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

Rubidi? That's Severa Montreal's mentor. Fabrisse's eyes widened. Is House Montreal actually involved? Surely Severa is smarter and more morally upright than resorting to this?

But then again, she just stole my lore clerk position.

But if Lorvan said that was Rubidi, that was Rubidi. He couldn't argue against cold, hard facts.

Rubidi was never one to waste words. She'd never talked much before unless it was to belittle someone, and she certainly wouldn't talk much now that her mouth had been replaced by rippling shadows.

She lunged forward, her shadows stretching, dragged by the weight of her own gravity. Trailing streaks of her afterimage stuttered at rapid intervals, which was absolutely offensive to the eyes.

Lorvan whipped. With a smash of his rod at air, the scattered fractures of his Veyruhn's lock knitted together—six radiant strokes locking into a jagged star. Symbols bloomed at each corner like branded constellations, and from the heart of the formation, spectral filaments shot out. At the center of Lorvan's chest, just above his sternum, floated a faint, hovering fragment of aether—barely the size of a coin, yet thrumming with dense, radiant rhythm. That must be how his lock was sustaining itself and drawing in aether.

Then he flung the lock at her.

For a split second, her body froze, locked by the threads latching onto her mass.

But then the slit across her chest split wider. With a sickening rip, she shed her own skin like a cloak. Her silhouette peeled from herself, becoming two overlapping shadows. One crumbled beneath the binding light. The other slid backward into the haze.

"She just severed her presence?" Fabrisse muttered in awe as Celine smashed the head of a voidspawn underneath his feet with her javelin.

"Help me with the spawns, Fabrisse . . ." Celine pleaded.

"Oh. Sorry." He immediately cast Tremblehold on the next spawn, and Celine pinned it down with ease.

Lorvan's rod traced another glyph, this one arcing along the ground, morphing into a crescent woven from mirrored runes. The stones beneath Rubidi's new position rose like teeth, then locked into a cage of aetherial bone, each bar scribed with cancelling seals. It was an elegant construct, recursive and multilayered, sealing not the body, but the pattern of the enemy.

But darkness has no pattern.

Rubidi's body split again, this time vertically. It warped the containment arc, curving the cage toward one version of her, possibly the wrong one.

Lorvan corrected immediately, twisting the rod to collapse the false seal.

Too late.

Rubidi reached him.

Her limb elongated, thinning into a shadow-spike that pierced the glyph circling his chest—aiming not for his heart, but the harmonic node that anchored the spell.

Lorvan swallowed the damage. His rings blazed. One snapped in half as its stored aether diverted into a defensive bloom. Hexagonal plates of force flared between them like window shutters in a storm.

She hit him.

The rod skidded from his hand as he was flung backward. Rubidi surged forward to follow up.

But the moment her foot touched down, a minor glyph embedded in Lorvan's falling rod flared.

That looks very much like a trap, Fabrisse thought as he cast Tremblehold on another voidspawn. Fighting these void-things was getting annoying and repetitive now.

Chains of aetheric script lanced out from the rod—runes forming in the air, followed by actual flying symbols. They pierced her projections and sought the core: the locus of identity she couldn't fully mask. Fabrisse didn't know where the core was; it was getting extremely difficult to follow such high-speed action.

The chains pierced Rubidi's illusions like needles. She shrieked.

Lorvan stood, blood on his lip. The rod flew back into his hand.

Through the haze of ruptured glyphs and dissipating darkness, Fabrisse saw Tommaso's flame-drenched silhouette dancing against a barrage of attacks from the masked figure.

How is that still going on at such intensity? Don't they ever run out of Focus Points?

The masked figure advanced at him with terrifying grace. A flick of their wrist summoned a sliver of light, sharpened into a blade that folded in mid-air and rebounded toward Tommaso. He barely ducked, only to be met by a pressure wave that slammed into his knees. He dove headfirst.

From one palm, a chain of radiant orbs spiraled out: condensed photonic packets, bouncing off the terrain at geometric angles.

From the other, a bolt of lightning cracked sideways mid-flight, then split again, weaving between Tommaso's sides before striking.

