I look at the sheet of paper and criticize it. Looking through everything again, I see no flaws, as expected of my greatness.

Happy with my result, I get up and bring it to the teacher.

“Done so soon, huh, Jeldard? Very good. Let’s see what you’ve written.”, the teacher says and looks down at the paper.

He looks through all my writing and, after a little time, crosses off the rune I wrote down to make the magic condense into a sphere.

After I give him a confused and slightly annoyed glare, he states, “That rune should only be used on elements with no physical form, like fire or wind, which don’t have a specific way they condense. Earth and water mana automatically condense into a sphere. In this case, this rune would just waste mana.”.

I nod a little annoyed. Whatever, lesson learned. I go back to my seat and wait for the period to end.

While minding my business, the annoying pest sitting to my right nudges me a little.

I look over to her, and I hear her whisper, “What’s the rune for condense?”.

I inwardly sigh at her stupidity and attempt to show her, but unfortunately, I don’t have a piece of paper anymore, so I have to trace the shape of the rune with my finger on the desk surface, which unsurprisingly catches the eye of the teacher.

"Ms. Keswick, please relocate two seats to your right.", Keswick frowns, and I hear her mutter, “Why’d you have to sit in the front?” out of frustration.

Well, whatever. I’m pretty sure she got the rune anyway.

After a while, the period ends, and Keswick is still looking at her paper, so like a true gentleman, I ditch her and leave for soul anatomy.

I make it to the soul anatomy class and take my seat. After a while, the students head in and take their seats as well.

The teacher arrives also, fashionably late as always.

She starts talking, “Oh hello students, I hope you had lovely breaks.”.

“This year’s curriculum will continue where we left off in the first year. So we're starting off with the core and mana veins.”.

She continues and dives into the subject, and I already know what she talks about because I’ve studied ahead. Although I do learn new things here and there.

The lesson ends, and we all head out for our dorms.

On the way, I realize something is different. It’s more calm, and I can think straight. Oh, Keswick isn’t talking.

Looking to my right, I see she is following along with me, but she seems to be in a bad mood. Hah, schmuck, that’s why you study.

Eventually, we split up, and I entered my dorm. Ustos is doing his little meditation exercises, so I leave him to it.

I go to the library to write the soul anatomy homework.

When I return, the day has already passed. I make Ustos do some leg exercises, and I head to bed.

A week passes by, and the mana theory teacher starts teaching us more about structuring magic circles and tells us that we will move on to actually casting spells soon. The soul anatomy teacher continued to teach us about the inner workings of the mana core. I was told that the artificing lessons will begin on the second week.

So now, after mana theory and soul anatomy class, I am sitting in a new classroom waiting for the artificing teacher to walk in. Looking around, I see new faces, likely from parallel classes. It doesn’t really matter; they generally look at me with the same glares.

After some time, the teacher walks in, and unsurprisingly, they are another middle-aged man with a high hairline.

He starts talking in a very monotonous and dead tone, “Greetings, everyone. I am going to be all of your artificing teacher.”

“First of all, introductions are in order.” He goes down each row and asks us all our names.

“Ok, now that that’s all sorted out, let’s begin our lesson.”.

“Artificing is the art of augmenting and enhancing physical material with runes.”.

“For example, with artificing, you can augment the shape of an object, turn them to dust, or even make them move on their own.”.

“Although those are low examples of artificing, one great example is the necklace all of you are currently wearing. They are bond to your soul's signature and can follow your location from a very long ways away.”.

“I have brought this for example,” he pulls out a wooden cube out of seemingly nowhere.

“With just a little work, we can transform this cube into a sphere.”.

“First, we say what elements we need to use. Since this is wood, it mostly uses water and earth elements. Of course, there are traces of other elements in it, but not enough to make an impact.”.