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

The curtains of Fabrisse's dorm room were drawn tight. The desk had been cleared, and the scrolls had been stacked into a neat tower beside a jar of glyph quills. In the center lay three smooth pebbles, washed, dried, roughly uniform. He'd spent fifteen minutes choosing them from the Southern Edge path this morning, all the while muttering to himself. He'd even sent a message to Rolen regarding the skitterwhit incident, just so he could stop thinking about it. Rolen hadn't replied.

Across the room, Greg Johnson hadn't looked up once from his cot. He was lying sideways with a blanket over his head, holding a pamphlet titled 'Mimetic Binding Theory for People Who Hate Mimetic Binding Theory.'

"Starting a religion?" Greg asked. Greg had never been out of the room without institutional duress.

"It's called methodical testing," Fabrisse muttered.

Greg didn't answer.

Fabrisse reached for his multiple robe pockets. From it, he withdrew the Silvial Quartz and set it gently out of range, on the windowsill. Then came everything else—his stone satchel, the basic balm, his scratch notes, even the backup teacup (chipped)—cleared and stuffed into a drawer. He couldn't afford any distractions or rogue resonances.

Only the three Trinav Quartz remained.

He took a breath. Then, with deliberate care, he unequipped the quartz.

He extended a hand, palm-up.

The pebbles jerked, shivering in the air like moths that have caught a cold. Their hover was wobbly, unstable. He tried to nudge one left. It tilted, quivered, and knocked into the edge of the desk before tumbling back to the floor.

"Six seconds," Fabrisse said quietly.

He wrote in his margin:

RES 2 — 6s hover. ~5cm control radius. Stability: low.

Then, he picked up the Trinav Quartz again and reactivated them.

This time, when he cast Stonesway, the effect was instant.

The pebbles rose with only a bit of drag. They hovered like obedient satellites, still wobbling but responding to his finger twitches.

He pushed one forward. It glided. Another, he coaxed into a slow spin. Not perfect—still a few skips in the flow—but it felt possible. Like movement wasn't such a fight anymore.

"Fourteen seconds," Greg said, still not looking.

Fabrisse smiled faintly, jotting notes.

RES 5 — 14s hover. ~15cm radius. Stability: moderate. Response: direct.

He stared at the middle pebble. Just for fun, he whispered, "Go higher."

It did, for half a second.

"I think I can actually tell them what to do," he murmured.

Greg shifted under his blanket. "Imagine what you could do with actual talent."

"Thanks, Greg."

"No problem."

He ran the sequence again. Then again.

The results were consistent.

RES 2 — 6s hover. ~5cm radius. Stability: low.

RES 5 — 14s hover. ~15cm radius. Stability: moderate.

RES 5 (repeat) — 14.5s hover. ~16cm radius. Stability: moderate.

He tapped the final margin note twice, drawing a thin double underline beneath the third line.

Confirmed.

Fabrisse leaned back against the wall, heart thumping, not from the spell, but from the quiet realization that he could see the difference now. He had quantifiable proof that the quartz helped. That his Path was doing something.

It still sucked, though. Even with terrible RES, he should've been able to lift simple pebbles for much longer and move them around with more force. The main problem was his innate resonance, which he didn't seem to have any way to improve. Even if he had a 1000 in Inner Resonance, but he couldn't resonate with aether in the first place, his result would still be severely limited.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Greg shifted on the cot again, this time folding the pamphlet over his chest like a funeral offering. "So, is this where you ascend or just submit a very enthusiastic lab report?"

"It's ironic you're the one making fun of me over this."

"A man has to have self-awareness," Greg replied. That line from him also sounded ironic.

The sun sat low over the north pond, slanting gold across the water. Frogs had claimed the left bank with a vengeance, and their croaking warbled like a badly tuned xylophone. Fabrisse stood a few meters back from the shallows, his satchel slung low, a half-eaten rye bread in one hand.

He tore off the last corner and tossed it toward the reeds behind him. It disappeared immediately inside Mercy's beak.

The creature had now felt comfortable enough to play around with him. These days, he would emerge with a triumphant cluckle-honk from the shadows, wings flared like he was announcing the return of royalty. Sometimes he even did a celebratory hop—if you could call it that—launching his entire round body into the air with startling force and a sound like a boulder sneezing. If he ignored him, he'd stalk him in slow, exaggerated circles, dragging one talon dramatically in the dirt, as if to say, You've betrayed me. I hope your shoes fall off.

