Let’s Go Together

Adrian and Mikhail arrived at the classroom a little earlier than the start of class and, as if they had agreed beforehand, sat side by side in the very last row. Mikhail glanced at Adrian, surprised that he had chosen the farthest seat in the back. Foundations of Magic—it was a subject that would typically excite and intrigue any commoner. Outside of the Academy, no one would even have the chance to attend such specialized lectures. And yet, Adrian sat in the back with an air of complete disinterest.

As the class time approached, students gradually filed in and filled the empty seats in the lecture hall. However, perhaps because it was the first class, the seats closest to the podium remained conspicuously empty.

Then came the sound of leather shoes tapping against the marble floor.

A stern-looking middle-aged man walked up to the lectern at the front. Dressed in immaculate attire, the professor gave off the impression of a well-groomed young master who had followed only the elite path in life. Adjusting his glasses, he scanned the students seated before him and spoke.

“Fill the front seats first. You, in the very back.”

Waving his hand with a finality that suggested he wouldn’t accept any objections, the professor gestured toward the students in the last row. Adrian turned his head to either side at the motion. He spotted Mikhail beside him deliberately averting his gaze.

“Yes, you. And the one next to you. Come to the front.”

He was calling on Adrian and Mikhail. With expressions full of reluctance, the prince and Adrian reluctantly gathered their belongings and made their way forward. They sat down in the seats closest to the podium. Both wore the faces of men headed to their execution, but the professor, ignoring such trivial expressions, simply said, “Good,” and looked around the room once more.

“Good morning, everyone.”

There were no required materials to bring to the first class. The freshmen, instead of textbooks, placed their hands neatly on their desks and looked toward the professor. All of them bore the hopeful expressions of students attending their very first lecture at the Academy.

“For the next year—and another, if you end up entering the Magic Faculty—I’ll be your instructor. My name is Sigrid Owen.”

Standing at the lectern, the man stared coldly at the new students.

“The first-year curriculum is an integrated course, designed with the assumption that some of you may have no mana whatsoever or possess no innate talent. For those who can sense mana to some degree, this class may prove boring.”

The words no mana whatsoever and no innate talent were so sharply enunciated they seemed to pierce through the ears. Several students in the hall turned visibly pale, as if they too felt the sting in those words.

Adrian leaned back comfortably in his seat, watching the professor threaten his students despite being an Academy instructor.

Right now, Adrian’s irises were a soft brown. Which meant his body had been completely sealed off from mana unless he pulled it directly from his true form. For a dragon to be sitting through a Foundations of Magic class—it was ridiculous, really…

But of course, that was part of what made it fun.

“Now then, for those who have never studied magic before…”

With a simple gesture, the professor gathered the light from every lamp in the classroom and focused it into the center of the high-ceilinged lecture hall.

“In our very first class, we’ll be talking about mana.”

A large, luminous orb hovered in the air. Since it had absorbed the light from every lamp in the room, the rest of the lecture hall was instantly plunged into darkness. The orb pulsed with a bluish glow, almost as if it were breathing—alive.

“The total amount of mana that exists in this world is constant. Where mana originates from or how it is created still remains a mystery. All that we know is that those we call mages manipulate it—changing its natural state into an artificial one. Depending on the object or action used to channel it, mana takes on different forms.”

With a sweeping motion of his palm, the professor sent the radiant orb back toward a single lamp mounted high on the ceiling. The orb shot across the room and embedded itself within the lamp’s light. Students tilted their heads upward to watch.

“Once you learn the basics of magic, moving mana becomes possible.”

As the once-massive orb compressed to fit within the lamp, its light intensified to the point of being painfully blinding. The professor gestured again, drawing the orb back out of the lamp.

He then split the glowing sphere into a quarter of its original size and once again inserted the much smaller orb into the same ceiling lamp. This time, the lamp lit up gently, with just enough brightness to illuminate the room without blinding the eyes—as if that had been its natural glow all along.

“The important thing is for the caster to clearly understand the purpose of moving mana. You must know how much mana to use and where to draw it from. Only then can you achieve your intended result.”

