Sylvester raised his tophat off his head and showed to the class that there was nothing inside of it, raising it upward to reveal the empty interior. He then gave the tophat a light tap causing a wand to fall out of it, magically.

He then lightly kicked the wand before it touched the floor and caught it with his hand, twirling it around the moment he held it.

It was a generic magic wand, a black rod with white strips located at both ends. Sylvester was now giving off an aura of tackiness mixed with the silliness of an old cartoon. Making exaggerated hand movements as he once again returned the hat back to his head.

The class however did not respond well to this display. To their eyes, what Sylvester was doing was nothing more than an outdated caricature, created by the imagination of a misinformed public and spread by charlatans.

Except for one girl, whose serious and blank gaze never twitched nor faltered as Sylvester continued with his little show.

Raising his wand upwards he then prepared the mental image needed to conjure the spells that he had been practicing in order to get the hang of chain casting and unsurprisingly, it was the combo that he loved using the most.

“Invisible platform!” Sylvester exclaimed, shouting in an exuberant tone as he called forth eight invisible platforms that floated high above him. Then he called forth the second spell to complete this basic combo.

“Trap door!” and as the name implied, a door magically appeared on the floor underneath Sylvester.

In pure magician fashion, Sylvester bowed and saluted the audience, making more exaggerated gestures before he finally jumped into the door. All of a sudden, doors appeared on all eight of the platforms and just like that, eight Sylvesters popped out.

Immediately, the audience realized something was odd.

“Wait a minute, he didn’t cast another spell, did he?” And many other voices of inquiry rained down on the magician in front. But before they could inspect the scene with an objective eye, Sylvester immediately changed the playing field.

With a swirl of his wand the seats suddenly spread out even farther apart, catching the students off guard as they suddenly found themselves far apart and a little disoriented.

“Wait what the? How did he? Where’s the cube?” The audience then realized that the room seemed to obey Sylvester’s whims and yet the key for such a feat was nowhere in sight.

As they once again cast their gaze towards the magician, they saw that there was only one man in front of them once again. Yet he was standing perpendicular to the ground, his body standing straight sideways.

For a moment, an illusion was cast but not by magic but through the betrayal of their own eyes, as they lost all sense of orientation around their 3D space.

This illusion was broken immediately as Sylvester “hopped” off and landed on another invisible platform and was now hanging diagonally in the air. He then raised his free hand upwards, his hand position in the finger hand gesture and casted another spell and somehow he still hasn’t broken the chain he started.

“Burst finger!” he exclaimed as a small but bright manifested itself from his index finger flying high up and suddenly splitting up into multiple copies that changed direction mid flight and each on aimed directly for the students!

The audience almost instinctively prepared to block the incoming “attack” with many raising their hands only for the projectiles to just vanish in the blink of an eye.

As if purposely not allowing his fellow students to process what was happening, he immediately raised the seats once again until everyone was three meters above him.

For some reason, the audience filled with mage students suddenly felt anxious over this cartoony performance. This all stemmed from Sylvester's odd spells.

While there is a great variety of magical spells to choose from, the spells Sylvester used seem tailor made just for him, no, tailor made for his act. Something that Rossa too has noticed.

A lie, created by the truth.

Sylvester continued his chain as he casted invisible platform followed up by trapdoor once again. He fell through the door and dropped out from above and landed on an invisible platform that was now at eye level with the rest.

However, it seems like Sylvester was holding something in his free hand as he faced his classmates, a deck of cards.

Smiling once again he continued with his unbroken chain and used the spell he learned from the S-rank trials, Dark strings and attached a string on each one of the cards.

Sylvester then threw the cards high into the air and pulled each one of them back with dark strings as he activated them to be tangible. The cards started flying back towards his direction when he held out his free hand formed into a snapping position.

“Shock snap!” He declared and a shockwave of air and energy radiated from his fingertips causing the cards to scatter once more. Still, Sylvester wasn’t done.

As the cards flew into random directions swaying calmly in the air Sylvester continued with the chain casting as he prepared to use another spell.

“Point return!” He said in a commanding voice and soon the cards started flying back to his hand at rather high speeds and neatly stacked themselves back into a deck.

