Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

Wolfe looked over the spell one more time, then added four more runes to link the portions of script together, and stepped back.

"There, that should improve the efficiency and reduce the focus required to cast the spell, without fundamentally changing it or making it incompatible with the others who are casting it the old way.

If you would like to try now, or have the class try, you can verify my work." Wolfe informed the Professor.

The old man held up his hand to stop the others from doing anything, then activated the spell on the top of his desk.

"That spell, it's so smooth, nearly effortless. What did you do to make it so easy to cast?" The Professor asked.

"Corrected the grammar. Magical runes have grammar and syntax to them as well, and frankly, this one read like shorthand that someone had patched together. I cast spells like that sometimes, and fill in the rest myself, but if you don't have a good grasp of the runic language, it's better to just write clearly in the original spell." Wolfe explained.

"Grammar and syntax? The spells are just runes, holy spells passed down through the generations." One of the younger Nobles asked.

Wolfe sighed. "The runes are a language of their own. Whoever wrote them down for you after receiving the inspiration for them probably understood it, but then it got a bit garbled over the centuries."

"So, if you can read it, you don't need to experiment with portions of runic inscriptions to find something that works?" The young man asked, and even the teacher flinched.

"Please don't do that. Your family would be quite upset if you self-destructed."

"How else would we learn the arts of an Artificer? Technology must move forward, and for that, we must invent new spells." A slightly older blonde young man from the far side of the room asked.

Wolfe turned to Cassie, who used Witch Magic to create a book from the Inheritance knowledge.

"You use something like this. Introduction to Runes, volume one." She explained, holding the book up for everyone to see.

A middle-aged mage with a long scar down the side of his head sighed. "If only that had come up at the auction, I would have paid a fortune for it."

Cassie laughed and opened the book toward him.

Inside were a collection of runes, with writing in the human common language, which was a bit different from the local written language, though the spoken versions were mutually intelligible, for the most part. Some of the dialects, Cassie wasn't certain that anyone else understood.

But the purpose of the book was clear. It was a schoolbook, a study guide for teaching youngsters how to read Runic.

Or, at least Cassie had thought it was clear.

"SO many spells, there are like thirty on that page alone." One of the nearby nobles gasped.

"They're not spells. It's a language learning guide. The Runic language is written by the paragraph as a series of interwoven runes in a vaguely circular pattern. What you see in runes is the same as what is written below. If you go to the first half of the book, it goes over the alphabet and the tonal modifiers.

This book isn't actually suitable for anything more than the most basic spell casting because it doesn't include the advanced runes or the prefix and suffix runes that are specific to magical spells.

Wolfe, can you write them a message and have them try to cast it as a spell?" Cassie explained.

[The uneducated should not speak.] Wolfe wrote, creating an elementary runic circle.

The students focused on it, using mana to activate it, and the room fell silent.

"What does it say?" The Professor asked, thinking that the students were finally beginning to understand the lesson.

"It says the uneducated should not speak." Wolfe joked, and the old man smiled.

The Professor turned to the class. "Now, who can tell me what happened when you tried to use that phrase as a spell?

Anyone?"

The room was still silent, and Wolfe facepalmed.

"I think they cast silence on themselves."

The Professor stared at him, and Wolfe shrugged.

"I didn't think that it would work as a spell at all, but you know, intention is as important as the actual runes, so I guess trying to make it a spell was enough for the magic to find a way."

"How long will it last?" The Professor asked.

"As soon as they focus on ending the spell, it will be cancelled, just like any other spell."

Slowly, the room started to fill with chatter again, until one of the students smirked and reactivated their rune, silencing over half of them.

"Do not cast spells on each other in this seminar." The Professor reprimanded them, then broke the spell on the student's desk with a burst of magic.

"Sorry, Professor."

The old man sighed, then cleared the side of the board he was working on.

"We can hold another lecture on basic rune language and grammar, but for now, we need to get through the last of the basic spells, and then we can start in on the focus of our lesson." He announced.

"I apologize for the disruption, I will return to my seat." Wolfe apologized, and the old man smiled at him.

"If only everyone were as excited about knowledge as you are, perhaps we would have little need for these mandatory lessons to start the symposium."

The students laughed as they went through the last spells, and then the short lecture about the importance of keeping up your skills with the basics, especially for the young mages who hadn't done their term of service yet.

Some of them would be excluded as Family Heads, but many of them would not, and that meant these were actually important safety skills to know.

Finally, half an hour after they had started the day, they were finally ready to start the lecture, and the Professor intended to start it out with a bang.

"Today, I have decided to focus on Gem Formations. We all know that many gems hold specific types of magic in them, and today, we will discuss the ways that they can be arranged to create more complex magical effects, or supplement other spells."