Notes

RightWayWrongWayPair: Theresa vs count whatshisname and their way of running an army, despite on paper having equal number of troops

funny
* Meg way of informing Vincent to take a hold of himself.
Meg! On we mnie zionie!
Uspokój się! - Szefowa sprzedała mi telepatycznego kopniaka - Wszystko idzie zgodnie z planem. Wdech, wydech!
Ale on zionie we mnie!
Króliczki kicają, ptaszki śpiewają, a smoki zioną! Przekazuję ci mapę energii. Łap
* The souldragon being programmed as a LargeHam, while recognising Vincent, a Source-less sorceress' assistant, as the great mage that created it due to the sheer amount of energy he's processing. Right down to asking if Vincent wants it [[MundaneSolution to simply turn off]], which he eagerly agrees on.
* Vincent's daily routine as an apprentice of Black Meg: a mix of UnphasedEveryman combined with treating his mistress, a fearsome, infamous sorceress as the AbsentMindedProfessor that she really is, making sure she eats her meals and stays hydrated, as she has no patientce to care for that herself.
* After Vincent does what he considers to be a DramaticReveal about being a Void Mage, Amandine shrugs it off, as she managed to figure it out on her own as something pretty obvious. Instead, she was expecting him to admit to an affair with Kathryn, a "younger, smarter, with an active Source", which in turn takes Vincent by complete surprise, as he didn't even consider it an option. They both awkwardly start to laugh at their misunderstanding.
* The local dialect that emerged from Old Bretonian in the lost Bretonia [[TranslationConvention is presented]] as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_language quasi-Silesian]]. Not only it is hilarious by itself, but it's nothing like the actual Silesian, too. Oh, and it's [[RealityHasNoSubtitles completely untranslated]], making it a complete gibberish to an average Polish reader.
** On top of that, there is a meta-joke on the translation convention. There is a long tradition in Polish translations to render the dialects from northern France, particularly those from the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, as Silesian or at least Silesian-like language. And given how Bretonia is heavily stylised as France, it's only fitting for the common people to speak like that.

awesome
* The opening chapter, with the group dealing with the souldragon, runs on applied AwesomeByAnalysis. Through extensive preparations, calculations and checking math variables, the group manages to defeat an ancient magical construct that's hard to even contain in a single area by ''calculating its energy emmission'' and processing it into the biggest Ball of Lighting spell ever made, responsible for a PillarOfLight seen almost 100 miles away.
** And before they reach the area with the dragon, they have to fight their way against all sorts of voidlings, [[EstablishingCharacterMoment showing off their skills and abilities]], along with extensive use of MundaneUtility that comes from using magic.
* Meg and Belle are squarely BroughtDownToBadass - despite having their Sources phased off in Bretonia, they very quickly prove their worth for general von Feuerstein, as they keep all their ''other'' skills.

hearthwarming
* Amandine is introduced as a low-key GreenEyesMonster, seeing Kathryn as a "better catch" for Vincent and a thread to their romance. After few awkward moments, they end up as a highly effective team and once in the lost Bretonia, Amandine treats Kath like a younger sister, helping her through the worst, being supportive and even doing few badly needed GetAHoldOfYourself.


https://www.kwestiasmaku.com/desery/serniki/sernik_wiosenny/przepis.html

* WriteWhatYouKnow: Aleksandra Janusz is a molecular biologists and neuobiology specialist, along with spending most of her life in the academia and starting off studying radiation effect on tissue. On top of that, in her youth, she worked for Kawaii, Polish scene-defying magazine for manga and anime. Take a wild guess how it affects her writing style


magic a is magic a/magitek: right down to ambient radiation measured with geiger-like counter
blessed with suck/cursed with awesome: vincent ability to process magic and his absurdly large channelling capacity


* AfterTheEnd: The story is set more than 700 years after "the Tear", a [[EarthShatteringKaboom world-splitting magical event]]. However, as the story progress, it's made perfectly clear that Arboria not only recovered entirely in short order, but actually ''advanced'' faster as the result of the societal upheaval created in the aftermath of the Tear. [[spoiler: Lost Bretonia, meanwhile, is stuck in perpetual medieval, with all the antiquated mores still firmly in place, while both technology and magic barely moving forward]].
* AllWitchesHaveCats: Played with. Meg has a cat named Plum. However, other magic users keeps around various magical beings instead, using them as power capacitors. Meg doesn't need one, since she has Vincent and his energy channels for that, keeping the cat solely for her own amusement.
* AsYouKnow: When the narration is done from Vincent's perspective, he mentions various obvious and common facts in-univers in an off-handedly manner, often pointing that the details can be found in [[EncyclopediaExposita specific publication or even common schoolbooks]].
* AutomaticCrossbows: Meg is carrying one as a MundaneSolution against voidlings that are immune to magic. The weapon itself not only is automatic in the traditional sense, but more importantly, the bolts from it are still magic-infused and that's what powers the mechanisms, too.

