If the giant sign over the front gate didn’t make it obvious enough, the dark stone tower rising over the main building proudly announced The Magic Academy of Gadea as the tallest and most important place in the whole capital. Well, nearly the tallest, only second to the distant towering spire of the Church. For some reason, it felt like that shining spire was pointing this very direction as if offering a challenge while gloating.

Regardless, at the upper left corner of the city’s Upper District, the Academy’s campus grounds looked like a miniature city unto itself. A tall iron fence surrounded the entire complex, a series of buildings around the largest in the center all connected by immaculate brick pathways. Even the grass appeared an impossibly perfect shade of green with the same trimmed height as far as the eye could see.

“It’s pretty sweet huh?” Titania asked, gesturing around with her lance.

For once, I couldn’t think of a witty response.

We stood by the front entrance taking in the sights until a woman in burgundy robes passed by. Her dark, silvery grey hair was tied in some sort of bun behind her head, a few books and scrolls gently clutched in her arms.

Titania hailed her with a wave. “Hello again, Professor!”

The woman abruptly stopped, turning toward us with a nod before approaching. “Well met, guild master,” she greeted.

Titania blushed while massaging her neck. Just how much did she like getting called ‘guild master?!’ It’s not like I was jealous, but…!

“We have a new arrival in town looking for reattunement,” the newbie guild master continued. “I know you usually prefer setting up an appointment, but since it’s the summer and all, do you have a few minutes?”

“Indeed,” the woman agreed before giving me a quick once-over. “Professor Wintra Seren, pleased to meet you.”

She really was a professor? Even more than her title, she looked like someone important here!

“Likewise!” I said with a slight bow. “I am Lady Beryl.”

An indecipherable trace of emotion crossed Seren’s face for a split second. “Lady Beryl,” she repeated.

Crap, was she suspicious I was pretending to be a literal noble lady? This time I was just going by the online alias I had used for years; I kind of got caught up in the moment and wanted a damn title like them!

“Uh… yes?” I gulped.

She blinked at me. “Very good. Might you be looking to reattune out of magic affinity?”

I nodded.

“Hmm, that’s unfortunate,” Seren mused with a hint of a frown. “The Academy could use more girls like you.”

“Come again?”

“Forgive me,” she said, shaking her head as if to clear her thoughts. “Right this way, please.”

Professor Seren lead us into the main building and up a few flights of stairs to the floor of her office. As she walked in front of us, I noticed she wore a belt around her waist that held a number of short wandlike sticks, each one a slightly different color of wood. They should have shook and rattled with every step, yet somehow every wand remained surprisingly still around her as if held by invisible glue.

Rather than open the door to her office with a hand, Seren retrieved a light-colored wand from her belt that lit up with her mana before the door swung open on its own. I didn’t stay impressed at that for long, though. The room itself was a tiny library of incredibly organized bookshelves jam-packed with various books, scrolls, and other bundles of paper. Two fancy chairs faced a large desk at the far end, a set of windows letting in the afternoon sun that bathed a square rug at the office’s center in warm light.

“So how is this going to work?” I whispered to Titania after we stepped inside.

“Just watch,” she grinned, motioning me to step aside.

With a delicate flick of the professor’s wand, the rug lifted off the floor and neatly rolled itself up before tucking away in a corner. A wave of nausea made my stomach churn; removing the rug exposed a circular ritual diagram inlaid with countless overlapping shapes painted directly onto the wooden floor.

Why did it have to look so much like a summoning circle?

After I nervously told her I wanted to try the agility affinity, Seren pulled out a piece of chalk from her desk and made some quick alterations to a third of the diagram. A shiver ran down my spine when she levitated a chair toward the center of the ritual circle and gestured for me to take a seat.

“Are you sure this is totally safe?” I had to ask.

She nodded like she was used to hearing such concerns. “You may feel a slight pressure or fuzzy sensation in your abdominal cavity, but I can assure you that there are no serious risks. Shall we begin?”

I gulped as I sat down inside the ritual circle. Not a summoning circle, not a summoning circle…

The professor swapped her wand for a darker one from her belt as she pointed toward the center of the diagram. She closed her eyes as she concentrated, every curve and line on the floor lighting up with a bright blue glow. The air around me began to hum and vibrate as Seren channelled her mana, even my ponytail rising up and fanning out around me as if I was underwater.

