Prologue

Feronie had always been patient.

Or perhaps she had been lazy and lax, and that had been something she had disguised as patience?

She didn’t know any longer.

In any case, she watched her many projects wander the world, pushing her agenda, doing what they could to help, even if so often it simply wasn’t enough.

Some she favoured, and of these, her little Crusader most of all.

So much talent, so much will, so much anger bent towards Feronie’s own goals.

And yet the little crusader was off on a crusade of her own making. The goddess could only hope that their needs and wills would meet along the way, and that perhaps the crusader would make the world itself tremble in Feronie’s name.

She would be patient, even if that now pained her.

***

Chapter One -

The more I learned about the world, the further my ultimate goal felt.

I lived in a capitalist-industrial hell, but its foundations were a tangled web of diverse interests. Cutting one stem wouldn’t untangle that mess, and it was likely that it would heal better than before.

If I wanted to improve things, actually  improve things and not just burn it all down and hope that whatever came next was better, then I’d need a few key things. First, knowledge.

That was something I was severely lacking at the moment. My eight-year-old self was educated, but that had been on another Earth, and while a lot of that education carried over--I was a mathematical genius for my age, and my critical thinking skills were sharper than anyone my age should have had--a lot of what I’d learned was moot.

My education had been tailored based on a system of governance, a culture, and a history that no longer applied.

It was one of the reasons I was so eager to take on the Ratesco’s Union job. Infiltrating the best school in the city would be a boon. The education I’d receive to be able to pull off that infiltration? That was a much greater prize.

A week after gaining my second class, [Angel of Death {Rare}] I headed back to the new union building.

The city had calmed down even more a month after the last of the riots died out. Food was flowing once more, and the status quo had more or less returned. There were fewer jobs to be had, the pay was worse overall, and things were more dilapidated than ever, but no one had the energy to fight anymore. The union had grown in power and popularity though, for sticking it to the man and for providing food when the city government failed to.

It was probably why there were so many people out around the union building in baggy coats and with shifty eyes keeping a lookout.

I focused on one of my new skills, [Unnoticeable]. It was a stealth skill of sorts, one that didn’t so much make me invisible as it helped me blend in as someone beneath anyone’s notice.

I was spotted  by Gary the moment I stepped into the union building, of course. The skill had its uses, I was sure, but at lower levels, and tested against skilled individuals, it proved less helpful than I would have wished.

No point in sweating it. I was sure it would come in handy in the future.

I didn’t get to meet with Markham. The union leader was too busy for me. Instead, his secretary pulled out a few notes for me, then a fairly large, heavy bag.

It contained a couple of textbooks and a blank notebook, as well as a simple steel  nib pen and a small jar of ink. The note had an address to a home right on the edge of the Mistbank district to the west, across one of the walls keeping the slums out of the... well, the other less awful lower-income neighbourhoods.

It was the address and name of my tutor, and it was a name I re-read six times before it really sank in.

Hortense Digglestein’s house was a nicer place than where I lived. It had proper dungeon-excavated brick walls, and despite having no front or side yards, the alley to the back did lead into a backyard that was just a bit longer than I was tall and as wide as the entire home. It was too shaded for any grass to grow, so it seemed to be a place for Hortense to park his bike.

I finished my inspection tour of the exterior of his little home, including a few glances through soot-stained windows, and decided that Hortense wasn’t a threat.

When I met the man, that impression only heightened.

Mister Digglestein was a severe older gentleman with a face so flat a pug would have been jealous and a bit of a mean streak to him.

I imagined that his immediate unlikability might have been why he was no longer working at any of the prestigious schools he’d once occupied. He took one look at me and decided that I was a scrawny idiot who couldn’t possibly figure out how to count my own fingers, let alone my fingers and toes.

But, he wasn’t being paid for his opinion of me, he was being paid to tutor me, and after a rough start, we got to work on that.

I was better at maths than he was.

Sure, I was used to calculators, but I could work out most solutions without, and I was sharp enough to do it all in my head. When it came to reading and writing, I was somewhat behind him. My persuasive writing was fine, but my grammar was poor, and my handwriting barely legible.

I’d never minded that in my last world. A doctor-like scrawl wasn’t a problem for an adult who happened to have a PhD--medical or otherwise--and anything important was going to be typed on a computer in any case.

In this world, that didn’t fly as well.

In any case, it was with history and geography that I was really behind.

For some reason, Digglestein viewed me with nothing but suspicion, and I often heard him muttering that I was a ‘strange child’ and a ‘bizarre aberration’ whenever he thought I couldn’t hear.

