The Prince in Question Is Not Stable

Chapter 79: Art of Deception

Academic classes resumed not long after the banquet, and Marcus, even after three days post-banquet, didn’t receive any letter from Violet.

He wasn’t focused on the publicity he was receiving, but he sure was thinking his plans through.

There had been no major development, not that Marcus or Graves could find any. Orochi did not show himself in the meantime; it appears that he’s been focused on observing the changes within the hell realm.

As for Marcus, he knew he wasn’t strong enough to go face to face with a Duke-ranked Demon. A duke is the leader of houses, under the legions of generals of the Demon King. But a Duke is a force that can face the higher gods without hesitation.

And Marcus has yet to see what the inner realm of hell or heaven even looks like. He needed strength, far beyond anyone has ever had, and so he was contemplating over his memory of every little detail he could find about the game.

Matthias Dane was busy containing the situation and constructing more secure measures for the cadets. Since the incident of Cescendra, the academy of Lunar had faced sorts of pressure from noble houses.

He stretched the cuffs of his shirt and gulped a shot of strong alcohol before leaving his office.

The lecture halls of the Lunar Academy had a particular quality on mornings, especially after a major development.

The same halls with the same stone walls and lamps had an air of reverence this time.

The number of cadets sitting in the halls of Marcus Rile was far more than the previous numbers. Weeks ago, Marcus Rile was just a head professor who was known for his prodigious brain, which wasn’t something that children of noble houses would find revering; they had seen several prodigies work under them.

But now, Marcus Rile is a professor who’s considered more powerful and knowledgeable than the heads of their very families.

So, the cadets just sat. In the particular silence of people who had decided not to waste anything.

And just like before, not a single one of them noticed that the man they were waiting for was already leaning on the desk placed on the podium of the classroom.

"..." ’Not again...’ some of them thought.

Marcus sighed.

He didn’t need a register to remember the names of the cadets; he just started reciting their names, and those who were absent were noted by Yumi, who was sitting in the front with Leon.

"Alright," Marcus said. "It’s been a long week, huh?"

"Out of sixteen fold arrangements, all you are familiar with are the ten fold arrangements, right?" he asked.

"""Yes, Professor""" they nodded.

"What are they for?" he asked one of the cadets sitting in the right front row.

"Nodes of the circuit, stable lattices that prevent the collapse of a circuit, define its structure and make it more efficient," the cadet replied.

"Correct," Marcus then looked at Leon, who’s been staying overly attentive for a while.

"What are they for, from your perspective?" he asked.

"Uh..." Leon turned blank.

Darin sitting in the last row’s desk behind raised his hand, and Marcus nodded at that gesture.

"Reading. If I’m in a combat situation I can anticipate the kind of magic circuit the mage in front of me using, and devise a strategy to counter it before it can be fully constructed," Darin responded.

"That is also correct," Marcus said. "Good, so that means most of you know what the Ten fold arrangement really is, now that you know how to construct a magic circuit more efficiently, and break it more efficiently, we’ll learn the next step, which is..."

"Deception," He said and wrote a line on the board. ’False Lattice Construction.’

"This isn’t a combat theory, but a deception are which can refine the flow of your aura or mana. The ten fold’s arrangement communicates every circuit you construct into a structure which anyone trained enough to read it will easily decipher the meanings, and like I say, my methods are most efficient but not the only methods, there are people who’ve constructed their own theories on the basis of their own understandings, even if their citations are not accurate, they’re not really that far from the truth,"

"That is the problem False Lattice Construction solves, but before we discuss the solution, we need to establish something fundamental, something that applies to every person in the room regardless of whether you run mana or aura, whether you’re a mage or a warrior."

He let his words seep in for a moment, and looked across the hall.

"The energy your core circulates tells the truth, which is a default function of your body. Mana resonates according to the circuit it’s moving through, the circuit’s structure is readable, its intent is readable, and it’s outcome and next action is also predictable. Aura in this case is actually worse."

He glanced at the characters he weighted importance, Leon, Yumi, Darin, and the main cast.

"Aura is dense, it just bleeds out of your body, your intent, your energy level, your exhaustion, and your next movements are not just predictable but explained clearly to your opponent."

"So both disciplines, share the same fundamental vulnerability. What is it? Can you repeat them?" he looked at a cadet sitting in the last, she was Elyra.

Elyra nodded, and inclined her head.

"Readability, our intent, energy, next movement, and how we circulate, everything is a vulnerability, but the same is masked when a high ranking mage or warrior fights, we’ve noticed that." She said.

"Perfect. False Lattice Construction is the discipline of making yourself be seen as a ’liar,’" he said.

He drew a magic circuit on the board, a simple magic circuit, and then looked at Sera, "Manifest it," he said.

"Oh... ohkay," Sera answered, and hesitantly started constructing the circuit.

A silent drop of blood manifested above he circuit on her palm. Her magic circuit glowed bright red, as fine threads connected the ten points.

Sera was surprised, because this magic circuit didn’t really do anything, it rather projected the kind of power she excelled in.

"This is a standard ten-fold stabilized circuit," he said. "Distribution of nodes is even., it doesn’t have any function except projection of the element of core, and it’s a short ranged circuit."

He then proceeded to add a single point of node on the circuit he drew on the board. That dot was uneven among the equal distances of the ten nodes.

He connected single line of it from the top node, but didn’t pass it through.

"Now, make this specific change," he said, and Sera furrowed her brows.

"But...it won’t work, the circuit is not connected," she said.

"Maybe, you’ll never know until you try it," Marcus replied.

Sera stared at the circuit on her palm, and made a node in it, and half heartedly connected it, but didn’t completely integrate it into the circuit.

The extra node sat at an uneven distance from others, disconnected, like a sentence stopped in the middle.

Nothing about the actual operation of the circuit changed, same projection, same short range function, but it looked different. There were eleven nodes now.

The number of nodes define the intensity of the structure, but first the structure in her palm was a basic projection magic barely using her mana, and second it also shifted to eleventh node without any changes in function.

It was as if a mini flame was glowing on a massive frame thrower that could burn anything, except here, it was just a drop of blood, instead of streams of blood.

"That extra node is a shell. And not just that, almost all of the nodes in that circuit are shell nodes. They carry no load, they participate in no function and display a significant power. What you just learned is a bluff. You can threaten your opponent with a power far greater than you can even imagine to have," Marcus said.

"""Oh...""" Amazement erupted as all of them noted what Marcus had taught them.

"Shell variable. The circuit works until a certain point, and then you place something between the functional lines that is not connected, or feels like it is connected, the circuit continues to operate exactly as intended, but the shell variables change the appearance and the level of magic which is fakely projected, this kind of technique is extremely common among high ranking mages, and knowing this lets you recognize the real threat and move," he said.

"Some will see a powerful structure, some will think it’s flawed and drop their guard, in both cases, you create a kind of deception your opponent doesn’t expects, and that is the moment you nail them in the combat," he said

"The same theory applies to warriors, by creating false signals of aura around your sword. While changing stances mid battle, the flow of aura takes a sudden shift, which means it is possible to shift the flow in an instant, and this technique is taught to third year cadets. In reality, it’s a simple deception technique, which you can use to create false predictions for your opponent."

"Honour is a luxury for those who have strength, until then, learn how to use every possible piece of knowledge to create an arsenal of techniques,"

"Dismissed."