13. The “Shameless Debauchery” Hypothesis

Sebastian stared at his right hand.

The ink in his notebook was practically glowing from how hard he had pressed the quill into the parchment.

No incantation. No words of binding. Raw thermal manifestation.

He closed his eyes. He pictured the scene in the lecture hall perfectly. The white-hot fireball hovering over Arion's palm. The terrifying, violent crack of raw thermal backlash that didn't even make Arion flinch.

If one could bypass the vocalized binding process, the cast time of a spell could be reduced drastically. It was a terrifying, revolutionary concept.

Sebastian took a deep breath. He stood alone in the corner of the secondary training courtyard, far from the prying eyes of the other nobles. He pulled a dense clump of mana from his core, routing it directly into his palm.

"Shape it. Compress it," Sebastian grunted, sweat beading on his forehead.

A spark ignited. It wasn't white-hot. It was a jagged, violently sputtering orange.

Success! he thought. I just need to stabilize—

Suddenly, the spark shrieked.

The orange light violently shifted into an angry, unstable violet. The raw elemental backlash didn't just burn; it swelled, desperately looking for a way out. It formed a vacuum, sucking the energy directly out of Sebastian's veins.

Panic seized his chest. He tried to cut the mana flow, but he couldn't. It was going to detonate. He was going to lose his arm.

"Help—" he choked out.

A heavy sigh echoed right beside his ear.

"You kids really need to stop taking my bad habits literally."

Before Sebastian could even blink, a hand snapped around his wrist.

Clink.

It sounded like a glass jar snapping shut. In a fraction of a second, a perfectly spherical, transparent barrier materialized exclusively around Sebastian's right hand and the volatile violet mass. There was no chant. No magical circle.

BOOM.

The explosion went off. Inside the tiny barrier, a ferocious storm of fire and concussive force raged. Sebastian felt absolutely nothing. No heat. No shockwave. The barrier didn't even vibrate.

A moment later, the energy choked itself out, leaving a wisp of harmless black smoke trapped inside the sphere.

Arion dropped his wrist. The barrier shattered into dissipating specks of light.

Arion was holding a half-eaten cafeteria sandwich in his other hand. He looked incredibly bored. "The words of binding are a safety net," Arion said, taking a bite. "Don't jump without one unless you've already hit the ground a few thousand times."

Sebastian stared at his perfectly intact hand. Then he stared at Arion.

The precision. The structural integrity of a localized, chantless barrier. Arion hadn't just saved his life; he had casually demonstrated a level of mana control that defied logic.

"You..." Sebastian gasped. His aristocratic composure completely shattered.

He lunged forward. He grabbed both of Arion's hands—sandwich and all—and pressed them against his chest. He leaned in, his face mere inches from Arion's, his eyes sparkling with the desperate fervor of a scholar who had just seen the truth of the universe.

"Teach me!" Sebastian pleaded, his voice trembling with breathless adoration. "The localized density! The instantaneous manifestation! Please, let me stay by your side! Let me study you!"

Arion stiffened. He leaned back as far as his spine would allow. "Whoa, hey. Personal space, man."

"I will do anything!" Sebastian pressed closer, practically backing Arion into the stone wall of the courtyard. "Just let me observe your technique!"

"Dude, seriously, back up, you're breathing on my lunch—"

"Absolutely disgusting."

The icy voice cut through the air like a guillotine blade.

Arion and Sebastian both froze.

Exousia stood a few feet away, clutching a stack of library books against her chest. Her face was contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated revulsion. She was looking at them as if they were a pair of slugs that had just crawled out of a drain.

"I knew you lacked proper decorum," Exousia sneered, her cheeks flushed a bright, angry pink. "But to brazenly display such... shameless debauchery in the middle of a public courtyard? Have you no dignity?"

"Debauchery?" Arion repeated, thoroughly lost.

Sebastian finally let go of Arion's hands. He looked around.

The secondary courtyard wasn't empty anymore. A crowd of upperclassmen and first-years had stopped in their tracks. A group of noble girls in the corner had their hands clamped over their mouths, whispering frantically to one another, their faces bright red.

"Did you hear him? 'I'll do anything... let me stay by your side'..."

"I thought he belonged to Teacher Sophia? A love triangle?!"

The horrific realization crashed over Sebastian. The desperate grip. The breathless pleading. The incredibly close proximity.

He looked at Arion. Arion looked at him.

"Oh, sweet merciful heavens, no," Sebastian choked out. He took three massive steps backward, his face burning hotter than his failed spell. "That is—I was just—his barrier technique is—!"

"Save your excuses, Sebastian," Exousia huffed, turning her nose up to the sky. "Whatever bizarre, forbidden affairs you two are engaging in, kindly keep it behind closed doors. You are polluting my eyesight."

She spun on her heel and marched away, her hair whipping behind her.

