Chapter 111: The List (31)
The lecture had been going on for so long that Balt was beginning to suspect time itself had given up.
At some point, maybe an hour ago, maybe a century, the concept of “before the lecture” had ceased to exist.
There was only now: the droning voice of Professor Halewick and the endless scratching of quills against paper.
“…and as I have emphasized, the differential resonance between an active ward and a latent construct hinges on the gradient across the barrier’s perimeter. This gradient, if properly aligned with the caster’s outer etheric flow, can theoretically produce a sustained stabilizing field without direct replenishment of mana through deliberate channelling…”
The words flowed like water from a cracked faucet, constant, unstoppable, and utterly impossible to turn off.
Balt sat at his cramped desk, spine arched like a dying shrimp, a thick stack of handwritten notes piled in front of him.
The pile was roughly the same breadth as his forearm, which was impressive and horrifying in equal measure. It sat there with quiet accusation, pages stacked unevenly from repeated handling, edges smudged with graphite and sweat.
He had started the night telling himself he would organize it later.
Now it felt like a monument to bad decisions.
His right hand was on its eighth pencil.
He knew this because the other seven were already lined up beside him like fallen soldiers, snapped tips dulled, erasers worn down to useless pink nubs.
Each one marked a stage of optimism steadily beaten out of him.
He’d sharpened them carefully at first. By the fifth, he’d stopped pretending.
His eyes were bloodshot, lids heavy and irritated, vision swimming just enough to make the text blur at the edges. Every blink came slower than the last, dragging against exhaustion.
His wrist ached with a deep, persistent soreness, the kind that didn’t fade when he shook it out.
His finger muscles, muscles he was beginning to suspect didn’t exist in the human body until one took this class, twitched involuntarily, small spasms betraying how long they’d been clenched around wood and graphite.
He blinked blearily at the parchment before him.
The words remained.
Unmoved.
The words he had written no longer looked like Common; they looked like the ancient curse of someone who had once studied too hard and spontaneously combusted.
All around him, the lecture hall was packed.
Students filled every seat, lined the aisles, even sat cross-legged on the floor with their backs against the walls.
The air was thick with the smell of ink, paper, and slowly dying willpower.
And yet, despite the exhaustion, every single one of them was taking notes like their life depended on it.
Because it did.
Professor Halewick’s exams were rumored to be so complex that even the answer keys occasionally broke into tears.
“…and so, as per the theorem of Arc-structural Continuum proposed by High Archon Deveret in the Sixth Thaumic Age-”
“...gods above, she’s still going,” Balt muttered under his breath, the words nearly drowned out by the constant scratching of quills.
The girl sitting next to him let out a quiet, strangled laugh.
“I stopped feeling my wrist around the second hour,” she whispered, not looking up from her notes.
“By the third hour, I think I reached ascending. Now I just… exist.”
Balt’s lips twitched.
“You too, huh?”
“Mm-hm.”
She turned her head slightly, she had bright chestnut hair tied up messily and dark circles under her eyes that could rival Balt’s own.
“I’m Lysara. First-year in Defensive Constructs.”
“Balt, currently regretting life.”
She huffed through her nose.
“Relatable.”
They went quiet for a moment, both trying to keep up with the professor, who showed no signs of human frailty.
“…and thus, by integrating the counter-resonance sigil along the external circumference of the projected barrier, one may observe a self-correcting stabilization effect that directly corresponds to the caster’s unconscious etheric rhythm-”
Balt’s quill paused mid-stroke.
“Did she just say unconscious etheric rhythm, I am starting to hear static…”
Lysara groaned, “I think so. I’m not even sure if that’s real or something she made up halfway through.”
“My notes just turned into a prayer halfway through that sentence.”
“Same. I think I wrote ‘please end this’ in three different languages.”
She tilted her notebook toward him; sure enough, amidst diagrams and runic annotations, there were desperate scrawls like HELP ME and SHE DOES NOT BREATHE.
