Quill made his way to the building in the distance, holding his mouth following a yawn. The beginning of the semester had just started. It was early in the morning, with the second sun not even up, but he wasn't one to miss his first class.

  And honestly, he was excited. He tried keeping his composure the night before, and the thought of getting excited by a simple class session was foreign to him, but he couldn't help but stay up all night thinking about it.

  The building was directly behind the library, far north at the edge of the academy. Quill had gotten the gist of the academy layout, with the castle being the one at the very center of the map, the library and open fields directly behind it. Many buildings wrapped around these, schools and dorms, spread out over a few acres of pathways and forests of trees.

  Quill stared at the School of Mages building. It was supposed to be the main building used for general magic studies, and looking at it now, it was as grand and as fancy as all the other buildings aside from the dorms and foodhall. That was a problem. Without the statue of the most generic mage plopped right in front of him, he wouldn't have known otherwise.

  Most of the school buildings in Gilhem Academy were all the same.

  Quill entered the building before following the hallway, climbing the stairs and entering the designated classroom. Inside, it was a large room filled with Initiate mages talking and laughing, spread out over stepped tables and stairs that sloped down to a stage.

  The moment Quill entered, the room fell silent. He couldn't help but notice the heads bending over backwards just to point eyes at him, and most of them were between the range of hostility and mockery. He followed the words from their lips, and they whispered about the encounter that unfolded between him and Pheter, along with the rumors of the ‘gray mage’.

  In moments like these, Quill only shook the thoughts away before ignoring the rest. He could tell from the atmosphere alone that not one of these strangers would actually listen to him, even if he tried to explain what actually happened in Gren.

  Quill sighed before he found himself a seat at the front row tables.

  “Would you look at that?” A hand grabbed his shoulder. Quill turned before seeing Rhena, her bright smile shining like the rising suns. “You’re early. I hope you took a bath today… you did, right?” She sniffed him up.

  “Don’t mock me.” Quill pushed her face away before he noticed the eyes around again, staring at him and Rhena. “That was one time, and…” Quill remembered the demonic dream. “Nevermind.”

  Rhena blinked. “Something happened?”

  “Nothing you should be concerned about.”

  Just then, another figure landed in the corner of Quill's gaze. It was Elarah, passing by their seat, walking up stairs, her face as hard to read as ever. When her eyes grazed past Quill’s, she stopped to talk to him, only to find Rhena beside him.

  “What do you want?” Rhena crossed her arms. That was a first: Rhena was usually friendly. If Quill had to guess, their conflict from the exams still lingered on the back of her head.

  “... you're blocking the stairs." Elarah let out a grating sigh, gesturing to the stairs. “Get out of my way. I don't want to talk to you any longer than you want to.”

  “Would it kill you to drop the tone?”

  “Move.”

  Rhena didn't move an inch from her spot. Instead, she pushed forward to stare down at Elarah. All eyes were on them now.

  “I don't know if you noticed, but you're causing quite the scene.” Quill whispered to Rhena before she glared at him, prompting him to sigh before he turned to Elarah.

  “The path is wide enough for you both.” Quill pointed, but like Rhena, Elarah also glared at him.

  The entire room’s eyes were on Rhena and Elarah before the lecturer entered the room. It was the old woman from before, the Group A overseer, walking over to the stage to stand behind the lectern. The surprise came when academy staves followed behind her, carrying black orbs that could only be Absorbers to the stage.

  Quill's eyes landed on the orbs now sitting on the stage, set just right behind the overseer. Those instruments were the same ones from Narrah’s field yesterday, forged instruments that absorbed magic spells and mana. It primarily allowed mages to train their magic without the destruction of academy properties.

  Quill had to wonder why these objects were now spread right in front of the class.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Sit down.” The overseer said with authority, and at once, the Initiates around the room settled to their respective seats. Elarah cursed, having her seat taken from her above, and with everywhere else taken, she settled right beside Quill. Rhena scooched over and sat on his other side, not wanting to sit beside the golden elf.

  The overseer then introduced herself as Athen, a gold-stage mage who will supervise the class. She turned to Quill for a brief moment before she then gestured to the instruments behind her.

  “Hmm. The test is rather simple.” Athen pointed to the Absorbers. “You are to be called in groups of five. Step up to these instruments and drain all of your mana into them. Then, using whatever techniques available to you, replenish your mana as fast as possible. Got that? Rewards will be given after.”

  Athen brought out a bottle of some kind of elixir. She had prepared ten of them, and it seemed the highest performing mages here would have a chance of acquiring an elixir themselves. Quill couldn't help but feel the competitive spirit inside him burn.

