“Hey, are you hurt somewhere?” Hannah tried to give the poor boy her hand, but he probably didn´t want to be seen as too weak and stood up on his own.

“I´m fine, thank you.” He said while looking to the ground. I leaned forwards a bit, tilted my head and looked from downwards into his eyes. Surprised, he even followed my head as I straightened my back again. Now finally looking less pathetic, he even dusted off his shirt.

“So … this is Hannah, and my name is Lucy. It´s a pleasure to meet you.” I said and curtsied in front of him. Hannah, although awkwardly followed suit shortly afterwards and together, we managed to make him bow in front of us.

“Lucy … like the saint?” He asked as he finished.

“Uhm, yes.” I chuckled loudly and then continued with my explanation. “Till this day though, I claim that she stole my name! After all, I am exactly three years older than her.” I smiled wryly and nodded, just to underline my point.

“I see. I´m Klaus Wasweisich. Thank you for helping me out.” He said and bowed deeply.

“Oh, that was nothing. In the first place, who were they even? To use violence in a place like this … unforgivable.” I claimed while pouting unhappily.

“Jacob Silberbaum, Ol-“ He started, but didn´t finish as Hannah interrupted him mid-sentence.

“Jacob was the one in the middle, right?” She asked, clearly quite angry that she failed to do her task of protecting me right away. I could only tilt my head at her sudden eagerness, but I took that as a good sign.

“Eh, yes, why?” He asked while looking at her in surprise.

“Well, he did behave like a creep, so I was wondering …” She trailed off at the end, but I could see the beginning of something murderous forming in her eyes. How cute she looked at that moment.

“I see. The others were …” I didn´t even listen to him at that point and left Hannah to ask some alibi questions to throw him off her trail.

“Umm, sorry to interrupt your conversation, but we are really short on time. Do you have any idea how we can get to the institute for magical items? We kind of need to speak to a professor there about our school uniforms … how much do they cost again?” I asked.

“… two gold coins.” He muttered, looking down upon his ragged, normal clothing. I nodded towards Hannah who brought out her purse shortly afterwards. Klaus could only look at the four gold coins she gave him with wide-open eyelids, but he didn´t dare to touch them yet. “I can´t take …”

“Hmm … how about this. You lead us to the institute, and we pay you for that?” I asked while smiling reassuringly.

“Even then …” Four gold coins was a lot of money. From them, he could buy hundreds of faked uniforms which were apparently only missing a few magical additions.

“Please.” I said and placed the palms of my hands together in a pleading motion.

“… okay.” And so, he relented.

Like this, we easily secured our slightly nerdy guide who swiftly led us to a two-storey house a few hundred metres away. It was way too close for paying him four gold coins as he could have just pointed in the right direction and we would have found it … but whatever.

“Hey, one last thing. Do you know where professor Werkzeug has his office?” I asked while giving him a sweet, memorable smile.

“Second floor, room three, if I´m not wrong … why do you want to meet him in the first place?” He asked, slowly getting redder with time.

“He asked us to meet him even before the entrance ceremony … and here we are. It was nice to meet you.” I smiled happily, while he gave me his hand for a handshake. Awkwardly, I curtsied along with Hannah and bid our farewells once again. This time, he got the hint that I would absolutely not touch him and bowed deeply once more.

A few seconds later, he was already running away with his book in his hands while I kept an eye on him.

“What are you thinking?” asked Hannah as I didn´t move for quite some time.

“This boy …” I said, quite far away with my thoughts.

“Is he something special?” Hannah asked while raising her eyebrow.

“What? Can´t you see the mediocrity in his eyes? Before he becomes someone special, a fish would learn to move on land. But he may have given us a hint we desperately need … Let´s go.” I turned around and opened the handle of the institute.

This time, Hannah had to rely on me for finding the way. Slightly proud of myself I followed the signs towards the offices upstairs and walked past the first few rooms. I only had to show Hannah the palm of my hand for her to rummage through her pockets and give me a set of lockpicks.

Three seconds later, the door with the number three on it opened and we strolled into the room. As expected, there was nobody inside which gave us time to look around his office. Piles and piles of documents were littered over his desk, but I also found quite a few magical apparatus we naturally didn´t touch. None of us wanted to blow this office up … at least not before I had my answers.

A few minutes later though, we already went through all the things in this room and chose to relax on the two chairs in front of the desk, naturally not without turning them around so that they faced the door. We made quite a few jokes until the professor barged into the room, staring straight at Hannah.

“I am dee-“ I began to say, but he interrupted me mid-sentence.

“Who are you?” He said while staring at Hannah, even though I stood up and curtsied like a lady in front of him.

“This is Hannah, and my name is Lucy.” I said and watched how he nearly froze for a few seconds.

“The saint?” He knew directly who I was. “… it is an honour to meet you, your holiness.” He added shortly afterwards and bowed deeply.

“Please, call me Lucy … I´m not really good with these honorifics yet.” I said and waited for him to close the door before I continued. “Judging by your reaction, you already knew someone from my family would visit you though. Would you care to explain?” I asked, realizing that I actually couldn’t confirm my knowledge about magical items yet.

“Certainly, your … Miss White. The blade your maid is carrying on her back is the sword of magnetism. Its aura reached a few hundred metres wide, which makes it quite easy to figure out who is at the centre of this circle.” Aura? It must have been connected to mana in some way, because I absolutely couldn’t feel anything radiating from this sword.

