I shrugged a shoulder. “I haven’t, and I don’t intend to. I don’t agree with what you did, but you’ve made it clear enough that members of the Valian government were deeply involved with starting all this mess. I’m not turning you over to them.”
“Good.” Jin let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t processed just how tense he’d looked before, but when he changed his posture after that breath, I started to register how nervous he must have been. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me by performing well in the test, and by being honest if you come across any relevant information in the future.”
Jin pursed his lips for a moment, considering. “I can do that.”
With that, I escorted him out of the house.
As Jin had predicted, Sera acquiesced when I told her that I thought she should allow Jin to remain on our team.
She wasn’t happy about it, but she was even more pragmatic than I was.
“If he hurts anyone on our team, I’ll kill him myself,” she told me.
I had no reason to doubt her sincerity.
It was the twenty-fourth week of the semester, six weeks before the winter ball. The school year would end the week after that, and we’d have a few weeks off before being sent off to participate in some kind of activity before the second year officially started.
Assuming we passed, of course. If we failed out, we’d either be sent to the military or forced to retake the first year, depending on our performance.
Neither was an acceptable option. I had to make sure I passed my classes.
I also needed to graduate with excellent grades, because I wanted to be able to choose to be a military climber. If I passed my classes, but didn’t get good enough scores, there was a good chance I’d be assigned to a support division. If that happened, I wouldn’t have access to the spires until after I finished my service. I’d just be stuck churning out magical items for the military.
A total of two weeks had passed since the dueling midterm.
I had one more of my final exams during that time — Physical Combat class. It was pretty similar to dueling class, but without Teft’s eccentric puzzles, and we were only allowed to use weapons and martial arts. No magic.
I was fortunate enough to be matched against another Enchanter…and most Enchanters didn’t have the kind of combat training I did.
The average Enchanter didn’t have years of “training” with a duelist father to draw from, nor did most Enchanters take the dueling elective. They would have had the same basic physical training that the rest of the university did, but that wasn’t anywhere comparable to my experience.
I probably should have gone a little easier on him. Hopefully he had better scores in other classes.
With that completed, I still had a few more classes I hadn’t taken a final exam for yet. Aside from Magic Theory, which I was already preparing for, I wasn’t sure what I’d be up against.
Understanding Attunements was probably going to be a written exam, and I suspected Introductory Runes would be the same. I wouldn’t be the best in my class for either of those, but I wasn’t particularly worried about them, either.
Permanent Enchantments was a bit more worrisome. It was an elective, so I wouldn’t fail out of the school if I failed the test, but I had a feeling Professor Vellum would find a way to make me feel miserable if I didn’t get a good score.
Possibly even if I did get a good score, knowing her.
I resolved to disappoint her as little as possible.
While we’d prepared for more exams, I’d finally gotten used to using my Arbiter attunement, both on myself and on Patrick.
Sera and I had agreed that using the Arbiter attunement on her was too much of a risk. When I measured her lung mana with the mana watch, it registered at 6/6. It was recovering, but very slowly. Giving her mana might have accelerated that recovery process, but we suspected it was more likely to cause harm.
Marissa was a lower risk, but I still didn’t understand the mechanism behind how Katashi had increased the power of her attunement. The amount of mana he’d given her was several fold more than I could, and I didn’t know if that meant she’d have to wait several times longer before it would be safe to give her more. We decided it was probably safe to give her mana now, but it was safer to wait a few more weeks until after winter break.
In those two weeks, I’d made considerable increases to both my own mana and Patrick’s. My Arbiter attunement registered 106/106 mana now, and my Enchanter attunement was up to 78/78.
I wasn’t improving quite as quickly as I had when I was pushing myself to my limit, but it was still a tremendous improvement for such a short time period.
Notably, I found that repeated uses of my Arbiter attunement didn’t give me the same kind of lasting benefit I received the first time. If I wanted to be able to boost my mana faster with it, I’d have to figure out more advanced techniques, like whatever Katashi had done to Marissa.
Even taking that into account, I was still increasing my safe mana capacity by about one point per day in each attunement. That was about three times faster than I had been advancing just before going back into the spire, so it was great progress.
If I could maintain that pace, I’d hit Sunstone with both attunements within a year. That would put me toward the top of my class. Less than a tenth of second-year students hit Sunstone, and having two attunements at my age was similarly rare. Having both would make me extremely competitive.
I was basking in my own amazingness when Patrick rudely interrupted me.
“Have you talked to Mara today?”
I shook my head. “We haven’t had any training today.” The idea of talking to Mara for other purposes didn’t even occur to me.
“She could, uh, probably use some company right now.” He gestured toward Marissa’s room with a thumb.
“…Why?”
“She asked someone to the winter ball and got turned down, so she’s a little upset.”
I could see that being upsetting, but I wasn’t sure what he expected me to do about it. “Why aren’t you talking to her? Oh, were you the one she asked?”
Patrick laughed. “Oh, good goddess, no. There’s no way she’d ever ask someone like… well, anyway, no. She asked Keras.”
“Keras?” I blinked. “Isn’t he…?”
“Ancient beyond comprehension? Yeah. He told her she was too young, and that he wasn’t planning to go to the ball at all for political reasons. He might not be running from the law at this point, but he still isn’t exactly welcome everywhere.”
I nodded at that. “Makes sense. I’ve thought about skipping it myself.”
“Yeah, same here. But I think we should go. It’s important for making social connections, and you’re a noble. You should be paying attention to that kind of thing.”
I shrugged a shoulder. I wasn’t sure I could be more apathetic if I tried. “I guess.”
“I know you don’t care much about that sort of stuff, Corin, but it’s probably important in the long run. Even if you don’t end up running the household, I know you like having influence over important things. Like the whole situation with Katashi. Making connections can help with that.”
He was right, of course. I just…didn’t want to deal with it. I decided to placate him, though, since it was obviously important to him. “Fine, fine. I’ll go. But I’m still not sure why you want me to talk to Mara…you aren’t trying to get me to ask her to the ball, are you?”
“I was kind of hoping you would. I think it’d go a long way to cheering her up.”
I folded my arms. “And you’re not doing it yourself because…”