Chương 43: Four-Dimensional Magic

When Ryland finished breakfast the next day, he thought he'd be heading straight to class. Although, he needed to pick up all the Inscription papers before that. But a commotion got in the way first. Ryland had left the cafeteria and was heading to his office on foot. [Translocate] would have been faster, but it wasn't like he was pressed for time. There was over half an hour left before his class was scheduled to start, and it wouldn't take him even half that to get to his office, thanks to his Inscribed Glyphs.

He had only been walking for about five minutes before the ground started shaking. For a small moment, Ryland wondered if Alaric's warning had manifested already. Had the Living Mana Incursion already reached Arcoryx City? But the shout that came his way didn't hold the same kind of panic that a strong Incursion would have inspired.

"Get out of the way!" a young voice screamed.

"They're loose!" They turned out to be a group of Lightraptors. Bipedal lizards whose short arms extended into wings made of crystalline feathers, their rapid motion across the ground causing the feathers to chime lightly against each other.

"Hey!" another voice called out from the distance. A slightly older one, and a quick look confirmed it was a graduate student, though not one Ryland knew personally.

"Get the Realms out of the way already!" Ryland did not move at all. There was no need." [Mindscape]." Time nearly froze. Ryland deliberated. The moment he had seen the monsters rushing towards him, he had started considering whether he ought to cast a spell or not. It would be easy to move out of the way. He could also stop the creatures just as easily. But if not getting overrun by several dozen of the manabeasts was Ryland's goal, then he didn't really need to do anything at all.

The problem was that, even if the creatures refused to get anywhere close to him—because, well, he was Ryland —they could veer away from him and run off in other directions. Their handlers had been lucky so far that the Lightraptors had chosen to stick together. But if every manabeast panicked at seeing him and hared off in different directions, the students' jobs would become a whole lot more difficult. All because of him. So, as time returned to normal, Ryland raised a hand.

His Soul Glyph of Genesis cracked into a space-breaking being." [Sovereign's Mandate]." His manasoul flared out, its outer edges turning into strands finer than hair that swam through ethereal space to connect with the manasouls of every approaching Lightraptor." Halt." The command was merely spoken through air, but it echoed like a frightful thunderclap through magic. Immediately, every single manabeast came to a hard stop, arresting their charges and going completely still.

"What the…" the younger of the students who had shouted at Ryland came to a stop, panting and staring at how the Lightraptors had completely stilled.

"What did you do?" The other one, the older graduate student, came up and mildly bonked his younger companion on the head.

"You're supposed to be saying thank you, you dolt."

"Ow!" He rubbed his head.

"Uh, right. Thanks for that."

"Yes," the graduate student echoed, bowing his head just a bit.

"Thanks, erm, Ryland, was it?" Ryland figured he shouldn't be surprised his name was known by people he didn't know. Nevertheless, he nodded.

"But seriously," the younger student said.

"Did you see that, Lord Karil? There was a spell circle and you'd think that's what stopped the manabeasts, but I swear, they had started stopping even before that."

"Yes, Darren, I—""And now, they're completely frozen. Just look at them. Have you ever seen all the Lightraptors looking at one person like that?"

"Darren, you're talking about him —" Ryland's Universal Watch sent a little jolt through his arm with a tiny ring. They all froze, just like the now placid Lightraptors.

"Ah, it seems my class is going to start soon," Ryland said. He was a bit sad he didn't get to converse with the two further, but being late wasn't an option.

"I'll be off then." Before either of them could say anything, Ryland severed the connection between his manasoul and that of the Lightraptors' before heading off. Thankfully, the beasts didn't resume their rampage at his departure.

"This is incredible," Bulgon murmured as he stared at the Inscription papers that Ryland had brought. His reaction was shared by the entire class. Including the even more new students who had joined the course, which had led Ryland to hastily acquire more of the Inscription papers. Even Viren and Acrypha were staring at the pages with the [Phantasmal Surge] spell Inscribed into them. Ryland had quietly kept it a surprise from them too.

"Your task is simple," Ryland said, surveying the entire class with an encouraging smile.

"By the end of the semester, with the help of this assignment that I'm setting for you, I want you to manifest a Tier [7] Glyph. Minimum." They all froze and stared at him. Not at all a surprising reaction.

"Sir, we're all just first-year students," the crimson-scaled dragonkin at the back said. Ryland raised an eyebrow at him. He cleared his throat, his scales turning dark and a hint of smoke escaped his nostrils in embarrassment.

"Sorry," he continued in his accented Androvian.

"I'm Nephrax, sir." Ryland glanced at the other dragonkin.

