Aurelius closed his eyes shut and shrank into his seat like a clam.

  However, going unnoticed was a luxury that eluded Aurelius that day.

  The sage noticed and identified Aurelius’s dismayed expression in a fraction of a second, teleporting across the dining hall to find Aurelius and his horrified companions.

  She had an uncharacteristically unkempt look, with scruffled hair and eyebags lining her eyes, she looked even more feral than usual. And her usual Commission uniform seemed to have been replaced by a simple shirt and pants.

  “I’ll be taking him now.” She declared, picking Aurelius up by the collar, and snapping her fingers.

  And with two illusory lines of geometry left behind, the pair disappeared from the dining hall, leaving Tiberius and Lucina stupefied.

  “Err, should we try to find him?” Lucina asked Tiberius, unsure if Aurelius had just been… kidnapped.

  “Good question.” Tiberius replied vaguely, scrutinising the spinning bowl of noodles that lay in front of them as he wondered what Aurelius did this time…

  ???

  Sage Yeltz and her muscular body bore down on Aurelius, as she stood tall and imposingly in front of the couch that Aurelius ever so comfortably sat in.

  Her cold hands grasped his shoulders, as Aurelius’s eyes darted around in nervousness. As he found different things around the office to look at, his eyes fixated on a rather interesting detail.

  With closer inspection, Aurelius could see the creases that the sage’s shirt had. Other than the occasional random and small crumples, the shirt had 3 lines drawn exactly lengthwise and two lines drawn across.

  It seemed that the sage… folded her collared shirts…

  Not particularly concerned about this baffled Aurelius, Sage Yeltz immediately started her interrogation.

  “I want you to recite to me EXACTLY what He mentioned about basic magic.” She demanded, shaking Aurelius’s shoulders slightly with a threatening glare.

  Aurelius was even more confused by her words, given that he had actively gone out of his way to inform her of what Quetzalcoatl had mentioned regarding basic magic.

  “Like I said, He defined magic as… Err… a manipulation of ambient mana, and said that the spells of magic possible with stacking the soul shapes in elemental magic systems are a… shortcut and… err… something that can be achieved with basic magic…” Aurelius stuttered out, his voice oscillating a little from the way that the sage kept shaking him like a ragdoll.

  “He specifically said that basic magic can achieve elemental magic and that soul stacking is a ‘shortcut’?” The sage clarified, finally letting go of Aurelius and ruffling her hair, as she started to pace around the room in thought.

  Aurelius nodded to nobody in particular, unsure if the sage had actually wanted an answer from him.

  The pacing continued for a couple minutes longer, with the sage finally collapsing on the couch opposite Aurelius in a daze.

  “Shortcut? But that would take… a lifetime…” She muttered to herself.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “He is a god… but at the same time… elemental magics are fundamental… even the gods are bound to them…”

  “Which accounts are to be believed? At most, it should remain within the elemental systems…” She mused, blinking slowly as the ferocity in her body was slowly replaced by deep thought.

  The sage snapped her fingers, summoning a familiar orb into the room. It was the soul image that was taken from Aurelius when he had been locked up in the cell.

  She lifted the orb into the air and brought out a dozen strangely shaped lenses and tools from her desk with another spell.

  With Aurelius still sitting very awkwardly in his seat, the sage started to examine every corner of the glassy ball with absolute focus and intensity, using her gizmos and gadgets with utmost precision.

  Each look seemed to puzzle her even more, as she muttered silently to herself in a daze. Occasionally, she would take notes on a rough piece of paper on the coffee table. However, that was the extent of her movements over the next… 30 minutes.

  Aurelius shifted in his seat slightly, edging towards the doorway that seemed ever so far away. However, that was a rather dumb mistake, given that the sage immediately looked up to glare at him.

  Ordinarily, this glare would have made Aurelius shrivel up and stop in his tracks, but Aurelius was feeling rather adventurous today, and he decided that he would try to attempt the impossible.

  Small talk.

  “So… How was your day?” Aurelius asked, immediately regretting his absolute buffoonery, as the sage tossed a small gem into the air and snapped her fingers authoritatively.

  The gem shattered instantly, adding a small ‘ting’ sound to the crisp snap of the Sage’s fingers, and Aurelius was teleported away into a dimly lit, and familiar room.

  Aurelius immediately recognised the smooth stone walls and the silence of this small square room, as he promptly stubbed his toe on the stone structure in its middle.

  It was his previous little accommodation at the Commission building.

  Sage Yeltz had just teleported him back into his prison cell!

  ???

  Aurelius would spend quite a while pacing the room, completely fed up with the way that the Commission treated him in general.

  The least that they could do for a ‘liability’ like him was to accommodate him with actually LIKABLE ‘mentors’ or ‘protection’!

  He had lasted just under an hour cursing loudly through the small bars on his cell door, before he defeatedly curled up into a corner and started to nap pathetically. After all, he had no way to get out of a damn prison!

  The jingle of keys against the metallic cell door woke Aurelius up after around 2 hours, and he was greeted with an increasingly unpleasant sight of Sage Yeltz.

  With another snap of her fingers, the two of them were teleported away once more back to the Sage’s office at the Academy.

  Without so much as a hello, the sage flew open the windows and summoned a chalkboard out of thin air.

  Wiping off what seemed to be complex mathematical equations and formulas, the Sage created a cloud of powdered chalk, causing Aurelius to sneeze incessantly.

  And without another word, the sage went into a lecture mode, her sleeves rolled up and revealing a trunk-like wrist in a manner reminiscent of a street hooligan and picking up a small stub of chalk

  “You. You have just upended the theory of magic that humans. No, even spirits have relied on for the last 10,000 or so years.” She announced, drawing a little circle on the board.

  In the corners of the circle, she proceeded to draw 4 more shapes; a series of concentric rings, a jagged circle with a hole, a hexagon and a diamond shape.

  “These are the shapes that humanity has distilled magic down into.” Sage Yeltz started.

  “In the beginning of the magical Era, humanity had to examine in detail the souls of magical creatures, or what we call monsters, to learn the basic building blocks of magic.”

  “With the progress of science and magical theory, we have created a system of magic that is sensible, procedural and efficient through a process of reductionism.”

  “We started to understand mana manipulation. We started to understand soul stacking. We started to realise the limits of magic.”

  “In the delusions of humanity, it seems that we overlooked a fundamental assumption in our theories over the last few eras.”

  “And that is that reductionism is the answer to understanding the essence of magic.” She concluded, staring at Aurelius expectantly.

  “Do you understand what your soul shape has made me realise?” She asked, peering deep into Aurelius's baffled eyes.

  Aurelius was once again, inching towards the door, completely uncomfortable with being stuck in a room with a semi-insane rambling woman.

  “It made me realise that the soul can become more than a component of its parts.” Sage Yeltz declared, her face almost drunk in delight…