Chapter 38: The New Semester
The Academy’s second year began with three major changes: a new course on Dimensional Ethics (taught, controversially, by Kael), a mandatory safety seminar on What To Do When Reality Starts Unraveling (taught by Jake, who was, the faculty argued, the closest thing they had to an expert), and a new student.
Her name was Vex, and she was a problem.
Not because she was dangerous—though she was, in the way that all beings made of compressed starlight and barely contained stellar fusion are dangerous. Not because she was rude—though she had the social skills of a supernova, which is to say she burned everything she touched.
The problem was that Vex could absorb mana.
Not use it. Not channel it. Absorb it. She was a living mana sponge, and in a school full of mana-users, she was a walking blackout.
“She drained my entire fire enchantment during lunch!” complained a second-year student named Thom, who looked like he might cry. “I was just trying to warm my soup!”
“She absorbed my barrier spell during Combat Training,” reported another. “I was naked. Magically naked. In front of the whole class.”
Jake found Vex sitting alone on the Academy’s eastern wall, legs dangling over the edge of the floating island, staring at the cloud layer below. She was small—barely five feet, with hair that shifted between gold and white depending on how much mana she’d recently absorbed. Right now, after an entire day of accidentally draining everyone around her, she glowed like a small, miserable sun.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said before Jake could speak. “I can’t control it. The mana just… comes to me. Like gravity.”
Jake sat down beside her. He let his Infinite Mana radiate freely—and felt the pull immediately. His mana flowed toward Vex like water toward a drain. But unlike everyone else in the Academy, Jake had mana to spare. Infinite mana to spare.
“Huh,” Vex said, looking at him. “You’re not running out.”
“I don’t run out.”
“That’s… weird.”
“You absorb all mana in your vicinity without being able to stop. I produce all mana without being able to stop. We’re both weird.” Jake grinned. “Maybe we’re compatible weird.”
Vex stared at him. Then, for the first time since arriving at the Academy, she smiled. It was a small smile, uncertain, like a sunrise that wasn’t sure whether the clouds would let it through. But it was real.
“Compatible weird,” she repeated. “I like that.”
And just like that, Jake’s party gained a new member. Whether the Academy would survive the combination of infinite mana production and infinite mana absorption was a question that the faculty discussed in urgent, closed-door meetings for the rest of the week.
The consensus: probably not, but it would be very interesting to watch.