---Silvia's pov---

After the class ended, I walked out with Lia and Emy to get lunch at the cafeteria. We sat down with our trays and started eating.

"So what do you think about everything Deverick said?" I asked Lia.

"They make sense, but I don't know how he will teach the class."

"Didn't you say he was more than capable in combat?"

"He was. Just magic-wise. I don't know how well he will account for weaponry. I have never seen him use any melee weapons."

"Emy believes."

"I guess we will see."

"Yeah."

We continued eating until Shin came over with someone.

"Can I join you, ladies?"

I motioned to the seats around the table.

He took a seat and introduced his new friend.

"This is Selena. She's a transfer so I wanted to show her around."

At that sentence, I took a closer look at the new arrival. Low and behold, it's the same lady that I talked to this morning.

"It's a small world." She noticed me and gave me a greeting.

"It sadly is," I replied.

Shin looked at this exchange.

"You two know each other?"

"Yes. We met this morning. She's obsessed with Deverick."

"Am not. I just want to get to know him."

"If only you heard yourself."

"At least I have a goal."

Shin and the other two girls decided to ignore this exchange. 

"So will you be joining his other class later?" Shin made a side conversation.

"No. Emy not good with such stuff."

"I think I will pass. The class deals with hiding information which is not something I want to work on right now. I want to put more time into researching artifacts. Plus I don't want to dedicate so much time to these two classes. Also, I want to take more classes. You?"

"Of course, I will. It's a man's dream to use be a secret agent."

I could practically see stars form in his eyes. I don't know what he meant by secret agent, but I will let him be. Every genius has some eccentricities and if I were caught up by every single one of them, I would not have any time.

After eating, Selena, Shin, and I walked to the room of the class. When we got there, we were about 20 minutes early, but we didn't mind. It's only the first day and the only homework Deverick gave us so far is to think about what weapons we want to use. It's very calm compared to what I was used to. Now that I think about it, the first few weeks of his classes were always calm. Things only ramp up after that. I wonder if he did that on purpose.

We found a seat in the front row and sat down next to Mary.

"Interesting finding you here," I greeted her.

"Oh, hello Sylvia."

"Why does it seem like you know everyone we have met so far? It's too coincidental like someone set this up," Shin commented.

"Oh, that's because Deverick introduced us before school started. Mary, this is Shin. He was in both of Deverick's classes last year like me. And this is Selena, a transfer student." I decided to give a normal greeting to the obsessive fan.

"Hello there."

"Hi."

The two greeted her.

"Hello. I am Mary, a friend that Deverick hired to be his assistant."

"Assistent? Wasn't Professor Racker helping him out?"

"What professor?" she asked in confusion.

I looked at her weirdly. 

"What's wrong?"

"He didn't tell you about his previous assistant, did he?"

"He only said he was voluntarily helping out but became too busy with school so I assumed he was a student."

"Long story short, a professor wanted to learn from him so Deverick offered him a position to help out and listen in on his classes," I explained.

Her eyes widened. 

"You will get used to this eventually. Deverick doesn't exactly go around bragging about his accomplishments so will you always find out at the weirdest times."

"I see."

"No I don't see," Shin jumped in, "That doesn't explain why you would know her beforehand."

"Well, stuff happened over the summer and Deverick ended up taking me as a student researcher."

"So you get to work together with him whenever you want?" Selena asked with what I felt to be a small amount of jealousy. 

Yeah, you should be jealous. I get to consult him whenever I need help, while you can only find him during specific times.

"Technically yes."

*mumble mumble mumble*

I didn't hear what she was saying, but it doesn't seem like a normal thought by the face she was making.

 A few minutes passed until 3 people came to our row. 

"Can we join you at the front row?" One middle-aged man asked us.

"Go for it," Mary encouraged them.

I looked over. Among the group, there are 2 men and one woman. The two men have dark hair with faint traces of whiteness. There were also some barely noticeable wrinkles on their faces. The woman on the other hand seemed younger than her two companions. She had this mature look to her, but her skin still looks young. She looks like a normal woman in her 30s, but who knows how old she actually was considering magic does slow down aging.

The stronger the mana in the body, the slower they age. Because of this factor, most mages live to their hundreds, while the legendary ones live past one thousand. I don't know who they are, but they defiantly aren't students.

"Thank you."

"If I may ask, why are you here?" Apparently, Shin was also curious about the newcomers.

"The same reason as you, to learn." One of the middle-aged men replied.

"To learn?"