I didn’t care. Our relationship was professional and that was all. If it turned to anything else, I had a knife strapped to my calf, another at the small of my back, and an angry   panbadger  in my bag. That wasn’t to mention the various poisonous, explosive, and poisonously  explosive mushrooms I carried on my person.

Digglestein and I would spend the next two years together, the old man skipping from subject to subject as he tried to cover every topic I needed at least a passing understanding of.

More interesting than the rote memori z ation that I needed to do in history and geography, were the lessons on how to behave in a ‘proper place’ like the Academy. There was a level of decorum and politeness that was expected there that was far more formal than anything I was used to in either life.

Unfortunately, at some point I’d picked up a few habits.

And an accent.

I knew I had a gutter accent, but I didn’t know how bad it was un

til Digglestein started giving me speech lessons. He had me read from mouldy old books aloud and smacked me with a ruler when I pronounced something in gutter-speech.

Well, he smacked me once.

That session ended with Digglestein bent in half, clutching at his stomach and shivering on the floor while I looked down at him and carefully confiscated his ruler and explained—in what I supposed was my normal gutter accent—that corporal punishment didn’t work as a form of encouragement.

He got better a day or two later.

He— politely —explained that I wouldn't be able to get away with such behaviour at any proper academy.

I didn’t refute that, nor did I point out that I could very much get away with it if I was never caught.

As we spent more time together, meeting four times a week for two years, I learned surprisingly little about the man, but I supposed that was normal. I was there to learn from him.

Early on in our meetings, he encouraged me to pick up a skill or two that he himself had, and which helped with learning. Some of the skills he had made him a better teacher, others made it so that when he lectured, it was harder not to pay attention—which was an interesting experience with a plainly obvious social skill—and some helped him remember lesson materials.

Academic Mind {Uncommon}

This skill helps you recall, remember, and apply anything you were taught, read, researched, or noted down previously.

Category: Academic skills

It was merely an {Uncommon} skill, but as I learned it was better in some respects than the {Rare} variants. Rarity, I learned, often meant specialisation. The less common a skill was, the more potent, but also the narrower its scope.

This skill helped one remember across a broad spectrum, and it was a skill worth keeping once someone was out of school since it would help them recall anything they’d learned while in school.

I liked that it helped me remember the many notes I was taking back home. I didn’t need to forget which poison did what, after all, or which mushroom needed which condition to grow best.

Of course, lessons with Digglestein weren’t the only thing I did over those two years.

I was a busy little mushroom, spreading my mycelium around and sharpening more than just my wit.

***

Chapter Two -

At the start of the two years I spent preparing for the Academy—a period which I kind of only remembered as one big block of very busy time—I found myself going to the Ratesco’s Union building fairly frequently, so much so that I decided to double down on things and brought Bet along with me one day.

As well as our entire mushroom-selling setup.

The folk at the union building weren’t rich, as a rule, but they did have a few half-pennies to spare when we started to tempt them with the delicious smell of roasting mushrooms topped with garlic and butter.

It wasn’t anything complicated, of course, but I was growing better, tastier mushrooms all the time, and seeing people react to their taste was a fantastic way of seeing how far along I was coming with my cooking and marketing abilities.

Bet and I—almost always in pairs now—would hit up the markets too once they opened up a few months after the riots settled down.

Unfortunately, people were poorer than ever, and that reflected in how much I was making.

“At this rate,” I complained to a bored Grey  one day. “I’m going to die broke.”

He smiled and took another chomp from the skewer I’d just sold him. It was one of my last ones for the day  and I was counting my earnings for the afternoon’s work next to the union building. Usually I waited to get back to the farm, but I wasn’t afraid of any of the locals.

I think I’d earned a reputation with the union as Grey and Dreg’s ‘pet’ which was as demeaning as it was useful. It helped that I was often around selling people food and working on my [Social Manipulation] skills to make them see me as the cutest thing they’d ever run into.

I didn’t like wearing girly clothes, but I could make an exception while working. If passing myself off as a girl meant that the average customer would be nicer, more polite, and looser with their wallet, then that was all for the best.

“Not making enough?” Grey asked.

“I’m breaking even,” I said as I tallied up the last coin. I made a note in a little book of how much I’d made. The same page had my expenses. “But I’m not making much on top of that. A shilling or two won’t help me get out of this gutter.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Well, I think I know how you could make more,” he said.

“Oh?” I asked. “Well, spill.”

He grinned. “Maybe for one of those skewers.”

I glared, then I blinked, made my eyes go wide, shifted my shoulders and hips just so, allowed some tears to fill my eyes, and added a sniff for good measure. “Please?” I begged.

He rubbed a hand on my head, messing up my hair. “Nice try, but that won’t work on me.”