"Are you related, perchance?"

"He's my idiot twin, sir," Nephrix said. Nephrax nodded.

"Yes, I'm her idiot twin."

"Raising concerns is far from a sign of idiocy," Ryland said.

"Nephrax, why do you think the task I set you is impossible?"

"If any old Iron-ranked academy student could manifest Tier [7] spells, then we'd be the talk of the entire academy." He shook his head, his gleaming horns catching the soft rays of the classroom's Glyphlights.

"Forget that, we'd be the talk of most of the Accorded Realms."

"The top Iron-ranked student last year just barely got his Soul Glyph to Tier [5] before hitting Silver," Bulgon said.

"And he's a genius." Ryland tutted.

"You think too low of yourselves. Limiting your possibilities to whatever rank the Grand Frame assigns you is exactly what we want to work past in this course, Nephrax. After all, you are my student, are you not?" The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The dragonkin youth stared at Ryland for a while, his pupils thinning, then he quickly nodded.

"Y-yes, sir."

"Good." Ryland turned to the rest of the class, eyeing them resolutely.

"The context gifted to you by the lives you've led so far might make you think that such a feat is impossible. And in truth, it is. Not just for relying on purely the Grand Frame. Even if you follow the methods I outline, you might not manage to manifest a Tier [7] Glyph within five or so months." They all looked at him with rapt attention, because by this point, Ryland hoped it was obvious that he had a plan. That the confidence he was projecting would instil at least a modicum of belief in his students as well.

"Nevertheless," he continued.

"These are the methods that helped me a great deal. These are the ideas that I should have followed from the very beginning of my magical education. So, even if you don't manage to reach our stated target, I believe you'll learn a great deal." They nodded back one by one. Ultimately, that was their goal. It wasn't to pass a test. It wasn't to complete some arbitrarily assigned project. It was to learn. And that Ryland would ensure each and every one of them did in spades.

"Now, let us get started on the specifics of the task before us," Ryland said. For the rest of the class period, he lectured them on what he hoped they would achieve and how he hoped they would go about doing so. Essentially, just as the officers back at the requisitions office had demonstrated, [Phantasmal Surge] created a ghostly version of whoever interacted with the Inscribed spell. It turned the interactor's life into a sequence of events and choices, of stimuli and responses. Almost a game, of sorts.

Souls weren't a fixed substance. They fluctuated with time, evolved and transformed as their bearer grew. And since magic was soulful, that meant a mage could truly grow their magic once they acknowledged their own growth as well. It was this principle that Ryland was seeking to emphasise with his assignment. By replaying the events of their lives, he was hoping they would gain a closer connection with the choices that had shaped their history.

Each of those fundamental choices reflected an evolution point for their manasoul, and by truly comprehending the changes, the soul's growth could be comprehended. The manasoul's growth could be comprehended. Ideally. In practice, it wasn't always going to be smooth sailing. Even during class, it didn't take long before Ryland's students were facing issues.

"This spell," Acrypha said.

"It's not as invasive as I had thought it would be." Next to her, Viren was already engrossed in his paper, his face shining as he took in various three-dimensional holograms flitting over the page. Out of concern for privacy, Ryland didn't look too closely at it. And it was this concern for privacy that Acrypha had pointed out.

"Yes," Ryland said.

"I made it so that whoever uses it volunteers whichever of their memories they would like to share. The spell merely prompts you to do so. It doesn't probe into your mind to dissect your recollections. That would be a touch too invasive, as you say." For all that it was supposed to be a good thing, Acrypha's face tightened at that. Ryland frowned a bit in confusion. It took him a sadly long moment before he understood what was going on. Right.

She had been hesitating back when they had met earlier with Viren at his office. It was obvious that she had trouble sharing things. She wasn't merely reticent, she was actively repressing herself from being open. So, instead of seeing it as a good thing that the Inscribed spell didn't violate her privacy, she might have hoped the spell would pluck whichever memories it needed without her active input. Ryland found himself highly uncomfortable with that line of thinking.

At least Acrypha seemed to be making a go of it. She was concentrating on actually sharing the bits and pieces of her life that she could spare, judging by the events that it was depicting. Ryland decided to leave her to it for now. She wasn't the only one with issues. Bulgon was having trouble as well. A very mechanical sort of trouble.

"This spell functions with memories, doesn't it, sir?" he asked.

"Yes," Ryland said.

"And I see the problem you're having…" Honestly, it was on Ryland for not remembering that a golemite would face an issue with a spell that required a transfer of memories. Golemites didn't have memories. Their physiology wasn't very… biological. Unlike most races who stored their memories in their minds, golemites instead stored recollections much like how Glyphs of Recording held them. They were basically compressed information stored as magic.

