A Spectacular First Class Debut
“Is that really reliable information?”
“I’m telling you it is! You should’ve seen it back then!”
“But no matter how I think about it, I just can’t quite believe…”
Looks like everyone’s still half-convinced.
Rachel muttered to herself as she eavesdropped on the conversation between the two students sitting right in front of her.
General education lecture: Fundamentals of Mana Understanding.
Hearing only that much, one could reasonably take it for an ordinary elective that padded out a few credits without much fuss. It was a required course, true, but unless you were aiming for the top of your year, skipping a fair number of sessions was perfectly acceptable. Still, credits were credits, so showing up wasn’t a bad idea.
The moment students learned the instructor was Felix Evergarden, however, most of them dropped the class on the spot.
Honorary Professor Felix’s notoriety still ran deep among the Academy’s magic-department students—and even students from other departments knew who he was. Upperclassmen who had been thoroughly disgusted by his half-hearted teaching style (basically tossing a textbook at them and telling them to self-study) had passed the lesson down to their juniors: just coast through it. As a result, attendance for his lectures in the first semester had been abysmal.
By all rights, his classroom this semester should have been just as empty.
Yet what met Rachel’s eyes was the opposite of empty seats. Students were packed in so tightly that some had no choice but to stand and listen from the back.
The reason was simple: rumors that the performance Felix had put on during the curriculum presentation had been nothing short of spectacular.
“In an instant our entire field of vision changed.”
“One second we were standing in a field, the next we were at the summit of a volcano.”
“And it definitely wasn’t illusion magic.”
Students who had attended the curriculum session spread their own awe to everyone else, insisting this time was different. Those who heard the claims, half-believing and half-curious, decided they might as well check it out—and so they flooded into today’s class.
“At this rate I’m going to win that bet hands down.”
From the snatches of conversation drifting past, it seemed Felix had become such a hot topic in the magic department that people were even placing wagers on him.
Well, I came because I was curious too…
Rachel herself had shown up purely out of curiosity sparked by the recent rumors, so she kept her ears open and tried to get a feel for the situation.
Then—
“Hey… wait! Isn’t that… Professor Remillion?!”
“You’re right? What’s Professor Remillion doing here…?”
“Does that mean the rumors are actually true?”
“…It’s not just Professor Remillion. Look, Professor Aleon’s here too!”
“Professor Aleon from Magic Circle Theory?”
“Now that I’m looking, a whole bunch of other professors have shown up!”
“…The rumors really are true, aren’t they?”
“…No way~ Or maybe they all came just to watch him crash and burn?”
Before long the students realized it wasn’t only their peers filling the room. Professors with free periods were standing at the back, waiting for Felix’s lecture. The atmosphere heated up by the second.
And then—
“Well, well~ Quite the turnout.”
“He’s here!”
“It’s Professor Felix!”
Felix appeared through the front doors, took one look at the throng packing the lecture hall, smiled, and strode toward the podium.
“Hello, everyone. Some of you may already know me, but allow me to introduce myself again and explain what we’ll be covering this semester~”
“My name is Felix—Felix Evergarden. As you all know, my specialty is the Fundamentals of Mana Understanding section.”
Tap—tap-tap—tap—
Even under the weight of countless expectant and skeptical stares fixed squarely on him, Felix spoke with practiced ease while writing across the blackboard with chalk.
“Mana. What is mana? We can boldly claim that we came to this Academy precisely to find the answer.”
“I myself have yet to fully master the concept of mana. Compared to the seniors who have long since forged their own paths of magic, I am still immature. Still, I hope this class will at least give you a little time to organize your own magical paths.”
“So what exactly am I going to teach you?”
Tap-tap—tap—tap-tap—
“This.”
While pouring out all those words, Felix had covered the board so thoroughly that chalk dust coated his hands. Only when the new stick of chalk was nearly half-gone did he set it down and turn to face the students.
“W-what is that…?”
“A magic circle…? But I’ve never seen a structure like that before…”
“What kind of configuration is that…?”
