The Last Apprentice of Magic

CHAPTER 3 — THE FIRST LESSON

The classroom door opened before Fred could answer.

Professor Vale stood outside.

His expression was calm, but his eyes told a different story.

Fred's fingers tightened around the edge of his desk as the professor stepped into the room and quietly closed the door behind him.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

The warning from the previous night still echoed through Fred's mind.

Don't let the academy know what's inside your core.

Fred wanted answers, but instead of offering any, Vale looked directly at him and asked a question.

"Did you attempt to analyze your core?"

Fred hesitated.

That hesitation was enough.

Vale released a quiet sigh.

"I thought so."

Fred pushed himself away from the desk and stood.

"You knew?"

"I suspected."

"What is the restriction?"

The professor's expression hardened.

"I don't know."

Fred stared at him, struggling to understand the answer.

"You don't know?"

"I know enough to understand that you shouldn't try to remove it."

"Who put it there?"

Vale turned his attention toward the window. For a moment, he watched the students moving through the courtyard below before answering.

"That's the question you should be asking yourself."

Fred frowned.

Before he could press him for an explanation, the professor turned toward the door.

"Your first spellcraft class begins in twenty minutes."

Fred couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"That's all you're going to say?"

"For now."

Vale opened the door, but he stopped before stepping through it.

"Fred."

"Yes?"

"Whatever happens today, don't demonstrate everything you can do."

Fred stared at him.

"Why?"

Vale looked back over his shoulder.

"Because the people who underestimate you are safer than the people who become interested in you."

With that, he left.

Fred remained where he was, staring at the closed door.

He didn't know whether Professor Vale was protecting him or warning him.

Perhaps the more frightening possibility was that he was doing both.

---

The spellcraft classroom was already crowded when Fred arrived.

The students were arranged around several circular magical workstations, each equipped with a small crystal, a rune plate, and a silver mana conductor. Unlike the worn equipment in the Foundation classroom, these devices were surprisingly advanced.

Fred immediately noticed faint streams of magical energy running beneath the desks.

The academy's technology was everywhere.

Magic hadn't replaced technology in this world.

It had transformed it.

A digital board floated above the instructor's desk, displaying the academy's emblem in a constant rotation of light.

When Professor Vale entered the classroom, the conversations immediately died down.

"Today," he said, "you will construct your first elemental spell."

The board changed.

A glowing diagram appeared in the air.

BASIC FLAME SPELL — LEVEL ONE

The diagram contained seventeen interconnected runes.

Vale pointed toward it.

"This spell is considered one of the simplest offensive spells known to modern magic. Its basic structure has remained largely unchanged for more than two decades."

Fred stared at the diagram.

Something bothered him about it.

He couldn't immediately explain what it was, but the longer he looked, the more obvious the problem became.

Around him, the other students began copying the formation.

Kael worked quickly, his fingers moving confidently across the rune plate as he transferred mana into each magical node.

Elara, seated two rows ahead, completed her formation almost as quickly.

Then Fred reached the fourth rune.

He stopped.

His eyes remained fixed on the glowing symbol.

The structure wasn't broken, and it wasn't dangerous.

It was simply inefficient.

The fourth rune redirected too much mana toward the ignition core. Every student using the standard formation was wasting energy before the spell had even formed.

Fred frowned.

Why would they design it like this?

He examined the surrounding runes more carefully.

The answer soon became obvious.

The fourth rune had been designed to compensate for unstable mana circulation. It forced excess energy back toward the ignition core, making the spell easier for inexperienced mages to control.

But if the mana flow was controlled differently, the rune wasn't necessary.

Fred hesitated.

Professor Vale had warned him not to reveal too much.

He should have left the formation alone.

Instead, he erased the fourth rune and replaced it with a smaller variation.

The student beside him noticed.

"Hey, that's not the formation."

Fred ignored him and continued working.

He completed the remaining runes and activated the spell.

The crystal on his desk glowed.

A moment later, a tiny flame appeared above his palm.

It was barely the size of a candle.

Several students laughed.

"That's it?"

"After all that?"

"Thirty-one mana really is thirty-one mana."

Fred ignored them.

He studied the flame.

It wasn't impressive in size, but something about it immediately caught his attention.

The flame was perfectly stable.

More importantly, the mana consumption was almost nonexistent.

Fred glanced at the crystal and checked the amount of energy he had used.

His eyes narrowed.

He had barely spent anything.

A thought struck him.

Efficiency.

Maybe raw mana wasn't the only measurement that mattered.

Perhaps everyone had spent years measuring the size of the fuel tank while ignoring how efficiently the fuel inside it could be used.

"Fred."

He looked up.

Professor Vale was standing beside his desk.

The professor pointed toward the modified rune formation.

"Why did you alter the fourth rune?"

The classroom gradually fell quiet.

Fred swallowed.

He knew this was dangerous.

"It was wasting mana."

A wave of laughter swept through the room.

Several students shook their heads, while one boy muttered, "He thinks he can improve academy spellcraft after one day."

Professor Vale didn't laugh.

Instead, he looked directly at Fred.

