16 – Odd

Ari blinked rapidly at the two messages confounding her right now: about her essence allowance exhaustion and the levelling up.

The former, she supposed, made sense, as devastating as it was. She hadn’t been keeping count of the number of essences she’d used. She’d simply assumed that it would be more than enough for the task she’d been assigned.

Of course she was out of Massa considering the sheer amount of spells that utilized it. It was almost always the negative balancing ingredient.

She still had Vitae and Vacu in abundance, but most of her beginner spells didn’t use Vitae or Vacu.

This didn’t seem fair. They hadn’t given her the right amount of essences for learning all the spells she’d needed to learn. She had a thousand and something spells left, and she needed more essences to practice them. She also needed essences to get her through the end of the week.

And she didn’t know why she’d levelled up. She hadn’t even earned up to fifty points yet. Were her calculations off somehow? Did she make a mistake somewhere, accidentally incorporate spells that she wasn’t supposed to?

Irritation crawled on her skin like ants.

She absolutely hated it when things didn’t go as planned.

It was her fault that her essences had run out.

But it wasn’t her fault that she’d levelled up. She’d painstakingly tried her best not to, but she’d failed somehow. How?

Either way, she needed to talk to Dean Octavius about this.

Ari got up, took a calming breath, and walked out the door.

***

Lyra was on her way back when she saw her new roommate leaving their room, every stride laced with determination.

She paused, watching her go. The girl was strange. Certain things about her unsettled Lyra, from the vacant look in her eyes to that bored expression, like nothing could shake her.

It was the utmost arrogance, as though her mind was occupied with things beyond the earthly plain, and so she didn’t care for the problems of mere mortals.

Also, the way she only held eye contact for a single second before looking away made her seem suspicious. Not to mention the way she talked. Everything about her communication was a little…off.

Her reaction to Faulkey’s attack was strange, too. Lyra couldn’t decide if the girl was brave or stupid. She hadn’t shown a lick of fear when he’d pointed the wand in her face. She hadn’t tried to dodge or shield herself, but simply stared into the air.

Lyra had thought it was just effrontery at first, but now she was leaning towards stupid.

Or maybe Arielle just didn’t understand what [Emberstrike] was and how much it hurt. Still. Common sense dictated that when someone pointed a wand at you, you didn’t just stand there like a lamb in moonlight.

If the spell hadn’t failed and Lyra hadn’t grabbed her out of the way, he could have temporarily blinded Arielle.

Lyra pursed her lips.

Then again, she could have sworn that she saw the girl’s eyes move distinctly, cutting to the left.

She’d only seen movement like that once before, with a silent spellcaster who didn’t even use hand signals to cast his spells. Just his eyes.

However, Arielle hadn’t been casting a spell, but she’d almost looked like she was.

So what had she been doing?

And what was she exactly?

She had to be special. Everyone who was admitted mid-cycle was special in some way to justify their late admission. A boy they admitted last week had memorized entire spellbooks and came from a clan of Luxa-dominant geniuses.

And the twins who’d arrived a month before him had some of the highest recorded mana capacity for their age.

Then there was Florian, who was partially-elf and whose Vitae control was leagues beyond anything Lyra had ever seen, even with her clan elders.

He was her true competition here.

But who was she kidding?

She was no competition for him. Last week, he’d made a pod plant sprout and turn it into a tiny monster that watered itself.

Lyra couldn’t even make her plants grow predictably.

At this point, she was still just a glorified herbalist, imbuing her body with the extracted medicine of the plants and trying desperately to refine her cores that way.

Even the new girl had seen it, had seen how weak she was. That was probably why she’d asked her that question.

Embarrassment flushed through her body, and tears pricked behind her eyeballs.

She’d been hoping for a kinder roommate, not like her last one, who had mocked her and told her that she wouldn’t make it through the first severance trials.

As luck would have it, Candice was the one who hadn’t made it. It was all Lyra could do not to rub it in, but she didn’t because it wasn’t like she had much of a leg to stand on.

Lyra had just barely scraped by, and Candice had loudly scoffed on her way out that Lyra wouldn’t make it through the next severance trials in a few months.

Lyra wanted to prove her wrong.

But if she was being honest, she didn’t think she would.