The moment Felix finished speaking, the students stared at the contents of the blackboard. They couldn’t even begin to grasp what he had written and simply tilted their heads at one another.
At first glance it looked like a magic circle, yet the structures filling the rings were utterly unfamiliar to them.
Thud—
“Ah, yes… that… um…”
“I am Aleon, in charge of Magic Circle Theory.”
“Ah~ Professor Aleon. Yes, yes, of course…”
“Might I ask a single question?”
While the students still had no idea what Felix intended, one of the professors who had been standing with hands clasped behind his back, silently studying the board, raised a hand and asked permission to speak.
“What sort of question would that be?”
“Ahem—First of all, I too have spent years accumulating knowledge in pursuit of the magical path. In that process I have taught many young people who, however modestly, wish to walk the same path. I have been at this Academy for more than ten years now.”
“And purely as a scholar of magic, I have been walking this road for nearly thirty years.”
“Yet in all my life I have never once seen a magic circle like this.”
“The structure you have drawn would look, to an ordinary mage, like nothing more than a child’s scribble.”
“Setting aside the central mana lines that form the basic conduit of any circle, the rest is bizarre in the extreme. At a glance it appears to be a circle for the elementary elemental spell Fireball, yet the calculation circuits that should handle the composition are nowhere to be seen. In their place sit strange formulas that have no business being there.”
“In plain terms, it is pure nonsense.”
Having been given the floor, Aleon began delivering something closer to outright condemnation than a mere question.
“He’s right. That mana structure doesn’t make any sense by ordinary standards…”
“I only came out of curiosity to see what that freeloading Professor Felix had pulled off this time… but of course it’s the same as always.”
“That rumor must have been him lucking into a magic tool that fooled the students.”
“Ugh, I came all this way for nothing.”
Aleon had taught magic-circle courses at this Academy for a full decade. Magic circles were the absolute core of magic; no spell, no matter what it was, could activate unless the circle was perfectly correct. If mana control, quantity, talent, and imagination were the chemistry, science, and physics of the modern age, then magic circles were the mathematics that could quantify and formalize all of them.
When the man who taught that subject at the Empire’s Academy criticized Felix’s circle, the other professors nodded along and naturally began to join in the condemnation.
As the voices denouncing Felix grew louder, only two people remained silent. One was Aleon himself, who had just delivered the critique. The other was Remillion.
Idiots. How can you look at this and still call it a simple doodle?
Already familiar with Felix’s abilities, Remillion shook her head in pity at the other professors who, with clouded eyes, failed to recognize how far beyond ordinary technology the circle before them truly was and simply piled on the criticism.
…Well, I couldn’t understand it either the first time I saw it.
The criticism’s getting pretty fierce. Maybe I should step in and—
Even as she recalled her own first encounter with Felix’s circles and prepared to explain just how remarkable they were—
“However, I can see it.”
Aleon, who until now had only criticized and then fallen silent, opened his mouth again.
“That central magic circle… is it a form in which different spells have been ‘layered’ on top of one another… is it not?”
“…Indeed. You noticed immediately.”
Just as he had declared he would ask a “question,” Felix—who had been quietly waiting for the situation to develop—smiled and nodded in affirmation.
“Layered…? Professor Aleon, what do you mean by that?”
“Layering different spells…?”
Watching the sudden shift in atmosphere between the two men, the other professors grew bewildered and demanded an explanation from Aleon.
“It is simple. This Fireball magic circle contains several different spells all at once.”
Felix immediately picked up the baton and began writing once more in the remaining space on the board.
“Along the outer edge of this circle I inscribed the vision-expansion formula from Clairvoyance. In the second remaining space I placed a doughnut shape—or rather, a ring shape—containing another vision-expansion formula while leaving the center open, so that the caster’s field of view is synchronized with the target.”
“Finally a space remains in the very center, correct? All that is left is to insert a spell that reports the distance to the target. In this way a single Fireball can contain three additional spells.”
Tap-tap—tap—
“….Hah.”
“How… such a thing…”
As Felix’s explanation continued, the professors’ expressions shifted from puzzlement to admiration, then from admiration to outright shock.
