The Extra is a Genius!?-Chapter 559 - 558: The First Page

The reinforced chamber was still, the thick stone swallowing echoes until even the air felt heavy. Frost lingered across parts of the floor from Noel’s earlier training, thin and uneven, already fading. The mana arrays embedded in the walls pulsed faintly, steady and distant.

Noel sat on the ground with his back against the wall, one knee raised, the other leg stretched out. The tension from training had left his body, replaced by a quieter focus. A few meters away, Noir lay on the stone, head resting on his paws. His dark fur shimmered faintly with purple undertones whenever mana shifted nearby.

They were waiting for Daemar.

Noel had time.

The old leather journal rested in his hands. Worn, but carefully maintained. He opened it to the first page.

The handwriting was younger there. Slightly uneven.

Nicolas. Age eighteen.

The day he arrived at Adept.

Noel read in silence.

Nicolas wrote that he had finally stepped into the academy at eighteen, feeling late compared to many others. He mentioned watching younger students already comfortable with mana circulation, already discussing affinities as if they had grown up with them. There was a quiet admission of feeling behind, of lacking the foundation others had built early.

But there was no bitterness.

He wrote that he did not know if he had talent. Only that he could not stop thinking about magic. That even the simplest exercises fascinated him. The way mana shifted inside the body. The way resonance changed depending on emotion. The subtle differences between elemental flows.

He described magic as something that moved on its own, something that felt almost alive beneath the surface of the world. Not something to crush into submission, but something to approach carefully. He compared it to water adjusting around your hands depending on how you touched it.

Noel paused.

’Eighteen...’

At first, the thought came automatically.

’So he wasn’t a prodigy. Or at least that’s what it seems, although it’s said that Nicolas was a genius from the beginning, it seems that wasn’t really the case.’

Then he reconsidered.

Starting at eighteen did not mean a lack of ability. It meant he began when he could.

Noel looked down at the page again. Nicolas had written about staying awake at night just to circulate mana slowly, trying to sense how it responded. Not trying to increase output. Just trying to feel it better.

Noel’s relationship with magic had never been like that. For him, it had always been structure. Efficiency. Result.

’I’ve always treated it like a weapon first,’ he thought.

Noir’s presence brushed lightly against his mind.

’And he didn’t.’

Noel closed the journal briefly and leaned his head back against the wall, eyes drifting toward the ceiling.

’He saw it alive.’

After a moment, he opened the diary again and turned the page. The faint sound of paper shifting echoing softly in the chamber before being swallowed by stone. Noir adjusted slightly where he lay, tail moving once against the floor before settling again. He remained silent, his presence steady in the back of Noel’s mind.

Several weeks had passed in the journal.

Nicolas wrote about the first time he finally created a spell of his own.

Not a combat technique. Not something meant to overwhelm. A small structural weave designed to stabilize ambient mana within a limited radius. Something simple. Something most would overlook.

He did not describe it in terms of strength.

He described what it felt like when it held.

He wrote that when the final thread aligned and the structure stopped trembling, something inside him eased. It was not excitement. Not even pride. It was the quiet certainty that he had understood something correctly. As if he had listened long enough for the world to answer back.

Magic, he wrote, was not force. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Each spell was an agreement between intention and reality. If one tried to impose too much, the structure resisted. If one adjusted, listened, allowed space, the pattern settled on its own.

He mentioned watching other students forcing mana into place, overpowering instability with raw output. He admitted he had tried the same in the beginning. It worked sometimes.

But it never felt right.

He preferred to observe first. To sense how mana shifted before shaping it. He wrote about failing repeatedly while developing the spell, about structures collapsing seconds before completion, about misjudging resonance.

There was no frustration in the tone.

At one point he even laughed at himself in the margins, noting how many nights he had stayed awake just to analyze minor variations in flow. He called it strangely gratifying. Simple spells that served no offensive purpose gave him more satisfaction than explosive techniques ever had.

There was a brief acknowledgment that he would need attack spells eventually. The world was unstable. Wars happened. Survival required power.

He would learn them.

But they were not what made him stay up at night.

Noel remained still as he read.

