Mira lifted her eyes toward the rune-ring structure etched across the moonstone slate, exhaustion and dread written plainly across her face.
Nearly twenty nodes were interlaced in a dense, spiderweb-like lattice.
And Node 17 sat dead at the center—the bottleneck, the point most likely to kill you.
“Corvus…” someone whispered, their voice trembling. “That spell is infamous.”
No one joked about Corvus. At least, not in Valerius’s class.
Corvus was a high-grade reconnaissance verification spell—delicate, precise, and vicious. A fraction of misplacement in a rune. A hairline error in mana flow. And the rebound pressure would cascade through the circuit, collapsing the entire topology before detonating.
It was one of the nastiest problems students ever faced—an execution tool professors favored when they wanted to cut grades cleanly, without mercy.
The fear was justified.
The statistics were worse.
Nearly half of DVM students were forced to repeat Valerius’s course—not because they lacked talent, but because they failed to cross the complexity barrier of Corvus topology.
And under that crushing weight—
Rein began to walk.
He descended the narrow steps of the amphitheater slowly, steadily.
Thunk. Thunk.
There was no hesitation in the rhythm.
To the students, he was marching toward a public execution; to Rein, he was simply walking toward a messy workbench that desperately needed organizing.
Magic? Please.
As someone who survived MIT lecture halls, he couldn't stomach calling this 'magic.' It was nothing more than a poorly optimized algorithm—an equation bloated into a cluttered mess by stacking redundant variables for no reason.
It was a brute-force solution that required no more brainpower than using a fighter jet to carpet-bomb a target the size of a coin.
Frankly, it was painful to look at.
“Permission, Master,” Rein said simply.
He reached down and picked up the crystal chalk resting at the base of the board.
Standing before the moonstone slate, the silence pressed in so tightly that his own breathing sounded intrusive.
Rein didn’t rush to write.
Instead, he narrowed his eyes and studied the network with undisguised contempt.
He didn't even have to think; three distinct detection models simply flickered to life in his mind.
The first was Standard Detection, which he had already reclassified as little more than a crude mana flashlight.
Cone projection. Massive energy consumption. Useless the moment an obstacle entered the equation.
Honestly… who was dumb enough to stand in the open and let a detection spell tag them?
On a real battlefield, with corners and cover, that cone of light was nothing but a tactical liability.
The second was Corvus—the one in front of him now.
On paper, it was an improvement, using pulsed mana emissions to separate matter through rhythmic sampling.
But that very improvement was also the flaw.
So you twisted the entire circuit into this mess… just to gain twenty more feet of range?
Rein’s gaze swept across the structure. The topology resembled a clunky gear train attempting a delicate operation. Pulsed backscatter created enormous recoil pressure—and all of it was dumped into Node 17.
Node 17—the signal filter—absorbed the strain until it inevitably reached a critical threshold.
Compared to Rachel’s spell, this Corvus felt like a relic from a dumber era.
It was like lugging a bulky, vacuum-tube battlefield radio on your back, while she moved with… well… something closer to a high-precision, handheld sonar.
“Master,” Rein said without turning around.
His voice cut through the amphitheater, smothering the murmurs into instant silence.
“This Corvus circuit has a fundamental signal-to-noise ratio problem,” he continued evenly. “The method it uses—boosting frequency directly at Node 17—doesn’t increase accuracy.”
He lifted the chalk slightly, holding it like a scalpel.
“It turns the entire network into a time bomb—one that’s just waiting to overload.”
Mira clapped both hands over her mouth, panic blooming behind her eyes.
Wait—Rein… you’re criticizing the work of a famous detection archmage from the Kingdom of Windfall.
If he messed this up, he’d be walking to class with a burlap sack—potato holes included—over his head for the rest of the semester.
Rein’s crystal chalk snapped into motion.
Krrrk—krrrk—
The sound came fast—then abruptly stopped.
He frowned.
…No.
A sharp scrape followed as he struck out his own line. Chalk dust spilled across the slate.
Krrrk—
He stepped back half a pace, head tilted, eyes narrowing as he traced the circuit in the air with his finger.
Still not right.
