Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotional Incompetent [A Magical Academy LitRPG]

"We need a safe space," Rolen said the moment he entered. Fabrisse opened his mouth to speak, to explain about Severa and Dir and everything else, but the words dried up as Rolen raised one hand. The classroom trembled faintly as a line of chalk-thin light traced itself across the floor in a semicircle around them.

"Archmagus!" Celine exclaimed. She didn't say anything else.

Kaldrin stirred. "You're folding a spatial shell?" he asked, blinking in disbelief. "Inside a sealed ward perimeter?"

"The aggressors don't play by the rules," Rolen replied. "We'll also have to bend space to our will." Rolen gave a short nod. "This structure was built on an old convergence fracture. There's a leyline wound just beneath it. Most forget." He drew a small sigil in the air with two fingers, the world seemed to stutter like pages of a book being turned too fast to read.

Rolen chanted,

"By wound and well, by twist and seam,

Fold this realm into the dream."

Fabrisse felt his stomach flip. The light from the holes in the wall collapsed to pinpricks, the ceiling peeled like petals folding. and the floor fell away without ever really dropping.

One moment, they were in the dusty, forgotten classroom.

The next, they stood in a space that felt carved from a dream.

The walls were gone, if there had ever been walls. The floor glinted beneath their feet, a rippling plane, reflecting their bodies but not their faces. Above them, the ceiling stretched into infinite fractals, folding and unfolding like mirrored origami, a cascade of motion without sound. Leylines drifted lazily through the air in spheres of colors a bit too bright for Fabrisse's liking.

The taste of lemon and iron filled Fabrisse's mouth, vanishing just as quickly.

"What . . . is this?" he asked hoarsely. He turned to Celine and she looked also in awe, if not moreso than Fabrisse.

"A pocket fold in the leythread," Rolen replied. "Aether doesn't come from our world. It leaks in from somewhere else. This—" he gestured to the surreal landscape around them "—is a subspace of that dimension. To explain more simply, it's like a sleeve between fabric and lining. That's the basis of all spacefold spells, whether it be voidfold or lightfold."

"He dropped us into the leyline with a Light-based spell," Kaldrin said. "Luxcradle, is it?"

Rolen nodded. "My own spin on it. Works wonder if you're literally standing over a leyline, don't you think?" He drew a swift circle in the air with one finger. A thin ring of light spun out from the gesture, stabilizing into a flat disc of glyph-light that hovered between them. The light glowed strong even within the already bright space. Crisp runes etched in the air, viscous like ink, before morphing into words. Each name hovered in place, connected by delicate lines of script and sigil logic.

"I have been doing background research on all 21 known Darkness-type users within Synod grounds." Rolen tapped a few glyphs to cluster them by affiliation, year, and restriction level. "This is cross-referenced from last month's override list, student archive entries, and public detainment records," he said. "I've already excluded any with null sigils or diviner wards. What's left . . . are the real suspects."

A smaller cluster of names detached from the glowing glyph web and drifted forward, each one encircled in a faint pink hue.

"These are the ones connected to the Committee on Research Authorization," he said. "Most aren't publicly affiliated with Darkness practices, but alignments don't always show up in their paperwork."

The names floated in front of Fabrisse:

— Arine Teckon
— Dr. Veroch Giannis
— Clyne Ravorne
— Errett Qos
— Ratuk Mustafa

Mustafa? Fabrisse's brows furrowed, and the conversation between Rubidi and Lorvan outside the classroom hall replayed in his head. "That's . . ."

"Yes," Rolen said. "The personal instructant invited solely for the purpose of teaching Severa Montreal."

The glyphs dimmed.

"Now I hope you understand yet another reason why I prevented you from reporting to the Synod," Rolen continued. "If House Montreal is involved, they will never side with you. At least no Monasterie or Fullmann, which would make up half the council. Fullmann has been helping you block motions, though, so that's a reason to believe House Montreal is not explicitly involved."

Rolen narrowed the list with a swipe, filtering the high-level glyphs away and summoning a second lattice—denser and packed with lesser-known names. "These are mid- to low-level contributors tied to the Committee through co-signed research, funding proxies, or instructional influence."

He pointed one finger, and more names began to glow:

— Darian Vult
— Sera Kephra
— Warren Wysth
— Ganvar Ciemnosc

Fabrisse flinched.

Ganvar? She said she didn't practice Darkness.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I've been so naive. Why would anyone give me anything for free? This is the price to pay for relying on shortcuts; on artifacts. I have to fix this now.

Fabrisse's hand moved almost on instinct. He reached into the inner lining of his coat and pulled out the rock that had never left his pocket in days—the Silvian quartz Ganvar had given him. He extended the crystal toward Rolen.

"Ganvar Ciemnosc gave me this. I think . . . there might be something malicious in it."