Since that wasn't the biological form of memories that most people boasted, the spell itself would fail to latch onto and accept them. In other words, Ryland would need to perform a modification.

"It shouldn't be a difficult fix," Ryland said, observing the Inscribed spell on Bulgon's paper.

"Give me a moment, please. I apologize for the delay. I should have remembered you'd be facing this sort of issue." Far from being ticked off, Bulgon gracefully ducked his head.

"Don't worry about it, sub-Academ," he said. Ryland looked at the youth critically.

"That's a very… generous way to think of something that's almost discriminatory. Even if it was unintentional."

"Are you asking why I'm not mad, sir?"

"I am curious, yes." Ryland began modifying the spell while Bulgon gathered his thoughts before speaking. The golemite youth hadn't just off-handedly dismissed the little gaffe. There was a reason behind it, and it behoved Ryland to find out what that was.

"It's nothing too complicated," Bulgon said after catching Ryland's expression. Hmm. Had he been appearing a bit too intense or something?

"There's only so much you can be offended. It's just exhausting to be angry all the time, you know? Eventually, you just get used to it and start letting things slide." Ryland didn't react to that, though he did understand what Bulgon meant. What Ryland had done was perhaps just a drop in the bucket of all the niggling and nagging ways things were utterly different for someone like Bulgon. Here, Ryland had merely forgotten to account for the difference in how their memories were collected.

Out there, Bulgon had possibly already faced things like the cafeteria running out of the kind of sustenance golemites needed, or the academy still relying on older kinds of Glyphtech developed specifically on Vyrd that reacted poorly to the presence of golemites, or even a certain brand of soap in the bathrooms melting the golemites' skin. Aggravations that weren't ever purposeful but annoyingly present all the same.

All because this land wasn't used to considering the presence of golemites—or anyone save humans, in all honesty—in a non-temporary fashion. Of course, such issues were difficult to avoid. No doubt, had the roles been reversed, humans would have found the home of the golemites on Realm 10 terribly inhospitable. And credit to Bulgon, he was doing an admirable job of being patient. Nevertheless, these incidents were regrettable.

In an ideal world, where people weren't fallible beings, these sorts of things would never happen to begin with.

"There," Ryland said.

"Your spell has been modified. You should be able to use it now. Try it, please." Rather than trying it out, Bulgon just stared at the modification at the spell itself.

"Is something wrong?" Ryland asked.

"You… you cast a three -dimensional spell circle?" Bulgon asked, his mechanical voice taking on a hushed note. Ryland looked down at the Inscription paper. To add the Subglyphs he had been thinking of, he had indeed modified the entire circle so that instead of being flat on the paper, it now formed a three-dimensional hemisphere over the page.

"Ah, yes. I thought that would make [Phantasmal Surge] the most efficient, considering the new modifications." Bulgon wasn't the only one staring. Most of the class had turned to observe his spell circle.

"Insane," another student muttered.

"I think I've only seen the Headmaster do three-dimensional spell circles." Viren just shook his head with a fierce smile.

"Nothing's impossible for our sub-Academ."

"That's not three-dimensional," Acrypha said. Her voice was almost as hushed as Bulgon's.

"That's four -dimensional." Everyone in the classroom froze. Even Viren was staring with his eyes wide enough to threaten to pop out of his skull.

"Ah, right," Ryland said evenly.

"The general spell structure already changes according to the interactor. Now, it should account for all sorts of differences I had failed to consider earlier. I've essentially tried to make it more universal."

"By literally allowing certain Subglyphs to change based on conditions and time?" Viren asked, staring slack-jawed. For all that he had seemingly mastered being flabbergasted by Ryland, it seemed this had sort of broken him again.

"I've never even heard of spell circles that can do that," Nephrix said.

"I've seen a few," Acrypha said.

"But those were huge spell circles, like the one Arcoryx uses to ward the whole city. Enormous workings created and maintained by multiple mages. This is…" She shook her head disbelievingly.

"I didn't even know they were possible at such a small scale." Ryland smiled at them.

"It's magic. There are very few things that aren't possible." He spent the rest of the class period redirecting the students' feelings of awe and wonder into productive lanes that helped them become more soulful. The process of actualizing their lives and the choices they had made wasn't easy, and it certainly wouldn't be completed in one day. But by the time class ended, both Ryland and his students were pretty satisfied with the progress they had made.

It wasn't even for everyone, of course, but they had all learned something. They also seemed a little less disbelieving that he had asked them to create a new Tier [7] Glyph. He counted that as a win.