I felt my clenched palms get slicker and sweatier with each passing minute. I really should have asked how long this was going to take!

A vein popped on Seren’s forehead like she was straining as hard as she could, her knuckles turning white around her wand. I shot a glance toward Titania, and for some reason even she looked unusually nervous. The humming around me grew louder and louder as the ritual diagram lit up to an almost blinding light.

Sweat and anxious reactions aside, I hadn’t felt anything at all this whole time—until a sudden intense pressure in my chest made my heart skip a beat. A moment of panic struck like lightning at the invading sensation, and I instinctively lashed back with my own channelled mana at full force to resist it.

Then all hell broke loose.

The air erupted around me like an exploding gas tank. The room trembled and quaked, a storm of books and papers launching out of their shelves to fly around and redecorate the room. And then, silence. Dead silence.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Seren shouted.

“Hey, that’s my line!” I shot back.

The professor used her free hand to rapidly cast a flurry of spells, countless lights flickering within her eyes like a computer processing an endless stream of data. When she had finished, her eyes grew frighteningly wide.

“What in the name of…! Mages would kill for a Gift like this!”

“Wait, what?” I asked. I couldn’t help noticing the familiar sensation of my mana coursing through my body. “After all that, you didn’t change my affinity?”

“I couldn’t even if I wanted to!” Seren huffed.

She yanked out her previous wand and began madly swiping back and forth in the air, a few scattered books and scrolls flying back onto their shelves. After a few seconds of hardly making any progress, she gave up and sighed as though exasperated at how long it would take to clean up the rest.

“It would appear I will be quite busy this afternoon,” the professor said as her brow started to twitch ever so slightly. “Please leave now, and good day to you both!”

***

“Hup! Hrrk! Hyah!”

I vented my frustrations by swinging and striking out into the empty street with Titania’s lance. Or at least, I tried to; the lengthy weapon was a lot heavier than it looked, and every lunge and strike went much slower than I would have hoped while pulling my whole body along with the momentum. And there was an even bigger reason that dashed any hopes I had left of trying weapons training instead of magic. Two big reasons, at that. Even if I could have gotten an affinity to boost my physical might and the muscles to effectively use a heavy weapon like this, with my chest, swinging around just about any melee weapon would be uncomfortable at best and chronically painful at worst.

This must be why the bustiest girls in fantasy worlds always seem to end up as mages…

“Um, Beryl, are you done yet?” Titania asked with an unusual red to her cheeks.

“Oh, right.” After I handed back the lance she let me borrow, I had to grit my teeth at how easily she was able to heft it with only one arm. “Anyways, what the hell happened back there?”

Titania anxiously rubbed her neck. “Yeah, about that… There was something I forgot to ask you before. I know a cozy little tavern near the river. It’s a little early, but why don’t I get us some drinks?”

I let out a sigh of relief when the tavern she picked out wasn’t the same place John took me to on my first day here. The only other locals in the room were two men who looked like drinking buddies and a few loners, so we were able to get a relatively private table all to ourselves in a back corner. After we sat down, my companion hailed a young barmaid who quickly returned with two mugs of ale. Titania still seemed kind of shaken from that earlier experience, judging from the way she chugged her whole mug within seconds before ordering another.

“Like I said earlier,” she finally began, “that ritual usually works just fine. It’s true! The only problem is when Outworlders have a Divine Gift that’s either tied to their affinity or has some kind of anti-magic trait. In that case, there’s basically no way to reattune.”

“Hold on, ‘Divine Gift?’” I asked. “What is that?”

Titania looked at me as though I just asked how many legs are on a cat. “It’s the other part of our ‘starting bonus’ we got to pick before coming here, remember?”

I’m pretty sure John never mentioned anything like that before he abruptly ended our very first meeting. Before he…

Oh, that bastard!

“Well, apparently something came up and I never even got the chance to pick out a… Gift,” I grumbled.

“Huh? Never heard anything like that happen before,” Titania said, “and I’ve spoken to a ton of other Earthers. But you know, it sounds like you got a really good one!”

I had my doubts about that, and that was beside the point anyway! This meant I couldn’t even try out superhuman reflexes in this world, and I was stuck being a mage with limited access to spell training no matter what? I really did need this beer right now…

“So what are these Gifts supposed to be?” I asked, feeling a little better after downing my whole mug.

