Two weeks ago, Professor Xu Weilan delivered the welcome speech for all students of Anzenwald. Today, the university officially begins its activities, which will continue uninterrupted for the next ten months of the first eleven-month academic term, before the first vacation period of the year.

  The cobblestones bore the footsteps of hundreds of students and merchants occupying one of the many squares that could be found every three streets throughout Ferhafen. The air was saturated with the smell of food that merchants prepared before the sun awoke, in order to sell it to the hungry students who had chosen to skip breakfast to arrive at the university grounds first thing in the morning.

  The squares were one of the main characteristics of the capital, and at present, of the only fully functional city in the Kingdom of Ferhafen. It was the city with the greatest number of squares on the peninsula, and these served as a key point for local commerce and one of the most common gathering places in the kingdom.

  The squares of Ferhafen contributed not only to the kingdom’s economy, but also to its culture and society. Their design had only two variants. Those located diagonally to a cardinal point had a large triangle at their center, its floor made of a very special stone whose origin and original name are no longer known, possessing the appearance of marble but the resistance of basalt. At the center of all these triangles stood a statue of a man whose name and history no one knows, mounted atop a creature just as unknown as the man himself. At the center of the squares aligned with a cardinal point—those which lacked an enigma like the previous statue, but not their harmonious design—there stood instead a fountain at the central circle, to which eight paths converged, connected by circular walkways surrounding the center.

  No one knows where the squares came from or which civilization built them. It is only known that, like Anzenwald, they have existed long before the Kingdom of Ferhafen itself. The same is true of the sacred rule forbidding trade at their centers—a rule whose origin is unknown, yet which no one, for some reason, ever breaks.

  Seated on one of the benches surrounding the central circle of a square located two streets away from Anzenwald were a boy—quite tall and dressed in the university uniform—and beside him a girl, wearing the same uniform and bearing a very similar physical appearance to his. And hopping about, seemingly out of excitement, around the bench was a red-haired girl, also dressed in Anzenwald’s uniform, carrying under her right arm two large red books.

  “Gods! I can’t believe we’re just a few minutes away from our first day at Anzenwald,” Elyne said, stopping in front of the bench where Iskra and Reinhardt were seated.

  “I’m sure this is going to be the best day of my life!” Elyne spun lightly in place with excitement.

  Iskra stood up and stretched slightly. “I have to admit, I’m excited too.”

  “Right?!” Elyne nodded, even more thrilled.

  A bell rang in the distance, announcing the opening of Anzenwald. Students from all across the peninsula who had gathered around the university began forming a crowd along the main streets.

  Elyne walked briskly toward the university, looking in every direction, trying to engrave every small detail of the day into her memory. Iskra followed close behind, while Reinhardt had already fallen back. After pushing their way through the students who were beginning to abandon the streets to fill Anzenwald’s vast and varied facilities, Elyne and Iskra arrived at the front garden of the university’s main building, where a flag bearing its emblem fluttered.

  “We have to go to class, right?” Elyne asked expectantly.

  “I think we have the first two together today.”

  “Yes, we have Heka I in the morning, and History of Nigin-zārum in the afternoon after lunch,” Iskra confirmed as she looked around, searching for the building they needed to head to—one that Reinhardt, already in his third year, had pointed out to them the day before.

  “Come on, we need to go around.”

  Iskra led the way while Elyne followed closely, making constant comments about virtually everything she saw. As they circled the university’s main building, they walked along one of Anzenwald’s elegant inner paths, constructed from the same stone used in the triangular centers of the squares. Upon reaching a circular building with six enormous pillars around its circumference, they entered and searched for seats inside. The interior was a large central circle with a lectern at its center—resembling an arena—surrounded by tiered seating where at least six dozen students were already settling in.

  As the minutes passed, the tiered seating finished filling up, and a secretary announced that Professor Heinrich Baumann would soon begin the first class of the subject.

  Elyne and Iskra took their seats and took out their notebooks. Iskra wrote the name of the subject, Heka I, at the top center of the page in simple handwriting. Elyne did the same, but with an overly striking cursive script and excessive decoration around the edges of the page.

