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

Celine Moose was one of the few Earth Thaumaturgy practitioners within her current year, and by far the huggiest. Cute-looking, bubbly and prone to unsolicited hugs, few expected her to be interested or any good at it, until she made the ground eat a flask of water during mid-term. Her experience with Stone Thaumaturgy, though, was less triumphant. She could form small quartz crystals out of thin air and throw them with dramatic flair, but it was said that her accuracy was less than that of a sneeze in a wind tunnel. One shard famously ricocheted off three walls and a glyphlight before lodging itself into Archmagus Rolen's biscuit. It didn't help that her gossip club was there to witness it, and they wouldn't let her live it down.

In any case, Celine was still a better Stone Thaumaturge than Fabrisse. But today, Fabrisse had the Stupenstone Fling, Rank III.

"Are you really wearing those mitts to an Arc Pebbles game?" Liene asked. She'd somehow chosen to dress like a typical magus-student would dress: creased robe, aetherically-imbued cuffs, and the kind of hat that only people with perfect posture could wear without looking ridiculous.

Fabrisse looked down at the oversized, rune-stamped gauntlets in his hands. They looked absurd in orange and made his hand sweat during summer (which was approximately now). "But the +2 RES . . ." he muttered to himself.

He had everything well-prepped. Between his newly-assigned stats, the throwmitts, and the three Trinav quartz he had in his back pockets, he had a total of 11 RES. It was not enough for stats scaling, but he would be able to increase his maximum range to at least 18m. And that wasn't counting the mysterious buffing Silvian quartz in his pocket.

"Say it in a volume a person next to you can hear, Fabri . . ." Liene peered in closer. Unfortunately for her, Celine Moose had brought along her entire magical gossip council consisting of four giggling girls, and as soon as they started giggling and whistling at Liene, she took a conscious step back. That had saved Fabrisse from getting his personal space invaded again.

They stood at the edge of the South Practice Terraces, a sunken quad-shaped courtyard carved directly into the valley behind the Old Synod Library. The terrace was tiered like an amphitheater, with runic balustrades marking out five arc-lanes that stretched across the sand-covered pitch. Each lane was separated by shallow channels of enchanted water meant to nullify stray pebbles and penalize wild shots. Aetheric sigils shimmered in the air above each lane, calibrated to register and display the curve, height, and speed of every throw in glittering glyphscript. The referee today, the ever impartial Ilya Snezhnaya who'd been hired for 15 Kohns an hour and a ham baguette, would power these sigils and tabulate the scores.

At the center of the pitch sat a set of chalky stone rings set in concentric distances—the five Arc circles.

Ilya Snezhnaya stood at the edge of the pitch, baguette crumbs dusting the sleeve of her robes. She cleared her throat, "Arc Pebbles rules—listen once, I won't repeat. One. Everyone gets three pebbles. You arc them—meaning curve, not chuck them like you're trying to bean a banshee. The most graceful arc that lands in an inner circle wins. Grace is determined by the throw path and how many arc glyphs you pass." She stopped for a second. "Two. Stray throws that cross into water channels, hit another lane, or explode a spectator's lunch will be deducted points. If you hit me, I deduct your points." She stopped for another second, only that this second turned into two seconds and everyone started looking at her weird. "Three. Bonus if your arc passes through a minimum of two glyphlights. Triple bonus if your pebble skips glyph-to-glyph. Your tally will be your final point."

Then she walked off the lane with her baguette. "Begin."

Fabrisse didn't think there would be five people knowing how to control flying rocks to join an Arc Pebbles game, but there were. His competitors were Celine Moose's ever-loyal gossip council: Rinna, Ploosh, Liene, and the ever-boastful Anabeth, who specialized in mid-air levitation assists and could ricochet a pebble off someone's ego from twenty meters away. The reason why the entire council learned Stone Thaumaturgy was unbeknownst to Fabrisse.

And then there was Liene, who had absolutely no idea how to levitate rocks. She'd joined anyway.

But Celine Moose—Queen of Passive-Aggressive Enchantments—stood off to the side, leaning against the runic balustrade with a very amused grin and a suspiciously gossipy-looking notebook. It was already half-filled. She waved at Liene and Fabrisse like he was a test subject. He tried not to make eye contact.

"Liene! You're standing too far away from him!" Celine called out.

