The Novel's Sidekick

Q: Who established the Starlight Academy?

A: King Alberan.

- - -

I looked at the paper scroll with a frown on my brows. For the third and last round, we have to imitate a magic formula from the scroll we were given—the one I am currently holding.

Other than delivering the scroll, the instructor gave no more instruction, though that did not come as a surprise to me.

Looking at the enchantments inscribed on the scroll, I could tell I could imitate them by spending some effort, though I was sure the spell I would create would not work. No, it was not just my incompetency, but the scroll in my palm actually was a false formula.

This was not just a test of the students' learning ability, but also their creativity and mental strength. Imitating the spell was not the only test here.

I knew the formula was broken, so even if I imitated all the things, nothing would happen. The instructor wanted to see if the students could find it on their own and try to solve it.

On that note, I did not find the error on my own. I had the advantage of knowing what Edward did with the test on his first try. The protagonist of the book found the error in it after his first try and even solved it to the best of his ability, gaining the highest score on the test.

My eyes could not help but drift off towards where the thin girl was. She was inspecting the scroll in all directions, with a cute arch in her brows.

No, I cannot become complacent looking at her. She would do fine, but I have to figure out my own way there.

Unlike me, she should have some introduction to magic. She was the protagonist's replacement, for Ishar's sake. Yes, I have improved. I started cursing in the name of Ishar—the dead god of Shrankor. Oops, spoilers! It was one of those spoilers that people would kill for. As much as I want to consider myself as an atheist, I have no intention of starting a revolution, or holy war, this name. I would not want those zealots, those fanatics, to batter my name, denouncing me as a heretic, blasphemer, among a few other things.

Shaking my head, I focused on the scroll in my palm. I thought my experience as a coder would help in some areas, but that was not the case here.

Those two were entirely different things. One was a mundane machine language. While this was a supernatural language, there was no link in between. But my knowledge of geometry had some, though I would be damned if only geometry was enough to solve this puzzle.

How easy would it be if I only had to click a button on the keyboard to solve this? I did not linger on the thoughts and started to inspect the broken magic formula again.

To my knowledge, all the answers on how to solve the problem are contained within the spell formula. All I had to do was to explore every one of them to find the correct way. But I did not know if that was entirely true. Through his tryouts, Edward found out the errors of the formula, linking it with his knowledge and the answer he got from the formula.

In my case, neither do I have the knowledge nor have I found the errors yet. And worse, each of the formulas presented to the students was different and had another unique problem with it. So just knowing that there was a problem was not enough.

Well, at least I knew better than most of the people here. All of them had started inscribing the formula, including the showoff prince. Some even wasted a couple of their parchment papers. I can do better than that.

I picked up the inscribing pen, which looked like an ancient fountain pen from my world, though the ink was something else. It is a cheap magic ingredient that novice sorcerers use in practice.

I was not clear what it was created from, other than spirit stones, but I do know its function. It works like a semiconductor in modern electronics. If you invest the energy, i.e., the spirit force, it will form the spell that you have inscribed.

At first, novices did not know how to create the spell formula in thin air, so they needed the help of the inscribing pen and the parchment paper to create the medium first. As their expertise grows, they will learn to do it without the help of the paper-pen medium.

The formula I was given was a fire-attribute elementary spell, which was awfully complicated. At least eight times complicated, I reckoned.

I drew the form of the formula first and if there was no problem; I started drawing the surrounding frames. I have enough geometric sense that I left an equal space between the boxes where the rune enchantments will be put together.

I only need half an hour to draw all the runes, whereas most of the youth have already squandered a few attempts. Are they so useless that they cannot even imitate the figure? It was not like we were asked to imitate the work of Picasso. That might have to do with the teachings of this world.

I saw the showoff prince delivering his papers to the instructor. He gave me and the thin girl another look before leaving, head held high. I did not know what he did, but I was sure he could not solve the puzzle within half an hour.

It was not that the showoff prince was incompetent; he did have knowledge about fundamental sorcery and talent, but sometimes all it took was a little hard work and common sense. But our Prince was too proud and presumptuous to think he had done something wrong here.

On another note, I could have delivered my papers now too, but I did not. I might have gotten into the magic department with the talent I had and the near-perfect imitation, but I wanted to see if I could solve the problem.

I calmed my breath and infused a thin strand of spirit force into the input of the spell formula. The geometric figure on the paper was an octagon with eight smaller octagons inside, and inside the smaller octagons, there were eight more in each of them. Inside all the octagons, runes were inscribed all around.

I was wrong. It was not eight times, but eight multiplied by eight times of complications. Still, it is an elementary formula and I must give them a round of applause for making it like this. This thing had no actual use. Any higher formula will be easier to create than this one.

I did not have to infuse mana into the runes, but into the path of the octagons. It would light up the runes and form the spell. In theory, that was correct.

But in reality, it was an entirely different case. As the strand of spirit force was about to complete a course in one of the sixty-four small octagons, the parchment lit up in flame. Within a few seconds, the paper turned into ashes, bringing all my effort to nothing.

Rosalyn, my aunt, gave me a smile, looking at what I was doing. Perhaps she was thinking, I have a working brain to check if the formula was right or not, unlike someone else, full of arrogance. Is this formula her doing, though? Probably not. Her standing was far above that of the others in the academy, but she should have known it just from the look of it.

More importantly, I knew something like this would happen, but I did not know it would be so early. Fortunately, I was watching it closely to find out the error in it. The rules in the lines that were closest to the sides of the octagon were the problem here. They were not actually symmetrical, even though they appeared to be.

Taking out another parchment paper, I started inscribing again. I did not start with the structural form of the entire formula, but I only inscribed one of the smallest 64 octagons.

I am not an idiot who would redo the entire project. Working hard is alright, but working smart is certainly undervalued. I marked where I thought the problem was and compared it with the other octagons.

Within a few seconds, I found out the blunder I made first. I tried it out a couple of times more with the smallest octagon and found out what I was looking for.

There were four types of unique rune structures inside the formula, and three of them should be wrong. All I have to do is try out all three of them, making them symmetrical, and see which one was right, hoping nothing else was wrong with this thing that I could not even check.

I released a heavy, self-conscious sigh. It would take me at least four hours to finish. For what it's worth, there was some surety of its success, and I have some talent in this.

Abruptly, my attention was moved to Elinor again, and I saw her standing up with her answer papers. She went to Rosalyn and gave her the papers. My aunt gave the paper back to her as if she wanted to see the result of what Elinor did.

The thin girl infused her spirit force and immediately the orb of light appeared, as the paper crushed into bits within it. The light rose to a degree before she stopped infusing mana into it. For the time being, it stayed like that.

Rosalyn gave her a smile that implied that she would not have a problem getting into the academy. My aunt looked at me, exchange a nod that told me 'you can do it' and left with the thin girl.

I sighed and got back to work. A part of my lazy self just wanted to give up, but I dominated that part of myself and got back to work.

There is a long road ahead of me.

______________________

Edited by Mysteries. Proofread by kqwxz.