Chapter 7
Levi’s first month at the Academy fell into a routine. Interdimensional Geography bored him to tears; Magical Creatures was interesting; Mana Harvesting turned out to be a lot of math, which he hated. The two classes that he found the most fascinating were Basic Spellwork and Taming 101. Since he knew nothing about magic, he barely managed to keep up in Basic Spellwork. The school’s answer to a student who came from a world with no magic was tutoring. Levi ended up with Nox Willowbrook as his tutor, the upperclassman from Fox House. She was a passionate woman, beautiful and… something of an airhead. She was also one of the best combat students at the school in terms of raw power. The woman was a juggernaut—just one that could get distracted by a cookie. Levi had never seen someone who loved sweets as much as she did. Her excuse was that combat magic drained the physical energy of a caster, on top of their mana reserves, thus she had to constantly recharge. Levi couldn’t prove she was lying, but seeing her drool at the sight of a frosted cupcake gave him doubts.
Despite that quirk, she was turning into a good friend. Zuzan liked her, and that went a long way toward putting her in Levi’s good graces. Zuzan was the reason Taming 101 was so fascinating. The squirrel didn’t care at all when Levi tried the instructions the professor provided. The more time Levi spent with the sylvan squirrel, the easier it was to interpret the meaning behind her chitters and squeaks. Only rarely did something translate as a normal word, but he was able to gauge her emotions and meaning more frequently. That was why Levi found her complete disdain for the taming process hilarious. The professor couldn’t understand Zuzan despite having several spells to speak to animals, nor could any of the other students. None of them could understand exactly why Levi understood the squirrel, but everyone confirmed there was a strong bond between them.
In terms of the regular taming work, Levi was neither bad, nor good—he was decidedly average. He took that as a win, since he was far behind in almost every other facet of magical study. It took him some time to learn the most basic spells, but several taming spells just came easily to him. The more he practiced, the more he came to accept that this world, however weird, was not a dream. Casting spells through his cane felt strange, like he’d discovered a new limb. The cane gave him a bit of a power boost; his professors insisted he had a lot more raw power inside than he was accessing. He just had no idea how to reach what they were referring to.
He was sitting at breakfast trying to get his bacon before Zuzan could, thinking about that predicament, when Nox sat down across from him. “Are squirrels supposed to eat bacon?” she asked curiously.
Levi let out a snort. “Zuzan will eat anything salty. She’s also a glutton,” he said affectionately. The little cream ball of fur groomed herself and chittered indignantly at him as he snatched the piece of bacon she had been trying to steal and popped it into his mouth. He chewed triumphantly while she stared at him with an open mouth. Levi extended a pinky and lifted her bottom jaw slightly to close it. “You know it is true,” he continued to his companion.
Zuzan dismissed him as she spun and scrambled over to look at Nox’s plate. The elf gave the squirrel a glower when Zuzan tried to snag a bit of pancake. Nox sniffed, then sliced a triangle free and graciously bestowed it to her. For Nox, sharing anything made of carbs seemed to be sign of true love. The redhead looked up at him and gave him an appraising glance. “Are you ready for your tutoring practical?” she finally asked.
Levi looked down and touched the tattoo on his forearm; he saw, clear as day, that a practical examination for the skills Nox had been teaching him was marked on his schedule. “Well shit, I forgot,” he admitted, and he was surprised to see her smirking.
“Good! Unplanned responses are best at showing what a person is truly capable of. Once we’re done with breakfast, we’ll hit the training field. You haven’t been there yet, right?” Her enthusiastic response did not fill him with confidence. He shook his head at the mention of the training field; the closest he’d come to that had been working on taming out in the schoolyard.
Her rampant excitement for this test was causing a nauseous feeling to build up in his stomach. He’d seen her casually shatter a boulder with a flick with that exact expression on her face. She also kept her focus concealed somehow, claiming it was best to be cautious, though he had no idea of what, or why. She started digging into her breakfast with gusto, and Levi turned back to his meal as he contemplated what the test might involve.