“Fuck,” I said as I dropped the act. “Fine, you can have another skewer on the house. Not going to sell these last few anyway.”

I grabbed one of the still-warm skewers—I’d shut off the fire a while ago to conserve fuel—and handed it over to Gray who then stole a dollop of butter from my bag while I let him.

“Well, spill,” I said.

“Increase your prices,” he said.

I stared. “That won’t work. I’m selling these as low as I can go, unless I start selling them two-for-one, and even then people can barely afford them.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s fair, but the people who can afford one of these,” he wiggled a skewer around, “can probably afford a lot more too. What you need is a way to justify selling for a higher cost. I mean, these taste pretty good, but they’re not that filling, and they’re nothing on something cooked by someone with the right skills.”

“The right skills, huh?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Prep better food, spice it up with the right skill, and you won’t have any trouble convincing people to pay a lot more for it. If you want, I can introduce you to someone , she  cooks here sometimes, even has a few skills for kitchen work.”

“I... suppose learning how to cook better wouldn’t be awful,” I said. It sounded like a bit of a waste of time, but then, I did need money, and this seemed like an easy solution at the time to earning more.

I ended up agreeing to Grey’s offer, and not even a week later, I was introduced to Aunt Nicole.

Nicole—who insisted on the ‘aunt’ part of her name—was a rotund lady in her middle ages. She exclusively wore baggy dresses with floral print and a pristine white apron, and she wielded spatula and ladle the way a mighty warrior might wield sword and shield. She only visited the union building once a week or so, usually on Saturdays, and when she showed up, the kitchen was hers .

Grey took her aside and introduced Bet and I  to Aunt Nicole. She took one look at us, then nodded. “Come, I’ll show you girls how to work a kitchen.”

I was a little annoyed, initially, I wanted a quick solution to my problem. If this Nicole woman was willing to look at my mushrooms and skewers and tell me what to do, exactly, to improve them, then I could get back to making more money instead of wasting time. The first day was entirely spent peeling potatoes and carrots and I never did any cooking at all.

I was going to write the whole thing off. What I was looking for was something like a proper, fixed recipe.

Even in my last life, I’d never cared much for cooking, but given access to a full pantry and a cooking book, I could whip up something that looked decent and tasted alright. I was a scientist, I could follow instructions from a book.

Near the end of the day, after a solid six hours spent in the kitchen with only one small break, I was tired, frustrated, and ready to call it quits.

Then Nicole took Bet and I  aside and sat us down to eat.

She’d made a simple porridge of sorts, with some baked loaves of bread, some cheese, and a sort of mash made of a few strips of meat mixed with mashed potatoes. It didn’t look impressive.

It tasted divine.

I didn’t even notice that I was done eating until I found myself staring forlorn at an empty plate.

“The trick with that one is the chives in the mash, adding the butter at the right time, and cutting the meat into fine strips,” Nicole said. “For the mash, you need to cook half the potatoes for about five minutes longer than the rest, that way you get two consistencies mixed together, and the porridge needs to stew for a while after it’s cooked at a low simmer to burn off some of the excess water. Add in just a thimble of good oil at the end and a few sprigs of basil. Salt helps, but it’s a crutch.”

I nodded along slowly. If I served food that tasted this  good, then yeah, there was no doubt that I’d be making a lot more. Though I would still be working with limited ingredients. “Can you teach us?” I asked. “Like, actually teach us?”

“Hmm,” Nicole said. “Well, I don’t see why not. But I work six days a week at the bank taking care of the lunch room . I don't  have much time to help, but I do help where I can.”

“Right,” I said.

Aunt Nicole didn’t push any more than that.

That night, I took the [Cooking {Common}] skill. It felt a little weak to grab a common skill, but I was aiming to level it up, then switch it out for something better later on. In the meantime, the skill would help me grow, and all I had to do was pay attention to keep some of the experience for myself.

Cooking {Common}

The ability to prepare and cook meals for consumption. As this skill improves, so will your cooking.

Category: Cooking skills

The most fundamental and basic cooking-style skill there was, but it would be something to build from, and as the weeks went on, I quickly levelled the skill up, especially when Nicole could spare a minute to show me what to do. Soon, I was insisting that everyone working one of my mushroom stalls take a stint working with Aunt Nicole and take a related cooking skill.

Grey had been right, it was a fantastic way to make money.

It also helped that I became a better cook at home. My mom appreciated it, certainly, when I took some time to make something good for the two of us to share.

Those were some of the simplest, most enjoyable moments in that long two years.

***

Chapter Three -

I wasn’t looking to get rich. No, my goal was more... I suppose I was drawn  into a long conflict against the very concept of the chase for more riches.