Strange.

He had never approached magic like that. For him it had always been tool, weapon, resource. Even now his instincts evaluated everything in terms of efficiency and outcome.

’I’ve always optimized,’ he thought quietly.

Training to survive. To dominate. To control.

Nicolas had trained to understand.

That contrast lingered longer than Noel expected.

A faint smile touched his lips before he noticed it. His shoulders had relaxed. The pressure that usually accompanied anything related to growth or power was absent.

There was no calculation in that moment.

Just curiosity.

And a quiet appreciation for someone who found joy in spells that did not need to destroy anything to be strong or beautiful and make a difference.

Noel kept his eyes on the page for a few seconds longer even after finishing the last line. The chamber remained still around him, frost nearly gone now, the air steady.

Nicolas had not been an early prodigy.

He had not walked into Adept already ahead of everyone else. He had not awakened as a child with perfect control or overwhelming presence.

But maybe that was never the point.

Noel lowered the journal slightly, fingers resting against the edge of the paper.

’He wasn’t a genius from the start,’ he thought.

At least not in the way people liked to imagine.

No legends about awakening at twelve. No immediate dominance.

Yet there was something in those early entries that felt... steadier.

’He was something rarer.’

Someone who loved magic without fear.

Someone who approached it without the need to conquer it first. No urgency to prove himself. No desperation to overpower others. Just curiosity that refused to fade.

Noel exhaled slowly.

’Maybe that’s why he went so far.’

The thought settled quietly in his mind.

He shifted his posture slightly and let his gaze return to the diary. As he skimmed forward a few lines, a different tone began to appear between the ink. A lighter rhythm. Brief mentions of someone unnamed at first.

A girl.

The way Nicolas described a conversation after practice. The way his handwriting subtly changed in those lines, a little less structured.

Noel’s eyes narrowed faintly.

’Redna?’

The name appeared a few entries later.

He stared at it for a moment.

’So it was her.’

There was something unexpectedly personal in the way Nicolas wrote about her.

Noel hesitated.

’I don’t know if I should read this part,’ he thought. ’It feels like crossing into something that isn’t mine.’

The idea of going through someone’s former love, their private memories, left a faint discomfort in his chest.

Noir lifted his head, golden eyes studying him with quiet curiosity.

’It doesn’t intrigue you at all?’ Noir’s voice slipped into his thoughts, smooth and faintly amused.

Noel glanced at him briefly before looking back at the page.

It did.

Noel held the page between his fingers a second longer before closing the journal halfway, thumb marking the place.

’It intrigues me,’ he admitted quietly within his mind.

Noir’s ears twitched slightly.

’But I’ll respect it.’

He lowered his gaze back to the leather cover.

’I’m not reading someone’s past just because I can.’

There were things worth learning. And things that were not his to take.

Noir watched him for a moment, then settled again.

’Then what are you looking for?’

Noel reopened the journal with clearer intent this time.

’I want the teleportation spells. And the gravity ones.’

His eyes sharpened slightly as he spoke the thought.

’That will be useful.’

He paused briefly.

’I still need to refine shadow magic. I’ve barely scratched its potential.’

A faint flicker of darker mana responded at the edge of his senses, subtle but present.

’Roberto uses light,’ Noel continued. ’Shadow should be the most effective against him. And the same applies the other way around.’

There was no hostility in the thought. Just calculation. Reality.

Noir’s tail moved once across the floor.

’That’s true. Light and shadow will always clash.’

A brief pause.

’Then let’s skip ahead until it matters.’

Noel nodded faintly.

’Yeah.’

He began turning pages carefully, scanning dates and headings. Early theory. Elemental foundations. Resonance notes. Structural diagrams. Margins filled with small observations.

Then—

A different section.

The handwriting was steadier now. More precise. More confident.

A header written clearly at the top of the page.

Spatial Transition Theory.

Noel’s eyes focused.

’So this is it.’

He adjusted his posture, leaning forward slightly as the faint hum of mana in the chamber seemed to grow sharper around him.

Nicolas’ original and unique teleportation magic.

Now this—

This was something he would read.