Chương 26: Academy

"Well? What are you two waiting for? I opened the door for you, so come in already!" The old robed man waved a hand, beckoning Carlos and Amber forward. Carlos blinked, shook himself, and hastily stepped into the tiny room on the other side of the great tower's doorway. Amber followed him a moment later, her eyes wide open and trying to look in every direction at once. With Amber dumbstruck by her surroundings, Carlos gave the old man a respectful nod and greeted him.

"As she said, I am Carlos Founder. Might I have your name?" The old man theatrically put his hand on his chest and gaped.

"Oh my! A high noble wants to know the name of little old Mallern? Royal academy receptionist and janitor at your service." He bowed, but sprang right back up to standing in an instant.

"You, ah, don't seem as respectful as I'd expect for a janitor talking to a high noble."

"I didn't get the impression you cared. If you want to go all formal and pretentious, you can, but I wouldn't recommend it." Carlos tilted his head slightly.

"Just for curiosity, why not?" Mallern held up his right hand and started counting off points on his fingers.

"One, you would annoy me, so I'd help you less. Two, I'd have to call in one of the higher ups, and they'd be annoyed with the interruption of their very busy schedules. Three, the whole academy would take official notice, and you're not ready for the attention that would bring. Four, you would annoy me, so I'd help you less." He smirked.

"Yes, I said that twice, but hey, it's my recommendation." Carlos chuckled.

"Heh. Fair enough." Before he could get any further, Amber broke her silence.

"Why..." She shook her head and turned to face Mallern, befuddled.

"Why is this room so small and plain? All my books talk about the academy having a grand entrance hall, but..." She gestured at the small wooden desk Mallern hadn't bothered to go to, and the unadorned walls enclosing the area, perhaps eight feet on its longest side. Mallern smiled knowingly.

"Come back in two months, and you'll see the grand entrance hall you read about. The academy shows off a bit when we're inviting hordes of prospective students. Right now, that space is being used for other things." Amber gaped and stared.

"You- You rearrange the architecture for a yearly publicity stunt!?"

"Sure do! It's good practice for some of the more advanced students." Amber stared some more, then slowly slumped her shoulders, looked down, and sniffled. She blinked, her eyes watering a little, and her voice cracked.

"I... I'm going to miss that, off being a noble." She sniffled again. Carlos quietly put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her gently. She leaned into him for a while, but then slowly shook her head, wiped off a few tears, squared her shoulders, and stood straight.

"No. This was my choice, and I need to accept the consequences. We need to push forward and find what our house needs, not cry over things I'll miss that aren't even important." Mallern gave a slight but solemn bow.

"With respect, Lady Amber, just because its importance is emotional in nature to you does not mean it is not important. I have seen far too many promising students deny their own desires in the obsessive pursuit of advancement in magic. They always regret it in the end, and I can't imagine a few extra soul structures changing that."

"But- but I'm a noble!" Amber stammered.

"And that does come with certain obligations and responsibilities that you should not ignore. However, a noble's duties do not need to consume your life. Build and secure your house's foundation, find some measure of stability, and when the time is right, you may request to observe or even participate in the re-creation of the Academy Grand Hall as a special guest." Amber sniffled again, then gulped and took a deep breath.

"I would like that, very much." Mallern smiled and nodded to her.

"Glad I could help. Youthful passion for learning is a wonderful thing to behold." He straightened and adopted a more serious expression.

"That said, you did come here for business, and we shouldn't just ignore that. A mage instructor, you said?" Carlos nodded.

"Yes. We have a good set of soul structures, but far too few actual spells, and I don't even know what else we might be missing from a normal mage's education."

"Such as how new nobles normally develop?"

"I... suppose that counts. How do they, anyway?" Mallern shrugged.

"Usually it's a well established platinum ranker with a lot of experience and development finally figuring out a workable ninth soul structure to add for mythril. Sometimes it's the kid of a platinum ranker who gets creatively inspired when learning the family soul plan, but with the parent being platinum with the same plan, and old enough to have a child, that distinction is almost a technicality.

