Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (79/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 79 I hope you guys enjoy! :D

About half of the student body was blinded by the sudden and intense flash of light that blanketed the room.

The other half seemed to have reacted in time to shield themselves from that unexpected assault on the senses.

I was part of that latter half. 

And what I saw during those precious few seconds of visual overstimulation was nothing short of remarkable.

The walls that had resembled Mal’tory’s dark and dreary office quaked and quivered in place, as if the whole room was a living organism, and we were somehow nestled within its guts. 

Each of the ornate wooden panels began dislodging from one another, their formerly flush surfaces cracking, revealing seams where there had been none before. These seams too began expanding, as each of the panels started wobbling, wiggling, then eventually disconnecting from one another entirely; moving independently of one another as if freeing themselves from a long-dormant state. 

For a moment, they looked almost like a reptile’s scales when put under magnification.

Then, and without any warning, they began disappearing, each panel violently pulled back and into some dark anomalous void that existed behind the walls themselves; sending the EVI into another fit of spatial error reports. 

We were, for a split second, completely wall-less. But not a second after the old walls had been… for lack of a better term — banished to the literal shadow realm, did a set of new walls suddenly take their place.

And quite dramatically too. 

As an entire wallface suddenly came into being from the darkness of the void, one that was earthy in tones, and reminded me more of those old teakwood heritage buildings back on Earth. There were fewer embellishments to them compared to the previous Victorian-styled walls, less patterns and ostentatious designs, instead simply going with this less is more approach that left vast empty gaps where decorations and patterns were previously present. It was almost as if they were left empty and bare for a reason.

And indeed they were.

ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 475% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS

As out of nowhere, dozens of pots, planters, and those metal grids you use to grow vines on, suddenly embedded themselves through the wall. 

Plantlife soon followed this open invitation for a free home, as hundreds of flowers bloomed all across the wall, carefully trimmed and perfectly appointed, with not a single one of them looking too wild or out of place.

The sudden and abrupt remodeling completely threw me off. 

At least, until the source of it all suddenly made themselves known.

“Welcome, first years, to Mana-field perception and Light Magic theory.” The voice continued, as through the literal haze of change came a female figure that the EVI had little problem assigning a name and identifier to. 

ENTITY IFF CONFIRMED: A109 Apprentice Larial Essen - NEXUS [CORDIAL]

Yet strangely, the metallic footsteps behind her didn’t follow. Instead, only the apprentice emerged from the door behind the lectern. 

The apprentice continued towards the lectern with a forced and somewhat stiff poise and gait, her general demeanor identical to how she carried herself prior to the whole crate saga. Which was of course, stern, tired, and completely unyielding; a fact supported by the impeccable posture she used to walk into class. 

Though the class’ focus certainly wasn’t on her demeanor, or her posture, nor even on the room that had completely morphed into a completely different space.

No.

It was instead almost squarely focused on the apprentice’s cloak, which was most certainly not black.

This prompted the entire room to erupt into a frenzy of whispers, tempered only by those daring enough to deploy privacy screens.

But before those antics could evolve any further, and before my mind could even catch up with this turn of events, a loud, high-pitched, and unbroken — SHUSH — erupted from the front of the class. Emerging from a certain gorn-like lizard, who’d stood up to face us rather than the apprentice currently manning her podium. “ALL STUDENTS RISE!” He commanded. 

To which the entire class followed, with the only two tentative parties being myself and a certain bull. 

“ALL STUDENTS FORWARD AND BOW!” He continued, prompting the whole class to follow suit, and from there, receiving a head-tilt’s worth of praise from the apprentice. 

“Thank you, Lord Qiv.” The apprentice spoke appreciatively, before setting her sights on the rest of the desks and chairs— 

ALERT: LOCALIZED SURGE OF MANA-RADIATION DETECTED, 400% ABOVE BACKGROUND RADIATION LEVELS

—which were subsequently transformed into brighter-toned variants of their formerly dark and depressive selves. “I understand that there may be quite a few lingering questions amongst the crowd that quite a few of you wish to be addressed. In the spirit of ensuring that these needless thoughts and senseless rumors do not come to cloud your mind throughout the rest of class, thereby rendering these lessons moot, I wish for them to be addressed here and now.” Larial announced tacitly, but with a severity that was clearly modeled off of her mentor. 

The mood of the room quickly changed following that. 

But instead of shifting to the deference and submission in Articord’s class, or the tentative acceptance of Vanavan’s class, there was instead an overarching tone of outright confusion. 

As if the whole class didn’t know how best to handle the situation.

But whilst the rest of the room remained undecided, with a few shaky hands rising up one by one, a sense of relief quickly washed over me as my emotions finally managed to catch up to the rapidly developing turn of events.

I couldn’t help but to immediately activate the in-armor positional readjustment mode in the suit, allowing myself to just… slouch; as I took in the class with a renewed wave of reprieve.

It was that same feeling you get when you arrive on the day of the test, only to find it delayed by a week. Or that feeling you get when a notification arrives in the dead of night, on the eve of a presentation, to inexplicably announce that the whole project was now put on hold due to some inexplicable event.

But unlike those situations where the why of the situation didn’t really matter… here, it most certainly did.

Which prompted me to listen in, as the questions began flying towards the apprentice. 

“If I may be the one so brazen as to offer myself as the voice of the year group, Apprentice Essen?” A certain Auris Ping took the lead, having been chosen by the apprentice amidst a sea of equally inquisitive hands. 

“The floor is yours, Lord Ping.” The apprentice proclaimed.

“Thank you, Apprentice.” The bull responded curtly, eliciting a particularly intense glare from the likes of Thalmin. “Where is Professor Mal’tory?”