The Red Dragon Lord is OP, but Insists on a Pop Culture Invasion!

Lori was prolifically writing his little beginner’s guide to the Transformation School.

As a third-year student at Repin Academy, though his grades weren’t outstanding, he had stumbled through these three years without failing any classes.

At the academy, students at his level were a dime a dozen, but in the grand scheme of all Mages, he was considered quite capable.

He had an especially solid grasp of the foundational knowledge of the Transformation School; otherwise, he never would have been able to test into the academy.

There were three ways to get into Repin Academy. The first was to display astonishing talent at a young age, gaining admission without needing to take an exam.

Geniuses always received preferential treatment; they would be personally mentored one-on-one by the academy’s professors.

For example, Uffie from the Illusion School had only been enrolled for a few years but had already published several papers in the Mage Journal, The Caster, and the Magic Configuration Annals.

Her accomplishments were enough for an entire lab of doctoral candidates to graduate, yet she was in the same year as him and even held a key position at the Zog Group.

’You couldn’t even be jealous of someone like that.’

The second way was through letters of recommendation, donations, or placing in certain magic competitions, all of which could lower the admission standards.

This route offered a lot of wiggle room, and there were always people from prominent families who got in this way.

To be honest, Lori didn’t look highly upon this group, but he’d probably end up working for one of them after graduation anyway.

The third and most common path, the one Lori had taken to get into the academy, was like a thousand soldiers trying to cross a single-log bridge.

It started with becoming an apprentice at a local Mage Tower. The ones that had produced successful students were extremely popular and only accepted a small number of apprentices each year.

You either had to pass the apprenticeship test or beg and plead, pulling every connection you had.

For the next decade or more, you’d spend your days as an apprentice doing menial chores while also studying all sorts of magical knowledge, all for a single, destiny-defining exam.

He felt that the peak of his knowledge had been right before that exam.

That’s why he remembered the introductory magic concepts far more clearly than the High Tier knowledge he was learning at the academy.

Lori found his rhythm and quickly finished writing the first Chapter.

Although it was already the dead of night, he didn’t feel tired. On the contrary, he was filled with motivation, feeling he was doing something meaningful.

He felt he was shattering a privilege—the privilege of knowledge belonging to the nobility.

Magic had always been passed down in an orderly fashion; you had to either become part of the nobility or serve them to obtain this precious knowledge.

Many Mages who dreamed of breaking the knowledge monopoly ended up defending the system once they became a part of it.

’Of course, what I’m writing now is very basic,’ he thought, ’but in this era of rapid technological advancement, even a little bit of Casting ability can be very useful.’

In the past, no one was willing to teach those with little talent, but now even they had access to the forum.

Lori stretched his wrists. His roommate was already asleep, so he went out into the hallway to walk around and relax.

While taking a break, he thought about what he should write for the second Chapter.

When he first started, he had planned to follow the structure of the textbooks.

First, write about magic components, then about basic configurations.

But while writing the first Chapter, he had settled on targeting absolute beginners, which meant following the textbook’s structure was completely inappropriate.

He and many of his classmates had the same feeling when reading the textbooks.

It was as if the damn things weren’t written with the intention of letting anyone learn from them on their own.

Or rather, the authors assumed that anyone reading the book already had superb comprehension, outstanding talent, and the ability to easily look up related materials.

Every Chapter began by throwing formulas and theorems in your face, followed by extremely concise proofs.

The wording was condensed for the sake of being condensed, as if a thorough explanation would somehow lower the textbook’s prestige.

This left much of the content confusing and disjointed.

The most despairing part was that even if you managed to understand it, the gap between what the book taught and its practical application was as wide as the Feilin Continent from north to south!

’I can’t write like that.’

Returning to his dorm, he deleted the title he had already typed: "Basic Components of a Magic Model."

He changed it to "A Practical Little Trick: The Repair Technique."

He planned to start with this extremely simple Transformation magic, allowing learners to understand what the most basic magic model looks like through a practical example.

Of course, the magic wasn’t *that* simple. Restoring something to a brand-new state required a high level of skill.

It had taken Lori several years to master it, at least.

However, another benefit of the Repair Technique was that if you only wanted to patch things up just enough to hold together, it was incredibly easy.

And for a beginner, even achieving that much would provide a great sense of accomplishment.

A sense of accomplishment motivates a person to learn more difficult things and solve increasingly complex problems.

’That’s very important.’

Back when Lori was an apprentice, many of his peers had given up on the path of a Mage because they saw no results for a long time, fell into self-doubt, and burned themselves out.

His mentor had called it a necessary screening process.

But Lori felt it was completely unnecessary. After memorizing basic principles for two years, when he finally learned the Repair Technique, he realized he could have learned the damn thing in his second week as an apprentice.

He grew more and more excited as he wrote, even weaving a bit of humor and sprinkling in little anecdotes from the history of magic between the lines.

This was unimaginable in other textbooks. Mages had always believed that the process of learning magic was sacred and solemn.

But Lori didn’t see it that way.

Learning itself was already painful enough. As for the "love of learning," aside from a very small minority, most people were just motivated by the results learning could bring, not by the love of the act itself.

’So why not make the process as interesting as possible?’

The probability of Mages developing mental health issues was so high, and Lori felt it was inextricably linked to this masochistic learning process.

Finally, as he heard the morning birds chirping outside his window, Lori completed the second Chapter.

He checked it over once and was very satisfied. ’Isn’t this so much more meaningful than chasing after some girl I’ve never even met?’

The only imperfect part was the lack of illustrations, but that required a special uploading device.

Having stayed up all night, sleepiness finally hit him. ’I’ll sleep first. The illustrations can wait until I wake up.’

Without even changing his clothes, he collapsed onto the bed, utterly exhausted.

’Sleep now. Try to get up by noon.’

...

’Dammit, I can’t sleep! I really want to know if anyone has read what I posted!’

’Will those Mages in the knowledge section look down on it? After all, compared to what they post, the stuff I wrote is like spelling out that two plus two equals four.’

He opened the forum again and found his thread.

Not a single reply.

Lori started frantically closing and reopening the app, not knowing he could just refresh the current page.

After repeating this for more than ten minutes, a new reply finally appeared.

"Red Dragon Eating Potatoes: EXP +3."

’Huh? What does that mean?’

Lori finally couldn’t hold on any longer and fell asleep with his Illusion Mimicry still active.

When he woke up again, it was because his roommate was shaking him awake.

"Lori, Lori, wake up!"

"Huh? What’s wrong?" Lori groggily climbed out of bed.

’Eh? Why is the sky dark again?’

’How long was I asleep?’

"That tutorial thread on the forum, the one that starts with 0 Ring Tricks, did you write it?"

"Yeah, why? You saw it? It’s pretty good, right?"

Lori glanced at the forum.

’Hm? What am I seeing?’

Lori rubbed his eyes, strongly suspecting he was seeing things.

He looked again.

A stickied and featured thread!

’How many replies are there?’

One, two, three, four... Over two thousand!

"Are you still looking? Stop looking! This has blown up. The dean and Master Soron have specifically asked to see you."

"Huh?"