Chapter 233 - 232 — Pay Attention, Vance

Wednesday morning found Arthur digging through the bottom drawer of his desk for his Magic Theory notebook while Felix sat by the open dormitory window, scrubbing at the leather arm-straps of Aegis Bulwark with a stiff brush.

The tower shield had taken the worst of yesterday’s fight on the western road. One of the hookjaw scavengers had kicked half a ditch of slaughterhouse muck straight up into Felix’s chest, and Felix had been going at the leather with saddle soap since seven o’clock.

"You’re still at it?" Arthur asked, pulling his crumpled notebook out from under a stack of old alchemy sheets.

"Come smell the top strap," Felix said darkly.

"Absolutely not."

"It’s in the stitching, Arthur. My hands smell like lemon oil, and the strap still smells like dead pig." Felix tossed the brush into his tin bucket and glared across the room. "Next time you look at your phone and tell me a roadside job is easy money, I’m locking you out of the room."

"We got paid, didn’t we?" Arthur said, picking up his satchel. His right hand was still stiff, though the salve Chloe had given him had closed the rope burn across his knuckles down to a faded red line. The leather splint on his left wrist creaked as he slung the bag over his shoulder. "And Sylvia’s still going after the merchant for the hazard bonus today."

"She’d better," Felix muttered, propping the heavy shield against the open window frame to air out before grabbing his textbook bag. "Come on. If we’re late for Elena’s lecture, she’ll have us writing circuit derivations until lunch."

They headed down the stairs and out into the cool morning courtyard. The quadrangle was busy with students hurrying between the wings. Over by the dining hall archway, workers clipped into safety harnesses were replacing the crossbeam damaged in Monday’s accident, winching a fresh piece of oak into place above the roped-off flagstones.

Emily was standing near the steps of the eastern academic wing, flipping rapidly through a sheaf of creased parchment with a charcoal pencil clamped between her teeth.

"Did you two finish the resistance tables from last week?" Emily asked around the pencil as they walked up.

"Done on Sunday," Felix said.

Arthur peered over her shoulder at the half-blank page. "Thought you did yours yesterday."

"I was going to do them this morning before class," Emily grumbled, taking the pencil out of her mouth and shoving the papers into her bag. "Then Morwenna kept the morning vanguard group ten minutes late running footwork drills. If Elena checks the homework rows today, I’m copying off Felix."

"Sit on my left, then," Felix said.

"I’ll take the aisle," Arthur said, catching Emily around the waist with his good arm to pull her toward the double doors. "I’m not letting you lean across my elbow for an hour."

They filed into the tiered lecture hall for third-year Magic Theory. Half the benches were already full, students chatting and trading ink pens while setting up their brass practice frames. Arthur slid into the middle row, taking the seat on Emily’s left while she sat next to Felix, flipping open his notebook just as the side door near the chalkboard opened.

Professor Elena Moon walked in carrying a heavy brass array slate under one arm.

She wore her formal dark-blue Archmage robes, the high collar fastened at her throat with a silver clasp and the heavy silk falling down to her boots. Her silver-blond hair was pinned up neatly as she set the brass frame onto the wide oak demonstration counter at the front of the room.

"Put the homework sheets away for now," Elena said, her cool voice quieting the benches at once. "Today we are looking at load-stability failures in linked circulation circuits."

Next to Arthur, Emily let out a quiet breath of relief and nudged his boot under the table.

Elena tapped her silver stylus against the frame on her counter. A three-ringed geometric projection rose into the air above the wood, glowing a steady blue—except for the outer secondary ring, which pulsed with a jagged amber flare every few seconds.

"This is a continuous structural ward," Elena said, resting a hand on the edge of the counter. "The primary core is holding, yet the secondary loop is building back-pressure at the third junction. How do you stop the surge without collapsing the active ward?"

"Throttle the secondary intake down to a trickle before it hits the junction," Arthur said, leaning an elbow on the desk.

