Death, Devotion, Dissonance

"Well, let's begin the class," the Chairman began.

Since the Helm Class was arguably the most important one in the academy, naturally, the Chairman was in charge of its development. He was something akin to a homeroom teacher. 

"I've mentioned earlier that aside from normal classes, you'll have to take apprenticeship under a teacher in the Academy. Obviously, different teachers have different specializations, so I made a list of it for you all to browse through. Make sure you pick the right teacher, as you won't be allowed to change your choice for four months," Kent said and gave out a few pieces of paper.

Evin browsed through them and found what he expected. Leanne was teaching Enchanting, the Chairman was teaching Imagination Casting, etc. But there was one name that Evin wasn't familiar with, next to an unknown specialization.

"Chairman, what's Heart-casting?" one of the students asked, noticing the same thing.

"Ah, let me explain about that now, as it's part of the briefing," Kent cleared his throat. "From this year on, a High-mage of the kingdom named Sufia Zurikh shall be teaching a few among you Heart-Casting. But before I begin, you must all swear on your honor as mages to never disclose this information to anyone. If you are found spreading this information, please don't be surprised if you get hauled off to be interrogated somewhere."

The man casually dropped a threat among the students and continued speaking.

"Now, what is Heart-casting?" Kent asked and looked around the classroom. Hearing no answer, he continued. "Then I must ask you three questions. First. What do you think Mind-casting is?"

"Normal casting," Bella replied.

"Correct. Chants, Gestures, Imaginations all fall into the category of Mind-casting. It's because you use your brain in some way to cast spells, you see? But that does not mean that Heart-casting is something that doesn't require your thoughts. It actually requires you to think a lot more than usual. But it also requires you to handle your emotions during it," the Chairman explained.

Evin found the man's speech a bit hard to follow, but it felt like something important, so he was trying hard to focus on its contents.

"Second question. Why are the Worlds of Magic are called Worlds?" Kent continued.

"Because Two Tales introduced them like that?" Evin offered.

"Yes, exactly. But then people started to ask the same question. Why are they called Worlds? After all, don't mages just absorb mana, and then will it to turn to different World energies? Where in this process is a 'World' involved? In the first place, is there even a World involved, or are their names misplaced?"

Evin fell in thought, and looked towards Bella. She didn't seem to know much about what was going on.

"Well, to answer your questions… yes. There are physical manifestations of the Twelve Worlds and yes, you can access them with your own bodies. You'll learn all about that in the Heart-casting class, provided Miss Sufia Zurikh is willing to teach you," the Chairman shrugged his head.

"What about the third question you were going to ask us?" Evin asked.

"Ah, of course. The final question is: what was the reward for the ones who accessed these Worlds?" Kent said, looking around the class. "The answer is: access to an endless supply of World energies that doesn't have to be filtered through your core. While before, you could only exchange mana to receive a meagre amount of World energies, with access to a World, you can simply order around the energies inside it to create spells that go way beyond what measly High-Mages like me can do."

Evin's mind blanked out, imagining access to an unlimited supply of mana. 

'What would Endra be able to do with such a thing?' he thought, and shuddered involuntarily. 

"Now, before you go pester Miss Sufia, listen till the end. As you're probably imagining, you can't have something so great without paying the proper price. And in this case, the price is your sanity. If I allowed you to enter a World as you are now, you'll lose your mind in half a second. The Heart-casting classes shall teach you how to maintain your sanity inside it for the longer periods. But please remember that even with a year of studying under Sufia, at best you'll learn to stay inside a World for five or six seconds more."

"Chairman, I have a question!" 

"How long did anyone stay inside it?"

"Have you ever entered a World?"

The students began asking countless questions, but the Chairman only shrugged and told them to read about its specifications in the library later on. He also warned that the High Mage exclusively picked her students on her own, and asked the students to not bother her too much. Evin decided to read about it in library, but did not have high expectations of it, thinking that Heart-casting would be more popular if it was as powerful as it sounds.

The Chairman then continued on to speak about the general plan for the year, the different classes everyone could take, some information about new specializations, etc. Most of them were just higher level versions of the things the students learned about before, but with more focus on practical applications. 

For example, while they mostly only learned about how to create and maintain illusions in the previous year's class on the World of Thoughts, this year, they were going to learn methods on how to notice and discern illusions and see through them without the caster realizing it. And, after learning these methods they were going to learn to create their own illusions that could not be so easily found. 

It all sounded extremely tedious to Evin, imagining a scenario where every illusion had its own countermeasure, and not only that, those countermeasures having their own countermeasures as well. But despite that, Evin was definitely going to attend this class, since he knew very well the potential of illusions.

As for other classes, they were mostly combat related classes so their "practicality" was mostly just fighting. The amount of combat classes had doubled for a week, and the Chairman mentioned many mana-beast hunts as well. This was the reason why the second year was going to be so deadly for the students. 

Every student was expected to take care of a tier-2 mana-beast on their own by the end of the year. Helm Class students had to meet even stricter requirements, but Evin was already capable of doing them so he wasn't that worried.

Next, the Chairman talked on length about the war with the South, sounding terribly annoyed about it, as if he was forced to do this. 

For the most part, the war info was the same as what Evin knew. Although the kingdom held an overwhelming advantage against the Southerners at the beginning of the war, they weren't able to maintain the advantage due to the unending waves of Myrmis wearing down the kingdom's armies.

Because of that, the kingdom's situation was getting worse and worse, with it experiencing its first lost battle since the beginning of the war. This was a great shock to the kingdom's people, especially for the ones who lived far away from the South, so now everyone was taking the Southern threat more seriously, with some even proposing some rather extreme measures, like the one involving sending Academy students to war.

The fact that even students were being seen as potential soldiers still didn't sit well with Evin. In fact, some students raised this question, to which the Chairman answered by referring them to the kingdom's laws. The laws regarding the situation of mages didn't outright say that they were the kingdom's tools, but there were a lot of punishments for mage who didn't comply to their country's 'reasonable' demands.

Finally, Kent spoke about what the Helm Class and also the distribution of resources. Since it was basically the face of the Academy, naturally, the students in it were held on a different level. They were going to face harsher challenges compared to other classes, but the rewards were well worth it. World Shards, research materials, magic infused equipment, Talismans, etc. were all going to be given to them.

But, there was only one problem. Arza was going to be responsible for distributing all resources for the class. Naturally, there were some complaints from the students, but the Chairman explained that this was the best way to put everyone under the control of the Helm. 

He then reminded everyone that the most important person in the class was Arza, who held the position of Helm. Everyone else were of secondary importance. So, whatever he decided to do with the class was his own will and the rest just had to comply with it.

This was the reward for clearing the Helm's Worthy, and if the Academy simply gave him a joke of a title, it wasn't going to be well received.

At first, Evin wasn't so worried about it all, but when Arza ordered everyone to call him supreme commander from then on, he realized that perhaps he should worry.

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