Silas, Jace, and Rowan sat together in Arcane Theory class. Jace leaned back in his chair as they waited for the professor.
"Ready for some magic theory to blow your minds?" he asked.
Rowan raised his eyebrow, mildly amused. "I don't think theories are supposed to blow your mind."
Jace waved his hand, dismissing Rowan's criticism. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just excited to learn. You know what I mean?"
It was Silas's turn to be incredulous. "Jace, I don't think anyone knows what you mean. I'm just trying to not die as soon as I graduate."
"What's with the downer mood, buddy? Who pissed in your cereal?" Jace said.
"You two are going to give me grey hairs," Rowan sighed.
"You're telling me you're not excited? Mr 'I got straight A's all through school.' Isn't that what you were telling me last night?" Jace said, surprised.
"I'm not the overachiever, my parents are. They're the ones who pushed me to get straight A's," Rowan said.
"Are your parents mage knights too?" Silas asked, curious.
Rowan nodded. "Both of them. Strong ones too. They always expected me to accomplish as much as they did, if not surpass them."
"That sounds like a lot of pressure." Silas said.
"You have no idea," Rowan said.
Jace leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk and squashing his face in his hands. "At least your parents were around. Mine were always busy with the family business."
"What kind of business?" Silas asked.
"They're merchants. Textiles mostly, but they have an antique shop they run out of our house. They were always right on the other side of the wall, but they still never had time for me," Jace said.
"You're making me feel like I got it good, man, sheesh," Rowan said.
"What about you, Silas? What's your family situation?" Jace asked.
"I shouldn't be telling Jace this, but my family situation sucks," Silas said, jokingly directing it at Rowan, pretending to ignore Jace.
"Hey! I can keep my mouth shut…if it's important," Jace said, indignant.
"Ok, well, my mom isn't a mage. She's actually not magical at all," Silas said, wincing, waiting for a negative response.
Rowan and Jace raised their eyebrows but didn't say anything, so Silas continued. "My mom's actually in prison."
"For what?!?!" Jace and Rowan said at the same time.
"They said it was for trespassing and illegal immigration, but it was really because she was practicing 'science.'" Silas said, a grim look on his face.
"What?" Rowan exclaimed.
"Holy sh**!" Jace nearly shouted.
"You're mom's from Earth?" Jace asked, his eyebrows raised so high they were practically touching his hairline.
"Yes. Now keep it down. You guys are practically shouting," Silas said.
Rowan was the first to regain his composure. "Sorry. That's just so…wild. I didn't expect to get my mind blown in Arcane Theory class, but I guess I did." He laughed, trying to lighten the mood.
"Holy sh**," Jace whispered.
"I know, I know," Silas said. "We'll talk about it later. Now, shut up, the professor is here."
Professor Hawthorne lectured about mana circuits and cores and flow. The rest of the class passed by without much fuss.
Their next class was Mana Manipulation with Professor Valerian. The Professor talked to them about the manipulation of pure mana and the constructs you could create with it.
Working with pure mana was immensely draining. Spells were far more efficient, but if you didn't have a spell for what you needed, you wanted to have the fundamentals of mana manipulation to fall back on.
For instance if you needed a ladder but your affinity was fire. Sure you could conjure a normal ladder if you knew the conjuration spell well enough, but you wouldn't always have a perfect spell memorized for every need. And making a fire ladder was obviously out of the question.
So you would have to rely on creating one out of pure mana. Pure mana manipulation was far more draining, but also far more intuitive than spells. All you had to do was sufficiently visualize what you wanted.
For the first class, Professor Valerian had the students try to create a basic object to start and they spent most of the class practicing just that. Silas watched as Jace and Rowan shaped their mana into simple constructs.
Jace was able to make a ball, but it dissipated after a few seconds. Rowan had far more control and finesse. He made a flame that flickered in his hand. Mana constructs were always greyscale, they had no color. Some were mostly white while others had shades of grey.
Silas started by trying to create a box but his heart wasn't in it, so it kept falling apart. He couldn't maintain concentration. His mind started to wander off, and he started thinking about Rowan's strange night time friend.
He thought about its small pudgy body and the way it breathed in time with Rowan when they were sleeping.
[System message: Construct parameters analyzed. Visualization sufficient.]
Silas felt something stirring inside of him, literally. The machine that had integrated itself into his body was doing something.
[System message: Construct requires high mana cost (300). Would you like to assemble the construct?]
"Sure," Silas thought.
Silas felt the mana as it left his body and started assembling itself on his desk. It coalesced into a solid form in front of his eyes, mimicking the contours and textures of Rowan's tiny stegosaurus.
The class collectively leaned towards Silas to take a closer look at his creation. It was a perfect life size replica of Rowan's stegosaurus familiar. It even looked around and breathed.
Jace did a literal double take when he saw it. "There's no way, man. How did you do that?"
Rowan stared at the mana construct of his familiar. "That's amazing. It looks just like Steggie."
Professor Valerian approached Silas's desk, his eyes full of excitement. "That is most impressive, Mr. Blackwood. Your control and attention to detail is remarkable for someone who is…" Valerian scanned Silas's clothes for something, "Rank 9??? I need to talk to Professor Vance to discover the meaning of this. This is a tier 5 construct. How did you accomplish this?"
Silas didn't want to reveal the existence of his system. It could result in the end of his time here or worse, he could be arrested for engaging in science like his mom. "I mean the altar did say my maximum tier is 00, so maybe it has something to do with that?" He scratched his head sheepishly.
"Tier 00. That explains it. I am still going to talk to Vance. I will see if he can raise your rank mid-term," Professor Valerian said.
"Thanks." Silas smiled. Initially, he hated his low ranking because it made him a target for first years, but if he was ranked tier 5, he would just become a target of second years who wanted to show him his place in the hierarchy. They would assume he was full of himself, and they would try to prove to him he was nothing compared to them.