My second morning in this world isn’t as pleasant as I thought it will. Both me and Deborah wakes up roughly the same time. The first thing in the morning obviously isn’t pick up your books and immediately get your ass to class. No, we still have personal hygiene to take care off. And since this is the girl’s dormitory, obviously they don’t have toilet and bathhouse for male usage built in mind.

So yeah, my second morning consists of running to the actual bathhouse for men, located in the opposite of the girls’ dormitory and is also packed with people the moment I step in. Thank god they provide free toothbrush and towel for students to use, so I got that going for me, which is nice. My clothing is, of course, would be dirty as hell after two days of fantasy hijinks. Thankfully, there are some spells that can instantly clean your clothes and banish the smell, which I ask some guy in charge at the bathhouse to perform on mine. The feeling of fresh clothes is indeed…refreshing, but I still prefer the good old-fashioned post-laundry and dried clothes though.

Aside from that and another struggle with the breakfast from hell, there’s nothing eventful happening in my second morning.

According from what Deborah told me in the morning, the learning sessions in this academy were divided into two categories: One is the Common classes, which is to deal with…common subjects, like Math, Language and History and other stuff. Not that much different from my old world’s standard courses. The other is Specialized classes, where students learn about subjects of their chosen Department. Apparently, there are three main Departments in this school, the 「War Arts」, the 「Magic Arts」 , and lastly, the「Alchemy Arts」 . The details however aren't known to me, but from their names, I can roughly imagine what they are about.

Well, forget about those for a moment. Today’s periods mostly consist of Specialized classes, but since Deborah decided to ditch hers, and I have yet to choose a Department, so (technically) we have a free day to beat the basic of magic into my head. I’m actually looking forward to it though. I mean, it’s not everyday you got to learn about freakin Magic. Comparing to the old lessons I had at home, this is much, much more exciting to look forward to.

There’s no time to waste, I have to head back to Deborah’s room as soon as possible. She’s probably waiting and will be mad if I’m late.

It’s kinda ironic that we’re ditching classes in order to study in our room. Well, doesn’t matter anyway. If she doesn’t care about her attendance record then why should I? #thuglife

The way back to the girl’s dorm is also uneventful, up until I reach the dorm’s entrance.

At the dorm’s main hall, as I am rushing back home, a girl suddenly appears near the staircase leading to the rooms. We nearly bump into each other, but both manage to stop before anything else happen. A girl with long purple hair, and is also the one I’m supposed to duel in the next two days. Amadia Devereaux, I presume.

“What is a man doing in the girls’ dormitory? State your business!”

“What?”

Is this girl kidding me? Usually when someone tripped and humiliated you in front of your friends and a bunch of strangers, if you don’t know the name then at least you should remember the bastard’s face.

“Speak now! Or would you prefer to get fried alive?”

Scaryyyyyy~

“I believe we have met before. You should remember me by now.”

“Before? Do I know you?” The girl bluntly replies with a complete obliviousness showing on her pretty, doll-like face.

“We’re gonna have a duel in the next two days!”

“What duel? I can only remember I’m gonna duel Deborah in the next two days.”

“That is only if you defeat me first!”

Seriously. This girl…she put goldfishes to shame.

“The cafeteria. The tripping. Remember?”

The girl looks confused. She puts her arm on her chin as she strikes a thinking pose. For some reason, after a few seconds, I can see her eyes shine a little bit brighter, and a Ding sound comically rings inside my head.

“Oh I remembered! You’re that unremarkable guy that I can’t remember from that day!”

"Well, that’s a start." I mutter to myself.

“Sorry for not remembering you. I’m a bit…excited for my upcoming duel with Deborah so…But hey, back to the topic at hand, what are you doing in the girl’s dorm!?”

She points her finger at my face. It’s rude to do that to people, you know?

“I live here.”

“Where? I recall there’s no empty room left for you to live?”

“I live in Deborah’s room.”

“Whattttt???? What did you do to Deborah!? If you do anything bad to her…!”

Am I not the victim here?

“And how the hell did they allow a man and woman to live together in the first place…!”