  Elixirs were great boons to a mage's Core. While low-grade elixirs didn't do much, higher-quality elixirs added a permanent increase to a mage's magic system. Whether that be better mana flow or stronger mana vessels, different elixirs had different effects, and Quill was already wondering what these would do for him.

  Entering the academy wasn't the wrong choice. This would help him advance faster than he ever could before.

  The test itself was just a simple way to show off how fast one could replenish their mana. This was going to be easy, and Quill was already beaming.

  The first five mages were called to the stage. As instructed by Athen, they placed their hands on the Absorbers before mana oozed from their palms. Immediately, one of the mages fainted.

  Quill only shook his head. Mana Fatigue was common in these types of tests. Mana is needed to supply the bare necessities of your Core, and without it, your Core would drain the vital energy from your body just to compensate. Most mages could handle and withstand the nausea and fatigue brought about by Mana Fatigue, but it wasn't nearly the case with most of the students here.

  One had already passed out, while two others dropped to the ground with no strength in their legs. This wasn't just a contest to find the mage who could replenish their manapool the fastest, but also a test of endurance to filter out the mages who could control their mana just enough from those who could not.

  Absorbers pull mana from the outside, and the mage's job here was to give it just enough mana, but not too much to cause Mana Fatigue. It was doing its job well enough, and the Initiates were having a hard time wrestling with the instruments.

  It took around an hour for one Initiate to refill his mana, and another five minutes for the next to catch up. Once they were done, their time was recorded before the next batch followed.

  The same as the first batch, it took more or less an hour for each of them, not counting the ones sent to the infirmary for Mana Fatigue.

  “...Rhena Direthen, Elarah Solheath, and Fenith Cranfether.” Quill was with the next batch. He pushed himself off, followed by Elarah and Rhena. They climbed down the stairs, and though he hadn't done anything, the whispers from the crowd behind him were loud and clear.

  One of them called him a fluke, while the other prattled on about his rumors. The atmosphere of the class burned into his mind–mortal minds were a strange thing. One day, they praise the hero, and the next day, they stone him to death. Quill wasn't anywhere close to a hero, but the popular poem still rang in his head.

  The majority opinion affected individual logic, and to this very day, it hasn't changed.

  Quill stepped up to the podium with Rhena, Elarah, and two others from the room. With a nod of the old woman, Quill then placed his hand onto one of the Absorbers, the cold and blank surface of it eating away at the warmth inside his chest.

  Only a second later, most of Quill’s mana was gone. A sweat dripped from his brow, a shake to his fingers following. He was trying his hardest to wrestle with the Absorber to keep the last of his mana inside him. Mana Fatigue had swallowed him, but it would take something more than this to topple the Night Lich.

  The Absorber pulled more, hungry for more mana. When Quill didn't let it, it then stirred before the force pulling on his Core died. At once, he squatted on the floor before closing his eyes. He needed to be first in time to have a chance at the elixir.

  Mana replenishment was an autonomous process. It happens automatically, the same as breathing air into lungs or blinking tired eyes. The Core is always absorbing mana from the environment, processing it into usable mana. If Quill just sat there and did absolutely nothing, most of his mana would automatically replenish within an hour, just like the rest.

  But the test here was to speed up that absorption of mana. He needed to take control of his Core, absorbing mana consciously as if drawing a huge breath of air manually. This required a cycling technique, a way to use his mana to speed up the acquisition of mana in a recurring cycle.

  It just so happened that Quill had developed a cycling technique from his past life for exactly this moment.

  He breathed in, pulling the mana from the air and into his lungs. He then breathed out, but instead of pouring the mana into his Core, he diverted it back to his lungs, using the mana to fuel his lungs to draw in more mana with the next cycle. It would take years to mimic the process and pull it off as he did, but it's one of the few things that Quill had an edge over the other students.

  This process was normally hard to accomplish, and many mages focus internally on their Cores to do it. But the crucial thing that most of them fail to realize is that this process naturally occurs while in a resting state. Given that reasoning, one only needed to attain a state of pseudo-sleep to practice the Blue Gem Cycle.

  Quill blanked his mind before static rang in his ears. In the darkness of his mind, he only latched onto the warmth seeping into him. He couldn't keep track of time or the amount of mana pooling into his chest, but he relied on nothing but his instinct to wake him up. He had already done this a thousand times before.

  “Done.” Quill opened his eyes. He pushed himself to stand, catching Elarah and Rhena beside him, staring at him through beads of sweat. His ears picked up the murmurs from the crowd as he made his way to Athen.

  “You again?” The old woman smiled before she then fished out an instrument, a small variant of a Scaler used to measure mana. Once Quill placed his hand on it, the woman then sighed.

  “Ten minutes.”

  Discord.