Holding his light bright and without problem Gilliam took the time to look over his fellow students. It quickly became clear that they were completely new at this, which was perfectly fine as everyone starts somewhere. But Gilliam got exactly the same explanation earlier and he had the light going before he knew that magic was even real.Though one part of him was extremely happy, another side of him was kind of sad and felt sorry for everyone else not having the cheat-gift that he had. He decided to do his best to never gloat about this power unless necessary somehow, this was just a bit unfair and he didn’t want to become a bully.

Most students managed to get some semblance of light to flicker into existence but faded after a second, some had some super dim candle-light thing going for a few seconds before it just faded. Some managed to almost flashbang themselves and get that annoying light-spot in their vision for a while according to their complaints. The more he listened to them the more he started to learn that though he was unfairly gifted there seemed to be an age thing as well. He had a good, what, double their lifetime of mental maturity? Sure, he didn’t know magic existed until less than a week ago, but it seemed that imagination and mental processing was both needed for magic to work so... Perhaps him getting the light spell that fast wasn’t all just a gift, it was an age thing?

He was deep in thought as the teacher started addressing him.“Mr. Gibson.”Gilliam snapped out of his thought process and locked eyes with the man, it was almost uncomfortable like his gaze pierced your very soul... How was a man with this kind of cold piercing stare allowed to teach children?“Are you aware that your light has been on for ten minutes now?”

Was Gilliam that long in his thought world? When you focus on something you can forget the passage of time but ten minutes already?“Oh.. no.. I’m sorry... I was thinking of something. Should I start over?”No wait, he shouldn’t need to do that, right? The goal was to have the light on for one minute, he apparently did ten, isn’t that good?Or did something happen with the light when he was mentally away? Perhaps his lack of focus had it flicker or something?

“That will not be needed. You have passed the first test. Tell me, how did you keep it that strong, clear and stable for that long without focus?”This sounded almost like a test, the kind in maths where if you just give the answer but not how you got it, you might only get half points if any points at all.

Gilliam was uncertain, he wanted to say that since it was this easy he didn’t have to even focus on it, but he felt a bit like a ‘better than thou’ kind of douche in a room full of kids doing their best. Perhaps he can hint to the teacher, adult to adult?“I... don’t know? It just came naturally when I learned it. I did practise keeping it lit a bit, though.”The tone of his answer seems to have worked. Most students murmured to their partner that since Gilliam was older and he had trained, that’s why he was good.But Jial seemed to have a different thought, though it was a bit hard to say for sure it did feel that the idea worked.

“How long can you keep it that bright and stable?” Jial asked at the same second as Gilliam completed his own statement.

“... That’s a good question..” Gilliam pondered for a few seconds. He hadn't really found a limit. During the tests when walking from Angela’s cabin to Che’or he did try to find out how long he could have it going during his random spell training, and though he didn’t have the know-how to sense how it was going he felt it was going fine even after having it on for a few hours.“I haven’t tested until I failed, but during my last testing I could have it going for at least a few hours before I just didn’t bother more. So I don’t exactly know.”He decided to be honest, he was here to learn and though this might be annoying for the kids he was here sort of for his own sake as well.

Jial’s face was impossible to read, if this was a good or bad thing. Logically speaking it should be good but what was this man thinking?“It’s not uncommon for students of your advanced age to get the starting elements faster than others.” This confirmed Gilliam’s earlier assumptions, though if what was mentioned earlier the Heptagon mage thing should also aid.“How many lights are you able to control at the same time?” he asked with the same deadpan, almost angry apperance as he had kept since he entered the classroom.

“Erm... that’s a good question as well.”Gilliam had not tried several lights before, in theory it sounded easy but he couldn’t say before he tried.Doing the movements and channelling the energy again he split the flow of energy into two, making sure not to affect the current stream too much as he set up another path for the mana to go through.This felt oddly intuitive to compare both of them as sub-processes of the same main program, strangely enough his way of thinking within coding kind of worked out here.It took a different kind of focus to get the second light to spark into existence, through that said it was somewhat easy, just different.A second light was now present, continuing to find his limit he did the same process again; dedicating the energy flow needed to the existing lights before trying another one. A third light, a fourth light but it all stopped at an unstable fifth light.At this point he had five light sources, though the fifth one started unstable it seems that it stabilised shortly after; it was just the extra needed focus during creation that had it flicker at the start.“I... feel this is my limit..” Gilliam replied after the few minutes needed to create all this was over.

