The "Old Engineering Sheds" were located in the dregs of the Academy, nestled between the roaring Mana-Furnace District and the forest of discarded cooling towers. It was a graveyard of ambition—a place where failed steam-golems and rusted airship hulls came to die.
At dawn, the fog was thick, smelling of coal dust and ozone.
Valerius Kane stood in the center of Shed 4, a cavernous hangar illuminated by the harsh, buzzing light of a single arclight lamp. He wore a heavy leather apron over his pristine suit, his sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms that—thanks to the original owner's lack of exercise—looked disappointingly thin.
In his hand, he held a rusted, mana-infused wrench.
"You're late," Valerius said without turning around.
Behind him, the five students huddled in the doorway, looking terrified. They had brought wrenches and overalls as instructed, looking less like noble mages and more like factory laborers.
"P-Professor?" Kaelen Moss, the large boy with the "magic immunity," stepped forward. "We're five minutes early."
"In engineering, early is on time. On time is late. And late is unacceptable," Valerius lied smoothly. He turned to face them, his eyes sweeping over the group. The Axiom Archive flickered to life, overlaying their nervous faces with blue wireframe schematics.
[Class Roster Detected.][1. Elara Vance (Cryo-Generator Overheat)][2. Kaelen Moss (Mana-Insulated Hull)][3. Zhuo Yan (Combustion Leak)][4. Miller (Optical Sensor Malfunction)][5. Lucas (Encrypted)]
Valerius tapped the wrench against his palm. Clink. Clink.
"Welcome to your first lesson. Forget everything the Academy has taught you. They taught you how to be wizards. I am going to teach you how to be functional."
He pointed the wrench at Kaelen. "You. Step forward."
Kaelen swallowed hard and shuffled forward. He was huge, standing a head taller than Valerius, but he hunched his shoulders as if trying to disappear.
"Tell the class why you are trash, Kaelen," Valerius commanded.
Kaelen flinched. "I... I have zero mana sensitivity. My pores are blocked. I can't cast spells."
"Wrong," Valerius said. "The Academy says you are a broken mage because you can't fill your mana core. They are trying to fill a gas tank, but you don't run on gas, Kaelen. You run on impact."
Valerius activated the Archive.
[Target: Kaelen Moss][Proposed Fix: Percussive Mana Infusion. Subject's skin hardens upon impact, forcing ambient mana into the muscular tissue instead of the core.]
"Take off your shirt," Valerius ordered.
"W-what?"
"Shirt. Off. Now."
Kaelen hesitantly removed his patched tunic, revealing a torso that looked like it was carved from granite.
"Zhuo," Valerius pointed at a skinny, nervous boy with soot-stained hair. "Cast a Kinetic Bolt at Kaelen. Aim for his solar plexus."
Zhuo yelped. "Professor! My magic... it explodes! I can't control the output!"
"I know," Valerius said calmly. "That's why I picked you. Fire."
Zhuo shut his eyes, panicked, and thrust his wand forward. "I'm sorry!"
BOOM!
A ball of unstable force erupted from Zhuo's wand. It wasn't a bolt; it was a shotgun blast of raw mana. It slammed into Kaelen's chest.
Kaelen grunted, sliding back a few inches. But he didn't fall.
"Hold that sensation!" Valerius shouted, stepping in. He slammed his hand onto Kaelen's shoulder. "Don't try to guide the mana to your dantian! Guide it into your bruise!"
Kaelen gritted his teeth. Usually, magic just bounced off him. But this time, following Valerius's strange instruction, he focused on the pain. He felt the residual mana from the explosion clinging to his skin.
'Into the bruise...'
He pulled.
Suddenly, his skin turned a metallic, shimmering gray. The pain vanished, replaced by a surge of raw power flooding his muscles.
"I... I feel it," Kaelen gasped, looking at his hands. "I feel the mana! It's not in my core, it's in my... meat?"
"You are a Kinetic Battery," Valerius explained, wiping his hands on a rag. "Standard meditation is useless for you. You need to be hit. The harder you are hit, the stronger you become. Congratulations, Kaelen. Your cultivation method is now 'Getting Beat Up'."
