Ethan suspected he would never fully get used to the sensation of traveling through the portals. He also figured he was one of few first-year students who had used them the most. Going from the city to a rural area was disorienting. The landscape that sprawled before him was not exactly as he expected.

  "Welcome to the breadbasket of Gale House." Alex made his pronouncement, holding his arms wide and sweeping his hand across the landscape as though he were a realtor trying to offload a few farmhouses.

  There was a small cluster of buildings around the gate. Nearby, Ethan could see the same wooden pavilion he had seen near all the teleportation stations, and a tiny town had popped up around the area. In the distance, he saw rolling hills, as he had expected, and the dotting of forests here and there. But it was the floating islands that drew his attention. It looked as though somebody had ripped the land masses from the ground and simply placed them in the sky. They danced among the clouds like errant petals of a flower on the wind.

  “That's… I didn’t expect that.” Ethan gawked, looking up in an attempt to judge the size of the islands.

  “You get used to it.” Finn waved a dismissive hand.

  "Time's wasting. If we don't hurry this up, I'm going to miss a very important meeting." Alex clapped his hands together as though to rouse the troops. "Luna, I want you to scout ahead. Since our newest member has no fast travel ability, Finn and I will walk him the rest of the way. It'll be nice to get some fresh air, anyway."

  A devious grin spread across Luna’s face. “You’re going to that musical again, aren’t you?”

  But she didn’t give him a chance to answer. Ethan watched as his mentor jumped into the air, landing on a sword that had appeared from nowhere. She stood there for only a few moments before zipping off.

  “That is also very normal,” Alex said. “Let’s go.”

  In his new world, Ethan found himself not questioning things quite as much, at least not the things he had no chance of understanding. Instead, he fell in line behind the other men. One thing he could change, though, was his lack of knowledge about this job.

  "So, what am I going to be doing here?"

  "You're going to be helping Luna with the mana control of the area. The first thing we have to do is siphon off the excess mana so that this thing doesn't restart itself. If it is, as it has been described, all we need to do is stamp some mana suppression wards on it, and it should be fine." Alex's explanation was concise, but it boiled down to Ethan standing on the sidelines and watching how things were done. He wouldn't complain about that.

  As the group traveled, Ethan couldn't help but let his gaze linger skyward. They watched as they passed underneath one of the many floating islands. Seeing something like that brought questions to the forefront of his mind. "How do you discern between what is anomalous and what is not?" He looked between the island and Alex. “Surely, the island itself was powered by some kind of magic. Why was it not anomalous, while some crystal generating water was?”

  "Wow, that's actually a pretty good question." Finn laughed from his position as second in the formation.

  Alex turned around, shaking his head. "That's kind of the problem with the group. Let's talk about the formation of the Anomalous Materials Group. It started when some students had a knack for mana control. A group had already been dealing with them, but they were… How to put this? Too important to stay here. That's when our benefactors came to us asking for some help. They claimed it violated the nature of the system. This was well before my time, by the way."

  "After the benefactors guided those first students to quite a few anomalies, those students created a pretty handy checklist." Finn laughed, shaking his head. "You kind of just get used to knowing which is which. If you take the islands above us, for example, we can explain how they're up there magically. There are sections of the landscape that are rich with ore that exude wind and gravity-aligned magic. Now, you might say that sounds awfully familiar to this water-gushing crystal, but it's not. Can you guess why?"

  "Because you can't account for the amount of water-aligned magic the crystal is putting off." Ethan thought the answer was pretty simple, but their rubric for diagnosis seemed rather loose. He wasn't sure if there was a better way to do things, but this certainly didn't seem like the way forward.

  "That's exactly right. We can measure what's happening and make an educated guess. We can also compare it to other things that we know are natural." Alex actually stopped the procession, turning and holding two hands out with palms upturned. "If you take on this hand an item crafted by somebody that grants the user quite a lot of attributes or perhaps even a skill. We understand how this item was created, and we can compare it to other items with similar effects."

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  He held up his other hand, wiggling it in the air. "And then take this item, a wooden sword that slowly drives the user insane. Now, that sort of enchanted item might be some necromancer's artifact or it could be an anomaly. In cases like that, we don't distinguish; we simply seal this item away."

  So, the line between what was an anomaly and what wasn't truly was blurry. Ethan was now determined that their method of marking anomalies was lacking, but as he understood almost nothing about this world, he had to go with what they said. He couldn't assume that he held the answers when he was looking inside this world from the outside. Once he gained some experience, he could make judgments. For now, he was there to learn as much as possible and maybe make a bit of money so he could get his hands on some more of that monster meat.