Afterwards he once again used the combo of invisible platform and trapdoor to gain some elevation. As he looked down on the audience down below he suddenly turned around and jumped off the platform.

At the middle of his fall he suddenly shouted the words “Activate” causing barely visible strings to suddenly manifest directly in his path. The strings however did not stop his descent as he simply passed through all of them.

Sylvester then landed gracefully on his feet and started to act like he was dusting himself off and for some reason decided to start jumping.

But this act only revealed that his body had been sliced into smaller parts that looked like it had been cut clean through by a very sharp knife, with each jump leaving behind segments of his body hanging in mid air before rejoining the rest and surprisingly, there was no blood anywhere.

While this was a common gag done in old cartoons seeing it in person is something truly disturbing, even for those who are well acquainted with the supernatural. It was an uncomfortable area deep in the uncanny valley.

Sylvester then acted like he just noticed what had happened to his body and raised his index finger, signalling that he had reached a eureka moment.

He then used the spell “Invisible strings” to stitch himself back together, giving the audience a thumbs, signalling that he was completely fine.

He then twirled the wand again and soon, the space of the classroom obeyed and returned the weary audience back to their original positions inside the classroom.

Sylvester again used invisible platforms and trapdoor in conjunction, jumping into the door and popping up down below, only this time eight of him once again showed up.

“Now for the big finale!” Sylvester’s voice rang out and yet, it didn’t sound like a mixture of eight people talking but rather it was only one singular voice.

The eight Sylvesters then raised their hands upwards and used a fairly appropriate spell to be used as a finale. With big smiles plastered on their faces they looked towards the audience and gave a sly wink.

“Flashy Fireworks!” Sylvester exclaimed and soon a ball of mana formed from each of the eight Sylvesters hands and shot high up.

The ball then exploded into an array of beautiful colors that was followed by a loud bang. True to its name, the spell did what its namesake described it would do. Flashy fireworks.

Sylvester smiled as he took off his tophat and placed it on his chest, bowing gracefully towards the audience who simply sat there in silence, suddenly the “Spotlight” above Sylvester disappeared and the room went dark for a few seconds.

The lights immediately went back on and the classroom seemed to have returned to its normal form, no whitespaces underneath as if the magical performance never happened. But one thing was amiss.

Sylvester was nowhere to be found.

The audience then started trying to find he was when suddenly they could hear the sound of footsteps from behind.

Sure enough, there was Sylvester walking ever so calmly back down to the front of the classroom and with him was the cube used to control the space of the classroom.

The room was still draped in silence as Sylvester continued to make his way down, eyes still glued to his figure watching his every move, something he seemed to enjoy.

Upon standing in front of the class once again, he took off his tophat and did a final bow as if to signify the end of his performance.

Sadly no one seemed to be willing to give applause for his wondrous performance as only murmurs and whispers filled the air, until a crisp uniform sound tore through the quiet.

Seated one the second row right beside the window sat Rossa, clapping her hands in a rather formal and serious demeanor. Her lips curved slightly upward giving the image of a very faint smile as she continued to give her applause.

Soon, the audience started clapping reluctantly in unison as if following her example.

Sylvester, who seemingly knew full well this was going to happen simply smiled and continued to bow and bow.

“Thank you for the applause! Thank you!” He said in a rather sarcastic way as if trying to agitate his fellow students.

He then transformed his tophat back into a cap and returned all his accessories, the coat, the wand, and the gloves back into the cap. Stowing them away safely into the portable storage space that Sylvester wears on top of his head.

As the claps dwindled he looked up to where Rossa was and gave a knowing smile.

“Well well now, it seems I won that challenge didn’t i?” Sylvester joked to himself as professor Bridget Bishop came running down to meet him.

“Nicely done Mr. Sylvester! A great performance. You can now return to your seat.” Bridget said. Sylvester simply nodded in response and did what he was told when all of a sudden, a serious looking girl wearing a beret stood up.

“How did you do all that?” She said in a serious voice.

“Hmm. You do know that magicians don’t reveal their tricks right? Buuut, you know what they say, it’s all just smoke and mirrors.” Sylvester smiled as he walked back to his seat behind Rossa.

“Now, who wants to go next?” Bridget asked as another veil of silence covered the lecture room.