Circe forced herself to perk up a bit, rummaging through the spellbooks and pulling out an old language parchment manuscript, which she tossed to Lorne.
"Today, we'll cover the remaining Hermetic script."
"I've already finished it."
Lorne caught the manuscript and, without even glancing at it, tossed it back into Circe's lap.
Hermetic script, also known as Hermetic symbols, is an ancient symbolic system believed to have originated in ancient Greece. Hermes, the messenger god in Greek mythology, is said to have invented this system and taught it to humans.
This symbolic language was widely used in ancient Greece and Rome for recording, communication, and mystical rituals.
Generally, it consists of a series of lines and geometric shapes, with each symbol representing a specific letter, word, or concept.
These symbols were often carved into stone, pottery, or paper and could also be used as talismans or magical charms.
Additionally, the shapes and arrangements of Hermetic symbols carry symbolic meanings and are believed to convey hidden messages and power. As a result, this script is often one of the foundational courses for learning magic and witchcraft.
Circe scratched her head, her multicolored eyes filled with confusion.
"Huh? I thought there were still a few pages left?"
"I studied them on my own. If I waited for you to finish dragging it out, who knows when that would be."
Lorne couldn't help but roll his eyes, his face dark as he snorted.
Since it was a basic introductory course, the difficulty wasn't particularly high.
Yet, this book, only a few dozen pages long, had taken Circe over half a month to cover, and she still had a third left.
Lorne suspected that this woman wasn't an eagle but a procrastinating pigeon, always slacking off and delaying.
As he silently criticized her, his purple eyes glanced at the Eagle Witch across from him, faintly flickering with disdain.
"That fast? Then let me test you."
Circe, half-doubting, flipped open the parchment manuscript and used a stick to draw five different symbols on a stone slab.
Lorne glanced at them and answered without hesitation.
"This triangle represents fire, symbolizing energy and passion; the square represents earth, symbolizing stability and solidity; the circle represents water, symbolizing flow and change; the semicircle represents air, symbolizing thought and communication. Fire, earth, water, and air are also the four elements often said to form the foundation of the world in magic.
As for the last one, the spiral represents the soul, symbolizing growth and evolution..."
"These are the individual uses, but when combined, these symbols can form more complex matrices. Depending on the shape, size, and arrangement of each symbol, the effects of the matrix will vary accordingly. This is what we call a **magic circle**."
After reciting the meanings of the five Hermetic symbols, Lorne paused briefly, his gaze deepening as he pondered further.
"At its core, it's about using elements as the foundation, symbols as the medium, and the soul as the master, to define rules, according to one's will, and reconstruct a miniature world!"
"Who told you all this?"
"I guessed..."
"...?!"
Circe's pink eyes widened as she stared at her rebellious disciple, who had just dropped such a bombshell and her expression gradually filled with a hint of bitterness.
"Do you know how long it took me to figure all this out? Decades."
"Just lucky, I guess."
Lorne's face remained calm as he spoke in a steady tone.
Words and symbols are not just carriers of language and communication; they also represent the creator's and a civilization's perspective and understanding of the world, inevitably containing a complete philosophical framework.
This level of insight wasn't something to be proud of.
It was simply because, while designing game narratives and structures, he had studied the logic behind more than one ancient language and understood their commonalities.
Once you grasp one principle, the rest follow.
Seeing her rebellious disciple perform so brilliantly, Circe, as his teacher, had no choice but to abandon her plan of muddling through.
She forced herself to perk up and pulled out another book from the pile.
"Since you've pretty much mastered the Hermetic script, let's move on to Potion Studies."
"We finished that last year."
Lorne reminded her with a blank expression, his gaze fixed on his unreliable teacher.
Circe coughed awkwardly and quickly shifted her focus.
"What about this one, Alchemy?"
"Three months ago."
"Summoning and Transformation?"
"Summoning is fine, but you said Transformation isn't suitable for my constitution. It seems to require a unique bloodline. That was last week's course..."
"..."
Under the increasingly subtle eyes of the students, Circe's face flushed unnaturally, looking at the useless magic books on the ground, she couldn't help but groan in her heart.
'Why are you so diligent? Are you in a hurry to reincarnate?'
The books she had collected with great difficulty were almost all used up.
What should she teach next?
A lazy teacher tried hard to turn her walnut-sized brain in the bird legend, and looked at the outstanding students in front of her from time to time, with a more and more resentful look.
So, she hated classes the most!
Finally, after racking her brains for half an hour, Circe weakly threw out today's learning tasks.
"How about a meditation class?"
Hearing her words, Lorne put down an old textbook he was reading and nodded calmly.
For sixteen years, although he lived on this island and lived a peaceful life isolated from the world, the sword of Damocles hanging over his head always made him feel a sense of crisis.
Therefore, in order to improve his self-protection ability, he spared no effort in learning magic and witchcraft, and even took out the posture of sprinting for the college entrance examination in his previous life.
Over the years, he almost emptied the magic knowledge in the brain capacity of this great witch.
At present, even compared with Circe, the only he lacked was probably the difference in magic power, experience, and skills.
Meditation, as a basic course for wizards, was the main way to stabilize the spirit and improve magic power.
Instead of wasting time on the inefficient and bad teaching of this cuckoo spirit, it was better to spend more time meditating and accumulate more.
"Okay, wait a moment, I'll go prepare something!"
With tacit consent, Circe jumped up from her seat and rushed out of the temple in a hurry.
Lorne glanced at the back of the silly bird teacher, who was almost fleeing, shook his head helplessly, reached out to pick up the Hermetic manuscript, picked up a branch and traced the rune traces written by Circe on the stone slab.
Although his theoretical knowledge had been full marks, it was still difficult to reproduce the perfect charm of every Hermetic text.
To make up for this, he could only go through long and boring practice.
After Lorne had copied it for more than thirty times, Circe finally returned to the temple as she placed a large, bubbling soup pot between the two of them, and then placed two earthenware bowls she had brought with her on the ground.
With the sound of sticky liquid churning, the two bowls were filled to the brim.
Lorne looked at the dark and green soup in the bowl in front of him, and his eyes twitched, with a look of "are you kidding me?" on his face.