  After about five minutes, a man around forty years of age entered, dressed in the same uniform worn by the students, with the difference that the collar of his jacket bore an additional golden embroidery—the only distinction between the students’ uniform and that of the professors. The man walked toward the center of the circular floor, cleared his throat, and adjusted his jacket.

  “Good morning, everyone,” the man began.

  “I am Professor Heinrich of House Baumann, and I will be your Heka professor during this first part of the year.”

  Elyne quickly wrote the professor’s name on her page.

  “Very well, we will begin with a brief introduction to Heka and a general overview of what we will be covering in this subject,” Heinrich said as he placed a book on his lectern.

  “As you all know, Heka is the name we give to the act of using Nigzar to generate one of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, and electricity—or any of their sub-elements,” Heinrich explained, counting the elements on his fingers.

  “The way we do this is through the use of Tesharu, which, put simply, is the programming of the Sekhen we will create—that is, the form, power, and other characteristics that the manifestation of the element we intend to use will have.” As he spoke, Heinrich walked toward the right side of his lectern.

  Elyne wrote down nearly every word the professor said in her notebook. Iskra, for her part, had not written anything yet.

  “I will demonstrate the use of Heka by forming a simple Sekhen,” Heinrich said, forming a circle in the air with a sweeping motion of his arm.

  Once formed, the empty interior of the translucent circle filled with a faint, almost imperceptible blue light.

  “This circle is the basis of any Tesharu. Within it, we must specify everything about our Sekhen. Keep in mind that although no limit is known to exist regarding either the amount or the level of detail that can be given to a Sekhen through Tesharu, the Nigzar cost grows exponentially the more complex we make the Tesharu.”

  “The first instruction we must give our Tesharu is which element it will use. For this example, I will use the fire element, whose symbol is a cross. You will learn the symbols for the remaining elements in the mandatory bibliography for this subject.” As Heinrich explained, he drew a cross at the center of the circle floating in the air before him, and as he did so, the entire circle turned red.

  “Once we have assigned an element to the Tesharu, we must choose whether or not to give it a sub-element. To do so, we must draw the geometric figure corresponding to each sub-element around the symbol of the element we drew previously. For this example, I will not use any sub-element, so I will simply draw nothing.”

  “The next step is to program the function our Sekhen will have. There are thousands of possible instructions and hundreds of thousands of combinations, but in this subject we will focus only on the most basic ones.”

  “Is this just the introduction?” Elyne asked Iskra in a low voice, looking at her with concern.

  “It seems so,” Iskra replied, vaguely jotting something down in her notebook.

  “For this example, I will finish the Tesharu with an instruction that tells it that the target point will be wherever my left eye is looking—an instruction represented by these symbols,” Heinrich said as he drew an L with two triangles at its sides on the right side of the circle.

  Heinrich then drew four squares in a straight line at the top center of the circle. “An instruction indicating that the Sekhen will be a fireball.”

  “And finally, I will indicate that the output point of the Sekhen will be my right hand.” Heinrich drew a shape resembling a tilted H on the left side of the circle.

  Elyne wrote down everything she heard in the most detailed and orderly manner possible, replicating the same drawings Heinrich traced in the air onto her own page. Iskra had also begun taking notes some time ago, though hers were far more direct and disorganized.

  “Once we decide that our Tesharu contains all the necessary instructions, we can fix it in place in order to use our Sekhen.” Heinrich made the same arm movement he had used to create the circle, but in reverse. As he did so, the circle closed into his palm along with its contents.

  In Heinrich’s right hand, there was a small red sphere. “Now, we simply need to inject Nigzar into our Tesharu depending on the amount of power we want to give it. In this case, I will give it only a small amount.”

  Heinrich extended his arm and aimed toward one of the walls of the arena where they were. The sphere in his hand began to fill slightly with a kind of blue gas or energy, and then, from Heinrich’s hand, a large fireball shot forward, heading exactly in the direction his left eye was looking.

  “Voilà—the first Sekhen of the class,” Heinrich said as he adjusted his jacket and returned to his lectern.

  The class continued for a couple more hours. Professor Heinrich gave a quick overview of the subject’s syllabus, several more examples of other types of Sekhen, and also called several students into the arena to attempt forming a simple Sekhen themselves.

