courtesy incredible

Saffra had been less nervous for the Institute Qualification Exams.

Which didn’t make sense. She wasn’t being evaluated, not in a way that had any consequences. Her magical competence clearly wasn’t the primary factor—if a factor at all—for why Lady Vivi had accepted her apprenticeship proposition.

As for what the actual factors were? She had no idea. That Vivi ‘needed a guide’ didn’t explain enough. She could get one of those anywhere.

A whim? High-level adventurers, high-level anybodies, tended to be eccentric. Would she be tossed aside in a month’s time? A week’s? Tomorrow?

She had resigned herself to that, so she wouldn’t be especially devastated. Even a week’s tutelage from a mage of this caliber made for an unparalleled opportunity.

And if she could extend Lady Vivi’s interest a few days by displaying a modicum of talent, she would do everything she could.

“I don’t know how the Institute educates its students,” Vivi said, “nor how most mages refer to the processes of magic, so bear with me if I use unfamiliar terminology. And feel free to ask for clarification.”

Saffra was interested. A mage without a formal education? Those weren’t the rarest, though in the modern era, definitely less common in the highest echelons of talent. That said, despite Lady Vivi’s ambiguously youthful appearance, she had to be at least a few centuries old. She wasn’t from the modern era. She had likely seen, maybe even partaken in, the fights against the Cataclysms. That was a humbling thought.

“We’ll begin with mana control. Circle it through your channels. As much as you can at once.”

A common exercise, and a starting point Saffra had expected. She was on familiar ground. She supposed the basics were the basics; what else would Vivi have asked for, formal education or not?

Saffra closed her eyes and focused. Her mana core sat high in her stomach, behind her sternum. It wasn’t a physical organ, but rather a purely magical structure. Over time—with training and levels—the amount of mana it could store grew.

But a healthy mana pool was only one small part of what made a mage powerful. To draw a comparison, her pool was like her stamina. But stamina didn’t mean strength. Strength was channeling capacity, and indicated much better the overall power of a mage. After all, being able to cast ten thousand tier-0 spells didn’t matter nearly as much as being able to cast five higher-tier ones.

That vibrating molten liquid filled her magical veins, and she breathed deeply with satisfaction. She had always loved the feeling of mana suffusing her channels. It made her feel powerful, in control of a situation, however much of an illusion she knew it to be. Magic hadn’t saved her any of the times she had needed saving. It would be a long time yet before she was strong enough to protect herself. It might never happen.

The test began. She only stopped flooding herself with mana when she felt ready to burst. There were dozens of exit points throughout the body—the Institute called them gates—and she struggled not to let mana leak through.

She moved that primordial resource around her channels, feeling as if she were setting herself on fire. The experience wasn’t pleasant, but she enjoyed the discomfort in the way a sprinter might enjoy the burn in their legs.

At least until the burn turned painful, then agonizing. Sweat dripped from her brow as seconds and a full minute passed. She struggled to maintain her breathing, refusing to stop until Vivi allowed it. Her mentor had to know how difficult this was. It was a test, and Saffra needed to impress.

“That’s enough,” Vivi said what felt like three years later, and Saffra pulled the mana back into herself and sagged into her seat, gasping.

Vivi gave her a moment to recover.

“That was enough flow to manage a fifth-tier spell,” she said, “but I expect not enough for a sixth-tier.”

Saffra couldn’t help but feel affronted. Of course she couldn’t cast a sixth-tier spell. She wasn’t even level four hundred yet! A fifth-tier spell at her level was already impressive, even by institute standards, and moreover, Vivi’s wording seemed to imply Saffra was closing in on the sixth tier. That was extremely impressive!

Saffra’s shoulders slumped. She supposed this was the downside of being taught by a prodigy. The demon in front of her had probably been casting fifth-tier spells before she could walk. Of course Saffra’s efforts hadn’t impressed, even if she’d tried her hardest.

“But well done,” Vivi added after a moment’s pause.

Saffra snorted. She was getting better at reading the woman. Vivi had clearly tacked that on because she had deflated. The mismatch between her outward appearance—those bored red eyes that were borderline contemptuous—and how her words and actions were always gentle was more than a little amusing.

Honestly, it was the reason Saffra had trusted her so quickly. She could see past a person’s surface layers. She was a good judge of character.

Except for a few very important instances.

