Chapter 43: Magic Spells
The Primordial Academy’s library did not feel built for reading.
It felt built for preparation.
Shelves rose through several floors, packed so tightly that their bindings formed continuous walls of leather, metal, and reinforced paper.
Entire sections were devoted to spell construction, affinity theory, monster anatomy, combat applications, Prana manipulation, formations, glyphwork, and historical records. Deeper within the library, iron gates marked sections whose contents required authorization even from students.
Caelus stopped just inside the entrance and let his eyes travel across the rows.
This was more useful than the Vespera library.
Not because it was larger, though it probably was.
The difference was what the books were for.
The Vespera estate weaponized knowledge. The academy preserved it.
Students occupied nearly every table.
Most were older than the candidates outside, judging by their uniforms and academy insignia. Second- and third-years, most likely.
No one paid him much attention.
A few glanced toward the Vespera insignia when he passed, but their attention quickly returned to their work.
Caelus found that more interesting than being stared at.
Here, a student’s usefulness seemed to matter more than his surname.
At least inside the library.
He moved deeper into the library, following the classification marks rather than wandering aimlessly. His first stop was the Water-affinity section.
It was smaller than he expected.
Caelus’s eyes moved across the shelves before he pulled out the first volume.
Basic Water Manipulation.
He opened it, scanned several pages, and returned it.
Water Affinity Fundamentals.
Better.
Spell Construction Principles.
He took that one as well.
Glyph Structures and Affinity Compatibility.
By the time he finished, he had accumulated enough books to make carrying them inconvenient.
"You’re the Vespera everyone has been talking about."
The voice came from behind him.
Caelus stopped with his hand still resting against the spine of a book. He turned and found himself looking up.
The difference was enough to irritate him on principle.
The man stood nearly two meters tall, broad enough to make the academy uniform look undersized. No family crest. No noble insignia. Just a stranger standing far too close to him.
Caelus lowered his gaze from the man’s face to the hand hanging loosely at his side, then looked back up.
The stranger’s expression held more curiosity than hostility.
"Which ones?" Caelus asked.
He gave a short laugh.
"Apparently there are quite a few."
He leaned against the shelf.
"One says you’re a Contractor. Another says you disappeared from your family and started dealing with people you shouldn’t have. Then there’s the one where your D-rank potential was fabricated because the Vesperas were hiding a trump card."
Caelus stared at him.
"A hidden trump card?"
"That’s what I heard."
"Creative."
Leon grinned. "There’s more."
Caelus already regretted asking.
"Your siblings apparently dominated their entrance examinations, so people are expecting another Vespera monster."
Caelus glanced toward the stack of books under his arm.
"They’re going to be disappointed."
Leon’s eyebrow lifted.
"That sounds confident."
"And what exactly do you know about that?"
Leon shrugged.
"Only that people get nervous when they don’t understand something."
Caelus considered that.
"You approached me just to tell me that?"
Leon shook his head.
"No. I was curious."
"About?"
"You."
Caelus waited.
Leon gestured toward the books in his arms.
"You walked into the library, ignored half the people who noticed you, and immediately started collecting books on Water magic and spell construction."
He smiled.
"That doesn’t look like someone preparing to prove he’s a Contractor."
Leon extended a hand.
"I’m Leon. First year. Nice to meet you."
Caelus looked at the offered hand.
He took it.
"Caelus."
Leon grinned.
"I know."
Caelus released his hand and turned back toward the shelves.
He reached for another volume covering practical Water-affinity spells and added it to the books already balanced against his arm.
Leon remained where he was.
Caelus glanced at him.
"Was there something else?"
Leon’s eyes dropped toward the books.
"Spell construction?"
"Among other things."
Leon let out a quiet whistle.
"You’re serious."
"Usually."
"Most mages spend months developing a single proper spell."
"I don’t have months."
"The examination?"
"Exactly."
"And you think you can build something in seven days?"
Caelus looked down at the book in his arm.
"Maybe."
He turned away.
A hand settled on his shoulder.
Caelus stopped and looked down at Leon’s fingers.
For someone built like that, the gesture was remarkably casual.
Caelus briefly considered several responses.
Removing the hand would take no effort. Breaking the wrist would take less. Cutting it off would create considerably more paperwork than the situation deserved.
He settled for turning his head.
Leon released him before he had to decide.
"See you around, Vespera."
Caelus gave him a flat look.
"I’d prefer not to be called that."
Leon grinned.
"I’ll consider it."
Leon walked away between the shelves, disappearing into the steady movement of students.
Caelus watched him leave.
With the interruption dealt with, Caelus carried the books to an empty table farther inside the library.
He chose one positioned between two shelves rather than beside the window. The location gave him a clear view of the nearest aisle without forcing him to sit in the center of the room.
Habit.
He placed the books in order and finally sat down.
Now he could work.
He opened the book on Water-affinity spell construction first.
