15 Class is in Session!

Seph grumbled in mild annoyance.

"Cheer up!" Hiila grinned, patting Seph on the shoulder. "At least we got the most of the day off yesterday!"

"I will NEVER not be mad at this," Seph declared loud and clear, her arms crossed. "Pacil is sick and the class should have been cancelled."

A couple of shouts of agreement echoed throughout the class.

Hiila shook her head. "I bet you'd be the first to come to class if Callu was your lab partner instead of me."

A small chuckle rolled through a nearby desk.

Seph shot her (and the neighbouring desk) a glare. "You know that's not true."

'Well, mostly not true.' She added in her thoughts.

Hiila gave Seph another pat on the shoulder from her perch on the desk.

Their batch of 8th years, all 48 of them, were currently present inside of their enchantment lab. Their teacher had called in sick, so Professor Krys was going to take their class. But he wasn't here yet.

"... I'd bet against that," Hiila said with a sly smile.

This was getting on Seph's nerves. Why did she keep saying stuff like that? And why did she have to be her lab partner this year?

Hiila opened her mouth to continue, but Seph cut her off before she could do that—

"With your allowance that you've already used up?" Seph sighed softly. "Why isn't Krys here ye-"

"He's here!" An assistant professor peeked through the door and called out. Seph blinked. Hiila hopped off the table. The class quieted down as well.

The assistant professor nodded and pulled his head back out again.

And then Seph noticed it again—Her own mana patterns, emanating through something very powerful.

The dagger. Krys must have brought it here.

She found herself eagerly staring at the door, trying to catch a glimpse of it.

And she was rewarded with the sight of it again, hanging off of Krys's belt as he entered the class.

Hiila gave her a nudge.

"Is that your dagger?" she whispered, nodding to it.

Seph nodded slowly. "Yes."

"Good evening. I hope you've had a good lunch." Krys's greeting snapped her attention to the teacher instead. "As you know already, Professor Pacil is in the infirmary and I'll be taking his place today."

She tried to get another glance of the knife. It had seemed more... alive somehow. It felt to Seph like it had been responding to Krys. Talking to him. She couldn't tell how she could feel that, but she did.

'Drat,' She cursed. Krys was already behind his desk, which blocked the knife from her vision.

"Good evening, Professor Krys!" Fenn was the only one who greeted back. He just dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

Then he froze and turned back to Fenn. After a quick discussion of what they had studied in the previous classes, Krys started the lesson.

"So, let's see you all performing a telekinesis enchantment, shall we?"

===

… Enchanting turned out to pique Kyvas' interest more than he had expected.

Krys had purposefully chosen a topic this class hadn't handled before. He'd said he didn't want to mess up Pacil's plans for the class, while also showing him one of the more competent batches of the 8th years trying to figure it out from scratch.

"You already know it! Magic and Enchantment are very different but work towards the same thing. The process required to perform them is not alike at all, but the way the mana reacts, in the end, is the exact same. Use the spell as a reference. See how the mana's reaction from the enchantments differs from the spell. See how changing your enchantment affects the reaction. Parse the changes. Intuit the patterns. Try it with different object shapes. Keep it up till you get the mana to react the same way every single time. Only then do you set the enchantments."

That, and a one-time demonstration was more or less all the instructions that Krys had given.

This time's enchanting lessons were, in essence, a puzzle for the students.

They had a reference—the telekinesis spells they already knew. And they had a blank canvas—the floating water balls in front of them which they could carve into. All they had to do was to carve a pattern into the water that gave them the same output as their spell.

The issue with that? Runes drawn in the air, and the carvings done in the water, both behaved very differently. The runes pulled and pushed on the mana that was already flowing in the air like magnets, while the carvings directed mana through them, like pipes. And to add to that, they apparently couldn't just see how the mana moved like he did (albeit even he had to strain his vision to see it). They were essentially trying to recreate a painting with different media while being blindfolded.

And they were doing an amazing job at that.