The class stared in horror and awe.
Valerius turned to Zhuo. "And you. You think you're a failure because your spells explode?"
Zhuo nodded shamefully. "My mana flow is too volatile. I fail every precision test."
"Precision is for watchmakers," Valerius scoffed. "You are a combustion engine. The Academy tries to force you to trickle mana. I want you to compress it until it screams."
Valerius kicked a heavy iron barrel toward Zhuo. "Your homework is simple. Put your hand inside this barrel and cast Spark. Do not stop until you blow the bottom out of it. If you try to cast a 'gentle' flame, you fail."
"Blow... the bottom out?" Zhuo's eyes lit up. No teacher had ever told him to make a mess.
"Go."
Valerius spun around, his coat flaring. He pointed the wrench at the third student, a boy with thick gla.s.ses named Miller.
"Miller. Take off your gla.s.ses."
Miller clutched his frames. "Professor, I'm legally blind without them. I can't hit a target ten feet away."
"Your eyes are the problem," Valerius said coldly. "The Archive tells me your optical nerves are atrophied, but your Mana Sense is in the 99th percentile. You are trying to aim with broken cameras when you have a military-grade radar in your head."
Valerius snatched the gla.s.ses off Miller's face and threw them onto the concrete floor.
Crunch.
"My gla.s.ses!" Miller shrieked.
Valerius wrapped a thick, oil-stained blindfold around Miller's head. "You don't get them back. From now on, you aim by feeling the mana signature of the target. If you miss, you don't eat."
Finally, Valerius turned to Elara.
She was standing straight, no longer using her cane, but he could see the frost forming on her eyelashes. She was struggling to keep the "venting" technique going.
"And you, Miss Vance," Valerius said, his voice softening slightly. "The Venting Method kept you standing yesterday. But it is a temporary patch. You are leaking energy to stay cool. Efficient, but wasteful."
He walked over to a pile of junk and pulled out a strange contraption—a brass backpack connected to copper tubes.
"Put this on."
Elara blinked. "Is this... a steam boiler?"
"It was," Valerius corrected. "I modified it. It's a Heat Exchanger. I want you to connect your mana circuits to these intake valves. Instead of venting your cold mana into the air, you will cycle it into this tank."
"What will that do?"
"It will compress the cold air," Valerius grinned. "When the pressure gauge hits the red line, you release it. You won't just cast Ice Bolt. You will cast Glacial Cannon."
Elara stared at the rusty machine, then at Valerius. "You want me to become a walking tank?"
"I want you to become a weapon of ma.s.s destruction," Valerius said. "Or you can go back to Professor Hugo and knit sweaters."
Elara grabbed the brass backpack and strapped it on. Her eyes burned with determination.
Valerius nodded. He looked at the last student. Lucas.
The boy with the "Encrypted" status. He was leaning against a workbench, watching the chaos with a faint, amused smile. He looked painfully ordinary, yet the Archive refused to read him.
"And you," Valerius said, narrowing his eyes.
"Me?" Lucas asked innocently.
"I have no instructions for you," Valerius said. "Grab a wrench. Tighten every bolt in this shed. If I hear a single rattle by sunset, you're expelled."
Lucas blinked, then chuckled. "Understood, Professor."
Valerius turned his back on them, walking toward his desk—a pile of crates topped with a half-eaten sandwich.
"Get to work," he barked. "If anyone dies, let me know. I have a shovel."
As the sounds of explosions, metal impacts, and groans of exertion filled the shed, Valerius sat down and opened a book to hide his trembling hands.
'I have absolutely no idea if this is going to work,' he thought, sweating profusely. 'Please don't explode. Please don't explode.'
[System Notification][Teaching Path Initiated: The Way of the Engineer.][Trust Level Increasing...]
Valerius exhaled. He had survived the first five minutes of class. Now he just had to survive the rest of the semester without the Academy realizing he was turning their students into industrial siege weapons.