Ganvar's casting spells from four different elements at once? They don't look high-level, but so clean. Like she's combat scripting.

Tommaso burst into a flaming torch. The blaze erupted from within, pouring from his eyes, mouth, fingertips—a solar flare trapped in human form. The bolts of lightning reached him, and he incinerated them. The electrical arcs boiled into white plasma, curling into the conflagration. Then the masked figure's orbs struck the inferno and erupted in a chain of prismatic detonations, a stuttering fireworks display of collapsing light logic.

And then came the one he knew would follow.

That piercing flash. A lance of condensed force: Pierce of the Iron Saint.

But Tommaso had learned.

With a single gesture, he didn't meet the strike—he turned it. A low-effort cyclonic twist of air redirected the trajectory. The lance curved off-course, whistled past, and embedded harmlessly in the stone.

Minimal aether loss. Maximum control.

His deflection spell was low-tier, effectively handling the masked figure's high-powered skill. They stood back for a second, having to recuperate.

That might've been their mistake.

Tommaso had the one second he needed. His back arched as he righted himself in the air. Then he started chanting,

"Primeval spark beneath rhythm's lie—"

I know this mnemonic. He's finally doing it!

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"Celine. Get me close to the dome now!" He shouted.

Celine moved without being told twice. They were really ten meters away; very close to range. Fabrisse pointed to the tiny pinprick on the dome's surface. "Can you aim for that?"

"My hands are . . . javelined," she said as she smacked a void-thing aside.

Fabrisse wanted to tell her to take aim, and he'd handle the void-spawns instead, but he knew better. He had a Rank III Stupenstone Fling spell. He'd practiced weeks to master this one, specific spell, one he really had no need to master. This was when all his efforts would come to fruition.

"Then get us five meters closer," he said.

Tommaso had released his disruption spell sequence—Falcrest Pattern Killstep.

The first wave was pure sound: asymmetric pulses of inverted tone, fluctuating at off-time intervals.

Next came the visual cascade: A kaleidoscopic bloom of blinking fractal prisms exploded outward, each flashing in erratic, unsynced strobe patterns. Fabrisse made sure not to look.

Then came the spatial disruptions. The ground swelled beneath the masked figure's feet. Thermal veins, ignited by the pulse of the spell, coursed beneath the battlefield like magma-fed arteries. Hairline fractures spidered out as if the very bedrock was exhaling.

"Easy!" Ilya shouted from somewhere Fabrisse couldn't see anymore. "This is still campus ground!"

The masked figure staggered.

Their footing cracked as the Killstep sequence layered deeper—sound, light, and heat, all weaving into a dissonant pulse that jarred the senses and warped the environment. Their arm twitched involuntarily. One of the rebounding light orbs splintered early, flaring wide and evaporating into static.

But Tommaso wasn't done.

He inhaled through clenched teeth, his whole form now ringed in solar flares. A corona of runes erupted around him, spinning in a double helix as he clapped his hands together.

"Scorchfield Spiral—Ignition Now!"

The spell detonated. A crackling firestorm rolled across the field in a helical band, concentric rings of pressure and flame unfolding in measured bursts. A roaring wall of patterned combustion swept past, skipping safe zones in fractal rhythms—one of which curved near the edge of the battlefield, almost brushing the dome.

"Whoa, what in the Flamus?" Fabrisse muttered as the static wash brushed past his cheek. He nearly dropped his Stupenstone.

"We're there!" Celine shouted. Only then did Fabrisse realize his legs had been moving on his own; as did his hand. He'd reached into his satchel and pulled out a Stupenstone. Gravelkin. His most trusted Stupenstone.

But then he saw the final pulse of Tommaso's Scorchfield Spiral coiling like a fiery wyvern, slamming into the ground around two meters ahead, within spitting distance of the dome's base.

And that gave him an idea.

"Celine, cover my run right!" he yelled.

"What? Why?!"

"I need to get within two meters of the fire!"

She blinked, piecing it together instantly. "Spell trigger?"

"Spell trigger."

Celine didn't argue. Her right hand flexed, then extended in a fast, flat sweep. A scatterburst of force peeled away three voidspawn, just long enough for Fabrisse to dive into position.

