Nine more days passed in no-time. Practicing enchantments for half a day while spending the other half reading through some new books on enchanting and pill-making silver had bought. The enchanting ones had been bought for him to increase his skill level, most of them were even simple, cheap, journals containing the day-to-day progress others made in enchanting. This could be a great help in case you had problems in the same way the writer did and they managed to find a way to fix it.

After the nine-day period, Villin was able to do most basic enchantments on items that weren’t too complicated. The best one he had done so far was a hardening enchantment within a coffee cup. The steep curve on both halves of the runes complicated things quite a bit as nearly all of the runes had multiple required deviations to them.

“Alright Villin, there’s only a single day left before you have to go to the academy, it’s time you learned of the place as a whole.”

At this point Silver truly seemed like a teacher to him. He had also learned that she was also in what she hoped to be her last year as she stated.

“Alright so as I’ve previously told you the academy is divided into twelve years and six grades. If you aren’t able to pass the first grade of the academy in two years you get expelled, you have four years to pass the second grade, and so on. I actually managed to get past the second grade in a single year and so I have three years to finish my sixth one. I am currently in my eleventh year.”

She explained while almost getting confused in her own words. Nonetheless, Villin nodded as he waited for her to continue.

“Most kids from noble families get trained from the age of four years old and they get enough training to normally be able to pass the first grade in a single year, the talented ones are already at the third grade in their third year even.”

This was also something that made sense. Even if they weren’t able to do magic before coming to the academy they already knew a lot of the principles behind enchanting, pill-making, and magic-arrays. Similarly to how he had done, they would practice these three arts and they would even have talented artists guide them when they made mistakes. Their general skills in these arts already give them an advantage, additionally, they get taught about history and runemagic before ever going to the academy.

Even though their knowledge on each of these things was rather basic due to how spread out it was, it helped them enough to have them pass the first grade in a year.

“What I have yet to tell you is that when you first awaken your magic you will be asked to show it to everyone as clearly as possible. Normal people do this by just trying to expel the magic outwards forming a faint glow around their body, this will be many times clearer with people that have a bloodline. Those with a glow greater then most will be put in class A that has quite a few more resources that class B that most people go to.”

The implications of this weren’t hard to follow. The academy actively favored nobles even to go so far to give them classes separately from normal kids saying it is simply because ‘they have more talent’. Hearing about this Villin couldn’t help but sigh, he truly didn’t know a way around this. Casting a spell instantly after awakening was impossible. Even though he got a ‘greater connection to the web’ and ‘great comprehension’ he knew he wasn’t omnipotent in the least. All of the advantages he got were things people could be born with.

Silver also explained all of the classes in the academy. They were ‘basic spell casting’, ‘rune magic’, ‘wandless magic’, ‘studies of the web’, ‘magic history’, and ‘combat classes’. Other then these there were also the optional classes of ‘enchanting’, ‘pill-making’, ‘magic arrays’, and ‘mortal history’.

Silver heavily advised him to follow enchanting and pill-making. His great comprehension and photographic memory should help him greatly in pill-making for sure. She also told him the optional classes weren’t free but she was willing to pay for his first month in each as long as he paid her back later. 

She was currently in the sixth year optional class ‘teaching’ and also needed as much money as possible so lending him this was already quite kind of her.

After all, money was magic. In magic society, things got bought using magic crystals, the more magic in a crystal the more money it was seen as. Mages can use these crystals to greatly lessen the resting times between sessions of training magic. Meanwhile, mages beyond a certain level can create these crystals themselves by using a large amount of magic power, even though the amount lost in the creation process was great.

Silver was sure that after this year she would be able to pass the sixth year if she wanted to, the problem is that in order to pass with the ‘teacher’ application she needed to solidify her core as a mage, something that was very hard to do and needed a great number of magic crystals.

Sadly Silver wasn’t allowed to show things such as a map of the academy to him. Everything to do with the academy had to be kept under lock and key, everything that she was allowed to say she already had.

The final day passed and so he spent his final day at Silver’s house. He was incredibly grateful to her as she didn’t have to take him in at all. She even bought some books and journals to do with enchanting even though she dropped enchanting in the third grade.

When he woke up from his sleep he was immediately alarmed, above him was an unfamiliar white ceiling that looked as if it had been made out of marble. He immediately stood up as he looked around him. He was standing in a massive room made out of the white stone, every twenty meters a large marble column connected the roof and the floor. The room was at least a kilometer in length and five-hundred meters in width. He couldn’t see a door or anything of the like, what he did see however were about five-hundred other kids.

A few dozen other kids had stood up at the same time as him and were also looking around. Some others were laying on the floor with their eyes open, looking from the left to the right while others were still soundly sleeping.

Everyone was wearing a fully black robe, when he looked down he noticed he was too, something else he noticed was that there was a contraption on his right arm, he checked it out and noticed it was holding a wooden wand within, he simply had to reach down with his middle finger on his right hand to unlock the mechanism and the wand would fall into his hand right away.

He also felt something in the left pocket of the robe he was wearing, when he took it out he saw there were a few small crystal shards about the size of a fingernail and he understood that this must be the magic crystals Silver said she would give him so he could follow the electives he wanted to.

When he looked around now, most people were awake and in the process of standing up and he noticed that they didn’t seem to have the wand-sheath he had. Instead, some of them reached into their black boots and took the wand out of that studying it with great curiosity.

He had finally arrived at the academy, a month after entering this world!