“I’m sorry for judging you, Tom, you were right, that was awful,” Emily pins as she walks through the hall with Tom aer after css.

  “Told you so.” Tom grins smugly.

  “Goddess, I hope the other required csses I have aren’t that bad.”

  “What else do you have? We probably have more crossover,” Hester asks eagerly.

  “Geopolitics, maths, and English. Oh and I’ve signed up for hand-to-hand bat, but that ersonal choice.”

  “We have geopolitid maths too. Are you literate?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Then skip English. Apparently it’s a very basic course to make sure oners are literate, so it will be pletely useless to you.”

  “Ah, I see, thanks.” Emily nods, grateful for Hester’s advice.

  I’ll have to look into dropping the course ter.

  Reag the transportation rooms, Emily says goodbye to the twins and heads back to her room. A couple of minutes after returning to her room, a system notification pops up.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  -Quest failed: True Magical Genius #3

  _____

  Cheg the time, she sees it failed exactly twenty-four hours after she left the yesterday. Dismissing the notification with a nod of uanding, she swiftly returns to her spell-creation experiments.

  A few hours ter, Emily closes her notebook with a sigh.

  “Maybe I was a bit overzealous: I still don’t uand what these lines and shapes do.”

  Sitting ba her chair, she opeatus and stares at her progression page while bitihumb.

  Should I set this aside as a side projed focus ression first? Maybe learning some magiowledge will help, I’ll go to the library after lunch.

  With a deade, Emily moves to her bed and sits down cross-legged to meditate.

  ***

  “Why do you have your notebook with you?” Hester asks while drinking a spoonful of her soup.

  “I’m going to the library after this to do a bit of research. Wanna e?” Emily says, taking a bite from her .

  “Sure, I want to look at a few books on spellcasting too. I’ve made nress so far.”

  “I’ll e if I I piggyba your access level,” Tom says excitedly.

  “Sure, but what do you eve for?”

  “I want to see what history texts are limited to nobles only!”

  Emily stares at Tom with exaggerated surprise.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I’m just surprised you gave an intelligent answer.”

  “Hey! I’m not dumb!” Tom pins as Juliana aer ugh at Emily’s response.

  Wiping tears from her eyes, Hester adds to the versation: “He may look like that, but he’s actually pretty good at history. There’s a reason he was the one dad made give tours.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ign the twins bickering again, Emily looks to the sulking Juliana and asks her a question.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I just wao go with you guys, but I have a stupid lesson after lunch.”

  “Haha, you join us after your lesson. I’ll be there for a while, even if these guys leave quickly.”

  “Really?” Juliana asks, her eyes glistening with expectation.

  “Would I lie to you?” Emily says with a grin. “Besides, I’m probably going to want your advi what to researyway so I’ll be gd for your pany.”

  “Yay!” Juliana cheers, boung in her chair with excitement.

  How does she have this muergy?

  “Hey Emily,” Tom calls over, finished arguing with his sister, “What are you going to spend your points on by the way? You got loads yesterday.”

  “Wait, how many did she get?” Juliana asks while Emily siders her answer.

  “One hundred and forty!”

  “Woah!”

  “I’m not really sure,” Emily finally answers. “I hadn’t thought about it till now. Maybe I’ll use it iraining rooms.”

  “That’s a great idea, you could get like seventy hours in a gathering array with double may for that much.” Juliahusiastically nods at Emily’s idea.

  “Gathering array?” Tom asks.

  “Ah, sorry. Those are only avaible in the B-grade training rooms,” Juliana says sheepishly.

  “Tsk, never mind.”

  After finishing their lunch, Juliana gives each of the trio a hug and leaves on her own as they head towards the library. Walking into the giant room, they pick a small table, with easily enough room for four people, and sit down. Emily takes out her silver crest from her robes and taps it to the tre of the table. As the invisible sound barrier covers them, Tom pces his hand oable and makes his request.

  “B-grade history texts.”

  Emily raises an eyebrow at his request.

  “Wait, you ask for books by their grade?”

  “Yeah, this library request system is really helpful. You ask for books by grade, topic, author, length, pretty muy requirement you think of!” Tom grins proudly as he answers.

  “He spent over an hour making weird requests when we first came here to try and trick the system,” Hester adds dryly.

  “Hey! You weren’t meant to talk about that!” Tom pins with a slightly embarrassed blush.

  “Haha, nah I respect that, thanks for the information,” Emily chuckles and pats him on the shoulder.

  Ign Tom’s smug gloating to his sister and the books nding in front of him, Emily pces her hand oable and siders her first request.

  Before I look at spell creation, I think I need a solid base on the elements.

  “Five C-grade elemental theory, Five B-grade elemental theory.”

  After waiting for a couple of seds, two stacks of books build up oher side of her. Pig up the first book from the sta her left, she reads the title, ‘Elemental Fuals’, before opening it and reading it from the start.

  Flipping through the pages and abs the informatioed, Emily quickly dismisses the book as useless. The entire book tres around the theory of each element being locked to a designated personality type and pletely tradicts Emily’s ability to use so many pletely different elements. Taking a few quiotes on the personality traits given for each element just in case, she turns slightly and pushes the book through the barrier, letting it be carried away by the flight magic.

  Emily repeats this process with the other four books from the first stack, making notes on a few barely useful scraps of information and finishing in only thirty minutes. Moving onto the first book of the sed stack, she reads the title ‘Basic Elemental Theory’, then notices the author ‘Jenny Forsythia’.

