Above the Magic Network

"Magic is everything" - this school motto is engraved on every piece of obsidian at Crescent Magic Academy and in the heart of every apprentice who walks through the door. Zero Infernet, the son of the Marquis of the West, has the talent of elemental perception, but is considered to have no practical value. At Crescent Magic Academy, nobles monopolize magic resources. Talented civilians and slaves were arranged to serve as sparring partners in formal classes, mopping floors, being skipped by instructors to ask questions, and even the magic crystals they received were tampered with. He helped a fire apprentice who couldn't keep up with the progress in the corner of the training hall. Then the second, and the third. Within a month, his small classroom was filled with civilian faces who had been abandoned by their aristocratic tutors. But this classroom is being watched. Someone was knocking on the door from outside, someone was sitting in the back row smiling, someone was waiting for everyone in the deeper shadows - he couldn't see it, but he could feel it. Every elemental trajectory in the academy is deflecting subtly, as if something is slowly spreading above everyone's heads. "Magic is everything" - this school motto is engraved on every piece of obsidian. But magic itself is never everything.