A few students exchanged uneasy glances.
Then Rein moved again.
Krrrk—krrrk—krrrk—
This time the strokes were faster, rougher. He rewrote a mana junction, paused, then erased it entirely with the side of his hand.
“Damn it…” he muttered under his breath, barely audible.
“I should’ve finished the range expansion last night.”
Mira’s heart skipped.
He’s… fixing it? Or breaking it again?
Rein exhaled through his nose and leaned in once more.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
He didn’t erase Node 17 like everyone feared. Instead, he began rebuilding the topology around it.
Alright, fine. One exception. That red-haired elf is a total monster…
Rein’s hand moved again—slower this time, tracing lines with a heavy, calculated caution.
Her senses were refined enough that she didn’t need a signal filter at all. She could simply release mana and interpret the return directly,
like a veteran sonar operator identifying a specific engine signature by ear alone.
But humans didn’t get that luxury. Their mana perception was noisier—cruder, full of static.
That was why humans needed Nodes in the first place—to translate raw signal into something the brain could survive processing.
Realizing that, a small, private smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Right. That’s the constraint.
He adjusted the angle of a mana pathway—then hesitated.
…Too aggressive.
Another line vanished under his palm.
He tried again, this time easing the curve into a smoother arc.
Better.
He couldn’t deny it.
He owed LIZ a fraction of the credit. Last night, she hadn’t just helped him sketch a money plan—she’d stayed up acting as a research assistant while he dismantled this spell in his head piece by piece.
Ever since witnessing Rachel’s detection spell during the library murder case, Rein had been quietly chewing on this problem—for over a week.
“Master,” Rein said, chalk still moving, “the issue with Node 17 is that it’s trying to behave like a sorting clerk drowning in paperwork.”
A ripple of unease ran through the room.
He redrew the mana link—this time into a cleaner, sinusoidal waveform.
“I’m changing the processing method. Instead of forcing separation through compression, I’ll let phase-shift resonance do the work.”
He paused again, then shook his head.
“…No. That’ll spike turbulence.”
A quick correction followed—tight, precise.
“I’m refining the pathway to reduce noise,” he continued, almost thinking out loud now, “and adding echo alignment to organize the return signal.”
The circuit slowly began to change character.
Less like a spiderweb.
More like a system.
“The mana cost drops below half,” Rein said, finally stepping back. “And the detection radius—rough estimate—should push seventy to eighty feet, even at Troposphere-tier.”
He studied the slate one last time.
Then flicked the chalk dust from his fingers.
Silence swallowed the amphitheater.
A heartbeat later, it shattered.
What had once been a tangled, hostile mess of runes now looked symmetrical—coherent—almost elegant.
Rein took three steps back, eyes fixed on the board. Not triumphant.
Just… satisfied enough.
True, it still wasn’t as clean—or as terrifyingly powerful—as Rachel’s elven “analog sonar.”
But this?
This was the best digital sonar a human mind—and human limitations—could realistically build.
“I’ve stabilized the bottleneck at Node 17,” Rein said evenly. “The circuit can now expand its operational radius without causing mana feedback injuries.”
The murmurs didn’t stop.
Admiration clashed with suspicion.
And from the noble seats, contempt spilled freely.
“It’s just drawn to look pretty,” someone scoffed. “An illusion. A commoner’s trick.”
Rein didn’t spare them a glance.
Explaining applied magical physics—his nascent research—to people who had already decided not to understand it ranked dead last on his priorities.
Not being confined.
Because a week in the library meant no The Ranking Matches.
My chance at that money would vanish into thin air.
Gone.
To these nobles, it was just a score—pocket change for a new cloak.
But for me?
It was the difference between goddamn steak and more fxxking bread.
Call it sloppy. Call it ugly. Fine.
Rein brushed his fingers together once more and looked through the chaos to a single figure.
Master Valerius von Thorne.
- Pierce Brosnan edition, he noted absently.
If this impeccably groomed “British spy in professor’s clothing” approved the result—
Then this equation ended exactly where Rein needed it to.
Valerius stood motionless for a long moment, saying nothing.
