Arcadia's Ignoble Knight: The Sorceress' Knights Tournament

Chapter 30

"Magical technology is created through the combining of scientific theory, mechanical engineering, and magical decomposition," the teacher lectured, though Caspian barely paid any attention.

Classes felt slower than ever that day. Tedious didn't begin to describe them. The lectures seemed even more boring now than ever before, the students bothered him more, and everything seemed to irritate him. He understood why, however, and it didn't have anything to do with classes.

Elincia wasn't there.

This didn't come as much of a shock to him. Elincia's presence had made what had once been unbearable tolerable. He enjoyed coming to class, even if the only reason had been because it meant he could see her. With Elincia gone, he felt like class was an abysmal black hole sucking all of the fun out of his life.

"Magical devices are created by building a matrix, or a series of matrices, with a specific function in mind, and then adding that function to a device that was designed specifically for each function. After the matrices and device are fully integrated, circuits and the motherboard, which is embedded with a spirit crystal, are added to create a pathway and a power source."

Where is she?

He didn't think anything had happened to her. There would have been an announcement otherwise. At the very least, Caspian was sure that he would know if something happened to her.

"Sol! Are you listening to me?" the instructor asked.

"No, I'm not listening to you," Caspian answered honestly, not even paying attention to what he was saying.

"Y-you little brat! You think you can talk back to me?!"

"Yes."

The instructor's face turned puce. "That's it! Out of my room! Get out of here this instant, you disrespectful peasant!"

Caspian still wasn't paying much attention, but he understood enough to stand up and leave. He didn't want to be there anyway, so if the teacher was going to give him a free pass, then he'd gladly accept.

Without much to do and nowhere to go, Caspian wandered the halls. He didn't have a destination in mind, though he supposed he could always hit up the library or even find a courtyard to practice via shadow sparring. Somehow, though, the idea of sparring with his own shadow didn't appeal to him all that much right now.

As he rounded a corner, Caspian almost ran into someone who'd been practically running down the hall. While the hooded figure let out a feminine shriek, Caspian reacted swiftly, spinning on the balls of his feet and swerving around the other person before they could collide.

Whirling around, Caspian laid into the person he'd almost crashed into. "Hey, you need to watch where you goi... ing...? Elincia?"

Her hood having fallen off, Elincia looked like a deer staring down a Peacekeeper's rifle. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was parted. Caspian thought she looked rather fetching, actually, but he quickly shook that off.

"Elincia, where have you—"

"Not here," Elincia whispered, placing a hand against his lips. She then removed her hand and grabbed onto one of his, tugging it as she moved down the hall. "Come on. Follow me."

Caspian didn't know what was going on, but he knew better than to ask questions. He dutifully followed his friend as she led him to what he recognized as the library. Before they actually entered, Elincia cracked the door open and stuck her head inside as if checking to see if anyone else was in there.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Sh! I'm looking to see if there's anyone here."

"Yes, I can see that. I meant, why are you doing it?"