Elena turned her golden eyes on him, one brow arching slightly. "On Monday, Miss Rowan was trying to kill the power to a runaway winch so a jammed breaker could drop, Mr. Vance. If you starve the secondary feed on a continuous ceiling ward, the outer ring goes brittle. The first troll that throws a boulder at your roof brings the entire hall down on your head."

A couple of students in the front row laughed. Arthur grinned and leaned back against the bench.

"Bleed the surge into the grounding channel," Felix said from Emily’s right. "If you widen the third gate, the pressure clears before it backs up into the primary ring."

"Better, Mr. Sterling," Elena said with a nod. "Though standard copper inlays will run hot if you bleed more than ten percent at once. What else?"

Down in the second row, a tall boy named Corvan raised his hand. "Can’t you just cross-wire the second bridge straight back into the core so you don’t lose the mana?"

Elena stared at him for two seconds. "Only if you enjoy picking melted brass out of your eyebrows, Corvan. Feeding an unstabilized surge back into a live core is how novices blow up their workbenches. Anyone with a suggestion that doesn’t involve shrapnel?"

A girl near the aisle suggested splitting the load across two auxiliary runes, kicking off an argument across the rows. A third-year near the window insisted that auxiliary runes would fracture the baseline charge.

Elena let them debate the heat-dissipation numbers for a minute before stepping in.

"Auxiliary runes bleed output alongside pressure, Mr. Kell," she corrected, picking up a piece of chalk. She worked through the math without looking at a single note, filling the center board with clean white equations.

"Activate the practice slates on your desks and copy the baseline circuit," Elena instructed, setting her chalk down in the tray as thirty students pulled their brass boards closer. "Mr. Vance—come collect the box of spare dampener clips for the middle rows."

Arthur pushed his seat back and walked down the side steps to the front platform.

Across the hall, thirty practice arrays hummed to life at once, students leaning over their benches and arguing over resistance numbers as they tuned the starting charge. Elena stood behind the oak counter near the side supply shelves, sorting through a small wooden tray of brass clips.

As Arthur stepped around the side of the counter to take the box, Elena glanced past his shoulder toward the busy rows of bent heads.

Without changing her calm, professorial expression, she hooked two fingers into the side-slit of her heavy blue robe and pulled the silk open a few inches.

She wasn’t wearing panties.

The pale curve of her bare hip and thigh flashed behind the wooden panel, giving Arthur a direct view of her naked pussy. Even from a step away, he could see her slit was already shiny and wet.

"Try not to lose half of them on the way back to your seat, Mr. Vance," Elena said in her crisp teaching voice, letting the dark-blue silk fall smoothly shut over her thigh as she handed him the wooden box.

Arthur met her golden eyes and gave her a slow grin. "Wouldn’t dream of it, Professor."

He carried the tray back up the steps, passed the brass clips down the row, and sat down to turn on his own board.

"You have twenty minutes to balance the secondary surge on your slates," Elena called out from the front of the room. "Keep the primary ring above eighty percent while you adjust the gates. Begin."

Arthur clipped a dampener onto the outer ring of his slate and tapped his calibration rod against the third junction. He tried widening the grounding groove the way Felix had answered earlier, but his mana feed was too blunt for the narrow channel; instead of bleeding off smoothly, the amber pulse bounced straight back into the inner ring and made the brass frame buzz against the wood.

Two seats down, a student’s dampener clip popped off with a loud snap and a shower of blue sparks, drawing curses from the neighboring bench.

"Mine’s holding at eighty-four," Felix said, scribbling his flow numbers onto his worksheet.

"Good for you," Arthur muttered. He picked up his rattling slate with his splinted left hand and stood up. "My gate keeps kicking the charge back."

"Go ask her before you crack the copper," Emily said, her tongue poked slightly out the corner of her mouth as she carefully nudged her own intake rune with her stylus.

Arthur walked back down the side steps to the front corner of the room. Half the class was talking over the hum of the slates, comparing numbers and arguing over whose readings were right.

