The Over-Break System

Several days after Professor Wallin’s Bloodline Class, life at VSFA settled into another goddamn rotation of lectures, practicals, and recycled fundamentals, leaving Cynrik wondering why anyone above Tier-2 was still required to sit through half of this shit.

His little brother was still listening, which figured, since Brance considered ignoring an instructor some kind of personal offense, even when the material was so fucking basic they could both recite it in their sleep. Gabby had her notes open beside him, while Benny and Melody appeared perfectly content to sit through Class like normal Students, an attitude Cynrik found slightly disturbing given how little they were actually learning.

By the middle of the lecture, Selene had settled against her Husband’s shoulder, lazily reading through something on her Watcet, while Cynrik had given up pretending the Professor held his attention.

The matte-black sunglasses covering his eyes, however, were new.

They looked more like military ballistic eyewear than enchanted equipment, with dark lenses sweeping tightly around the sides of his head and narrow arms tucking beneath his hood.

There wasn’t a single exposed Runic channel anywhere on the frame, something that had taken far too much fucking work to manage without compromising the clearance he needed to fight or cast while wearing it.

”Since when do you wear sunglasses inside?” Gabby asked, leaning around Brance to get a better look.

Without shifting his attention from the front of the room, Cynrik answered, ”Since today,” in the exact tone of someone who knew what her intended question actually was.

She stared at him for a second, clearly deciding whether it was worth pushing while the Professor was still talking, only for Benny to glance over from Melody’s side and study the frame more carefully.

”Are those Selene’s old Inspection Glasses?”

”They were.”

With her head resting against Cynrik’s shoulder, Selene sighed softly, but she wisely kept reading instead of helping, leaving Benny waiting for an explanation neither of them intended to provide in the middle of a classroom.

The Professor standing several dozen meters away was Tiers above most of the Students present, and Cynrik wasn’t stupid enough to pretend speaking quietly somehow created privacy around senses sharp enough to hear half the room breathing.

{{You could at the very least, I don’t know, maybe TRY acting like you know the meaning of being normal,}} Brance complained through the Mind Link without taking his attention off the lecture, earning an immediate {{No,}} from his brother and forcing a slow breath through his nose.

{{Right. Of course. Why would you ever consider being anything other than weird? Silly me.}}

{{Leave him alone. He’s finally wearing the frame I picked instead of one of those ugly-ass prototypes.}} Selene chimed in while muffling a laugh against Cynrik’s shoulder.

{{They were functional.}} Cynrik argued, clenching his teeth as he looked down at her.

{{One of them made you look sixty.}}

{{It had excellent internal clearance.}}

{{MMMMHMMMM, you said the same thing about the one that made you look like Dahmer.}} She shot back with a playful eye roll.

{{Wait…what? You made Serial Killer-based glasses.}}

{{FUNCTIONAL BRANCIE!}}

{{THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING, CYN!}}

{{Babe, aesthetics aren’t everything, you know,}} Grunting at his brother, Cynrik ignored him and turned back to the woman hanging on his side, only for Selene to finally lift her head enough to look directly at him.

{{Okay, then how about you let Maeeeve see you wearing the old prototype, and we’ll REALLY know.}}

He opened his mouth, only to close it again at the thought of Maeve taking one look at the old frame, laughing in his face, and joining Selene in tormenting him until he destroyed the damn thing himself.

{{...}}

{{Yep, that’s what I thought.}} His Wife settled back against him with a pleased little giggle while Brance wisely stayed out of it.

Unlike the early Load Point experiments, where Cynrik had kept Selene away until he could be sure a jump wouldn’t scatter her across the Shadow Realm, the glasses had been her project too from the beginning, even when his tests got dangerously fucking ugly.

Throughout most of the development, Selene had sat beside him, usually reading while he swore at microscopic Runic pathways and destroyed another lens, only looking up when something exploded or when he went so quiet she knew better than to ask what the fuck he had broken this time.

By the fourth prototype, Selene had stolen control of the exterior design, declaring she refused to be seen with whatever ugly shit he’d come up with next.

Of course, he had used her design, though he would rather bite his own tongue off than tell her how much better it fit.

While the lecture dragged on, the glasses quietly handled the constant flood of information he had spent so much time trying to keep out of his conscious attention.

Common Mana signatures matched existing profiles, while Watcets, classroom electronics, security systems, furniture, and the other everyday bullshit he’d scanned countless times were checked against what he already knew.

He didn’t need to see more when his ocular Skills already showed him too fucking much; what he needed was a way to decide which of those readings weren’t worth looking at again.

Matching readings slipped into the background, but Cynrik could call them back whenever he wanted to inspect something properly.

Testing the inscriptions beside the door, Cynrik called the familiar formation into focus, dismissed it, and summoned it again without bringing all the other useless garbage along for the ride, leaving him so fucking relieved by the missing headache that he almost checked the system a third time out of habit.

Then a Student crossed the doorway carrying an enchanted accessory Cynrik hadn’t scanned before, its unfamiliar Mana signature lingering at the edge of his vision while he compared the item with the protective ward, watched the kid sit down, and reluctantly decided there was no fucking reason to make a scene.

To be absolutely certain, he disabled the filtering long enough to endure the usual flood of Mana and Runic information, then switched it back on to find the unknown signature still sitting exactly where the stupid things had told him to look.

’Tch. Fine, you win this round.’ He still wasn’t trusting a new piece of equipment with their lives just because it had survived a few hours of Class, but it was a hell of a lot better than missing something important while checking the same old security formation for the fiftieth time.

”So what did you actually do to those things?” Benny asked, catching Cynrik outside the academic building while pointing directly at the frame.

Adjusting the glasses in the most EPIC method possible… with one finger, Cynrik replied, ”Rebuilt them.”

”That’s it?”

”That’s the answer.”

With a frown, Benny asked, ”What do they do?”

”Stuff.”

From beside Brance, Gabby groaned, ”Big Bro Cyn, that isn’t an explanation.”

”It wasn’t meant to be,” Cynrik replied, his eyes sweeping across the passing Students, security systems, and familiar Mana formations while Gabby watched him in mounting suspicion, made considerably worse by Selene refusing to help her get a straight answer.

Before they reached the MyrkLys dorm, Melody convinced Benny to disappear down another corridor while Cynrik watched their familiar Mana signatures until both vanished farther into the Academy.

He saw nothing strange, but that didn’t mean he stopped watching.

After the quiet walk, Gabby had apparently saved her questions because she barely made it through the dorm door before pointing at Cynrik’s face. ”Okay. Melody’s gone, Benny’s gone, we’re home. What did you do to them?”

Deciding that complimenting how quickly Gabby had read the situation would only encourage her, Cynrik answered, ”In short, I made them considerably more useful than the earliest pair of glasses Sel got as a reward.”

”That still doesn’t explain anything.”

”Instead of just giving random item descriptions, they handle the more strenuous things I normally see, so my eyes and brain don’t need to.”

That finally gave Gabby something useful enough to chew on, her brows knitting together as she started working through what he meant while Cynrik continued deeper into the dorm before she could form another question. Brance watched his brother leave before looking toward Selene. ”He’s not telling her either?”

Shaking her head, Selene followed her Husband, leaving Gabby to mutter, ”Wow. Rude.”

”It’s not personal, Gabs,” Selene assured her over one shoulder.

That was only partially true, and after Gabby disappeared into another room, Brance followed Cynrik down the hall, having recognized the look his brother always wore when an experiment had nearly exploded in his face, but he was pretending everything was fucking fine.