"Magic is an art that must be worked. Haste will lead you either to failure or to stupidity. And in both cases, I would prefer the idiots die before dirtying my classroom. Hmpf."
The silence that followed was almost religious.
Davin sat at the back of a pale stone amphitheater, surrounded by dozens of students dressed in gray, green, or off-white. The benches rose in an arc around a wide platform covered in engraved circles. The air smelled of warm chalk, ozone, and cold ash.
In front of them, the professor paced back and forth.
He called himself Gus.
The man wore a green kimono robe open over simple clothes, almost commoner's clothing: an ecru tunic, dark trousers, and worn boots. The contrast was strange. The academic robe, wide and loose, clearly marked his belonging to the elemental sector. On the left side of his chest, Aethelgard's castle was carefully embroidered, topped with two thin stars.
But beneath it, he looked like an old merchant dragged out of bed and forced to teach elemental destruction to children armed with lighters.
His gray hair pointed in several directions, his short beard was not perfectly trimmed, and his green eyes shone with an old, stable, almost professional irritation.
Here is a man who turned pedagogical contempt into a career.
Gus pointed at the student standing on the platform.
The poor boy wore green too, but without a star. His hands trembled slightly. In front of him floated a small plate of blackened wood, marked by hundreds of impacts.
"Again," Gus ordered.
The student swallowed.
"Professor, I…"
"Again. Or admit in front of everyone that you came to learn elemental magic with the mental discipline of a drunk duck."
A few muffled laughs moved through the amphitheater.
The student closed his eyes, raised his hand, then recited an incantation in a hesitant voice.
The syllables snapped through the air.
Davin did not understand everything yet, but he sensed the mistake.
The sound structure did not match the fire flows studied in the scanned books. The cadence was cold, descending, almost brittle.
White mist burst from the student's palm.
Then a thin blade of frost struck the target with a dry crack.
Gus remained still.
One second passed, then another.
He then inhaled with the slowness of a man trying not to commit an administrative murder.
"I have seen many idiots in my life," he said at last. "The arrogant. The lazy. Nobles incapable of telling the difference between a stability circle and a soup plate. But casting an ice formula while claiming to produce ardent fire magic… twice in a row…"
He turned toward the room.
"Where is the logic? Where is the respect for the element? Where is your instinct for self-preservation?"
The student turned pale.
Gus pointed at the target.
"Magic is not a wish. Thinking 'fire' very hard does not oblige the universe to obey you. Mana is stupid, but faithful. Give it an ice structure, it produces ice. Give it an unstable structure, it tears off your fingers. It is very simple. Even stones eventually understand when struck long enough."
Davin mentally noted every phrase.
This class was not only theoretical. It was a dissection.
Gus was explaining the foundation of fire magic for Adepts: breathing, intention, circulation, incantation, mental image, point of exit. Nothing spectacular. Nothing like the great bursts he had seen in the training courtyards.
But everything rested on those foundations.
While Gus insulted the class with almost artistic precision, the A.I. finished its processing.
[BEEP. System Message / Processing complete.]
[Written common language reference: stabilized.]
[Sword technique reference, curved blade: initial simulation available.]
[Arcane grammar: elementary correspondences established.]
[Elemental text, Wind: indexing complete.]
[Elemental text, Fire: indexing complete.]
[Elemental text, Water: indexing complete.]
Davin did not move.
But a cold satisfaction passed through his mind.
The A.I. could now read part of the texts for him, translate them, structure them, compare them. He himself still could not read properly. He recognized letters, shapes, a few simple words. Nothing that would make him a competent reader.
The A.I. offered him neither complete understanding nor perfect translation, but it already gave him enough material to move forward without walking completely blind.
I don't need to read like a scholar today. I need to understand fast enough not to buy a rope thinking it's a ladder.
Spoken arcane, however, posed another problem.
Gus clapped his hands twice.
A small flame appeared above his palm.
The flame was small, almost modest, but perfectly clear.
Dense, stable, sharp as an orange gem. It did not flicker. It did not smoke. It consumed nothing. It simply existed, held by the professor's will, breath, and sound structure.
"This," Gus said, "is a basic flame. Not a fireball. Not an explosion. Not a tool to impress your cousin. A flame. If you cannot maintain this for ten breaths, you have no right to dream of burning anything larger than a dead leaf."
He blew.
The flame vanished.
"And if one of you asks me again why we repeat elemental articulation syllables, I will make you swallow the manual. Page by page. With the cover."
The class continued for nearly an hour.
Davin listened.
Truly.
He did not listen like a machine storing sounds, but like someone searching for the fault line between error and mastery.
He tried to understand the logic beneath Gus's insults. The professor was not merely brutal. He repeated the same idea again and again under different forms: mana followed the most stable structure. Incantation was not a magic formula in the naive sense. It was a rail. A constraint. An activation magic that helped the mind impose a shape on mana.
The most talented could do without it.
The others died trying too early.
