"As you know, I've been gone for the last couple of weeks on a capstone mission over in the Ashford Duchy. While I would love to tell you what happened, you know I can't do that." A polite laugh rippled through the room.
The chalk, which had floated up to write his name, drifted back down into Silus's waiting hand.
"However, what I can share are some techniques that were imparted to me by the experts I worked alongside. Techniques that, frankly, made me realize how much we've been leaving on the table."
He turned to the board and began to draw by hand this time. The chalk moved in clean, precise strokes, laying down a standard barrier rune that every member in the room would recognize.
"As you can see, this is a standard Sinclair-style barrier rune. Simple, cheap, and able to block attacks up to Mid Bronze." He tapped the glyph. "Anything above that and it's worthless. So what do you do?"
He scanned the room.
"The obvious answer is to build a stronger rune. More mana, higher-tier concepts, better materials. But what if you don't have any of that? What if you're in the field with limited mana and something above your tier is thirty seconds away?"
He picked the chalk back up.
"One option would be resonance amplification. In principle, it works with any rune as it cycles the output back through itself to multiply the effect. The problem is that in practice, only Gold-tier runes and above can handle the cycling without burning out."
He began drawing over the existing barrier using the resonance amplification framework, but instead of the typical full runic structure, he seemed to be inscribing only small parts of it.
Turning the highly complicated concept into something even more impressive because to take such a high-level concept and simplify it to only what was needed was no easy task. It was, in its own way, a greater display of mastery than drawing the full thing ever could have been.
He set the chalk down.
The rune looked almost the same. The new lines flowed naturally into the existing runic structure, almost like it was always meant to have them.
"Now, with this, the barrier costs fifteen percent more mana but blocks three times as much — enough to stop attacks at Early Silver."
The room went silent.
What their president had just shown broke all practical logic. In theory, yes resonance amplification could work on any rune. But in practice? The variables were too numerous, the margin for error too thin. One misplaced line, one poorly routed mana channel, and the whole thing collapses. Every student in this room had been taught that. It was treated as settled fact.
Yet there it sat on the board. A first-year barrier rune that defied everything they'd been taught humming quietly with a strength it was never supposed to have.
"Who taught you such a thing?" Brandon asked, unable to hold back his curiosity. Several members leaned forward, the same question written on their faces.
Silus smirked. "I think you already know who it is."
Brandon's eyes went wide.
A murmur swept through the room. Arthur caught fragments of a name passed between members in hushed tones, spoken with the kind of reverence reserved for people of legends.
He looked back at the board and committed every line to memory. As if the information is from such a legendary figure, they must have a library worth of knowledge.
"The lesson here isn't about resonance amplification," Silus said, pulling the room's attention back to him. "It's about how you approach a problem. When you're outmatched and under-resourced, the answer isn't always to build something bigger. Sometimes it's to use what you already have better than anyone thought possible."
His aura settled as he stepped back from the board. The subtle pressure in the room eased and members exhaled like they'd been holding their breath without realizing it.
'It's just like what the book said: you need to find ways to bridge the distance. And it seems I just found another way.' Arthur can't help but smile.
"With that said," Silus continued, crossing his arms, "I want to see what you can do with this. Group up into groups of 3 or more and see if you can find a way to take a higher tier concept and apply it to a lower tier rune. I don't care if it's an early silver technique that gets applied to peak bronze. I just want you all to figure out ways to apply higher tier concepts to weaker runes."
He picked up the chalk one more time and wrote on the board in large letters:
What can you sacrifice to gain what you need?
"That's your guiding question, get to work."
The room broke into motion. Chairs scraped, voices rose. Members gravitated toward familiar faces, pulling notebooks and reference texts from bags as groups formed across the central tables and workstations.
However, all those around him went away to make their own groups and Arthur could tell they wanted nothing to do with him. Even though he is recognized as one of the members that doesn't change the opinions of his family.
'Classic Webb effect.' Arthur can't help but muse as he scans the room trying to find someone he could join with.
