Professor Eggs told the single most ridiculous story Ethan had heard in his entire life. She claimed to have been a normal rescue dog back on Earth. That was until monsters attacked, and she fought some war against them with a group of people from another world. Then she was taken to yet another world where she served at the side of a powerful cat person. That cat person eventually rose to godhood and brought her along. While that was fun, she eventually grew bored and then came here to this world to teach students. She left out all the important details, like how she got her power or why she was still alive after a proclaimed 60,000 years of life.

  Professor Eggs waved one paw, dismissing the image she had conjured of a person running through an endless subway. "Anyway, I suppose you passed last week's assignment, even though I didn't give it to you. What should we do for this week?"

  Barry pointed at his bare chest. "Are you asking me? I don't think I'm the one teaching this class."

  "How about image conjuration with mana?" Ethan shrugged. He knew he would pass this task effortlessly, and Barry was probably right around the corner to developing the skill. If the other students couldn't do it, then he would take it as his own responsibility to make sure they got there.

  Eggs brought one paw to her chin and hummed as she thought. A moment later, she nodded and flew away back to the lectern where she did something they couldn't see. A few moments later, she returned, holding two bits of wood in her mouth. She let them fall to the ground.

  "Do you want to play fetch?" Ethan asked.

  "Although I do love a good game of fetch, no. I've imbued these with a core of powerful magic which will help our wayward students do exactly as you suggested. This might fall outside the realm of ritual magic, but creating circles quickly is an important skill. If you can't create the circle, then you can't practice the magic. So I suppose these will be a very helpful teaching aid."

  "And you only made two because you know Ethan and I can do this on our own, right?" Barry thrusts his fists out, placing his hands on his hips as a wide smile paints his face.

  "Yes, that's exactly it. And not because of my lacking effort for this nearly empty class. Anyway, that's your assignment for the week. I also suggest you do a deep dive into ritual magic. Try to get a better understanding of how it can help you in your day-to-day. Especially you, Barry, with your crafting class. It'll become even more important to create the components you need." Eggs paused for a few long moments, one eye looking at Ethan and the other at Barry. She began floating upward. “Anyway, bye-bye.”

  Space warped around the floating dog. Ethan felt the bending of powerful magical forces deep in his bones. Just as he thought the pressure couldn’t get any worse, he felt it bend then break. The flying dog vanished.

  “Does anyone else hate this class!?” one of the other two students shouted, throwing their hands into the air in frustration.

  “It ain’t so bad.” Barry scooped the slobber-soaked sticks from the ground. “Come on. We’ll teach you how to do it.”

  Although Ethan still wasn't sure what he thought about the class structure in Gale House, he wouldn't complain. It was more a matter of the students who knew what they were doing teaching the students who didn't know. Instead of simply ensuring that those other two students could do the previous week's assignment, Ethan and Barry stayed in the class for about an hour to make sure that they could do the coming week's assignment. The catalysts provided by Professor Eggs were very similar in nature to the celestial pen. This enabled them to turn mana into a shape in the real world that acted as a ritual circle.

  "I was thinking of heading back to Feyhammer if you wanted to go." Ethan and Barry were leaving the classroom and had just stepped out into the midday sun. There was just enough time for him to head over to the gravity anomaly and try his best to contain it.

  "I've got enough materials here for now. I've got to get back to the smithy, put in a couple of hours so the owner doesn’t yell at me, and then get back to working on my project. But thanks for the offer. I still don't have my free pass from the Headmaster, although I do have my meeting with him later today."

  Although Ethan would have enjoyed the company at the other house, he appreciated the solitude. It helped him think about how he was going to do this. Just a tiny bit of practice with rituals didn't mean he was now suddenly an expert, but he could try his best. The attendant at the pavilion for the Eastern Gate didn't give him any trouble, and he teleported instantly to the Feyhammer House gate. He ran through the ritual he planned on casting a few more times as he worked his way through the streets of the city. He was reminded once again how much he didn't enjoy the bustling streets, especially compared to the relative calm of Gale House.

  "So you're back again," the voice issued from beneath a visored helmet.

  Ethan smiled as he laid eyes on the same guard he had seen the other day. There was a sharp tone in his voice that begged the scribe not to cause any more trouble. "I promise not to collapse any more buildings today."

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "and yet here you are. I'm not allowed to refuse you entry into the quarantine area, but I'm going to do my best to bodily block you."

  He waved his hand dismissively. "I don't even need to go inside this time. I think I can create the spell I need to use from the outside."

  The guard flipped his visor up, giving Ethan a concerned look. "Well, I hope you know what you're doing."