So incantation is activation magic. Not the spell itself, but the mechanism that helps mana take the right shape. A crutch, yes. But when learning to walk at the edge of a ravine, throwing away your crutch out of pride is less talent than suicide.
When the class ended, the students left in groups. Some were still laughing at the humiliated student. Others repeated syllables under their breath, lips tense.
Davin left the amphitheater without speaking to anyone.
He needed space.
He crossed several corridors, passed a training courtyard already loud with activity, then reached the Academy's vast rear garden.
The place contrasted almost violently with the rest of the estate.
Wide stone paths wound between lavender lawns, black trees with silver leaves, and circular basins where blue flowers floated. Crystal lanterns hung from the branches even in daylight, giving off a pale glow. In the distance, Aethelgard's towers cut into the sky like needles planted in Kassis's light.
Students worked here and there. Some meditated beneath the trees, others read, and a few slept. A boy in off-white fed a creature resembling a six-eared fox, which chewed its biscuits with insulting dignity.
Davin sat on a stone bench away from the others.
He mentally opened the translated versions of the scanned books.
The A.I. projected the sentences into his field of thought, cutting them apart, annotating them, linking them to diagrams. Davin read slowly.
It was not the A.I. slowing down.
It was his brain that had to keep up.
The first book dealt with elemental wind magic. It spoke of pressure, direction, dispersion, lightness, and cutting. Wind was not presented as "moving air," but as a set of tendencies: to push, to flow around, to slip through, to slice, to lighten.
Several hours passed.
Davin remained on the same bench.
He read, reread, compared with the arcanographic annotations, asked the A.I. to isolate recurring characters, then tried to pronounce a simple syllable.
The result was catastrophic.
The sound came out wrong, too dry, without the proper vibration. The mana in his chest barely reacted, then dispersed like clumsy smoke.
Davin tried again.
The result was worse.
The third attempt made him feel as if he had swallowed a stone.
He cleared his throat, irritated.
Good. I can understand certain theoretical aspects, but my spoken arcane sounds like an assault on language itself.
A student sitting two benches away briefly looked up.
Davin immediately stopped speaking.
He stayed still, eyes fixed on the basin.
The books are clear: for beginners, incantation is almost indispensable. Warrior-mages and beast tamers rely more on the body, weapons, bonds, or beasts. But pure spellcasters have to structure mana through the voice before pretending they can do without it.
It was not mandatory in theory.
In practice, casting without incantation required talent, experience, or superior control.
Davin had none of the three.
I need spoken arcane classes. Quickly.
He stood.
Then swept his gaze over the garden with the attention of a vulture searching for a profitable carcass.
Several students were training alone, spaced apart from one another. Most were Adepts. Some gave off a pressure stronger than his. Nothing crushing, but clear enough to remind him that he had only just entered their world.
He approached the first.
A student in green, seated under a tree, was making three small leaves float around his wrist.
"Hi. Can you teach me spoken arcane? I can pay one gold coin."
The student did not even look up.
"No."
Davin did not insist.
He moved to the next one.
A girl in dark gray, leaning against a basin, was reading a black-covered book.
"I'm looking for someone to help me with arcane pronunciation. One gold coin."
"No."
Third attempt.
A boy in red sharpening a short blade.
"Do you know someone who teaches spoken arcane?"
"Get lost."
Fourth.
An older student in midnight blue looked him up and down.
"Twenty gold coins. One hour."
"I only have one."
"Then I only have one word: no."
Fifth.
"No."
Sixth.
"Ask a professor, recruit."
Seventh.
A boy in lavender violet almost burst out laughing.
"With your accent? Even free, that would be punishment for me."
Davin stared at him for a second.
Then turned away.
These students are all sons of bitches. Very consistent with their environment, then.
He abandoned that path.
Not out of pride.
Out of efficiency.
Continuing to beg for private lessons from students who had no interest in helping him was a waste of time.
He returned to the main reception hall.
This time, it was not the same agent as the previous day. Behind the counter stood a woman in her thirties, dressed in off-white, with a castle embroidered on her chest and a golden star above it. Her brown hair was tied in a low ponytail, and her expression carried the polite neutrality of employees who had already seen too many panicked recruits to feel anything.
Davin approached.
"Hello. Do you know who can teach me spoken arcane?"
She handed him a thin wooden tablet covered in engraved lines.
"Twenty-two professors currently teach the basics of arcane pronunciation and incantation. Their schedules and classrooms are listed here. Eight of those classes are free."
She glanced at him briefly.
"They are often crowded. The front rows go quickly. And spoken arcane is extremely difficult."
"I suspected as much. Thank you."
"Good luck."
She had said it without irony.
Which made the phrase almost worrying.
Davin took the tablet.
He still could not read it perfectly, but the A.I. quickly translated the main elements.
[BEEP. Written support analysis complete.
Free class available in 12 minutes.
Estimated distance: 430 meters.
Room: lower elemental sector.]
Davin left immediately.
The room was already full when he arrived.
He had to stand against the back wall with several other recruits. Every bench was occupied. Around thirty students repeated sounds under the direction of a thin professor in dark gray clothes.
