Chapter 1190: An Anomaly Inside Magician’s Block (2)

The remainder of the lecture passed without another interruption.

Once the difference between load distribution and structural tolerance had been established, the lecturer returned to the formation above the hall and supplied the values he had withheld. The students recalculated their earlier answers, this time comparing the burden placed upon each component against the strain it could endure.

The outer ring had shown the first visible distortion.

It still would not fail first.

Its broad channels distributed the excess mana across enough surface that the deformation remained within tolerance. The sustaining circuit possessed a greater absolute endurance, but the redirected flow pushed it far closer to that limit. Under continuous operation, it would collapse several breaths before the boundary ring and release the accumulated mana back through the remaining anchor.

The lecturer altered one tolerance value. The sequence changed.

He reinforced the sustaining circuit. The anchor became the first point of failure.

He reduced the incoming flow. Nothing failed at all.

By the third demonstration, the lesson had moved beyond identifying damaged lines. Each formation became a relationship between load, tolerance and duration, and changing any one of them altered what the others could survive.

Most of it remained within material Elara already understood. Her own instruction under private tutors had included structural assessment long before she entered the Academy, though it had been divided among several subjects rather than presented as a discipline of its own.

For Lucavion, the lecture should have been far less comfortable.

The elementary formations she had taught him possessed few enough components that he could follow mana from the core to its intended result. Arcane Structural Theory assumed that the student could perform that tracing while accounting for competing channels, secondary functions and changes accumulating over time.

Yet whenever Elara’s attention strayed toward her right, she found his pen moving.

Some sections of his notes were sparse. Others contained small diagrams connected by arrows which ignored half the proper symbols in favor of terms that would have embarrassed any introductory instructor. Still, he did not appear lost. When the lecturer changed a load value, Lucavion’s gaze usually moved toward the affected component before the resulting distortion appeared.

The final bell sounded while the third formation remained above the hall.

Several students began closing their texts.

"Before you leave," the lecturer said, and the movement stopped with collective reluctance.

He touched the lectern. A new document transferred into every notation crystal, unfolding into three pages of diagrams and accompanying values.

[FOUNDATIONAL STRUCTURAL ASSESSMENT]

[Submission: Before Next Session]

The silence lasted only until the deadline appeared.

"An assignment?" someone near the lower tiers asked.

"The term began today."

"We have not even covered degradation calculations."

A few quieter complaints joined them as students examined the pages. The document contained five incomplete formations. Each supplied its input, intended function and component tolerances. The task required them to identify the primary load paths, mark the most probable failure point and explain how the sequence would change under one prescribed alteration.

No construction was required.

That did not prevent the hall from reacting as though the lecturer had requested five original spells before breakfast.

He allowed the complaints to exhaust themselves before closing the demonstration formation.

"You have been given every value required."

A student lifted the second page. "For all five?"

"They are not difficult."

That answer produced several expressions suggesting that his definition of difficulty required revision.

The lecturer appeared unmoved. He gathered the attendance plate and the thin stack of materials resting beside it.

"Unsupported conclusions will receive no credit. Show the relationship between load and tolerance. If your answer changes under the stated modification, explain why."

"Are we permitted to work together?"

The lecturer had already turned from the hall.

"Your submissions are individual."

The lecturer had reached the side door when it opened before his card touched the access plate.

A tall woman stood beyond it in deep indigo robes, one hand still raised toward the corridor formation. Conversation across the hall thinned almost immediately. Enough students had spent the examination period beneath her attention to recognize Magister Selenne without announcement.

Elara’s gaze moved past her to the faint projection hovering beside the doorway.

[SPONSOR ACCESS IRREGULARITY]

[ROUTE VALIDATION FAILED]

So Lucavion’s rejected connector had not merely redirected him. The system had reported the contradiction between his authorized course and his Martial Arts designation to the faculty member responsible for that authorization.

Selenne glanced at the lecturer. "His enrollment was verified?"

"It was." He presented the attendance plate long enough for her to inspect the resolved record. "The nearest connector rejected his Primary-Block access. I instructed him to confirm the route before the next session."

"I will have the access layer corrected."

The lecturer inclined his head. Nothing further needed discussion. He passed through the doorway, leaving Selenne to enter the hall in his place.

Her violet eyes found Lucavion at once.

"You were late to your first lecture."

Lucavion had been examining the assignment as if determining which of its five formations had offended him most. He looked up from the second page.

"The building objected to my education. Even the buildings are against me in this world."

Selenne released a quiet sigh.

It contained neither surprise nor sufficient sympathy to reward him.

"The connector recognized your course authorization but refused to extend Magicians’ sector access to a Martial Arts designation. The route layer will be corrected before the next session."

"Then one of my enemies has been defeated already."

"It malfunctioned."

"This would be a common defense for a criminal, had it be a human."

Selenne ignored that and let her gaze travel across the seat he had chosen, the open text before him and the notes occupying considerably more of the page than Elara would have predicted at the beginning of the lecture.

"You appear comfortable enough," she said. "It is fortunate that you found someone you know."

Lucavion’s mouth curved.

Elara recognized the expression a moment too late.

He turned toward her with all the ceremony of someone presenting the answer to a difficult institutional problem. "Our dear Elowyn is generosity granted mortal form. Among all the learned souls of the Magicians’ Block, none has labored more valiantly to rescue me from ignorance."