  Close to noon, the nearly one hundred students who had spent the morning in Professor Heinrich’s class began exiting in all directions along the circumference of the building that served as the classroom for practical subjects such as the one they had just attended. At the same time, students from the other buildings spread across Anzenwald’s vast grounds also began to leave, filling the university’s various paths and parks.

  After the morning classes—which usually lasted four hours from their start at eight in the morning—Anzenwald granted students two free hours so they could have lunch, socialize, and locate and make their way to the classroom assigned to their afternoon subject. This task, due to the countless classrooms, zones, and buildings of Anzenwald, as well as the crowds students tended to form, could take quite some time.

  The university’s perimeter was enormously extensive, occupying approximately fifteen percent of the total area of the capital of the Kingdom of Ferhafen, effectively making Anzenwald a city in its own right. Seen from above, the shape of the perimeter resembled a rhombus, with the vertex pointing toward the city center housing the university’s entrance and main building. From this vertex, two roads extended, forming another, smaller rhombus within the perimeter. From these roads branched forty-seven additional paths, from which, in turn, another one hundred and fifty-four trails branched off. Within the perimeter, aside from the main building, there were fifteen buildings dedicated to education and twenty-one service buildings, such as those providing students and professors with food, sanitation, and lodging for those who came from other kingdoms.

  Between the buildings and the main roads lay an enormous forest, which became almost inaccessible in its densest areas. Some of the trails branching off from the main roads led into the forest’s most beautiful and open sections, which were generally used as recreational and resting areas by many students who preferred to avoid spending the hours between classes inside one of the buildings designated for lunch.

  In one of these areas, Elyne and Iskra were seated at a small circular table, having lunch. In front of Elyne was a Niuyao steak from the Kingdom of Jiangping, accompanied by a simple salad. Iskra, on the other hand, was eating a Kue sandwich, the most common fish in the region.

  “Did you understand anything from the class?” Elyne asked, somewhat worried.

  “I mean, I did understand… almost everything,” she quickly justified herself.

  “Well, it was just the introduction—of course I understood,” Iskra replied, confused.

  “Still, I didn’t expect it to be so hard to form a Sekhen,” Iskra thought aloud.

  “I guess I was unlucky that the professor called me to the front during the very first class.”

  Elyne nodded as she cut her food. “Yeah, luckily he didn’t pick me. I didn’t even really understand how to open that circle.”

  Iskra nodded at Elyne’s admission. “Yeah, it’s more complex than I thought. I don’t understand how my brother makes Sekhen so quickly—or really, how all the third-year students do it.”

  “Yeah… I think there’s a trick they’re hiding from us to maintain their status as third-year students,” Elyne whispered conspiratorially.

  “Well, I think that secret is called practice,” Iskra laughed.

  The two-hour break passed quickly, and before she could even realize it, Elyne was already walking briskly behind Iskra, heading toward their next class—which was more than a fifteen-minute walk away.

  A marble building, with a square central section and two circular wings on either side, was the location where several classes of the first-year subject called History of Nigin-zārum would be held.

  The interior of the building’s central section—the part that appeared square from the outside—was divided into four floors. The first housed the administrative area, while the three above it contained seven classrooms each. The lateral wings were more simply divided, having only two floors: the lower ones with a library and study area for students, and the upper ones also containing a library and study area, but reserved for professors.

  In one of the classrooms on the third floor, a professor was finishing the presentation of the subject and was about to move on to its first topic. During that class, two girls entered quickly and quietly—one with black hair and the other with red hair. Both took seats at the back of the classroom in the few remaining empty chairs.

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  The professor saw them enter, but since attendance at classes was not mandatory at Anzenwald, and students could choose not to attend and simply take the exams, she made no comment and continued with the lesson.

  “With the presentations concluded, we will begin the class,” the professor said as she picked up a book from her desk.

  “Open your books to page twenty. We will begin with the origin of Nigzar.”

  Elyne took out her book, which already had notes and ideas underlined, and placed it beside her notebook, in which she wrote the title of the subject, though in a much simpler manner than in the previous class.

  “Nigin-zārum, or abbreviated Nigzar, is the foundation of all life. A little over ten thousand years ago, the gods—born from the eternal source—created all existence using the pure Nigzar they possess,” the professor began to explain.

