NOVEL NEXT Chapter 69
AN: By the laws of the internet, I will do my duty and be the first to say, Nice.
I made my way to my first elective course of the day, which was Advanced Spell Theory. Instead of a classroom, this course was hosted in a huge lecture theatre that could easily seat more than 300 people.
As I overheard the conversations from those around me, I learned that all these students are Year 1 Higher Education, or as others call it, Year 5 students.
Soon after taking my seat, a wizened old man enters the lecture theater and introduces himself to the students as Professor Thaddeus Northwind.
Besides going over the spiel of congratulating our young minds for taking the first step on the path of true knowledge, the first thing that catches my interest is him using what I assume is a light illusion spell to project the syllabus for the year.
The other thing that caught my eye is the syllabus itself. While we were to learn the theory behind different schools of magic, the one that caught my attention was Summons & Golemancy.
Mainly it was the Golemancy I was interested in, I read a basic outline of this school of magic, and the short summary was that Golemancy is the practice of bringing inanimate objects to life. This sprouts ideas inside my head of incorporating Golemancy into my future super armor, who knows, it may become a power-assisted armor or even help me automate mundane tasks.
Too bad the syllabus states it will only be taught towards the end of the year.
After the introduction and starting the class on subjects that Mum and Grandpa already taught, the school bell rang, indicating the class was over, and I was off to my next course, Enchanting.
My next classroom was located in a part of the school that seemed to be suspiciously more structurally reinforced compared to the rest of the school, outside the classroom, there were metal beams securing the walls, and inside the classroom, the walls were actually lined with metal plating.
When I looked at the state of the furniture, I could not help but notice scorch marks, gouges, and other forms of damage, even the other students are looking around uncomfortably. What in the world have I gotten myself into?
Soon, after class was supposed to start, the door to a connecting room was kicked open to reveal a human woman in heavy plate armor carrying a male gnome by the scruff of his shirt. The gnome was covered in soot, was rocking a messy Albert Einstein hairdo, and 1 of his eyes seemed to be stuck permanently pointing slightly off-center.
While the gnome was folding his arms and pouting like a child, the armored woman marched to the front of the class and plopped the gnome on a step ladder behind a podium, then took her place a step behind the gnome.
“Alright, let's get this over and done with, your stupid class was interupti-” the gnome started his tirade, but cut himself off when he clearly felt something was wrong, and true enough the armored woman behind the gnome had materialized a small club form somewhere and had it raised, ready to clobber the gnome.
“I mean, what I meant to say was… Welcome to the Basics of Enchanting, I am your teacher, Professor Bixby Goldensprocket, and this brute that threatened me to come here away from my research is Brunhilde.” Bixby said while using this thumb to gesture to the armored woman behind him, and got a light wack to his head in response.
While rubbing the top of his head, Bixby muttered loud enough for everyone to hear, “Alright fine, lets get this over with.”
He then slammed the table and addressed the class, “Alright, all of you, shut up, listen up, and pay attention. I will only allow questions after the lecture is over.”
As the lesson began, me and the class were introduced to the basics of Enchanting. It all started with an enchanting table. It did not necessarily need to be a table, it just needed to be any surface that held an enchanting array circle painted/drawn/carved on it, another caveat was that the item to be enchanted could not exceed the bounds of the enchanting array circle.
So, why a table? That was because depending on the material the enchanting array circle was on, it could greatly affect the potency and/or attribute of the enchantment end product. And the size of the enchanting array circle was a significant factor in the amount of mana used, the bigger the circle, the more mana is needed.
Another reason for using a table was due to the tables being designed with mana-insulating legs because of mana’s tendency to flow along whatever it touches, in a normal table’s case, from the table to the legs and into the ground to disperse. If people wanted to have a huge ass enchanting array circle on the ground, they technically could, but the amount of mana-insulating material required would be prohibitively expensive, and if they forego the mana-insulating material, a good chunk of mana would leak from the enchanting array circle and even introduce instabilities from the mana in the ground interfering with the enchanting array circle.
Another thing we were introduced to was the importance of different components, catalysts, and reagents, along with their different elemental attributes or mystical properties.
By the end of the introduction presentation, I was convinced that Enchanting was somewhat tied to Array Architecture and Alchemy, and when I asked as much during the Q&A section at the end of class, Professor Bixby looked at me and nodded. “Good catch. As you further your studies, you will soon realize that the schools of magic you see today borrows a bit of knowledge from each other, that is why you see so many of our alumni return for more classes long after their graduation.”
After some time of answering questions, the bell rang, and Bixby dropped the question he was answering halfway and practically sprinted back to the door he came from, followed by the armored woman Brunhilde walking after him.
My next course is one I have been anticipating for a long time, even from my previous life. Blacksmithing.