The sorcerer led Kiro, Patches, and Boc deeper into the academy.
“Master Loran said that the three of you will serve as… ‘teaching aids’ for an important magical experiment our academy is about to conduct,” the sorcerer explained.
“Teaching aids?”
Kiro stopped walking.
She turned her head and looked at the sorcerer, her eyes narrowing.
“Explain that. What do you mean by teaching aids?”
“T-that… those were the Master’s exact words.”
The sorcerer felt a little frightened under her stare and subconsciously took half a step back.
“The Master said that the three of you would provide valuable… experimental data for a revolutionary magical theory.”
Patches’ tiny eyes spun around. He seemed to smell something wrong, but he could not quite say what exactly felt off.
Boc, on the other hand, had gone pale with fear. He clutched the corner of Patches’ clothes, trembling all over.
Kiro could not figure out what exactly Loran was planning.
But words like “experiment” and “teaching aids” gave her an instinctive feeling of displeasure.
“Take me to him,” Kiro said coldly.
The sorcerer did not dare delay and quickly led the way.
They passed through the corridor and eventually stopped in front of a lecture room.
The door was half-open.
Through the crack, they could see that the room was full of people.
Dozens of sorcerers wearing all kinds of glintstone crowns were sitting upright.
And Loran was standing in front of a blackboard filled with symbols they could not understand.
The entire lecture room was silent.
Kiro pushed the door open and strode inside.
Patches and Boc followed closely behind her.
Loran turned around and gestured for them to come to his side.
“Loran, you’d better give me an explanation!”
Kiro questioned him.
“What do you mean, ‘teaching aids’? What are we to you? Performing monkeys?”
[Affection: -99 → -110]
[Status: Feeling Toyed With / Angry / Seeking an Explanation]
Loran ignored her.
He turned toward the dozens of sorcerers below and spoke.
“As you can see, this is the most crucial part of my theory—experimental subjects.”
“These three samples have never received any traditional education in glintstone sorcery theory.”
“Their minds are uncultivated wastelands.”
“To me, they are the best test fields.”
A commotion rose among the sorcerers below.
“My theory states,” Loran’s voice echoed through the room, “that the core of casting glintstone sorcery is not the memorization of complicated incantations, nor is it the comprehension of the movements of the stars.”
“It is a kind of ‘access permission’ to invoke cosmic parameters.”
“In other words, as long as the correct method is found, then in theory, anyone, no matter how ‘foolish,’ can learn magic.”
He paused.
His gaze finally landed on Kiro.
“Based on my preliminary evaluation, the Intelligence of these three samples, added together… may not even reach thirty.”
“Especially her.”
He pointed at Kiro.
“Her Intelligence may even be lower than that of this demi-human gentleman beside her.”
The room erupted.
That sentence, “may even be lower than that of this demi-human gentleman,” struck Kiro’s pride with brutal precision.
Her face instantly turned dark red.
A wave of rage shot from the soles of her feet straight to the top of her head.
She clenched her fists.
Flames of wanting to swallow Loran alive burned in her pupils.
[Affection: -110 → -200]
[Status: Furious / Ultimate Humiliation / Killing Intent]
She opened her mouth, preparing to use the most vicious vocabulary she had learned in her entire life to spray this bastard who had humiliated her in public until nothing remained.
“Don’t get angry yet.”
Loran interrupted her.
“What if I said I could let you… learn Comet Azur without wasting even a single stat point on Intelligence?”
“Would you learn it?”
In Kiro’s mind, that unstoppable blue torrent that pierced heaven and earth instantly appeared.
It was the ultimate romance of all mages.
The embodiment of power.
Her chest full of anger was instantly crushed by this enormous temptation.
She froze in place.
She stared blankly at Loran, her mouth slightly open, forgetting what she had originally wanted to say.
Her brain, that simple processor with only 9 Intelligence that had always been able to handle only “Yes” or “No,” was at this moment hit by an option far beyond its understanding and went completely blank.
In the end, she nodded woodenly.
Loran had obtained the answer he wanted.
He said nothing more.
Instead, he walked down from the podium and came in front of Kiro.
“Hold out your hand,” he ordered.
Before Kiro could react, her hand had already been taken by Loran.
Kiro instinctively tried to pull her hand back, but Loran held it tightly.
“Do not move.”
His voice was low, yet carried a force that allowed no doubt.
“Sense. Do not think.”
“The essence of glintstone sorcery is not memory. It is invocation.”
“Forget everything you know about the concept of ‘magic.’”