Her face suddenly turns a bit red from embrassment. Is she really a succubus? She doesn’t seem like one despite the claim of Deborah’s friends. Was she born in the wrong race to begin with? An innocent succubus? This is new.

“It’s more like a master and her pet, though.”

The only thing missing is a collar for me.

“Master and…pet? That actually makes it worse!”

Wow, this girl is suprisingly bright where it counts.

“Amadia, please. I am her familiar, well, technically anyway. But since I am her familiar, I guess it’s okay if we do live together? Like a girl and her pet dog?”

I’m okay as long as Deborah doesn’t make me her guard dog for real, though. And I prefer being a cat more.

“Still, even if it’s true. You’re a man, and she’s a maiden. It’s unacceptable for a maiden to live together with a man! That’s right…I gotta make this into one of my demand if I win the battle against her. I’ll definitely save her from the likes of you!”

Okay, this girl is totally in her own world right now. How about I bring reality back to her, heh?

“Can you actually do it? Beat Deborah, I mean.”

“What do you mean by that? I’m strong! I can beat that girl!” Amadia proudly declares, complete with a confident smirk.

“Deborah told me she could beat you in less than five seconds.”

Amadia begins to slowly lose her smile…for one second, before she turns her arrogant smirk into a pleased smile. For some reason, she seems kinda happy knowing her rival can beat her in a blink of an eye.

“As expected from someone I admire. She have to be that strong at least, else it won’t worth all those convincing efforts of mine.”

Now this is new. So she does it not out of hate, but out of respect, heh? However, as much as I admire that admiration of hers, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m gonna face her first, and I'm gonna get beaten hard by her if I blindly charge in. But I have no intention to be confined in the infirmary for weeks to recover. There are so much things I want to do and learn in this world, and I have no time to waste for healing.

That’s why…how about I play my cards right now ?

“That being said…”

“Hmm?”

Amadia looks at me again after she's done finishing her fantasies.

“I may not be able to defeat you in five seconds…” – I mumble – “But I assure you, I won’t make it last longer than ten.”

Amadia suddenly drops dead silence. There’s no longer any signs of a ditzy and somewhat innocent girl I just met. Rather, Amadia has just return to her normal self, return to be the feared Thunderbolt full of murderous intents from the day I met her. A terrifying girl who has no fear of anyone, just like a bolt of thunder and lightning striking wherever they please, befitting her granted nickname.

I guess since I made her this mad, it counts as a success for me?

“Do you know the weight of those words you just said?”

I can already feel the electrons running in the air. I bet if I make her more mad than this, she’ll definetely fry me alive without any regards for our duel.

“Oh I’m dead serious. If you actually want to have a fight here, I won’t mind. But that would break our agreement, and your only chance to duel Deborah would vanish along with it. Is that what you really want?”

That being said, if a fight breaks out here, I believe rather than the infirmary I would actually end up straight to the cemetery. If I’m a fisherman with a poisoned bait, and she’s a hungry shark looking for a feast, I pray that she only take the bait and go, not dragging the fisherman to the sea along with her for an early dinner.

“Right.”

Amadia calms down. Her belligerence slowly vanishes. I give out a small smile on my face before continuing my walk, not wanting to make this conversation any longer than necessary.

“Two days.”

Says Amadia when I walk past her.

“Two days.”

I answer. Both of us start to walk our own path, not meeting again until the fated day. The day to show this world what I’m capable of.

---------------------

“…And that’s what happened.”

I sip a bit energy drink from my cup after I’m done telling what just happened earlier to Deborah. The girl doesn’t comment anything at first, at least until she starts facepalming to block her sight away from the idiot in front of her, that's me by the way.

“At this point I’m no longer surprised. Still, to think you would actually go and enrage her before your fight…”

“You’re saying like that’s a bad thing.”

Isn’t this one of old man Sun Tzu’s tactics, right? Enraging the enemy generals or something like that.

“Maybe you’re right. But do you think you could back up your claim? Defeating her in less than 10 seconds, that is?”

“Nope. It’s just a bluff, totally a bluff.”

“Figures…”

I have a feeling she’s gonna bang her head repeatedly to the wall in disappointment, but that’s none of my business.