Before long, Kyvas started looking at the carvings and the spells of students and tried to think of how they could improve on them. Yes, he was getting sucked into this puzzle as well.

Once he got somewhat decent at intuiting the changes, he wondered whether he could apply this on himself. Telekinesis would come in handy.

Also, he just wanted to solve this puzzle. He liked puzzles like these.

Kyvas stared into himself in the way that he had learned after suffering through Krys' cruel machinations. The patterns that he'd seen inside of him back then, Kyvas realised that those were the common reaction that one would get after drawing a rune or enchanting an object. He tried to see if he could mess with that.

He quickly found out that he could! But, not in the way that he had hoped for. He couldn't directly interfere with his mana, but he could create channels in the mana, much in the same way the carving in enchanting worked. That was nice, since he had a lot of enchantments for reference right in front of him, but... unlike the students, he couldn't see the carvings. He just had how they reacted to his mana to go off of.

Unfortunately, he had already messed up and put a line where he shouldn't have.

'Uh-' Kyvas turned to call for Krys, but stopped himself when he saw that Krys was helping out a student.

'What do I...' he mumbled to himself. He doubted that he could just will his mistakes away.

…

Kyvas successfully willed his mistakes away. It turned out that just thinking about removing the enchantment made the Self-Repair enchantment rush out to consume it.

Any of the changes did not affect the Self-Repair enchantment either, almost like it was present in a different layer than where he was making the changes. He attempted to replicate the enchantment next.

Second attempt, another failure. He carved at the wrong spots. The mana did not flow in a way that let the pattern form.

It's the shape. Different object shapes require different adjustments. Some students who had succeeded with the ball of water, had then modified the shape of a ball and tried again. They all had to make changes for their new shapes. He just needed to find the right adjustments for himself.

And so he tried. Again and again. Getting better at it with each attempt.

By the thirtieth attempt, he thought he had nailed it. The pattern looked identical to the ones that Krys had been displaying.

Kyvas decided to try it out.

He looked around for a target to move.

There, on the desk. Krys's quill. Kyvas tried to nudge it.

He failed.

'I got something wrong maybe?' He wondered.

Two more tries. Two more failures. Kyvas frowned. He was sure he was doing this correctly.

Was it something wrong with his method? He pondered on that for a moment.

No, no, it wasn't! The quill! He couldn't see behind it! It was a 'Living.' Magic won't affect it!

He looked for a different target. The ink bottle.

Kyvas focused, trying to nudge it.

Klack—

The bottle immediately tipped over, spilling its contents all over the floor.

===

Seph adjusted the enchantment for the umpteenth time.

"I say that line should be more over to the right," Hiila suggested. She was the one keeping the water image floating this time.

Seph shook her head. "No, I think I got it this time."

If she moved that line any further right, the output of it would miss the target entirely. Hiila kept on insisting otherwise.

Seph performed the final touches on the carving. She was feeling rather good about this version. She put the needles down and extended her hands towards the image. A pulse of mana entered the activation point of the enchantment.

It worked! The carvings spewed out mana in the intended ways, and the required mana reaction was created! They had—

The edge of the reaction started fluctuating.

"No-!" Seph exclaimed. She rushed to examine it. Oscillations in that area. They just kept on getting worse! At this rate the—

The pattern shook itself into oblivion. The enchantment shut itself down.

"So close..." Seph let out a small cry in defeat.

"Told you to move it more to the right." Hiila smiled.

"That would have ruined it!" Seph exclaimed. "If I moved it any—"

"No, it wouldn't have!" Hiila interrupted Seph. "You know what? Move over, I'll prove I was right."

Seph glared at Hiila. Hiila just smiled back confidently.

"If you ruin it, I'm making you remake the entire thing again." She threatened.

"I won't!" Hiila grinned. "Ruin it, I mean."

Seph kept the glare up for another moment, then looked away and rubbed her forehead.

"Fine. FINE, you can go for it." She accepted.

Seph's breath got caught in her throat. A strong mana signature—her mana signature—burst out from Krys' desk.

