Throne of Magical Arcana

After the adjustment of the environment, it was brighter and brighter, and a new day began in the Heidler Magic College.

Donnie, who could not sleep, jumped from his bed and rushed into the bathroom the moment he heard the echo of the Skull Bell. He shouted, “Sammy, Karl, rise and shine! Mr. Felipe has an open class today! We won’t be able to get into the room if we are late!”

The open class, as its name suggested, was open to all apprentices, provided that they could find a spot in the hall.

Since he was woken up in the night, Donnie had considered seizing the opportunity and going to the teaching tower where the lecture was to be held in advance. However, he knew that during the period between midnight and when the Skull Bell was rung, nobody except certain senior-rank mentors with permissions was allowed to approach the three central magic towers of the college—the teaching tower, the experiment tower, and the office tower.

From the seniors that he talked to in the past few days, Donnie had heard a lot of stories where sorcerers broke into the three magic towers at night only to become zombie guards.

“So, it was indeed only a nightmare that we passed through the whole college without raising any alarm…” Donnie thought to himself.

Karl, who had fallen asleep at some point, sat up in confusion. After he combed his hair, his gem-like eyes finally glittered again. Then, he jumped off his bed and knocked on the metal rail of Sammy’s bed, urging him to get up.

Sammy rubbed his head and yawned, as if he had forgotten what happened yesterday. Then, he was suddenly dazed and said nervously, “Karl, don’t forget to send the message out.”

“Rest assured. I always have the best memories,” Karl said with a toothbrush in his mouth and foams all over his lips.

After Donnie was done washing his face and brushing his teeth, he browsed his notebook and patted his head. “Jones, let’s go.”

“You finally remember me.” Fatty Jones seemed rather moved. “Only after you wrote me down in your notebook.”

“Of course.” Karl cleaned his shirt before the mirror, grimacing in dissatisfaction. However, whatever strange expression he made, he still looked like a pretty girl. “My father once said that below the senior rank, the best memories cannot compare with a short note.”

He put on his magic robe and was about to walk out of the room. Opening the door, he said, “Remember to save a place for me.”

“Not a problem.” Donnie put on his magic robe.

After seeing Karl off, the three of them were suddenly caught in awkward silence. They were yet to fully recover from the nightmare last night. If it weren’t for Karl’s astonishing background, they wouldn’t have been able to stay calm at all.

“Let’s go. We will miss Mr. Felipe’s speech if we are late.” In the end, it was Donnie who broke the weird silence.

“Alright,” Sammy said with bloated eyes.

……

“So many people are already here?” Donnie was blasted by the heat and the noises the moment he walked into the lobby on the first floor of the teaching tower. There were one and a half hours to go before the open class, and almost three hundred people were already waiting in lines!

Looking at the jam-packed lobby ahead of them, Sammy shook his head in surprise. “We got up immediately after the Skull Bell was rung. How could they be faster than us?”

“Perhaps they did not brush their teeth or wash their face. Perhaps they finished everything before the bell was rung and rushed here the moment they heard the knock.” As a secret reporter, Jones was rather knowledgeable and experienced.

Sammy looked at him strangely. “Who are you?”

Having been struck too many times, Jones was already numb. He shrugged and said, “I am your—”

Before he concluded his sentence, Sammy had already turned around unconcernedly and talked to the ghost on his back. He did not care about who he was at all! Or rather, he felt that the question was not important.

“We aren’t too late either.” Noticing Jones’ “fury”, Donnie interjected, “The speech hall can accommodate five hundred people. We can definitely go in.”

“Yes,” Jones said in relief. That was the reward of a nightmare!

After half an hour, more and more queues had been lined up outside of the speech hall without leaving any empty ground. The apprentices and sorcerers who came late could only look at the crowd in regrets and leave reluctantly.

At this moment, Karl walked in from the outside. He was obviously shocked by the massive crowd, but he was agile enough to swim among the people like a little fish and approached his roommates.

The apprentices behind Donnie were all infuriated when they saw Karl cutting the line, but before they lashed out, Karl raised his head and smiled. “Forgive me, my friends have been keeping a place for me.”

His smile was mixed with apology, shame, pitifulness, and gentleness. The apprentices’ eyes bulged immediately as they said, “It… It doesn’t matter.”

It was not until then that Karl turned around and said to Donnie, Sammy, and Jones in a low voice, “I’ve already sent the message. We will receive the analysis and suggestions of professionals by tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Karl,” Donnie said honestly.

The four of them stopped talking and started to think about their own business until the gate of the speech hall was opened and the people before them moved forward in order.

Because they were not too late, Karl and the rest of them were at the center of the hall and could see the podium ahead rather clearly. Outside the gate, many magic apprentices and sorcerers who did not have a seat were standing and listening.