That kind of greed without any regard for the consequences of self-enrichment was what turned City Nineteen into the cesspit that it was, and I didn’t want to become either a cog in that machine, or one of those perpetuating the very thing I was here to dismantle.

I was also aware of my own hypocrisy.

My little mushroom-skewer selling business was profitable. Not superbly so at first, especially when it depended on locals having money of their own to spend and that money was scarce, but it still grew by fits and starts.

Over those two busy years, I grew my business at a rate that I suspect was somewhat prodigious. Every step I took felt natural, like it was the obvious thing to do at the time.

One day, Bet came to me and said that she had a friend who was looking for work too. Another girl, this one a year older than Bet, making her... about thirteen? I was pretty sure that Bet was two years my senior at the time.

I didn’t have a good reason not to accept the extra hand. After all, I was loath to send Bet out on her own, and I had a lot of small things vying for my attention. An extra hand would only help, and even if my margin of profits would be cut into even more with an extra person onboard, it wouldn’t be down to nothing.

The girl was called Mary-Anne, and she had a father who worked at the Union. Her mother knew Bet’s family, and they lived near each other.

She was a tallish girl, stick-thin and nervous, but with a nice smile and pretty, dark-ginger hair a few shades darker than my own.

Mary-Anne was nervous when we first met, but soon calmed down as I explained the work. “Just slather these in butter. Don’t be too afraid to waste the butter, it’s fairly cheap right now. I buy milk that’s about to spoil from a grocers on ninety-first for a half-penny the  bottle and turn it to butter at the farm. You might be asked to help with that,” I added.

Mary-Anne nodded along as I spoke. “Got it,” she said.

I finished cooking a few skewers, then handed her one. “Eat up,” I said.

She did so, and judging by the happy noises she made, the few levels I’d earned in [Cooking] were being put to good use. That reminded me that I’d have to get Mary-Anne to learn the skill too, if she had a slot for it free. It was an easy enough skill to get, and it would help a lot.

“So, we just make these, and then bring the money back?” Mary-Anne asked.

“That’s the gist of it,” I said, and I laid things out for her to try cooking a few herself. “It’s not too complicated now that it’s all set up, but there’s a lot of work in the background to make it... well, work. Getting the materials, the mushrooms, the oils and butters and garlic, getting permission to sell at different locations. Honestly though, I’m making it sound more complex than it is. It just takes time to set everything up, and a small initial investment for some of the equipment. Past that, it’s almost self-perpetuating. But it doesn’t earn you that much.”

“Okay,” she said.

Mary-Anne didn’t strike me as the brightest candle in the night, but she was a nice enough girl, and she got along well with Bet.

After a week or two with just a few small issues (she once dropped a tub of butter on a client’s pants and she was prone to burning things at first) she got the hang of the job and things went smoothly.

Then, one day as I was selling mushroom soup—we were trying new things—at one of the markets, Bet and I were approached by two girls. “Hey,” One of them said. She was older, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with a nose that had been broken at least once and clothes that were clean, but worn in a few places. Something told me that she was trouble . “Who do you work for?” she asked.

I glanced at Bet, but she seemed to leave it up to me. “We work with a few people,” I said evasively. “Why?”

“I wanna sell shit like this too,” she said.

“We’re not looking for more people to sell stuff,” I lied a little. While I wasn’t looking for more sellers, I wouldn’t mind a few more hands. It might mean having two stalls running concurrently, and my farm was now out-producing our sales by a handy margin. I could run three stalls at the moment.

My extra supplies of mushrooms were being donated to the union every week, just to do something with them instead of tossing them in the trash.

“Well, maybe your boss wouldn’t mind a replacement for one of you two,” the girl said. She closed her hands into fists with an audible pop, and her friend, who was closer to Bet’s age, though a bit scrawnier, wiped at her nose then pulled out a screwdriver from her belt.

Then I laughed in their faces. “Girl, I respect the hustle, but you’re wasting your time. You wouldn’t swing a fist in this market if you were smart, and even if you did, I’d make you regret it,” I said.

She glared at me, and I instantly felt my heart skipping a beat and my breath hitch. My hands shook for a moment, and I felt as if I was staring down an oncoming train, only... no, this was just a girl. Almost as soon as the effect settled in, I brushed it off.

“Huh,” I said as I l o cked my lips. “That’s a neat trick. What is it, [Intimidation]?”

The girl seemed to have been put on the backfoot for the moment. “Yeah, maybe,” she said. “What, you’re not afraid?”

“No,” I said. “Who do you work for?”

She shifted. “No one,” she said. “Is just me and ma sis, and we’re needing that job you have there. And if I need to kick your teeth in to get it, I will.”

“How about we don’t kick anyone’s teeth in and I get you a better sort of job?” I asked carefully.

