After a few more minutes of exchanging barbs, she made it absolutely clear that I was not ready to make enhancement elixirs, and that she was well aware I would continue to attempt to do so anyway.
She was right, of course. But she also wasn’t particularly helpful.
I dug into books for techniques on mana manipulation, and eventually found some practice exercises for making liquid mana that sounded doable.
The easiest was just channeling mana into a glass of water.
The trick was getting the mana into the water at exactly the right rate so that the water didn’t evaporate, solidify, or explode.
I mourned the loss of many cups that day.
When I finally succeeded in charging a glass of water with mana, the result wasn’t an enhancement elixir, or even a mana potion — it was just water with some mana in it.
Mana potions were the next logical stage in progression from there, and that involved mixing mana-charged water with specific alchemical agents.
Enhancement elixirs required pure mana in liquid form, rather than mana-infused water, as a base. After days of effort, I still couldn’t get mana to coalesce in that state.
And beyond that, an enhancement elixir still required other ingredients — some of which, I learned, were quite expensive.
That week wasn’t a waste, but it wasn’t as much progress as I wanted, either.
I switched my focus on the following week to something I’d neglected — life magic. Life was the secondary mana type for my new attunement, and I hadn’t done anything with it yet.
Ignoring a secondary mana type was pretty common for first-year students. Marissa had barely studied life mana herself, and she’d had it from her Guardian attunement since the beginning of the semester. The primary mana types and compound mana types — like lightning, which Patrick could make from a combination of both air and fire — were far more popular.
It probably would have been more efficient to wait until my second year, then enroll in a class on life magic. But I had a bad habit of wandering into near-death situations.
I didn’t want, “Healing magic didn’t seem like a priority,” to be my final words.
In fact, I didn’t really want to have final words at all, unless they involved something like, “At last, I have transcended beyond the boundaries of my frail human existence.”
Not in a metaphor for dying sense; more in an ascending to a higher state of being sense. That sounded pleasant.
Unfortunately, healing magic wasn’t exactly the type of thing I could master in a week.
I learned early on that “healing” spells involved bombarding a specific part of someone with mana and guiding that mana to rebuild the damaged location. This required a high degree of precision, almost like performing surgery.
If I didn’t have a firm understanding of what the healing spell was supposed to accomplish, it wouldn’t work properly, and I could actually do more harm than good.
For example, if I found someone with a slice in their leg, I could use a healing spell to patch the hole in the skin — but if I didn’t know how the muscle underneath was supposed to be repaired, I could either leave it in a damaged state or heal it incorrectly, making the injury worse.
That meant my week of learning healing magic was largely dedicated to studying books on human anatomy.
The rest of it was spent on practicing the Lesser Regeneration spell, which worked like a weaker version of my ring — it caused the body to heal itself faster. It was much slower than a direct healing spell, but it didn’t require any skill to use, and had a minimal chance of causing harm.
I didn’t expect to get much utility out of the spell, since it was about a tenth the power of the ring, and about a third the power of the bracer. Still, if I was ever in a situation where there were more people injured than I had items to handle, it would potentially be useful.
Beyond that, I continued my usual training routines throughout the two weeks. Keras continued to work with Marissa and me on general combat, and I started doing some ranged combat practice with Sera to get her back into fighting shape.
When those two weeks were up, I had three final exams in a row.
Understanding Attunements was, as I expected, a written exam. I suspected I got an average score on that one.
Introductory Runes was also a written exam. That one was considerably easier. I’d been terrible at memorizing attunement runes as a child, but that was because they never had any practical use to me at that age. Now that I was actively Enchanting things, I was learning runes on a daily basis, and memorizing them was much easier when I was practicing them all the time.
Permanent Enchantments, of course, was not a written exam. Professor Vellum never would let us get away with passing her class that easily.
“Ah, students. It brings me great joy to see so many of you here, so eager to display what you’ve learned.”
She wasn’t even trying to disguise the mockery in her tone.
This is going nowhere good.
As we sat down, I could see the nervousness in the expressions of my peers.
Even the greatest monsters couldn’t inspire fear like an old woman who was plotting something.
“Oh! No need to be seated. I wouldn’t dream of giving your final test in something as dull as a classroom. Please, follow me.” Professor Vellum stepped out of the chamber without another word.
We followed after her, most students mumbling suspicious comments to one another. I stayed focused, trying to figure out where exactly we were walking.
It wasn’t long before I knew. I’d already seen her with another class at the vaban stadium, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
But the dueling class finals were over, so what was she planning?
The arena floor was still covered with the same tiles that we’d used during the dueling match. In addition, there were two tables on the far side of the arena floor.
One table held standard enchanting tools, like etching rods and measuring implements.
The rest of them held a miscellany of assorted items: a vase, children’s toys, kitchenware… It looked like someone had dumped out a box of old junk onto the table.
And, knowing Vellum, that was very likely what had happened.
“Stand over here.” She positioned the class on the opposite side from the tables. “Good.”
Vellum folded her hands. “When this semester began, I told you this would be your hardest class. While the work up until this point has proven challenging for some, I was referring specifically to this final test. Many of you will fail. Most of you who do will feel that the test was unfair.”
I felt my jaw tighten as she continued.
She cracked a grin. “That’s because it is, of course. This is a terribly unfair test. Not quite as unfair as the spires, however, which is why you need to be properly prepared before you challenge them.”
Professor Vellum turned and pointed at the tables behind her. “Those will be your supplies. When I say to begin, you may retrieve a single set of tools and a single item from the other table to enchant.”
Some students were already groaning, but that part didn’t make me nervous. Not yet.
“Your test today is a simple one. Assume you are going into the spire with a group of climbers, and you need to prepare. You only have the time and materials to prepare a single item. Ten minutes after we begin, I will begin calling out the names of students, starting from those who have the highest scores. When I call your name, you will present your item to me.”