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

"Fabrisse! Did you really insult Severa Montreal in front of half the student body?" Celine's voice cracked three different ways as she stormed into the Eastern Training Field (not to be mistaken with the Eastern Target Field), clutching her bookpack like a shield.

Fabrisse jolted at the mention of Severa's name. "What? No! How did you even know about that?" From his memory, there weren't even more than three other students present in the classroom, and their conversation should have been at a reasonable volume that others couldn't easily eavesdrop on.

"I run the local news!" She flung her arms around. "I have tipsters. One of them just happened to be there."

"Your tipsters should get the facts right . . ."

"The fact is that . . . you were super brave. Some of us hate Montreal, you know, but none has ever said it to her face. I support you on a personal level. But you should get yourself a council pleader."

"I don't need courtroom defense just because I said something."

"I heard you called her tutors evil. Technically, that can be grounds for defamation. You know her father sued other people for less, right?" Celine arched her brow. "I don't think he's ever actually won those stupid cases, but he's dragged them out long enough that the other people ended up broke, miserable, and eating porridge for a year."

Fabrisse gulped. Maybe he had really made a terrible impulsive decision back there.

"I don't think the daughter Montreal has ever cared about anyone else enough to go out of her way to make their life miserable, so, uh, you're in luck, I guess? You have to be a really special case for her to even remember your name."

Not sure if I like that kind of special.

So her network of tipsters didn't know about the butler's butler incident. Severa definitely did mess with him.

"Are you only here to pry more information out of me?" Fabrisse asked, narrowing his eyes.

"Well, yeah! I wanna hear your side of the story."

"There wasn't much to the story . . ."

Celine leaned closer to Fabrisse. "Look, if you really want me to drop it, I will. But you've got to admit—this is the kind of thing that makes headlines. Even if you don't talk, people will just make up their own version. Wouldn't you rather I print yours?"

Fabrisse groaned, rubbing his temples. "No. I'd rather you print nothing."

"Well, okay, but think about it—" Celine abruptly stopped speaking as the ground beneath her feet dampened. She jolted, the tip of her boots sinking a fraction into the stone that had somehow turned to slightly looser grit before she yanked her foot out.

Celine only has 22 DEX?

"D-did you just cast Granule Drift on me?" Celine stared at him in shock. "When did you learn it?"

"I learned it just now."

"You can learn from looking at the diagrams in Anabeth's book?"

"It's taught in basic Earth Thaumaturgy I, you know. I've passed that course; I was just never able to cast it."

"And you can now cast it in how long?"

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"It took me an afternoon." He couldn't quite hide the slight boastfulness in his voice.

"That's great progress! And Liene told me that you're completely hopeless academically."

It stung a bit hearing even Liene saying that about him. ". . . She wasn't wrong. I was hopeless."

Celine nodded a tad too cheerily hearing that. "What changed? Is it the Eeeeeidralith?~"

"I, uh, put my mind into it." Which was partly the reason, but the main cause was probably that his SYN was now 9 whereas it was like 2 before. His SYN was the main bottleneck and the reason why he couldn't release aether to cast spells, but a SYN of 9 meant he could clear most requirements for simple spells. He could learn to cast all registered Tier I spells, as long as it wasn't something he'd literally seen the first time, like Tremblehold.

Granule Drift would mark his sixth spell he'd learned in the span of one week, after Basic Combustion Funnel, Glasveil, Cindermark, Harmonized Spellcasting, and Tremblehold. That was about as many elemental Thaumaturgic spells as he'd learned over the last six years. The Eidralith had done wonders to his progression, but more importantly, it'd given him something he hadn't had before: confidence.

And it had helped him distract Celine enough to no longer badger him about his cordial conversation with Severa!

"Sure, sure. Anyway, ready to tell me all about your cordial conversation with Montreal?" Celine had already pulled out her notebook and her second favorite stylus (presumably, after her last one got swallowed by the void).

Fabrisse sighed. "I don't want to talk about it." He stopped for another second before continuing, "Do you think I was an idiot?"

"I can't tell you that without knowing the story," Celine flashed him a bright smile. "But you can talk to your friends who you trust with your secrets. Not Liene, though. She'll just take your side. You have another friend, right? Tommaso Ardefiamme?"

"Yeah." Fabrisse hated the idea already. There was a ninety-percent chance Tommaso'd call him an idiot on the spot.