  The walk wasn't quite as long as Ethan had expected. They approached vast wetlands, which soon became clear were generated from the anomaly. He decided that discovering these objects might be rather obvious if they presented in a similar way. Both Finn and Alex headed toward the center of the disturbance, while Luna hopped off her flying sword and jerked her head to the side.

  "Come on, I'm going to show you a simple processing technique that might come in handy later. This will be out of your skill range, but you should try.”

  Ethan was happy to follow along and soon found himself marching along the edge of the marsh. Luna showed her technique, which was similar to the mana-replenishing skill she had taught him yesterday. It was all about pulling mana in from the surrounding air, but this time she was overloading her soul with energy and then expelling it. She had to explain it to him. What she was actually doing was processing it to be her own style of mana and then releasing it into the air. That would make it harmless so it wouldn't generate any more water.

  After Ethan decided that it was a skill outside of his range, he excused himself as he spotted something far more interesting in the distance. He said, "I'm going to go check on those students over there." The scribe gestured to a hill with a lone tree. He could see a fireball flying into the sky and recognized the style of a member of Gale House.

  "I'll come collect you when it's time to gather the anomaly. Alex will want you to see that part of the process, but this is going to take several hours of mana processing, so you are free to go."

  Pulling his pen from his chest, Ethan wiggled his eyebrows. Luna rolled her eyes. He headed off, stomping through the marsh and lamenting his nice shoes. He didn't think they were magical and doubted they would survive the trip, but perhaps the group would give him some money for the job, even if he didn't really do anything.

  The closer Ethan got to the pair of students, the more he felt the flavor of their magic. Each time they cast a spell, his affinity ring vibrated in his chest as though responding eagerly. They spotted him approaching and were oddly on guard.

  "Sorry, I'm just a first-year out here studying. I got to the academy late and was wondering if I could observe you practicing." Ethan held his hands up, hoping that it put him in a pacified position. The two students were both elves, a man and a woman. They looked at each other and shrugged in response.

  "That's fine. Just keep your distance. We're practicing the barrier spell and fireball."

  "Thank you," Ethan said, saluting them with his pen. He found a dry rock and sat down, holding his pen at the ready and watched as the pair got back to work. He appreciated it. They didn't mind him observing, but they truly were just using two basic-level spells. It wasn't as though they were harboring secret abilities like him.

  Ethan pressed his pen into the air, leaving a small streak of his primordial mana. It was an action designed solely to get his mind working. He focused on only three things: the practicing students, his Emulation Mode ability, and the nib of his pen. He traced a circle in the air, broken with a gap at the top. Inside the circle, he drew two lines. Although he wasn't entirely sure where the design had come from, he focused on it with all of his being, allowing himself to be drawn into that circle. His eyes went unfocused until a message appeared.

  [System Emulation]

  Would you like to emulate the X-13 system at Rank 1, Level 5, with the Mage class?

  Y/N

  Ethan's eyes snapped between the message and the glittering outline of the symbol he had just drawn. Yes, of course, he wanted to emulate the X-13 system to figure out what all of this meant. But he was curious about the design of the circle. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was a representation not only of the X-13 system but also of the Mage class. He knew that the outside circle represented the system itself, while the two vertical lines inside represented the class. This was the system's magic. It was a sigil the system itself had created to keep track of these things. He accepted the message.

  Another message appeared.

  [X-13 Emulated]

  While in emulation mode, you’ll gain access to the abilities of the person you’re emulating. While this mode is active, you may use your Celestial Pen to create a System Sigil of any spell, ability, skill, etc belonging to this system and class.

  Ethan sat there and read over the message several times. The information made sense, and there was barely anything to puzzle over. It confirmed that the symbol he had drawn earlier was a system sigil representing the X-13 system and the mage class. But what stopped him was the detailed message itself. Was this the grand system communicating directly with him, pushing him forward? And why had it only now started showing itself? The scribe determined that it was his own actions that had brought the message, his own desire for information, sure, but since he had filled in one of the gaps with his system, he now had a path forward. The Grand System could steer him in a direction.

  With his pen at the ready, a smile spread across Ethan's face. His mind went back to the dream. He knew exactly how to create the System Sigil for the barrier spell. He pressed his pen into the air and began drawing.