She would have to go home and disappoint everyone who had put their faith in her, her entire family, who had celebrated the first ‘real’ mage in their lineage.

She wasn’t a mage at all. She was a fraud.

She exhaled, steeling herself.

Now wasn’t the time to feel sorry for herself.

Now was the time to push even harder.

She wouldn’t go down without a fight. She would keep trying, and if her cores never developed, and she got cut from the program, at least she would know that she gave it her all.

She would accept her core suppression with dignity and grace.

And tons of depression, probably.

She got to her room and opened the door, pausing at the helm.

The sigh distracted her from her melancholy.

What the heck happened in here?

***

“I used up my allotted Massa allowance for the week.”

“I’m sorry?” Dean Octavius blinked at the young teen in front of him. When she’d returned to his office, he’d thought perhaps she wanted to make a complaint about an incident that had transpired.

Though the faculty tried to crack down on it, new students sometimes got hazed on their first day. Nothing explicitly violent anymore, mostly petty pranks and occasional mishaps. He thought she’d fallen victim to it and was coming to make a report against the perpetrator. He was glad for it. Sadly, not all students had the boldness to do that, and so often the perpetrators went on unscathed.

He’d invited Arielle in and gently guided her to sit. He thought he would have to comfort her or talk her through the report.

This was not at all what he’d thought she would say.

Yet she repeated it.

“I used up my allotted Massa allowance for the week.”

He shook his head. “I think you might be mistaken, dear. To exceed the allowance, you would have to have completed over a hundred beginner spells in the past few hours.”

She pursed her lips. “That sounds about accurate.”

One trimmed white eyebrow lifted on his forehead. “You completed over a hundred spells in a few hours.”

She nodded.

He didn’t believe her, but he asked anyway, “How?”

Her face flushed, and she glanced down, toeing the carpet and drawing lines.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But it’s not my fault, really. I was only learning the spells that I was asked to.”

“What spells?”

“The beginner spells.”

His ancient and wise brain was struggling to grasp what she was telling him.

“How many beginner spells did you do?”

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“A hundred and fifty-three.”

“What?”

She flinched at his barked word. “I know. It’s a long way from a thousand, but I was making good progress until the EPUQ forced me to stop .”

“No, it’s not….” He shook his head, his beard beads clicking against each other. “You mean to tell me that you learned a hundred and fifty-three spells in just two hours?”

“Yes. I can complete the rest once I have my essences.”

“You’re not supposed to complete the rest.” His voice was a breath of disbelief. “Young Arielle, you’re not supposed to do that much in a day. Your EPUQ…did you fracture it?”

“No. It warned me, and I took a break when it told me to.”

“Let me see.” He gestured with his hand, and she slid the device out from her robe, handing it to him.

He activated administrative access and was able to see that she had indeed used up all her Massa essences plus most of her Calor and Luxa. Luckily, there was no microfracture.

Still, he couldn’t believe it.

“Let me see your Grimoire.”

“It’s back in my room. Should I go get it?”

The evidence was already in front of his eyes. He couldn’t remain in denial forever.

He shook his head. “No need.” He’d seen enough.

Dean Octavius had known that Arielle’s capacity was on the extreme upper end of normal for her level. He’d been expecting a young genius, ahead of her class, scoring the highest marks.

But this was beyond his expectations.

He stared at her for a while, reframing everything he thought he knew about her.

He’d been willing to overlook what had happened earlier today, her seeing through his spell. He’d thought perhaps she had an unawakened recessive Luxa-dominant bloodline trait.

Or maybe he’d simply not cast the spell to the best of his abilities, even though that was doubtful, as casting illusions came as easily to him as breathing.

Even Gio Li, the most talented mage he’d known, with a powerful bloodline trait, had not seen through the illusion as a first-year.

But this girl had.

And now she had completed a hundred and fifty-three spells in two hours.

He truly didn’t know what to make of that.

“Dean Octavius?” she prompted. “Am I in trouble?”

“No,” he said automatically. It was her first day, and he didn’t like to censure students on their first day. Everyone was allowed at least one mistake in their lifetime. “I’m just a little stunned right now.”

“I’m sorry if I did the wrong thing. I wasn’t trying to. I was just trying to learn all the spells.”