The room vibrated with awkward voices.
Some syllables produced a faint pressure in the air. Others produced nothing. Some made their speaker cough.
One student pronounced a combination too quickly. A small spark burst in front of his mouth and burned his lips. He staggered back, swearing, while the professor sighed like a man who had just witnessed an accident announced by fifteen warning signs.
Davin remained standing.
But he could hear clearly.
That was enough.
A.I., record everything. Separate correct sounds from errors whenever the professor corrects them. Build an oral reference.
[BEEP. Audio Archiving Mode activated.
Objective: arcane phonetics / intonation / rhythm / corrected errors.
Accuracy improved by multiple repetitions.]
Davin concentrated.
On the words, but not only on them.
On mouths, tongues, breaths, pauses. On the vibration of mana when a syllable was correct. On the way the air shifted slightly around the professor when he demonstrated.
The A.I. recorded while Davin learned, slowly but surely.
When the class ended, he checked the tablet.
Another free class began elsewhere in twenty minutes.
He went.
This time, he arrived late.
The room was even more crowded. Students stood all the way into the corridor. Davin remained behind them, back against the cold stone, listening to every syllable with total attention.
Then a third class.
Then a fourth.
The entire day became a hunt for free lessons.
He crossed Aethelgard from one building to another, passing students in every color. The grays ran the most, always late, always out of breath, always burdened with books, bags, tablets, or baskets of herbs.
The other colors moved with more confidence.
Even when hurried, they gave the impression that the corridors belonged to them a little more.
Davin noted the difference.
Another invisible hierarchy.
Another way of teaching the weak where their place was.
By evening, he had attended six spoken arcane classes.
His throat hurt despite the fact that he had barely spoken.
His skull buzzed.
The A.I. worked continuously, comparing sounds, symbols, flow diagrams, and corrected errors.
[BEEP. Spoken arcane reference: under construction.
Current estimate: initial theoretical comprehension possible after 30 days of intensive exposure.
Practical mastery: undetermined.]
One month to begin standing upright. Not to run. Not to fight. Just to stand.
He could have been discouraged.
He was not.
One month, in this world, was not long.
One month to reduce a barrier others took years to cross properly was an excellent investment.
That evening, in his room, he did not go to bed immediately.
He pushed the chair against the wall, cleared the ridiculous space in the center of the room, then began a set of push-ups.
His body protested at the twentieth.
He continued.
Push-ups, sit-ups, squats, low holds, stretches. Each exercise woke a different part of his weakness.
Then he stepped into the corridor, found an almost empty side courtyard, and trained with the saber basics from the scanned books.
It was not yet a real technique, only stances, slow cuts, pivots, and movements simple enough to remind him of his ignorance with every gesture.
The A.I. corrected angles in silence.
[BEEP. Biomechanical correction: right hip too rigid.
Excessive weight on front leg.
Risk of imbalance in case of lateral counterattack.]
Davin adjusted.
Tried again.
Adjusted again.
Every movement was simple, and every movement revealed how little he knew.
Good. The more humiliating it is now, the less lethal it will be later.
He finished exhausted.
Then, seated beneath the meditation crystal, he spent another hour on the common language and arcane grammar.
He did not work in blind frenzy, nor with the perfect regularity of a machine. He learned, repeated, made mistakes, started again, and felt with every error the distance that still separated him from those who had grown up in this world.
The next day, he resumed the exact same cycle.
His days took on a simple and brutal shape: spoken arcane classes, mental notes, A.I. references, meals swallowed too quickly, saber training, physical conditioning, translated reading, meditation under the crystal, then a few hours of sleep stolen from fatigue.
Then he began again.
This world had long days.
Twenty-eight hours.
Nineteen hours of light, as long as Kassis and Mira shared the sky.
Twenty-eight-hour days resembled a blessing disguised as a sentence. They gave him more time to learn, but also more time to exhaust himself and notice that others were advancing while he was only trying to close the gap.
Davin did not ask himself whether he liked the routine.
The question had no value.
He had no choice.
If he slowed down, he would remain weak. If he remained weak, someone would eventually put a leash around his neck and call it protection.
So he continued.
After four days, something changed.
It was neither a revelation nor a miracle, only a tiny click, almost ridiculous, but clear enough for him to feel it pass through his mana.
During a crowded free class, while a professor had the entire room repeat a concentration syllable, Davin finally felt the difference between two sounds that were almost identical.
With the first, his mana scattered immediately, as if the syllable drove it away instead of guiding it. With the second, it stayed gathered in his chest for one second longer. The difference was faint, but he could feel it clearly.
He repeated the second one under his breath.
This time, the mana did not scatter immediately. It vibrated faintly in his chest, barely for a second, then faded.
Davin remained still while around him, the others kept repeating, coughing, correcting themselves, and failing. No one noticed anything.
He lowered his eyes. A discreet smile appeared on his lips.
Finally.
It was almost nothing, but in an Academy like Aethelgard, almost nothing was already better than ignorance.