“Make another” Jial commanded to Gilliam’s surprise, all five lights flickered once in his surprise hinting to their tie to his mental state.

Though, there was nothing to really lose here. The worst that could happen was that the lights go out and he would then know his limit. This calmed him down a bit, stabilising the five orbs he currently had going. He didn’t feel that this affected his mana reserves or flow at all, it seems that the light spell was stupid simple in it’s construction and drain so this was more a test of his focus rather than the other limiting factors.Taking a deep breath he calmed himself down a bit more, this was just a test for his own sake, anything else is just secondary. Repeating this to himself he tried to remove the stage fright and fear of failure aspect of the ordeal.

The programming way of thinking worked so far, he mentally allocated everything according to a code structure. The source of energy was the problem, but it was stable at the moment so connecting another drain to the source was just a matter of focus. Stabilising it was just to make sure that the connection was proper, cloning the existing working structures should aid with this.His focus narrowed to the lights he was looking at and to his empty hand. Doing the process in drawing out another connection to his mana reserves, the metaphorical connection of the hose to the larger pool, stretching it into his hand and having it pool up there into a sphere of light; much like having a thin hose connected to a water balloon, letting it inflate in his hand.These weird ways of thinking worked! Though it took considerably longer to get the sixth light sphere to form than the other ones, especially than the first that only took a casual thought, though this took considerable effort and time it worked.

“Another.” Jial dryly commanded as soon as the sixth orb stabilised. Again causing all now six orbs flicker a few times before returning to their solid glow.

Gilliam was prepared for that to happen, and for it to happen again should he make another one working. But this was getting interesting, he was fired up.Going through the same process again was hard, much harder. It started feeling impossible but he decided to take this time, don’t rush it and ignore how long this took. The existing streams were working and stable, as long as he didn’t change anything to them they should remain good. Connecting and stretching out another metaphorical hose was not a problem, keeping the flow steady was. Though with careful consideration and a very narrow focus he slowly managed to get another orb to form in his hand. This was unstable and dim, fading into nothing and back to a weak glow several times much like an ancient and worn out lightbulb. He focused on it more and more but felt the connection to the other six orbs waver, causing them all to flicker a little.Returning the focus to the six the seventh he was working on dimmed out and faded into nothingness. Though there was no light in his palm the connection to his mana pool was still present, he wanted this, he really wanted this to work.So he took his time! Increasing the flow a tiny bit, it started glowing dimly, keeping this stable alongside the others for a few seconds then increasing the flow a tiny bit more. This incremental illumination of the seventh orb was slow and tedious, took a considerable amount of focus for ‘just some lights’, but he was adamant, he felt it could work.Keeping doing this for, well, he lost track of time so he didn’t really know how long this took but after enough baby steps he managed to get seven glowing orbs of light!

This time Jial didn’t ask for another, he clearly saw the strain and knew that another one would just collapse it.“Keep them glowing as long as you can.” he ordered instead.This had them all flicker as Gilliam mentally sighed and prepared for the long haul, this level of focus was legit straining, it felt like doing hard calculus in his mind without actually being good at maths.He did his best, he kept all seven orbs fed with energy, kept the connections stable and in check, kept the orbs in form and floating. Though only a few steps it was not easy.

Suddenly the school bell tolled, breaking his focus entirely having all seven orbs pop and turn off at the same time. The seven flows of energy all stopped and all spells failed.Gilliam cursed a bit, both at himself for losing focus but mostly at that damn bell that still startled the shit out of him.Now that his focus returned to the norm he realised how much this had affected him. He was tired, winded and almost sweating. He felt like he had walked up the stairs a bit too fast just with his mind. It was a weird experience to say the least.Jial seemed to have a slight smirk on his lips, it was subtle but any emotion stood out on such a face. Gilliam couldn’t confirm if this was true or just wishful thinking from his side.

