Lake Egoven, the Demonic Leader of the first years.
Even Harper had some impression of him from rumors and online media that were currently trending.
"Goblin Slaughterer."
"Youngest Rank Three Raid Leader!"
"Humanity’s First Magician?"
"Demon of The Academy."
These were only a few of the titles of the articles currently posted online about him, but who knew what else he was hiding.
Looking at his smiling face, Harper couldn’t help but think that this was it. Her bad luck had finally kicked in.
"Miss Sun, I hope you don’t mind if I bring up a somewhat advanced topic, but I was hoping you could clear up some doubts of mine." Lake leaned forward and placed his elbow on the table, propping his head up on his palm.
"Sure," Harper maintained her outward composure as she replied, "If it’s something I can answer, I’ll be more than happy."
Lake smiled as he raised his other hand and snapped his fingers. In the next instant, the room went dark as the blinds for the windows fell.
A few murmurs passed through the crowd of students but were quickly silenced by the starry landscape that revealed itself before them.
"This..." Harper’s eyes widened into circles, the almost breathtaking sight before her reflected in her glasses.
Floating in the empty space above the students, mana flowed in currents, rotating vortices made their appearance, and starry particles floated effortlessly in the air.
"What is this...?" Harper asked, her gaze dazed.
"This is mana. All I did was make it visible to the naked eye," Lake responded casually, but Harper couldn’t ignore the claim he had just made.
"Make it visible? But how?" Harper pressed, struggling to believe his claim. "Even if mana is concentrated, it doesn’t manifest physically. It remains intangible, invisible—only its effects can be felt."
"To the human eye, maybe so, but not to your current ones," Lake replied, his signature smile creeping back up.
"My eyes?" Harper’s blinked in confusion until she noticed a subtle change in the other students’ eyes. Raising her wristwatch, she opened the camera function, zooming in on her eyes.
There, she could see a small, almost invisible circle floating right above her iris causing it to glow a purple hue. The circle looked almost like a contact lens from what she could capture.
"What did you do?" Harper looked to Lake with a mix of terror and astonishment.
"I simply changed the lens through which you viewed the world, but enough about that. Back to my question," Lake said as he swiped his hand in the air, causing the mana above to shift.
As you can see, mana moves and behaves in unique ways, with countless properties still being researched," Lake explained, concentrating the mana into a single stream. "The property I want to explore today is this one."
A spell circle materialized in midair, and as the stream of mana passed through it, it transformed into a flowing stream of water.
The sight sent a jolt through the room.
The students exchanged wary glances, their expressions dark as they began piecing together how Lake’s magical prowess had tormented them in training sessions. Meanwhile, Harper’s world shattered as the reality before her clashed with everything she understood.
"What I want to explore, Miss Sun, is the alchemic property of mana—how it can be shaped into various forms through alchemic formulas, or what some might call magic spells."
Lake demonstrated further, conjuring flames to boil the water before dispersing the steam with a gust of wind.
At this point, the classroom was silent. They were all still trying to process what they had just witnessed. Most of the students were able to understand what had happened quicker than others due to a mix of Lake’s theoretical lessons and seeing many of his magical exploits in person.
’So he is a fucking magician!’
Everyone silently cursed, finally getting the conclusive evidence they needed to prove their theory right.
Suddenly, a lot of their understanding of Lake’s attack patterns and fighting style started to make sense as numerous strategies on how to face him began popping up in their heads for the next training session later tonight.
What the students didn’t know, however, was that Lake had already predicted their reaction and had an entirely different program lined up for them.
While all these thoughts raced through everyone’s head, Harper stood still in a daze. Her scientifically aligned brain struggled to process what had just happened.
She swallowed her saliva as her shattered worldview struggled to rebuild itself. In the end, she turned to face Lake, who was looking at her with a patient gaze, almost as if he were curious to see her response.
The word echoed in her mind as she stared into his deep blue eyes.
Taking a deep breath, Harper managed to compose herself just as Lake raised the blinds, allowing sunlight to flood the room once more.
"Well," Harper said at last, "let’s assume I understood what just happened. You still haven’t asked your question. What do you want to know from me?"
Seeing how fast Harper was able to recover and respond, Lake smiled in satisfaction as he spoke, "If given the alchemic formula and thought on how to use it, could you combine it with Mana Tech to recreate the magical phenomenon on a larger scale? For example, using the water conversion formula I demonstrated just now, couldn’t we create a device that produces water from mana in the atmosphere?"
Harper didn’t immediately respond. Most of the students in the room were also sitting with bated breaths.
Although they didn’t understand the complexity of Mana Tech or the magical nature of Lake’s spell, they were able to understand what he was asking of Harper.
To reproduce the effects of his spells without having to cast them!
One didn’t even have to think to understand how important this was for both hunters and society as a whole. Not only would modern science as a whole be changed forever, but if some of Lake’s combat spells could be adapted, both the combat capabilities and survivability of hunters would greatly increase inside rifts!
Harper too instantly understood the many implications of Lake’s question and was even able to look further ahead than what these students could imagine.
After a moment of silent contemplation, she made a decision.
Moving to the podium, she faced the class and announced firmly, "Class is now dismissed."