  Slightly surprised, she opens the book with higher expectations. Reading through the first few pages, a small smile grows on her face, and she quickly begins making he book follows simir principles to those Jenny spoke of in css but goes into far more detail on each element, with examples of their natural appearances, along with their agical and non-magical usages. It also looks at the links between each element, going as far as creating links between what mages of Ulea call ‘Higher form elements’, and seemingly ued os, like lightning and wind.

  She has some iing ideas that are closer to the system’s knowledge. I’m excited to see if she work out mental magiy expnation of the brainwashing spell.

  Emily smiles as she moves on to the other books iack. Halfway through reading the fourth book iack, a system notification appears along with a familiar yet different feeling of information filling her head.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  Magiowledge learned: Basic Elemental Theory

  _____

  Instead of pletely new knowledge flowing in, the information Emily spent the past hour and a half learning expands and self-corrects until a new uanding of the elements is born in her mind.

  Jackpot!

  Smiling, Emily checks her progression requirements and sees basic magiowledges sitting at 2/3.

  Now I just have to work out what else stitutes magiowledge. I’ll talk to Juliana about it whes here. For now, let’s look at magic circles.

  Removing the elemental theory books from the desk, Emily makes another request.

  “Five B-grade magic circles.”

  “Wait, you’re doh those ten already?” Hester looks up from her reading and asks Emily with obvious fusion.

  “Yeah.”

  “How you uand all this teical mumbo jumbo so quickly?” she asks incredulously.

  Emily tilts her head in fusion at the question.

  “But it’s all perfectly straightforward, what is there to not uand?”

  Hester narrows her eyes at Emily’s answer before sighing and looking back down at her book as she mumbles: “Damn genius!”

  Wait.

  Emily quickly opens her system and pulls up the description of her Magical Genius talent.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  [Magical Genius]

  User is a natural-born mage.

  -Grants instant prehension of new magiowledge]

  -Mana strength increased by +50%

  -Increased aptitude for creating new spells

  _____

  Does the instant prehension of magiowledge help me uand teiguage or something? All these books seemed perfectly easy to read but e to think of it, Juliana did mention only using C-grade books so far, and all those C-grade elemental theory books seemed far too simple to me.

  Blinking away the system with a nereciation for her talent, Emily starts reading the books on magic circles. After sinking into her research for another hour, she is startled by a sudden voice over her shoulder.

  “Whatcha reading?”

  Jumping a little, Emily looks to the side and sees Juliana leaning over her with a wide griing out a breath and rexing, she expins:

  “I’m looking into magic circles because I was trying to create my own spell earlier but couldn’t uand what the lines and shapes within the magic circle were for.”

  Juliana moves to sit on the seat beside Emily.

  “I see. So you’re doing something ridiculous again.”

  “When isn’t she?” Tom mutters quietly, barely looking up from his book.

  “How is this ridiculous, isn’t it normal fes to make spells? How else do you guys get all your spells?”

  “Yes, but not normally first circle mages. We stick to buying spells from the information hub. After all, the spell creation course is intermediate grade for a reason.”

  Emily quickly he name of the book she was reading, befetting rid of the staext to her.

  “What does the crade have to do with it?”

  “While it’s not enforced, most basic courses are for first circle, intermediate for sed, and advanced for third. So, you doing something sidered an intermediate course is weird!”

  “I see,” Emily easily accepts Juliana’s ent before ging the subject. “Anyway, I’m trying to work out what subjects I should be researg at the moment because waiting for csses is taking too long. you help me work out the general topics I should be fog on? Please?”

  “Sure! I’ll do my best,” Juliana says happily while opening her notebook.

  After thirty minutes of going over her notes and trying to split everything Juliana has learned over the past year into specific subjects, Emily is left with a short list in her notebook to focus on.

  Natural mana formation

  Elemental theory

  ts

  Mana manipution

  Meditation teiques

  Reagents

  Arrays

  Runes

  “That’s pretty much everything I think of,” Juliana says while leaning bad stretg. “As long as you have a w meditation teique and focus on your element though, quite a lot of that isn’t needed. But I hope it helps.”

  “It’s perfect, thank you!” Emily says with a wide grin, giving Juliana a quick hug before turning back to the table to request more books.

  I’m not sure if it will be sidered a magiowledge but let's look at meditation teiques first. I don’t know if what I’ve been using is any good: it’s just a random way of breathing Anna taught me to calm down.

  “Five B-grade meditation teiques.”

  Once more, a stack of books forms on the desk o her, and Emily picks up the first ohe els Within’, and starts to read. The book immediately grabs her attention as it goes into detail oernal mana circuits each mage forms, and how to use a rhythmic flow withio increase the amount of mana gathered and even passively press mana before it reaches the magic circle.

  Her notes are slowly filled with more information, with each book having slightly different views and opinions from the st. With every book she reads, Emily streamlines her notes and begins f ideas for a new meditation teique.

  Pig up the final book from the stack, Emily raises an eyebrow at the odd name, ‘A Study on Magical Beasts’.

  Why did I receive this when I asked for books oation teiques?

  Opening the book, she reads the first page.

  Magical beasts are creatures who have been exposed to vast quantities of mana since birth. Unlike mages, their usage of mana es naturally, and their development in power is pletely passive.

  Through this study, I aim to uand the methods beasts enact to draw in atmospheria even in motion, to supplement my own growth.

  First, we shall start with a Bzing Samander, a rare creature I found when travelling to the volic region in the south of the Lerus Isles…

  Emily swiftly devours the book, before looking at the author and requesting any other texts they produced, along with more resources on general meditation teiques. With her focus fully on her research, time flows smoothly until a system notification interrupts her.