"What?" Liene turned to her.

Celine grinned. "You're not in optimal support radius! The closer you stand, the more aligned your resonance arcs. You might even cast a harmonization spell!"

The others giggled.

"That's not—" Fabrisse started, then stopped when Liene scooted three whole steps closer to him like a badly controlled puppet.

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Now they were within awkward-arm's-reach.

Fabrisse cleared his throat and looked straight ahead. Not at Liene. Not at her eyes, not at the way her sleeves were nervously half-pulled down over her knuckles.

"Much better!" Celine boomed as she scribbled gleefully in her notebook. "Now let's see if emotional tension improves spell resonance."

Rinna adjusted her gloves. "Can we start? I have class in fifteen minutes."

Fabrisse sighed, checking his quest again.

Okay, second place. That shouldn't be too hard.

Ilya snapped her fingers. From the center of the court, the scoring sigil etched into the ground surged with structured light. Its loops and spires illuminated in sequence, like someone lighting a fuse made of glass.

"First up," Ilya announced from the sidelines, "Rinna."

Rinna stepped up to the boundary line, adjusted the cuffs of her gloves like she was preparing to conduct surgery, and took a deep breath. Then she took a step back. The pebble buzzed once as it floated in her palm.

She mimicked an actual throw. The pebble sailed forward with bursting sparks of red, then immediately veered off course like a moth chasing a streetlamp. It whizzed past the outer ring and plinked harmlessly against a glyphlight, which dimmed in protest.

The glyphscript numbers beside Ilya showed a half-hearted "1.6 ARC, 23° deviation, 0 GLY-PASS".

Ilya raised one brow, unimpressed. "Zero points," she said, before biting off a corner of her baguette. "Aim for the pitch next time."

Fabrisse squinted at the flight path. That pebble had been charged—too much, and with the wrong stuff. He'd seen that kind of overcommunication before: spells that got muddled by too much emotion.

He made a quiet mental note. Too long. Her charge time had gone over a second—maybe 1.2? He wasn't sure if she was using the same type of modulation spell as his, but if it was close, then anything above 0.8 seconds risked fuzzing the command vector.

Rinna huffed, clearly annoyed, and lined up for a second attempt. This time, she narrowed her stance and dropped her shoulders, letting the tension out.

The throw was still messy, but better. Less sparks, more glide. It clipped the fourth ring and bounced inward, just barely skimming the edge of the third circle, enough to light up a point-glyph.

The glyphscript reacted immediately: "2.9 ARC, 12° deviation, 1 GLY-PASS". The path glyph drew a thin dotted line through the trajectory, followed by a faint spiral where the rebound occurred.

"Legal bounce," Ilya said, chewing on her baguette. "Grace still counts if it happens by accident. One point."

Rinna lined up for her third toss, this time visibly more focused. Her gloves brushed together once—an unconscious tic, maybe—and then she took a stilling breath.

Fabrisse leaned forward, watching closely. Her posture changed, not the way he would stand. The angles were off from what he was used to in his own resonance configuration. Not transferable. Not helpful.

The pebble left her hand in a clean arc, a lazy swoop that looked, at first, like it was headed too wide again.

Then, near the end, it changed.

The arc softened, dipping in with a kind of elegant sag. It passed through the second ring—not grazed, through, dead center—and the sigil lit up in approval.

The sky glyphs bloomed in gold: "4.2 ARC, 4° deviation, 2 GLY-PASS", with a curved signature pattern and a pulsing glint where it crossed the second ring.

Ilya nodded. "Four points. Marked clean. Your total is five points. Congratulations!" She gave a thumbs-up which was made all the more comical by the fact she kept her deadpan face while munching on her baguette.

Wait—what did she do at the end? Fabrisse's eyes darted between the ring and her hand, trying to catch the gesture that must've caused the shift. But he was too late. The moment had split in two, and he hadn't caught either.

"—She moved her hand like this." Liene was suddenly beside him. She mimed a sharp lateral flick with her wrist, thumb pressing in like she was pinching an invisible thread.

Fabrisse stared at her arm. "Thanks—"

Scratch scratch scratch went Celine Moose's quill. She had already flipped to a fresh page in her notebook, grinning like a villain as she labeled a new entry. "Remember, Liene!" She whispered. "You go next!"

Fabrisse resisted the urge to groan.