Chapter 199 — The First Lesson

"Shh, if you make him angry, you're dead!"

"That magic robe is so old..."

The older children still looked at Santis's magic robe and the short staff at his waist with some fear, but the younger ones had no fear at all—they had not yet learned to bow and scrape the moment they saw a mage lord, as their parents did. Likewise, Santis had not mastered the "spirit" of an ordinary mage, who would casually fling a fireball at an insolent wretch and blast him into a cripple.

He could only cast a few arcane missiles a day.

He could only open his mouth uselessly, his voice so small that even the front row struggled to hear: "Quiet down... everyone quiet down, class is starting..."

No one listened to him, exactly as expected: the children of commoners were all the harder to deal with.

Santis felt sweat seeping onto his face and thought his first lesson might well end in failure—but a handkerchief was suddenly held out to him from the side. He looked over in surprise and saw a girl with very large eyes holding up the handkerchief and looking at him.

The girl was somewhat frail, yet wore clean, neat cotton clothes, and a little hairpin was fixed in her hair—which suggested her family circumstances were fairly good. She pushed the handkerchief forward again and opened her mouth to make an "ah-ah" sound.

"Th-thank you..." Santis had not expected a child to be so sensible. He thanked her at once and took the handkerchief, wiping his sweat as he smiled. "You didn't shout like the others—what a good child..."

Hardly had he finished speaking when a boy beside her suddenly cried out: "Because Pea's a mute!"

The girl with the large eyes immediately shot the boy a glare, and he hastily shrank his neck. "Sorry, Sister Pea..."

The girl was called Pea, and she was a mute?

Santis froze for a moment. He recalled that he had indeed seen the strange name "Pea" on the student roster, but he had never imagined that among his students there would be a mute.

And in the two seconds of that daze, out of the corner of his eye Santis suddenly saw a small hand reach up from below the lectern, clutching a slate for writing. On the slate were a few crooked words: Cast a spell, sir.

Then the slate was swiftly withdrawn, so fast that Santis could not even see who had passed it up.

He was stunned for a moment, then finally came to his senses, and slightly raised his right hand. The precious few casting chances he had each day—he spent one on his very first class.

A tiny orb of arcane energy flew from his hand, up into the middle of the classroom air, and then burst with a bang, scattering magic sparks as though a firework had been set off in the room.

All the children fell silent in an instant.

They looked at their new teacher with awe, as though only now did they finally realize, finally become certain, that this was a true mage.

Like Lady Heidi—a mage.

The children exchanged bewildered glances, and Santis finally understood what he was meant to do.

"Children," the young Second-Rank arcanist said with a smile. He cast aside his days as a tutor to petty nobles and merchants, discarded those meaningless flowery overtures, discarded the "first-contact etiquette" and all the rules, and spoke the words he most wanted to say at this moment: "I am going to teach you how to identify runes, and the basic principles by which they take effect."

These children might never in their lives cast a single spell with their own hands.

Santis turned and wrote the title of the first lesson on the blackboard with a piece of chalk.

Never in history had anyone ever considered imparting the mysteries of magic, without reservation, to every person.

The foundational runes of earth, water, wind, and fire flowed from the tip of the chalk onto the blackboard, followed by the derivative runes of every domain—frost, lightning, and the rest.

Yet these children could commit this knowledge to memory with their minds, could work it through with paper and pen; Miss Jenny had already proven the value of such "calculation," and the lord believed in that value as well.

Santis turned around and saw dozens of curious, focused pairs of eyes. They were capable of focus.

"Let us begin the first lesson."