“Class is dismissed, work on your light until tomorrow.-” before Jial was done with his sentence the kids in the classroom started packing their things, some were already on the way through the door.“-Mr. Gibson, do you mind remaining?”The tone was the same as everything else he had said. This Jial seemed to be a weird character. Though his voice was not monotone it was oddly devoid of emotion or any emphasis unless clearly deliberate.

Gilliam just nodded and waited for now, Jial seemed to take some notes or do some teacher-stuff as the room emptied.As soon as the last student had left, leaving both of them alone in the classroom, he made a pulling motion at the door which closes itself, Gilliam recognized this as a very simple telekinesis spell.

“Mr. Gibson. I was informed by the headmaster about you. I had my doubts where to place you at the start. Seven lights is impressive.”Though the words he said made it sound like he was indeed impressed, you could not tell by looking at him.“Unstructured like that I’m only able to keep five.”

This took Gilliam off guard, he was better than his teacher in this, on his first day. Naturally this had him somewhat ecstatic but it also almost felt like he was cheating.He decided to focus on the former thoughts rather than the cheating feeling.

“Structured is an entirely different story, which you will learn later. Based on this I believe the headmaster in that you have tremendous potential. I would like to personally, and privately, teach your next class in magic circles.” This sounded like a request and order at the same time. He had a very strangely commanding aura. Perhaps that’s why he did well as a teacher?

Gilliam considered the scenario a bit, on one hand this felt like he was again given special attention, but based on what Angela and Ledels mentioned just yesterday this was probably some ulterior motive in giving himself credit for having taught Gilliam things. Though he was getting the feeling this was going to become a thing more and more, he decided that, to hell with that thought. If this gave him special training by masters or experts then they are both gaining, aren’t they?If he paid a teacher to teach him something, he was paying in money. If he gets the training for free like this but the teacher gets some PR points, then he’s paying through advertisement, this was just some alternate form of payment.At least this is how Gilliam explained it to himself, in the end he was getting specialist treatment and training, so he was winning on it regardless.Not to mention that Jial introduced himself as a specialist in magic circles, if this was true that he was good at it, then who better to learn from?

“I would like that.” Gillaim responded after a few seconds of thought. There was no need to not take advantage of the situation for his own benefit, after all.

“Good, then let’s start immediately.” Jial was apparently only nice to the younger students, but then again Gilliam was stoked to learn more so this didn’t matter. Jial started immediately to explain, as he did that a pad had started moving on the blackboard behind him, erasing the chalk-written notes from the class.

“We will focus on first drawing the magic circles, then we will teach you your first spell through it. Like a Foci helps you direct the energy correctly, a magic circle does two things; first it helps control the mana flow by channelling energy into it, second it acts as a lens to concentrate the effect to exactly where you want. But before we go into depth, make a line in the air like this-”Drawing his finger in empty air he made a yellow-white thin glowing line. It was perfectly straight and looked like a super thin LED-string just hanging there. “-This is done through an application of the light spell. Instead of forming an orb; like a quill or ink-pen, deposit the light along your finger as you draw it.”

This metaphor instantly clicked in Gilliam’s mind. That made sense, if you let a weak and steady flow of energy out as you draw your finger, your finger basically becomes a magical pen of sorts.Looking at his hand he focused the light to pool up in his palm, but rather than having it become a sphere he stopped growing it by restricting the flow of mana, much like pinching on a hose of water. He then let that energy flow into his index finger and pulled it across the air, letting it ‘spill’ off his fingertip.It was splotchy, almost like finger painting and compared to Jial’s yellow-white Gilliam’s was more teal-like. Jial’s line was crisp, straight like a ruler and looked like he took glowing ink to the air through a pen, Gilliam’s looked like finger painting without a goal.However, it was a success, there was a glowing line in the air just hanging there. Gilliam could not help himself and poked it with his other hand, this apparently destabilised it so it practically shattered and faded in the matter of a split second.

