Chapter 86: Sefina’s Teacher

After meticulously observing and employing every investigative technique, Aige finally set down his tools.

And that piece of tree branch.

He gave his final verdict:

“This lady,” Aige looked at Sefina, his tone bearing the certainty of a professional, yet with a hint of apologetic regret for having made her come all this way for nothing.

“After my careful inspection, considering the texture, density, mana affinity, energy veins, and all other aspects combined, this material… hmm…”

“…I’m afraid to say, it really just seems to be an utterly ordinary piece of wood. I didn’t find any features of known magical timber, nor did I detect any trace of special energy or rune marks within.”

Sefina:

A subtle silence spread through the shop. Mia and Kefi were first surprised, then—almost in unison—turned curious, slightly skeptical eyes toward their teacher, Sefina.

Even Sefina herself felt her cheeks flush a little, a hard-to-describe embarrassment welling up within her.

To bring such a mere “piece of scrap wood” to a seasoned forgemaster for appraisal, only to be told it was, quite literally, just wood…

…How should she put it? It was a bit humiliating, but when she thought about it carefully, somehow it was both unexpected and yet perfectly reasonable.

Sefina’s teacher was just such an unfathomable existence.

At times strict and serious—able to shatter her cultivation bottleneck with a mere few words, granting her sudden insight and great rewards.

And other times so wickedly mischievous it made her grind her teeth, like that time she made Sefina practice the wrong Magic Circuit Model for an entire day, leaving her utterly exhausted, only to offhandedly reveal at the end: “Just teasing you. You actually believed it? This is the real pattern.”

Sometimes, Sefina herself couldn’t tell whether her teacher was earnestly instructing her, or simply enjoying the amusement of toying with her.

This branch… She’d treasured it for so many years, countless times pondering what mysteries it might conceal…

In the end, could it really be nothing but an ordinary stick?

Sigh. Having a teacher so powerful, so knowledgeable, and yet so eccentric and unpredictable—she truly didn’t know whether she ought to be grateful for such guidance, or bemoan her own fate at being so often fooled.

A storm of mixed emotions brewed within Sefina, but outwardly she simply pressed her fingers to her forehead, forcing herself to maintain a calm tone as she said, “It’s all right. Thank you for your trouble.”

She carefully returned the now-declared “ordinary wood” branch to its wooden box and closed the lid, already determined in her heart never to bring it out to make a fool of herself again.

Sefina walked slowly out of “Aige’s Workshop”. The afternoon sunlight shone down on her, yet she felt somehow drained.

Unable to restrain herself, Mia leaned closer and asked quietly, curiosity brimming in her voice, “Teacher Sefina, um… why did you ask Mr. Aige to appraise that branch? Is there something special about it?”

Sefina sighed, her voice tinged with a trace of resentment and a sense of helplessness towards the past.

“No choice, I guess… My teacher fooled me again…”

“Teacher?” Mia blinked. “You mean your teacher, Teacher Sefina?”

Sefina nodded slightly.

Kefi, who’d been quietly listening nearby, couldn’t help but speak, her tone full of admiration and curiosity, “To be Sefina-teacher’s teacher, she must be a truly, truly incredible mage, right?”

Sefina made a sound of assent, and instantly the image of that orange-haired, crimson-eyed figure with an aura cold as a glacier flashed through her mind.

“She’s very powerful,” Sefina added.

“What kind of person is she?” Mia’s curiosity was thoroughly piqued, and she pressed for details.

Sefina was silent for a moment, as if searching for the right words, and finally spoke flatly: “As for her, she doesn’t permit me to share too much. In short, she’s strong—far stronger than you could imagine—but at the same time, also rather ‘scary’.”

Clearly, Mia found the word “scary” hard to believe, or perhaps simply couldn’t grasp it.

“Really? But… Sefina-teacher, you’re already so, so amazing! The magic theory you proposed before, what was it… [Source Code]? And that time you taught Kefi the delayed magic release technique, that seemed super advanced to me!”

Kefi nodded seriously, adding, “Yeah! Even just the idea of low-tier mages completing parts of a magic array and jointly casting a higher-tier spell—that’s already an incredibly pioneering and powerful research direction!”

Listening to her students’ earnest and even reverent words, Sefina’s delicate face showed no ripple of emotion; she wore the same calm expression as always.

She only softly replied, “My teacher… perhaps she’s already beyond the scope of what ordinary people can comprehend…”

Logically speaking, her research combining programming concepts from another world with the magical system—be it Modular Magic Construction, or Delayed Function Triggering…

Or other as-yet-unrevealed ideas like Multithreaded Mana Manipulation Simulation and Magic Protocol Stack…

To the natives of this purely magical world, these were revolutionary achievements—enough to shake foundations and create entirely new schools of thought.

For a time, she’d felt proud of this, thinking perhaps it was a field her teacher had never set foot in.

But…when she eagerly presented these preliminary ideas and results to her teacher, that orange-haired girl merely glanced at them, her face showing not a trace of surprise, and in her uniquely cool voice, said:

“The idea is passable, but your approach is crude and full of loopholes.”

Then, she casually pulled an extremely old-looking notebook from the bookshelf and tossed it to Sefina.

“Go look at what I wrote in my younger years, page three-twenty to around four hundred—see for yourself.”

Bewildered, Sefina accepted the thick notebook and flipped to the specified pages.

She was astonished to find that the “modular programming mindset” and “delayed function” foundational theories she’d painstakingly devised and thought groundbreaking, her teacher had already systematically researched and documented all of it—who knew how many years ago!

Moreover, when Sefina, filled with awe and the thirst for knowledge, continued reading the even deeper, more complex sections of her teacher’s notes,

She found, to her despair, that those pages were crammed with countless concepts, formulas, and lines of reasoning she couldn’t begin to comprehend.

The symbols and logic chains seemed to hail from another dimension, making her dizzy, as if she were reading celestial script.

Back then, it left young Sefina profoundly shaken—she even wondered, just for a moment, if her teacher was, like her, a transmigrator from another world.

But after Sefina’s subtle probing, her teacher never betrayed a single sign of being from another world.

Which meant…she really had understood all this knowledge relying solely on her own learning.