I could tell she didn’t trust me quite yet, and in this case my skills were probably working against me. I couldn’t play the role of someone as tough as her, not when I had skills that made me look very much the opposite.

“What sorta job?” she asked.

I grinned. “How about I tell you where to meet me after, and I’ll show you what I’m looking for?”

“You think you can get away so easy ?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “You beat us up and the best you’ll get is kicked out of the market with a boot to your ass. You listen to me, and you might get a job out of it. And here, have a couple of skewers, on the  house.”

She did listen, in the end, and I wasn’t sure if it was my persuasive abilities, my lack of fear, or the food that convinced her.

Her name was Willow, and her scrappy little sister was Daisy. She’d been working at a place of ill-repute for a while, until she got sick and her nose got broken and then she went around begging for coin  wherever she could and sleeping on the streets with Daisy in tow.

She needed the job bad , and once I delivered on my promise of work, Willow’s loyalty was won over instantly.

She was awful at selling, couldn’t cook to save her life, and had an attention span measured in seconds, but she was quick and vicious and knew how to make a grown man cry.

I got her to take lessons with Dregs while the rest of us took [Cooking] lessons from Aunt Nicole, and while she always came back a bit bloodied and bruised, it was with one of her signature missing-teeth grins.

Early on in my first year, I decided to bite the bullet and picked up a new skill called [Management].

Management {Uncommon}

The ability to keep track of personnel and employees, of having supplies on hand when needed, and of running a business.

Category: Managerial skills, social skills

I wasn’t planning on keeping this one forever, but for the moment, it was a nice boon to have. My little enterprise waxed and waned. I kept my core group, but hired out more girls who’d often leave after a few weeks or months to greener pastures and more profitable work. In the meantime, I made a neat little reputation for myself as a fair minded young businessperson with an eye for talent and making a fair coin.

That would serve me well in the future, I figured.

***

Chapter Four -

My schedule was... a bit of a mess. Digglestein’s lessons were held five days a week, usually somewhere in the day. We didn’t have a fixed hour, exactly, but rather a range of hours. I’d show up somewhere after Digglestein’s breakfast and leave before he prepared his supper. Lessons usually took an hour or two, depending on the subject and how difficult it was, and how busy I was otherwise.

In the afternoons, I liked to have my girls out and about, selling skewers and raking in a few pennies. I didn’t need to hover over them too much, not after a while, but I still wanted to keep an eye on them and their work. It was better than leaving them be and discovering that they’d gotten themselves into trouble.

On weekends I had my [Cooking] lessons with Aunt Nicole. She only popped in irregularly, so I had to keep on my toes so as not to miss any lessons. Normally I wouldn't make such a fuss for what was such a... dubiously useful skill, but every single lesson presided over by Aunt Nicole gave me a level or two, even as I pushed the skill upwards and grew more competent with it, she merely took some time to show me and the others a new trick of her trade and then I’d get just enough experience to slip up to another level.

I had no idea if she was doing it on purpose or not. Digglestein certainly wasn’t an incompetent teacher, and lessons with him weren’t pushing my [Academic Mind] skill up nearly as quickly.

In any case, that took up a neat slot in my weekly schedule. The rest was taken up by two tasks that I had to take care of near constantly. My mushroom seller girls, who while fun to work with and quick on the uptake for the most part, still needed some guidance, and my farm.

I had to establish a second growing location soon, and I chose a location literally behind my old farm. As it turned out, the building that my farm was in was split down the middle, and the back wall of my farm room was the back wall of another warehouse. I’d discovered that after one wall started to fall apart and I ended up poking a hole through it.

A bit of careful engineering with a hammer and a length of wood to act as a lever, and I had an opening more than large enough for me to squeeze through into a dark, damp warehouse that had clearly not seen use in a long time.

There were mushrooms growing all over it.

Unfortunately, they were all very familiar. Now that I was on the other side, I could make out pinprick holes in the wall leading into my farm. Clearly, those were enough for a few spores to slip through, then the damp nature of the room and its undisturbed darkness and rotting crates did the rest.

A few weeks of clearing this warehouse out and I had a new place to grow mushrooms in. I found someone to change the lock on the other door for me for cheap, then left the door open for a week or two. Some vagrants moved in, then back out after they discovered that staying in the warehouse lead  to several painful bowel-related issues.

Nothing lethal, of course. I wasn’t cruel. Just enough to keep them away.

Rumours went around that the place was no good, a few locals etched a mark next to the door saying that the air was bad within, and then I relocked and sealed the place up tight. If things were done right, no one would bother me there.

Then I moved a few racks over and hid the connection between this warehouse and my farm.