* BatmanGambit: Black Meg spend 24 years training Vincent and looking for a chance to finally have ''juuuust'' enough spare magic energy to fill his ridiculously spacious energy channels. [[spoiler: Him processing and recycling magic out of a souldragon, a powerful magical construct, wasn't a risky, if innovative way of dealing with the beast, but a calculated attempt to finally get anywhere close to Vince channel's capacity and thus activate his Source]].
* BrickJoke: When Kathryn is trying to hack into Meg's crystal ball, she complains that the first thing she tried was simple stuff, like "Plum" (Meg cat's name) and it didn't work. Much later, Meg's pocket variant (essentially a smartphone) turns out to be protected by a password that's, you've guessed, Plum.
* BroughtDownToBadass: Meg and Belle, even when stranded in Bretonia and having their Sources severely quenched, are still incredibly experienced, well-trained and well-educated magic users. While they can't solve their problems with fireballs, they still can kick some serious ass and still have access to entire slew of simple hexes, as those don't require access to the Source, knowing more of them than all of Bretania together.

* DramaticWind: Skuld does that when angered - despite no real wind being around her human form, her hair start to float.

* FieryRedhead: Amandine is described as copper-haired and easily gets aggitated, particularly when it comes to just how risky Vincent job is. This goes so far as her having no qualms chewing up an all-powerful magic construct for dragging her loved one into a grave danger.
* FieryStoic: Kathryn is a mild-mannered magical nerd with plans to be a civil engineer once her apprenticeship is over. She almost never gets aggitated. In the same time, she is a Creo mage, with in-born affinity toward fire spells.
* FirstPersonSmartass: Played with. Vincent isn't snarky, but he tends to describe things in a routine, matter-of-fact manner, because he has SeenItAll already for countless of times and shrugs off various other things due to them being common in-universe.

* HoldYourHippogriffs: Things aren't automatical, but automagical. To make it more confusing, not all of them actually run on magic power.
* HowWeGotHere: The story opens when Vincent is having an argument with Amandine over the sort of risk he takes while being merely an assistant and should at least ask for a rise, off-handly mentioning that he "[[NoodleIncident processed the whole souldragon]]". Then the story goes few days back and process through all the events leading to Vincent being bed-ridden and having a migraine due to the adventure.

* LIsForDyslexia: Kathryn suffers from dysenthropy, which makes her struggle with enthropy-based spells (more than half of all spells out there). However, rather than having problems with keeping rules of casting spells, dysenthropy is described as being LiteralMinded when it comes to reading the energy patter of spell, thus having problems with variables and random elements.
* LostTechnology: Various old magic techniques were lost in the direct aftermath of the Tear and the following war. On top of that, due to the way how things used to work with passing knowledge back then, great deal of sorcerers died without passing their secrets to anyone. In fact, this is a big part of why MagicIsScience and treated as such in the modern times is due to everyone realising just how much was lost thanks to previously everyone jelously guarding various magic spells and techniques they knew privately.

* {{Magitek}}: It's more or less 2nd industrial revolution, but powered by magic, rather than steam and early electric generators. Think ''VideoGame/{{Arcanum}}'', but without TheMagicVersusTechnologyWar.
* MartialArtsStaff: Vincent's weapon of choice. It's implied that staff fighting is part of the Way of Heron, the martial art that Vincent uses to compensate his lack of magic Source whenever dealing with voidlings during on-field expeditions.
* MasterOfOneMagic: Kathryn is a rare Creo sorceress, making her excellent in that particular type of (and normally pretty tough) magic. She also suffers from dysenthropy, making her ''utterly suck'' in Enthropy-related spells. Which is about half of all of them.
* MugglesDoItBetter: A variety, along with various degree of "muggle"
** Witches in-universe are people that don't have an active Source, but still use hexes. Unlike spells, hexes use BackgroundMagicField and while nowhere near as impressive, ''every single human'' can do this, often to a master degree. Meg even mentions to Arthur that witches in Arboria often completely outshine Sorcerers in their [[MasterOfOneMagic narrow experise field]], despite, again, barely having a single quantum of magic at their disposal.
** Amandine, Vincent's fiance, has virtually zero clue about magic, but she's a painter. As such, she has zero problem with drawing even the most complex sigils and runes, including multi-dimensional ones, as she treats them as a work of art, rather than a mathematical puzzle. [[spoiler: It also allows her to realise the various decorative motives from the Imperial period aren't there just for the aesthetics alone once she spots similarities between them and runes used in Void-related spells]].
** [[spoiler: Artois manages to physically overcome and assault [[ScaledUp Lucius in his dragon form]], [[EyeScream gauging one of his eyes out]]]], while everyone else is too busy simply blocking and dodging dragon's magic attacks. Granted, this was [[WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer the best he could do]], but ''still''.
* MundaneSolution: When faced with a troll that's immune to magic, Meg doesn't waste time to figure out which spell might work - [[CombatPragmatism she just draws a crossbow and shoots the thing]].