At this moment, a smaller gate on the other side squeaked, and a tall, slim man in a black coat walked in. He coughed with extreme indifference on his sickly face.

“Mr. Felipe is exactly like what’s described in the paper,” Donnie said in a low voice.

Felipe did not like being exposed to the public, so he rarely accepted the invitations of TV interviews and preferred newspapers or radio stations.

Karl smiled in a low voice. “I wonder if his arcana expertise is as what the newspapers described…”

“You don’t know that?” Donnie asked, finding it odd. Such a renowned archmage who had good chances to become legendary should’ve received much attention in his family. Huh. Why is Mr. Felipe only wearing the badges of the Arcana Review Board and the Hand of Paleness, instead of arcana and magic badges like regular sorcerers would?

Karl shook his head. “I do not have enough arcana knowledge to decide his papers and his research, and my brother does not like to discuss him. However, he must be awesome to have won so many honors.”

From the podium, Felipe looked around at the apprentices and sorcerers down below. Wherever his eyes reached, everybody fell silent. Then, he spoke with his special gloomy voice, “I am Felipe. You may call me mister or mentor. I’m here today to show you the bleeding-edge theories and achievements in genetics. It’s possible that you do not understand them, but you must know them, or you will rot like the bodies in coffins without being able to present any valuable works…”

Donnie listened attentively. However, he keenly sensed that Mr. Felipe’s eyes seemed to have stopped for a while on the few of them. Of course, the pause was so short that Donnie thought it was his illusion.

“Mr. Felipe is entirely different from the other mentors. The other mentors all said that they were here to share the latest knowledge with us, but he…” Sammy asked the ghost on his back to rub his forehead to keep himself calm.

Jones also nodded. “Yes, he is very blunt and straightforward, completely ignoring our feelings…”

As Felipe’s speech went deeper, everybody was captivated by the marvelous genetics, which included chromosomes, genetic models based on alchemical reactions, and the speculations and experiments on heredity.

Most of the information was too much for the sorcerers and apprentices to understand, but they were indeed amazed by the wonders of the field that involved the secrets of life.

“That is all my speech. Do you have any questions?” Without them knowing it, it was already noon, and Felipe put his right hand back into his pocket.

The apprentices and sorcerers were just back to themselves and hadn’t even raised their hands when a magnetic male voice said, “I have a question!”

Donnie looked at Karl, only to see his highly-raised hand and his fully-written notebook.

Felipe nodded and said casually, “What is your question?”

Karl stood up excitedly and bowed. “Hello, Mr. Felipe, I am Brades. I would like to ask your opinion on the current genetic model. Personally, I don’t…”

Donnie held his forehead helplessly and moved his eyes away, pretending that he did not know Karl. Based on his experience, Karl would certainly ramble on.

However, instead of waiting for Karl to finish, Felipe answered the question, “It’s obvious that the abundances and wondrousness of this world cannot be described and inherited by this simple model.”

Everybody gasped hard. Was Mr. Felipe openly expressing his dissatisfaction regarding the current genetic model?

Karl seemed rather uncomfortable when his long speech was cut. So, he asked again, “Then, Mr. Felipe, do you think it is possible to change one’s look by controlling genes? Is it possible to—”

Felipe interrupted him again, “That’s not a problem at all. As a matter of fact, the blood power research in the Magic Empire is exactly a practice in that regard, except that they did not have any theoretical guidance and could only summarize the pattern by abundant human experiments.”

Karl’s face was so twisted as if he were being suffocated. “I have one more question…”

“Please give other people a chance. You’ve already asked two questions,” Felipe said straightforwardly.

Karl could only sit down gloomily, but his lips were still moving up and down, as if he were talking to himself.

Donnie couldn’t help but feel amused. Normally, there was no way that he could stop Karl from rambling. It was quite enjoyable to see the guy choked.

In the meantime, he raised his own hand, waiting to be picked.

……

After the open class, Felipe sat in a secret chamber in the teaching tower by himself. The artificial intelligence before him was playing all the pictures recorded in the college in the past three days. After the development of artificial intelligence and alchemical storage materials, it was much easier to save things now.

In the dim pictures, the whole college was in order, and when it came to night, everything was quiet without the slightest anomaly. Felipe stared at the pictures with a cup of red wine in his hand, not leaving out any detail. However, after half a day, he still did not find anything that deserved his attention.

Suddenly, someone knocked on the door lightly.

“What is it?” Felipe asked.

“Mr. Felipe, somebody sent a note to you.” It was a servant.

Felipe nodded, and the door of the room was opened. The servant walked in and handed a plain-looking note to him.

“Donnie?” Felipe saw the handwriting that he was rather familiar with on the note and read the word on it.

……

In Room 202 of the Life Tower…

“Hu. It’s not dangerous. My brother asks us not to worry about it and just leave it alone.” Karl jogged in from the outside and waved the note in his hands in great delight.