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

Severa took two steps into the center of the casting square, then turned to him. Her brows arched like she was preparing to grade him before he even started.

"I assume," she began with a voice so weirdly gentle, "you know how to spiral your flame clockwise?"

Fabrisse gave her a sunny smile he absolutely did not feel. "I, well, yes, if I can ignite my flame."

Her eyes narrowed. "Let's keep the combustion external, then."

It had become tradition by now. If Severa Montreal was going to help him, it was going to be with the same energy a noblewoman extended to a peasant attempting dinner etiquette.

But today was different.

Today, he had an edge.

The Silvial Quartz was still in his robe's inner seam, inventory-stowed and safely out of sight. With Celestial Hoarding as his Path, he didn't need to hold it. He'd done his homework, looking at all the ways Celestial Hoarding could interact with his existing skillset.

One particular spell stood out: Gravelkin.

Fabrisse couldn't believe simply bonding with a stone enough to give it a name would turn out to create such a useful skill, but he wasn't about to complain now. At least his nine years of carefully handling and cataloguing Stupenstone had resulted in a quantifiable upside. If only he had given the remaining 27 rocks in his collection a pet name, he would've been the Lord of the Stone, powerful enough to annihilate realms by studding his stones into a glove or something. He could collect glowing stones of different colors, then stud them on some gaudy-looking glove and call it some fancy name, like Infinity Gauntlet, for example. Okay, ideally that gauntlet shouldn't look gaudy and the name wouldn't be trademarked, but knowing his luck, it might as well have become an object of epic popularity in some alternate realm already.

Or maybe it didn't work like that. Maybe Gravelkin only gained semi-sentience (according to the Eidralith) because it was the first Stupenstone in Fabrisse's collection.

Nonetheless, thanks to Gravelkin, he could already feel the quartz's foreign aether existence beneath his skin, syncing quietly to his field.

"Do you always need to stare at your hand for a minute before commencing your spellcasting?" Severa asked in the tone she'd always used, and it was enough to interrupt his train of thought. He bit the inside of his cheek, mentally noting down how he really needed to stop going off-tangent right before conjuring a fire. It might cost him one of these days.

He squared his shoulders.

"I'm ready," he said.

Severa lifted her hand to demonstrate the form again. Fabrisse was amazed how fluid she made it look even though she had to do it in slow-motion. "Draw breath; coax warmth; speak bright," she said lazily. "I recommend practicing the arc before adding emotion," she continued. "Though with your history, even practicing might be a bit—"

Fabrisse raised his hand before she could finish.

"I'll try it now," he said.

"You haven't prepared your pulse rhythm."

"I have," he lied.

Her facial expression didn't change, but she wasn't able to say anything for a second. That counted as a win in his books.

"Well then," she spread one hand. "Do you think you can do it without practicing your rhythm, or are you giving up already?"

I am going to do it anyway, he thought. He steeled his resolve. I will get it right on my first try. I will show her.

"Draw breath," he whispered. Get the timing right. "Coax warmth. Speak bright." Now!

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His hand moved in a rough spiral. It didn't look nice, but he was sure it counted. He felt the aether shiver.

An ivory-colored spark flickered on his palm. Then the flame came.

A loose helix of fire spun from his fingertips, wobbled. Heat licked up his hand and wrist, sharp and sudden, and he instinctively jerked back, shaking his fingers like he'd touched a hot stove. Then aether licked up his nerves, and the flame sputtered. It held for just another second before fizzling into the air.

It left a soft orange shimmer in its wake, coalescing with the ivory of the spark to create a peach-gold trace that drifted in the air like a firefly on its lunch break.

Fabrisse stared at it, stunned. His skin tingled. He didn't even need an aetheric reaction equation to get this spell to fire, and he couldn't care less he wasn't able to hold it for three seconds. The entire thing might be a fluke; non-replicable given his low affinity with fire anyway. But that wasn't important right now. What was important was that he'd never finished a quest that easily.

Severa blinked a total of three times. He'd counted.

"Not bad," she said slowly, like the words physically pained her. "Crude. But not catastrophic."

