Once Noah finished his song, it didn’t take the demons long to start brainstorming as to what their patterns might be. Their ideas were certainly... interesting. It would probably take them a while to get to any ideas that would actually work.

    And someone really needs to tell Edda that there’s more to life than eating. I wasn’t joking about not needing a second Lee. It’s not like I can blame her, though. She grew up surviving on scraps. Anyone would love food in her position.

    Noah watched over the demons for around thirty more minutes, providing advice and suggestions in an attempt to steer them all in the right direction. Many of their pattern ideas were either straight up insane or just far too impractical to be realistic.

    It was probably hard for them to reconcile power coming with something simple when they’d grown up in the Damned Plains, where there was so much focus on posturing and showing how deadly you were.

    He waited around to make sure none of them would go against his warnings and try to start a pattern with magic. That wasn’t particularly likely, of course. Pulling something like that off would have made them a prodigy.

    And if Noah wasn’t paying attention with his domain at the ready to snuff said magic out, it also would have made them dead.

    He fortunately had no prodigy idiots. None of the demons tried to manifest their pattern and had instead all managed to get into a heated debate about what kind of pattern would be the most powerful.

    Noah took that opportunity to catch Moxie’s eye from where she was overseeing the other students. He gave her a slight nod and they both broke away from their groups to meet in the middle.

    “Going well?” Moxie asked.

    “As well as one could expect. They’re going to need to re-screw their heads on a bit,” Noah said with a small chuckle. “They’re still mentally stuck in the Damned Plains. But they’ll get there soon enough. What about you?”

    “I’ve basically just been practicing alongside everyone,” Moxie admitted. “But they’ve been careful. You know what’s kind of interesting, though? I think Alexandra’s pattern has gotten stronger. Like, a lot stronger.”

    “Really? I would have thought that carving her runes out—”

    “Yeah, me too. But no. I can definitely feel that its stronger. Even when she doesn’t use her own magic in it, the pattern has innate power to it. Almost like...”

    “A rune,” Noah finished, his eyes going slightly wide.

    “How’d you guess? Did you already know?”

    “Patterns and Runes aren’t really all that different if you zoom out far enough. Runes are just patterns made to hold a specific type of magic. Patterns shouldn’t be any different when you get good enough at them.”@@@@

    “Your music can do that too?” Moxie asked.

    “I kind of skipped the beginning step with my music. I had a lot of practice back on Earth, so I understood the pattern well long before I came here,” Noah admitted as he scratched the back of his head with a sheepish smile. “I went right to wrapping my magic with it, but there’s definitely magical energy in the pattern of my songs.”

    Moxie studied him silently for a few seconds before answering. “What about in a fight or something? Have you ever tried using your pattern without putting magic into it?”

    He paused for a moment to think about that question. Ironically enough, even though he was teaching his students to do it, Noah realized that he hadn’t. He’d used his pattern in fights before, but generally for the purpose of making a Formation.

    For some reason he’d never really considered just using a normal music pattern in a fight when a Formation wasn’t involved. Now that he thought about it, there was absolutely no reason that wouldn’t work.

    How did that never come to me? I can definitely picture a few ways that would actually be pretty damn effective, even if just as a distraction.

    Noah coughed into his fist. “That... might work pretty well, actually. I somehow never thought about it.”

    Noah’s domain picked up on something within her. He couldn’t tell quite what it was, but it was there. It probably warranted a conversation to figure out just what kind of pattern she was focusing on now that she’d formed her Rune of Self.

    And then, standing in the center of the group and with a mixture of awe, fear, and confusion on her face, was Yulin.

    Ah, shit. She definitely should have been with the demons to get the summary of patterns.

    “What is all this?” Yulin asked. Her gaze lingered on Alexandra. “What kind of magic is this?”

    “Patterns. I should have given you a summary of them together with the demons. The short form is that patterns exist in everything, and you can harness them to access magic in a different way. I can get more in-depth later. Until then, you can just stick around and watch. And no telling anyone else about this. Big secret.”

    “Yeah,” Yulin muttered. “I can’t see why. I don’t get any of this.”

    “The patterns?”

    “No,” Yulin said. “You. You’re supposed to be one of the worst professors from the Linwick family. The rumors said you were a pervert that got sent to Arbitage to keep you out of your family’s hair. But that doesn’t match up at all. How could someone like that be... you?”

    “It all started with grand larceny.”

    Yulin stared at him. “What?”

    “Never mind,” Noah said, shaking his head with a chuckle. “Maybe you’ll find out one day. Until then, your only job is to practice. I’m a teacher. That’s it.”

    “Right.” The tone of Yulin’s voice made it abundantly clear that she was far from convinced. “Just a teacher.”

    “Oh hey, Vermil is here,” James said, nearly making Noah jump. He’d somehow forgotten about the boy in the time since he’d last spotted him. That nothingness pattern of his was surprisingly effective.

    Todd glanced up and a grin split his lips. “Oh, hell yeah. Is it teachin’ time?”

    “Don’t call it that,” Noah said. “It sounds dumb.”

    Emily’s white mist faded and her eyes drifted open, focusing on him. One by one, all of the students let their patterns drop safely and all turned to face him.

    “I think it’s teachin’ time,” Isabel confirmed.

    She was aware of her surroundings acutely enough to pick up on Todd’s joke even while practicing? Well done.

    “We are not calling it that,” Noah said, narrowing his eyes and crossing his arms in front of his chest. “But I have to say — I’m quite proud of all of you. You’ve made quite a bit of progress since my little trip.”

    “Does that mean we can get to the next stage?” Alexandra asked eagrely.

    A smile pulled across Noah’s lips and he nodded.

    “Yes. I think it’s time that we move onto Formations.”