With more space, I could expand my mushroom farming quite a bit. After booby-trapping everything, of course.

I wasn’t paranoid. I was cautious. Or so I told myself.

So, my day-to-day was packed. I’d wake up early, rush to the farm, then run over to my lessons halfway across the city. Then it was managing the girls, and back to the farm to keep on top of the dozen or so mycologic projects I was working on at any given time. Weekends were, if anything, busier.

I was quickly running out of time for anything. Fortunately, my managerial work was centred around food, otherwise I might have failed to eat anything.

In the before , when I had been a grad student, I’d gotten a doctorate in just a few years. I knew what crunch was like, and I could take it. But I had been  an adult then. Here and now, I was eight, approaching nine. I’d be ten by the time I would be sneaking into the Academy as a student next to twelve-year olds.

I needed to blend in, and at the moment... that wasn’t working out.

My scrawniness was fading bit by bit as I ate more than the bare minimum, and a skinny kid wasn’t too unusual. What was unusual was how little I was growing. Even with healing mushrooms as part of my regular diet, I still stayed small.

I needed more than just more food, I needed rest, rest which just wasn’t fitting into my schedule.

My first thought was finding ways to better use the time I had. My [Management] skill came in handy there, I successfully arranged things to be easier to organise and work around. It was just shaving a few minutes off of a few tasks here and there, but those added up.

And then I instantly used that free time to tackle even more projects. I read more books from Digglestein’s private library, I practised sneaking around and walking like a boy, I tended to Sir Nibbles.

Every minute I gained was a minute spent, and soon I was moving around with bags under my eyes and a constant low hum of tiredness covering my world like a soft blanket. I suspect that everyone noticed after a while, but there was nothing I could do about it.

That was, until I chanced upon Eight-Three-Eleven.

The acolyte of Galen had aged a bit since I’d last seen her. That was... maybe a year and a bit ago. Now she was closer to a proper adult and it showed, both because of a bit of added height, and thanks to a new layer of confidence that she wore around herself like the layers of her red cloak.

“Mushroom girl!” Eight-Three-Eleven said. We met, by happenstance, in one of the markets near the centre of the slums. I was there watching over Bet and a new girl who I suspected would be flaking off in a week or so.

“Eight-Three-Eleven, hi,” I said with a genuine smile. “How are you doing? What are you up to? It’s been forever.”

“It ha d  been,” she said. She gestured back to a few others in the same red cloaks as she wore, masks and all. “I haven’t been here in a while. Not since Eight-Three-Thirty and Eight-Three-Oh-One... you know.”

“I don’t, actually,” I said.

“Oh... well, the riots, they got caught up in them. We found their bodies a few days later and since then, Galen’s wisdom suggested that we leave this area for the moment, spare people his mercy. But we’re back now! I’m training these two to take over the routes I once had.”

“Ah, that’s nice,” I said. I wasn’t so keen on Galen’s so-called mercy, but Eight-Three-Eleven had always been kind and helpful. I offered her a few free snacks, for her and her skittish acolyte friends, and then we got to talking a little. Her schedule was worse than mine.

“I wouldn’t be able to take it all in if I had to sleep as much as everyone else,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. My first thought was that it was a strange perk of her service to Galen.

Eight-Three-Eleven shrugged. “I have the [Quick Sleeper] skill. It shaves off a couple of hours of sleep every day. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but an extra couple of hours is priceless.”

“Oh?” I asked, but the conversation moved on.

My mind didn’t, however, and for the next month I tried different things to wake myself up, I even let myself sleep until I was no longer tired at all one day. The trick, as it turned out, was to pace my sleep schedule for a week or so, taking nothing but rapid naps around the clock.

And just like that, I unlocked the most useful and potent skill yet.

[Quick Sleeper] {Uncommon}

You’re quick to fall asleep and quick to awaken.  As this skill grows your need for long rests will decrease. Shorter, more potent sleep will allow you to function as though you were well-rested.

Category: Sleep skills, Dream magic

It felt like I’d just unlocked the best cheat code ever!

***

Chapter Five -

My two years were passing relatively quickly. It was strange, in the before, I could remember my childhood passing as a crawl, then once I grew older, it felt like entire years were slipping by in a blink.

Now, in this new world, that... wasn’t quite the same. Maybe that speedy passage of time had more to do with routine and experience than it did with youth and one’s own perception of time? I wasn’t sure, but as I settled into a more fixed schedule, time did feel like it was just passing me by.

It was always busy, always crowded, but not as... novel, I supposed. In any case, soon I only had a few months to go before I’d be heading out to the Academy. And yet, I still had a single free general skill slot.