Fabrisse was probably grinning silly by now. But his grin immediately vanished the moment she walked over to him and whispered, "So the Eidralith does improve you. You've been able to maintain a fire spell for two seconds only because of your artifact. The Eidralith helps you cast a basic spell. With me, it can set the realms ablaze."

That line . . . is kind of extra, he thought. He didn't know if that was a threat, a challenge, or a cry for magical custody.

Severa lingered a beat longer than necessary, expectant. Fabrisse said nothing. He was too busy watching the soft afterglow of the fizzled spell spiral into nothingness, already calculating the experience yield.

Only +14 EXP?

At this rate I'd have to set my hair on fire eight hundred more times just to hit Level 5. This training's not even remotely efficient. Unless she's hiding a boss-tier miniboss in her coat pocket, this isn't going to push me past the threshold.

She sighed in a particular way, as if his silence had personally inconvenienced her lineage.

"While you're busy drifting off to whatever whimsical corner of your mind lets you cast spells by accident," she said sweetly, "the rest of us are dedicating our waking hours to the pursuit of meaningful growth—earned growth. Not handed to us by half-awake relics. You'll see the fruits of our labor soon enough, I imagine."

That caught his attention. We? Fabrisse thought, expression neutral. Does she mean her army of a hundred private tutors?

And what could they possibly be 'working on' that mimics the Eidralith's interactability? This system is unique in its function. I've never encountered anything like it—Real-time diagnostics, progression metrics, tiered skill trees, and emotional feedback conversion. Even if it might have been made by an angsty philosopher, it still gives me actual quantifiable instructions. Not vague mentor advice or hand-wavey approximations.

A shriek rang out from the left side of the auditorium.

One of the fire students—Larna, a third-term elemental alignment specialist with more enthusiasm than control—had panicked. She was casting a more advanced spell, against the instruction of the Professor. Her flame spiral broke formation, flared in two directions, and lashed toward the upper rows like fire arrows.

Half the class ducked. Professor Markenth was on the other side, shouting to a student blocking his view, "Duck!"

Fabrisse turned, instinct locking up, unsure if he should run or cast a Stillbrace. But before he was able to think, a figure from the back of the room raised one arm.

An onyx-colored ripple shot out, looking like a snorkelling eel. It reached a fire arrow in a flash. The flame vanished, completely swallowed by a blot of curling shadow before collapsing into nothing.

A glint of aquamarine burst from Severa's palm.

A ribbon of high-pressure water snapped across the air with a sound like a cracked whip. It struck the second arrow head-on, shearing the flame apart in a hiss of steam and aether sparks. The remnants fizzled and dissolved before they could reach the student seats.

The class gasped in unison.

Professor Markenth stormed down the steps with a flick of his cinderstaff, flame spirals extinguishing in midair as he cut a path through the dispersing smoke.

"Control!" he barked. "Is the first rule of fire work. Not confidence nor dramatics. And certainly not improvisation." He turned on his heel, voice sharpening. "Control."

You didn't say that before . . .

Larna had already sunk halfway into her seat, eyes wide with panic. Markenth didn't berate her directly. He just raised his chin and looked across the room.

"My thanks to Montreal," he said crisply. "And to Ciemnosc. Swift responses and clean execution. Exactly what should happen when a student loses control."

Rimmar Ciemnosc was still standing at the back of the room, hand lowered. He gave a polite half-nod and murmured something too quiet to catch clearly. But his spell had been quick. Too quick. Fabrisse wasn't sure if he'd chanted any mnemonic. He only saw that slick curl of onyx energy, silent like an assassin's ribbon. It had moved too smoothly, without a sound.

Fabrisse squinted. He knew what spell Severa had used—Fractaline Thread, a mid-tier water-form cut stream used for flame severing. Water subdual wasn't uncommon among multi-affinity prodigies.

But Rimmar's spell?

He couldn't recognize it. And that was a problem. Not because darkness-type spells were banned—they weren't—but because they were rare.

He felt a shiver crawl across his shoulders. Darkness can't branch out to Void. Can it?

Or can it BE Void? Is that what Void wants to look like, when it's pretending to be something else?

Rimmar met his gaze from across the room with a neutral stare. Then he nodded at Fabrisse.

Fabrisse quickly looked away.