Arion stood completely still, staring at his slightly squished sandwich.

The library was supposed to be a sanctuary.

A quiet, dusty haven where a man could hide from the consequences of being publicly accused of shameless debauchery.

Arion huddled in a secluded corner of the Restricted Section. He wasn’t reading about forbidden magic or ancient spells. He was engrossed in a completely mundane, incredibly thick book about the architectural history of municipal bricklaying.

It was boring. It was safe. And most importantly, it had absolutely nothing to do with magic or overly emotional noble heirs.

"I have analyzed the courtyard incident."

Arion jumped, nearly dropping the heavy tome.

Kara Abyssos stood perfectly still at the end of the aisle. Her posture was rigidly straight, her expression completely void of emotion. Her pale, white eyes with those unnerving whirlpool pupils were locked dead onto his face.

"How do you keep sneaking up on me?" Arion hissed, looking around to make sure no librarians were nearby.

"Your interaction with Sebastian," Kara continued, her voice flat and echoing slightly in the quiet aisle. "I observed it from a third-story window. The close physical proximity. The desperate vocalizations. The tight gripping of hands."

Arion dragged a hand down his face. "Kara, I swear to the heavens, it was a misunderstanding. He was asking about a barrier technique. That’s it."

Kara tilted her head a fraction of an inch.

"I cross-referenced the visual data with the academy's library of romance literature. The parameters heavily align with a forbidden lovers’ pact, or perhaps a master-servant subjugation ritual."

She paused, her white eyes narrowing slightly in genuine, clinical curiosity.

"Is this a new method of mana transfer? Because if such… 'shameless debauchery' yields an increase in magical output, I am highly interested."

Arion choked on his own spit. "Interested in what?!"

"Observing. Perhaps… participating," Kara said, without a single ounce of shame or inflection. "If holding hands and pleading in public unlocks a hidden threshold in one's magical core, I am willing to test this hypothesis with you."

"No! No hypothesis! Delete that data immediately!" Arion waved his hands frantically. "There is no secret threshold! He’s just an idiot!"

"I see."

Kara didn't look entirely convinced. She pulled out a small notebook, drew a single line through a page, and tucked it away.

"If the physical bonding method is invalid, then I must proceed with my original objective. I am stepping up my observation."

"Observation of what—"

Before Arion could finish the sentence, the temperature in the aisle plummeted to freezing.

The ambient hum of the library vanished. The towering bookshelves melted into an infinite expanse of dark, crushing water. The white, sunless sky stretched endlessly above them.

WHOOSH.

The hydrostatic pressure slammed into Arion from all directions.

It was a hundred times heavier than the mild wave she had hit him with earlier that morning. Kara was deliberately pushing the environment to the absolute extreme, forcing the crushing weight of the deep ocean onto his mind.

She wanted to crack his composure. She wanted to force the silver limiter ring on his left hand to pulse, to reveal just how deep his mana reserves truly went.

Inside the mental domain, Kara stood gracefully atop the water, her eyes analyzing every micro-fluctuation in the air. She waited for him to gasp, to fall to his knees, or for the ring to glow under the strain.

Arion stood waist-deep in the crushing void.

He sighed.

He was still holding the book about municipal bricklaying.

"You know," Arion grumbled, squinting at the page. "The lighting in this mental domain is terrible. It's way too blue. It completely ruins the contrast on these masonry diagrams."

Kara’s whirlpool pupils twitched.

She increased the pressure. The horizon warped inward, compressing the space. The weight of an entire trench bore down on Arion's mind, a hydrostatic force that would have caused any senior student’s consciousness to instantly shatter.

Arion casually turned a page. The paper rustled loudly in the void.

"Fascinating," he murmured, completely ignoring the conceptual weight of the ocean currently trying to flatten him into a pancake. "I had no idea they used reinforced mortar during the third era. I should take notes."

Kara stared.

She looked at his left hand. The silver ring wasn't glowing. It wasn't pulsing. It wasn't doing anything.

Because Arion wasn't fighting the pressure. He was just fundamentally ignoring it, treating her ultimate mental domain as if it were a slightly drafty reading room.

"Illogical," Kara whispered, her stoic facade showing the tiniest crack of disbelief.

"Mortar is perfectly logical," Arion corrected, not looking up from the heavy book. "Now, are you going to drop the ocean thing, or should I start reading these bricklaying techniques out loud? Because Chapter Four is very dry."

With a sharp CRACK, the horizon shattered like glass.

The library rushed back in. The smell of old paper and dust returned.

Kara stood in the aisle, her breathing infinitesimally faster than before. Arion was still leaning against the shelf, casually turning another page of his mundane book.

"You are an anomaly," Kara stated, her voice returning to its icy baseline, though her eyes lingered on his silver ring.

"I'm just a guy who appreciates anything," Arion said, finally snapping the book shut. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a place to hide after everything had happened.”