Chapter 20: Analysis Error

Lucien tapped the side of his skull with a triumphant grin.

"The result? My conventional mana affinity, which was already embarrassingly low, has dropped to zero. Flatline. A brick wall has more magical conductivity than my bloodstream right now."

Rowan looked utterly bewildered. "Why are you smiling?! That means—"

"That means," Lucien interrupted, his smile widening into something bordering on holy ecstasy, "that under Imperial Regulation Section 4, Paragraph B, I am formally classified as Magically Incompetent for High-Hazard Practical Studies! I am being permanently withdrawn from all combat-oriented coursework! No dungeon sweeps! No wilderness survival training! No monster dissection labs! No practical vanguard drills with shouting muscleheads!"

Lucien spread his arms wide, basking in the invisible glory of his bureaucratic salvation.

"Starting next week, Rowan, my schedule consists entirely of: Imperial History of Agriculture, Principles of Grain Taxation, Introductory Astrological Philosophy, and Advanced Nap Management in Sunlit Courtyards. Do you know what this means?!"

"That... that you’re going to become an accountant?" Rowan guessed, his brain struggling to keep up.

"It means I will never have to cross paths with Cassian Valemont ever again!" Lucien hissed triumphantly. "The Astra Party lives in the elite combat spires! They take High-Tier Annihilation Magic and Abyssal Combat Theory! They exist in the stratosphere of violence! Meanwhile, I will be in the basement of the humanities annex, drinking lukewarm chamomile tea with seventy-year-old professors who don’t even remember their own names! I am free, Rowan! I am a salted fish floating in a pond of absolute, unbothered obscurity!"

Rowan stared at his friend, feeling entirely dumbfounded.

For a moment, the boy seemed to genuinely consider whether the Abyssal Crawler’s claw had pierced Lucien’s skull instead of his chest.

"Wait..." Rowan muttered, scratching his messy hair. "What about the Imperial Awakening Ceremony on Friday? Everyone has to attend that! Even the unawakened!"

Lucien waved a dismissive hand, thoroughly unconcerned.

"That’s just a mere imperial formality. You know how the empire operates. Every citizen undergoes the baseline mana sweep at age four to check for divine bloodline sparks. If nothing shows up, you get a second sweep at age twenty when the physical body reaches complete maturity, just in case a dormant affinity settled late. Thousands of students go through it every decade. Ninety-nine point nine percent of late-stage sweeps reveal absolutely nothing. The orb will glow a dull, pathetic grey, the proctor will stamp my paper ’Normal Human’, and I will return to my chamomile tea."

And as for that ridiculous System interface hovering behind my eyes, Lucien added silently, it’s currently stuck in ’Analysis Error.’

’It has no quests. It has no timers. As long as I don’t poke it, it won’t poke me.’

Rowan let out a long, ragged exhale, his shoulders visibly dropping by four inches.

He wiped the last trace of moisture from his eyes, a tiny, tentative smile finally breaking through his tear-streaked face.

"So... we’re really going to be okay? You’re not going to die, and I don’t have to flee to the pig farm?"

"We are going to be extraordinarily, gloriously boring," Lucien declared, tossing the silver butter knife onto the breakfast tray. "Now, get up off my floor, Rowan. Go wash your face in the basin. You smell of teenage panic and stale rye bread. Then, we are going to take a peaceful, uneventful walk across the lower campus to submit my formal course withdrawal forms."

"Okay," Rowan sniffled, scrambling to his feet with the clumsy, uncoordinated grace of an overgrown puppy. "Okay! I can do that! As long as there are no monsters! Or giant swords! Or people who look at me aggressively!"

Twenty minutes later, Lucien was properly attired in the standard navy-blue uniform of the academy’s civilian-humanities division, mercifully free of the armored pauldrons and combat straps favored by the students, and draped in a light, comfortable wool coat.

Rowan, having vigorously scrubbed his face until his cheeks were bright pink, hovered precisely six inches behind Lucien’s right shoulder, flinching whenever a dry leaf rustled in the manicured hedges.

The morning air of Astraea’s lower residential plateau was crisp and refreshing.

Far above them, the great floating spires of the Combat Divisions gleamed in the sunlight like polished spears, but down here, in the tranquil, cobblestone lanes of the Administrative Ward, life was delightfully mundane.

Elderly groundskeepers raked golden leaves from the walkways; junior clerks hurried between archive towers carrying stacks of parchment; and the ambient noise was defined not by explosions or battle cries, but by the gentle, murmuring chatter of students who had never held a sword in their lives.

"See?" Lucien murmured, taking a deep, satisfying breath of the autumnal air as they strolled down the tree-lined boulevard toward the Registrar’s Office. "Peace. Serenity. Absolute mediocrity. Not a single protagonist in sight."

"I still feel like someone is watching us," Rowan whimpered, his head swiveling like an owl on high alert. "What if Lord Valemont has scouts in the trees?! What if that purple-haired witch is growing carnivorous mushrooms in our dorm plumbing?!"

"Rowan, you are suffering from acute paranoia. Cassian Valemont is currently in the high-tier sparring arena doing four thousand one-handed pushups while brooding over the moral complexities of the universe. He doesn’t even know this street exists."

They turned a corner past the towering marble facade of the Archive of Ancient Treatises, entering a secluded, sun-dappled courtyard paved with pale flagstones and ringed by ancient, weeping willows.

And precisely at that exact second, Lucien’s internal narrative-alarm went off with the deafening roar of a siren.

Standing in the center of the courtyard, leaning against the rim of a dry stone fountain with an expression of menace, was a young man.

He was dressed in the flamboyant, scarlet-and-gold uniform of the Imperial Division, featuring an absurdly oversized, feathered cavalier hat, a flowing velvet capelet pinned with an ostentatious silver gryphon crest, and a polished rapier resting at his hip with an excessively gem-encrusted basket hilt.