Lynx Hoverwarth stormed through the marbled hallways of the noble estate, fists clenched, eyes bloodshot. His jaw twitched with every step, teeth grinding beneath pursed lips as he threw open the doors to his father's study without knocking.
"Father," he growled, voice sharp with the sting of humiliation, "I demand a formal inquiry. That boy—he humiliated me in front of everyone. He used some... some kind of sorcery. Illegal techniques. His actions were—"
Duke Malloran Hoverwarth did not look up from the scroll he was reading. His long, silver hair was tied neatly behind his neck, eyes narrowed behind a pair of reading lenses as he examined archaic military accounts. His office was silent save for the ticking of an old arcane pendulum clock.
When he spoke, it was without inflection—calm, cutting, and utterly disinterested.
"You were defeated."
Lynx blinked. "He—he cheated. He—"
"You were defeated," the Duke repeated, setting the scroll down. His gaze, cold as the glaciers of the Northern Vale, settled on his son. "In full view of your peers. By a commoner. Moreover, You're the one that used magic first."
"He's not a commoner—"
"Silence." Malloran's eyes narrowed further, but his expression remained impassive, carved from stone. "You were born into power. Bred for greatness. Yet today, a nameless third-tier made a fool of you without so much as breaking a sweat. What excuse do you have?"
Lynx opened his mouth, but no words came. His hands trembled.
The Duke leaned back in his chair, sighing. "There will be no inquiry. No petition. No retaliation. You were bested not because he cheated—but because you are weak."
Lynx flinched. His father's words struck deeper than any blade.
"Grow stronger, or be forgotten," Malloran said. "That is the law of our blood."
Later that day...
The sun dipped low as golden light filtered through the towering stained-glass windows of the Royal Academy. Within the spiraling spires of the research tower, the scent of chalk, aged parchment, and arcane reagents hung in the air.
Akito knocked twice before pushing the door open. Inside, stacks of dusty tomes were arranged like ancient walls, surrounding an island of cleared space where magical arrays had been meticulously etched into the floor.
Professor Caldus Marrenvar stood with one hand behind his back and the other flicking a sliver of crystal tusk with his index finger.
"Ah," Caldus murmured without turning, his voice cool and detached as if the sound itself held hidden layers of meaning. "Seems like you've understand the mechanism behind the ability of your eyes, huh? The book must have a lot of valuabe information about it."
Akito stepped forward, one hand casually pressed behind his neck as though shielding an unspoken thought. "Yeah, It seems like the same ability that triggered that night when Ruva was trying to get 'one shot one kill' achievement. By the way, You mentioned needing an assistant for your rune-carving project," he replied, his tone measured yet laced with a hint of challenge, as he sought affirmation.
At last, Caldus slowly pivoted, revealing his golden eyes that shone like molten metal beneath a shadowed, hooded brow. His sharp, angular features seemed sculpted in a timeless marble, their strictness softened only by the faint, almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his lips—a silent acknowledgment of Akito's audacity.
"You understand that I abhor inefficiency," Caldus stated in a voice as smooth and deliberate as a scholar crafting a hypothesis. Each carefully pronounced word resonated with deliberate intent. "And you are well aware that I have no patience for students who merely boast potential without manifesting it in reality. You are not here to merely impress me. You are here to validate the curiosity that has driven me to this moment."
Akito merely offered a nonchalant shrug, his expression unyielding. "Fair enough. You show me the array; I'll demonstrate how to make it more efficient."
A weighted silence fell between them, punctuating the air with an intensity that bordered on the sacred. Then, with an almost ceremonial gravity, Caldus extended a fragment of an ivory tusk toward Akito. Etched delicately along its curved surface were intricate glyphs—elegant, archaic—shimmering softly beneath the amber light, as though the fragment itself breathed with restrained power.
"The spell is stable," Caldus said, his voice low and methodical, "but it demands a six-second chant. Utterly impractical in combat. I attempted to break the incantation into layered glyphs for acceleration, but the mana lines collapse—bleed into one another like ink in water—when forced."
Akito stepped forward without a word, taking the fragment in hand. The moment his fingers brushed the carved surface, he wasn't looking at magic.
He was looking at a circuit board.
In his mind's eye, the etched tusk unfurled like a diagnostic schematic. The root glyph pulsed like a power source, with the outward channels branching in predictable, radial fashion—like traces on a poorly designed PCB. But the paths were wrong. Too wide, too linear, too lacking in isolation. He could see the energy surging outward, competing for paths, overloading weak points and leaking through unshielded runes.
He crouched beside the worktable, brushing aside a layer of dust, and began to draw.
"What you've built," Akito muttered, more to himself than Caldus, "is a beautiful mess. It's like trying to wire a processor without using gates or capacitors. You're relying on the glyphs to do everything passively, but there's no modulation. No control. No... timing."
He started sketching—fast, precise strokes. First, a circular core. Then branching channels, but this time layered with node-like breaks—tiny glyphs acting as mana "resistors" and "diodes." He added a staggered spiral of containment glyphs around the edges like a magnetic coil. When he finished, the design resembled a magic circle crossbred with a CPU cooling system.
"Channel from the center outwards, yes—but don't let the spell seek balance on its own. Prime it first. Store the structure like a pre-charged capacitor." Akito tapped a spot in his diagram. "This glyph becomes the activation switch. No chant. Just input mana, and it cascades."
Caldus leaned over slowly, peering down at the chalk drawing. His sharp eyes scanned the array of corrections. He said nothing at first—but his face shifted. Slightly. Curiously. Like a researcher who'd just found a new star in a sky he thought he had already mapped.
"You… replaced chant articulation with staged micro-pathways," Caldus murmured. "Compression glyphs. And these containment coils—"
"Stabilizers," Akito replied, nodding. "Borrowed the idea from voltage regulators and heat sinks. Magic burns hot. You're not guiding it. You're letting it flood."
He rotated the tusk in his hand thoughtfully, the shimmer of the old glyphs reflecting in his eye—Phi still faintly visible in his iris. "If we etch this revised layout directly into the tusk and prime it with your spell core... it should activate at full power in under a second. Just pour in mana."
He looked up at Caldus. "Think of it as... plugging in a charged battery. No need to spin the turbine every time."
A heavy silence followed—again. But this time, it was different.
Caldus Marrenvar, the pride mage who rarely spared even words for those beneath his intellect, slowly folded his arms, lips curving ever so slightly.
He leaned in, his eyes narrowing as the implications of this innovative approach sank in. The gravity of the moment was palpable; this was no idle theoretical musing. It was the crystallization of pure application, a tangible breakthrough forged in the crucible of arcane science.