The Misfits of Arcane Academy: A Journey of Unlikely Bonds - The Girl with Zero Points

Lina Schwarz wrote her answer in the final column of the test paper and set down her quill. Silence. In the seat beside her, a tall male examinee was still reading through the problem statements. Next to him, a red-haired girl bit her lip as she wrestled with equations. Beneath the high ceiling of the great hall, nearly a hundred examinees faced their papers in unison. No one noticed that Lina had stopped writing. (All done.) More than forty minutes remained. Lina folded her arms and reviewed the problems once more. Fundamental formulas in magical theory, the history of mana distribution after the Great Decline, mutual interference coefficients of the six attributes—all questions that could be solved by layering memorization and logic. The contents of the theory books she'd read while holed up in the Deep Archive came back to her, one by one, with perfect clarity. She could do this, she thought. Not that she'd say it aloud. Her jet-black short bob swayed forward with each glance down at the paper for review. The slightly flipped ends bothered even her. The uniform still felt unfamiliar—a cape with a black base and green trim made a rustling sound with every movement. The colors of the Zero Division, she'd confirmed beforehand. Arcana Academy, this school that trained mages, had five specialized divisions, each corresponding to an attribute. And for those whose aptitude didn't match any of them, there was the Zero Division. Lina had known from the start where she would be assigned. She folded the test paper and placed it at the corner of her desk. Now there was nothing to do but wait for time to pass. Outside the window, the sky over Miravenne was a clear blue. This academic city, positioned in the southeast of the central continent Eldvach, had a population of forty-two thousand, with the Academy crowning its center—everything seemed to slope gently toward it. Lina had lived in this city since she was twelve. She still remembered the day they'd moved here for her father's work. The old, settled appearance of the streets as seen through the carriage window. And three days after moving, the mana pathway examination she'd undergone. --- The written exam ended, and the examinees moved to the outdoor testing grounds. The Great Training Field—called the Cortus Arena, an open-air circular amphitheater with a capacity of three hundred. The practical exam was conducted in individual booths set up along its outer edge. Though "booths" was generous—they were just two-meter squares marked off by white lines, with a single examiner standing in each. Lina watched the adjacent booth from the corner of her eye as she waited her turn. A male examinee turned his palm forward. The next moment, a small flame was born from his fingertips. A crackling sound. The examiner wrote something down. That was all it took—that examinee's future was decided. (Flame attribute, then.) The six attributes—flame, water, wind, earth, light, dark. Mana was converted through pathways within the body called mana channels. The thickness and density of one's mana channels determined innate magical aptitude. About one in fifteen of the population possessed magical aptitude. The rest worked in agriculture or commerce, living with a certain respect for mages. That was the world, Lina thought. She didn't resent it. She simply couldn't bring herself to give up. "Next." At the examiner's voice, Lina entered her booth. A man in his mid-twenties stood with a record sheet. "Lina Schwarz. Perform basic flame attribute activation." Lina took a deep breath and turned her right palm forward. She directed her consciousness inward. The path of her mana channels— Nothing. No, there was something. There had to be. A pathway that ran through her, thin but definitely there. Lina focused her consciousness again. A sensation like pain appeared near her forehead. The mana channels existed. But they were far too thin—mana couldn't pass through them. Like trying to pour a river through the eye of a needle. A futile sensation. Nothing happened in her palm. "Next, water attribute." Nothing happened in her palm. "Wind attribute." Nothing. Six attempts. Six times, nothing but emptiness. The examiner wrote something on the record sheet. A sharp sound—the quill moving. It seemed impossibly loud. Lina wasn't looking at the examiner's face. Her gaze remained fixed on her own right hand. Slender, delicate fingers. The kind of hand that seemed to show the thinness of her mana channels in her very physique. "That concludes the exam. You may leave." "...Yes." She left the booth and walked toward the assembly point. Behind her, a voice. Quiet, but it echoed off the stone pavement of the Cortus Arena, carrying clearly. "Perfect score on the written exam but zero on the practical—kind of pointless, right?" Lina didn't stop walking. But her right hand gripped the edge of her uniform so tightly her fingers went white. So naturally she didn't even notice. --- The administrative office on the first floor of the main building was unusually crowded. The line for assignment notifications stretched halfway down the corridor. After waiting about ten minutes, Lina finally stood before the window. Behind it was a middle-aged male clerk. He had a meticulous face behind his glasses and confirmed, "You're Miss Schwarz," before picking up a stack of documents. His nameplate read "Walter Knobbe." "Your assignment is to the Zero Division. Here is your notification." "Thank you." "The Zero Division," Knobbe continued, flipping through the documents with a recitative tone, "allows exclusive use of the classroom. It's ideal as a self-study environment." (Which means no other students come, Lina thought but didn't say.) "The homeroom teacher's schedule is extremely flexible, enabling highly independent learning." (Which means the teacher doesn't come.) "Additionally, cafeteria usage times are independently set, allowing you to completely avoid congestion." (Which means you're segregated so