Chapter 1167: A Magister and a peculiar student (2)

Selenne allowed the silence to remain between them.

Lucavion held her gaze without withdrawing the request. The petition rested beneath his hand, its receiving-faculty section conspicuously empty.

She looked down at it. "What exactly do you mean by sponsor?"

His eyes shifted toward the title printed across the top. "Student Affairs was considerate enough to explain it in large letters. You place your respectable name behind my considerably less respectable academic record, and I benefit from your questionable professional judgment."

"The form explains what the Academy requires." Selenne tapped the unsigned section once. "I asked what you expect from me."

Some of the ease remained in his posture, but his attention sharpened.

Faculty sponsorship was not a decorative signature added to an ambitious student’s petition. If Selenne signed, she would be telling the Magicians’ Block that Lucavion’s exception possessed academic merit. Instructors might admit him into restricted courses, overlook an absent prerequisite, or spend limited practical capacity upon him because her judgment stood behind the request.

If he proved incapable, irresponsible, or dangerous, that judgment would remain attached to the failure.

Selenne glanced deliberately toward the examination packet. "You lack several foundational qualifications, your affinity remains unresolved, and your Oral score suggests that Magical Theory suffered personally from meeting you. Why should I attach my name to this?"

"Because continuing to know nothing seems like a poor method of improving the situation."

"Do you want better marks?"

"No."

The answer came without the smile that had accompanied the rest.

Selenne waited.

Lucavion turned the petition beneath his fingers. "During Mana Control, I realized that most of what I call control is direct. I make mana do something, correct it when it moves incorrectly, and continue correcting it until I no longer need the action."

That method suited reinforcement, bodily circulation, and weapon techniques. His awareness remained connected to the process, allowing him to respond whenever pressure shifted or the structure began to deform.

Detached magic demanded another kind of control.

"I treated the formation as though it were a sword that needed my hand on it," Lucavion continued. "Every change required another instruction from me. If my attention moved elsewhere, the structure began losing what I had forced it to become."

Selenne remembered the trial clearly. Lucavion had maintained control through relentless intervention, compensating for faulty construction with speed and instinct until the formation could no longer survive the strain.

He had identified the weakness correctly.

’And he came here because he intends to remove it.’

"So you want to learn spell construction."

"I want to understand what makes spell construction possible." Lucavion lifted his eyes from the petition. "How does a mage place intent into mana so that the structure continues behaving as designed without requiring someone to correct every movement?"

The question lacked the Academy’s preferred terminology, yet its substance reached beneath individual spells. He was asking how mana could be given a stable function rather than a continuous command.

Selenne rested one hand against the open examination file. "You understand that my sponsorship makes me responsible for more than your admission into a lecture."

"Yes." His answer carried no hesitation. "You would be claiming that the exception is justified. If I waste the opportunity, part of that waste belongs to your judgment."

That acknowledgment removed the last refuge of casual misunderstanding. Lucavion knew what he had asked her to risk.

"And you believe the Magicians’ Block can teach you what you are missing?"

A trace of his earlier amusement returned. "That is generally why people attend schools."

Selenne let the remark pass.

The petition had an academic basis. Lucavion had identified a genuine weakness and sought instruction capable of correcting it. Whether she should place her own name behind him remained a separate question.

The arrangement did offer an advantage she had no reason to mention. Structured lessons would place his unresolved affinity beneath repeatable exercises and qualified observation. His rapid adaptation during Mana Control and the Rotunda’s unexplained response might become easier to examine.

Selenne wanted to correct a student’s weakness. She also possessed very little instinct to leave unexplained magic alone.

"You built most of your control without formal instruction," she said. "Someone in the Magicians’ Block will tell you that a method you’ve used for years is wrong."

"Someone will probably manage it before lunch."

"And if they can prove it?"

"Then I will just stop using the wrong method."

His answer carried no resistance. Selenne pressed once more. "What if their proof consists of their title?"

"That’s.... I will most likely wait for the proof to come out?"

"Your history suggests that you do not wait especially well."

"Are you sure about that? I feel like, I waited plenty in Student Affairs."

"For how long?"

"I would say, long enough to develop character."

Selenne left that claim unexamined. Lucavion distinguished expertise from position and apparently felt no loyalty toward a bad method merely because he had invented it. He would be difficult in a classroom, but difficulty and unwillingness to learn were not the same.

She turned the petition toward herself and indicated the empty affinity field. "What am I supposed to place here?"

"Why not just put ’Flame’."

"That merely describes its appearance."

"Then, Black flame?"

"A color is still doing the same thing."

Lucavion looked down at the blank. His thumb passed once along the paper’s edge before stopping. "I know what it does when I use it. I don’t know what the Academy would call it."

"That was not my question."

"No." He met her gaze. "It is the answer I can give to you."

