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"My... magic wand?"
"Miss, is it... for me?"
Rosie stared at the wand in her hands, eyes wide with surprise, barely able to believe it. After a long moment, she looked up cautiously.
"Who else would it be for?" Luo Wei beckoned her over. "Come here. Closer."
Rosie drew near, her breathing quick and shallow. Her eyes, dulled by the black lenses she wore, were suddenly bright with a light that had no business being there.
"Chin up. Let me see if that scar is still there."
Rosie tilted her head back. When warm fingertips settled against her chin, her nose prickled without warning, and the urge to cry swept over her all at once.
So Miss didn't dislike her. Miss had always remembered her , remembered the injury on her face. Had even prepared a magic wand just for her.
"Healed well." Luo Wei lowered her hand. She caught the glint of tears in Rosie's eyes and paused, softening her voice. "I told you before — once you have the ability to protect yourself, you can drop the disguise and walk in the sunlight."
"For now, you can take those lenses out. Wear them any longer and they'll damage your eyes."
Rosie shook her head. "But I'm not strong enough yet. My wanted poster is still on the city walls. I don't want to bring danger to you, Miss."
"Not being strong enough is fine. I can protect you." Luo Wei gripped her shoulders, her tone steady and serious. "Sometimes you have to weigh one kind of danger against another."
"If your eyes are damaged because you avoided a short-term risk, then you'll be living with that damage every single day for the rest of your life."
How could a Mage function without clear eyes?
Poor eyesight meant you couldn't aim properly when casting. Combat effectiveness would plummet. And Rosie had a pure dark element affinity , she could only train in the highly aggressive Dark Magic. What if she got turned around and attacked in the wrong direction? Hit her own people?
The reason Luo Wei had asked Rosie to keep up the disguise before was simple: she'd been in a perilous enough situation herself that she'd had no capacity left over to look after anyone else.
Things were different now. She had a fallback plan. If it came down to it, she could run to Demon Island. The Undead there would protect her.
Rosie was a genius. Properly nurtured, she'd become a serious asset. Being shortsighted enough to cripple a genius during her growth stage would be a tremendous waste.
"Alright. Wipe those tears." Luo Wei pressed the wand into her palm. "Now show me. Two months of studying — let's see what you've got."
"Yes, Miss."
Rosie gripped the wand, stepped back a few paces, and channeled her magic into the Spiritwood. Instantly, dense dark elements came surging toward her.
"Teacher Hall taught me three types of incantations — seventeen spells in total. This is the first type, Soul Curse: Nightmare Spell..."
Luo Wei listened closely, rapidly locking each incantation into memory.
Dark Magic fell into three major categories: Soul Curses, Control Spells, and Black Sorcery.
Soul Curses targeted the mind and spirit: Memory Erasure, Soul Extraction, Nightmare Spell, and the like.
Control Spells could amplify human desires or seize control of the body entirely: Gluttony Curse, Sleep Curse, Blood Curse, among others.
Black Sorcery was the most brutal of the three. It existed purely to cause suffering: Gut-Rotting, Heart-Corroding, Petrification, Flaying. Magic that made people beg to die.
Unfortunately, Rosie was still young, her talent not yet fully awakened. After four Dark Magic spells, her magic was spent.
Luo Wei had her set down the wand and recite all seventeen incantations from memory, following along herself and memorizing them by rote.
When she had some time alone, she'd quietly try her hand at them , see if she could replicate these Dark Magic spells on her own.
Rosie finished the recitation and looked up at Luo Wei, expectant.
"Very good." Luo Wei's voice was warm. "Your talent is real, and the work you've put in shows. Keep it up, and you will become a great Dark Magic Mage. I'll be proud of you."
A smile broke across Rosie's face , one that had been gone for far too long. She was like a yellowed stalk of grass beaten down through a whole autumn and winter of storms, and then, suddenly, a tender new shoot pushing through, green and alive in the muddy earth.
"I will, Miss!"
I will make you proud of me.
I will never let you regret saving me. I'll be your sword. The blade in your hand. I'll cut through every thorn on the road ahead.
Because I am your knight , the female knight you chose.
...
A little past eight in the evening, Luo Wei walked back into the academy carrying an oil lamp.
Another night of staying up late to patrol the perimeter. Absolutely maddening.
She genuinely did not understand why the academy thought this was necessary. She'd been at it for a week and hadn't seen a single person try to scale the walls.
And besides , the Intermediate and Advanced Division apprentices all had higher magic power than she did. If they wanted to sneak out, they had ways she couldn't detect. She was a Primary Division apprentice. What was she supposed to catch, exactly?
This punishment punished exactly one person and served no one else. What was even the point?
Luo Wei kicked a stone off the path, then settled onto a flower bed outside the main square, oil lamp in hand, and fished a palm-sized piece of parchment from her waist sash.
She had cut Roman's map into nine equal squares with a knife. Each session, she only studied one square at a time , that way she never saw the full magic pattern framework at once and risked a backlash from the complete design.
The map itself was rough work. Roman's strokes were immature, the lines unsteady and crooked. She'd need to trace over the whole thing and correct it before it was actually usable.
The building on this particular square she recognized immediately , the Advanced Division chapel. She picked up the lamp and headed that direction.
Tree shadows crowded the path. The willow branches by the lake lashed about in the night wind, and the flame in her lamp guttered and swung. She steadied it with both hands, crossed the long stone bridge spanning the academy lake, and stepped into the Advanced Division's grounds.
The chapel stood on the west side of the academy, surrounded by dense vegetation. Behind it stretched a small grove where, by reputation, students from the Magic Pattern Summoning class kept their magical beasts.
Luo Wei had been giving this area a wide berth during her patrols. Tonight, she decided to start with the hardest part.
She circled the chapel once, then took out the parchment and began filling in details with a charcoal pencil.
This section had the most missing content. So many trees obscured the view from above , paths, building corners, entire edges of structures vanished under the canopy. Drawing complete shapes was nearly impossible.
[Luo Wei, what are you drawing?]
CLATTER
Luo Wei nearly sent the lamp flying. She crumpled the parchment into her fist, yanked her sleeve down over it, and spun around.
"Wadsworth?"
The Undead stood under a tree, black as charcoal, his body dissolved entirely into the dark. Only the blue flames burning in his eyes proved he was there at all.
"What are you doing here?" she asked, genuinely startled.
Wadsworth lifted one hand and pointed at the chapel.
[That place was my classroom before. I came to see it again.]
Luo Wei's vision went slightly dark. How had she forgotten? Wadsworth was an Advanced Division magic apprentice.
Wait , actually, that wasn't on her. What kind of Undead wandered around the academy grounds at this hour of the night?
If any other student caught sight of him, rumors would be all over the school before morning. And within a day, that single ghost story would spawn eight hundred different versions.
➤ Next: Foresight Ability — Words Unspoken
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