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"So, how does this work?" I asked.

"Hmm, well that\'s a good question, actually. How indeed? You see, Requiem is by no means an ordinary sword, I hope you already know. So when the ability to make its user summon magic circles is just one of those things it can do which other swords cannot."

"It still doesn\'t explain how a sword can do all that."

"Well, that… I can tell you, but I highly doubt you would be able to understand a thing from it. It\'s quite complicated, you know?" her eyes wandered far away as she spoke.

"It\'s alright. I\'ll try my best to grasp whatever I can."

"Eh? I mean, okay. Don\'t blame me for anything," she said. I passed her a knowing smile.

"As I\'ve already said multiple times before, Requiem is not just a sword. She is alive, and she has a soul of her own. And as you know, every living thing has its own field of mana, no matter how big or small.

"Humans like you can manipulate that mana to their desire and cast spells, hence it affects the surroundings. But a plant, for example, has a very weak field of mana; so weak that it\'s barely noticeable, and for the most part, it doesn\'t help the plant cast magic or even interact with other magical forces.

"Just like that, since Requiem is a living being too, she also has her own field of mana. As for how strong it is, well, not really what you would expect. Her mana is big and powerful, but it operates on a different frequency. And who else has mana that works in a different frequency, I wonder?" she made it sound like a question, but it was plain as day she was referring to me.

"But that doesn\'t clear much. I get that the sword and I—"

"Me too!"

"Ah…sigh. Okay, I get that the sword, you, and I have similar mana\'s. Though that still doesn\'t shed light on how I can cast spells with the help of a sword."

"Firstly, it isn\'t A sword; it\'s Requiem, you idiot! Only one of its type. Secondly, I am getting to that. Though I will still hold on to my statement that you won\'t be able to understand this part," she drew in a breath and then continued.

"What really happens when doing what you did back then is that Requiem takes on your mana and then passes it through the mana circuits inside her, circuits that were made for that type of mana frequency. In doing so, she changes the runes on whatever magic circle you were going to cast," she came to an abrupt stop as if not satisfied by what she said.

"\'Change\' won\'t be the right word, actually. She alters the runes inscribed on the magic circle according to your mana. By the way, your magiken also only works with Requiem because she has the mana circuits required for processing that sort of mana.

"Anyway, that is how you\'re able to use magic with the help of Requiem. She takes your mana, passes it through her magic circuits, and then boom. You get your magic circle," Req said as she mimicked the gesture of an explosion with her hands.

"That still leaves a lot of untied knots," I said. "Like, how does it know which spell I want to cast and the required magic circle for that? There are a couple of things more which you didn\'t explain."

"Ah, that. Well, to understand that, you\'ll have to learn how mana works down to the molecular level. It\'s complicated, and I\'m not going to try and teach you that," she stated with a shrug. "It\'s boring too," she stretched her arms and legs as if waking up after a long nap.

"I see," I replied, and began walking again. She followed.

I can push her for the details if I want to, I guess that is within my powers as the owner of the Requiem sword. But I won\'t. There are two reasons for it.

First, I don\'t want her to sense any malicious intent from me or feel like I am forcing her into anything. I\'ll get the best results if she worked for me with her own happy will and not because I forced her to do so—the same goes for Ellyn too.

And secondly, I, myself, don\'t want to get too tangled up in the working of mana. That is a subject of interest, I admit, but not for now, as it is bound to take up a lot of my time. Plus, I have other things to do.

My main problem, of using magic, had been solved. Though I had a blank expression and wasn\'t showing it on my face. From the inside, I was bustling with excitement.

***

After that, I left the training room assigned to me, commanded Req to turn back into a sword—which she did after complaining about it for a long minute—and finally stepped out of the Instrs building.

Dusk was hitting, and the sun was almost down by the time I came out. The sky was dyed a bright golden with a tinge of orange in it, and the white clouds floating around with not a care in the world were looking marvelous.

I walked down the path toward the dorms. On my way, I met Ellyn, who was going to the Instrs for her extra classes. It was a good time, and she had a handful of minutes left, so she gave me her daily report, and went on her way afterward.

I headed to the café and had an evening breakfast with a couple of donuts and a cup of coffee. Then, when I was done with all that, I returned to my dorm room.

***

Inside the Instrs building, in one of the privately rented training rooms meant for physical body training, there was a boy, lying on a bench press machine and lifting the weights up and down.