Rolen took it without a word. The moment his fingers closed around the quartz, the glow of the floating glyphs stuttered. He narrowed his eyes.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then he snapped his fingers, and a thin filament of golden light slithered across the surface of the quartz, tracing patterns far more complex than any standard binding spell.

His face darkened.

"That wasn't a conduit," Rolen said grimly. "It was a tracker laced with cloaked aether signals and passive drift anchors. It was extremely subtle work; I wouldn't have detected it if I hadn't held it directly."

Fabrisse's mouth went dry.

Kaldrin exhaled. "That level of cloaking . . . is it Archmage-level?"

Rolen didn't immediately answer.

"Possibly," he said at last. "I heard about your incident just outside Synod ground, Kestovar; the one with the Skitterwhits. That was an unsanctioned, spontaneous activity. There was no way the attacker could've known where you were if they hadn't actively tracked you. But we need to think about whether we'd want to destroy the quartz now."

"Why shouldn't we?" Kaldrin asked. "Sure, they'll know if we destroy the tracker, but that'll deter them from attempting another reckless assault."

"Because we don't know if we can use it as bait."

Bait? Fabrisse thought, and suddenly an idea lit up inside his head. What if . . .

Fabrisse's voice came low and quiet. "And you said Archmage Terevin Sil is a known Darkness Thaumaturgy practitioner?"

Rolen nodded once. "Confirmed by three independent observations. She's clever enough to mask it, but the Order has seen indirect effects of Darkness seep and relational decay near her wards. It's not just theory anymore."

Fabrisse stared into the luminous, dreamlike space swirling around them.

"Do you know who else it could be?" he asked.

Rolen didn't hesitate.

"There's no one else."

And with that, the pieces slid together.

Severa's rage.

Mustafa's arrival.

Ganvar's tutoring.

The quartz.

The Committee's inaction.

The Synod's silence.

Rolen bent his knees and lowered himself as if into a chair—except there was nothing beneath him. He simply sat in the air, cross-legged and composed, his coat settling against an invisible surface that did not exist. "That has been my mistake, Kestovar. This type of meddling is unprecedented, and no one has ever thought of extracting the Eidralith from its binder before. The spellcasting framework for such techniques has possibly only been perfected recently." He exhaled. "I've underestimated what these individuals could potentially do inside Synod grounds and have not prepared appropriate defenses. They must know I am shielding you by now, and my reputation within the institution is not stellar. If whoever is behind all this can forcefully reassign me or temporarily transfer me from the Synod, I'm afraid my hands are tied." He paused, glancing downward at the shimmer beneath his crossed legs, as if the nothing he sat on were a precarious ledge. "There is one option. We can report privately to the Headmaster."

Kaldrin said, "You're serious? He never listens and if you come to him for help, you're all but his puppets."

"As serious as I've ever been. Draeth wouldn't tolerate tampering with artifact research, especially not the foundational kind. If he catches even the scent of unauthorized manipulation, he'll descend on it."

"No, Mikhael. You cannot do this." Kaldrin's voice sharpened as he tried to stand, but abandoned the idea halfway through. "Draeth will twist it. Either he'll use your report as proof of your submission to his authority, or worse. He'll blow it wide open and trigger a full institutional audit. You know how he is."

For the first time, Fabrisse saw Rolen not actively talking and simply staying silent.

Kaldrin leaned forward. "Have you even heard the rumors about merging the South Westris Branch with the North Westris Division? This could hand them every excuse they need. One false step, and you'll be reduced to a proxy, Mikhael. Do you want to be a puppet mouthpiece for the North Westris Doctrine Committee?"

"I will walk when that happens. I have every right to."

"That's the thing with you." Kaldrin scoffed. "You always take the stupidest path to solve a complex problem. In that regard, you're no different from Draeth."

Fabrisse had been listening to every word. He thought he knew the flaws of Rolen's approach, and he had thought of a solution. But should he really be voicing his thoughts?

Do I really know more than the professors and the archmagus, people with hundredfold the power and thousandfold the wisdom?

But this is my life on the line. I must contribute.

"If I may, Archmagus, Professor." Fabrisse stood before he lost the nerve. His voice wavered at first, but he steadied it. "I want to propose a solution."

Kaldrin and Rolen turned to him, then turned to each other, then turned to him again. The collective staring (from Celine too; she'd been doing nothing but contributing to collective staring and fidgeting now that she didn't have a pen and a notebook with her) got him feeling nauseous. But he endured.

"Let's hear it," Rolen said.

"We've been too passive," Fabrisse continued. "They want to take me, and we're just fending them off. If they want to take me . . ." He stared down at his hands. They trembled. "Let them have it. Let them take me. How . . . how confident are you in your battlecasting, Archmage?"

Rolen stared at the floating sigils, which had all but faded into smeared ink. "I've burned a few memories out of history and names off the records."

"Archmagus, I need your aid." He curled his hands into a fist. The trembling stopped. "We will catch the Void-thing, on our own terms."

Then a quest appeared. The quest appeared.