Then from the corner of his eyes, he saw a hand waving. Sitting by the window he could see Helena waving him over as Brandon sits beside her looming over some notes not caring about Helena inviting Arthur.
"Thanks for letting me join you." Arthur says as he walks up to Helena and Brandon.
"Don't mention it." Helena gestures at the empty chair. "Sit."
Arthur takes his seat and immediately feels the weight of several stares pressing against the back of his head. He doesn't need to turn around to know what's happening — the murmurs are loud enough to carry.
"Helena invited the Webb kid?"
"Why does he get to work with her? I've been in this club for two years and she's never—"
"Probably feels sorry for him."
"Sorry for him? That's Helena Lysander. She doesn't do sorry."
Arthur sets his notebook on the table and ignores all of it. Helena does the same though the slight tightening of her jaw tells him she heard every word.
Brandon, to his credit, doesn't react at all. He just keeps scribbling in his notes, unbothered by the politics of who sits where. Whatever his feelings about Arthur were, sharing a table with him clearly ranked lower on his list of concerns than the assignment in front of him.
"So," Helena says, her voice cutting cleanly through the noise behind them. "Where do we start?"
Arthur opens his notebook to a bookmarked section.
"Concealment," he said.
Brandon looks up from his notes while Helena flips through hers.
"A standard Bronze-tier concealment rune masks your presence from mana-based detection wards, scanning arrays, and sensory runes." Arthur tapped the page. "But it does nothing against physical detection. A beast-type bloodline with enhanced senses picks you up in seconds."
"So, you want to push it past Bronze," Brandon said, following the logic.
"We could use a Silver-tier technique called Overlayering. It adds a secondary masking field on top of the primary concealment that disperses the user's mana signature across a wider area instead of concentrating it in one spot." Arthur drew a rough sketch in his notebook as he spoke. "Apply a simplified version to the Bronze concealment base and you push the mana detection resistance to Early Silver. Maybe higher but then you get too resource dependent so it's best to keep at a lower level."
"That handles the mana side," Helena said, already a step ahead. "But physical detection is still wide open."
"Right. Overlayering makes you invisible to wards and scanning tools, but scent, sound, body heat all still exposed. Anyone with a beast transformation or a sensory bloodline above a certain threshold walks right through it."
Arthur looked at Helena.
"Unless there's something that handles that side."
Helena was quiet for a moment. Her icy blue eyes drifted to some middle distance the look of someone flipping through a mental library that most students would need a week in the actual library to match.
"Sensory diffusion," she said. "It's a footnote in Alderman's second edition. Most people skip over it because the full technique requires a Platinum-tier base to sustain. But the principle is simple: it doesn't hide your physical presence. It scatters it, distributing your scent, your body heat, making the sound of your movements across a wider radius."
"To a beast with enhanced senses, you'd register as background noise," Arthur said.
"Exactly." Helena pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward her. "And if you apply the same logic Silus just demonstrated, take the principle, strip it down to only what the base can handle, and integrate the fragment..."
"You get Silver-tier concealment against mana detection and physical detection on a Bronze-tier base," Brandon finished. He sat back in his chair. "That's useful, sure, but the cost is a bit high. Overlayering is expensive to maintain, and the sensory diffusion technique is all but impossible to simplify to that degree. We'd practically have to create an entirely new technique to make it work."
Brandon, playing devil's advocate, acknowledged the gaps in the design without dismissing it outright.
Helena nodded. "He's not wrong. The theory holds, but the practical execution is another matter entirely. Simplifying the sensory diffusion fragment to a level a Bronze base can sustain — that's not something you solve in an afternoon."
"Then we don't solve it today," Arthur said. "We blueprint it."
"Well, I guess we can do that. I'm sure Silus wasn't expecting us to make something on our first try." Brandon says in agreement.
"I don't see why not as well." Helena adds.
Author Note: Patreon.com/Lord_Cuckles or Search TabooQuill on Patreon for up to 20 Advance chapters.