The glow of the mana lamps trembled faintly along the white at his temples as his eyes moved across the moonstone slate—too quickly for anyone else to follow. They traced the circuit from node to node, lingering where lines had been erased and redrawn, where hesitation and correction overlapped in ways no standardized spell ever would.
This was an act of intellectual violence.
The logic was unrecognizable—a jagged, foreign structure that bypassed tradition entirely. It stripped the Corvus doctrine of its authority, leaving it looking like a crude, inefficient draft.
Even the masters of the Kingdom would have hesitated before this board.
Or worse.
They would call it heretical.
Valerius inhaled slowly.
As an academic, he understood one thing above all else: any idea dangerous enough to offend tradition was valuable enough to test.
He stepped forward and stopped before the slate. Up close, the circuit appeared even stranger—mana paths adjusted mid-thought, lines corrected rather than polished, the marks of a mind working in real time rather than reciting something memorized. It lacked elegance in the conventional sense,
but it was undeniably honest.
Without ceremony, he extended a gloved hand—black leather against pale stone—and brushed the edge of the slate lightly.
Then he fed mana into the structure.
The air in Room 402 shuddered—not violently, but unmistakably—as a thin wave of mana expanded outward from Valerius, rippling through the space like water disturbed by a falling pebble. It was neither a cone nor a beam, but an omnidirectional pulse that slid through desks, stone, and bodies alike, carrying with it a faint, chilling pressure.
The mana returned.
Within Valerius’s mental visualization, the reflected mana assembled itself with startling clarity. The range pushed past the old Corvus limit without resistance, slipping beyond seventy feet as clean geometric data returned from behind walls and obstacles—sharp, precise, and free of the distortion that had long plagued the spell.
There was no recoil, no backlash—and Node 17, the infamous bottleneck, held firm.
For the first time since he had entered the room, something shifted behind his pale blue eyes. Not excitement, and not shock—but wonder, restrained only by years of discipline.
He turned to Rein, who still stood before the slate with chalk dust clinging faintly to his fingers, his expression blank, as if awaiting an entirely ordinary verdict.
“Mister Rein,” Valerius said at last, his voice measured, carrying a weight that silenced the room, “it appears I will not be deducting your marks.”
He paused, just long enough for the words to settle.
“Nor will I be confining you to the library.”
A murmur rippled through the amphitheater, but Rein merely nodded once.
“Thank you, Master.”
He returned the crystal chalk to its place, wiped his fingertips against his sleeve, and turned away from the board.
Without flourish or hesitation, he walked back up the stone steps and slipped into his seat among the first-years without another word, shoulders relaxing as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Around him, the amphitheater buzzed softly—whispers, half-suppressed disbelief, the rustle of pages as students pretended to return to their notes.
At the front of the room, Master Valerius didn't look away from the moonstone slate. He didn't erase the circuit. Instead, he simply folded his arms, his fingers drumming a rhythmic, thoughtful beat against his sleeve while his gaze lingered on the elegant, logic-defying curves Rein had left behind.
He had seen geniuses before. But he had never seen a student treat an ancient spell like a poorly written draft.
"The lecture continues," Valerius said, his voice returning to its cool, professional edge.
"Open your texts to page eighty-four. Let us see if you can understand the original theory as well as Mister Rein has... dismantled it."
Mira slowly turned in her seat, her gaze searching through the crowded rows for the boy at the back of the hall.
Rein was slouched in his chair, staring down at his notebook like any other student who had barely made it to class on time.
No intimidating aura. No bristling arrogance. Not a single trace of the person who had just, single-handedly, dismantled and rebuilt a spell taught across the entire continent.
Mira’s brows knitted together.
Is this really that guy?
The Rein she knew was insufferable—arrogant beyond redemption, cold as a glacier, with a nasty habit of crushing others into the dirt with a few sharp words.
Oh, that’s right. She’d almost forgotten—and she had to admit this much—Rein was razor-sharp. He’d possessed a chilling kind of brilliance when it came to tactical maneuvers and magical flexibility.
But that had been the brilliance of a "prodigy"—a fire fueled by pure ego.
What she had seen on the moonstone slate today was different.