"You were an idiot." Tommaso winced as he listened to Fabrisse, also wincing, telling him what happened between him and Severa the previous morning. "You were either extremely stupid or extremely genius. And I'm leaning stupid."

"Okay." Not that Fabrisse had expected anything else. Nothing anybody said in the heat of the moment could be smart.

"Think about it. How much leverage do you have, really?" Tommaso threw his hands wide. "Negative leverage. You actually gave her leverage. She might even sue you for talking smack, because that's what they do. She seems like a huge piece of work."

"Okay."

"Fabrisse, mio caro, you had one weapon against her: obscurity. And you threw it away. Do you know what you just gave her? A hobby. And trust me, you don't want a snobby nerd making a hobby out of you."

"Okay, I get it."

Fabrisse obviously wanted to stop discussing this topic right there and then, but in typical Tommaso fashion, he had to sneak in just one more line before because he could never leave it at that. "If you had a problem with her, you should've dealt with it before it got to this point, dude."

Fabrisse raised his hand in a sequence he thought was subtle.

Tommaso's eyes hooked on the movement at once. "Dude, if you're gonna try to subtly fling a stone at me, at least don't do it while I'm looking right at your hand."

The ground gave the faintest shiver, barely enough to stir dust.

"Did you just rock the ground on me?" It literally did nothing to Tom. He was still walking normally.

Fabrisse cleared his throat, lowering his hand a little too quickly. "Not really."

He could cast the spells now, but they couldn't trap anything that walked faster than a child hauling their schoolbag uphill. Still, the spell was a necessity. They had been briefed about voidspawns; potential demons that spawned out of void portals. A deciding characteristic about the common voidspawn was that they WERE slower than a child hauling their schoolbag uphill. Which should put them into the Tremblehold-able range.

Tommaso stretched his arms wide and let out a long, fake yawn, so exaggerated it echoed along the walkway they were on. "It's a bit too early for action, man. What's it now—just past the seventh bell?"

"You can go back to sleep," Fabrisse muttered.

"Can't," Tommaso grinned, tugging his undershirt up just enough to flash the intricate glyph-lines curling across his torso. They shimmered faintly, etched like molten silver into skin, curling in spirals that hooked into angular channels. "Not when I've got these absolute bad boys on me."

He ran his finger along one of the glyphs, tracing the curl where it split like a branching river. "Look at that linework. Tell me that isn't banging. Ilya should quit Thaumaturgy and just become a tattoo artist."

The tattoo glowed as if in agreement, exhaling a cool sheen of air that misted in the morning chill.

"They're too cold, though," Tommaso admitted, snapping his shirt back down. "Suboptimal heat for a good snuggle. You can't sleep when your own skin's frost-kissed."

Tommaso needed the enhancements. Unlike Fabrisse who was sporting an absolutely ridiculous pair of orange mitts right now, Tom wouldn't bother with mitts as they were too obvious. Accessories weren't his thing either, apart from the thin silver chain he always wore. But the glyph tattoos—temporary enchantments drawn painstakingly by Ilya—were another story. They'd taken hours of steady handwork to etch and empower, and would burn out before noon.

He had claimed they boosted everything from concentration under pressure to smoother aetheric release and sharpen decision making. Fabrisse, naturally, had asked if he'd run any measurable tests. Tom had just grinned and said, "Nah, man. I can just feel the groove."

The glyph-lines crawled up his forearms in pale silver, so bright now they almost erased the aether ink beneath. Normally, Tommaso's actual tattoo was impossible to miss: a sprawling compass rose with gilded rays and points bent slightly askew as if it spun too fast, surrounded by fragments of script in different languages that looked like they were cut off at random spots. He had more pieces hidden under cloth, he once said, because the Army frowned on anything too visible, like accessories and tattoos you couldn't easily cover.

Fabrisse was about to make some remark about overcompensation when Tommaso rolled his shoulders and grinned. "And that's just one layer, my dude. I've got three more of these bad boys stacked under it. Stamina boost, resistance, reaction speed. You're not the only one well prepped, man."

Reaction speed? He doesn't need more reaction speed.

The words hung in the air like a challenge and a promise both. Fabrisse glanced ahead toward the gravel path leading to the North Pond, the mist already pooling low and heavy in the treeline. Their plan waited there. So did the void, possibly.

Today was the date.