Balt barely stifled a laugh, mostly because he was too tired to make any sound louder than a wheeze.
Four hours.
Four hours of uninterrupted talking.
The professor’s voice didn’t even waver.
It was calm, unbroken, perfectly steady, the kind of monotonous cadence that lulled the brain into a false sense of listening while quietly smothering its will to live.
At one point, Balt caught himself writing down the same word three times in a row because his brain had gone on autopilot.
Lysara leaned closer, whispering in a tone of desperate solidarity.
“You know what’s actually terrifying? I think she’s still on the introduction.”
He blinked.
“No.”
She nodded grimly.
“I checked the syllabus. We’re still in Chapter One. Section A.”
Balt looked at her, then at the towering pile of his notes.
“I’ve written enough to publish a book.”
“And it would all be meaningless,” she replied softly, her tone almost reverent.
“Because only she knows what half of these words mean.”
Her hand trembled as she wrote.
“My nails were bleeding at some point,” she added absently, “but it dried up before I noticed.”
He stared at her, equal parts horrified and impressed.
“…You might be the bravest person I’ve met.”
“I’m not brave,” she murmured.
“I’m just trying to pass.”
Professor Halewick’s voice continued, unrelenting.
“Now, if we refer to the comparative models proposed in the Unified Warding Thesis-”
Balt’s quill slowed.
His eyes glazed.
The words blurred together, becoming a continuous line of black ink across the page.
He didn’t even know what he was writing anymore, something about harmonic oscillation and layer inversion, maybe.
Or maybe it was his last will and testament.
He was about to surrender, to just lay his head down and accept death by lecture, when Lysara nudged him.
“Hey,” she whispered, rummaging in her satchel.
“Here.”
She slid something small across the desk, a purple candy, glossy and faintly translucent.
Balt blinked at it.
“Uh. Thanks?”
“Herbal concentrate,” she said, her voice hushed.
“Helps with focus and mana flow. I’ve taken three. That’s probably the only reason I haven’t merged with this chair yet.”
He stared at her for a beat.
“Is it safe?”
She gave a half-smile that could’ve meant yes or I’ll let you find out.
“Mostly.”
He didn’t hesitate long.
Anything was better than dying of academic exhaustion.
He unwrapped the candy and popped it into his mouth.
The flavor was odd, sharp and sweet at once, like mint mixed with lavender and ozone.
It tingled on his tongue, spreading warmth through his mouth, down his throat, then outwards like liquid clarity.
For a second, his head went light, the world seeming to sway gently, as if the air had thickened around him.
Then, suddenly, everything sharpened.
The fuzziness in his mind receded.
The words on the page seemed… legible again.
The droning of the professor became distinguishable sentences.
He could follow the lecture.
Actually follow it.
He blinked, straightened in his seat, and picked up his quill again.
The words flowed smoother now.
His handwriting steadied.
His note-taking accelerated.
The constant fog of fatigue that had clouded his thoughts was gone, replaced by crisp focus and a faint hum of energy behind his eyes.
Beside him, Lysara smirked faintly without looking up from her notes.
“See? Told you.”
Balt nodded absently, his attention already fixed on the professor’s words as they rolled seamlessly from one complex concept into another.
“…and therefore, a barrier of proper calibration does not merely repel external forces,” Professor Halewick intoned,
“it listens to them, adapts, absorbs, transforms. The ideal barrier is not an obstacle. It is understanding made manifest.”
For the first time all day, Balt understood what she meant.
Or at least, he thought he did.
Either way, his notes began to make sense.
His wrist stopped aching.
The words flowed.
His mind clicked into rhythm with the lecture’s pace.
He exhaled slowly, the faint taste of herbal sweetness still lingering on his tongue.
Taking a deep breath, Balt got back into writing down the never ending sermon that was being sung by the professor.
And in the four hours he had been enduring it, he could finally have some hope.
The hope that he will leave this lecture hall a sane man.
And maybe, just maybe, he could survive this class after all.