* NegatedMomentOfAwesome: Katheryn is a an incredibly rare Creo magician, which requires a bunch of already inborn, yet uncommon features comming together, allowing her to effortlessly use normally taxing fire magic. Her first display of that ability is used on a troll species that happens to have ''a complete immunity to Creo magic'' and shrugs off entirely her attack that would normally burn anything into ash.

* OverlyLongName: Among the likes of Margueritte de Breville de Brnche d'Ambre, Belinde Chamomille de Branche d'Emeraude and Kathryn Verd de Branche d'Argent, not to mention Liliana de Diego Otero de Branche d'Opal, an apprentice under the name Vincent Thorpe really stands out, simply due to the simplicity of it. It's a running theme for magic users in general, as grand majority of them come from nobility or at least are BlueBlood. [[spoiler: People from the Lost Bretonia take it a notch higher]].
** Belinde Chamomille de Branche d'Emeraude
** Margueritte de Breville de Brnche d'Ambre
** Kathryn Verd de Branche d'Argent
** Liliana de Diego Otero de Branche d'Opal
** Bernard de Montreuil de Branche d'Amethyste

* PlaceOfPower: Geographic sources, which are the main source of magic power. However, rather than magic being stronger in those places, they are simply responsible for the BackgroundMagicField, "seeping" the energy around
* PrematurelyGreyHaired: Kathryn is in her early 20s, yet is described as grey-haired. And not because her hair is gray, but because it turned so (makes more sense in the original Polish).

* RequiredSecondaryPowers: Every single person in-universe can use magic. The real hurdle is how much and how well they can do this, requiring a Source (this can be trained to get bigger over years, once having one at all) and magic channels of sufficient capacity (those are in-born and can't be altered) to flow energy from said Source. And then there are other factors, affecting things like specific types of magic or even disorders that will affect one's casting. If this wasn't enough, a Source can be "half-active", which is enough to be technically licensed as a Sorcerer, but requires re-evaluation every five years to get the license extended for another period. Without access to a source, all there is are basic hexes - still magic, still ''enormously'' useful for MundaneUtility, but hardly impressive and rather slow-going.
** Vincent has enormous, almost impossible to measure capacity of his energy channels. However, he has no active source, or even a half-active one, which renders him simply incapable of Sorcerer-tier magic: all he has on his disposal are few quantums of magic energy, which is barely half of unit of magic energy. While this is still impressive for a non-Sorcerer, even a half-active Source can muster 5-10 units after some capacity training (which is about the size of a newly awakened active Source), allowing them to cast actual spells.
** Kathryn is a rare Creo magician, which is implied to be genetical quirk. As such, she's incredibly good at channeling [[Creo even with minimal training]], while normally those spells are considered AwesomeButImpractical due to amount of excess energy wasted during casting (often going beyond one's capacity)
** [[spoiler: Void magic is another in-born ability. One has to be born with entire pre-set of secondary powers, all of which can be easily looked over as insignificant on their own, but their sum allows to access Void magic without dying in the process]].

* ThemeNaming: Most of old, noble lineages use colours and gemstones as their surnames. Also, there is a significant contrast between French-sounding noble names and English-themed "commoners".

* UncannyValley: Happens in-universe. When taking a human form, Skuld looks like a gorgeous girl in her late teens that's just TOO perfect, which cause open revulsion to people looking at her, as they are unnerved by her looks and mannerisms. She's well aware of this, but that's just how she was designed by her creator, and advises people to simply look away. Ironically, her human form was intended to be AFormYouAreComfortableWith.

* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: The only spell Vincent truly mastered for the 24 years of apprenticeship is Ball of Light, a basic illumination spell, which was the best he could do with his non-existing magic power. He ends up using it as an anti-magic weapon thanks to his enormous capacity of energy channels, simply processing whatever excess energy send into his direction into light bulbs, and, in the first instance of using it, a PillarOfLight.