  All Ethan had to do was emulate a couple of spells from the X-13 system. His assumption was that the gravity anomaly was from that very same system and that if he combined the idea of emulating the system with system sigils and using ritual magic, he could at least contain the anomaly. That would allow him to get close enough to interface with it and perhaps emulate the anomaly's specific system. It was all complicated, but he was taking it one step at a time.

  There was a big difference between what Ethan was attempting to do and what he had just done back at Gale House. There, he had created a ritual circle for an existing spell in the X-13 system. This time, he was using a loose arrangement of system sigils to create an effect rather than a spell. He didn't know if it would work, but it was the only idea he had to even come close to interfacing with the anomaly.

  Along the outside of the city block that had been ensnared by the anomaly, Ethan drew his circle. He dragged his pen through the air, filling it with mana and stopping at predetermined bases to draw a small circle filled with one of his system sigils. He focused on the Filter Mana sigil and hoped the distribution of mana would be wide enough that he didn't collapse anything else. When he finally made his way all the way around the block, he connected the circle and looked it over with pride.

  The guard nearby cleared his throat. "What exactly is that supposed to accomplish?"

  "Say hello to my gigantic mana distribution array. This thing should pull the mana from the inside and put it outside, distributing it evenly so it doesn't fill any one place with too much ‘up’ or ‘down’ gravity magic." Ethan tapped the end of his pen against his chin. “If I shrink it over the course of a few hours, I think I can get close to the anomaly’s center.”

  The guard grumbled something under his breath, retreating to a safe distance.

  A flash of mana ran along the outside of the ritual circle. It pulsed back, refracting until the golden line glowed brighter than before. Ethan could feel the gravity mana being drawn into the various spheres generated by the sigils on the outside of the circle. He kept his distance and simply observed. Only when he was satisfied it wouldn't explode, as he had been warned, did he approach for closer inspection.

  One quirk of the FIlter Mana spell was that some mana was destroyed during the process. Since Ethan was using the large array to push all the gravity mana out, some of that mana vanished during the process. The entire ritual array was in equilibrium for now and the scribe did his rounds around the outside to ensure it held together. That required the addition of more celestial mana from his pen. He reinforced areas that grew thin, or reshaped other parts that warped.

  The first time Ethan shrank the ritual circle down, everything went fine. He had some control over the symbols that he had already drawn in the air, making this a very easy task. Over the course of hours, he shrank the size of the circle until it was breaching into the inner courtyard. Then it was hovering just above a rock feature in the center. Finally, his ritual circle was so small that it might as well have been a dot floating in the air.

  “There we go,” Ethan said, digging through the pile of rocks. He was expecting to find anything that might’ve been generating the strange energy. But there was nothing. Each stone was inert. Instead, the air just above the pile was the unlikely culprit.

  "Having some trouble there?" The guard took a few tentative steps into the courtyard, looking around as though he would be crushed at any moment. That was, in fact, still a distinct possibility.

  "I've seen something like this once before, but the extra mana was being generated by a crystal. Here, the mana is coming from thin air… just right here where I'm waving my hands."

  "I’m no mage. I don't have any idea what's going on." The guard lumbered around the area, taking cautious steps.

  While the gravity magic had been siphoned away, what little was leaking through the air above those rocks wasn't enough to cause a feather to fly. That alone could crush a person. Based on the rate the magic was leaking into the air, Ethan guessed it would take quite a while to accumulate, maybe an entire week. The danger to the city was now minimal, so long as someone came around to siphon it away.

  But Ethan couldn’t stand the idea that he couldn’t solve this problem. He took a seated position on the ground, gazing at the spot he knew the anomaly was at. There was no visual indication of the error. But he knew it was there.

  “Is this the part where you stare at nothing for a few hours?” the guard asked.

  “Yeah. At least a few hours.” Ethan cupped his chin, tilting his head to one side to get a different view. “I can almost see something there. It reminds me of something very familiar…”

  “I really have no idea what’s going on.” The guard offered a nervous laugh, but he was clearly interested.

  The more Ethan narrowed his eyes, the more he thought he could see something. He remembered where he had felt the sensation before. When he watched people use spells from different systems, both his pen and soul twitched. The deeper he fell into the invisible anomaly, the more his soul vibrated. Only when the guard let out a surprised yelp did he realize a system message had appeared.

  And something stranger.

  “Are you supposed to be floating?” the guard asked, poking an accusatory finger at the scribe.

  Ethan looked down, mouth agape as he hovered about four feet off the ground. The gravity shifted without warning and he was driven into the ground. Fortunately, only his dignity was wounded. He took a break from struggling against the abnormal gravity to read the message that had appeared.

  [Anomalous X-13 System Variant Emulated]

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