“Good first try, try to make it thinner. Rather than guiding the energy to spill off your finger, focus it on a point and let it be pulled off like a pen. You are pushing the ink out. It needs to be drawn off by the receiving medium.”This also made sense to Gilliam. He had been using a syringe method by pushing out the ink meaning it didn’t go out smoothly, but all pens of all sorts leave a trail at the point of contact based on.. Well.. several things but mostly about the ink flow being present but drawn off the point as it is absorbed into whatever you’re drawing on.

With this in mind Gilliam did the same thing again, but rather than guiding the energy to the tip of his finger he guided it into a point above his finger, like an invisible claw of sorts.Drawing again made a perfectly smooth line!It was not ruler-straight as Jial’s but it was like drawing an ink-pen across paper, just teal glowing and arced where he just drew in the air.Gilliam thought he saw Jial raise an eyebrow, but if he did it faded fast enough that he couldn’t properly validate it.

“Impressive. A clean line on your second try” Jial complemented.

“Why is mine blue?” Gilliam asked, not having considered that light can usually be of any colour, but this was a different colour than the light spell this was apparently based on.

“For most, the line takes the colour of their element, or one of their elements if they have several. Though with training you can make the line any colour you want. You as a Heptagon mage can choose the colour as well. Since you did this without thought the teal colour has some significance to your thought behind magic circles.”This was explained like it was a known fact, given that he specialised in magic circles and taught children he had most likely seen this many, many times before.

And the logic behind his explanation also makes sense, Gilliam back home in media and stories always felt that the base colour of arcane magic was always this kind of teal colour, seems like that became his standard.

“In a realistic scenario. Good mages can tell what kind of spell you are casting based on the brief moment they see the magic circle. The colour is important there. This means being able to change the circle’s colour can throw an opponent off. Having it be red will have them expect fire. If you then cast an earth spell this can become the difference between a fight and instant win.”Gilliam didn’t expect to get combat lessons the first day, but this made a lot of sense.

“A magic circle as mentioned. Is a focusing and controlling element of a spell. If a spell is a candle’s flame the Foci is a reflector and the circle is the lens. Of these the lens is the most important for a concentrated result. You can heat an ant with the sun but a lens lets you increase the effect dramatically. Just like that a spell can be used more effectively, at a lower mana cost and hit where you want.”During his explanations the chalk moved on the blackboard by itself, emphasising his explanations, drawing a candle and putting an oval behind it and a thicker oval in front, showing the light going everywhere before bouncing against the reflector and being focused into a point by the lens.

“In most cases a spell cannot work without a magical circle. Often due to mana cost as you would need vastly more for a worse result. But also often due to how the circle guides the mana into the correct form, shape and trajectory.”During his explanation he draws a circle in the air with his finger, some internal structure makes a triangle with a smaller circle within it. He waves a hand along the outer perimeter which forms a bunch of runes and letters.“A circle will also have commands as part of its structure, it can guide energy, control mana pathways and make it easier to focus on a spell. The seven lights you controlled earlier, that job can be done to the point where it’s almost no effort. I mentioned that I’m only able to hold five orbs like that. This is true however with a structured spell like this.”

He waved his hand through the example magic circle, having it fade into yellow smoke, he then proceeded to make a circular motion with his hand twice, the first circle created the geometry of the magic symbol, the second filled it with runes and symbols. The outer circle had a line of runes, letters and symbols traced along it, the inner geometry looked like two layers of squares on top of eachother in 3D space, there were runes around and inside them. He charged some energy in his fist, put the charged fist inside the circle and opened it. The magic circle glowed for a split second before it disintegrated into a plethora of golf ball sized lights that started hovering around the room. If he was to guess there would have to be at least a hundred.“As you can see, I can easily control these lights with only a thought. Something I would not have been able to with an unstructured spell. This is a part of what makes magic circles powerful.”

