Creating My Own Magic (1)
"Ehehe, Master...."
"She's sleeping in for once. Or did I just wake up early?"
Still dreaming of yesterday's collar play, Nia mumbled in her sleep as she nestled against me, and the feel of her body pulled me awake. The soft press of her chest was as pleasant as ever. I deliberately buried my face in those full breasts and settled in to savor the languid morning haze.
"Mm? Nngh...."
"You awake?"
"Yeah.... Did you sleep well?"
"More or less. How's your neck?"
"It's fine like this."
I'd gotten a little carried away yesterday and been rougher than I meant to. Still, it didn't seem like there was any real damage, which was a relief. Time to eat breakfast and head out for course registration.
"Surprising. It's almost time to get up, and I'm the one who woke first instead of Nia."
"...Maybe I got a little soft over break?"
"Soft? We lived pretty hard even during vacation, didn't we?"
"Yeah."
It was just that she hadn't fully adjusted back to the academy's schedule yet. She'd probably be back to normal within the month. As for why I had woken up, I thought about it and figured it was probably because I'd spent every night cuddling Rosaria's flat chest — and then suddenly found myself buried in a pair of enormous breasts. My body hadn't adapted, and I'd woken up short of breath.
"You like them that much?"
"Different sizes have different charms, but before any of that — breasts are simply correct."
"Hmm...."
Honestly, my tastes ran broad enough that I liked just about everything. Beautifully, densely rendered toes and armpits, of course. Liquids that caught the light like glittering jewels. Smooth abdomens with that captivating little hollow of a navel. And a wide, childbearing pelvis and hips like Rosaria's went without saying.
"Do I sound like a pervert?"
"You do, but I love the grotesque look of Cali's cock, so maybe we're not that different."
"Hmm...."
The second I heard that line, a fantasy of Nia surrendering to my cock flashed through my head and I got hard first thing in the morning. Still, today was course registration — a day that was going to be chaotic enough as it was — so I had to resist the urge to skip breakfast and dive straight into something filthy.
This term I was taking the basics of Record Magic, plus advanced courses on magic I'd already studied, so I really had to be careful about what I signed up for.
"What classes are you taking, Nia?"
"Roughly Professor Patton's Fundamentals of Magic Creation, and Intro to Record Magic? Beyond that, History of Magical Script and Magical Thermodynamics. Though I might swap those depending on how things go."
"Almost the same as me."
Were our tastes just that similar? Or was it simply that we were still first-years, so even if the professors differed, the course offerings overlapped a lot? Either way, even our secondary picks lining up this closely meant we were on the same wavelength. Today we'd probably move through the same pattern, and our actual schedules would end up looking pretty much alike.
The only real variable was grades — but Nia and I had taken first and second place last semester, so I didn't need to worry about rankings throwing anything off. We'd stuck together through last term in much the same way. This semester would probably be similar.
"I need to be careful. If I keep glued to your side like that, I might slip up."
"Slip up how?"
"Lately Niar's cuteness has been eroding my image of you. It's genuinely dangerous."
Honestly, I'd reached the point where even Nia in her male disguise could turn me on. And if I mindlessly treated her the way I normally treated Niar-mode Nia? The results would be so catastrophic I didn't even want to imagine them. No matter how much the latest work had smoothed over certain issues, it was still far too early to reveal every truth.
"Ah, it's been a while since I had this."
"Missed it?"
"...I don't think so."
It was still a far cry from the breakfasts Rosaria prepared — the ones where she knew exactly what tasted good and bought it to use as side dishes. Pure cooking skill aside, Rosaria wasn't extraordinary, but she solved the flavor problem by buying the important ingredients, and she did it all in a naked apron that satisfied other appetites too. Honestly, it had been far better than academy food.
"It tastes fine, but what we ate over break was better."
"I've heard some commoners say the academy's better."
"If I hadn't been buying expensive ingredients and had just cooked with whatever was on hand, I might've thought the same.... Honestly, for an academy, I think ours tastes pretty good."