Beside, I think my move of boasting the impossible maybe the right thing to do. The girl doesn’t look that bright, but I guess that would be an effective psychological attack and bring me some advantages. For now, the most effective weapon I could use is the image of a powerful familiar inside the people's impression of me. Though that girl, Amadia, doesn’t seems to mind it that much due to her excitement of dueling Deborah. Anyway, with that little boast of mine, I bet right now she has already begun gathering more information about her upcoming opponent rather than Deborah.

Yep, I could win this if all the necessary conditions are met.

“Anyway, how is your talk with the headmaster?”

Deborah doesn't answer and just gives out another sigh. Seems like it didn’t go well for her. I guess I still need to live in this room from now on after all.

“Just forget about that for a moment. We don’t have time to spare. Let’s hit the books.”

Deborah points to a bunch of books that weren't on my study desk yesterday. Seems like she have prepared all of those during my absence.

“Your job first is to read all the basic ones if you don’t understand anything, just tell me. I’ll be waiting up here, reading some books to kill time.”

“So…your definition of teaching people is telling them read books and make them figure everything out for themselves while you go chilling?”

“Stop whining. If you’re indeed my familiar and our pact is still working then these won’t be a problem for you to stomach.”

“Right…”

As unfair as this is, I know it’s not time for me to whine. If what she said is true, then this won’t be a problem for me at all. Let’s pray I didn’t inherit just this world’s language from her.

Deborah arranged all the books in the order of what needed to be read first. The first textbook is literally called The Basic of Magic. It’s relatively brand new, though there’re still some dust on that book. After a quick glance, I notice that there are no personal notes on this book. I guess a mage of Deborah's caliber never bothered to use a children book like this to begin with.

But anyway, time to hit the books.

No more words, no more conversations. While she keeps reading her own books, I obediently sit on my chair while reading mine. Sometimes, I take a sip from my energy drink cup – a special drink from the cafeteria, which is suprsingly drinkable, not delicious, but drinkable. It also helps boost concentration and energy, so it’s the go-to drink when someone needs to grind for finals and the likes.

One of the first topics in this book is about 「Soul energy」 – the main energy source for mages to perform magic. Soul energy, as described by the book, is some kind of substance which surrounds this world. It’s in everywhere: the air, the earth, the atmosphere, the sea…Those were called Outer Souls, while living beings also have soul energy within their body, which was called Inner Souls to separate from the outer ones. The reason is due to how the inner soul energy was perceived by those who studied it.

During my first time hearing the word 「Soul energy」, I imagined it to be nothing more than a fancy name for Mana and the likes, but according to what was written in this book, that doesn’t seems to be the case. While Mana usually come from the user’s soul, soul energy however required not just that. The schoolars in this world found out soul energy is the combination of both the energies that came from a living being’s soul AND body. In their theory, while the body is the vessel for a soul to inhabits, it’s not exactly what binds those two together to form a complete living being. Thus, when the body’s energy and the soul’s met, they fused together to become soul energy, and that became the link between the soul and the body. The schoolars summarized the concept soul energy as “the chain that binds one’s soul and flesh”.

If I have to put this in layman’s term, then soul energy would be “duct tape in mana form” in order to keep your soul from finding a more handsome and better body to inhabit.

Then, when the long-winged explanation of soul energy ended comes the long-winged explanation of how magic actually works. I hope this is not rocket science.

After thirty minutes of reading, I have come to realise that the the essence and the fundamental of Magic come from soul energy manipulation and 「Ancient Tongue」 language.

What was written here is Magic is nothing more than just a mere recreation of the old Ancient Devils’s power. The book doesn’t go too much in details, but from what I know, I guess the current Devils don’t possess the same magical strength their old ancestors had, until they went extinct or something like that. That being said, I guess due to being more historical than magic explanation, the authors didn’t bother to put more details in the book. If I wish to learn more, I have to learn this world’s history first.

Okay, here’s the real deal about magic.

