"Up to what class can this magic circuit defend against?"
Henry lightly tapped his shoes on the surface. A faint ripple spread out and dissipated.
"Hahahaha! Everyone knows, but it's still a secret." Prospect winked at Henry.
The capabilities of this magic circuit were an open secret. Those who knew knew, but those who didn't shouldn't know.
"Is it the fifth class?" Henry said, meaningfully eyeing Prospect.
A bit of blood drained from Prospect's face. He was embarrassed. Henry was entirely correct.
"Was it that obvious?"
"It was a guess," Henry faintly smiled.
"…"
Prospect took a sharp breath. Henry had tricked him into revealing the secret. It was an open secret, so he unintentionally became careless.
"Here's a Mana Chalk." Prospect threw a blue chalk at Henry. "The magic circuit will adapt to it."
"What's this?"
Henry marveled at the chalk in his hand. He fiddled with it. It was dry and dusty like regular old white chalk.
"Made of crushed mana stones imbued with stardust. It can modify a magic circuit if the change is possible," Prospect explained clearly.
Henry widened his eyes. This chalk was impressive if it was true. He could faintly sense that he never had this kind of thing in the past when he was making magic circuits.
"What are the downsides?"
"You expect that too? Well, it fades away over time. It was the main reason we have maintainers. In ancient times, magic circuits were made permanent. That art was lost long ago."
Henry nodded his head upon listening. The current world is so different from his era. It was almost as if he was in another world.
"Do you have any more questions?" Prospect asked. He still had things to take care of.
"How long can I stay here?"
"Until 7 PM you need to leave. We let this place fill with mana during the night."
"All right. I will take note of that."
Henry waved his hand at Prospect, who left.
He looked around and found the part of the magic circuit from the blueprint earlier. The whole magic circuit was 200 meters in diameter.
It was massive, and there was so much mana. Henry would be able to become a High-class magus in one go if he absorbed all of them in the air.
The underground obviously contained more mana. It wasn't hard to guess that they stored many to supply the energy needs of the magic circuit in times of an attack.
It was 2 PM when Henry entered the magic circuit. He walked in circles starting from the outer edge and slowly walked to the center.
By 6 PM he had seen all of the features of the magic circuit. This thing had many novel shortcuts applied to it.
Whoever crafted this magic circuit should be a top magus of his generation. It also wouldn't surprise Henry if it was a group of magi who made this.
The magic circuit would condense large amounts of mana at the surface of the magic circuit's defensive bubble and explode outward in order to counter the attacking spell.
It was ingenious. It wasn't without flaws, but it would be hard to overcome.
Henry crossed his legs while sitting at the center of the magic circuit. There were other students here, and they ignored him earlier.
The fog concealed Henry's facial features from them. It was an unwritten agreement for them to stay a distance from each other as they were doing their work.
But when he sat down, many of them immediately noticed. They curiously walked over and saw Henry's face.
"Who is this guy?" a male student asked the female student near him.
"No idea. New student?"
All of them had heard of Henry, but they hadn't seen his face, so they were all clueless about his identity.
It only took a few minutes before they lost their interest and continued their maintenance work. Some of the others left since it was near 7 PM.
The image of the magic circuit was floating within Henry's mind. He used a bit of mana to aid in visualizing it.
As a result, he was able to understand the whole magic circuit in only a dozen minutes.
He opened his eyes and stood up. He learned a lot about the state of this era's magic circuits.
It was more advanced than his era, but not by a lot. He recognized a few parts of the magic circuits and many were unfamiliar to him, but they essentially did the same thing.
Henry's harvests were a lot. To repay what he learned, he walked around and casually started modifying the magic circuit with his chalk.
"What's he doing?" a student asked.
They watched in disbelief and horror as Henry diverged from the blueprints and modified it willy-nilly.
"Hey! Stop!" another student shouted.
They all became frantic. They instantly thought that this was a sabotage attempt towards their academy!
"Stop, all of you!" an authoritative voice commanded from the entrance.
"Teacher Trago!"
The students recognized this person! They paused in their footsteps and froze.
Henry was aware that this guy had been silently watching him since a few hours ago. He had been watching under the shadow of the entrance.
The students were in disbelief as they continued watching Henry modify more and more of the magic circuit's parts.
"Done."
Henry stood straight and looked around.
As if he commanded it, the magic circuit started morphing and changing shape. The lines brightened, and mana condensed into liquid a few inches above the magic circuit.
A mini rain started. The liquid mana flowed into the magic circuit and supplied its energy to change. In a few seconds, the blue mana fog was gone.
Henry could be clearly seen.
The students were astonished beyond comprehension. They turned to look at Teacher Trago. He was just like them, with his mouth wide open in disbelief.
Trago walked onto the magic circuit lines and looked around. He crouched down and touched the lines which were giving off waves of powerful energy.
It was like the earlier magic circuit was broken and that it should be like this in the first place!
"What did you do??" Trago asked in a coarse voice.