillion taking the lead in mocking Felix right in front of the students, they felt free to treat him as a full-blown laughingstock.
“Hmm. You’re not wrong. Even among those who can’t cast spells, plenty of people still handle mana, each in their own way.”
“But fundamentally, the most common method of using mana is through magic.”
“Like this.”
Snap—
Whoosh—
“Huh? What is this?”
“I can’t see a thing!”
“What the…?”
Still smiling as if nothing were amiss, Felix flicked his fingers with a sharp snap—and the brightly lit lecture hall plunged into darkness.
Sunlight still streamed through the windows, and luminous stones were embedded throughout the room, yet a pitch-black darkness so complete that nothing was visible swallowed the hall whole. The students panicked and began to stir in confusion.
“What on earth?!”
Remillion was no exception.
But what had startled her was not the darkness itself.
That just now—that was definitely magic! How did that man cast a spell?
Before Felix made the sound, mana had clearly been gathering in his body.
The instant he rubbed his fingers together, that mana concentrated and the spell activated—and as a professor, Remillion had not missed a single beat of it.
If what she had seen was real, Felix had blanketed this entire lecture hall in darkness without a magic circle, without an incantation, without so much as a magical tool.
It was a spell that would take even her a moment to cast if asked on the spot, and he had done it as naturally as breathing. Sparks of disbelief crackled through Remillion’s mind so fiercely that she couldn’t even think to light the room with her prized flame magic.
As the students and Remillion reeled and the noise of confusion swelled—
Fwaaah—
“Eek?!”
“W-what is that?!”
“A blue light… a magic circle?”
A brilliant azure radiance suddenly flared. When Remillion and the students turned toward the source, they could only stare in shock.
Centered behind Felix’s back, a massive magic circle large enough to completely cover the blackboard hung suspended in midair, pouring out blue light.
“Well then—let us begin the curriculum for Basic Understanding of Mana.”
Bathed in the afterglow of that magic circle, Felix opened his mouth, a smile playing on his lips.