小嫂子的味道

When I had my stomach full and satisfied, I left the cafeteria and headed toward the main academy building.

It was a fresh morning. The weather was clear and cool. The grass on the ground waved from time to time whenever a gentle gust of wind passed by, tossing the broken flower petals in the air and hurling them up in the vast sky.

It was around 9:45 and the number of students on the grounds was increasing.

Some of the students who had just woken up were rushing into the cafe for breakfast, those who were already done with that were heading for the main building, and those who didn\'t have classes or decided to skip them were either headed for either the training facility or enjoying their time in the open garden—some with books and some savoring their own company.

It was nice…living in the present, for once in a while.

​ I was successful in avoiding my death, the Requiem sword was also with me, and I had settled things with Ryfin too—at least that\'s what I would like to think. For now, there wasn\'t going to be any major event in the academy that could harm my life, thus I didn\'t really have anything to do.

Well, I did have a few things in a while—such as training with the Requiem sword and getting used to it, but they weren\'t life-threatening. In short, I finally had some time to take it slow and easy for a while.

I let out a sigh as I admired the environment around me. It was…beautiful. I\'d been tangled up in so many things that I basically forgot the fact that I was in a fantasy world. A dream every author has at least thought about. I was living that dream right and was in a world of swords and magic…

I was so lost in admiring the beauty of the fantasy that I didn\'t realize it when I reached the main building. As I entered through the gate along with the other students I saw a metal plate fixed on the wall above with several letters engraved on it.

\'Ah, I almost forgot about it.\'

I\'d been addressing the buildings in the academy as \'main building\', \'training facility \'and \'office building\' because that\'s what they were and it was easy to remember.

Although that doesn\'t help the fact that these buildings had their names too.

The main building was called \'Mains\', the training facility building was called \'Instrs\', and the office building was called \'Harts\'. These were the official names given to each of the buildings by the academy staff.

Hmm, now that I think about it, using their given names should be easier since they were short. Well, whatever.

I went inside and after walking in through the maze of multiple hallways and corridors I reached my class. Class 1B.

I stepped inside the classroom and let my gaze wander across the room. It was already filled one-fourth, meaning that only the students who were later were left.

Standing near the entrance I looked at the seats and noticed that the place where I used to sit was already occupied by another student. Hence, I walked up and chose another empty one in the right corner of the row.

I sat and rested my hands on the table in front of me. My eyes scanned the atmosphere inside the room and only then did I realize that I again forgot to bring notes with me. I mean, really. Everyone here was sitting with papers and pens to note down the lessons.

…Okay not everyone, there were a few who were like me but you know in which category those types fall.

For once, I thought about going and buying the paper and pen from the shop or grabbing one from my room but then as the distance between the dorms and the shops have from the Mains came into my mind, I discarded the idea upon seeing the time on the wall clock hanging above the blackboard.

\'It\'s not like anyone\'s gonna scold me for it,\' was the excuse I gave to myself. It was true though. The teachers didn\'t force anyone to note down the lessons, it was upon the students to decide what they had to do.

They could write them down if they want to but if they are geniuses with superhuman memory then they can just sit with nothing but thin air on their tables.

In all the classes I\'ve attained until now, not even once have I shown up with something that could be used to write. A part of it was because these lessons didn\'t really mean anything to me—the magic lessons to be precise.

Yes, I had come to this academy to gain knowledge about magic but I already knew how to use elemental magic—and I was growing more accustomed to it with each day. These lessons which started with basic elemental magic didn\'t matter to me—unlike the other students who were new to this or only knew to cast spells through an incantation.

The other reason was…I couldn\'t use spells by using magic circles. Yeah. At first, I thought I was having a problem memorizing the circles just like other students but apparently, that wasn\'t the case.

For some reason, I was not able to cast spells even after I had the whole magic circle printed in my mind, down to the last, minute detail. The cause I didn\'t know but I\'ll pass it as the same reason I wasn\'t able to use the magiken before—my mana being different from the majority.

The magic circles which were taught to us now were premade ones created by the magicians over the ages, they were used because they were the best out there. However, that doesn\'t mean they were perfect.

The circles the academy taught to the students were best because they were compatible with almost every person, actually, that was the main reason the academy used them—so that each student could cast spells with the help of those circles.

It goes without saying that those weren\'t meant for me because my mana was different.

You see, the patterns and runes in the magic circles contain information. Each and every spell is broken down into pieces of information such as the area the said spell will affect, the speed of the attack, the amount of mana used, the duration of the spell, delay in fire, recoil, sound, and many more things even I don\'t know about.

All these chunks of information are expressed into runes without are later compressed further into magic circles. In order to use a spell, the user had to remember the runes and the circle and create the same circle again with nothing but mana.

This process is rather automatic, if you have a clear image of the magic circle in your mind and then channel the mana in your body, the real circle will appear just by thinking about it. But for me, that\'s where it doesn\'t work.

My theory is that just like the other pieces of information, the frequency of one\'s mana is also inscribed in the magic circles, mine doesn\'t match with it thus I\'m unable to use the circle itself.

As I thought about this, Ryfin entered the class with his usual teacher\'s smile.