Sufficiently Advanced Magic/Summary

Sufficiently Advanced Magic - Chapter-By-Chapter Summary

Chapter 1 - Entry

Corin Cadence enters the Serpent Spire to begin his judgment, taking a backpack full of supplies. Within the spire, he starts in a room full of items, where he takes a gold key, trials of judgment, a quill, a Dueling Cane, a dueling vest, and a scroll in a foreign language. After the item room, he goes through a room with tile platforms and a mirror that spawned a shadow copy of himself.

Chapter 2 - Valor

Corin continues his judgment, cheating his way through a room with a valor board and rising mist. With the assistance of marginally helpful advice from Trials of Judgment and his gold key he enters the next room, one with multiple doors across a pool of water. After draining the water, he exits through a hidden, previously-underwater gate.

Chapter 3 - Limited Options

Corin continues his judgment, finding a corpse outside a prison holding Vera Corrington, a masked Keras Selyrian, and an unconscious young child (later discovered to be Echion Valden). Corin opens Echion's cell using a prison key found on the corpse and Vera's cell using his gold key, after which Keras breaks himself out. After going through a room full of pendulums, which Keras destroys, and receiving a warning about the prisoners he rescued from Trials of Judgment, Corin follows Vera and Keras into a large room, with Katashi, the Visage of Valor baring their path.

After failing to convince Katashi to let them leave, Keras starts fighting with Katashi, and after siding with Keras against Katashi, Corin and Vera carry the unconscious Echion away while Keras and Katashi fight.

Chapter 4 - Escape

Corin and Vera enter a room with a pillar of ice containing a sword and several sectioned off groups of monsters, including a spire guardian. Vera kills the non-spire guardian monsters with Corin's dueling cane while Corin assists. When Vera and Corin break the ice pillar, the spire guardian attacks. Corin takes the sword from the pillar, which turns out to be rusted and useless in a fight, and distracts the spire guardian while Vera kills it. When Vera discovers the next room has an exit, she takes the kid and Corin's dueling cane and takes it, and preventing Corin from taking the same exit.

After Vera has left, the The Voice of the Tower (from Trials of Judgment) appears, directing Corin to an attunement fountain, where he drinks and sees a vision. The Voice of the Tower then dips his sword in the fountain, transforming it into a magic ice sword, and tells Corin to tell Lyras Orden that The Voice of the Tower must speak with her. After warning him not to tell anyone what he had seen, it vanishes. Corin then writes his experiences down, fills his flask with water from the fountain, and exits the spire.

Outside the spire, Corin discovers that his memories are intact, then heads to the administration tent, where he discovers he has the Enchanter attunement. When he gets home, his father proclaims his failure, and announces Sera Shard as his replacement.

Chapter 5 - Orientation

Corin learns a bit about his attunement and anonymously notifies the family of the corpse he found in his judgment, then heads off to Lorian Heights Academy. On the way, he writes to the Voice of the Tower, and shows Sera some of what was written in Trials of Judgment. After Chancellor Wallace's orientation speech and moving into his dorm room, Jin Dalen knocks on his door and asks he is a spider, which he denies. He spends the rest of the day getting school stuff taken care of until Curtis Mattock gets everyone for a dorm meeting.

This chapter contains a flashback of Corin, when his brother falls out of a tree.

Chapter 6 - Preparations

Corin goes to Professor Orden's office, and delivers the Voice's message, but is stopped immediately by Orden, who says her (already secured) office is not secure enough, and warns him to protect his room against potential assassination attempts. He then secures his room in small ways, limited by his funds.

The next day after breakfast with Sera, where he learns Tenjin has gone missing, he has a lecture by Professor Meltlake on the school's structure and the basics of magic. After class, he signs up for his electives: permanent enchantments and magical dueling. His first magical dueling class starts with the professor hiding invisibly, a duel in which Marissa Callihan beats Rupert Kent, and Roland Royce challenging Corin to a duel.