Early the next morning, after washing up, Luo Wei opened the door to her dorm room.

  The figure pacing outside froze, then looked up nervously.

  Luo Wei paused in the doorway, raising an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?”

  “I—I was waiting for you,” Vina stammered. “I couldn’t find you last night, and I wanted to ask about… my father’s letter…”

  “You’re in luck.” Luo Wei shut the door behind her and started walking. “You won your bet.”

  “My bet… You mean my father agreed!” Vina’s face lit up with joy as she hurried to catch up. “He really agreed?”

  “Yeah, he agreed.” Luo Wei glanced sideways at her. “Are you this happy because you get to keep your fingers?”

  “N-no, that’s not it!”

  Vina instinctively clutched her hands to her chest. Ever since Luo Wei had threatened to cut off her fingers, she’d been plagued by phantom pains. She couldn’t bear to hear it mentioned.

  At 7:30, students streamed out of the dormitory castle, heading toward the academy classrooms.

  With the magic tournament over, it was back to regular classes.

  This morning’s lesson was Magic Runes. The topic? Enchanting objects made of various materials.

  There were no shortcuts to increasing magical power or expanding one’s mental realm. Progress required persistence and effort, inching forward bit by bit.

  Expanding the mental realm was particularly grueling. Those born with low initial capacity could work a hundred times harder than others and still see minimal improvement.

  Even now, mages didn’t fully understand how mental power was generated or how it functioned. Some mages outright denied its existence.

  The concept of the “mental realm” was first proposed by an astrologer. While teaching astrology, he noticed a peculiar phenomenon: students with low elemental affinity often performed better at astrological prediction than those with high affinity.

  This wasn’t a fluke. Many students with high magical affinity struggled with astrology. Astrological talent seemed to have no correlation with magical aptitude.

  The discovery shattered the astrologer’s assumptions. At the time, the magical community believed that high magical talent guaranteed superiority in all professions.

  After years of observation, the astrologer concluded that a mysterious power, distinct from magic, influenced astrological ability. He named it astral power.

  When he presented his findings to the Magic Council, magic array specialists observed similar phenomena in their own field.

  Eventually, the Magic Council identified this mysterious power, which was especially prominent in astrology and magic runes, as stemming from the mental realm.

  The strength of one’s mental realm directly determined the magnitude of this power. For most people, their mental realm was too weak to contain star charts or generate magic runes in their minds.

  For magic apprentices, Magic Runes class was an exercise in frustration. Progress was slow and hard to measure. The lessons were dull and arduous. They’d spent three months just practicing using magic to cut small wooden sticks—not to mention the headache-inducing spatial calculations.

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  After three months of effort, they finally learned to break the cursed sticks with magic. Then Professor Mike handed out iron and copper sheets, telling them to enchant those instead.

  The difficulty gap was like this: imagine a master teaching an apprentice to chop down trees. After three months of chopping, the master suddenly demanded the apprentice carve intricate dragons playing with pearls into the wood.

  The apprentice was in agony. This wasn’t something a human could learn overnight.

  The master was equally puzzled. The pattern of dragons and pearls was right there. The apprentice just needed to transfer it to the wood using the same chopping method. It was simple! Why couldn’t they do it?

  Like now—Professor Mike had merely asked the students to complete a Wind Rune enchantment on iron and copper sheets. Yet the entire class groaned and wailed in despair.

  Professor Mike was baffled. The students had already learned to carve magic runes. All he was asking was for them to put down their carving knives, use magic instead, and redraw the pattern on iron sheets. Why was this so hard?

  Fortunately, there was one student who made teaching effortless.

  Professor Mike glanced at Luo Wei, feeling a rare sense of relief. She was staring at the iron sheet on her desk, her index finger tapping the air a few times. Within seconds, she had completed the enchantment on one sheet.

  Professor Mike: …Relief was premature.

  Luo Wei was a genius. She didn’t need him to teach her at all.

  While the other students pressed their fingertips against the iron sheets, practically trying to scratch out the patterns with their nails, Luo Wei had already mastered aerial enchantment on her own.

  Students like her—brilliant as they were—didn’t give you much sense of accomplishment as a teacher.

  After class, Professor Mike kept Luo Wei behind. He pulled a folded piece of parchment from his Magic Runes book and handed it to her.

  “Professor Mike, what’s this…?”

  “A magic array. See if you can replicate it.”

  “A magic array?” Luo Wei blinked in surprise. “But Professor, I’m still a beginner magic apprentice.”

  Professor Mike shook his head. “Your mental realm is stable, and your magical power has reached the level of a junior mage. All you lack is knowledge and experience. Beginner apprentice curriculum isn’t suitable for you anymore. It would only waste your time.”

  He pointed to the parchment in her hand. “This magic array is formed by integrating ten types of magic runes. Start by deconstructing and reconstructing it to understand how arrays are integrated. If you don’t understand something, come ask me.”

  Luo Wei didn’t understand integration methods, but deconstruction and reconstruction? She was all too familiar with that.

  She’d torn apart the academy’s magic array three months ago. To date, her deconstruction and reconstruction progress had reached ninety-nine percent.

  The remaining one percent was because she didn’t dare take the final step: combining the nine small grids to restore the academy magic array’s overall framework.

  She was afraid that the moment she completed the restoration, she’d die with blood pouring from her seven orifices.

  The magic array diagram Professor Mike had given her was timely rain. Perhaps once she mastered integration methods, she could perfectly assemble the academy magic array.

  “Thank you, Professor. I’ll replicate it as soon as possible.”

  Luo Wei carefully put away the diagram and thanked Professor Mike.

  Since she had a lunch appointment, Luo Wei didn’t linger in the classroom. After saying goodbye to Professor Mike, she left the academy and took a carriage to the Siria Temple.

  Behind her, several heads of various colors poked out from behind the academy gate. Seeing her carriage drive away, they exchanged glances.

  “Theodore: “Follow her?”

  Gladys: “Follow!”

  Laura: “But Miss Luo Wei told us not to follow.”

  Gladys: “What if the old man hurts her?”

  “Exactly.” Theodore turned to Hol. “Hol, what do you think? Follow or not?”

  If this were before, Hol would have rationally said no. But now, he hesitated. “It’s too dangerous for her to meet Alfried alone. We should—”

  “Stay at the academy like good juniors.” A leisurely male voice interrupted from behind them.

  A chill ran down their necks. They turned stiffly, only to see Sebastian standing there.

  Theodore jumped up. “I knew it! It’s you again, you old guinea pig!”

  Sebastian reached out and casually pushed him back down.

  “Calm down, octopus junior.”

  He smiled at the group. “Junior Luo Wei already guessed you’d try to follow her, so she asked me to stop you.”

  “When?” Another voice came from behind them. Hessel stepped forward, her gaze fixed on Sebastian. “When did Luo Wei tell you this?”

  Sebastian released Theodore and turned to Hessel. “She didn’t tell me directly. She knew I’d do this. Junior Calansis, you might not understand—that’s called having an understanding.”

  Understanding?

  Hessel’s eyes darkened. She truly didn’t understand that sort of thing—an unspoken understanding.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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