It only fell short by comparison. It was more than good enough to enjoy on its own. We dipped our bread in the remaining soup and circled back to course registration.
"So how are you handling the professors and the order in detail? I mapped mine out like this."
"...Pretty similar. Did you ask an upperclassman?"
"Yeah. You too?"
"More or less."
So the professors' reputations were basically the same across the board. Well, unless something was particularly unusual, that was how it usually went. There was always a reason most people ended up feeling the same way.
"Getting called up first feels weird."
"It was the same last time. Why make a thing of it?"
"Being first on the entrance exam and first by semester grades feel different, don't they?"
Course registration went in grade order for first pick of lectures, so we were called first and took our places in line. The Intro to Record Magic course I'd prioritized most — the professor had stressed how important it was — so I locked that in first. Next was probably the lecture related to magic creation?
"We should be able to snag that one too, right?"
"People will split across the two time slots, so it should be doable."
That professor alone had two time slots, so we could just take whichever still had room. And even if it didn't work out, it was a course with a solid backup plan — switching to another professor's lecture on short notice was still an option.
"Nice."
"Yeah, it's going exactly the way we predicted."
The real problem with course registration was always the same: you locked in your main lectures, then if the remaining ones you wanted were full, you spent the leftover time frantically swapping things in and out so nothing overlapped. Before you knew it, you often ended up with a schedule that looked nothing like what you'd planned. But every prediction we'd made about where people would crowd had landed perfectly, and we built the exact timetable we'd originally envisioned.
"Wow. It's actually hard for two schedules to match this perfectly."
"Looking forward to another semester with you, Cali."
"Same here."
If our clubs had matched too, we'd have been together all day. Though, on second thought, that might have been a bit much.
"Welcome. Most of you first-years are probably seeing me for the first time. Last semester, only second- and third-years were enrolled in this lecture, so it couldn't be helped."
The professor who introduced himself as Patton began presenting the course he would teach this semester: Fundamentals of Magic Creation. I'd naturally assumed it would be about what we'd always done — drawing various magical characters into a magic circle to complete a spell — just taught more systematically. But....
So this is why Rosaria thought the second-years would all realize she'd thrown the match on purpose.
To be blunt, the content wasn't all that different from what I'd expected. The problem was that the smallest unit wasn't a magical character. Instead, tiny pre-completed spells were prepared specifically for use in magic creation, and you combined those spells to produce a final result. That was what this lecture would cover.
If conventional magical characters were letters of the alphabet, then here we were learning pre-built words made from those letters — and the grammar for using them. If a spell was a sentence, you didn't have to construct it letter by letter; you could build it from words. It was a method that resembled computer coding in a way.
This part especially feels familiar.
Just like writing a function in advance and calling it whenever you needed it, you could isolate a section of a magic circle, draw it separately, and pull it in whenever you wanted. That was how you optimized a circle — by reducing the sheer volume of magical script that went into it. The one real difference was that, given the nature of magic circles requiring mana to inhabit them, running the same component multiple times simultaneously was difficult. Well, that was probably only natural.
"The first thing I'll teach you in this course is this. If you look through the lecture text, you'll see they're called 'modules.' We'll start by covering what kinds of modules exist."
Then he'd explain how each module operated, and the midterm would test whether you could combine them to implement a specific spell. The final would cover creating modules yourself and learning how to revise a spell to improve the overall efficiency of a magic circle. That was roughly how I understood it.
"And for the final exam, each of you will create one spell and submit it. That will serve as your comprehensive evaluation for the semester."
Creativity and spell difficulty earned bonus points, but there was no real need to attempt something hard — every inefficiently constructed section incurred a deduction. Difficult spells packed more content into the circle and grew more complex, which meant more deductions. It all evened out.
...Is that right?
To me, it sounded more like you only earned a proper score by implementing a difficult spell perfectly, with zero deductions.