Elena stood behind the demonstration counter, her marking ledger open beside a stack of reference tomes.

"Still trying to force the channel like a winch brake?" Elena asked evenly as Arthur stepped up to the inner edge of the counter and set his humming slate on the wood.

"The third gate won’t take the bleed," Arthur said, resting his splinted left forearm on the top rail so his body blocked the side gap from the room.

Elena leaned over the slate beside him, pointing her silver stylus at the outer ring as if checking his work.

"That is because you are shoving mana into the end of the line like a vanguard," she said aloud, before dropping her voice low under the hum of the classroom slates. "And because you have been staring at the front of the room since you sat down."

"Hard to care about copper lines when you flashed me your bare pussy five minutes ago," Arthur murmured, keeping his eyes on the glowing blue rings of his slate.

Elena’s golden eyes glinted with wicked amusement. "You looked bored during the equations. I thought you needed an incentive to pay attention."

Arthur tapped his calibration rod against the brass slate with his left hand, and slid his right hand beneath the overhang of the oak counter, shoving his fingers straight through the side-slit of her robe.

"Ahn—!"

A sharp, quiet gasp slipped out of Elena’s mouth as his bare fingers slid between her thighs and stroked straight across her naked pussy. She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, her left hand clamping hard onto the inner rim of the counter.

She was soaking wet. Hot slick coated Arthur’s fingers the second he parted her folds.

"Incentive for me, or for you?" Arthur whispered, rubbing his middle finger rough and slow over her swollen clit. "Your pussy’s dripping all over my hand."

"Mmh... haa... both," Elena breathed. She kept her gaze fixed down on the glowing slate while a pink flush crept up her pale neck above her silver collar, spreading her legs a fraction wider under the long skirt. "Keep your voice down... nngh... and don’t just tease it, Arthur."

Arthur shoved two fingers straight up into her hot, wet pussy.

Schlick!

"Uhn—!"

Elena bit down hard on her lower lip as her tight walls clamped around his knuckles, her knees jerking inward against his wrist under her robes.

Arthur curled his fingers upward and started fucking his hand in and out of her soaked cunt in hard, steady strokes, grinding the base of his thumb across her clit every time he pushed in.

Squelch... schlick... squelch.

The wet, sloppy sound of her pussy echoed behind the wooden panel. Elena’s face turned bright red, but instead of pulling back, she rolled her hips forward into his palm, fucking herself quietly onto his fingers while thirty students sat a few yards away.

"Professor Moon?" a girl in the second row called out, raising her head from a sparking board. "My grounding channel keeps flaring—did you say negative bias on the second bridge?"

Elena’s left hand clamped down like a vise on Arthur’s wrist under the desk, freezing his fingers deep inside her. Her thighs snapped tight against his forearm.

Arthur held perfectly still, his knuckles lodged firmly against her G-spot.

"Check your... your intake polarity, Jenna," Elena answered, her voice tight but remarkably level. "You have the bridge rune reversed."

"Oh. Right," Jenna muttered, bending back over her desk.

Elena let out a shaky breath through her nose, her grip on Arthur’s wrist loosening as a hot gush of slick ran over his palm. "Haa... ahn... finish it, Arthur," she whispered shakily, glaring at him with flushed cheeks as her control began to crack. "Right there—"

Arthur pumped his fingers hard and fast into her dripping slit.

Schlick-schlick-schlick!

Over by the far wall chart, the two first-row students finished copying the conductivity numbers and turned around, starting back toward the center aisle.

"Wait—uhn—!"

Elena clamped her lips shut to trap the cry in her throat as her climax hit her. Her pussy spasmed violently around Arthur’s fingers, soaking his hand down to the wrist while a long, silent shudder ran up her spine.

Arthur worked his fingers through two last tight squeezes of her walls, gave her swollen clit one hard pinch, and slid his dripping hand smoothly out from beneath her robe.