I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but I did know that I wanted to use it for something. The issue was picking up a skill that would be worth my time, or that would improve my life enough that it was worth taking in the first place.

I ended up asking around for ideas, which turned out to be one of the few activities that I did that suited my age. It was normal for kids to ask their parents and guardians about which skills to take, it seemed, even if what skills someone did have was a semi-private thing.

My mother suggested [Cleaning] of all  things, but that felt wasteful. I bathed often enough. More than the average person in the slums, at least. And I kept my farm perfectly clean. I didn’t need some {Common} skill to help with that.

Dregs suggested [Stealth] which actually seemed like a decent idea, but the more I thought about it, the more I dismissed it. The skill would help me tread quietly and go unnoticed, but I had several other skills that helped me disguise myself and seem innocent already. It would be somewhat redundant.

I asked Bet, and she suggested [The Art of the Sale] which was an {Uncommon} skill she’d picked up and which helped her be the top seller in our little operation every week. That was tempting as well, but it seemed too narrow.

Willow, my beater, suggested [Punching] but I passed up on that. My wrists were thinner than some twigs. Even with a skill I was liable to break something if I tried to swing a fist at anyone.

I met up with Debra and Stew one day. The two were still together, and closer than ever. Debra suggested that I pick up [Lean] which was a skill that helped you get by when there wasn’t much to eat. Invaluable to her when she had been living on the streets.

Stew, on the other hand, had suggested [Tough] which was another passive skill that didn’t so much make someone tougher than it made it so that pain didn’t hurt as much as it could. It made the skill’s holder able to resist a lot more damage than usual and keep on going, even if it didn’t mitigate any of the damage.

That was my best bet, actually. I didn’t plan on getting hurt, but it did seem like it might come in handy in a variety of situations. Until I realized that it would just mitigate pain, not actually help. [Fast healing] a {Rare} skill that I read about in one of Digglestein’s books seemed like it would be much better, but I didn’t know how to get it.

In the end, the skill I went with was an unusual one, suggested to me by Markham, from the Union. “You’re going to want [Lie Detection], [Liar’s Sense], or [Know Truth],” he said from behind his desk without really looking up from his paperwork. “There are a few variations. Some are better than others. They’re all very potent in social situations. I’ll tell Grey to train you, it should help.”

I didn’t take the offer immediately. Instead I thought about it for a while, then decided that I might as well. It would be an interesting skill, and I could dismiss it later, and knowing when someone was lying just... seemed like an ‘I win’ button for a lot of social situations.

Unfortunately, unlike many of the {Common} and even a few {Uncommon} skills people suggested, that set wasn’t in my repertoire of available skills in any form. That meant either I had to try to figure out how to gain it myself, Or I’d have to rely on Grey.

I chose the latter, if only because it seemed faster and more efficient.

“Alright,” Grey said as he eyed me up and down. We were in one of the back rooms of the Union, a place that was a little more quiet, though he insisted that we leave the door open for propriety's  sake. A bit weird from a man that I knew was a killer, but I wasn’t going to complain. “So, lie detection skills require that you notice when someone’s lying.”

“I figured,” I said.

“Which means reading body language, noticing little changes in tone, and putting together all the little details that make it so that you can catch a lie out in the open. But it also means being able to counter techniques like [Lie] and [Misdirect].”

“Okay,” I said.

Grey looked at me, then leaned forward. “What colour are my eyes?” he asked.

I stared. “They’re grey,” I said. Was he named after them? That would make some sense, naming your kid after such an obvious feature. It had to be somewhat genetic too.

“No, they’re green,” he said.

I continued to stare. “Huh, I guess they are.” Well, I supposed that under the right lighting, they could be a bit green. Maybe as a sheen. Green was a pretty common colour.

My own eyes were green, just like my father’s, and... and. S hook my head and looked at his eyes. His green eyes. His grey-green eyes. His eyes which were... green?

I grunted, then glared. “Your eyes are... grey,” I said.

He grinned. “They are,” he agreed. “Always have been.”

“What was that?” I asked. “I knew  they weren’t green, but it’s like I was instantly self-rationalising it.”

“A [Lie] skill I have,” he said with a dismissive little wave. “It’s a {Legendary} skill.”

A {Legendary}? That was impressive! I didn’t know someone like Grey would have such a potent skill, it seemed... it seemed very, very unlikely. “Was that another lie?” I asked as I shook my shoulders out.

“Good, that was a bit faster. Though I guess that was less believable. A good lie will be something like... I’m not wearing any socks today.”

I looked down at his feet. They were covered in thick boots, pants tucked into the boots so that even if he was wearing socks, I couldn’t tell. “Okay?”

