'Oh, no.'
An expression of horror slowly overcame Jane's face at the sight outside his window. Ascending past the forest, and slowly painting the world a harsh shade of gold, the sun was rising. And Jane had not gotten even a moment of sleep. It occurred to him that he was really, truly done for that day.
It was not all bad, however. He had greatly expanded his repertoire of spells. Now, he had memorized too many runes to even count, and near endless possibilities of how to combine them. There was still something lacking, though.
'Shouldn't I be able to shoot beams of fire, or something?'
No matter what kind of magic he casted, or came up with, it would always just stay in one spot and not move unless he moved the runes themselves. He seriously doubted any of his opponents would wait for him to cast offensive magic right under them, so as it stood, his magic had little to no real offensive capability. It was alright, though, since there weren't really any hostile mages this far into the backcountry— except for his teacher, of course.
Jane went over the new runes in his head. There was 'Cold', 'Ice', 'Soil', 'Fuel'— which he renamed to 'Tar'— 'Light', 'Metal', and one rune which had seemingly no effect at all.
He glanced at the pile of dirt and raw iron outside his window, and then looked back at the picture of the functionless rune. It was composed of a large circle attached to an auxiliary symbol.
'Hold on. Would it do something if I—'
Jane hurriedly constructed the rune in the air, this time making it much larger than was necessary. Despite the decent quality, absolutely no effect was felt whatsoever. He then thought for a moment, before deciding to put 'Light' inside the circular portion of the larger rune.
Although the inner rune was refined quite a bit, there wasn't any light scorching Jane's eyes. Instead, the light was focused in the opposite direction from the auxiliary symbol, making one part of his bedroom hurt to look at.
Jane slowly rotated the spell in midair, watching different parts of his room become unbearably bright. He then repeated the experiment with different inner runes, this time making sure to direct them all out of the window. After his mana was yet again fully exhausted, he took a look outside.
Streaks of rock, soil, and slag lined the grass outside, and some water had even made it onto nearby trees. Jane smiled in satisfaction. He decided to call this rune 'Project'.
---
'Oh, my god. I'm dying. I'm really going to die.'
Every few steps he took, it felt like someone was grabbing his brain and violently shaking it around. His vision would sometimes become scarily saturated, making everything hurt to look at. His heart was wildly beating, as if struggling to keep him alive. Jane's intuition told him he was currently in the process of dying. Of course, he was only sleep deprived.
While the physical suffering was something he could bear with, there was something even more tragic about his situation. With his addled state of mind, he could not properly fight back against his teacher. So, he had to endure provocation after provocation without being able to reciprocate.
"Teacher."
"What is it, my disciple?"
"What other syntax is there? Other than the circle, obviously."
"Hmm. There isn't any."
"Huh? Didn't you say earlier that there was still plenty left for me to learn?"
"All syntax incorporates a circle, though. It is the only operator for the combination of runes, and thus there cannot be any syntax without a circle in it."
"Oh, so that strange rune with a circle was really just a type of syntax?"
Although he was on the brink of passing out, Jane still absorbed the information with ease.
"Yes, and in particular, that one—"
"It makes stuff shoot out, right?"
"...More or less."
"By the way, where are we going?"
They had been walking for almost an hour, with seemingly no end in sight. Jane seriously doubted that his teacher actually knew what he was doing.
"Well, it's occurred to me that you'll probably get murdered by any mage you see as you are right now."
"And we're going somewhere to help prevent that?"
"What do you mean, 'we'? You're the only one who's going to be preventing it. I'll only give you hints on how to do it."
"That sounds pretty risky, though?"
"Good. You'll be more motivated with death lurking right behind the corner."
The midday light glittered across the grass and fallen leaves, a slight breeze rustled the branches, and the sounds of footsteps and breathing filled in the quiet. Jane would have been much more appreciative of the moment if he didn't feel like he was dying, but for now, all he did was trudge along distractedly.
"Hey."
"Who's that? Is there someone named Hey here with us right now?"
Jane chose to ignore the blatant act.
"Do you have a spell that'll get us there faster?"
"If I had one, I would've surely used it, no?"
"No."
Calex stopped walking, and began gathering mana. Underneath the two of them, a spell more complex and grand than any Jane had seen his teacher cast before was taking shape. Unlike the earlier times, his teacher looked to actually be concentrating quite hard on casting the spell.
Once the pattern reached perfection, Jane felt the world warp around him. At first, he thought it was just the sleep deprivation getting to him, but when his vision righted itself, everything except his teacher had changed. They were now standing outside of a quaint little tower, the surroundings in a state of clear disrepair.
"Wait, why were we even walking, then?"
His teacher smiled at him slightly.
"Weren't you the one going on about how much I needed to train my legs to outrun you? I was thinking I could get a head start on that."
It was a lie, of course. Jane could tell his teacher had used some kind of magic to make his walking easier. Still smiling, Calex waltzed through the doorway.
'Was he seriously doing that just so he could watch me suffer?'
Jane felt a little frightened as he followed his teacher into the dark innards of the tower. The depths of his teacher's spite were indeed too deep for him to currently fathom.