Chương 2: Human Reputation

Ch 2: Human Reputation

"Hey, man, don't you think this is a little excessi–" Just like he'd done to Sahirah when she complained, a sudden, malleable mana bandage materialized across my face, silencing me as if I were a hostage being gagged. Sahirah and I exchanged a look as we followed the Grey man in flowing robes through the school's corridors. Curious eyes of every imaginable color tracked our progress, belonging to students from a variety of different races.

The humiliation parade made me feel less like a student and more like an exotic animal that had just committed a particularly memorable act of stupidity at the zoo. Damn, this was obviously an excessive reaction from the Grey. I'd only accidentally set the library on fire, and nobody had gotten hurt. The emphasis being on accidentally. Just wait your turn, dickhead. I decided then and there that when I created my system, I would make sure to give him a very, very embarrassing nickname in his status window.

And I swore by all that compiles that if anyone ever asked me about it, I'd spend the rest of my life pretending it was just an unfortunate bug and that there is absolutely nothing I could do to fix it. Still, at the very least, this Grey had the decency not to blame the children, returning them to their nannies before taking the two of us on this shameful parade. So perhaps his nickname would only last a couple of years. That would depend entirely on my mood, of course.

The silent march continued until we stopped before an ornate door. It unlocked and swung open for him without him even bothering to uncross his arms. He took a seat in the large chair behind his desk, and before he said a word, my eyes landed on a glass globe displaying several moving images from different locations around the school. Was that the magical equivalent of a TV hooked up to a security camera system?

The question occupied me until he placed both hands on the desk and adopted a rigid posture before finally speaking.

"Miss Sahirah, this is your fourth day at this school and the fourth time I've been forced to bring you to my office. Don't you find that, as your human friend tried to say earlier, a bit excessive?" The gag covering Sahirah's mouth vanished. As I noticed the faint hint of embarrassment coloring her face, I could only wonder. Four times? What had she done during the previous three days that was somehow comparable to setting the library on fire?

"None of that is my fault, Principal Zorik." She glanced at me. Her lips parted as if she were seriously considering pinning the entire library incident on my existence. For one brief moment, I was certain I was about to become the official explanation for today's events. Instead, she sighed and turned back to the principal.

"I only came to your office on the first day because meat is so expensive, you know? I really needed more credits. A healthy Nadiri girl can only eat so many leaves before her tummy starts hurting. See?" With a completely unbothered smile, she hooked her fingers into the corners of her mouth and pulled back her lips, proudly displaying a glittering row of teeth that looked more suited for tearing through meat than chewing vegetables. Her eyes drifted toward me again, lingering for a heartbeat before she continued.

"And then there was the mana globe explosion. How is it my fault that I have more mana than the other species? And teacher Niori suspending me from class because my mana gave her a little fright is definitely her fault, not mine. I'm just a fragile Nadiri girl. How was I supposed to know old Grey professors were so easily spooked?" I had to admit, her explanation was funny enough to make me laugh despite the mana gag still covering my mouth.

Really, Sahirah kept talking about rules and how I needed them more than anyone else, but wasn't she proving herself to be a far greater source of trouble for the Greys than some poor human programmer who was only beginning to learn magic and tried tweaking a few runes? Principal Zorik immediately conjured another mana gag over Sahirah's mouth, then shook his head and let out a long, weary sigh.

"What are the odds?" he muttered to himself.

"A human and a newly discovered species arriving during the same Rift Session. Is it truly too much to ask the gods of the void that I finish my tenure with as few incidents as old Namik?" His mumbling piqued my curiosity. Could it be that the humans who came before me had left a reputation behind? As the principal removed the seal from my mouth, I found myself hoping their legacy wasn't anything too terrible.

"Speak up, human." He gave the table a light tap.

"Was it you or the picky-eater girl who destroyed my library floor and endangered the other students with that failed spell?" Stealing a glance to my side, I found two wide eyes, one green, one amber, staring at me as if afraid of what I might say. I smiled at her and said, "That was my spell. She and the kids had nothing to do with it."

Turning back to the principal and finding an expression I could only describe as not amused, I added, "Though, in my defense, it was an accident, and I swear it won't happen again."

"Words are cheap," he said.

"You'll repair the floor yourself. The materials will be paid for with your allowance, and if you do a poor job, I'll force you to pay for the labor of someone who can do it properly."

"Ah–" I tried to protest, but no argument came to mind. After all, I didn't even know how expensive food was, much less how much it would cost to replace the damaged floor. In the end, I simply said, "As long as I don't starve because of it, I'm fine with that." He took a deep breath.

"Consider the matter resolved." Suddenly, both my gag and Sahirah's vanished, and relief finally washed over me. When I glanced at the door, wondering whether we were free to leave, the principal spoke again.

"One more thing. There are no species-specific regulations I can enforce on a newly discovered species, but humans are a different matter." Staring directly into my eyes, he said, "Starting a workers' revolution is forbidden in Navar. Also, spreading ideas involving the decapitation of nobles by gravity-powered blades is punishable by death." Before I could even process the implications of whatever my fellow accidental human immigrants had been up to, he continued.

