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The class bell rang. Professor Moses walked in carrying a metal object shaped like a morning glory, all flared bell on top and iron box below.
"Huh, why didn't Professor Moses bring her magic book today?"
"What is that thing? It looks so strange."
"Isn't that something used in artifact forging?"
"Artifact forging? Are we not doing Spellchant today?"
The students murmured to each other, trading guesses about the metal horn.
"Quiet!" Professor Moses snapped, and set the object on the lectern.
Luo Wei looked at it. Then looked again.
That shape, wide bell mouth at the top and iron box at the bottom , why did it look exactly like an antique phonograph?
She didn't have to wonder long. Once the class settled, Professor Moses spoke.
"Teaching you lot is a waste of my breath."
"This," she said, pointing at the metal horn, "is your Spellchant teaching assistant. Professor Temple improved it from a sample sent in by an anonymous magic apprentice. From now on, it will handle your Spellchant instruction in my place."
"Today's lesson is Earth Wall and Earth Bind — a step up from the basic earth spells. Learn them, and come find me if anything's unclear."
She flipped the switch. A clear, steady voice rose from the horn.
The class stared. The voice coming out of it was identical to Professor Moses's own lecturing voice.
There was a slight distortion, yes, but against something this miraculous, nobody was going to complain.
Luo Wei's scalp prickled. She'd built a simple phonograph last year , with a self-destruct mechanism specifically to prevent this. So why was one sitting on the lectern right now?
Seven or eight centuries of scientific progress, collapsed into a single afternoon. Would this derail the entire historical trajectory of this world?
Up on the podium, Professor Moses adjusted the device and set it back to the beginning. "Alright. Follow along."
The students cleared their throats and turned their attention to the "Spellchant teaching assistant" with barely contained excitement.
"Gusqialongtelakkeyi..." The device launched into its work with mechanical faithfulness.
"Gusqialongtelakkeyi..."
"Gusqialongtela..."
For a fully trained Mage, incantations this long were unnecessary. If Professor Moses demonstrated Earth Wall herself, a single utterance of the spell's name would do it. Spells were carved so deeply into a Mage's mind that casting only required a small internal prompt , the rest surfaced on its own.
Apprentices didn't have that luxury. They misremembered incantations, scrambled passages from different spells, and ran low on magic reserves far too quickly. Chanting aloud was a crutch , one that sharpened their sensitivity to magical elements and helped them compensate for what experience hadn't yet built.
The day they could parse Spellchant's meaning without translating it in their heads, their casting time would drop. But if they wanted to squeeze out a spell's full power, chanting the complete incantation was still the way.
Think of it in gaming terms: channeling before an ultimate. The longer the channel, the harder it hits.
Legend had it that when Aldrich killed Nidhogg , the great evil dragon of the Western Plains , he stood at the peak of a snow-covered mountain and chanted for three unbroken days.
By the time the morning's Spellchant class ended, Luo Wei's mouth was bone dry.
Just before the bell, Professor Moses made one more announcement.
Every year around this time, junior-division apprentices were expected to start thinking about their career path and confirm their chosen profession with their homeroom professor before the Magic Competition. Summer practical training was coming, and the academy needed their selections in advance to assign the right tasks.
The students spilled out of class in high spirits, already debating.
"Mage, obviously. Mage is the only real path."
"Any proper lady chooses Mage. I am not spending my days smelling like a forge."
"Mage for me too. I've wanted this since I was little."
Winnie tugged on Luo Wei's arm, eyes bright. "Darling, you're going Mage too, right?"
Luo Wei nodded. "That's the plan, barring any surprises. You?"
Winnie hesitated. "I really want to be a Mage, but my elemental affinity isn't great. Honestly, I'm probably better suited for apothecary."
"Apothecary is a solid path. When you're the top magic pharmacist in the Western Plains someday, I'll have to book an appointment just to get a potion out of you."
"You make it sound so easy," Winnie said, cheeks going pink. "Becoming a magic pharmacist is harder than becoming an Archmage, you know."
Luo Wei smiled. "I still think you'll get there."
Winnie looped her arm through Luo Wei's. "Then I'm wishing you Archmage, and soon."
...
After lunch, Luo Wei headed back to Rose Castle.
After weeks of careful surveying, her map of the academy had taken proper shape. All nine grid squares were corrected and ready. It was time to start the real work: deconstruction.
Before she began, she latched the balcony doors and checked the lock twice. No gaps. No angles anyone could watch from. Satisfied, she sat down at the desk and lit the oil lamp.
She stacked the nine squares back-side-up in a single pile.
Three minutes, eyes closed. She let the noise in her head go quiet. Then she unrolled a fresh sheet of parchment, lifted the first map fragment, and began pulling the outline from the image , separating the magic pattern lines from everything else.
Magic patterns were symmetrical. The complex ones were built from layers of basic symbols. If a shape within the image could be resolved into one of those symbols, it belonged to the pattern. If not, it was noise.
For the ambiguous cases — shapes that could go either way — she had a simple test: trace them in magic power. If the line held the charge, it was part of the pattern. If the power passed through without catching, it wasn't.
The entire afternoon, she finished exactly one grid square.
From that single square, she extracted seven nested magic patterns of varying sizes. All five elements were represented.
She copied each independently functioning pattern onto a separate iron plate. Tonight, she'd catch a few mice somewhere in the academy and quietly test what each one did.
The shapes she'd set aside as noise weren't necessarily worthless, either. Some of them might link up with lines from other squares to form a larger, unified pattern.
The academy's magic array was far more complex than she'd expected. Whatever this formation was, it was not a simple entry-and-exit alert line.
She was still mulling it over, brush moving steadily across an iron plate, when her nose twitched. Then blood dripped , one drop, two , onto the metal surface, blooming red at the tip of her pen.
She'd lost track again. Her magic power had run dry.
Luo Wei tilted her head back quickly, dug through her pocket, and pressed a handkerchief to her nose.
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