GameDev Reincarnated into His Own Creation

Vol 2 - Chapter 26.1: Multithreading

The excitement building in Vel's chest faltered slightly at her next words.

"But I don't think I'm the right person to explain this to you," Lyvenna continued, glancing briefly at the other students. "My education and study purpose was specifically for unstable students. This goes beyond my formal training."

Vel knew what Lyvenna meant, and understood something like this would go beyond anyone with unstable attunement.

"Who else could I ask about this?" Vel wondered aloud, his mind already racing through possibilities.

Lyvenna straightened her posture, reverting to her more formal instructor stance. She paused, as if considering something, then seemed to think better of it. "The Archmagister would be your best resource. Though I doubt she will spend her time with an unstable student, even if you're related to Saint Landre."

She tapped her chalk against the board thoughtfully. "I've seen her show no interest even to the royal family—even the king's relatives can't command her attention unless she deems it worthwhile."

"Any chance that I could arrange a meeting with the Archmagister?" Vel asked, trying to keep his tone casual.

Lyvenna's lips curved into a slight smile. "If you perform well in the first bracket of the tournament—and I don't mean well, I mean very well—maybe there's a chance."

Vel frowned as the realization hit him. To learn advanced magic that might help them in the tournament, he needed to perform exceptionally well in the tournament first. A classic circular dependency.

Vel scratched his head intensely, causing his hair to become completely disheveled. The more he considered the problem, the more frustrated he became with the circular logic. His classmates watched him silently, waiting for his next insight or suggestion.

After a moment of contemplation, Vel's gaze returned to the Stormbringer diagram on the board. If he couldn't access layered casting yet, he'd need to work with what was available—the crude, original method.

"Why did you specifically ask me about this one spell, Mr. Novalance?" Lyvenna's question broke through his thoughts.

Vel looked up, his fingers still tangled in his messy hair. "Because I was thinking about the 'chaos' element that we discussed." He stepped closer to the board, tracing the chaotic sigil with his finger. "Turns out, Chaos doesn't need to be invoked—it's just there, here in the diagram."

Vel wrapped his fingers around his chin, studying the Stormbringer diagram on the board. To his classmates, he appeared deep in contemplation. In reality, his interface had quietly registered the spell, displaying information only he could see:

[Stormbringer - Registered]
[Incantation: Aqu-alea-voltis Aretum]
[Status: Ready for casting]

The randomization wasn't just a feature—it was the key to understanding how unstable attunements might be harnessed rather than controlled. But knowing the theory was one thing. Actually casting it required the proper incantation.

He turned to Lyvenna, who had been the one to introduce this spell in the first place.

"Instructor, what would the incantation be for this spell?"

Lyvenna moved to the board, chalk in hand. "It's quite complex, but the incantation is..." She wrote carefully, each letter precise: Aqu-alea-voltis Aretum

Tomas leaned forward, squinting at the board. "That sounds... different from normal spells."

Mira looked up from her notebook. "Different how?"

Tomas gestured at the incantation, his brow furrowed. "The words don't flow like regular incantations."

Enya nodded slowly, her focus crystal glinting as she shifted in her seat. "Now that you mention it, it does sound strange. Like someone took normal words and mashed them together."

Rohen crossed his arms, studying the written incantation. "Is there a reason for that structure, Instructor?"

Lyvenna paused, chalk hovering over the board. She glanced away briefly before meeting their eyes again. "The sources I encountered only provided the incantation itself. No explanation for why it's structured this way."

"Which sources? Maybe we could look into them ourselves."

Lyvenna hesitated, her fingers tightening around the chalk. "It's... instructor circle knowledge. Not really found in standard textbooks. These things get passed around informally among faculty."

Vel stared at the incantation, his mind racing. Years of programming had trained him to recognize patterns, and something about the word structure tugged at his memory. Each component seemed to blend into the next—not cleanly separated like typical spell words, but fused together.

"Look at how the words connect," he said, stepping closer to the board. "'Aqu-alea'—the 'a' from 'Aqua' flows into 'alea.' What if the words need to blend together instead of staying separate?"

His classmates gathered closer, examining the pattern he'd identified.

Mira approached the board, tracing the letters with her finger. "You're right. Regular spells have clear breaks between words, but this..."

Enya leaned forward, understanding dawning. "So chaos spells need different incantations entirely?"

"Maybe, this could be how we communicate with the Chaos spirit," Vel said, uncertainty creeping into his voice. "Normal spell structure might not work because chaos doesn't follow normal patterns."

The classroom fell silent as they absorbed this observation. Lyvenna set down her chalk, her expression shifting from confusion to dawning understanding.

"If this pattern holds true for other chaos-element spells..." she began, then trailed off.

Rohen leaned back in his chair. "Then we need to understand how this fusion works."

Vel considered Rohen's words, studying the incantation on the board. A thought occurred to him.

"What if every 'failed' unstable spell we've ever cast was just using the wrong incantation structure?"

Tomas blinked. "You mean it wasn't us that failed? That we weren't the problem?"

"Think about it - we could have been learning the wrong approach from the beginning. What if unstable students shouldn't start with basic spells at all? What if we could handle something like Stormbringer right from the start, assuming our theory is correct?"

Mira sat back in her seat, the implications sinking in. "So we might have been capable of casting them all along."

Lyvenna moved toward her desk, gathering her materials with renewed purpose. "This gives us our research direction then. I want you to find any spells that incorporate randomness or chaotic elements. Pay attention to their incantation patterns—see if they follow this same structure."

She turned back to face her students. "If our theory is correct, you might be able to cast spells we never thought possible for first-year students."

The weight of that possibility settled over the classroom. For several minutes, no one spoke as they absorbed the implications of what they'd discovered.

When the morning bells chimed from the Academy tower, signaling the end of class period, the silence was broken.

As his classmates gathered their books, the energy in the room had shifted. Tomas was already sketching spell circles in his notebook margins. Enya muttered potential incantations under her breath. Even Rohen looked energized by the possibility.

Lyvenna, however, left the classroom eagerly. Like she had somewhere urgent to go.

Vel remained at the board, examining the Stormbringer incantation. If their theory was correct, everything they thought they knew about their limitations was wrong.

They had work to do. And less than two months to prove themselves before the tournament.