you don't overlap with other divisions.) Knobbe looked up from the documents and smiled. "In other words, you have an excellent learning environment." Lina considered for a moment, then spoke. "May I ask one thing?" "Yes?" "Isn't what you just described less an explanation of treatment and more a euphemistic expression of abandonment?" Knobbe's smile stiffened slightly. "That is certainly not—" He dropped the documents in his hand. He gasped, crouched to pick them up, stood, adjusted his glasses, and gave a light cough. "In any case, congratulations on your enrollment." "Thank you." Her tone was completely flat. She took the notification and left the window. The line behind her still stretched on. --- The connecting corridor from the main building to the east wing was made of stone. It had a different character from the heavy walls of the Arcus Tower. The joints were numerous, and you could see that stones of different ages were fitted together. A place where old and new sections mixed—like the seams of time itself. Lina walked alone. The other examinees didn't come to the east wing. The classrooms of Divisions One through Five were concentrated in the main building and west wing, and most people didn't even know the wooden structure called the Henro existed until they checked a map. Midway down the corridor, her footsteps stopped. At a joint in the stone wall. Her gaze was drawn to the letters carved there. The characters were worn, but legible. —Those without mana channels, those who break the circle. Lina stared at those letters for a while. The color differed from the surrounding stone. The carving style was clearly different from other parts. Not something embedded later—the weathering of the stone's surface showed these letters had always been here. When were they carved? Who carved them? Why here? The meaning eluded her. Yet her gaze wouldn't leave. Her eyes traced over the letters again and again. She read them aloud. Kanmyaku naki mono, wa wo yaburu mono. The sequence of sounds carried no meaning. But something caught. A memory from when she was twelve surfaced. The mana pathway examination room was white. White walls, white ceiling, a doctor in a white coat. The doctor checked the numbers on the examination device, then looked at Lina's face—not with apology, but with the expression of someone stating fact—and said: "You shouldn't expect much from mana output." That was all. Don't expect much. Which meant: don't hope. The character "output impossible" would be carved into the aptitude column of the national registry. Since that day, Lina's evaluation regarding her mana channels had never changed. But she couldn't bring herself to give up. She didn't know why. But from the day she left that white room, Lina had begun visiting the Deep Archive. The central library of this academic city Miravenne—the Deep Archive, boasting a collection of one hundred forty thousand volumes. The structure of mana channels, the theory of the six attributes, the mechanism of mana conversion. The more she learned, the more she understood why her body was this way. Mana channels too thin. Resistant to external interference, but unable to output anything from within—an extreme structure. Knowledge couldn't fill the gap in her body. Yet she kept reading, searching for either a reason to give up or grounds to resist. Probably both. —Those without mana channels, those who break the circle. Lina took a small notebook from her bag and copied the letters. Only after finishing did she realize what she'd done. She hadn't been conscious of it. Her hand had moved on its own. She made a slightly strange face, then returned the notebook to her bag and continued walking. --- When she pushed open the door to the Zero Division classroom on the second floor of the Henro, no one was there. Six desks and six chairs were arranged haphazardly. The arrangement was disorganized, with no trace of anyone having thought it through. The wood of the window frames was old, the paint peeling in places. A completely different world from the polished stone pavement of the main building corridor. But the window itself was large. Lina pulled out a desk in the front row and sat down. She took the assignment notification from her bag and placed it on the desk. Beside it, she laid the notebook she'd carried since childhood. Now on her third volume, filled with notes on magical theory. The cover was quite worn. She looked out the window for a while. The cityscape of Miravenne spread before her. The silver light of the Regen River visible in the distance. The roofs of the stalls in Tseit Square arranged neatly. The blue of the academic city's low sky stretching endlessly. The entire city seemed to slope gently, flowing toward the Academy—that was the sensation. From here, the city looked small. The Zero Division—capacity twelve, graduation rate approximately thirty percent. On paper, registered as "regular students of Arcana Academy" equal to Divisions One through Five, with equivalent credentials upon graduation. But the reality was vastly different. The dedicated classroom was isolated in a corner of the Henro, cut off from the main building. No joint classes with other divisions. The homeroom teacher appeared only a few times a week. Cafeteria usage times were set separately. A system that shared only the framework with the other divisions while being thoroughly segregated within—that was the Zero Division. Everything the clerk Knobbe had listed as "special treatment" was merely that segregation wrapped in polite language. Lina had known this before enrollment from her research. She'd known, and come anyway. It was half true that she had no other choice. No other magical education institution existed for someone recorded as "output impossible" in the magical aptitude registry. But the other half was—a baseless conviction that something e

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Name: The Misfits of Arcane Academy: A Journey of Unlikely Bonds
Author: Novelia

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