Aside from Shade, the other students were all officially enrolled at the Academy, dressed in matching black robes as uniforms.
Professor Garcia briefly welcomed Shade before beginning the formal lesson. Naturally, he first explained the course requirements and went over the twelve-inch-long (approximately 30.4 cm) parchment course report that would need to be submitted at the end.
Shade had thought that taking such a specialized course so early would leave him unable to understand parts of it, but once Professor Garcia formally began teaching, he discovered that the course merely provided a very introductory explanation of the strange supernatural ability known as a Mystic Lock.
The Ring Arcanists who chose this course all planned to study Mystic Lock-type thaumaturgies or spells in the future, or at least had such intentions. Comparatively speaking, Shade understood the course material better, because he had truly used Mystic Locks more than once.
This sort of foundational course was immensely helpful to Shade. Not only did Professor Garcia's explanations of spatial thaumaturgies give Shade more ideas about applying his abilities and planning his own system, but more importantly, he simply could not find information on Mystic Lock-type mystical abilities anywhere else. Thus, despite having used Mystic Locks several times, this was his first systematic understanding of such abilities.
Mystic Lock-type abilities were precious because they required the user to create and overlay a space upon the exceptionally stable space of the Material World. Within the sealed space, the Mystic Lock user's power would be greatly enhanced, and they could even suppress certain powerful Relics to some extent.
Besides comprehensively strengthening their user, different Mystic Locks would also grant different abilities according to their nature.
For instance, Shade's The Little Match Girl granted him the ability to make four limited wishes. So far, he had used