As I just said, one of the essence and fundamental of Magic is 「Soul energy manipulation」. In other words: How to use your Mana. The most stereotype way of using Magic in my head usually is just using your own Mana within your body as the cost and wreck shits. However, in this world’s magic, it’s just half of the work. While their names are a little differents, inner soul and outer soul are still the same type of energy. The recipe for magic here is: Using your inner soul to gather outer soul energy as fuel, perform your chant using the Ancient Tounge and then you can wreck shits and beat up fools.

Let’s put it this way, there’s this noob mage called Akuma. He only knows the Fireball spell, which requires 10 MP to successfully cast. The thing is, Akuma the Mage only have 5 MP in his disposal. That usually would be a problem, right ? Most games I heard of don’t allow you to use spells you don’t have enough mana to cast. But this isn’t the case in this world. Even if you only have 5 MP, you can however use those same 5 MP to gather 5 MP in the air, combine those together and use that as the cost to perform the Fireball spell and throw them at the bad guys. Hooray, victory for Akuma the noob mage!

That being said, the old-fashioned way of just using your own mana…err…soul energy pool within your body is also a legit way of using magic. But the authors have written a line here which said “beware of severe consequences when using too much of inner soul”.

“Hey Deborah, what is the severe consequences from using too much inner soul energy?”

“Oh that. It usually ranges from rotting and decaying your body, or just make your soul completely disappear and leave your body slowly dying as an empty husk. Nothing seriously though.”

“Phew…now that’s a relief.”

I guess if Akuma the Mage did perform the 10 MP Fireball spell by using all of his own 5 MP, the ensuring result probably won’t be very pretty. Suck for you, Akuma the Mage.

They have a point, though. Soul energy is what binds the body and the soul together, weakening it from using too much magic isn’t exactly a good idea.

Okay, now that settled the soul energy manipulation. Here comes the Ancient Tounge part.

To put it in layman’s term, again, it’s nothing more than a type of Abracadabra. You chant the spell you want to perform in Ancient Tounge, then the world would do the rest for you. Each spells required a different chants to perform, thus all those who wish to learn Magic also need to learn this ancient language. The properties of the spell usually come from the used words and how you speak it. Like, if you need to throw a fireball, the required chant would be something like “Gather flames in my hand for I intend to fry some poor bastards with it” blah blah, but only in Ancient Tounge.

What to know more about the Ancient Tounge is rather than something the Ancient Devils invented, it’s actually the language of Gods. The authors said that while Magic is an attempt to recreate the Ancient Devils’s powers, they did so by asking the help from Gods through the use of this ancient language. Complicated stuff.

There are several examples of the language in this book. Suprisingly though, I can already understand them without any difficulty. The writing is different, the reading is also different, yet I have no problem reading nor speaking it. For some reason, I know it is different from the language people here use, yet I can use both as ease while still be able to tell the difference. Strange…

“Hey Deborah. That day, Amadia used her spells without chanting, right? How can she do that?”

“It’s simple. It’s due to her affinity with the element she use. As you may have guess, her affinity is strong with Lightning element, thus, she have no problem using Lightning magic with out chanting.”

“I see.”

So if your elemental affinity is compatible with the spells you use, you may be able to skip the chanting and went straight to the awesome part. Cool. I wonder what is my elemental affinity though.

I sip another drink before I go back to study. Never before have I found reading a textbook would be so much fun.

The next part is the categories of Magic. There are two main types of magic, and three minor branches.

The two main types are 「Verbal Magic」 and 「Image Magic」. Verbal magic is roughly what I just explained earlier. It is basically the use of Ancient Tongue to manipulate the result from using magic with the fusion of inner and outer soul energy as the cost. It’s the “mainstream” type of Magic, and the most frequently used. The other however, despite being one of the main types, is far less popular due to how impractical it is. Image Magic is just a fancy name for the use of magic circles, runes, rituals and the likes. Yeah, the mages here don’t produce runes or magic circles as they use their spells, it’s just plain Abracadabra and boom. The stereotypical magic circles aren’t that easily made in this world, you have to do it manually, drawing them to the ground using your own soul energy as paint. As Verbal Magic customizes the properties of its magic through the use of words, the Image Magic customizes its through the use of images and runes of arcane words. Two of the few pros of Image Magic is you have more liberties in customizing your magic, and the cost of energy is only during the drawing part, as it uses the outer soul energy in the air to operate, thus making it very cost-effective. Doesn’t make it any better in the eyes of most mages, though. Most people will be dead if they start doodling like a madman on the battlefield in plain sight.