"Anyway, I can tell you straight up that none of the academy's actual teachers will be interested in going with you. If you stayed here, then sure, you'd get a few offering cushy personal apprenticeships, but that's not an option for you." Carlos raised an eyebrow.

"I'm guessing you have something else in mind?"

"Of course." Mallern turned toward the back wall and started walking, beckoning with one hand for Carlos and Amber to come.

"Follow me." A door sized section of stone disappeared, revealing a long hallway, ten feet wide, with a tiled floor and marble walls. Murals hung on the walls at intervals, interspersed between labeled doors, and light filled the hall with no apparent source. Most of the doors were labeled as various administrative offices.

"Let me walk you through my reasoning on the way." Mallern glanced at Carlos, who nodded in response.

"So, you can't get an actual professor. Just not going to happen. If you talk with the headmaster, you might get him to assign a teaching assistant to you, but most TAs won't like going where you need to - Wilds frontier town, right? - and are accustomed to safe classrooms. Plus, as I said, official channels here will get you attention you're not ready for." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

One of the murals they passed moved as Carlos glanced at it, an animated fireball exploding silently and killing most of a formation of twenty armed soldiers, with the survivors scattering as they fled in all directions. Then the picture reset, the formation intact again and advancing on a mage whose arm was outstretched towards them.

"I doubt you can afford to pay the hiring price of any remotely decent established independent mage out in the city, and advertising there could get attention from rival nobles too. All the best upcoming graduates here have high paying jobs already lined up. You can't outbid those unless you offer adoption into your house, and I shouldn't need to tell you how stupid an idea that would be. Students in the lower years want to stay and keep learning, and wouldn't know that much more than you anyway."

Mallern turned a corner, and Carlos was surprised to see a window showing they were well above ground and walking through one of the elevated walkways to another tower. They turned another corner, and passed by a group of robed teenagers going the other way and chatting among themselves. Carlos waited a few more seconds, but Mallern didn't resume talking.

"Uh, so far all you've said is about options that won't work. What's your solution?" Mallern wagged his index finger at Carlos.

"I'm getting there, have patience. Timing." They passed a few more students and turned another corner before Mallern spoke again.

"You need someone competent, of course. A graduate, or close to it. Someone adventurous, who would enjoy venturing into the Wilds and leaving the comforts of city life behind. But also available. Someone with few good job prospects, because all the good employers don't want them.

"You need-" Mallern paused, grabbed the handle of a door they had just reached, and slammed it open as he finished his pronouncement with a dramatic flourish.

"-a troublemaker!" Trinlen unconsciously chewed on the end of his pencil as he contemplated the spell he was trying to create. He wanted something to wipe that smug condescending smile off the face of the class valedictorian, and he had the perfect idea in mind: a curse to make her voice hilariously high pitched and squeaky, right when she starts giving her speech at the graduation ceremony. Figuring out how to pull it off was proving difficult, however. The effect itself was easy enough.

The problem was how to get the spell on her undetected. All the stories made curses sound so simple and easy - someone gets cursed, it's mysterious and impossible to remove except by some esoteric condition, and the cursed person has to puzzle their way through figuring out even the basic effect of the curse, much less how to remove it. Those stories generally featured some overwhelmingly powerful being as the curse's caster, though. Trinlen was just an academy student.

A senior student just one month away from graduation, but still a student, and they were in the royal academy. Any curse he could cast, the professors would be able to remove with trivial ease. He'd have to make it subtle. So subtle she wouldn't notice until it triggers, even with her highly capable mana sense. Actually hiding it from her completely wasn't viable. She was just too good at sensing mana to miss a spell effect attached to her. He'd have to disguise it instead.

Combine it with something else, make it a multi-effect spell with an obvious effect that she'd accept. She'd be suspicious of anything coming from him, too. The obvious effect would have to be something she would readily believe was his main goal for the spell. Hmm. Could he make an obvious prank effect that she could co-opt and turn into a positive for herself by embracing it? Pranks within pranks. Ah, he was going to miss this place.