“So it is correct to assume this sword is some kind of beacon for everyone?” I asked while tilting my head. This was the most important question there was for me. How do you steal a magical item that tells every magician where it is? I simply had no answer yet, but I did hope this man could help me out.

“Yes. Carrying a magical item around like this is rather dangerous … luckily the academy grounds are quite secure because of all the mages, but I would advise against moving it around like this.” He mentioned casually, but didn’t seem too bothered by the possibility of me being robbed. Maybe he did have too much faith in the role of the saint … or maybe he was an idiot.

“I assumed this to be the case … please take a seat, professor, this may take a bit longer. I hope you don’t have any other appointments?” I asked out of kindness.

“Nothing that would justify interrupting a meeting with the saint.” His answer was exactly what I predicted, but I wanted to be a bit humbler.

“Oh? We can wait if you need to hold an important speech or so. I don’t want to trouble you.” I said and watched how he took the seat opposite of us while we turned out chairs around to face the desk.

“No, no, everything is fine. Please, go on.” He said and interlocked his fingers in front of him.

“Right … where was I? Can you tell me a bit more about this sword? Since our mansion burned down, we do have trouble finding any documentation about it.” I explained.

“Certainly, certainly. The sword of magnetism was given to your ducal family by the king hundreds of years ago. Since then, it rarely made an appearance and thus, even I am not entirely sure what it can do. What we do know about the four weapons gifted to the dukes though, is that their elemental affinity is incredibly high.” He said, still eyeing the cloth on Hannah´s back from time to time.

“Elemental affinity?” Hannah asked, to which the professor only frowned.

“Are you an elf, by any chance?” The professor asked which did surprise me somewhat as I could barely see her pointy ears. But my vision during the day was quite bad, so there was that.

“Is that a problem?” I asked while frowning.

“No, no. The gods chose you as the saint while you had an elven maid. I wouldn´t dare to question their choice ... anyways, elemental affinity is in human terms what magic is easier for you to use. If you have the elemental affinity of water for example …” He said, but stopped as he apparently failed to find a good example right away.

“You can make it rain?” Hannah asked quickly.

“Well, well, only if you are an archmage.” The professor concluded and smiled wryly.

“And in terms of magical items?” I asked swiftly afterwards.

“Only if you have the same magical affinity as the weapon, you can actually hold it in your hands. Otherwise it is like the weapon itself is resisting the wielder.” He said which did bum me out quite a bit. I would never be able to use magical weapons if this were the case after all.

“But it is still possible to use them?” I asked with a bit of hope. He only mentioned holding such a weapon, not using its magical abilities which may be a little different.

“There was one a mage who tried. He did manage to use the weapon somewhat, but his arm had to be amputated shortly afterwards …” The professor gulped loudly which was probably an indication that he witnessed said scene himself.

“Interesting … what elemental affinity does this sword have?” I asked and waited for Hannah to place the sword on the table. Reverently, he unwrapped the cloth until the sword laid on the documents. None of us wanted to grab it, but we still stared at it for several seconds until the professor retrieved a sword stand from one of the shelves in the room.

“Multi-layered inscriptions … runes of the old era … hollow inside … a fascinating sword.” He said, clearly in his element.

“And the elemental affinity?” I asked.

“My first guess would be earth, but it could be something different as well. I can´t be sure until I tested it out.” I nodded but wasn’t exactly happy with the result.

“How long does that take?” I asked, hoping to get my answer that day.

“A few minutes. Wait a second …” He rushed out of the room, only to come back with a strange apparatus several minutes later. Two cables were leading out of the casing, ending with two metallic clamps he directly secured to the blade.

“This will do it.” He said and clapped once. He was truly in his element and certainly more than happy to research this very old, godly blade.

“So as far as I understand it that if this blade has the elemental affinity of earth, nobody who has the elemental affinity of air can use it?” Every book I read so far portrayed elemental affinity as a scale of opposite elements, at least in regard to weaponry. You would be able to use every magic if you had sufficient elemental affinity for it, but weapons seemed to work quite differently. They only looked for their own affinity and if it was enough and then if the opposite element had a higher affinity.

“Right, we call that X-Factor. If you have the littlest bit of fire affinity, you may use a simple fire weapon. If you have more water affinity though …” My arm would need to be amputated … which wasn’t that bad considering it would regrow within the next hour.

“Is it possible to have a balance affinity?” If so, the natural focussing of mages on a few elements would be completely thrown out of the window. As far as I was aware, mages usually trained their best element and maybe a few others, but never two opposites.

“Oh, yeah, there were some cases in the past. But across all elements? Impossible.” He shook his head aggressively.

“And none? What if you have neither the elemental affinity of water, nor fire. How would a fire sword react?” I mused. Was it still balanced if I had no elemental affinity whatsoever?

“Not good.” I wasn’t entirely surprised. My guess had always been that I only had one elemental affinity, even though Aska never proved or disproved it. Darkness, that was probably mine ... Without mana though … “Earth, as I thought. Can I?” The professor said while looking towards this strange measurement device. I nodded swiftly and observed how he lifted up the sword.

“What can it do?” I asked and tilted my head.

“The sword of magnetism …” a metallic object flew from a nearby shelve directly towards the sword. The impact alone was enough to throw the sword out of the professor´s hand, which was honestly quite lucky for us as a few buttons of my dress were already drawn towards the sword.

“And except that?” I asked, already thinking about all the possibilities.

“Uhh … I think it can turn other metallic objects into magnets by touch as well, but I wouldn’t try it out here.” Which was probably the right decision. I certainly didn´t want to be buried under the mass of metallic devices in this building.