He knew the training fields were supposed to be enchanted every which way to prevent people from actually getting hurt inside. They were also supposed to be able to recreate a lot of different challenges, and not just illusions. Glint had spent an afternoon talking about the mana vapor hydraulics and stuff they used to rebuild the interior power machines, and even—he claimed—vapor-powered constructs. That led Levi to believe he wouldn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. Some of the spells he had been taught were purely utility, others were meant for combat. Nox said every student learned some offensive spells in case of a Horror incursion. Levi’s skills so far had been unimpressive, but he was doing his best.
Zuzan managed to beg another morsel from Nox, which proved she was a magical creature in Levi’s mind. Then, they got up and headed out of the cafeteria. The training halls were set up on a large hill behind the massive school. The halls looked like a cathedral had been combined with a stadium—they looked a lot like a big gothic donut, circular and empty in the middle. He looked over his shoulder at the Academy as they walked up the hill and got his first good look at the building. It was a castle. In truth, it was more than that: the central keep had several towers, then a circular wall. Two wings extended out from the keep, these passed through the wall while additional towers rose and then the wings ended with their own perimeter. This pattern sort of repeated, which meant the school had a total of six walls around it. Each wall was taller than the one outside it, and each building inside was just slightly taller than the walls. It gave the structure a kind of wedding-cake look, except Levi swore it looked like Minas Tirith from The Lord of the Rings. No imposing cliff for it to perch on though. Just rolling grasslands that gave way to hills and forests.
With the sky a crystal blue and the wind refreshing, Levi loved the walk outside. One of his favorite parts of Taming 101 was the fact that half the classes had been outdoors. He spun his cane between his fingers, keeping it on the opposite side of his body from Zuzan. The squirrel thought jumping onto the knob of his cane while it spun was a great game, though Levi was afraid he was going to send her flying across the sky like a baseball. She’d nearly given him a heart attack the first time she’d done it, and she just seemed to laugh whenever he tried to get her to stop.
Nox waved a hand at the gate, and a huge portcullis of wood and bronze clanked its way up into the ceiling of the tunnel before them. The passage was huge, but Levi didn’t know if what he was seeing was real. Knowing there were illusions as part of the test made him paranoid: did they begin before or after he entered the test? He looked at Nox and she gave him an innocent shrug, then she waved for him to head down the tunnel. “Good luck, Levi, see you soon.”
He held back his mutters while walking down the tunnel, his eyes narrowing as he adjusted his glasses. He’d discovered that homo draconic had wonderful eyesight in dim light, and decent in no light at all, but he was blessed with being nearsighted. On Earth he’d had perfect eyesight, but here? Nope. He had no idea how he had managed to get reborn into a superior body with inferior eyes. “Stupid fucking Reincarnation Network,” he mumbled to himself. Zuzan let out a chitter and tugged on his blue hair. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Without it I wouldn’t have met you. Totally worth it.” He reached up and scratched the back of her head with his fingertip.
They emerged suddenly from the stone tunnel and Levi smelled smoke. He looked around quickly and realized they were standing in a village on fire. The buildings were made of logs, many of them collapsed, and the roofs were on fire. He squinted and found the light of the flames didn’t bother his eyes at all—he could even make out the fact that the roofing had been some kind of thatch row. There were dark shapes moving between the flaming buildings, and Levi raised his cane to cast a spell Nox had been drilling into him for a week. Crystal-blue light ran up the knotwork on his cane, the tip glowed until it turned white, then a dome of energy formed around him. The walls wobbled, and there were spots that looked thinner than the others, but it was clearly a defensive barrier.
It turned out he’d cast it just in time—a huge wolf charged out of the flames with a goblin on its back and the pair bounced off his shield with a thud that caused the entire spell to tremble. Levi slammed the tip of his cane down into the earth and used a simple utility spell; the digging spell caused the ground to open up under the wolf and the animal yelped as it dropped a few feet. When he pulled his cane up from the ground, the power behind the spell vanished and the dirt collapsed. The wolf’s own squirming causing the hole to collapse and half bury it. Unfortunately, the goblin was fine, and the creature ran toward Levi’s shield again with a sword over his head.