What she was seeing now, however, went beyond anything sixteen years of life should allow. It was too staggering—an impossibility that made the title of ‘Prodigy’ feel like a gross understatement.
The way he’d handled that Corvus circuit was surgical—stripping away the excess with a systematic precision that was far beyond any student's level.
It felt as if someone far older was looking out through his eyes—someone who had already seen how things broke, and how they fit together again.
Mira shook her head to drive away the shivers and muttered under her breath—
“Or maybe if you eat stone-hard bread every day… your brain just evolves to that level?”
Rein sneezed.
These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.
Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.
Corvus (Standard Version)
Type: Reconnaissance / Detection Spell
Tier: Advanced (typically taught at higher academic levels, such as DVM)
Origin: Windfall School of Magical Engineering
A sophisticated but unstable detection spell designed for long-range magical scanning.
The spell relies on pulsed mana emissions, which sample surrounding matter by sending and interpreting energy echoes—similar to sonar or LIDAR in modern terms. However, the Corvus structure is notoriously fragile due to its rune topology, especially around Node 17, which acts as the bottleneck.
Overloading this node often causes the entire circuit to collapse violently, resulting in magical backlash or circuit failure.
The original Corvus spell prioritizes range at the cost of stability and efficiency. It suffers from:
– High signal-to-noise ratio
– Poor mana distribution
– Critical overload risk centered on Node 17
It is often referred to as an "execution tool" by students due to its reputation for failure and harsh grading consequences.
Corvus (Rein’s Modified Version)
Type: Re-engineered Detection Spell
Tier: Unknown / Custom Architecture
Developer: Rein
Rein radically redesigned the Corvus spell using principles of signal processing and algorithmic logic, reminiscent of modern electrical engineering. His version incorporates:
– Echo alignment to organize return signals
– Phase-shift resonance instead of brute-force compression
– Sinusoidal waveform pathways to reduce magical turbulence
– Lowered mana cost by over 50%
– Expanded effective radius to 70–80 feet
– Stabilized Node 17 bottleneck
Unlike traditional elven "analog" perception-based detection (e.g., Master Rachel's spell), this is closer to a digital sonar system, optimized for human mana-processing limitations.
Node 17
A crucial rune node in the Corvus topology.
– Functions as a signal filter, managing data overload.
– Tends to absorb recoil from backscatter pulses, leading to frequent system collapse.
– Considered one of the harshest technical bottlenecks in magical circuit design.
– Stabilization of Node 17 is considered a major engineering challenge in detection spellcraft.
Rein resolves the instability by modifying signal processing logic, transforming Node 17 from a bottleneck into a stable distribution node.
Valerius von Thorne (Update)
– A powerful magic professor described as “Pierce Brosnan edition 007” — calm, elegant, and dangerous.
– Specializes in magic theory and is unafraid to test unorthodox methods if they prove logically sound.
– Publicly approves Rein’s re-engineering of Corvus, breaking academic precedent.
Pop Culture Reference Codex
- Pierce Brosnan Edition
Character / Reference: James Bond (Pierce Brosnan era)
First Appearance (as Brosnan): GoldenEye (1995)
Portrayed By: Pierce Brosnan – An Irish actor who played the iconic British spy James Bond across four films between 1995 and 2002.
– Genre: Spy / Action Thriller
– Signature Traits:
Smooth sophistication, deadly precision, and emotional control under pressure. Brosnan’s Bond was known for balancing charm and lethality—an embodiment of "cool under fire."
– Famous Gadgets:
Exploding pens, remote-control cars, laser watches—his Bond used high-tech gadgetry alongside raw instinct and wit.
– Key Quote:
"Vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred."
The History:
Pierce Brosnan’s tenure as James Bond revived the franchise in the mid-90s, modernizing it for a post-Cold War audience. His portrayal merged the traditional suave demeanor of previous Bonds (like Sean Connery) with a sharper, more emotionally resonant core.
Trivia:
– GoldenEye was the first Bond film to feature extensive computer-age themes like satellite weapons and cyber-terrorism.
– Brosnan's Bond was frequently cited as the “most elegant” iteration—less brutish than Daniel Craig's, more grounded than Roger Moore's.