Adrian already knew all of this. Dragons, as a species, were born with an instinctive understanding of mana—they exhaled and absorbed it through their skin from the moment they were born.

“Think of drawing mana like scooping water from a lake. It’s easy to dip your cup into the surface. But pulling water from the bottom of the lake? That requires precise and expert control. Ancient mana—heavy and settled like the water at the lake’s depths—holds incredibly pure power. And that kind of mana lies beyond what humans can safely control.”

Adrian couldn’t help but feel a surge of smug pride. Outside of dragons, there were very few intelligent beings capable of handling high-purity mana.

He nodded slightly to himself, then turned to glance at the boy beside him—who hadn’t reacted to the lecture at all.

Mikhail, sometime shortly after the class began, had folded his arms and leaned back comfortably in his chair. In other words… he was blatantly settling in to nap through the lecture.

Is he insane? We’re in the front row—obviously, I’m going to get dragged into this too.

At that exact moment, the professor’s gaze drifted toward the prince, who sat with his eyes closed in the very front row.

Adrian jabbed Mikhail’s leg with his knee under the desk.

Mikhail cracked one eye open and glared at him. Adrian tilted his chin toward the podium, signaling discreetly. But whether Mikhail was simply dense or just more annoyed about being kicked, he stretched out his long leg and jabbed Adrian’s leg back with equal force. Adrian mouthed a silent “Ow!” and shot him a look.

That’s when he felt it—a sharp, piercing gaze.

Slowly, Adrian turned his head from Mikhail to the podium.

The professor was staring them down—though, to be precise, his focus was entirely on Adrian rather than Mikhail.

Adrian offered him a faint, half-smile, but the professor didn’t drop his cold expression. Without a word, Professor Sigrid dispersed the glowing orb suspended in the high-ceilinged hall with a snap of his fingers.

“Lectures can get dull, so why don’t we move on to some practical work to assess your current abilities?”

With a click, he opened a business card holder about the size of his palm. After flipping open the lid, he placed a clenched fist over it… then slowly unfurled his fingers.

Then, like water flowing, the white sheets from the cardholder floated through the air in smooth arcs, landing softly in front of each student seated in the lecture hall.

“These sheets react to mana. They’re the most commonly used tool for basic mana-sensing training. Place the sheet between your palms and slowly pull your hands apart, trying to make it levitate. Here’s a tip: maintaining a steady flow of mana energy works best.”

Adrian placed the sheet in front of him between his palms and slowly drew his hands apart. As expected, the sheet that had been suspended between them slipped and fluttered down to the desk.

Naturally—there wasn’t even a gram of mana in Adrian’s body at the moment.

The professor, walking around the lecture hall as students grunted and strained to make their sheets rise, glanced briefly at the limp paper on Adrian’s desk and moved on without a word. His expression all but said, Just as I thought.

Then he looked at Mikhail’s.

The prince, despite pretending to have no interest in the lesson, was dutifully following instructions.

His sheet hovered perfectly between his palms, forming a sharp ninety-degree angle. It looked entirely different from the trembling, unstable sheets of the other inexperienced freshmen that kept fluttering down.

The professor’s eyes briefly changed behind his glasses as he looked at the prince’s sheet. But that was all. It was common knowledge that the youngest prince of Rustavaran was sword-obsessed. The professor would have gladly bet his job that the prince wouldn’t be joining the Magic Faculty.

Mikhail, too, didn’t seem to be doing it for praise. Even when the professor moved on without a word, he didn’t so much as blink. Instead, he glanced over at Adrian with a half-smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth—a childish look that said, You can’t do this, can you?

As the professor passed the front row and headed toward the back of the hall, Adrian reached out and pressed down firmly on the sheet floating beneath Mikhail’s hands. He couldn’t stand the look on the prince’s face.

Robbed of its support from mana, the sheet collapsed under the force of Adrian’s palm. Now, two pieces of paper sat motionless atop their desks.

Mikhail, seemingly satisfied with his one moment of showboating, folded his arms again. While the professor was focused on instructing the students in the back, it was now an officially sanctioned nap window.

Watching him, Adrian made a firm mental note: Next time, I’m sitting anywhere but next to this bastard.