Titania sat up a little straighter. “Basically, they are… usually another type of ‘passive’ ability like affinities, except Divine Gifts are much more specialized and only us Outworlders get them. They’re supposed to help us stay evenly matched with the natives since we don’t start here with any family or connections. It’s been a couple years since I saw the whole list, but most of them were about giving minor boosts to combat skills or social interactions. Some Gifts were called things like Increased Accuracy, Psychic Empathy, Extra Endurance, Poison Immunity, Sharper Senses, pretty self-explanatory stuff and nothing ‘gamebreaking,’ if you know what I mean.”

I leaned back in my chair, just slightly more relaxed than before. As much as I would have liked to see that list, it didn’t sound like I had missed out on any overpowered cheat because of that cheesy bastard.

“Alright, I guess that makes sense,” I sighed. “Which one did you pick?”

“Wh-What?” Titania stammered. “It’s not that important, really. Don’t worry about it!”

Something felt very ‘off’ about her jittery response. The way she just started laughing nervously with another hand rubbing her neck was far too suspicious. Did she get something really overpowered?!

“What is it? It’s fine, you can tell me!” I said, leaning a little closer.

She looked away, her face redder than ever before. “It’s not that big of a deal. Really! I mean, it kind of is, but… I mean, I just don’t talk about it that—”

“Seriously, I need to know!”

I reached out and gently put a hand over hers. This might have been reckless, but I was too tipsy at the moment to care!

Titania bit her lip while she stared into my eyes as if checking my resolve. After a few tense seconds, she snatched her second drink and chugged it down in record time.

“Okay, so it’s like this,” she began after a deep breath. “Most Divine Gifts are essentially just accelerated training or the permanent effects of an enchanted item, right? But there was one Gift on the list that was different from all the others, and as soon as I saw it, I… I just knew I had to go with it.”

For some reason, a chill ran down my spine as if warning me to turn back. But if it was an overpowered cheat, I really did need to know.

“Well, what is it?”

Titania looked around one last time to make sure no one else was in earshot, then her face lit up with a grin like she was finally telling a secret she’d been dying to tell for years.

“Dual Genitalia.”

I think my brain just broke.

“You… what? I didn’t hear you right. Dual… Dual wield?”

She leaned closer, drunkenly grinning even wider. “Oh I think you did hear right! Yeah, having both down there is pretty great, not gonna lie. You won’t believe how it saved me from that scumbag Ciedrich! Back when I was a newbie, he spun some bullshit to get me alone and tried doing his thing, but all it took was one look at my ‘partner’ downstairs standing up for me and he passed out cold! I always wished I would’ve finished him off when I had that chance instead of getting the hell away, but I don’t have to worry about that anymore thanks to you! Ahh~, that felt better getting off my chest than I ever imagined. Oh, you must be curious what I look like down there! Normally I wouldn’t offer but since it’s you, um… Do you want to see?”

No… No… No, this can’t be real. This can’t be happening. Her suggestive choice of weapon, and the reason she never stayed with just one adventuring party, and the reason she got embarrassed watching me grab and swing her… no, no, NO!

For the second time since I came here, something at my very core straight up snapped.

I shot up out of my chair and shouted at the top of my lungs, “For the love of God, is there ANYONE in this world who isn’t a pervert?!”

“Excuse you lady,” said a drinking man seated across the room. “I’m just trying to raise a family over here!”

“Don’t listen to him,” the guy next to him spoke up. “You should see the way he looks at stray cats.”

“Son of a bitch! I fucking knew it!”

I made a beeline for the door.

“Beryl, wait!” Titania called after me. “It’s not like that!”

“Look, I am going to go have a little chat with an old ‘pal’ of mine. Just give me a second.”

“What?”

Fortunately, one second was all I needed. My finger turned into a glowing blur for the moment it took to cast my improved version of Recall, and the whole tavern of perverts vanished before my eyes.

It was time to get some answers.

Malonymous

Trivia: this was originally the ‘climactic’ chapter where that last line of dialogue from the synopsis was first going to come into the story, but I also added it back in chapter 3 to make the scene more impactful. Also Titania's name was originally going to be Futanya, but you know... figured that might spoil the 'surprise' too early ;)