Chapter 39: This Is Magic
Patches’ impassioned speech did not produce the effect he had expected.
The awe and admiration on the faces of the two sorcerers gradually gave way to obvious suspicion.
Their gazes moved back and forth between Patches’ slick-tongued face and that robe, which in their eyes could only be described as “neither fish nor fowl.”
“…Liberate?”
The gatekeeper sorcerer on the left finally broke the silence.
“This… gentleman, I do not understand what you mean. The academy uniform is a symbol of Raya Lucaria’s long history and noble status. Every robe and every glintstone crown carries the glory of glintstone sorcery. It is not a prison uniform. It is a medal.”
The sorcerer on the right also chimed in, his tone displeased.
“What we pursue is the mystery of the stars, the pinnacle of reason, not this kind of… superficial and meaningless decoration. Your actions are an insult to the spirit of the academy.”
[Name: Academy Sorcerer]
[Identity: Raya Lucaria Gatekeeper]
[Affection: -10 toward Patches / -5 toward Kiro]
[Status: Offended / Contemptuous / Defending Tradition]
“Now, now, gentlemen, you can’t put it that way!” Patches still wanted to argue. “Times change, and aesthetics need to improve with them! Look—”
“Enough.”
The sorcerer on the left raised a hand, stopping Patches’ chatter.
His gaze turned to Loran once again.
“Master, we have no intention of offending you. The academy’s gates will always be open to a true wise one such as yourself.”
He stepped aside, making way toward the inside of the academy.
“This young lady,” his gaze then fell on Roderika, who was staying close beside Loran, “has a kind of… pure aura about her. She may enter as well.”
Then, he pointed at the “fashion empire trio” led by Kiro.
“But those three may not enter.”
His words were firm and decisive.
“Why?!” Kiro was the first to explode. “Why can’t we go in? This is discrimination! Industry prejudice!”
“The academy is not a marketplace,” the sorcerer on the right replied coldly. “We do not welcome merchants who attempt to peddle goods here and disturb the order of scholarship.”
“Even less do we welcome… people dressed in bizarre clothes, behaving frivolously, with no reverence for the academy whatsoever.”
He was practically pointing at Kiro’s nose as he scolded her.
Patches’ expression also darkened.
A duck that had already reached his mouth was about to fly away.
But the other side consisted of two sorcerers of unknown strength, so he did not dare act rashly.
All he could do was look to Kiro with pleading eyes.
As for Boc, he had already been frightened into hiding behind Patches the moment the atmosphere grew tense, only daring to reveal a pair of terrified eyes.
“Loran!”
Kiro immediately turned her anger toward Loran.
“Say something! Don’t they think you’re some kind of master? Tell them to let us in!”
Loran glanced at Kiro, whose face had flushed red and who looked ready to argue with the two sorcerers to the very end.
He did not try to debate any principles of “all beings are equal” with the guards.
He simply thought for two or three seconds.
Then, he said to Kiro, “Wait for me.”
“I’ll go in first.”
After saying that, he did not wait for Kiro’s reaction.
He took Roderika’s hand and walked straight toward the two gatekeeper sorcerers.
“You—”
Kiro was about to flare up, but Loran had already walked away.
She watched Loran’s back.
Watched as he held the hand of that crying woman and calmly entered the gate under the respectful gazes of the two sorcerers.
“This is outrageous!”
Kiro stomped her feet in anger.
“That bastard who values romance over friendship! That traitor who forgets loyalty the moment he sees a pretty girl! He left me here all alone!”
“Now, now, Miss Kiro, don’t be anxious, don’t be anxious.”
Patches quickly leaned in to comfort her.
“That lad Loran doesn’t seem like the disloyal type to me. There must be a reason for what he’s doing. Maybe… maybe he’s going in first to smooth things over for us, so we can enter too?”
“Think about it. He’s a ‘Master’ now. One word from him is worth more than all the arguing we could do out here!”
Patches’ analysis calmed Kiro’s anger slightly.
“…Really?” she asked doubtfully.
“Of course!”
Patches patted his chest in guarantee.
“Just you watch! In less than half an hour, Loran will definitely come out to bring us in! When that happens, our fashion empire will bloom all across this magic academy!”
Listening to his words, Kiro’s expression finally turned from cloudy to clear.
She snorted, folded her arms, and leaned against the nearby wall.
“Fine. I’ll believe him one more time. If he still hasn’t shown up after half an hour, then I’ll… I’ll charge in there and drag him and that little crybaby out together!”
…
In Loran’s UI, prompts of Affection +5 and +10 kept popping up.
Without exception, these sorcerers held a natural awe toward him.
“Mr. Loran…”
Roderika seemed somewhat breathless under the pressure of this atmosphere.
“Where… are we going?”
Loran did not answer.
His gaze was sweeping over everything around them, and his mind was working at high speed.
The academy’s exclusion was based on a screening of “wisdom.”
Anyone whose wisdom was insufficient, or in other words, whose Intelligence stat did not meet the standard, was, in their eyes, a “fool” who should not be allowed to defile this sacred land of scholarship.
Kiro, Patches, and Boc had clearly all been placed into the category of “fools.”
Therefore, what he needed to do was not “persuade” the guards.
He had to change the guards’ “judgment” of them from the root.
He needed something.
Something that could make Kiro and the others look “less foolish.”
In a lecture room, a sorcerer wearing a Twinsage Glintstone Crown was speaking endlessly from the front podium.
Below him sat a dozen drowsy apprentices.
Loran’s entrance instantly interrupted this dull lesson.
“A M-Master?!”
When the sorcerer on the podium saw Loran, he was so startled that the teaching material in his hands fell to the ground.
Loran looked at the newly refreshed [+60] Affection above his head and his [Terrified Respect] status.
His heart did not waver in the slightest.
He walked straight onto the podium, picked up the magic textbook that had fallen onto the floor, and casually flipped through it.
Twelve Conjectures on the Primeval Current
Loran only glanced at the table of contents before closing the book.
He turned around and faced the dozen apprentices below, who had already been frightened into standing up, not daring to breathe.
“Your understanding of primeval sorcery is all wrong.”
The entire room fell into dead silence.
The lecturer’s face was filled with shock, but he did not dare refute him.
Loran gave them no time to ask questions or think.
He picked up a piece of chalk and began writing on the blackboard behind him.
What he wrote was not any known theory of magic.
Instead, he wrote a string of code.
#include
int main() {
float initial_current = 0.0f;
float glintstone_sorcery(float soul_intellect, float cosmic_parameter);
…
}
He reconstructed the entire casting process of glintstone sorcery.
The “intelligence of the soul” was the input variable.
The “parameters of the cosmos” were the external function library being referenced.
The “resonance of glintstone” was the compilation process.
And the “formation of sorcery” was the final output.
He wrote very quickly.
The chalk drew smooth lines across the blackboard, making a soft scratching sound.
To the people of this world, those symbols were like heavenly script.
“{ }”
“;”
“float”
Under his hand, they formed a kind of cold, orderly logic and beauty.
The entire lecture room was silent.
The dozen apprentices, along with the lecturer, all looked as if they had been turned to stone.
They stared blankly at the symbols on the blackboard, symbols they could not understand at all, yet which seemed to contain some kind of supreme truth.
They did not understand.
But they were greatly shocked.
When Loran wrote the final semicolon, he threw away the chalk and turned around.
“This is magic.”