"I'm done."
Raizen didn't even look up.
"It's fine. I figured you wouldn't be able to answer them anyway."
"I said I'm done, Headmaster Raizen."
That made him pause.
"Hm… what?"
The old man finally lifted his head, blinking at the boy now standing in front of his desk. He adjusted his glasses before speaking
"You answered all of them?"
"Yes."
"All three?"
"Yes."
"By yourself?"
Leon's eye twitched.
"...Yes."
Raizen sighed and lazily extended a hand. "Alright then. Let me see it."
"Here," Leon replied, handing over the paper.
The Headmaster adjusted his glasses again and gave the paper a quick glance.
'He probably wrote the questions back as answers just to fill space...' he thought.
"Huh?"
What greeted Raizen was a neatly written page, filled top to bottom, front and back.
Precise handwriting, bullet points, and even intricate diagrams tucked between narrow spaces. There wasn't a single spot left to even write a grade.
Raizen had intentionally instructed the servants to provide only one sheet of paper. After all, giving more to a so-called failure would've been a waste.
Yet somehow…
'He answered all of them…'
Raizen's brows twitched. He glanced at Leon, who stood quietly with an expressionless face.
From noble gatherings and casual court gossip, Raizen had heard plenty about the youngest son of House Valentine, he was a talentless brat, who was not even awakened, who was better known for his incompetence than anything else.
"..."
But the paper in his hand told a completely different story.
The first two answers described the inner workings of mana circuits and magic formulas with such clarity and precision that even the professors at Eclipse Institute would pale in comparison.
It was absolutely brilliant.
Raizen turned the page.
"...?!"
The third question.
It had been answered.
Not just answered, he completely nailed it.
Charts, comparison tables, flow diagrams, speculative theories, even a miniature blueprint for some kind of artifact, it crammed perfectly onto the back of the same page.
Raizen shot up from his chair.
The page in his hand was worth decades of magical research.
"H-How…?!"
This… this hasn't even been discovered yet!
He rubbed his eyes in disbelief, glancing back and forth between Leon and the paper in his hand.
Without wasting a second, Raizen read through the theories proposed by Leon.
"There's only one way to reduce spell casting time, and that is to completely skip the magic formula creation and visualization process…"
Leon had named this process: Formulaless Spell Casting.
At first glance, it sounded idiotic. There was no known method of casting a spell without first visualizing its magic formula in the mind.
A mage needed to visualize a fire-bullet magic formula and recite its incantation to cast a fire-bullet. Likewise, a water-snipe spell required its own unique formula and incantation.
To skip that process completely meant casting random spells without structure.
So how could anyone do that?
Leon had managed to come up with an idea.
He compared 'Formulaless Spell Casting' to 'Voiceless Incantation', where a mage completely skipped the act of speaking while casting a spell.
Leon had drawn a detailed comparison table between the two, marking several identical occurrences within each concept.
But 'Voiceless Incantation' was incredibly rare, and it's achievable only by someone with a deep understanding of magic, or one who had reached the pinnacle of it.
Without witnessing it with his own eyes, Leon's theory had clear flaws. And Raizen had caught one of them quickly.
The Headmaster raised a question.
"How can you compare it to something like 'Voiceless Incantation' when you haven't even seen it in practice?"
To this, Leon calmly replied.
"That's why I'm presenting my idea to you."
The Headmaster raised his eyebrows.
"What do you mean by that?"
A small grin appeared on Leon's face as he said,
"The whole capital knows of your greatness, Headmaster," his gaze fixed unwaveringly on the old man, "with you providing me a glimpse of your talent, I'll be able to refine my theories."
Raizen's eyes widened at what he had just heard.
'He wants to see my talent?'
Now that was something he hadn't heard in a long time.
Keen understanding of magic or not, there existed a [Unique Skill] capable of casting 'Voiceless Incantation' without requiring pinnacle-level knowledge of magic.
And Raizen Nightson was one of the few who possessed such a skill.
It wasn't known to outsiders, but the heads of top noble houses were aware of it.
'He must have learned it from Duke Orion.'
That was the only explanation Raizen could think of.
Even so, Raizen wasn't someone who would display his skills to just anyone. He had his pride.
But the papers in his hand, the incomplete theory this young boy was proposing… weren't something he would get to see again.
Raizen gazed at Leon.
'It's not like he means any harm.'
A rather fair exchange of trade. And in this case, Raizen would be the one gaining the most.
"Alright then," Raizen said, stretching out his hand to Leon. "I'll show you my skill, and in exchange, you'll help me develop this theory of yours. Deal?"
Leon's lips curved into a smile. "As you wish, Professor."
「Fate Point: 2」
"Great. Stay focused. I'll only do it once."
With that, Raizen opened his palm. A spark of lightning flickered from his fingers.
Leon's gaze was fixated on the palm, as though he would miss something crucial if he dared to blink.
'Almost,' Leon thought.
It lasted only a moment. Raizen created a vortex of blue flame in his palm, without uttering a single word.
As if Leon's eyes were covered in streams of 0s and 1s, his vision turned bright gold, and lines of binary scrolled at lightning speed.
「Fate Point: 1」
In less than one second, one of Leon's Fate Points had been consumed.
His thinking and understanding amplified; time itself seemed to slow. Leon noticed several colorful threads stretching out from Raizen's spell, forming a DNA-like helix as his brain imprinted the exact same formulation into his own memory.
「Skill Deconstruction (Active) : 'Voiceless Incantation'
In a mere instant, Leon's muscles burned, but he didn't let it show on his face.
"That's it," the Headmaster said. "Did you get it?"
"I did. Thanks for sharing." He bowed.
Leon's plan had worked smoothly. His main objective was to replicate the Headmaster's Unique Skill, using this interview as a base.
All he needed was a single glance at Raizen's skill, and for that to happen, he had to lure the Headmaster into the trap of his proposed theory.
Everything had gone exactly as he planned.
He left a mark on the Headmaster, and gained a Unique Skill in return.
Headmaster Raizen opened a drawer and took out an envelope, then handed it to Leon.
Leon looked down at it.
"What is this?"
"Your acceptance letter," Raizen informed him. "You will be a student at my institute starting next week, as a research scholar directly under my authority…"
He paused, then added.
"Welcome to Eclipse Institute."