Gilliam was amazed, though that circle looked complicated it had amazing effects. And it kind of made sense: a proper magic circle could alleviate the concentration and focus needed to do things, it could focus the energy used into a point and get greater effects at lower effort, even aiding you in aiming.This alone sounded like it could fix the problems he had with the training spells, in how weak they were, how hard to aim and easy to resist.“Are all circles that complex?” Gilliam asked, referring to the oddly three dimensional one that Jial just created.

“Yes and no. I will teach you the basic circles. They will work for what they are intended to be. I will also teach you the structure of a circle, how and why it works and how to elaborate on them. The basic light circle looks like this-”As he explained this the chalk on the blackboard had already started drawing the circle. It was simple and straightforward; a circle with a triangle inside it, the overlapping points where the edges of the triangle touched the circle, smaller circles were placed that each had a single rune in it, the three runes read: Light, multiply, focus.

Gilliam realised that he could understand the runes, which made things much easier!

Jial continued, this time using his own magic drawing to make the circle he used before. “-When you elaborate it on your own you can strengthen and even alter its effects.”Taking a second and more thorough look there were new runes, different variants of runes meaning the same thing. For example there were four different runes all meaning Multiply.Due to the different runes meaning the same thing, he had many, many more usages of ‘Multiply’ than the basic circle. His Three dimensional drawing had more than one triangle nested in tiny magical circles on each of the four corners of the cube within the double major circle that were covered in other runes that seemed to have a lot of Control runes in it.

“So the Control runes help you with the many, many extra Multiply runes. Since all of them are structured around the Light rune, this makes the circle take care of most of the multiplication and control, letting you focus on just one casting and feeding them with energy?”This was the analysis based on the explanation he had.

Jial for the first time had an emotional response; Surprise. And a lot of it.“You can read the runes?” his voice cracked a bit as he seemed to not have expected this at all.

“... Yes?-” Gilliam replied as if he was asking a question, he was more uncertain about the situation. “Isn’t that normal?”.He didn’t really know what to reply with, since the mages use these runes he assumed that everyone could use them, how else are you going to use the language.

“No, it is not.” Jial replied as his face finally returned to his calm demeanour, though his voice was shaking a tiny bit. “We spend considerable time, testing and researching to find out what rune to use, where to make it work, and you can just read them like that?”He made it sound like Gilliam could read a mystic language nobody knew, but needed nonetheless. His way of talking also changed to less commanding and less full stops in his sentences. This sounded weird even just after knowing the man for a few hours.

“Well...” Gilliam was happy, a bit, but again he was uncertain how he should act with all the other stuff surrounding his gift. Whatever made him able to understand the language people speak here might also have branched out. He felt lucky that his hopes from last night were true, about not needing the language-spell thing done to him. But this felt a bit much.“If you add some logic and your explanation, it would make sense that this is how the runes work... no?”For now he just wanted to know if he was correct or not, wanting to find out if his analysis of the concept was correct before they trailed off into something weird.

“You are indeed correct. Repeating the same rune too much seems to have lesser effects, in some cases even detrimental. Finding other runes that mean the same has a synergistic effect with other runes having the same and similar meanings. The lines connect the sub-circles together to work in unison.”The explanation he gave and the examples he used when pointing at runes, lines and the smaller circles. This felt more and more like code.

The main code that connects smaller codes to do sub-processing jobs and feeds the information around where it needs to go to be processed correctly. This is all working as a program.

“Then wouldn’t it work better if you didn’t have repeated runes at all? You have the same four runes to multiply over and over, if you used five or six different runes instead, would that work better?” Gilliam asked. Though that part didn’t exactly match the coding he was used to, it had a slight sense to just how one could code the same function. Using different coding languages or just a different person with a slightly different way of thinking, could calculate or handle data slightly different ending up with a potentially more robust system in the end?

Jial blinked twice and looked at Gilliam with a strange mix of wonder, curiosity and confusion. His voice shaking a little in a kind of anticipation Gilliam had not gotten used to coming from this man.“You know more runes than this?”

“I think so, yes.” Gilliam responded honestly, not really understanding the importance of this language, but it seems he can get some practical testing done through Jial!