"And lastly, the boom stick is forbidden. If you have one, you'd better surrender it now before any incidents occur." Boom stick? It took me a shamefully long moment to connect the dots, but when I finally did, I smirked. My smartphone had fallen from my hands while crossing the rift, but there hadn't been a boom stick to lose in the first place. It wasn't as if someone like me carried a firearm on the way to work after all.

"You can rest assured. There isn't a boom stick anywhere near me." The principal stared at me for a moment. Then the door swung open, and after a tired nod, his attention returned to the floating images inside the globe above his desk. Sahirah and I didn't waste any time. We left before he had the chance to change his mind. Once the door closed behind us, I said, "So, you have a lot of mana?" The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. She ignored the question.

"And you don't have a boom stick, but other humans do have boom sticks?"

"It's complicated," I said.

"The reason I have a lot of mana is complicated too." The smile on her face made it clear she knew exactly what she was doing by giving such a vague answer. With neither of us sharing much about ourselves, we walked side by side through the sea of curious stares. As if by unspoken agreement, we ignored every single one of them until we reached a window overlooking what appeared to be a dormitory building, several stories tall and lined with rows of identical doors. I stopped.

"I'm sorry for getting you into trouble today. But you're the only person I know here. Can you tell me where my room is?" She stopped as well.

"Do you still have your crystal?" Remembering the small red crystal the intake clerk had given me, I reached into my pocket and pulled it out. The moment Sahirah saw it, her eyes widened.

"The number on the back tells you where your room is. Yours is 267. Mine is 266."

"We're... neighbors?" For a moment, I couldn't believe the odds. The person I'd gotten into trouble with was also someone I would probably see every day from now on. Yet her explanation made it sound more like fate.

"Of course we are. The Greys assign rooms by species. You're currently the only human, and I'm the only Nadiri. Neighbors." I smiled.

"I guess there's no reason to say goodbye, then. But I really have somewhere to go now, so... see you later."

"The floor repair?" Scratching the back of my head in mock embarrassment, I said, "Oh, right. There's that too. But first I want to buy some mana-conductive ink and try messing with runes again somewhere a little safer." She didn't say anything. As I walked away, I had the strange impression she'd turned to stone after hearing my last sentence. But who can understand those overly cautious people, anyway? Especially when they're from a completely different species.

So I put Sahirah out of my mind for the moment and focused on acquiring my very own supply of mana-conductive ink.

My first night on the planet Navar fell around me without me even noticing. I was once again too absorbed by Magica Principia, to the point that I completely missed the beautiful blue moon hanging in the sky. It was the only light source helping my tired eyes copy runes from the book as I worked through what had already become my fifth attempt to create a functional spell from two interconnected modules.

Yeah, it was a pretty strange coping mechanism for dealing with the loss of the life I'd been forced to leave behind. And, to make matters worse, there was a voice in the back of my head insisting I should probably start by following the instructions in the book before trying to modify a form of magic I barely understood. But who could blame me for being unreasonable? At least I wasn't sitting in my room crying. I was doing something that might actually help me in the long run.

As the night swallowed the last traces of sunlight, my focus only deepened. My eyes narrowed as I added an eighth rune to the Fireball spell, carefully considering both its placement and the resonance rules. A smile spread across my face when I finished.

The limiter rune sat neatly inside the spell circle, designed to regulate the mana flow and prevent the Fireball module from overloading like it had in the library, when Mana Drain had force-fed it far beyond what a beginner's spell was meant to handle, perhaps Sahirah's fault for being too close with all her mana. I quietly admired my work before activating it, my thoughts drifting back to the parts of the book I still didn't understand.

Mainly the chapter about connecting your mind to your mana in order to sense how much you possessed. Seriously, who the hell writes, 'Become one with your inner energy and commune with the mana within?' That abomination of an instruction was worse than the worst code documentation I'd ever read. It was so bad that it felt more like a religious text than a manual on magical theory. But I was the immigrant here, so I guessed I'd just have to deal with it, at least for now.

With a sigh, I decided to forget about checking my mana reserves and just skip to the spell activation like I'd done before. After all, the worst that could happen was passing out from mana depletion, and with the high fence around the training grounds, there was at least no risk of being eaten by some alien predator while I was unconscious. Without hesitation, I raised the paper toward a wooden dummy and touched the circle containing the Mana Drain module.

Almost immediately, dizziness washed over me, and the lights around the academy blurred together as more and more mana was ripped from my body. Before I could pass out, the pull stopped. I could barely believe my eyes. The limiter rune had activated, stabilizing the mana flow through the trace connecting both modules. A heartbeat later, the paper burned away.

My gaze followed what turned out to be a perfectly competent, and utterly unremarkable, Fireball as it shot toward the dummy, exploding harmlessly against its center mass and leaving behind nothing more than a small scorch mark. A smile covered my face. I'd done it. It was a bizarre and unnecessarily complicated first spell, cast only after an entire day of failures, but it was the proof of concept I'd been looking for.