His dome couldn’t hold back another attack, so the goblin broke through. Levi blocked the first sword stroke with his cane, then he twisted his wrist to send the goblin’s weapon out to the side. Reacting without a thought, he snapped his foot up and gave the smaller creature a boot to the chest. He was honestly surprised when the goblin went flying back—he’d never had a reason to test how strong he was in his new body. That momentary surprise cost him, though, as the wolf tore free of the soft dirt and pounced on him from behind. He felt teeth tear at his uniform and claws scrape down the back of his legs in a fiery streak of pain. He held onto his cane as the animal sent him rolling. Then he heard a tiny squeaking war cry that caused him to truly freak out. His glasses had been knocked off, so all he could see was a cream-and-gray blur glide in a circle near the wolf. The large charcoal shape of the creature leaped up, trying to bite Zuzan from the air.
Levi felt a rage like nothing he had ever known swell up inside of him, and he didn’t recognize his own voice as he snarled “Leave her alone!” His hand thrust his cane forward, the knob glowing with a black-and-red energy. The power erupted from his cane and screamed toward the wolf in a spiral that tore the ground it passed over. When the ball hit the huge canine, the wolf let out a yelp and was carried away, vanishing as its body smashed through four of the burning buildings and disappeared from Levi’s sight. His head turned to look for Zuzan, and he followed a chittering sound until he found her. The sylvan squirrel was fine—she clutched his glasses to her round body and was chastising him for “being dramatic,” as near as he could tell.
The rage drained out of him and Levi felt lightheaded. He swayed as he got his glasses back on. There was a two-foot-deep trench that extended from the spot he had been standing to the backside of the village, and nothing along its path was still standing. Even the fire had been blown out, and Levi had to adjust his glasses twice before he believed what he was seeing. “I did that?” he asked Zuzan. The squirrel on his shoulder gave a small nod and Levi remembered that they had had a goblin problem as well. When he looked for the creature, he saw he’d kicked it into a fire and… well, it wasn’t going to be a problem anymore.
“Think this means we won?” he asked Zuzan, and then laughed as the squirrel threw a tiny fist into the air and let out a victorious chirp. Levi glanced down to make sure his cane was fine and felt relieved to see the magical focus didn’t have a single scratch on it. He walked to one of the burning buildings and reached out a hand, but the flames felt like nothing to him. He frowned, shrugged, and began casting a spell that summoned water. When a cerulean mist formed around the top of his cane, he used it like a hose to spray water on as many fires as he could, the action easier than it had been in practice.
When the last fire was out, the test faded, and Levi found himself standing in a huge, circular space with a dome of black stone over his head. The ground was layered with brown stone blocks, and the walls looked like tiered stairs and pews made from finely carved oak. The place was fairly impressive. He turned in a circle, then jumped to find house mistress Tawny Goldenrod and Nox Willowbrook standing behind him. He hadn’t heard them arrive, and had no idea if they had been there for the entire exam, or just walked in at the end while he wasn’t looking.
“I’m impressed Levi. Nox said you had potential, but that last bolt of power had one hell of a punch behind it,” the sultry dark elf said with a grin. Levi took in the proud expression and felt good about how he’d done. When he glanced at Nox, he saw his tutor beaming at him.
“Dude! You sent a dire wolf flying through four buildings! Talk about a great shot, and in your first practical, no less. That’s a great score. I knew you could do it!” Nox exclaimed in pride as she wrapped Levi in a huge hug—he found her bountiful bust crushed against his chest. He laughed as he hugged her back, then gave her a wide grin while she seemed to forget she was supposed to let go at some point.
It wasn’t until Tawny gave a delicate cough that Nox remembered herself; the elf blushed as she backed up. Levi looked over Tawny’s way, but he was surprised to see that she was studying a scorch mark left on the floor of the training hall.
He shrugged, then looked back at Nox. “Time to get victory cupcakes,” he said, watching her bounce in delight at the idea.
He was really starting to like this school.
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