Even having her thoughts brush against the most recent example made her flinch. Yes, there was definitely one major exception, and it was why she didn’t attend the Institute anymore.

Her eyes drifted over to Lord Barnaby Caldimore, taking brief note of the blurring landscape beyond the windows. She’d been so absorbed in the lesson that she hadn’t noticed the Convoy leave the station.

Caldimore. What were the odds? She’d been irrationally worried he would recognize her, but obviously he hadn’t. In the grand scheme of things, her expulsion hadn’t been important to anybody. Not even the family most involved with it.

She wondered what she was up to, these days. Did she even care what she’d done? Had the whole thing been a joke?

She shoved those thoughts away. She was done thinking about Isabelle.

“Channeling at high fifth-tier when I haven’t even reached the benchmark level for fourth-tier is impressive, by the way,” Saffra declared, sticking her chin up. “Especially when I have half the education most casters do.”

The words were for her own benefit, and she felt embarrassed the moment they came out of her mouth. But thinking about Isabelle had sent her spiraling again, and she always felt better when she blustered.

That she cared so much after eight months infuriated her. Isabelle certainly didn’t care. She’d probably howled with laughter for days afterward, then promptly forgotten about her.

“I expect it is,” Vivi said in her usual calm voice, though those red eyes were watching her carefully. Some of what Saffra had been feeling had probably leaked through.

“What now?” Saffra asked, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

Vivi’s attention lingered a little longer before she replied, “Let’s see your external mana manipulation.”

She seized the distraction.

Internal channeling capacity determined how quickly a mage could funnel mana through their body, through their channels, and out their gates. Not only was it the limiter for how high-tier of a spell someone could cast, it also decided how quickly a spell could be formed and activated. A spell required a certain amount of fuel, and the faster a mage fed it, the faster the spell could be formed and then incanted.

But power and speed weren’t everything. Technique and knowledge were equally important. Perhaps more so. It didn’t matter how fast a mage could feed their spell if the design was inefficient, or worse, unstable. Moreover, it didn’t matter how excellent the spell design was if the user’s technical ability—how well they could execute said design—failed to reach incantation requirements.

“Do as I do,” Vivi said, lifting a pointer finger and extruding an orb of mana.

Saffra focused. Liquid energy thrummed through her as she siphoned mana from her core. This time she didn’t circle it around her body pointlessly as a channeling exercise, but expelled it through the gate on her pointer finger.

Mana in one’s own body was many times easier to control. The moment it entered the air, it began to wriggle away like a live, buttered fish. The mana still belonged to her, but heavens above, it didn’t want to be. Only with concentration did she wrangle the mana into a neat orb, compressing it down into a sphere that quavered slightly.

Vivi’s ball of mana was so glassy-smooth and unwavering that no matter how hard Saffra squinted at it, she couldn’t sense the smallest fluctuation.

She had a feeling she was about to be humbled even more than she’d braced herself for.

Vivi waggled her finger left and right, and the orb followed. Saffra did the same; that part was easier than holding the mana in a sphere.

A series of demonstrations ensued in which Saffra did her best to imitate Vivi. She moved the orb left and right, up and down, in circles—then in geometric shapes, a triangle, square, pentagon. These weren’t unfamiliar training routines, since moving mana around in deliberate ways was fundamental to drawing spell circles, but Saffra struggled to keep up. Vivi slowed when Saffra faltered, but it was clear she wasn’t having issues herself. Not that she would expect a mage of her caliber to.

When Vivi extruded a second orb, Saffra really had to focus.

“I expect at your level, controlling many simultaneous streams isn’t important,” Vivi said. “Low-tier mages are limited by their channeling capacity, not how quickly they can trace the circle itself.”

It took Saffra a second to understand, because ninety percent of her brain was occupied with keeping the two spheres moving like they should. If holding one wriggling fish was hard, imagine two.

“That’s how you cast so fast,” Saffra said. “Almost instantly. You have the channeling power, obviously, but you can also draw the whole diagram at once by painting with ten brushes at the same time. Or—how many streams can you manage?”

In demonstration, Vivi split the two orbs into four, then eight, then sixteen, then thirty-two. Saffra sat back numbly in her chair as she watched the mass of orbs fly to their respective positions and each trace a portion of a low-tier spell she recognized as [Ignite]. With so many ‘paintbrushes’, it took less than a second. And Vivi had clearly slowed the process for Saffra’s sake.

