Class used to be a sporadic event. With only two lessons a week, Orion could spend most of his time on research.

  With the discovery of counter-spells and the usefulness of crystals, he had many things to devote himself to.

  It was just ironic that as soon as he gained the stats and trait needed to finally move ahead, he was forced to attend so many more lessons.

  He was busy five days a week from early morning until just before dusk, and Sundays were reserved for religious teachings and ceremonies, which he could not skip without attracting even more attention.

  If Orion was honest, he was starting to doubt whether all this paranoia was justified. Morliana hadn’t made a move since that day three years ago, and even though he knew she had people watching him, it wasn’t to the point where he felt stifled. No more than what living in the Sanctum caused, anyway.

  Likely, she was passively monitoring several people at the same time, and as long as he did nothing to attract attention, he would be fine.

  It still didn’t make wasting so much time any less frustrating.

  Fortunately, not everything was so bad. While some of his classes, like Potions and Rituals, were either useless as he already knew everything or completely theoretical for now, others, like Charms, Jewelcraft, and Enchanting, showed more promise.

  Not that he had managed to enchant anything yet, but their teacher, Madame Celine, was sharp enough to notice when her students were losing interest in the curriculum, so she had arranged a series of runic puzzles for them to decode as a way of teaching the language.

  The specific one Orion was working on described the effects of the Torchlight spell, which was always used when teaching the basics, but it did so in a way he was completely unfamiliar with.

  Orion wasn’t a stranger to enchantments. He had crafted the SDGs himself, after all. But he had to admit he might have been a bit too narrow in his scope because he was quickly discovering that as long as an effect could be clearly described, there was little that wasn’t possible.

  Well, that, and the power requirements increase rapidly once you begin adding details to your rune matrix.

  The runes he was looking at were placed randomly across a wooden grid, and he needed to find the most effective way for them to tell the story of the Moon Mother’s victory over darkness, the myth behind the Torchlight spell.

  Initially, he thought it was just a logic puzzle. If he could translate each rune individually, then it would just be a matter of figuring out the right order.

  And that was what everyone else seemed to be doing. Well, except for Selene, who had taken one look at the puzzle and solved it. But that was probably because her class gave her access to knowledge she shouldn’t have.

  Orion, on the other hand, decided not to take the easy way out. It would have been simple for him to follow the unspoken instructions, but since Madame Celine hadn’t specified the way they were supposed to proceed, he decided to do something more interesting.

  [Verification Principle] didn’t just work with spells, after all. He could use it on all types of magic, as long as he could perceive them.

  And the runic tassels were magical, meaning that when he looked at them, he could see the interconnected concepts represented by the runes and how they were currently failing to form a workable syntax.

  Picking up the piece carved with the symbol for light, the one rune everyone could recognize with their eyes closed, he placed it at the very beginning, silently watching how that changed the network of connections.

  Interestingly, all the runes were carved from wood from a single tree, giving them superior synergy. I might be able to succeed even without that, but the natural connection between them allows even those without Knowledge to bumble their way through. It is a simple exercise, after all.

  With the rune for light placed in the first slot, the remaining tassels flickered faintly, attempting to establish a connection according to his intent but quickly faded back into darkness, as the internal logic was strong enough to sustain the magic.

  I was more correct than I realized. This is essentially both a programming language and a natural language at the same time, which means…

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  What if he not only constructed a phrase with the runes but also created an actual command?

  Now, Orion did not know the meaning of each rune. He simply hadn't had the time to study the obscure language yet, and even with how limited the first floor of the library was, there were enough books for him to read every day for the next century without stopping.

  But he didn’t really need to know. He just had to observe how the tassels interacted with each other every time he moved them.

  When he placed “light” at the beginning, one specific rune flashed brighter than the others, trying to give the command structure, but its position prevented it from doing more.

  Orion took it and gently moved it into the spot where “light” had been, shifting that one position over.

  Even with only two runes, the subsequent flash was much more powerful, and how it interacted with the other tassels revealed even more to him.

  That one has to be “origin.” The story goes that the Goddess emerged from the darkness, so it makes sense to have something indicating her rise.

  If he were following the Sanctum’s syntax, he’d be searching for the tassel that meant “darkness” next, but Orion was trying to do something different.

  Grabbing another rune that had reacted only feebly, he placed it one line below instead of continuing the sentence.

  It had almost no power of its own, and he suspected it was a bridge word, something to give other sentences more structure.

  It would serve very well as a divider between lines of code.