"The dagger..." She muttered softly, turning to look towards the Professor's table.

Klack—

Professor Krys's ink bottle fell over.

Krys noticed it rather quickly. The first thing he did was pick up his notebook and place it far away from the ink.

The second thing he did was curse like a sailor.

Half the class dropped their water shapes instinctively. All of their eyes on the teacher. Seph checked if Hiila had dropped theirs too, but fortunately, she still had it up.

"Which one of you did this?" Krys glared at the class. One of his hands propped the bottle up and the other formed a series of runes. The spell for manipulating water mixed with telekinesis, Seph noticed.

The spilt ink floated up and move towards the ink bottle. The class remained silent.

Krys's glare still held their eyes.

"Well?" He roared. "That was telekinesis. I could tell. Who here decided to tip over my ink bottle?"

The entire class was drenched in silence. Krys waited.

'I think it was me, Krys.' a quiet voice echoed through Seph's mind. Seph glanced around, trying to find its speaker. She couldn't decipher where the sound had come from.

The ink made its way inside the bottle. Krys capped it up again. The stains on the desk and his cloak did not disappear.

She didn't recognise the voice. And the source seemed...

Telepathy. That was telepathy.

'The dagger...?' Seph wondered. After all, she was certain she had heard it speak out telepathically the previous day.

Krys grumbled and broke his stare. "Alright. I'm letting all of you off the hook this time. But you had BETTER finish the enchantment in the..." He checked his pocket watch "... 20 minutes till this class ends."

Seph's eyes widened. Krys would never just let something like this go. It was the dagger. Without a doubt.

Well, okay, some doubt. She had a hard time believing that a dagger could talk, let alone use magic.

'And then there's the fact that it feels like me...' She added.

She had to get her hand on it to know for sure.

===

The class ended not long after that. Krys, understandably, was in a foul mood for most of it. Near the end of it, however, his face lit up. He took out the dagger and used its telekinesis to balance a coin mid-air.

Seph could tell that the mana felt like it came from the dagger itself, rather than the user. Her motivation for getting her hands on it just got stronger.

Krys was still testing out the telekinesis when he headed out upon the class's end. Seph left soon after him, still trying to get a look at the dagger. Hiila complained about that. Seph was distracted enough throughout the class that they weren't able to finish the enchantment in time.

Seph was about to follow Krys further, but decided against it, stopping not far from the classroom.

She heard footsteps behind her. It was her three friends. She let them catch up to her.

"You know, I'm almost jealous of that dagger now," Callu said, prompting a chuckle from Hiila.

Seph rolled her eyes. Then lowered them. She was about to ask something much more from her friends now.

"What is it?" Hiila noticed her look and asked.

"I... might be reconsidering our opinion on thievery," she admitted.

Teak was the first to laugh. "I KNEW IT!" he grinned.

Hiila followed soon after, with a roll of her eyes. "You're trouble, Seph."

Callu just chuckled. She wove her hand inside of Seph's and smiled.

Seph smiled back.

"So..." She said, "Shall we plan a heist?"

The group let out another laugh.

This one, however, did not last long.

Seph felt Callu give her hand a tight squeeze, prompting her to look up at her face.

Callu's smile had fallen. Her face looked drained of colour

Seph looked around to see her other friends also freeze up. They were all looking at a spot behind her.

"This... is bad," Callu called out softly.

Seph blinked, then turned, following their gaze.

Behind her, she saw a man donning the green robes of a janitor. Young, lean, with neatly parted hair and eyes that could freeze the sun.

Eyes that were affixed on the four intently.

"... Shit." Seph cursed.

It was Yurel Nakrov. Known in some circles as Lyk's Eyes. Circles that, unfortunately, her group might have dabbled with before.

And he was walking towards them.

"Hello, Alli Cat!" He said, shooting a look at Callu. His face curled up in an amused smirk, taking pleasure in the clear panic showing on her companion's face.

"It seems we will be working together again!"