  “At the end of creation, the gods saw that, although the lives of all living creatures depended on Nigzar, they could not control it, which prevented them from evolving properly, as they were unable to control their own nature.”

  From the left side of the classroom came murmurs and laughter, which quickly faded when the professor directed her gaze toward that section of the room.

  The professor cleared her throat before continuing. “To solve this problem, the gods, in their benevolence, granted all living beings a part of their grace, which we know as An?utuku—or simply An?u—the energy that allows us to manipulate our own Nigzar.”

  “In short, that is the origin of life, and in turn, of Nigzar and An?u.”

  “Unless you’re some mountain freak,” a male voice was heard from the left side of the classroom, followed by the laughter of the other students.

  A pale-haired girl with gray eyes, seated in the second row, shrank into herself upon hearing the mockery. Beside her, another pale-haired girl—identical to her—clenched her teeth, holding back her anger.

  “Who said that?” the professor asked, without much concern.

  A tall boy with brown hair and a silver chain hanging around his neck stood up from one of the seats on the left side of the classroom.

  “I did, professor,” he said with a smug tone.

  “Could you explain the purpose of your comment?” the professor asked.

  “I just thought this was a history class, not a religion class.” The boy shrugged.

  The professor sighed, as if she had been expecting that response. “This is the official history taught throughout the peninsula.”

  “So those who don’t believe it are wrong? I mean, it’s history.”

  Before the professor could respond, one of the twins stood up, slamming her hand against her desk.

  “Enough!” the girl said in the official language of the peninsula, but with a very strong northern accent.

  “Just because something is history in one region doesn’t mean it is also history in another,” the girl justified herself.

  The professor raised an eyebrow at the girl’s outburst. “The Vólkhova sisters, correct? You come from the Druzhkar Empire on the continent, right? As far as I know, they share the same history there as we do here on the peninsula.”

  “We’re not from Druzhkar… well, legally yes, but we’re from Velmoraaz, so we have almost nothing in common with the rest of the Druzhkari,” the girl said, crossing her arms defensively.

  “The gods are fake and they’re conspiring,” the brown-haired boy whispered mockingly, imitating the harsh and direct northern accent.

  “Enough, Mr. Müller. Take your seat, please,” the professor ordered.

  The boy obeyed and sat back down, laughing along with the other students seated beside him.

  “Velmoraaz? How interesting. I believed they were almost completely closed off from the world. I didn’t expect to have students from there,” the professor said with interest.

  “They are. We were sent here because… because yes,” the girl replied, clenching her fists in frustration.

  “I see… Very well, open your books to page thirty, and I don’t want any more interruptions in my class. The next person who interrupts will receive a disciplinary report.”

  After five more hours of classes, the bell rang, indicating that the school day had come to an end. Students formed small bottlenecks at the exits of the building. From the rest of the structures assigned as classrooms, students were also beginning to pour out of their classes.

  After several minutes trapped among the students trying to leave the building, Elyne and Iskra finally managed to get out and headed toward a less crowded area. They walked along one of Anzenwald’s secondary paths, killing time while waiting for Reinhardt to finish his meeting with the university’s Arethón team.

  “Hey, Iskra, did you understand why they were laughing at those girls?” Elyne asked curiously, focusing on not stepping on the lines between the cobblestones as she walked.

  “Because they’re from Velmoraaz.”

  “Yes, I heard that, but there are lots of foreigners here. What’s different about them?” Elyne asked, confused, quickly stepping back ten paces after she stepped on a line.

  “Well, I’m not entirely sure, but I think the people from Velmoraaz don’t believe in the gods and instead believe that humans began to exist something like fifty thousand years ago or so,” Iskra explained.

  “And they also worship a god they made up. His name was… Onagi Genta? I don’t know, they’re really weird,” Iskra laughed.

  “They made up a god? You can do that?” Elyne stopped to think, confused.

  “I can make one up?!” Elyne asked, shifting from confused to incredibly excited at an alarming speed.

  Iskra laughed and shook her head. “Well, shorty, if you have enough people willing to believe in your god, you can.”

  Elyne thought for a moment, counting on her fingers the number of people who would believe in her god, and after considering it, made a face and discarded the idea for the time being.

