The Academy's Genius Mage

’Why does she get like this,’ Lucas thought, still holding himself slightly stiff from the two seconds under Celia’s gaze.

Beside him, Nova was doing the thing where you look at someone from the very corner of your eye and immediately look away the moment they might notice.

’I have never,’ Nova thought, ’been this scared of someone shorter than me.’

Gideon cleared his throat.

Both of them straightened at the sound, which said a lot about the state they were in.

"Now that that’s resolved," Gideon said, stepping forward with the calm energy of someone who has decided to be the adult in the room and is fully committed to it, "can we actually talk about the duel?"

The arena air settled back into something normal. Lucas rolled one shoulder. Nova unfolded his arms. The immediate danger of Celia had passed and they were both willing to pretend the last five minutes had gone differently.

Gideon looked at Lucas first. The small approving smile that came to his face was genuine and quiet, the kind that doesn’t perform itself. "You’ve improved. Noticeably. Compared to last week it’s not even the same fight." He tilted his head slightly. "Your reactions, your timing, the way you read Nova’s attacks before they finish forming... That’s all sharper. You’re starting to match him in actual combat."

Lucas blinked. The praise landed before he could prepare for it, catching him somewhere unguarded, and for a second he just looked at his hands, at Shadowfang resting there and didn’t say anything.

’Yeah,’ he thought. ’I can feel it too.’

Gideon shifted to Nova. "Your power is still solid. Nobody’s arguing that." He paused just long enough to be meaningful. "But your speed is becoming a liability. Lucas kept up with you. He dodged, he deflected, he had time to think inside your attacks. If you don’t address that, it’ll cost you when it matters."

Nova clicked his tongue softly. Looked away. Folded his arms. Did the whole sequence of a person who knows they’re right about something but hasn’t fully committed to being graceful about it yet.

"Yeah," he muttered. "I know alright."

Then he looked at Lucas, and the defensiveness dropped enough for something more honest to come through. "About inside my Vortex spell." He paused. "I didn’t expect you to actually cut through that vortex in one strike." A short exhale that was almost a laugh. "That was... pretty impressive."

Lucas looked at Shadowfang again. The blade caught a faint reflection of his face in it, distorted slightly by the angle.

Celia let out a small sigh, her fingers loosely intertwined as she glanced toward the training field. "It would’ve been nice if Sylvia trained with us too... all five of us together," she murmured, a hint of disappointment slipping through her voice.

Gideon nodded slightly, folding his arms as he followed her gaze. "Yeah... I get that," he said. "But she made it pretty clear she wants to train alone and in a private ground. Not much we can do about it."

Lucas didn’t say anything. He ignored it by changing the topic.

"I’ll take that as a win for today," he said, brushing water off his sleeve with the dignity of someone who has accepted that they are still completely soaked. He glanced at the others. "Give me a bit. I need to go be a normal dry person for a while."

Nova looked at the puddle Lucas was standing in. "Yeah, I guess."

*****

The academy corridors were doing the thing they always did at this hour — busy enough that you were never really alone, never really noticed either unless something made you noticeable.

Lucas had become noticeable.

Not loudly. The conversations didn’t stop as he passed. Nobody pointed. It was subtler than that — the slight dip in volume, the sideways look, the words that floated out of groups just a half-second after he’d passed them.

"That’s him, right?"

"Yeah. Sylvia’s boyfriend."

"Man. What a lucky guy."

Lucas kept walking. Hands in his pockets, expression neutral, eyes forward, every word reaching him perfectly clearly and none of it showing on his face.

It had already spread everywhere.

Of course it had. This was an academy full of teenagers with nothing more pressing to do than distribute information at maximum speed. He’d known it would happen.

He turned a corner.

’So it’s already everywhere,’ he thought, without particular feeling about it. It was just the reality of things now.

His thoughts drifted without deciding to.

’I wonder what she’s doing right now.’

The image arrived before he’d invited it, Sylvia, probably somewhere composed and unbothered while the entire academy whispered about her personal life, handling it with the same flat unbothered dignity she handled everything else.

He shook it off and kept walking.

*****

The shower helped. Everything about the shower helped, the warmth of it, the silence, the simple mechanical process of washing the arena off and replacing it with something clean.

His soaked uniform hung to dry. He pulled on a fresh one, adjusted the collar, and stood in the middle of his room for a moment.

Then he raised his hand. His palm opened.

The mana came up slowly, gathering above his skin in a soft golden glow, and then it moved circular, smooth, the rotation settling into a rhythm that didn’t fight him. No resistance. No strain around the edges.

He tilted his hand just slightly.

The sphere adjusted. Didn’t collapse, didn’t scatter. Just shifted with him, patient and precise, like something that had learned his voice.

"So this is how it feels," he said quietly, to nobody.

He held it there another moment. Then closed his fingers slowly and let it fade.

He looked at his hand after it was gone.

"I’ve changed more than I thought," he said, quieter than before,

But even as he said it, his gaze stayed on his closed fist.

"Still," he added, after a beat. "I want to know exactly how much."

The words settled in the room. He let his hand drop.

The thought that came next arrived the way things arrive when you’ve been avoiding them, not suddenly, just present, the way something is present when it was always there and you simply stopped pretending otherwise.

The System.

Lucas sat down on the edge of his bed. Elbows on his knees. Fingers laced together. Eyes on the floor.

He hadn’t used it once since that night.

Not for training guidance. Not for analysis. Not even the casual habit of checking his stats after a hard session. He’d gone a full week doing everything manually, through feel, through instinct, through the kind of grinding that didn’t require a glowing interface to validate it.

And part of that, a larger part than he’d admitted to himself was deliberate.

That red screen sat in the back of his mind the way things sit when they’ve changed the shape of something and you’re still working out what the new shape means.

The color. The tone. Three words that didn’t sound like a tool talking to someone it was helping.

Lowly mortal vessel.

Lucas stared at the floor.