The large brown spot at the bottom left of the room had gotten bigger since last night.

  Mal glared at it. It didn’t shrink.

  There was a strange odor, probably the leftovers of the rat corpses, and he had to resist the urge to sneeze from the amount of dust that had gotten clogged in his nose.

  He pushed himself up, and pain shot through his back. He let out a groan and awkwardly rolled into what felt like the least painful position.

  It was a combination of his injuries and the fact that he'd slept on what was functionally a wooden plank.

  No, he'd slept on wooden planks before. This was somehow worse.

  Come on, Mal, he thought. You’ve been through far, far worse. Are you really about to have your ass kicked by a bed?

  With those words of motivation, Mal was able to force himself to roll out of the bed and drop onto the floor like a wet sausage. He pushed himself up, then stumbled over to the door and swung it open.

  He poked his head out to see that the hallway door was already open. Rolam was in the front room, frantically stuffing a large pile of books into a bag. Nima was standing by the front door, having elected to carry his books by hand. Philo was nowhere to be seen. The only other inhabitant of the room was Lusia, who had taken a similar stance to Nima, standing next to the door with about three or four books held in a pile in front of her.

  Mal looked over at Rolam. “What are you doing?”

  Rolam looked over at him and widened his eyes. “Honored leader, we were just about to wake you up!” He zipped up his bag and slung it to his side. “Class is in fifteen minutes, and the magic theory department is on the other side of campus.”

  Mal looked down at himself and realized that he was still wearing a loose shirt and pants. No robe. “Let me go get dressed.”

  Rolam nodded quickly. “Yeah, but hurry up.”

  Mal rushed over to his room and took the robes off the hanger. As he slipped it on, his mind couldn't help but wonder what had happened to Philo.

  “Where did Philo go?” He slid his arms through his sleeves.

  “No idea. He wasn't here when any of us woke up, that's for sure,” Rolam's voice said from the other room.

  Mal adjusted his robes, then stepped back out and nodded at them. “Okay, I'm ready.”

  The group of four stepped out of the dorm room and into the outside. They were greeted by a stream of other students doing the exact same thing. Mal and the others easily fell in line with the others on the main walkway, cutting past Central Hall.

  Mal glanced back at Lusia. She was behind them, a few feet away.

  He looked at the books she was carrying. "I'm gonna take a guess and say that those are my textbooks?"

  Lusia nodded. "Yes."

  She must’ve gone out and bought them last night.

  "I don't suppose I could carry them myself?" he asked.

  Her head swiveled and she glared at him so hard that he thought he could feel the heat behind her gaze.

  Mal could force her to give him the books, but that would kind of defeat the point of gaining her trust and all that.

  "Never mind.” He looked back at Rolam. "So why exactly were you in such a hurry?"

  He sighed and slumped over.

  "Unlike you,” he said. “This honorable one doesn’t have a servant who went out and got my textbooks. Instead, I was apparently supposed to buy them this morning or last night. And in all the chaos of yesterday, I completely forgot. I had to rush over to the bookstore, then I realized that I had forgotten to put on my robes and had to run back here." At that, he ran his eyes up and down Mal's body. "Where did you get those from, by the way? You were wearing them during initiation, before we got ours. Not only that, but it looks like that thing is about to fall apart."

  Mal shrugged. "It was actually on another hospital bed. I just went ahead and borrowed it because I didn't want to be naked. I guess if they haven't taken it from me, then it's probably fine."

  "Maybe you should ask about getting a new one?" Nima piped in. "I'm sure if you talk to whoever's in charge of the clothing, they'd be happy to give you a new one."

  Mal shrugged. "Maybe. I don't think it really matters, I doubt I'll get in trouble for it unless it becomes really bad."

  Their footsteps clicked against the stone steps, the chatter of the other students adding to the atmosphere. The shadow of the Great Hall came into sight. Mal looked up at the very top and noticed the bell.

  "This really is crazy, isn't it?" Rolam muttered. "We're actually students, aren't we? We made it to Exodi."

  His nose scrunched up. "Even if our dorm room is a complete dump."

  “S—say what you will, but it still remains the best school in the world," Nima said. "Even if you ignored the world-class faculty, the unaligned mana alone would be enough to guarantee its position of prestige."

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  "You know, I've always wondered about that." Rolam scratched his chin. "People always talk about the fact that there are tons of unaligned mana in the air. But why is that?"

  Nima was about to respond when he paused and furrowed his eyebrows. "I actually don't know."

  Mal, who'd been continuing to look up at the bell, muttered out the response idly. “Leylines."

  “Leylines?" Rolam shook his head. "That doesn't make any sense. Leylines are aligned. This is all unaligned mana."

  There was a slight pitch in the footsteps behind them. Mal looked back to see the faintest flicker of interest cross Lusia's eyes before it disappeared.

  "Lusia, do you have any questions?" Mal asked.

  She shook her head. "No, master."

  Mal hummed. "Well, let's just assume for the sake of argument that not everybody here is aware of what a leyline is." He snapped into teacher mode, remembering his brief explanations to his soldiers during his campaigns. "A leyline is the source of mana. They're cracks in the surface of the planet, so to speak. Not literally, but metaphysically. Mana spews out of them and seeps into the surrounding area before spreading out further and further. This is both a good and a bad thing. It's a good thing because wizards need mana in order to cast spells. It's a bad thing, however, because that mana that seeps into the surrounding area typically creates the creatures that we know as magical beasts. As such, leylines have a bit of a bad reputation."