  At the northern vertex of the university perimeter lay the recreational zone. There, students could spend their free time socializing or engaging in recreational activities, whether as part of one of the university’s clubs or individually.

  All of the university’s official sports activities took place in this area. Among these activities, several sports and physical disciplines stood out, but by far the most prominent was the flagship sport of the peninsula—one so important that not only could the result of a single match change the mood of an entire country, but it was also the primary measure of a university’s educational level. The university with the champion team was generally recognized as the best on the peninsula.

  This sport was called Arethón, created more than a hundred years ago by the only non-human race that inhabits the lands north of the mountains: the elves of the Kingdom of Sylvareth.

  In this northern area, a vast space had been delimited: a square with sides ten kilometers long. Within this square, at opposite vertices, stood two yellow gemstones shaped like three-dimensional heptagons, large enough to be visible from anywhere within the area. From these gemstones extended two paths that ran parallel to the square’s perimeter until they met at the vertices without gemstones, where there was a square zone at each vertex. From these zones, a path led toward the center of the area, where there was a clear circular space containing a third heptagonal gemstone, this one white and much smaller. Throughout the rest of the interior of the perimeter—covering everything that was not path—lay a dense forest, within which there were two square clearings, one in each section of the forest, divided by the central path.

  This perimeter was Anzenwald’s official Arethón playing field. It was one of the most crowded areas and one with the greatest number of buildings in the entire university grounds. A short distance from the playing field lay a flat, circular area with nothing but carefully maintained grass, surrounded by small stands. This was the zone where Anzenwald’s official team usually trained.

  Two enormous stones formed out of nothing itself, colliding with the intent to crush the boy standing between them. Leofrik easily disintegrated both rocks using a Sekhen, forming a shield around himself. This Sekhen was using the most powerful sub-element of fire: plasma.

  Ayanokooji, who was using a Heka of the earth element’s sub-element known as Metalkinesis, which granted its user the ability to control all metals, wasted no time and, at incredible speed, used another Sekhen, which formed a tungsten cage around Leofrik.

  At the same time, Edric Ashcombe—a fourth-year student from the Kingdom of Tarnwick, of direct royal lineage as the cousin of the crown prince—completed a Tesharu that had previously been interrupted. As he did so, massive torrents of water began pouring into the cage from its six sides, leaving Leofrik submerged.

  Taking advantage of Leofrik’s disadvantageous position, Reinhardt created a shield around himself using a Sekhen of the healing sub-element of the earth element—if the way healers used Heka could even be considered Shekeni—and lunged straight toward Leofrik, entering the cage through an opening left by Ayanokooji, with the aim of closing as much distance as possible.

  Leofrik, despite his situation—trapped in a cage designed to counter his primary element, fire, and with Reinhardt rapidly approaching—shook his head and let out a smug laugh that was drowned out by the water. Forming a very simple Tesharu, specifying only the element, sub-element, and the desired output form, he invoked a plasma Sekhen.

  Around Leofrik, an orange ring formed, encircling him vertically. The ring began spinning on its axis at increasing speed until it ceased to look like a ring and instead appeared as a sphere surrounding Leofrik.

  Ayanokooji instinctively stepped back two paces upon seeing the Sekhen Leofrik was about to use, using his earth Heka to sink into the ground and encase himself in a cube of tungsten. At the same time, Edric quickly formed a Tesharu with each hand, using them as compressed jets of water that propelled him as far away from Leofrik as possible.

  Then, releasing a blinding flash, the water filling the cage evaporated in the blink of an eye, and soon after, the sound of the evaporating water vanished along with the steam, disintegrating even the water in vapor form.

  “Supernova.”

  The sphere surrounding Leofrik expanded in all directions at the speed of light, melting the tungsten cage as if it were ice.

  Despite the enormous pressure generated by Leofrik’s Sekhen, Reinhardt managed to endure it, rapidly draining his Nigzar reserves to keep his shield active. In doing so, he succeeded in getting close enough to be less than a meter away from Leofrik.

  “Nig?ura,” Reinhardt said, slamming his fists together.