The material was dense enough to discourage anyone who had picked it up looking for a quick answer. Pages were covered with glyph diagrams, affinity interactions, Prana-flow models, and handwritten corrections left by generations of students.
Caelus appreciated the corrections more than the printed explanations.
They showed where other people had failed.
Failure was useful when someone else had already paid for it.
He turned the first few pages, comparing the academy’s methodology with what he remembered.
The basic principles remained unchanged.
Glyph placement.
Prana routing.
Affinity compatibility.
Structural stability.
Everything followed the framework he had written.
There was something deeply strange about it.
A theory he had once created from imagination now lay beneath his hands, covered in annotations from people who had spent years refining it.
His memories were not worthless. The system still followed the foundation he remembered.
He moved to the section covering spell tiers.
The lowest two tiers belonged to C-rank. B-rank entered Tiers Three and Four, A-rank followed with Five and Six, and S-rank with Seven and Eight.
Beyond that lay SS and SSS-rank, where conventional spellcraft began becoming something fundamentally different.
Higher tiers allowed increasingly complex manipulation after release, while S-rank marked the transition from conventional spells toward signature spells.
Caelus closed the book.
He didn’t need any of that yet.
One week was all he had before the examination.
Creating one proper spell in that time would already be unreasonable.
He intended to create three.
The difference was that an ordinary mage approached a blank page with no idea what would survive the first attempt.
Caelus did not have that problem.
He knew the principles behind the structures.
He knew which approaches had already been abandoned.
He wasn’t inventing magic from nothing.
He was taking a system he understood better than almost anyone alive and forcing it to work for him.
That was still difficult.
It was simply less difficult than it should have been.
The problem was his rank.
Caelus was still a low C-rank.
He could improve his mana control, but he could not manufacture the reserves of a mid-C or upper-C mage simply because the examination demanded it. If he met someone significantly stronger than him and tried to win by matching force with force, the result would be predictable.
He would lose.
So he needed something that didn’t rely on having more reserves.
He opened the Water spell compendium.
The difference between the sections was immediately obvious.
Fire had pages of offensive applications.
Lightning had variations stacked on variations.
Water had fewer entries, and many of them were utility-oriented.
Caelus almost laughed.
An entire affinity had been reduced to what people could imagine doing with a bucket.
The problem was investment.
Water required precision, control, and creativity before its advantages became obvious. Most mages wanted power they could feel immediately.
Water rarely offered that satisfaction.
His attention settled on Water Bullet.
The spell was straightforward: a compressed projectile designed to minimize Prana consumption while retaining enough pressure for penetration.
Cheap.
Precise.
Useful.
He marked it mentally as a candidate.
Against weaker targets, it was sufficient. Against stronger candidates, its killing power would depend on precision.
That could work in his favor.
But it would not solve every problem.
Water Lance offered the opposite solution.
Greater penetration at the cost of higher Prana consumption, better suited to punching through durable targets.
Caelus studied the glyph arrangement and the increase in required pressure.
He kept reading.
His fingers stopped halfway down the page.
The next entry caught his attention.
Water Blade.
It was one of the simpler offensive spells in the section: compress Water into a narrow cutting edge, shape the pressure along its surface, then release the construct as a forward arc.
Caelus read the description twice.
The spell wasn’t particularly powerful. Its Prana consumption was higher than Water Bullet, its precision requirements greater, and its limited range made it inefficient after release.
On paper, it was mediocre. That was probably why nobody had bothered developing it further.
Caelus traced the glyph sequence slowly with his fingertip.
The structure was designed around projection.
Compress.
Shape.
Release.
That was the conventional sequence.
But something bothered him.
The spell did not actually need to be projected.
His gaze drifted toward the sword at his side.
He had spent years learning how to make a physical blade cut.
Water Blade already created something whose entire purpose was to cut.
Why throw it away?
What if he kept it attached?
Instead of forming the Water Blade and launching it forward, he could bind the cutting edge to his sword.
The physical blade would provide the structure; Water would provide the additional edge.
He wouldn’t need to replace swordsmanship with spellcasting. He would be extending what the sword already did.
Caelus leaned closer to the page.
The possibilities multiplied.
Water Blade could extend the sword’s effective reach without increasing its physical length. He could concentrate pressure along the cutting edge instead of wasting Prana maintaining a projectile, perhaps even altering its thickness or length with each strike.
Most importantly, the spell would move with him.
No cast.
No delay between releasing the spell and reaching the target.
Just the sword, wrapped in Water.
He reached for his notebook.
The original glyph structure was designed for release, so the binding sequence would have to change. The Prana path needed to remain stable on a moving object without interfering with his grip or sword control.
That was the difficult part.
Caelus began drawing.
He altered the final sequence, stared at it, crossed part of it out, and started again.
The first consumed too much Prana. The second became unstable during movement. The third looked promising.
Caelus leaned back and looked at the unfinished structure.
It was still only an idea.
A dangerous one, maybe, but an interesting one.
His mouth curved slightly.
This might be more fun than he’d expected.