Chapter 16: Fixing An Enchantment

Rune Magic truly was a curious class. When Villin got into the room he was once more surprised. There wasn't even a single chair in the classroom. He saw some objects laying on the floor and a few small Magic Arrays. The teacher seemed to be working on one of the objects on the floor while the students that had arrived before him were awkwardly standing at the sides of the classroom, unsure of what to do.

The teacher seemed to be extremely old. He had white hair and was sitting while working on the object. Seeing how none of the students said anything, Villin walked up to introduce himself.

"Hello there professor, my name is Villin Grey, I look forward to learning from you."

This was a rather standard greeting bit it got the teacher's attention. The teacher turned back to look at him before he noticed the students that were standing at the side of the room.

"Tch, to think the students these days are so spineless they don't even dare greet their teacher."

He sneered before looking at the object he was working on earlier.

"In my class, nobody will be getting magic crystals. If someone does something impressive they will get an opportunity to prove themselves, if they succeed, they shall be rewarded." He said as he looked over all of the students here "Kid, Villin was it, here take this item, it seems to be broken, fix it!"

The teacher spoke in a commanding tone as he grabbed one of the objects on the floor before throwing it toward Villin.

After grabbing it out of the air skillfully, Villin had a decent look at the object. It had the appearance of a large magic crystal, it was about ten centimeters high and four centimeters wide and was refined nicely, it looked very visually appealing. Just as he was planning to study it further he heard Kayley who had walked closer, in order to see the object, let out a surprised gasp.

"A crystal holder, did the professor actually just gift you a crystal holder?"

As she said this, the red-haired beauty took out something out of her robes, it looked extremely similar to the object he had been given. And a moment later the number two-hundred appeared on it.

Villin then understood what the object in his hand was since it had been mentioned in one of the books he read before. It was a special kind of enchanted crystal that absorbs the power of regular magic crystals. It was used often, especially for people that were rich or of noble lineage. It made paying for things a bunch easier since if both parties had one of those there was no need to keep a bunch of magic crystals on you.

When you inserted some of your magic power into it it was supposed to light up and show the number of magic crystals it had, yet when Villin did this nothing happened. He tried feeding it one of his magic crystals but that was also to no avail, it seemed to be broken, just as the teacher had suggested.

Said teacher turned to him again before saying just a few words "You have until the end of class." then he went ahead and pocketed the rest of the items that were laying around on the floor.

"Now all of you brats go take a seat and be quiet." with these words said some brown rectangles appeared on the floor, and similar to back in the hall where they arrived, chairs and desks came out of the floor. "There are three sources of magic in this world. The least important one is the web, the second most important one is the natural magic around and within you and the most important one are runes!"

He said all of this in one breath before explaining the differences. It really was quite simple even though the teacher was extremely biased toward runes. While the teacher was speaking Villin inspected the Crystal Holder. There seemed to be enchantments covering the middle of the object, there were also some scratches in that part, breaking through the runes.

It usually wasn't so easy to destroy an enchantment but it seemed like the attack causing the scratches was magical in nature. There were about six runes affected, each of them getting partially destroyed.

At this point in time, Villin felt extremely lucky that he took everything concerning enchanting and magic arrays with him. He quickly retrieved the enchanting book and pen and started scrolling through the pages. He had a rough idea of how the four unknown runes should look like but with a part of them gone, he couldn't be sure.

After some time passed he now knew five of the six runes required to fix the item while the final rune had two possibilities. He couldn't express how lucky he felt the runes were on a flat part of the item making it so that no variations were required.

Now he spent some time hovering his hand over each of the destroyed runes to try and feel the intent within them. Even though he could guess it now that he found them in his school book, it would be his first time trying to properly enchant something and he didn't want to do it wrong. Even if it was just fixing an existing enchantment, it wasn't anything easy.

Just like that ninety minutes had passed by and the end of the class was soon approaching. All this time the old professor had been talking about runes, most of the things he said were already known by Villin as he read them either in the 'Rune Magic' school book or had to utilize it when enchanting.

When only twenty minutes were left Villin breathed in deeply as he grabbed the pen. Once he started fixing the runes he had to do so all at once, if he didn't and lost focus he risked ruining the entire enchantment. Villin breathed in and out three times slowly as his enchanting pen was writing the runes in the air.

Without him knowing the teacher had suddenly grown quiet as he also gestured to the other students not to say a thing. When a student would look into Villin's eyes at this point in time their head would suddenly start hurting, even though it wasn't all that bad it still frightened them.

After he breathed in for the fourth time, Villin's hand suddenly shot forward as he started writing the runes at a crazy pace. After half a breath passed Villin retracted his pen as he looked at the enchantment. He felt slightly tired but at the same time also exhilarated. He could already tell the intent was there, he just didn't know if the final rune was correct of if he had picked wrongly.

With a nervously beating heart, he grabbed the crystal holder before letting some of his magic power enter it. His nervousness was contagious as everyone in the class seemed to gulp nervously, staring at the object in his hands. A moment later a big zero appeared atop the object.

Villin breathed out in relief as he started smiling. A moment later someone started clapping, something that was soon taken over by most of the class. The first enchanting class hadn't even been held yet and he had already managed to achieve something such as this. There were some people who looked a bit pissed off at him as their pride kept them from congratulating him but most people here seemed to be good in nature.

After a few second the old teacher raised his hand. He was extremely strict and so the class nearly instantly fell quiet.

"Well done boy, since you managed to fix it, naturally the object should be yours. And on that note, class dismissed."

After saying this the professor cast a spell before disappearing. Meanwhile, Villin was still looking at the crystal holder in his hand with awe. Looking at the enchantments and materials used this object would cost well over a hundred magic crystals to make. In a shop, he estimated it would sell for two-hundred magic crystals.

Seeing an object of such value simply given to him, Villin didn't know how to feel.