The admission agreed with what Selenne had already suspected. He understood the manifestation through behavior, but his knowledge weakened when behavior became nature.

She left the field empty. "And what happened in Rotunda?"

Lucavion knew what she meant. "Talking about that flame? Just to clarfiy, I had never encountered that flame before."

"Did you expect yours to react?"

"Kind of."

Selenne raised one eyebrow. "Kind of?"

"Yes. Kind of."

Lucavion leaned back as he said it, leaving one hand beside the petition. His fingertip traced the empty affinity field as though the distinction had become a minor problem of paperwork rather than the reason three evaluators had requested further investigation.

"So you knew something like this would happen."

"Not that I knew it would." He lifted his finger from the page and held it between them, granting the correction more ceremony than it required. "I felt like it could. That is a big difference, as far as I am aware."

"That is indeed quite a big difference."

Selenne allowed the agreement to settle.

Lucavion waited with an expression of patient innocence that became less convincing the longer he maintained it. He was enjoying the distinction. More importantly, he had chosen to make it.

Someone intent upon concealing prior knowledge could have answered no. The Rotunda reports supported his surprise, and nothing in Selenne’s own observation would have made the denial obviously false. Instead, he had offered a less convenient truth and immediately narrowed its meaning before she could do so for him.

She tapped the report beneath her hand. "When did it begin to feel possible?"

"That is a very precise question."

"It is meant to be."

His fingertip returned to the petition. "Shortly before it happened."

"And what changed?"

Lucavion considered the blank affinity field with sudden interest. "Something felt different."

Selenne waited.

He looked up after the silence made it clear that she would not improve the answer for him. "That is still the answer I can give you."

He had retreated to the same boundary as before. Selenne could press, but the useful part had already emerged.

Lucavion had not entered the Rotunda knowing that the ceremonial flame would react. He had sensed a possibility shortly before the interaction and acted without understanding what that sensation meant.

Such instincts were not unusual among experienced cultivators. A body trained through the same circulation for years could register resistance, danger, or compatibility before conscious thought supplied a classification. Lucavion relied upon direct control more heavily than most. His awareness remained entangled with every movement of his mana, and his manifestation appeared to respond to properties he could neither identify nor explain.

He might have felt the change before he understood it.

That did not mean he had told her everything. He had revealed neither what produced the sensation nor whether his own flame had prompted him to move closer. His answer preserved several possibilities with irritating care.

Yet the distinction itself held.

Lucavion had suspected that something could happen.

He had not known what would.

That distinction was enough.

Selenne no longer required another question. Lucavion had identified the limit of his present method, accepted that expertise might overturn what experience had taught him, and admitted ignorance where a more prideful student would have invented certainty. He remained selective with the truth, but the petition did not require his entire history.

It required her judgment of his academic purpose.

"I will sponsor you."

Lucavion’s hand stopped beside the petition.

"Under restrictions," Selenne continued. "You may take two courses in the Magicians’ Block."

"Only two?"

"You already possess a Primary Block."

He looked at the form, then at the examination packet partly covered beneath her hand. Selenne expected at least one attempt to stretch the number. Instead, Lucavion considered the limit for several seconds before giving a small nod.

"I did not come here for a second timetable," he said. "Two will be enough if they are the right two."

"They will be Arcane Structural Theory and Innate Mana Flow Control." Selenne wrote both titles into the receiving-faculty section. "The first will give you the framework you lack for construction, stability, and failure. The second should teach you to sustain mana without correcting every movement by force."

Lucavion read the titles upside down. "You chose quickly."

"Your weaknesses were not subtle."

"That must be why the Academy used so many examinations to find them."

Selenne continued writing while he enjoyed the complaint. Martial Arts would remain his Primary Block, and its administration still needed to clear the additional courses against his schedule. She attached supplemental foundational theory without counting it against the two-course limit, then marked his practical work for supervision whenever it involved the unresolved manifestation. If either Block determined that his performance was suffering, the arrangement would return for review.

Lucavion followed the additions without objecting. His attention paused only when her pen reached the supervision clause.

His eyes moved from that line to the empty affinity field. "You appear to be receiving something from this arrangement as well."

"You asked an Archmage to sponsor a manifestation you cannot identify." Selenne dipped the pen into the violet ink. "It would be wasteful if neither of us learned anything."

The slight curve of his mouth acknowledged the point. "How fortunate that our interests align."

Selenne placed the nib beneath the sponsorship declaration.

The Academy would record the arrangement modestly: one Martial Arts student, two courses outside his Block, and one faculty name accepting responsibility. The supplemental work would become another attachment in Records, while the supervision clause would occupy a single line among hundreds of enrollment conditions.

Yet Lucavion had built his magical understanding through instinct, pressure, and survival. For the first time, part of that understanding would be placed beneath a systematic structure designed to teach rather than test it.

Selenne signed the petition.