"Yes. We heard many things about this professor so we asked to join."

"Okay?" Quite an unexpected response to say the least. I wonder what attracted them.

(a/n: Just for clarification, these are not their original looks. That's why Sylvia does not recognize them.)

When Deverick walked in, he stared at the trio for a few seconds, before ignoring them. He gave the classroom a quick sweep with his eyes before talking.

"Now there are a lot more familiar faces in this class than I expected. You do realize you don't have to take all my classes, right? You can learn from other professors. I know some that teach their fields very well."

"I don't know about the others, but I am personally very interested in this topic," Shin answered. 

"Yeah!"

"I'm here to see if I might enjoy this class. If not, I won't hesitate. Your classes aren't exactly easy, professor."

A bunch of responses from other students that took his previous classes.

Deverick smiled at these responses.

"Very well. I didn't know there were that many people interested in this niche topic. That or my charm is that good."

"I'm here because you hooked me with the display the morning," someone in the back yelled out.

"Yeah, professor. When are you going to talk about the paper-burning transmission thing?"

I can tell the class was very comfortable with speaking their mind around Deverick. It's strange. When he first started, although he delivers good information, he gave the impression of this cold, hard-to-approach professor. Now, he gives people the vibe of a casual older brother, despite him being younger than everyone. He has changed so much over the past year that it's hard to tell they are the same person. Maybe he realized the cold personal is too tiring to play?

"Paper burning transmission?" one of the men asked us.

When they asked that, I realized that they might not have seen the event that some were talking about.

"He had us burn a piece of paper with some responses on it and the answer is sent to the board somehow and processed." I quickly filled them in.

The man turned to the other man.

"Windfrey, do you have any idea?"

"I have a guess, but I think he is going to explain that soon." Windfrey pointed at Deverick.

I turned just in time to see Deverick open his mouth.

"I see that many of you are curious about how I did that. Very well, I will explain the logic behind it. As many of you had guessed, the paper I used handed out was not normal paper. Instead, it was a piece of cloth weaved with a spell of mine. Then, I modified the properties of the cloth so that it felt and acted as paper. When the cloth is burned, a signal was sent to a receiver in the form of a space vibration wave. The information contained in the signal is determined by what you wrote. By tracing the indentation of the surface, an imprint of your writing was sent to the main processor. After that, it's just using artificial intelligence to interpret the results and group them under the same category."

That sounds pretty simple, but I am sure the process was much more complex than what he said. And apparently, the man named Windfrey also agreed with me. I only need to see his furrowed brows and twitching eye to tell.

"That segways to the question of the day. What is encryption and why is it used? For me, encryption is how well information is hidden and delivered. In the prior example, I didn't hide the information, but I transmitted it in a unique way. That is an example of the application of encryption. But this class won't really focus on that part. Rather, we will mainly focus on what ways information can be concealed. I am sure many of you hide stuff from others. Whether by lying, not talking about it, or giving misleading answers. There are a lot of ways to make sure something remains hidden.

In our case, we will focus on stuff that we have written down or only a specified target to know. Basically intelligence gathering and making sure the information is useless if it gets into the wrong hands. In my case, I wanted to encrypt my research results so that no one but myself can understand them. That is the best way to ensure my notes don't get stolen or read unless it's by someone I wanted. A very strong way of controlling information.

Now let me go through the timeline of this class. For the first 2 months, I will introduce a bunch of encryption methods. Some of them will be common. Some rare. Some enigmatic. And some that are very troublesome. These examples are there to give you all an idea of what might be possible with the right technique. After that, I will take about some points to pay attention to when you are trying to create an encryption system. 

Starting at this time, I want you all to start thinking about designing your own system. Take inspiration from prior examples, modify a system based on a concept, or innovate your own. It doesn't matter if the ones you have at this time are bad. And I don't expect you to know everything. That's why I will be talking about it. Over the course of the year, I will keep introducing more advanced concepts. When this happens, you can incorporate these elements into your system or start over.

I want you all to play with everything. Create multiple systems. Learn from each other. Figure out where things can be improved upon. And finally, how to crack the systems. Yes, decryption will be one of the topics. For this to happen, it is important you create a system and participate in class activities. Starting from the third month, I will have you form small groups and swap encrypted messages. Let them try and try to crack your encryption. This will happen at the end of every following month from then. But don't let this limit you. If you want, you can find others outside of class to test your designs.

The end goal of this class is to let you form your own system that you can hopefully continue to build upon and use for your own purposes. Now are there any questions before I continue?"