“What I wish to ask is precisely this. The spells engraved in the circle you drew may have been taken from other magic, yet you have forcibly stitched together formulas from completely different spells—and somehow they still function. That is what I find so questionable.”
“Yet the greater problem is that, to my eyes, there is no problem at all. Your magic circle is like taking wooden sticks, roughly lashing them together into the bare shape of a bridge, propping the whole rickety thing up, and then claiming it is a bridge.”
“Anyone can see how flimsy and grotesque it looks… and yet we are watching that bridge function perfectly…”
Aleon tried to keep his voice calm, but the more he spoke the more his mind was turned completely upside down.
In theory and in words it was easy. The real issue was that it was like someone announcing, “I made bread with water and flour,” and then simply producing bread—without a single word about how much flour goes into the dough, how much water, how long to ferment, at what temperature and for how long to bake it, or even what structure the oven should have. It was exactly that level of abruptness.
I can understand this much only because it is me. The other students and professors can’t even approach it…!
Only someone with Aleon’s unmatched knowledge of magic circles within the Academy could even form such questions. Everyone else was still at the level of “What’s dough? What’s fermentation? How do you even use an oven?” and therefore treated Felix’s circle as a joke.
“Wooden sticks… yes, exactly. You have grasped my intention perfectly.”
“Wooden sticks are the core of this magic?!”
“Ah… that is not quite it.”
“Quiet! The professor is explaining!”
Hearing Aleon’s analogy of building a bridge from wooden sticks, Felix praised it as an excellent comparison and continued.
“I regard this mana as a kind of wooden stick.”
“Mana was wooden sticks?!”
“Hey, shut up for a second!”
“Yeah! Be quiet already!”
“…Ahem—! Earlier Professor Aleon said I built a bridge out of wooden sticks… Put another way, that means it does not have to be a bridge at all.”
Lightly ignoring the student who had been fixated on wooden sticks from the start, Felix kept speaking.
“Not only bridges, but buildings, fortress walls, cannons—even the very earth and mountains.”
“What can be created with this mana is truly limitless.”
“There is only one thing I wish to teach you in this class.”
“Mana is literally a carving knife that lets you sculpt the world, and a wooden stick from which you can make anything. And the ones who make that possible… are all of you.”
“I hope that through this class I can offer you even a little help in understanding what mana is, and what you can do with it.”
“If you continue the course with me, I guarantee you will be able to draw magic circles like this yourselves. That much I can promise.”
Bow—
Having finished his explanation perfectly, Felix lowered his head in greeting to the students and professors.
Silence settled over the lecture hall so completely that not even the sound of someone swallowing could be heard.
Then—
“If it would not be an imposition… I find myself wishing to receive that instruction privately as well. Might I be permitted to take individual lessons?”
“Professor Aleon?!”
“Did you just hear that? Professor Aleon is asking to be taught?!”
Aleon’s words shattered the silence and the lecture hall erupted in noise.
Professors were both colleagues and rivals. Each carved out their own path, yet they were all scholars walking the road of magic who had established their own magical ways. For such a person to bow his head and request instruction from a fellow professor—especially from Felix, who until recently had been regarded as a freeloading professor—was unheard of.
And on the very first class of the semester, no less.
When the rumor spread that Aleon, a man of considerable pride who held firm convictions about his own philosophy, had been the first to seek teaching, it became an event large enough to turn the Academy upside down. Fellow professors and students alike could only stare in stunned disbelief.
“Of course. If those who walk the same path of magic can help one another, I am more than happy. I shall offer what modest assistance I can.”
“There is no need for modesty. With that single magic circle you have already proven yourself.”
Even when Aleon bowed to him, Felix showed not the slightest fluster; he accepted it as the most natural thing in the world—an attitude that was itself astonishing.
And so the two siblings succeeded, from the very first class at the Academy, in presenting a completely unconventional spectacle and announcing a spectacular debut.
The older brother with his outstanding knowledge, the younger sister with her outstanding martial prowess.
(Below is a simple example material that roughly explains the magic-circle theory of this world.)