He took out a roughed Stupenstone named Marahat, aimed for a nearby plant, and hit it.

Stupenstone Fling training had become rather repetitive. No matter how many new angles he invented, or how many new targets he found, it was just the same thing. He'd only gained 1 STR, but his velocity was already close to the max velocity for Rank II, so there was not much room for improvement.

Oh. The System is urging me to up my game and calculate the moving speed of my targets. But where can I find a moving target to throw rocks at? I can't smash Cuman's head in multiple times without getting into trouble.

"Not all aetheric creatures are worth bonding with," came a voice from behind.

Fabrisse startled so hard he nearly tossed his entire satchel into the pond as Ilya Snezhnaya stepped into view. Her coat was even longer than that of Lorvan's, trailing behind her like melting frost. Perched on her shoulder was her ever-unnerving raven familiar.

"Why," Fabrisse muttered, placing a hand over his chest, "do you sneak up on people like that?"

"I wasn't sneaking," Ilya replied, perfectly composed. "You weren't paying attention."

"Oh." He recalled Lorvan's advice about not staring too hard into the Eidralith. He wasn't expecting anyone else to show up, but maybe he should've been more cautious anyway.

Things hadn't been smooth sailing between Fabrisse and Tommaso the past few days. Tommaso, to his credit, had learned from their last near-argument that it was probably better to give Fabrisse space. And Fabrisse . . . hadn't exactly earned that grace. He'd been avoiding eye contact and refused to talk altogether. He didn't know how to talk to Tommaso without hearing that old voice in his head say: You were assigned to watch me like I'm a problem someone needs to solve.

Fabrisse was embarrassed. Which meant Ilya was his designated 'guardian' for the day. Other than enjoying sneaking up on people, Ilya wasn't much of a nuisance because she didn't talk.

After another minute of silence, Fabrisse asked, "Does your familiar help you with anything?"

"Intelligence," she replied.

"You mean spying?"

"Possibly," she said. "Also, actual intelligence." The raven let out a smug puff of feathers and began grooming one wing with exaggerated dignity.

"Do they boost your magic?" Fabrisse asked, genuinely curious now. "Like, increase your aether capacity or resonance or something?"

Ilya considered. "Not that I know of. Some species supposedly reinforce your aether pool passively, but it's rare." She strolled past him without a word, sat at the edge of the pond with practiced elegance, folding her robes beneath her.

She casually pointed a finger, and a light ripple passed through the air. Dozens of silvery, angular patterns suddenly spread across the water like frost flowers, forming runic tessellations that floated for just a few seconds before dissolving.

She didn't explain how or why she did it.

A moment later, she spoke. "Do you want to see a magic trick?"

"I—"

"Good."

She didn't wait for the rest of the reply.

Ilya dipped into her coat, withdrew a small coin-sized mirror disk, and tossed it lightly into the air. As it spun, she whispered something beneath her breath, too soft for Fabrisse to catch.

The disc froze mid-spin.

Then, with a gentle sweep of her fingers, the disc shattered into dozens of glowing motes, which hovered in place for a moment before blinking into perfect formation: an array of miniature birds made of ice-glass and starlight. They flapped twice and then wheeled around her in a perfect spiral before flying outward across the lake. The motes broke apart as they passed the pond's surface, vanishing in ripples.

"That was cool," she said to herself. Fabrisse just stared at her.

What she had just done was a form of advanced magic called mimicry, a rare and difficult technique where a caster replicates the properties or behaviors of existing magical phenomena using nothing but raw aether and will. Fabrisse had no idea how to do that, of course.

"Tommaso said you're stubborn," Ilya said. She seemed to possess this unique talent of starting conversations randomly without ever finishing them.

"He did?"

"Would you still bond with the clucklebeak if I'd told you it would not be worthwhile?" She started another conversation.

A bonus? There's actually an attribute bonus?

Fabrisse stood as the cluckblebeak waddled out of the pond, clambered onto the grass, paused dramatically, then broke into a lopsided sprint straight toward him. He extended his arms and pulled the little bird into a hug, then said, "You are wrong, Ilya. It is worthwhile."

Ilya, having no access to the system notification, stared at him for a good five seconds before saying, "You are stubborn."