"Good morning, Leonel. How are you today?" She asked me as she closed her book and kept it on the small table beside the sofa. "Well, it was kind of a dull start, but it seems much brighter now." I said as according to her instructions, it is expected for one to flatter a lady of a higher rank. This is not counted as flirting even, just how a gentleman is supposed to act.
"Well, consider your days to be significantly brighter for the following weeks. Since your grasp on language is now at an acceptable standard, we will instead have music lessons for you. I will be teaching you about musical theory to the required courtly standards while your grandfather will be hiring the services of a teacher for whatever instrument you decide to learn. You have to make that choice about a week from now when you have an initial idea of what each instrument is and what it signifies." She spoke as we walked to the room where our lessons usually took place; it was very similar to how I imagined a medieval study to look like.
We spent the next two hours going over musical theory and how it developed; it was more like a history lesson than anything else. The last few minutes of our lesson were focused on recognizing various instruments and their variations. While they had instruments very similar to those from my previous world, instruments like the piano that were commonly associated with high society were not given much importance here. They instead focused more on instruments like the flute as it allowed for a much better integration with magic. Magic is quite frankly used to an absurd degree here, they even have running water and indoor temperature control. It is abhorrently expensive for a normal family to implement, but it is still weird to have well-built refrigeration in a society that looks as if it came out of the Middle Ages.
As I was saying, an instrument like a flute allowed the player to utilize magic to invoke emotions; a piano, on the other hand, would need to be enchanted like hell to give even a fraction of the output of a flute. The exact mechanics of it is something I put on my 'to be studied later' list. As our lesson for the day came to a halt, she looked at me and said, "Leonel, while I have no experience utilizing magic for music of my own, you have the potential to do so. Make sure to factor in the magical attunement of the instrument you choose. It will be very beneficial not only for your skills in producing good music but also for improving your control over your magic."
"Do you have any books on this that I could maybe borrow?" I gave her my best cute puppy face, I swear I even had sparkling eyes at that moment, maybe because I learned how to do that by photon manipulation, but meh, semantics. She still was heartless enough to say, "No chance of that Leonel. Books on this aspect of magic are not exactly 'common'. You have a better chance of obtaining a tier 5 spellbook than this, musicians are extremely private over their use of magic and even the ones that share their methods beyond direct apprentices are only allowed to spread this knowledge through the academies. There is a royal decree prohibiting the buying and selling of any book on magic's application on music without state approval."
Her answer was quite shocking as I did not think that something like this would be restricted so I asked her directly, "But, why is it restricted to such an extent, it does not even have combat applications? I would get it if it were musicians that refused to share as it would be akin to reducing competition, but why would the kingdom even go as far as to issue a royal decree?"
"You forget a simple thing, the magic used by the way of music has the nature of invoking certain emotions in the listener. What do you think something capable of manipulating the emotional state of a person can achieve in the wrong hands? Taken to a theoretical extreme, music could even be capable of mind-controlling or brainwashing all life within its hearing range at once. Now tell me if the restrictions sound reasonable or not." Her answer was like pouring a bucket of cold water over me, I had subconsciously ignored such applications due to my own bias. I had a somewhat linear way of observing magic, which the clearly defined tiers and the initial spells that I learned only reinforced. This was the first time I got a glimpse of the terrifying nature even simple magic can take if used creatively. It was like a whole another world opened up to me. I had somewhat already been doing something similar by the puppy eye spell and others of my creation.
I left that class in a daze after bidding her goodbye and made my way rapidly to my room. I made notes of ideas that I would pursue in the future as this world allowed me to do far more with magic that what I had initially thought. I would have to study its impact in other seemingly ordinary professions as well. I wrote down quite a lot before having Markus forcefully take me away for my next lesson.