The surrounding students had not yet begun leaving in earnest. Far too many of them heard him.

Elara kept her eyes upon the assignment, although the page had become unnecessarily difficult to read.

"Your ignorance," she said, "has proven unusually resistant to rescue."

"Yet you persevere. Truly inspiring."

From Elara’s left came the soft sound of Selphine concealing amusement behind one hand.

Elara did not look at her. Doing so would only confirm that there was something worth concealing.

Selenne’s attention settled upon Elara with greater consideration. Unlike the curiosity spreading through the nearby seats, hers did not linger upon Lucavion’s deliberately embellished implication. It carried the same measured assessment Elara remembered from the oral examination.

"Arcane Structural Theory suits you," Selenne said.

The simplicity of the judgment caught Elara more effectively than praise would have.

During the examination, Selenne had challenged the assumptions beneath her answers rather than their conclusions. She had pressed whenever Elara preserved a structure merely because it was the one she had been given, forcing her to distinguish between repairing what existed and recognizing when its original design no longer deserved preservation.

"It addresses several weaknesses in your oral assessment," Selenne continued. "Particularly the tendency to solve the presented structure before questioning whether its stated conditions are complete."

Elara accepted the observation despite Lucavion’s presence beside her making that considerably less pleasant.

"I recognized the same deficiency."

"Good. Then the course should be useful."

Selenne gave a single nod before returning her attention to Lucavion.

"Next session, use the corrected connector."

"And if the building develops another objection?"

"Arrive early enough to lose the argument."

With that, she turned and departed through the side door.

The moment it closed, the restraint holding the surrounding curiosity in place began to fracture.

Elara looked down at the assignment, then at Lucavion’s faintly satisfied expression.

He had acquired formal enrollment, a Magister’s sponsorship and a corrected route into the Magicians’ Block.

Apparently, discretion had not been included.

Neither had distance.

The first authorization could have been mistaken for an administrative exception arranged by someone beneath Selenne’s office. Her name upon the sponsorship record had weakened that possibility. Her appearance at the hall removed it entirely.

The connector had rejected Lucavion once, and the irregularity had reached Selenne quickly enough that she arrived before most students finished packing their texts. She had verified his enrollment, taken responsibility for correcting his route and spoken of his next session as something already decided.

There had been no mistake.

The same realization moved through the students around Elara, though it did not produce the same conclusions.

As the hall emptied, surprise divided according to whatever each student already believed about Lucavion. Those who considered him an opportunistic commoner saw proof that he had attached himself to a powerful Magister. Those who remembered the Rotunda regarded the sponsorship as another reward gained through spectacle. One student wondered aloud what service Lucavion had performed to earn such attention; another answered that men without standing survived by learning whose favor to cultivate.

"First the Rotunda, now a Magister," someone murmured while descending toward the aisle. "He certainly knows where to bow."

"He did not bow once," came the dissatisfied reply.

"That only means he found someone willing to tolerate it."

Their voices were low enough to preserve the appearance of discretion and loud enough to ensure their subject could hear them.

Lucavion gave no indication that he had.

He closed his text, aligned the loose pages of the assignment and slid them into his case one after another. His movements remained unhurried despite the attention lingering upon him. If the remarks irritated him, he concealed it beneath the same ease with which he had endured the earlier accusations.

Or perhaps he truly did not care.

Elara suspected the latter, which only made the watching students more frustrated. Disapproval expected resistance. Without it, each muttered judgment returned to its speaker carrying less importance than when it left.

Selphine rose on Elara’s other side and gathered her materials against her chest. Her gaze followed Lucavion for a moment before returning to Elara.

"So," she said softly, "generosity granted mortal form?"

"That description originated from the student requiring rescue."

"Of course."

The agreement was far too smooth.

Elara ignored it and stored the assessment inside her notation crystal. Lucavion stood beside her at last, settling the strap of his case over one shoulder. Several nearby students slowed on their way toward the aisle, apparently unwilling to leave before discovering whether he intended to continue displaying his unusual familiarity with Elowyn Caerlin.

He merely glanced at Elara’s crystal.

"Five formations," he said. "Our instructor possesses a generous nature."

"You were informed that they are not difficult."

"I was also informed that the building merely malfunctioned. Authority has been unreliable today."

Then he stepped into the aisle as though nothing more needed saying.

Elara watched him descend through the thinning hall.

Until that morning, Lucavion’s place within the Academy had possessed a comfortable boundary. His lectures, residences and training grounds belonged to the Martial Arts Block. Their meetings required a shared library, a scheduled lesson or one of the Academy’s broader events to bring them together.

That boundary no longer existed.

His enrollment was valid. His sponsor was attentive. Before the next session, even the Academy’s pathways would be corrected to admit him without protest.

Lucavion would return to the Magicians’ Block.

He would sit through its lectures, receive its assignments and attract the attention of students who had believed these halls belonged exclusively to them. He might choose the empty seat beside her again. He would almost certainly continue speaking whenever silence would have served everyone better.

Days like this would not remain an exception.

Institutions changed quietly once an irregularity received the proper authorization. A sealed record became an active course, a corrected route became ordinary passage, and a person who had once appeared misplaced returned often enough that the room was eventually forced to make a place for him.

Elara followed him toward the aisle, already considering which of his assignment answers would require correction first.

She did not notice the smile that had begun to form.