“Now, imagine yourself as an… empty container.”
Loran’s voice gradually calmed Kiro down.
“You do not need to understand what the ‘Primeval Current’ is.”
“Nor do you need to calculate any ‘stellar trajectories.’”
“Those are all ‘functions,’ tools that have already been encapsulated.”
“What you need to do now is find the ‘main program’ that runs them.”
Holding Kiro’s hand, he gently drew a semicolon across her palm.
“This is the end of a command.”
“It is the terminator that marks the transition from the preparation of magic to its formation.”
Then, he drew another symbol.
A pair of curly braces.
“This is the ‘scope.’”
“It is the range your magic will affect.”
“The world inside the braces follows your rules.”
“The world outside them has nothing to do with you.”
“Now, find the ‘desire’ deep within your soul.”
“Not the desire to become Elden Lord.”
“Not the desire to obtain runes.”
“But the purest desire… to destroy.”
“Invoke it.”
“Treat the things you saw me write earlier, those symbols you cannot understand at all, as a ‘black box.’”
“You do not need to know how it works inside.”
“You only need to know that when you place your ‘desire’ into it, it will give you a result.”
“Now, activate it.”
“Aim at… that candlestick over there.”
Loran’s voice echoed beside Kiro’s ear.
Kiro’s consciousness was in chaos.
She could not feel the uncertain gazes of the sorcerers around her.
She could not hear the nervous breathing of Patches and Boc.
In her world, only Loran’s voice remained, along with the two strange symbols in her palm.
Destroy…
A primal impulse lit a tiny spark in the barren wasteland of her soul.
She stretched out her hand.
Aimed at a brass candlestick on the wall not far away.
She thought of nothing.
She simply wanted that candlestick to shatter.
A faint blue light gathered at her fingertip.
The light was weak and unstable, like a candle in the wind, ready to go out at any moment.
The sorcerers below let out suppressed cries of shock.
“Impossible… she did not even chant…”
“What is this? A barbarian’s trick?”
“Silence!”
Loran’s low shout suppressed all the commotion.
“Not enough,” he said softly to Kiro.
“Your ‘desire’ is too weak. It is not enough to drive the ‘main program.’”
“You need a stronger… ‘input value.’”
“Think about it.”
He leaned closer to Kiro’s ear.
“Think about Godrick, who humiliated you.”
“Think about Melina, who wanted to execute you at the slightest disagreement.”
“Think about me…”
“Think about how I just said, in front of everyone, that your Intelligence is not even as high as a demi-human’s.”
“Do you want to… destroy all of it?”
Boom—
Something exploded in Kiro’s mind.
Humiliation, anger, unwillingness…
All the negative emotions found an outlet in this instant.
The faint blue light at her fingertip suddenly surged.
It was no longer a weak spark.
It became a high-speed rotating core of energy.
Even the surrounding air distorted because of this sudden eruption of power.
The sorcerers below were filled with horror.
They could feel the violence contained within that energy.
“Go,” Loran gave the final command beside her ear.
The blue glintstone pebble shot from her hand.
Bang!
With a loud explosion, the candlestick and the wall behind it were instantly blasted open.
Broken stones flew everywhere.
Dust and smoke spread through the air.
The entire lecture room fell into deathly silence.
Everyone’s gaze gathered on the black-robed girl who still maintained her casting posture.
A trace of lingering blue electricity remained at her fingertip.
Then came an uproar.
“By the stars… what did I just see?”
“She did it… Someone with such low Intelligence actually released Glintstone Pebble! And with such astonishing power!”
“This is impossible! This completely overturns the foundation of glintstone sorcery theory!”
“Could it be… could the Master’s theory be true? Is the essence of magic truly not ‘comprehension,’ but ‘invocation’?”
The lecture room became as chaotic as a boiling pot.
The sorcerers whispered to one another and argued endlessly.
Some had faces full of disbelief.
Some fell into feverish contemplation.
Others looked at Loran with eyes that had already changed from initial awe into something close to fanatical worship.
Patches’ mouth hung open.
He stared blankly at the hole in the wall, then looked at Kiro beside him.
He muttered to himself, “Can… can this also make money?”
Boc was so frightened that he sat down on the ground, tightly hugging his sewing kit.
As for Kiro, she slowly lowered her hand and looked down at her own fingertip.
She had succeeded.
She had truly used magic with only 9 Intelligence.
She raised her head and looked at Loran.
She saw that there was no surprise or joy on Loran’s face.
As if all of this had been within his calculations.