"Demonstrate it."

Fred stared at him.

"Professor?"

"You heard me."

Fred slowly raised his hand.

The tiny flame hovered above his palm.

He increased the mana flow.

The flame grew to ten centimeters.

Then twenty.

Then thirty.

As the flame expanded, the laughter gradually faded.

Fred continued feeding it mana.

The small flame eventually expanded into a bright sphere of fire that hovered steadily above his palm.

Yet the amount of mana he was using remained remarkably low.

Fred stopped.

The sphere floated above his hand, burning brighter than the standard version displayed on the board.

Nobody spoke.

Kael stared at the spell with open interest.

Elara had turned completely around in her seat.

Even Lucian, who had been sitting near the back of the classroom, had stopped smiling.

Professor Vale stepped closer.

"How much mana did you use?"

Fred glanced at the crystal.

"Four units."

A murmur swept through the classroom.

The standard version of the spell required nearly twenty units.

Kael's eyebrows rose.

"Four?"

Fred nodded.

Professor Vale looked at the modified formation and then back at Fred.

"Do it again."

Fred repeated the spell.

The result was identical.

Four units.

The same stable flame.

The professor's expression changed.

It wasn't admiration or excitement.

It was concern.

Fred noticed.

So did Kael.

The classroom filled with whispers.

"How did he do that?"

"He must have memorized another spell."

"No first-year knows that kind of optimization."

Fred barely heard them.

His attention had drifted somewhere else.

A memory had surfaced.

He was eight years old again, standing in front of a magical assessment crystal while an examiner studied the result.

31.

His parents had tried to hide their disappointment.

The instructor hadn't bothered.

"You'll never become a mage."

Those words had stayed with Fred for years.

He looked at the flame hovering above his hand.

For the first time, he wondered whether that statement had ever been true.

Maybe he had simply been measuring himself by the wrong standard.

Maybe his problem wasn't that he lacked enough magic.

Maybe nobody had ever taught him how to use what he already had.

The flame flickered.

Fred closed his fingers, and the spell disappeared.

Professor Vale dismissed the class early.

The students slowly filed out of the room, although they continued discussing what they had witnessed in hushed voices.

Kael stopped beside Fred before leaving.

"You changed one rune."

Fred nodded.

"And reduced the mana cost by eighty percent."

"Approximately."

Kael stared at him for a moment.

"Can you do that with every spell?"

Fred shrugged.

"I don't know."

A smile appeared on Kael's face.

"Then I'll be watching."

He walked away.

Fred watched him disappear through the classroom door.

There was something different about Kael.

He wasn't looking at Fred with contempt.

He was looking at him as though Fred had become a challenge.

Fred wasn't sure whether that was better.

---

The classroom eventually emptied.

Professor Vale remained behind.

Fred turned toward the door.

"Professor?"

"Stay."

The door closed behind the last student.

Vale walked toward Fred's workstation and carefully examined the rune formation.

He activated a small magical scanner.

A beam of blue light passed over the formation.

The professor's expression gradually became more serious.

He checked the spell again.

Then he checked it a second time.

Finally, he whispered, almost to himself, "That's not something a first-year should know."

Fred heard him.

"What?"

Vale didn't answer.

Instead, he touched the modified fourth rune.

"The academy teaches students to memorize this formation because it is considered stable."

He looked directly at Fred.

"You saw the inefficiency immediately."

Fred shrugged.

"It was obvious."

Vale's eyes narrowed.

"Obvious?"

Fred immediately realized he had said too much.

The professor turned toward him.

"Who taught you?"

Fred's heart skipped.

He thought about the blue interface, the strange ability called Magical Observation, and the warning about his core.

Nobody could know.

"Nobody."

Vale stared at him.

Fred expected disbelief.

Instead, something much worse appeared in the professor's eyes.

Fear.

The professor slowly looked back at the spell formation.

Then he whispered, "That's the frightening part."

Fred's stomach tightened.

"What do you mean?"

Vale didn't answer.

His attention had shifted to the modified rune.

For several seconds, he remained completely still, as though something about the formation had triggered a memory he didn't want to acknowledge.

Then he reached into his robe and pulled out an old metallic disc.

The moment the disc came close to Fred's spell formation, it activated.

A red symbol appeared across its surface.

Professor Vale's face went pale.

Fred stared at the symbol.

"What is that?"

Vale immediately closed his hand around the disc.

"Nothing."

But Fred had already seen it.

His strange ability activated before he could stop it.

[Unknown magical pattern detected.]

Fred's eyes widened.

A second message appeared.

[Pattern similarity: 72%.]

His heart seemed to stop.

The symbol on Professor Vale's disc wasn't merely similar to something Fred had seen before.

It was connected to the same mysterious structure hidden inside his magical core.

Fred slowly raised his eyes.

Professor Vale was already looking directly at him.

And this time, Fred was certain.

The professor had seen the message.

The professor knew something.

Whatever secret had been buried inside Fred's magic for sixteen years, the academy had apparently been hiding it for much longer.

And now, Fred had just discovered a connection between that secret and Professor