  In that instant, Reinhardt’s figure compressed in on itself, producing a yellow flash and a metallic sound. Immediately after this flash, there was another identical one, which caused Serelinde to appear where Reinhardt had been moments before. Thus, thanks to Reinhardt’s Nig?ura, he swapped positions with Serelinde, who had been preparing a Tesharu from afar since the beginning of the battle.

  Although Reinhardt changed positions, the shield he had generated did not, granting Serelinde protection for the few seconds she needed to close the remaining short distance to her brother and manage to touch his arm. Upon seeing Serelinde make contact with his arm, Leofrik adopted an expression of frustration and resignation, and almost instantly, his body evaporated completely.

  “By the gods, I knew we had to beat him at least once today,” Edric said, stretching his arms over his head.

  “I can’t believe that idea actually worked,” Reinhardt admitted with a tired sigh.

  Serelinde walked toward a small yellow, heptagon-shaped gemstone, just like the ones located on the playing field, and placed the palm of her hand against one of its faces. As she did so, the dirt and traces of combat on her, Reinhardt, Ayanokooji, and Edric vanished completely, restoring them to their pristine uniforms. Leofrik materialized beside the gemstone as well, without a single trace of battle.

  “You’re all so annoying,” Leofrik complained, crossing his arms.

  “All you do is look for ways to get close to my sister. Finding another strategy is valid too, you know.”

  “It’s not my fault I’m the one who inherited the best fire sub-element,” Serelinde mocked.

  Reinhardt rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure.”

  “If a strategy works, but the tactic by which it is implemented stops doing so, changing the strategy instead of the tactic would be foolish,” Ayanokooji explained, as if reciting a proverb.

  Leofrik stared at Ayanokooji incredulously for a few seconds, still unable to tell when the boy was joking and when he was being serious. “Yeah, I suppose…”

  Edric laughed and placed a hand on Ayanokooji’s shoulder. “Man, you give me more reasons every day to believe Tsukimine needs to be erased.”

  “For Tarnwick to defeat Tsukimine in a war, you’d have to refound it five times,” Ayanokooji replied.

  “That was quite a show,” a voice was heard coming from the stands.

  The five members of the team turned toward the stands in confusion, because unlike when an Arethón tournament date was approaching, the regulations at this time did not require training sessions to be public, meaning there should have been no one in the stands. And when they looked, indeed, there was no sign of anyone there.

  “What are we looking at?” the voice asked—but this time, the sound did not come from the stands. It came from behind Edric.

  Upon hearing the voice for the second time, the five of them sighed in annoyance, recognizing it as belonging to Matthis Keller, one of the seventeen students in all of Anzenwald enrolled in the optional subject Zisuda.

  “Matthis… good to see you,” Reinhardt said, trying to sound friendly.

  Matthis was dressed in Anzenwald’s uniform, but in blue. He also wore an enormous necklace made of what appeared to be gears and stone fragments engraved with runes. On both arms, he wore two equally oversized bracelets, each lined with large square segments containing solidified Nigzar, plates with notes on some of the more complex Tesharu commands, and other objects that looked as though they had been taken from a second-hand shop.

  “Yes, I know you love me. That was made clear the last time I showed up here, when Serelinde tried to greet me by shaking my hand,” Matthis said sarcastically as he stepped closer.

  “Well, I don’t know how you expect to be likable if you base your personality on believing you’re Loki,” Serelinde retorted.

  “Well, it’s not my fault I have the gift,” Matthis shrugged.

  “Though it’s a shame I can’t play pranks on you anymore,” he lamented.

  “What do you want, Matthis?” Leofrik asked seriously, clearly irritated.

  “Well now, don’t get all worked up, my prince,” Matthis said with a wide grin.

  “Well, old Xu believes he’s found the key to a major breakthrough in the use of… well, a device. It’s confidential, forgive me,” he added dramatically.

  “And he needs access to the royal library in order to finish substantiating his theory before moving on to, well, the trials.”

  “So he asked me to come request that the royal family inform the king, so that he can grant us a time slot during which our class may access the library,” Matthis finished explaining.

  Serelinde and Leofrik exchanged glances. “Of course. We’ll speak to Father.”

