"You're Jin Raith, right?"

I looked up.

Emma was watching me now, her blue eyes careful and uncertain.

"Yeah," I said.

"I'm Emma Vale." She paused, her fingers fidgeting with the corner of her page. "Thank you for helping me the other day."

I blinked, tilting my head slightly. "What help?"

Her cheeks flushed faintly, and she looked down at her book, fingers still worrying at the paper's edge.

"In the garden. The other day. You... you helped me with the mana efficiency equation."

Oh. Right. That.

I waved my hand dismissively. "It's nothing."

"It's not nothing," she said quietly, still not quite meeting my eyes. "I'd been stuck on that problem for hours. Days, actually. And you just... figured it out in seconds."

"You would've gotten it eventually."

"Maybe." She finally looked up, her expression sincere despite the nervousness in her posture. "But you didn't have to help. Especially since... well. You're a noble. And I'm..."

She trailed off, but the meaning was clear.

A commoner.

And nobles don't usually help commoners. Not without wanting something in return.

I closed my book, leaning back in the chair. "I don't care about that."

She blinked.

"About what?"

"Noble. Commoner. Whatever." I shrugged. "You were working on a problem. I knew the answer. It would've been stupid to just watch you struggle for no reason."

Emma stared at me like I'd just said something in a foreign language.

Then she smiled, small, hesitant. "That's... not what most people would say."

"Most people are idiots."

She laughed softly, the sound barely audible.

"Maybe."

Silence settled between us again, but it felt different now. Less tense.

Emma went back to her notes, her quill moving across the page in steady, precise strokes.

I reopened my book, skimming through the tactical formations section.

After a few minutes, she spoke again, her voice was quiet.

"Are you nervous? About the practical exam?"

I glanced up. "Should I be?"

"I don't know." She bit her lip, her fingers tightening slightly around her quill. "I am. A little. I'm not... I'm not very good at combat. My magic is strong, but if we're put into dangerous situations with people who don't want to work together..."

She trailed off, but I could fill in the rest.

People who'll sabotage her just because they can.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "I get that."

She looked at me, surprised. "You do?"

"I'm rank 447. Most people here think I'm dead weight." I tapped the cover of my book. "If I get grouped with the wrong people, they'll probably try to get me killed."

Emma's expression shifted, something between sympathy and understanding. "Then we're in the same boat."

"Pretty much."

She hesitated, then asked, "What are you going to do? If you get grouped with people like that?"

I thought about it for a moment.

What am I going to do?

Survive. That's what.

Same as always.

"Adapt," I said finally. "Figure out what they need. Make myself useful enough."

Emma nodded slowly, like she was turning the idea over in her mind. "That's... smart."

"It's practical."

"Same thing."

I smirked faintly. "Maybe."

She went back to her notes, and I went back to my reading.

The library stayed quiet around us, the soft scratch of her quill blending with the distant rustle of pages and muffled conversations from other tables.

I was halfway through a section on flanking maneuvers when Emma shifted in her seat.

She glanced up at me, then back down at her notes.

Then up again.

I could see her hesitating, her fingers drumming lightly against the edge of her journal.

Finally, she spoke, her voice quiet and uncertain. "Can I... ask you something?"

"Sure."

She bit her lip, flipping back a few pages in her notebook. "I've been working on optimization formulas. For spell efficiency. Trying to figure out how to reduce mana consumption without losing output quality."

I set my book down, listening.

"But I keep running into this... problem." She turned her notebook toward me, revealing a page covered in equations and crossed-out attempts. "The variables keep compounding. Every time I solve for one, another shifts, and the whole calculation falls apart. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong."

I leaned forward, scanning the page.

Ah.

She's treating it like a static system. But mana flow is dynamic, it changes based on too many variables to lock down with a single equation.

She needs conditional logic.

"You're thinking about it wrong," I said.

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You're trying to solve it all at once. But it's not one equation, it's a series of conditions. If this happens, then that. If not, then something else."

"Conditions?" She looked confused. "But how do you map that mathematically?"

I grabbed a blank piece of paper from the stack beside her and started writing.

"Think of it like branches. You start with the base case, standard mana input and output. Then you add conditional modifiers. If the user is fatigued, reduce efficiency by X percent. If the environment is mana-rich, increase efficiency by Y percent. Each condition adjusts the formula, but they don't all activate at once."

I sketched out a simple flowchart, showing how each condition branched off into different calculations.

Emma leaned in, her eyes following the lines I'd drawn. "So instead of one formula that tries to account for everything, it's multiple smaller formulas that trigger based on circumstances?"

"Exactly."

Her expression shifted, confusion melting into understanding. "That... that makes so much sense. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you were trying to brute-force it. Sometimes you need to break the problem down instead of solving it all at once."

She stared at the flowchart for a moment, then looked up at me, her eyes bright. "Thank you. Seriously. I've been stuck on this."

I shrugged. "It's not that complicated once you see it."

"Maybe not for you." She smiled, "But for me, it was. So... thank you."

I waved it off. "Don't worry about it."

She hesitated, then said quickly, "If you ever need help with something—anything—just say so. I mean it. I owe you."

I opened my mouth to tell her she didn't owe me anything.

But she kept going, her words tumbling out faster.

"I mean, I know I'm not good at combat or tactics or anything like that, so I probably can't help with the practical exam, but if you need research or theory work or spell analysis or—"

She stopped abruptly, her face flushing. "I didn't mean... I'm not saying you need help. I'm sure you're fine. I just meant—"

She closed her mouth, pressing her lips together, looking down at her notebook.

Embarrassed.

I watched her for a moment, then said quietly, "Emma."

She looked up, her expression uncertain.

"If I need help, I'll ask."

Her shoulders relaxed slightly. "Okay."

"And you don't owe me anything."

"I—"

"You don't," I repeated, firmer this time. "I helped because I could. That's it."

She stared at me, her eyes searching my face like she was trying to figure out if I meant it.

Then she nodded slowly. "Okay."

"Good."

She went back to her notes, but I caught the faint hint of a smile on her face as she started rewriting her equations using the conditional framework.

I picked up my book again, flipping back to the page I'd been on.

She's smart. Just needed to see the problem from a different angle.

Not a bad person to have around. Better than that idiot, anyway.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.