  He tilted his head back to look at Lusia. She'd been looking directly at him during the entire explanation. When he finished, she nodded her head. "I see."

  At that, both Rolam and Nima seemed to give Mal a strange look before Rolam grimaced.

  "Don't the Eastern Wastes sit on a leyline?" Rolam said. "That's a bit more than a bad reputation."

  "They do. In fact, the Eastern Wastes leyline is the biggest in the world. That's why the monsters found there can't be found anywhere else."

  "But the way you were saying it made it sound like there's some kind of honorable positive to leylines existing."

  "Well, there are. There would be a lot less mana in the world if leylines didn't exist. Magic would be way more difficult, hence why every magical academy sits close to one.” Mal shrugged. “Like I said, this whole school sits on a leyline, so—"

  "And again, that doesn't make sense. If it sat on a leyline, how come we are not being attacked by a bunch of magical beasts?"

  “First of all, the school and city is a fortress, remember?” Mal said. “And besides—the Exodi leyline produces unaligned mana."

  Rolam was about to respond when he stopped and blinked. "Really? leylines can do that?"

  "Yeah. At least this one can. Where exactly did you think the unaligned mana in the air was coming from?"

  Rolam turned his head down and shook his head. "I don't know. I guess I just kind of took it for granted and didn't really think about it."

  "Everything here is powered by the leyline. The teleportation spells, the floating platforms, even the bell at the top of the school. It all comes from mana produced by the leyline."

  "The bell?" Rolam said.

  "Yeah, the school bell." Mal pointed his finger toward the top of Central Hall. "If that rings 13 times in a row, extra fast, you're supposed to get to Central Hall and hole up. It means there's some sort of emergency."

  "Oh, I wonder why they didn't tell us that yesterday," Nima said.

  "Because the bell has only been used maybe once or twice in the history of the entire school.”

  That would soon change, though. It would be used a grand total of three times within the next several years. But for right now, the idea of the warning bell actually being used was a bit of a joke or meme among students. Nobody actually thought that the warning bell would ever be rung.

  "When was the bell ever rung?" Rolam leaned his head back and snorted. "It's hard to imagine a situation bad enough for that to happen—"

  "In the first five years the school was here, it had been hit by an attack from a dark wizard," Mal said. "The school was forced to band together and fight him off."

  Mal looked back and noticed that Lusia still had a confused look on her face.

  "How much do you know about dark magic, Lusia?" he asked.

  Lusia shook her head. "I am untrained in the magical arts, master. I know nothing."

  "The theoretical classification for dark magic is a little bit hard to pin down." Mal thought back to the many, many types of dark magic that he had experimented with. "In practice, what it really means is magic that is rejected by mainstream society. There are some extremists who would even call the aligned magic of the witches a type of dark magic."

  "You're overcomplicating it," Rolam said. "Dark magic is just bad. That's all there is to it."

  Mal shrugged. "There's a degree of truth to that. The technical definition has something to do with corrupting influence. Does the magic in question affect your mind or your soul in a negative way? Dark magic does. It's well recorded that those who delve too deeply into that particular field eventually lose touch with reality."

  "And that's why mind control magic is considered dark," Lusia said.

  "Exactly. Well, that's part of it, at least. The other part of it is that it's just seen as something particularly heinous. The mind is a sacred place. Any magic that intrudes upon it is seen with immense suspicion, especially if it's a forced intrusion."

  Mal had experimented with mind control magic in his time, but had ultimately rejected it. Not out of any deep moral convictions, but more so because it just didn't fit his theme. He favored raw power and devastation. The subtleties of mind magic struck him as almost cowardly.

  "Ultimately, however, it's the wizard who is at fault, not the magic."

  Nima glanced over at him. "What do you mean?"

  "Nobody can force you into exploring dark magic,” Mal said. “There’s no compulsion, save for the most extreme of mind magics, that could force you to pursue that path. If somebody becomes a dark mage, it wasn’t the magic that corrupted them. They were corrupt from the start."

  At that, Nima and Rolam fell into silence. Nima had a tight frown on his face, while Rolam was stroking his chin and looking thoughtful.

  Mal knew how awful he was. He was corrupt, down to the very bone. Just because his reasons were good didn't magically make him into a hero, even if things weren't as cut and dry as the heroine thought they were. He could make all the excuses in the world. He had been pressured into it, he'd made mistakes—

  But that's all they were: excuses.

  In his early years, those were what he fell back upon. It was a cowardly attitude. A refusal to take responsibility for one's own actions. Mal was many things, but he wasn't stupid. He made his choices, and there were consequences to those choices. That was what it came down to.

  The Magic Theory and Spellcasting building came into view. It wasn't anything too fancy—a wide, rectangular construction made of clean stone bricks with window after window dotting the sides. Mal took a step inside and the group traced their way through the building before they saw a sign: Room 2, the one mentioned on their calendar. Lusia stepped over and set Mal's books on the ground. She picked out two from midway through the pile, then walked over to Mal and presented them to him with a bow. Mal took the books from her. One was a notebook, the other was a textbook of some sort.

  "Thank you," Mal said. "Though... is there any rule saying that you can't step inside?"

  She unbowed her head. “It wouldn't be proper, master. Besides, I have classes of my own.”

  “You have classes?”

  “Yes. While you study wizardry, my job will be to support you in politics, economics, and cooking. The school teaches these subjects and expects servants to learn them.”

  “How varied.”

  “With respect, master, we don’t have time for this. You’re expected in a few minutes.”

  He nodded, then walked over to the door.

  "First class," he muttered. "Let's do this."

  He opened the door.