Mother of Learning: ARC 1

7

He dismissed the mana construct holding the apple in the air and let it fall down on his palm. A drop of rain fell down on his palm along with the apple. Another raindrop soon followed it, splattering on his glasses.

He wished he had some kind of rain protection spell. That, or an umbrella. Either would work just fine, except an umbrella didn’t require several years of training to use.

“Magic can be such a rip-off at times,” said Zorian gloomily.

He took a deep breath and started running.

“Huh. So there is a rain protection spell,” mumbled Zorian as he watched raindrops splattering upon an invisible barrier in front of him. He extended his hand over the edge of the barrier, and it passed unimpeded. He withdrew his now wet hand into the safety of the barrier and followed the boundary as far as his eyes could see. From what he could tell, the barrier encircled the entire academy compound (no small feat, as academy grounds were quite extensive) in a protective bubble that stopped the rain—and only rain—from penetrating it. Apparently the academy had upgraded its wards again, because they didn’t have this feature the last time it was raining.

Shrugging, he turned around and continued towards the administration building. It was too bad the barrier didn’t also dry you out when you passed it, because he was soaking wet. Thankfully, his bag was waterproof, so his clothes and textbooks weren’t in any danger. Slowing down to a leisurely stroll, he studied the collection of buildings that made up the academy. The wards weren’t the only thing that was upgraded; the whole place looked…prettified, for a lack of a better term. Every building was freshly painted, the old brick road was replaced by a much more colorful one, the flower patches were in full bloom, and the small fountain that hadn’t worked for years was suddenly functional.

“Wonder what that’s all about,” he mumbled.

After a few minutes of contemplation, he decided he didn’t care much. He would find out sooner or later, if it was of any importance.

The administration building was, predictably, mostly empty of students. Most of them were sheltering from the rain instead of pressing on like Zorian, and those who didn’t live on academy grounds had no reason to come here today. That was perfect as far as Zorian was concerned, as it meant he could be done here quickly.

‘Quickly’ turned out to be a relative term. It took two hours of wrangling with the girl working at the administration desk before he had taken care of all the necessary paperwork. He asked about his class schedule, but was told it wasn’t finalized yet and that he would have to wait until Monday morning. Come to think of it, Ilsa had mentioned the same thing. Before he left, the girl gave him a book of rules with which third-year students were expected to familiarize themselves before sending him on his way. Zorian idly flipped through the book while he searched for room 115, then tucked it into one of the more obscure compartments in his backpack, never to be looked at again.

Academy-provided housing was pretty terrible, and Zorian hadn’t known a pleasant experience with it, but it was free and apartment space was severely overpriced in Cyoria. Even children of nobles often lived on academy grounds rather than in their own apartments, so who was he to complain? Besides, living so close to the lecture hall cut down on the travel time each morning and put him close to the biggest library in the city, so there were definitely good sides to it.

An hour later, he smiled to himself as he entered a fairly spacious room. He was even more pleased when he realized he had his own bathroom. With a shower stall, no less! It was a welcome change from having to share a cramped little room with an inconsiderate roommate and navigating a single communal bathroom with the whole floor. As far as furniture went, the room had a bed, a closet, a set of drawers, a work desk, and a chair. Everything Zorian needed, really.

Dropping his luggage on the floor, Zorian changed out of his wet clothes before collapsing on the bed with relief. He had two whole days before classes started, so he decided to postpone unpacking until tomorrow. Instead, he remained motionless on the bed, wondering for a moment why he couldn’t hear the raindrops hitting the glass plane of the window next to his bed, before remembering the rain barrier.

“I’ve got to learn how to cast that,” he mumbled.

His spell collection was extremely limited at the moment, consisting of about twenty simple spells, but he had plans to rectify that this year. As a certified first circle mage, he now had access to parts of the academy library he didn’t before, and he planned on raiding them for spells contained within. Besides, this year’s classes were supposed to be much more focused on practical spellcasting now that they’d proven themselves capable, so he should be learning plenty of interesting things in class, too.

Tired from the long journey, Zorian closed his eyes, intending to take a short nap.

He wouldn’t wake up until the next morning.

Chapter 002 - Life’s Little Problems

Although the academy loved saying they were an elite institution thanks to the excellent quality of the teaching staff, the truth was that the main reason for their supremacy was their library. Through contributions of its alumni, generous budget allocations by a number of former headmasters, quirks of local criminal law, and sheer historical accident, the academy had built a library without equal. You could find anything you wanted, regardless of whether the topic was magical or not—there was a whole section reserved for steamy romance novels, for instance. The library was so massive it had actually expanded into the tunnels beneath the city. Many of the lower levels were only accessible to guild mages, so it was only now that Zorian was allowed to browse their contents. Fortunately, the library was open during the weekend, so the very first thing Zorian did when he woke up was descend into these depths to see what he'd been missing these past two years and maybe fill out his spellbook a bit.