  “Perfect. Well, I’ve delighted you all enough with my presence. Now, I shall take my leave through the art of camouflage,” Matthis exclaimed dramatically, spreading his arms wide.

  Matthis manipulated several components on one of his bracelets, at several moments looking as though he might fall apart, and then transformed into grass—retaining his original size—and walked away as grass.

  “We need to legalize public murder again,” Edric said, following Matthis with his gaze as he left.

  In the park in front of Anzenwald’s central building, Elyne and Iskra were seated on a bench to one side of one of the statues that were prominent throughout the area surrounding the university’s main grounds. Elyne was focused on decorating the pages of her notebook dedicated to the subject History of Nigin-zārum, as she had not had time to do so during class. Iskra, meanwhile, was reclining against the backrest of the bench with her eyes closed.

  The university was already practically empty. Only the cleaning staff remained, along with a few faculty professors and those students with extracurricular activities beyond their classes, such as the members of the Arethón team.

  “Sorry for the delay, training ran long,” Reinhardt said as he approached.

  “Don’t worry,” Elyne replied without lifting her gaze from her notebook.

  “Finally,” Iskra said, springing to her feet and grabbing her bag.

  Ferhafen was very different at dusk compared to dawn. Unlike the morning hours, in the later hours of the afternoon, as night fell, the streets were far emptier. The merchants’ stalls were no longer there—or, in some cases, remained but were closed. The squares were no longer crowded with students and people heading to work; instead, there were a few children playing and couples spending time together.

  “Hey, Reinhardt, can’t we watch the team’s training?” Elyne asked.

  “Huh? Well, it depends on the time of year. At this point in the year, they’re closed,” Reinhardt explained.

  “Well, if you expect us to wait for you every day you train, you’re going to have to get us VIP passes or something. While we were trying not to die of boredom, we went to the training area and they wouldn’t let us in,” Iskra complained.

  “Iskra gets into a very bad mood when she has to wait,” Elyne murmured with amusement.

  Reinhardt laughed at Elyne’s comment. “Sure, I’ll let them know they have to allow my little sister in.”

  “Good. You know what’s good for you—you still retain some intelligence,” Iskra joked, crossing her arms.

  A few streets later, Elyne and Iskra said goodbye to Reinhardt, who lived in the Anzenwald dormitories, and headed toward their own shared residence.

  By nightfall, the capital of Ferhafen was almost completely asleep, with the exception of a few taverns that remained open even on weekdays. Anzenwald was already completely closed; the entrance to the university’s perimeter, as well as every one of its buildings, was locked.

  In the catacombs of Anzenwald—which stretched from the main building to nearly the entire city—lay the classroom assigned to the Zisuda class. The room was clearly in poor condition: the stones of the walls were covered in moss, the wood of the shelves showed obvious wear from humidity and the passage of time, as did the books resting upon them.

  Inside the classroom sat Professor Xu Weilan, seated at an old, worn wooden desk, writing in a large book. To his left, on the desk, lay three objects: a purple gemstone, a hexagonal stone piece engraved with inscriptions along its sides, and three rings made of the same gray stone.

  “Did you speak with the prince?” Weilan asked in a tired voice.

  “Yes. He said he would speak with the king. They’ll let us use the library,” Matthis replied from the other side of the room.

  “It won’t work, Xu. Even if we follow the original blueprint, we don’t have a Nigzar source large enough,” Matthis said seriously.

  “We can obtain it. Anzenwald has plenty of solid Nigzar pieces large enough to supply it with energy.”

  “Yes, but they’re not going to give them to us.”

  “If we manage to make it work, I’ll take care of convincing the board,” Weilan said.

  “And how are we supposed to know it works if we can’t test it?” Matthis asked sarcastically.

  “Hey, you’re the professor—you’re in charge—but we both know my idea is more feasible. Changing the blueprint a bit doesn’t affect the device’s objective.”

  Weilan closed the book he had been writing in and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Matthis, your ideas for modifying the device’s method of operation are very unpredictable.”

  “They are, but they consume less than twenty percent of what the original method requires,” Matthis argued.

  “I know—and that’s why it’s the second option. First, we’ll attempt to follow the original blueprint,” Weilan said, standing up and preparing to close the classroom.

  “We always end up using the second option,” Matthis joked.