Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

It was only during lunch, when they were going over all the things that they learned in the first class of Wolfe's seminars on the magical language that anyone other than Petros realized that they had only covered the alphabet and basic word structure, and hadn't actually learned more than three words in the language.

If they didn't know any words at all, it would do them no good to know the language until they managed to translate the essentials. It would tell them where they had made mistakes in spells that used the new style runes, though. That was a small improvement, but it meant that they would have to keep attending Wolfe's classes for the duration of the seminars and get more basic knowledge.

If they were persistent, they might even get him to give them a basic vocabulary book, so they could begin working on creating entirely new spells.

A few of them were ready to drop the course in favour of something that made more sense, but most of them had been craftsmen to begin with, and this knowledge was valuable to them. They already knew the runes for major words, or at least the ones that they used the most often. That was necessary to identify what an unfamiliar object was supposed to do, but mostly they had been muddling through combining spells while only knowing half the words.

Once they got the knowledge to fill in the gaps, the Artificers were convinced that they could almost eliminate casualties among the apprentices.

The thought was preposterous. Artificers blowing themselves up trying to make new magical items was part of the process from the very beginning. Even if they knew a bit more of the language, they were only likely to try to make something more complex and end up having it explode anyhow.

That was just an essential fact of human nature. In the struggle to gain recognition and be the best, risks would be taken. Educated risks, preferably, but risks nonetheless.

After lunch, Wolfe, along with almost everyone from his morning group, all went to the advanced Artificing classes. While Wolfe didn't understand any of the techniques, or much about the way that their processes worked, he knew more about magical inscriptions than the rest of the class put together, and Petros assumed that was going to be enough for him to struggle by.

This time, Wolfe wasn't sitting in the back, he had been guided to the front and centre by the other attendees, as it was likely that not only would he be called on, but that he would have questions about various processes, either because they were so foreign to him or because he knew a better way.

From what everyone had heard and seen of his magic, it was so far from normal that they couldn't rule out either possibility.

The Professor this time was a stout and extremely short man that Wolfe was certain wasn't actually human. His magic felt different, though the people here would dismiss it as just being differently trained. He felt like he was part Fae, but not completely, so he could be a hybrid of some sort.

This certainly wasn't the place to question a man's parentage, though, so Wolfe just took out his notebook and wished that he had brought one of the girls with him so that the notes would at least be written in pleasant script, and not the chicken scratch that he called handwriting.

"Good afternoon everyone. I am master armourer Thorin, and I will be your instructor for the advanced Artificing class today. I know, most of you were expecting a noted Artificer, not an armourer, but Judith is not well, so I am covering for her. Rest assured, I am well versed in what she wanted to cover today." The lecturer began.

The short man sighed and reached for the chalk.

"Hold up a second, I have a spell that will help." Wolfe offered.

He cast a [Whiteboard] spell over the chalkboard, and nodded in satisfaction. "Just place a finger on it and focus on what you want to appear. As long as you don't imbue magic into the runes or inscriptions, they won't activate."

The whole room fell silent at the appearance of the whiteboard, and Thorin was examining it in amazement for a moment before he decided to test it out.

A whole sheet of instructions, along with three runic circles, appeared, and the Armourer smiled in satisfaction.

"Now that is some good magic. Talk to me after the lecture, I would like to buy one from you." He announced, then continued his work.

"This is the basic linking array, to bind crystal formations with central inscriptions to other inscriptions, crystal matrixes, or a rune inscribed object, like the handle of a hammer. Most of you should be familiar enough with it, and though it looks complex, it really isn't.

So, today we will go over how to modify the runes so that you can incorporate different numbers and types of objects into one whole device."

Now this was the sort of thing that Wolfe needed to know. He could easily enough link arrays. That knowledge was included in his Inheritance spell, but linking all these esoteric power formations was an entirely different matter.

Some of the details on the board Wolfe recognized as having been derived from Fae magic, though they would now be recognized by the Fae as human magic. The structure was similar enough, but all the runes were changed.

Perhaps he was not the first to try to guide these people, and the last one couldn't quite get them onto a productive path, where they used their magical knowledge for more than war. But everything that Wolfe could teach them might not change their ways either. They might still adapt it all to war and conquest instead of finding ways to improve their own living standards and that of the worlds they had already colonized.