Maybe create an image of an over-the-top sarcastically congratulatory valedictorian crown above her head? Yes, that could work. She would see his sarcastic intent, and spoil it by pretending it's genuine. Now, what exactly should it look like... He was lost in thought, imagining ever more elaborate crowns, when suddenly the door to his room slammed open and old Mallern barged in and declared, "-a troublemaker!" Trinlen jumped to his feet and spun to face the door, heart pounding from surprise.

Two more people peered curiously at him. One was a man in his early twenties, tall and thin, with brown hair and eyes, a light skin color, and a confident bearing. The other was a girl in her upper teens, thin and lanky, with a lighter shade of brown on her hair, and her eyes were wide and constantly looking around in open wonder at everything. Whoever they were, they weren't wearing robes, and that meant they weren't students here.

Well, unless they followed Trinlen's own example in rejecting the standard school robes as the impractical absurdities that they really are, but he had yet to find even a single other student who agreed with him about that.

"Mallern? What the hell do you want me for? And who are these people?" Mallern gave his trademarked kindly smile, and waved a hand first at Trinlen, then at the pair accompanying him.

"Carlos and Amber, this is Trinlen. He's in his final year here, due to graduate next month, and he has a truly impressive disciplinary record. Some of the things he's gotten into trouble for, even I have no idea how he did them. Trinlen, this is Carlos Founder, and Amber Carlos. A pair of brand new noble mages, who are sadly lacking in resources and proper magical education, having somehow devised a soul plan far beyond their background.

They came to the academy looking for a teacher before they head out to the Wilds, and I thought you could do a fair bit of solving each others' problems." Trinlen blinked, and stared.

"Wait, what?" He blinked again, and stared some more.

"... You two are nobles, and you want me... to teach you magic while adventuring in the Wilds with you?" The man, Trinlen remembered his name was Carlos after a moment of thought, nodded.

"We only know four spells, and the parts of magical theory we could learn from the books we managed to get. We don't have much to offer right away, but our house will grow in time, and whoever comes with us for that growth will share in its rewards."

"Four spells? Wow, that's like almost nothing. And not enough practical knowledge to make your own, I take it. Which ones are they?" The girl, Amber, stopped looking around his room and faced him directly as she spoke up.

"Light, light beam, distant cut, and spark."

"Ah, the examples from Sandaras's intro book. That book is good for foundational theory, but for practical spellcasting it's more like a sales pitch for the academy. Just enough to get you hooked on the tantalizing possibilities." Amber's mouth hung open for a moment.

"He- Archmage Sandaras intentionally withheld information to get more people to come to the academy?"

"Yep." Carlos nodded.

"Makes sense. He probably wants more control over who learns advanced spellcasting, and how much. Or maybe it's his friends in the government who want that. Anyway, will you help us?"

"Ingratiate myself to a new noble house while fighting thrilling battles in the mana-rich Wilds? Count me in! I'd kinda like to finish out my graduation first, though. It would be a shame to drop out this close. I can give you a few more spell incantations while you're here, though. We're not supposed to teach those without academy approval, but hey, you're nobles. If I get in trouble for it you can assert noble privilege to bail me out, am I right?" Mallern chuckled.

"I have yet to see the prospect of getting in trouble dissuade you, of all people, from anything."

"Too true, indeed. So, just how new are those fancy soul structures of yours, and how much mana do you have to play with?" A few hours later, after the two curiously young nobles left, Mallern was skimming the day's log entries from the entrance wards. Three entries within the span of a couple minutes, each for scanning a visitor with once-compressed soul layer, no surprise there. He paused and raised both eyebrows at the next entry, for a notable item carried in by a guest.

"A dungeon core? How the hell did they manage that?" He shook his head, chuckling.

"I bet that'll be one hell of a house secret for them. Those two are going to shake things up pretty fiercely once they're established, aren't they?" Mallern pursed his lips and tilted his head a little, thinking and muttering to himself.

"Hmm. That shakeup will be more fun to watch if it's a proper surprise to everyone. And they were rather polite and friendly. Hmm..." He tapped his fingers a few times, considering. Then, he quietly erased the dungeon core log entry.