My confidence in the idea of creating a world-spanning magical system built from countless interconnected modules had just increased by a goddamn order of magnitude. Still, as I was about to close the book and finally look for my dorm room, a gray-skinned woman suddenly materialized in front of me as though she'd teleported. Her hand was already reaching for my notes before my brain had fully processed that she existed.

"Who the hell are you?" I asked as she snatched the papers and began reading. How she was reading them was a mystery in itself, because her eyes were hidden beneath a black bandana that covered most of her forehead and upper face, leaving only a small nose, her mouth, and shoulder-length silver hair visible. And that wasn't even the strangest thing about her.

Looking closer, I realized she was wearing shorts and a revealing top, exposing a youthful body covered from head to toe in intricate tattoos unlike anything I'd seen on any other Grey. She took a moment to finish reading my notes. Then she lowered them and said, "I'd dare say you might be the first person on Navar to use modular casting for a first spell, little lamb." Modular casting? Wait... did that mean I hadn't invented anything new after all? Well, it was my first day, so I supposed that was to be expected.

But more importantly, why was she talking to me with that annoyingly condescending tone?

"Who do you think you are, just showing up and reading my notes without permission?" I asked.

"And 'little lamb'? Really?"

"Me?" she replied with a smile, releasing a cutting pressure that made it feel as though she were staring directly into my soul despite the bandana over her eyes.

"I'm an Archmage stationed here under direct orders from the imperial family, tasked with ensuring that the poor hatchlings caught in the Riftstorm have a chance to learn our language and adapt to our ways. Quite a benevolent era we're living in, isn't it?" I took an involuntary step back. An Archmage? Did that mean Principal Zorik wasn't even the strongest person in this school? He had dealt with my failed Fireball so effortlessly that it had already seemed ridiculous...

Taking a slow breath, I asked something else entirely.

"I still don't get it. Why would someone as strong as you be interested in my notes?" Still smiling, she took a step closer, as though she were enjoying how thoroughly her mere presence unsettled me. This time, I didn't back away. I just stared at the bandana over her eyes while a chill crawled up my spine.

"Don't let it inflate your ego, little lamb. But it was through the notes of a human from your world that Navar first learned about artificial Rifts." Frozen, I listened as she reached out and teasingly tapped the tip of my nose with a finger.

"Who would have guessed, thirty years ago, that extreme gravity spells were the secret behind artificial Rifts? A human named Kate taught us that much in her final moments." Her smile faded ever so slightly.

"If the nobles hadn't killed her for such trivial reasons, what else might we have learned?"

"I..." My voice failed me. Had another human really introduced Navar to black hole theory? Or had she simply explained Einstein's relativity? But if that was true... Would this woman steal my notes? Worse, would she torture me for information? Perhaps she noticed the cold sweat running down my neck, because she read me like an open book.

"You don't have to fear me too much. I used to work with Kate, and now I want to work with you, see? Just state your price, and I will provide fair compensation for your notes. Our very first trade." The offer came so suddenly, that all I could think of was if it had any strings attached. A fair assessment, of course, since this Grey woman was claiming she used to work with another human... who was dead now.

With those things in mind, I decided to ask for something unreasonable, hoping she wouldn't accept it and leave me alone.

"The... the blueprint for an illusion spell!" I blurted out, remembering a passage from Magica Principia.

"The big book says mind magic is forbidden to off-worlders, but that's what I want in exchange. I want a spell capable of displaying a floating window with written information that only the target can see." For the briefest moment, I felt my neck sweating, and my knees nearly buckled under her gaze. Then, without warning, a blinding light materialized between her hands, forcing me to shield my eyes. When I looked again, she was holding several sheets of paper that had seemingly appeared from nowhere.

Without ceremony, she shoved them toward me. Under the moonlight, my eyes widened as I skimmed through them. There were several magic circles, the complete blueprint for a forbidden illusion spell. The exact kind of core module I would need to build my system. Unbelievable. This Archmage had actually traded me a forbidden spell in exchange for my ugly notes.

"If that spell gets you into trouble anywhere in this school," she said, "just mention my name, and the trouble will disappear."

"Your... name?" I asked hesitantly.

"Elitha Hearthstrong." She tucked my notes away and added, "You see that tower near the academy? Come find me there once you've finished the beginner's book. I may have other things you're interested in trading for. And, as a token of goodwill, consider your existence hidden from the royal family for as long as you are doing business with me, human." Another flash of light, and she was gone, disappearing with my notes before I could even think of a way to go back on this deal.

Alone beneath the moonlight once more, I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my shirt and let out a quiet laugh. After all, I'd just traded a handful of doodles and loose ideas for an illusion spell of a future core module of my system. I was absolutely certain that the illusion spell and the permission to use it freely were incredibly valuable, perhaps even a treasure I could barely wait to explore. Even so, if anyone had been scammed in that exchange, I was pretty sure it had been me.