"Ugh...! Are we really supposed to be able to learn this?!" a small-framed girl cried out as she collapsed to the ground, her mental energy utterly spent.
Her cry was a spark to tinder. A wave of complaints and frustrated sighs spread through the training hall. This wasn't just hard; it felt fundamentally impossible. The precision required to draw the Polyrunes perfectly, to feel the flow of ambient mana and command it—this was a skill light-years beyond the average cadet's reach. Countless attempts had been made, yet the results were universally pathetic: a wisp of smoke instead of [Fireball], a faint tremor in the dirt instead of [Ground Wall].
Another boy slammed his practice slate down, the chalk shattering. "What's the point?! We could just find a skill book and learn this in an instant! Why are we wasting our time?!"
The instructors observed the mounting rebellion with cold indifference. Their only commands were sharp, uncompromising echoes: "Continue." They believed this harshness was a mercy—the foundational survival skill for the new world they were entering.
And then, out of the blue—BOOM!
A concussive blast ripped through the cacophony of complaints, originating from the very area where Hua Ruyan and Shen Liang were stationed. Dust and debris billowed out, and when it cleared, the source was revealed: Ba Huong.
He stood unharmed at the epicenter, not with a small, controlled flame like Hua Ruyan, but with a roaring [Fireball] the size of a shield still dissipating in his palm. He hadn't just succeeded where hundreds failed; he had surpassed the example. He had, on his first day, unleashed the most powerful display of raw, natural magic talent the hall had seen.
"W-Woah... he's incredible!" Hua Ruyan exclaimed, her eyes wide with genuine astonishment at the raw power Ba Huong had just unleashed.
Shen Liang watched the dissipating energy with a clinical eye. "It's inefficient," he stated, his voice flat.
Hua Ruyan turned to him, surprised. "What?"
"He misdrew the primary containment rune. The one on the left." Shen Liang's gaze was fixed on the fading afterimage of the spell in the air, his mind deconstructing it. "The mana had no guided path, so it defaulted to the simplest reaction: a single-point expansion. An explosion. It looks powerful, but most of the energy just dispersed into the air as heat and force. It's a leaky pipe, not a focused laser."
He finally glanced at her. "Your cast was smaller, but it was complete. The energy cycle was closed. His was a contained failure."
"I think I've seen enough. I'll try it once more." Shen Liang's voice was calm, a stark contrast to the frustration simmering around him. He had learned more from observing a single catastrophic success and a single flawless one than from all his own failed attempts.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the noise of the hall. He raised his hand, and this time, his movements were not hesitant, but deliberate. He wasn't just drawing; he was conducting. He visualized the Polyrune for [Fireball] not as a static image, but as a flowing circuit. He could feel it—a faint, ethereal pull as ambient mana began to flow into the pattern he traced in the air.
A circle of fire sputtered, then ignited, hovering shakily before him. A wave of relief washed over him. He had finally done it.
But the mana was still flowing.
A second pattern, the [Stone] rune, was completing itself almost on instinct, fueled by the same focused stream of will. Before the fireball had even stabilized, a sharp, earthen spear manifested beside it, hovering in the air.
The fireball winked out. The spear clattered to the ground.
Hua Ruyan, who had been watching his intense focus, drew a sharp, silent breath. Her eyes widened not with admiration for power, but with stunned realization. Shen Liang hadn't simply struggled to cast a single spell. He had failed at something that should have been impossible. He had failed to [Double Cast].
In the midst of a hall full of students who could barely manage a spark, Shen Liang had just, for a fleeting second, touched a height no human had ever reached without the System's direct intervention.
The brief triumph of his double cast evaporated, replaced by an instinctual, primal fear.
Suddenly, a terrifying presence materialized behind Shen Liang. It was not an arrival of sound or motion, but a shift in the very pressure of the world. The air grew heavy, thick with an energy that was both suffocating and razor-sharp. Power didn't just radiate from it—it overflowed, a silent, violent tide that threatened to drown his senses.
He could feel it before he saw it: a deadly, focused gaze piercing through his back, cold and evaluative. It was the feeling of being a specimen under a microscope, studied by a force that could snuff him out with a thought. Every hair on his arms stood on end.