  And so Orion went, forging three entire lines of code with runes that had never been meant to be used that way, until finally, he placed the last tassel down, the one that meant “fight,” or at least something like that.

  Several runes remained unused. He’d been given two dozen tassels, after all, and he was supposed to use them all. Instead, he created three lines made up of only fifteen runes, but he was confident this would work just as well, if not better.

  It took only a moment to push his Intent, and he was greeted with a board that lit up so intensely he jerked back, nearly falling out of his chair.

  A beam of light burst out of his desk, slamming into the ceiling and stopping there, thankfully.

  It bathed the entire classroom in light for several seconds before the charge he’d directed into it faded away.

  “Mr Voidwalker!” The Madame thundered, but Orion didn’t particularly care. He was going to have fun with this class.

  The other class he’d been excited about was Basic Jewelcraft. The chance to learn something that could improve his glasses alone made signing up worthwhile, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

  Essentially, Jewelcraft was a material science class where they’d study how each valuable metal or mineral crystal interacted with different types of mana, and down the line, how they could be used for both casting and enchanting.

  The possibilities seemed endless, but the first few lessons put a stop to his wild dreams.

  The teacher, Elder Candra, was an old, doddering witch whose glasses were as thick as bottle bottoms and who moved at a turtle’s pace both physically and verbally.

  There was no doubt in Orion’s mind that she knew her business. She was a Veil Priestess, after all, on par with Morliana in influence and power, and second only to Seraphina herself within the Sanctum.

  His Inspection also confirmed that much.

  [Candra ??? - Lv. ???] [??? - A-Rank]

  She was among the most powerful people he had inspected. Given his repeated failure to get any information from Seraphina, she was probably the highest-ranked person he could reliably observe, aside from Set, whose mystery remained unsolved.

  All that power, unfortunately, only meant he had to be on his very best behavior and swallow his tongue whenever she went on another rant about the superiority of the crystals excavated from the nearby mountains, compared to those that the dwarves of the Adamantine Forge at the other end of the mountain range produced.

  He had hoped it was just the result of a particularly frustrating day and that during the next lessons, they would finally start learning real Jewelcraft.

  The Elder began the lesson by taking out a nugget of hematite, giving a brief overview of iron oxide and how it was known to reject most kinds of mana except for Earth mana.

  This made it valuable for strengthening building foundations, and he was very eager to learn more, only for her to start ranting about how the dwarves were flooding the market with low-quality junk, which would surely lead to the collapse of Silverpeak Town as a whole.

  It was kind of funny at first, but the woman kept going for hours, seemingly unaware she was losing the class.

  Considering her position within the Sanctum, it was unsurprising that no one felt they could intervene, but Orion was ready to take his complaints up the chain until he stopped grumbling and started listening, and realized that amid all the ranting, Elder Candra was actually revealing some pretty interesting information.

  “And then there was that time I went to inspect the newest shrine on Silverpeak's northern edge, aiming to complete the triad and ensure the wards' integrity. Some people swear by ilmenite, saying it’s as solid as iron but less likely to reject an enchantment. Know this: anyone who claims that should be ignored. Hematite may be harder to control, but when mastered, it yields the best results!”

  More than half the class had tuned out, thinking that since the old woman wasn’t paying attention to them, they could do the same. Orion, on the other hand, was furiously writing everything down.

  He might not have been a materials expert, as evidenced by his untimely death, but that didn’t mean he was unaware of the importance of using the right elements.

  Any future attempts at enchantment would greatly benefit from this knowledge. And he had many, many projects on the back burner.

  “Of course, if you listen to the blacksmiths, they will tell you that silverite is the only way to go. HA!” Her laughter was loud enough to shake the entire room, and everyone sat up straight, stunned.

  The decrepit witch kept ranting, as if she hadn’t even noticed. “Just because it’s the easiest material to ensure the purity of, doesn’t mean it’s the best! Of course, this is all because of the Standardization Treaty of 817! I argued vehemently back then that we should not bend to the whims of the dwarves, that if they had their way, every artificer from Leviathan Watch to the Ebony Gauntlet would be using their methods, and thus be dependent on their industry, but no, we had to get concessions about religious freedoms!”

  The more the old woman ranted, the more Orion realized that even if this class might not have been exactly what he’d hoped for, it was still just as interesting.

  Sure, he might not start making his equipment anytime soon, but this kind of history lesson was unlikely to be found elsewhere. After all, no one would dare censor a Veil Priestess, senile or not.

  Hopefully, Charms will be more practical than this. It’s the only reason I can think of for why they would schedule its five weekly hours on Friday as the only class.

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