There was no obvious answer, and Zorian didn’t feel like trying to track down Zach. He probably couldn’t find him, even if he tried, and he had more attainable goals to pursue.
Like getting out of Xvim’s merciless clutches. What could be more important than that?
The rest of the restart was pleasantly uneventful. There was no Zach, since the boy never showed up in school and couldn’t be found by anyone. After a week or so, the newspapers stopped covering the story because there were no new developments to justify the articles, and the rumors making rounds across the student body died down soon after. For his part, Zorian threw himself completely into mastering the exercises in Ilsa’s book. He neglected virtually everything else, often skipping classes when he thought he could get away with it. Akoja was furious, since he was apparently ruining the attendance record of the class, and got Ilsa to corner him one day about it. Fortunately, Zorian’s ability to get top grades on every exam, despite his spotty attendance, blunted the impact of Akoja’s criticism, and Zorian managed to convince Ilsa he was working on a personal project that was taking most of his time… not skipping classes for the heck of it as Akoja claimed. He assured her the project would be finished within a month, and that he would resume attending classes regularly after the summer festival. She made him promise that he would show her what he was working on when he was done, and he enthusiastically agreed with her.
His single minded focus gave results quickly — he mastered both vertical and fixed position levitation by the end of the restart. He didn’t bother showing these advanced skills to Xvim, who was still having him work on the pen-spinning exercise, since he doubted he’d get a worthwhile reaction. Nothing seemed to please that guy.
He hadn’t been present in the city when the invasion came, of course. Without Zach’s ring, he was even more useless in combat than he was in the last restart, so it was doubtful he could have lasted for very long in the midst of it all. He did make sure to practice with combat invocations he learned from Zach each day, hoping to hone them into the same reflexive state that Zach displayed. That would take years of practice, of course, but that just meant he’d better start as soon as possible. He also didn’t just leave via train like he usually did — he traveled by foot to one of the hills overlooking the city and observed the city from there.
Watching the invasion unfold from such a high vantage point was not only a lot easier on Zorian’s nerves than being in the thick of it — it was also rather informative. It was interesting to see how the invasion played out in broad terms. It seemed to have several stages, the first of which was, of course, the disguised artillery magic barrage. The explosive flares mostly targeted three crucial areas — the city hall, the local military base, and one cluster of buildings that Zorian didn’t recognize. The academy didn’t appear to be a primary target, possibly because the invaders wanted it reasonably intact. Aside from the initial blast, the impact zones seemed to spawn scores of fire elementals that had to be dealt with. Fortunately, a lot of buildings in Cyoria were at least moderately warded against fire, because Zorian didn’t doubt for a second that the entire city would’ve been aflame within minutes otherwise. Once the fire elementals had a few minutes to make a nuisance of themselves, monsters poured out of the sewers, and after they rampaged across the city a bit, the spellcasters finally arrived.
The battle was still raging when the clock finally hit two past midnight and everything went suddenly black.
All things considered, the army of monsters was the least destructive part of the invasion — if he could somehow prevent the initial barrage from crippling the city defense right from the start, or take out a lot of the attacking mages that followed in the monster’s wake… well, it was worth a shot when he finally got some skills under his belt.
The next three restarts were essentially the same, right down to Zach dueling his guardian and escaping into the night. Apparently that wasn’t just a one-time thing, but a rather routine occurrence. The exact details varied, but every time he roughed Tesen up before setting off god knows where. Unfortunately, Zorian couldn’t find out anything substantial about Tesen — the man was a high ranking politician, and thus not exactly approachable, and nothing in publicly available sources explained Zach’s apparent hostility towards the man.
His work with Ilsa’s book progressed steadily, but he was frankly getting a bit sick of it. There was only so much of incessant shaping practice he could stand before he lost all enthusiasm. Besides, Ilsa said most students go through them at a rate of 6 per year, and he was already more effective than that — something that he attributed to his unusual focus in the matter. How many people could afford to focus all their energies on shaping exercises? There were so many things vying for the typical student’s attention that shaping exercises no doubt ended up near the bottom of their priorities.
That was why he was currently in Ilsa’s office, trying to see if he could get something out of her without mastering quite the entire book.
«What can I do for you, mister Kazinski?» Ilsa asked.
«Well, I’m a bit concerned about the program you outlined in your first class,» said Zorian. «I’m not sure I’ll get anything out of it, since I already have a solid grasp on all the topics you mentioned.»
Ilsa raised an eyebrow at him. Hey, it worked on Kyron, why wouldn’t it work on Ilsa too?
«I see,» she said after a second of silence. «Would you mind if I gave you a couple of quick tests to confirm that?»
Confident he could deal with anything she tested him with, he agreed. Ilsa proceeded to rummage through her drawers and took out 2 different tests. One was an exact copy of the same test Ilsa gave to the whole class just before the summer festival, and Zorian proceeded to fill it out in 10 minutes flat by sheer memory. The other was unfairly hard, because it covered advanced topics that didn’t turn up in class at all. Zorian only managed to fill out a quarter of the questions before time was up, and he was fairly sure not all of his answers were correct.
Ilsa skimmed through them quickly and then nodded to herself.
«Your theoretical knowledge is pretty spotty,» Ilsa said with a theatrical sigh, and Zorian had to stop himself from scowling. That was such bullshit! She gave him that second test just to make sure he failed! «Here… I’ll give you a list of additional reading to study in your free time.»
Two minutes later Zorian found himself practically pushed out of the door, a piece of paper with hastily scribbled writing in his hand. He glared at the list of book titles, very much tempted to incinerate it on the spot. He was supposed to start on the variations of the flame producing exercise, anyway. But he didn’t. He would not be defeated that easily! If he could survive Xvim’s mentoring methods this long, he could definitely read a couple of theoretical manuals. He would be back. She could be sure of that.
«Good morning, brother! Morning, morning, MORNING!»