Chapter 41: Teachers and Temperature

The moment Julian left the training ground the crowd closed in.

It wasn’t the usual jeering or curiosity. Students from House Dawn, a few from Ash and Thorn who had followed the noise, and even the five who had just been beaten by Julian all pushed forward. Their faces were sweaty, serious.

Voices overlapped.

"Vance, teach us!"

"How did you stop his lightning like that?"

"Can you show us that finger technique? Was that a wind spell?"

Arthur raised both hands, trying to create space. The circle was getting too tight.

"Back up, give him air," Milo tried to help, but no one listened.

Before Arthur could speak, one of the first-years — a thin boy with a Tier 2 earth Grimoire floating open beside him — stepped to the front. His face was still marked with dirt and a light burn on his cheek from Julian’s earlier strike, but his eyes were steady. His uniform was torn at the knee.

"We know we can’t get stronger in a single day," the boy said, loud enough that the others quieted to hear him. "We’re not asking for miracles. We’re not asking for your secret move. We just... yesterday, when the barrier fell, I couldn’t even stand up. My legs gave out. I watched Professor Aldric bleed. I don’t want to stand there helpless again if something like yesterday happens. Please."

Arthur looked at the faces around him.

The usual laziness and gossip were gone. No one was recording with a crystal for jokes. No one was whispering about Tier 1 trash. What remained was quiet, real determination. These were the same students who had mocked him as a waste only weeks ago. Now they stood in front of him ready to work until their hands bled.

He exhaled slowly. Mimi, still invisible to everyone else, floated down and sat cross-legged on his head.

"Well, well. Look at you, accidental professor," she whispered in his mind. "Go on, Master. Do your thing."

"Alright," Arthur said. "Form groups according to your element or fighting style. Earth left, fire right, wind and others middle. Don’t waste my time. If you want to learn, you work."

The training ground organized itself in less than a minute. It was messy, but it was fast.

Arthur moved between the groups without rushing.

He stopped first with the earth-affinity group. Three students, including the thin boy from before.

"Your problem is you think your Grimoire is just for building walls," Arthur said, kneeling and pressing his palm to the stone. "Feel that? The ground under your feet is already your mana. Don’t just raise it. Listen to it."

He made them take off their shoes. "Shift your weight. When you step forward, pull the stone slightly up under your heel. When you step back, push it down. Every step becomes a trap, or a launch pad. Your Grimoire isn’t a second shield, it’s a second skeleton."

The thin boy tried, stumbled, then his foot suddenly shot forward half a meter as the stone bucked under him. He yelped, then grinned.

"I felt it!"

"Again. Fifty times."

He moved to the fire users. Two girls who had been spraying wild, impressive-looking fireballs that burned out in seconds.

"You’re trying to look strong," Arthur said bluntly. "You’re burning all your mana to make it big. That’s why you’re out of breath after two spells."

One of the girls flushed. "But fire is supposed to be —"

"Hot, not big. Compress it." He remembered how Selene had taught him to compress mana until it screamed. He made them hold their palms close, forcing the flame down into a tight lance no wider than a finger. "See? Smaller, but it will cut through earth. And it costs a third of your big explosion. Try it on that post."

The first lance fizzled. The second left a deep, smoking hole straight through the training post. Both girls stared.

A girl with a wind Grimoire similar to the temporary print Arthur had once held received the most detailed attention. She was struggling to keep her Mana Skin stable.

"You’re leaking," Arthur told her. "You’re letting wind flow constantly. Don’t. Layer it like a second skin, then hold it. Only release it in short bursts." He showed her, wrapping a faint current around his forearm, then popping it to shove himself sideways a foot. "Think of it like breathing. Inhale, hold, burst. Not like a river."

She practiced, her face scrunched in concentration, until she managed to dash three steps without falling.

The longest he spent was with a quiet boy at the edge whose Grimoire produced thin metal threads. The boy could barely make them float.

"I... they only bind," he mumbled, embarrassed. "It’s useless in a fight."

Arthur crouched next to him for nearly twenty minutes while the others practiced. He watched the threads tremble.

"They’re not just rope," Arthur said eventually. "Feel the mana running through them? They’re conductive. Like wires."

He took one thread and looped it loosely around a distant wooden dummy’s leg.

"Now, send your mana through it. Not to the thread — through it."

The boy closed his eyes. The thread glowed faintly, and then — crack — a tiny spark of mana discharged at the dummy’s ankle, making it jerk.

The boy’s eyes went wide. "It can... trigger at a distance?"

"Your Grimoire isn’t weak. You just haven’t found its shape yet," Arthur said, standing up and raising his voice so all groups could hear him.

"You are the master of your own Grimoire. No one else can feel it the way you do. I can show you principles — compression, layering, conduction — but the unique way you fight has to come from you. Stop trying to copy me or Julian or the instructors. Find the shape that only your book allows."

Sweat soaked through training uniforms. Mana crystals cracked from overuse. A few students collapsed and had to be dragged to the side to sit, chests heaving. No one complained. When the sun began to drop and the sky turned orange, Arthur finally called an end.

The entire group was exhausted but standing.

One of the fire girls wiped blood from a split lip where she’d bitten it in concentration and spoke for everyone, her voice hoarse.

"Tomorrow. Same time?"

Arthur nodded once, his own shirt damp.

The students dispersed in small, tired clusters, already discussing what they would try next, arguing about compression and footwork. Milo stayed behind long enough to clap Arthur on the shoulder with a tired grin.

"Since when did you become an instructor? That was... actually good."

"Since everyone decided I was one," Arthur said.

He walked the quieter path to his own room, taking the long way past the half-rebuilt wall. His body felt pleasantly heavy from the teaching, that good ache after using mana properly.

When he opened the door to his dorm, the temperature hit him immediately.

The air inside was cold. Not uncomfortable, but clearly lower than the rest of the dormitory building, enough to see his breath faintly. Frost limned the edges of his desk.

Selene Frost sat on the edge of his bed, still in her clean instructor coat. Her silver-white hair was loose around her shoulders, drying. Her ice-blue eyes met his the moment the door closed.

Arthur paused, hand on the door handle.

"Professor?"

She did not waste time with greetings. Her voice was quiet, clinical, the same tone she used for lectures.

"Headmistress Lily examined my circuits after the treasury," she stated. "The ice backlash from holding that sealed room left residual frostbite deep in my channels. Normal healing can’t reach it."

She folded her hands in her lap. The cold in the room seemed to pulse once, in time with her breathing.

"She said the dual-circulation method we used before is the only way to permanently remove it. The method where we balance my ice with your Grimoire. She said we should keep doing it, regularly, if I want the damage to clear completely."

Arthur closed the door fully behind him and leaned against it, understanding now why the room was so cold.

Outside, the academy continued its repairs under the evening light, hammers ringing faintly. Inside the small dormitory room, the temperature stayed low, and the next round of their uncomfortable, necessary treatment waited in the silence between them.