Let’s put it this way for example: You have two way to produce a fireball, one is using your own mana and the air’s then you just have to say some nonsense words, the other is taking your time to draw a complex circle, which requires less mana but more time and yet the end results isn’t that much different from the other way. It isn’t hard to see why most prefer the Verbal type of Magic. That being said, there’re still ways to effectively use Image Magic. Due to how easily customizable and tactical-friendly it is, one of those is using them as traps.

Now comes the three minor branches.

The three branches is this world’s way of categorizing magics. Those three are 「Offensive magic」, 「Defensive magic」, and lasty, 「Support magic」.

Offensive magic is…offensive magic, really. Fireballs, Snowstorms, Meteor Falls, Ultim*, M*gidolaon…it’s as simple as that. If you hurt your enemy either physically or mentally through the use of spells, it’s counted as offensive magic. Of course, due to how people always suddenly become so creative and innovative when it comes to killing people in differents ways, there are tons of offensive spells available to those who wish to learn, and that’s just the common ones. There’re still many secrets and unique magics outside of what written in your work borks. This world is a vast place indeed.

Defensive magic is also like what it sounds. The magic categorized here is defensive in nature. Barriers making, protective shields making, traps making, enhancement…For some reason, even healing spells are categorized as defensive magic. There is something noteworthy about this type of magic though. It’s about the Shield magic. There are actually three types of shields, one to protect against physical attacks, one to protect against magical attacks, the last one is to shield against both types of attacks. Pretty neat, heh? It is said in this book that the hybrid Shield magic is actually weaker than the other two, and it’s recommended to use a shield matching your enemy’s attack type. Reasonable enough.

Support magic…I can’t find another word other than “Mundane” to described this branch. Spells that don’t have much combat use in the battlefield are usually called Support magic. Like spells that make transporting stuff easier, or help remembering things…Or should I say, if they don’t have much use for battles, they are counted as Support magic. Suprsingly, for some reason, Summoning magic is also categorized as Support magic.

It’s almost lunch time. I guess I’ll have to take a break eventually, but let me finish this part first.

The last thing I want to learn about is the classification of magic, or rather, how to rank their power level. There are ten classes of magic, ranging from 「Class One」 – the weakest to 「Class Ten」 – the strongest. From what was written here, I can tell that Class Ten magics are the magical equivalent of nukes in my own world. That being said, there aren’t many mages strong enough to successfully cast them, and they still require insane amount of preparations and soul energy in order to use, render them extremely impractical. Class One is also known by the name as “piss-easy magic”, the type of magic anyone can use as long as they know how to read and speak Ancient Tongue, which is pretty much everyone in this world. From this book, I also learn that in order to enroll to a Magic Arts department in any school, you have to at least be able to perform a Class Three magic. Those who could use spells from Class Three and above are called Mage. When someone reached the Class Eight barrier, they become an Archmage. If it’s Class Nine, they are called Sage, and if they are able to cast a Class Ten magic, their title would become Archsage.

That being said, it’s not like I could perform magic higher than Class Three, anyway. Hell, I doubt that I could even use Class Two magics.

“So, did you understand everything written in those books.”

Deborah jumps out from her bed the moment I started yawning from tiredness.

“Pretty much. I can even recite spells in Ancient Tongue at this point.”

That pretty much confirms I inherited some Magic knowledge from the girl. The problem is whether or not I could put them into good practical use.

“I see. Well, it’s actually a good thing, though. Takes away the pain of teaching you from basic.”

“You will become a very good teacher in the future, you know ?”

“I know, right!”

Deborah gives out a laugh. I’m not sure if she’s serious about her intention though, or it’s just another snide comment of hers.

“Let’s take a little lunch break. Since you’ve done with the text books for now, we’ll go straight to practice this afternoon.”

“That’s the word I'd like to hear.”

And thus, my study continues, after I torture myself with a meal, of course.