He slipped his wet right hand straight into his trousers pocket, wiping his fingers clean on his handkerchief, and picked up his buzzing slate with his left.

Elena smoothed the front of her heavy blue robe with one hand before picking up her silver stylus. Her cheeks were still flushed pink, but her expression was perfectly composed when she spoke aloud.

"Stop trying to fix the bottleneck at the third gate, Mr. Vance," Elena said, tapping the front of his board with her stylus for the benefit of the nearby rows. "Your control is too heavy for the narrow channel. Look at where the pressure is entering the ring."

"Got it, Professor," Arthur said easily, turning and walking back up the steps to his row.

"Well?" Emily asked as Arthur slid back onto the bench beside her. "Did she tell you which gate to open?"

"Told me to quit messing with the third one," Arthur said.

He picked up his calibration rod with his clean right hand and looked down at the pulsing amber loop on his board. The surge was building at the third junction because the narrow copper channel couldn’t clear it fast enough—but the charge was coming in through the primary intake bridge at the top of the slate.

Arthur dragged his stylus across the first intake bridge, cutting a wider dispersion groove right where the mana entered the circuit so the load spread out before it ever reached the narrow gate.

The jagged amber pulse smoothed out at once, settling into a thick, steady blue glow across all three rings. It burned nearly twice as much mana as Felix’s neat little third-gate bleed, but the needle held rock-solid at eighty-five percent without a single flicker.

Five minutes later, Elena walked slowly down the stepped aisles with her marking ledger, inspecting the active slates and written sheets.

When she reached their bench, she gave Felix full marks for his neat three-paragraph derivation, marked a pass on Emily’s board, and stopped behind Arthur’s shoulder.

"Your circuit is stable, Mr. Vance," Elena said coolly, making a sharp note in red ink on his page. "Though widening the primary intake wastes mana to cover a sloppy secondary bridge, and you skipped two steps in your written derivation. Seven out of ten."

Arthur twisted around on the bench to look up at her. "The ward’s holding at eighty-five percent without a flicker, Professor. Doesn’t keeping the roof up count for more?"

Elena met his gaze, a trace of dry amusement in her golden eyes. "In the field, perhaps. In my classroom, skipping the math costs you three points."

She moved down to the next row, her dark-blue robes swishing neatly past the benches.

Felix leaned across Emily to look at the red 7/10 on Arthur’s parchment and smirked. "At least you didn’t blow the dampener off like Miller did."

"Shut up, Felix," Arthur muttered.

Once she finished grading the front row, Elena stepped back behind the counter and tapped her stylus against the wood.

"Shut down your slates," she told the room. "Before you leave, the faculty has finalized the structure for the upcoming division assessments. In Magic Theory, you will be tested individually on an unfamiliar malfunctioning circuit. You will have fifteen minutes to find the fault, write out the complete dissipation math, and stabilize the live board without burning out the core. Vanguard and Combat divisions will run their practical evaluations during the same assessment block."

A low groan went through the hall as students began packing away their brass frames and rods.

Arthur looked down at the red ink on his worksheet as he shoved it into his bag. On a guild contract, he could either shoot whatever was powering a hostile ward or pay Iris to trace the grooves for him. In an examination room with an instructor watching the clock, brute-forcing the intake wasn’t going to cut it.

The bell chimed in the courtyard tower, and they filed out through the side doors into the busy stone corridor.

"Seven out of ten after you spent five minutes at the front desk getting help," Emily teased, bumping Arthur’s shoulder with hers as they headed down the wide staircase toward the training yards. "What were you even doing up there?"

"Listening to the professor explain intake pressure," Arthur said innocently. "I just need to find a study partner before the assessment block starts. Someone who actually likes doing three pages of array math for fun."

"Good luck with that," Felix said, adjusting his satchel strap as they pushed through the lower doors into the sunlight. "Nobody in our cohort likes Elena’s math that much."

"Doesn’t have to be someone in our cohort," Arthur said, glancing across the grass toward the library path before following them down to the combat grounds.