The stuttering chromatic fractals reflected off the mysterious figure's mask in maddening, disjointed hues. Even their body shimmered at the edges, struggling to anchor itself.

With a hiss of compressed air, the masked figure slammed a crystalline half-disc against her chestplate. It latched with a pulse, and a dome of pale, translucent black expanded around her, refracting the worst of the dissonance. The sound dulled. The heat shimmer warped. The kaleidoscopic strobe fractured at the shield's edge.

A harmonic dampener.

It steadied her breathing, and her stance re-centered, almost too easily. She shot one finger upward, casting a precision gravity sink toward Tommaso's last position, regaining tempo.

But Fabrisse grinned.

Because now he knew two things.

One, she needed help to resist overwhelming sensory disruption.

And two—she was about to face the Clucklebeaks.

He'd taken into account the possibility she'd have a counterplay for a disruption sequence. But did she have a counterplay for two disruptions at once?

He grabbed his Lodestone from his satchel and swiftly transferred it to one of his robe pockets. The item would have severe drawbacks if used for over ten minutes, so he waited until it mattered to apply its boosts.

This fight happened because of me. I must take matters into my own hands.

"Don't fail me now," he whispered as he aimed for the tiny, glowing crack near the foot of the structure. He'd need to throw past a patch of tall grass to reach it. The curve had to be perfect. But he got this. This was like that third glyph in the Arc Pebbles game. He could hit the pinprick head-on. He knew he could.

Fabrisse threw his Stupenstone.

Gravelkin morphed into its most aerodynamic form. Slabs of compacted gravel slid and ground against one another with magnetic clicks, folding into a dense teardrop core, flanked by spinning flakelets.

It whistled through the air like a skipping meteor.

It's over 20 m/s!

The stone arced through the tall grass, flawlessly and unobstructed.

The impact bloomed like a gong note as the Stupenstone struck the pinprick node on the dome's surface.

There was a moment of eerie stillness.

Then came the warble, followed by the high-pitched, accelerating chirpstorm of Clucklebeak panic.

The Clucklebeaks were thick creatures; there was no sugar-coating it. They could sit still through literal Armageddon events. But if the aetheric stability was in any way compromised . . . they riot.

Hundreds of them launched into the air like someone had set off an avian landmine. They flew in chaotic spirals, their stubby wings somehow achieving improbable lift, their oversized bodies colliding midair and bouncing like fluffy wrecking balls.

The dome's fracture widened under the weight of rising panic. Aetheric pressure fluctuated; more Clucklebeaks sensed it and panicked harder. It was a feedback loop of poultry hysteria.

Another crack. Then another.

The dome didn't shatter. It popped, disintegrating into motes of broken containment logic.

And then the Clucklebeaks descended.

There were too many of these birds everywhere. The masked figure turned just in time to blast two Clucklebeaks from the air with precise lightspells—both exploded in a puff of burnt feathers and surprised squawks. Another barreled into their flank. Then one hit their back. A pair tangled around their legs, flapping violently.

The figure struggled to stay upright, casting rapid sigils in panic, barely holding ground.

And then came Mercy.

The smallest Clucklebeak. A runt, really. But possessed of something rarer than size: conviction.

With a determined chirp, Mercy tucked his head, rocketed through the air—and headbutted the masked figure square in the diaphragm.

The figure's harmonic shield fizzled. They staggered.

And that was all Tommaso needed.

From above, blazing like the sun's arrogant cousin, Tommaso dove in. His fist, a comet in the shape of a man, smashed.

One clean hit.

The masked figure crumpled into the grass like laundry.

Silence. Sort of.

Tommaso rose from his crouch, flaming and triumphant.

He threw his arms up like a conductor at the world's worst avian orchestra, panting, grinning while Clucklebeaks spiraled around him in dizzy, drunken orbits. One was literally hanging from his shoulder like a confused parrot.

"Victory," He struck a pose. It might've been meant to look heroic. It did not.

And then one Clucklebeak flew overhead and pooped directly onto the unconscious figure's mouth.

Yes. We did it. We did it!

But Fabrisse could barely celebrate before darkness lunged at him again.