When would she stop being stunned at what this woman was capable of?

“That does explain it,” Saffra muttered.

Vivi canceled the spell circle and sucked the mana back into herself, which made Saffra wince. Reclaiming expelled mana was more than a little painful, but Vivi’s face didn’t so much as twitch.

“At your level, it’s forgivable to deprioritize multitasking.” She extruded a single sphere, and Saffra smashed her two existing ones back together to mimic her. “Fine control is more important as a beginner. It’ll be some time before you can move past that fundamental weakness of mages.”

Their fundamental weakness: slow cast times. Mages made poor solo fighters because of that, though they could handle themselves if they ensured they always had the drop on their enemy. A disabling spell into some form of artillery worked wonders, and wasn’t hard to set up with preparation. But there was no way to guarantee the first strike in every encounter, so mages primarily worked in teams.

“Then again, if you focus on simultaneous mana streams and low-tier magic, you could succeed with a versatile, rapid casting strategy. It depends on what your desired outcome is.”

“I don’t mind being artillery.” The standard mage role. The idea of rapidly casting weak spells wasn’t half as appealing.

Vivi nodded. “Then focus on fine control. Let’s talk spells. Which do you use most often?”

Saffra’s pulse sped up. This was what she’d been hoping for. Useful as mana control exercises and such were, the real value of an experienced mage taking her under their wing—besides the eventual apprenticeship boost, which could take days to manifest—was being taught new spells, or how to improve and perfect existing ones.

“I’ve been hoping for an elementalist class evolution,” Saffra said, “so I’ve been using mostly fire and ice spells. Depending on the monster’s resistances, I use [Flame Bolt] or [Ice Spear] as my go-to. [Fireball] when I have a lot of time to channel, like when we have the drop on a strong one. A basic [Arcane Shield] for self-defense, of course, and [Frostbind] or [Ice Slick] for utility and disruption.” She bit her lip. “Those are the most common, but I have a larger arsenal than that, of course. I…I can show you my grimoire if you want.”

Normally, a grimoire was something a mage protected fiercely, sometimes not handing it over even to their spouse. It represented, literally, a mage’s life work, revealing every spell that the Grand System recognized proficiency in. Saffra had a total of thirty-three spells in her grimoire, but most were low-tier.

In classic fashion, her attempt at earnestness and her implicit show of trust were pointless, because Vivi asked curiously, “Grimoire?”

Saffra stared at her. This one was criminal. “Grimoire. You’re—you’re one of the strongest mages I’ve ever seen! How can you not know what a grimoire is? The book that has all your spells in it!” Bewildered, she said, “You summon it through your spell screen?”

Vivi tilted her head. “Spell screen. Does every mage have one of those?”

“As soon as they learn their first spell, they should.” It was more than a little disorienting to be answering such basic questions for someone who was her senior in magic by several orders of magnitude.

Saffra had a working theory for the origin of Vivi’s gaps in knowledge. It was a grim but plausible one. Memory loss—maybe magical in origin, maybe as simple as a head injury earned during combat. She couldn’t imagine another explanation for why she knew so much and so little, in seemingly random fashion.

“I see. Interesting.” Her eyes latched onto, presumably, her spell screen. “I have one then? A grimoire? How do I access it?”

Saffra opened her own spell screen and commanded, “[Grimoire].” The screen disappeared, and a book dropped into her hands.

A person’s grimoire evolved throughout their life, changing in design according to the individual, and in thickness according to the number of spells inside.

Saffra’s was earthy-red leather with tan strings tying it closed. At thirty-three pages, it wasn’t the most pathetic grimoire in existence, but it wasn’t impressive. Level four hundred wasn’t a shabby level even for adult mages, but it wasn’t remotely approaching the pinnacles of magehood.

Archmage Lysander, the headmaster of the Institute, liked to carry his grimoire around strapped to his belt, obviously to show off. And as much as she disliked him, she begrudgingly admitted she was impressed whenever she laid eyes on that white gilded tome. It took dedication to add that many spells to one’s arsenal, even if he’d been vain and learned low-tier ones to fatten the book out. Which she wouldn’t put past him.

Grimoires were status symbols in the mage world. They were a way of signaling one’s breadth of magical knowledge at a glance—much like an adventurer’s badge, but with even more personalization and flair.

Vivi studied Saffra’s book with interest, then turned her attention toward her spell screen.

“[Grimoire],” she said.

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