There was no one there to help him balance the weights, thus he was doing it by himself. Every time he lifted, the muscles on his biceps and triceps tightened, along with a lot of nerves that came visible after the skin was stretched to its limits.

He was drowned in sweat and had been bench-pressing for about an hour now. He\'d done two hours of push-ups and squats before that, and even before that was his weight-lifting practice. But there was no hint of tiredness in him, he was not out of breath or dying to take a rest.

Needlessly to say, the boy had quite a muscular body. He was still only 16 and there were some limits he could not break, but that was just about it. While he couldn\'t break the limits, he had pushed himself down to the very edge.

It wasn\'t an exaggeration to say that he was the most muscular boy in the whole first year of the academy…the second year might also count in. The boy had short black hair, one step away from being bald. His hair was not always like this until he cut it short.

Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Before he could reply, whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again, this time more loudly.

"Come in," the boy said, without stopping his bench press.

The door opened and a male student with blonde hair entered the room. He had a face, a man whose horse has burned makes, panic, and despair. He hurriedly took steps toward the boy on the bench press and stopped before him. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he looked at the muscular boy.

"What is it, Wynfir?" he asked, finally giving his arms some rest and sitting up straight on the bench press machine.

"He… I saw him…again. He\'s back…back in the academy," Wynfir replied as he caught his breath and tried to calm himself. "I rushed here as soon as I was free," he said.

"That bastard? You sure it was him?" the muscular boy asked, his body going a bit stiff upon the mention of "him".

"Yeah. How can I ever forget the face of the person who took Winston\'s arms…and destroyed his life," Wynfir said with a darkened expression.

"The hell are on about?! You were passed out in a second, don\'t make shit up!" the muscular boy growled.

"I…!? Ah, leave it. But, I\'m sure, it was really him. I checked multiple times. Zero Blanks, that is his name, right? I\'ve no doubt about it. He\'d come back," Wynfire stated.

Silence filled the room as neither of them spoke anything afterward for a long while. The boy sitting on the bench press machine stared at the floor below as he went through something in his mind. Wynfire on the other hand stood nervously.

Then the silence that seemed to last for eternity was broken.

"When he stopped showing up for classes and disappeared from the whole campus, I was not pleased. I thought I would be, but I was wrong," the boy said, finally looking up.

"Most of them didn\'t even notice that he\'d vanished, and those who did think that he was sick or something. But I was not like them, I was keeping a close eye on him and those around him. When he disappeared, his sister was worried, too worried about a sick person\'s sister. Then after a few steps even she stopped coming out of her house, and that was when my suspicion reached its peak.

"I went and asked the teachers about it, and they simply said that he is not well and won\'t be coming to classes for a while. So I took the final step and went to his dorm room. You know what I found there?" the boy looked at Wynfire, but despite that, it was clear that this wasn\'t a question meant to be answered by others.

"It was locked…the dorm room. That was when it became clear to me. Either he vanished by his own will or something bad had happened, and judging from the behavior of those around him, I believed it was the latter.

"That was when I realized it; I wasn\'t happy with the fact that the person I was targeting had disappeared without me doing anything. I was angry and sad because now I won\'t be able to kill him with my own hands, the person who took my friend, Winston\'s arms and his life from him.

"Do you know? When Winston went back to his house after leaving the academy, he was disowned by his family. Can you believe it? His family left him because he didn\'t have arms now and won\'t be able to carry on the family lineage. That\'s why they left him. And who was responsible for all this? Him. Zero fucking Blanks!

"I still remember…the feeling of powerlessness I had when he froze Winston\'s arms and then kicked his lumpy body. I couldn\'t do a thing, other than standing like a dummy in the corner, hoping that I\'m not the next in line…" he looked down at his hands, and then tightly curled them into fists.

"That was a thing of the past. But now, if it is as you say, and he has truly returned. Then I am going to kill him for what he did to my friend. I was powerless back then, but not anymore. I\'ve spent a good amount of time researching his abilities while increasing my own.

"All that I need now is a golden opportunity, a right time to strike. When that time will come, that will be the end of him," he turned to face Wynfire.

There was a fire in his eyes of him, the boy named Emmeric. A fire of determination, a fire of friendship, a fire of wanting to avenge a lost brother. A fire that wasn\'t going to extinguish anytime soon.