“That was a lie,” he said. “It’s cold, of course I’m wearing socks. But since you can’t verify the lie, and since it’s perfectly believable that I might not be wearing socks today, you have no reason not to believe it, which makes it much harder to detect the falsehood.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I reached over and tugged his pant leg up. He wasn’t wearing socks. I glared at him and Grey grinned, unrepentant.

Grey spent the next couple of hours lying to me, and I had to play a game of guessing whether or not it was true, or if he’d just made things up. This was complicated by his skill interfering, by him using half-truths, and by him using some farfetched, wildly unbelievable stories about things that really had happened to trick me as often as he could.

He was enjoying this far too much, but I was starting to get better at it... slowly. He had a tick of smiling  before he lied, which turned out to be a false tick that he was just doing to mess with me, which I discovered an hour in when I started to rely on the tick too much and he turned it against me.

Still, it was a good lesson, and in the end, I got what I wanted out of it.

[Lie Detection ] {Uncommon}

This skill gives you a passive sense of when something you are told is an untruth according to the person who is saying it. As this skill grows, so will your ability to detect lies and falsehoods and exaggerations.

Category: Social skills, Social magic

“Nice work,” Grey said. “Didn’t think you’d get it so easily. Well, I should go, I have patrol in a minute.”

“Right, thank you, that’s ...” I paused, then rewound the last sentence he said, something about it... “That was a lie?”

“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t have patrol , but I do need to take a massive dump.”

“Also a lie?” I asked.

“Eh, so-so,” he said, and I didn’t detect any falsehood in that.

So I kicked him in the shin for being gross.

***

Chapter Six -

I was ready.

Or, I imagined that I was ready. In reality, because I didn’t know exactly what to expect, it was hard to truly believe I was entirely prepared.

In any case, it was too late now to do anything. At the ripe age of ten-and-a-bit, I was going to the Eden-Powell Academy of Arts and Sciences.

I had explained to my mom, with a bit of help from Grey at the union, that I’d earned an opportunity to work in a nicer part of the city for a little while. She... didn’t like it, but my independent streak was a mile wide by then. I gave her enough money to make ends meet for a long while, then told Bet and some of the others to come check on her every so often for me. Mom still insisted on working, even if my stalls earned enough  that she could afford to stay home.

There was a lot of pride in being a worker, and telling someone to stay home and do nothing was generally considered pretty insulting.

I... didn’t press the issue too hard.

It was a bit dirty and pragmatic of me, but it would keep her busy and out of my business.

The day I was to head to the school for the first time, I found myself walking to Mister Digglestein’s place. I’d go from there to a carriage-stop, then to the Academy itself. Somewhere along the way I’d change into the uniform, but for now I was wearing my usual overalls. I had taken a long shower the night prior, scrubbing myself raw with a bar of pumice-filled soap to remove any grime and any stains on my skin.

It would be humiliating if a bit of soot gave away my disguise, or worse, the slum-stink that came from living downwind of too many factories.

On the way over, I looked over my skill sheet. It had progressed pretty satisfactorily over the last two years.

Name: N/A

Alias: Ginger

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 10 Years

Mana: 83/94

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Secondary Class: [Angel of Death {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung  {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level three Hundred Twenty-four

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Eighty-Six

        > [Shaped Aura]

        > [Careful Casting]

        > [Unrestricted Growth]

        > [Sustained Growth]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Seventy-Five

        > [Persistent Death]

        > [Rigour Mortis]

        > [Infection]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level Twenty

        > [Apocalypse Walker]

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Seventy-Four

        > [Druid’s Sense]

        > [Druid’s Ear]

        > [Health Sense]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Sixty-Nine

        > [Super Shroom Zoom]

        > [Mushroom Remaker]

        > [Potent]

Angel of Death Class Skills - One Hundred  and  Eleven

- Cherub of Death {Rare} - Level Nineteen

- Guileless Eyes {Uncommon} - Level Twenty-Nine

        > [Lingering Look]

- Unnoticeable {Uncommon} - Level Thirty-Two

        > [Notice Me Not]

- Poison Blooded {Rare} - Level Fifteen

- Angel’s Touch {Rare} - Level Sixteen

General Skills - Level Four Hundred  and   Fourteen

- Running {Common} - Level Sixty-Two

> [Surefooted]

> [Sprint]

        > [Runner's Breath]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Seventy-One

        > [Patterner]

        > [Clicky Clacker]

        > [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Forty-Four

        > [Mana Bleed]

        > [Push Through]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Sixty-Two

        > [Too Cute to Kill]

        > [Bargain Maker]

        > [Misinformer]

- Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Sixty-Six

        > [Iron Lunged]

        > [Toxicant Sense]

        > [Thick Skinned]

- Academic Mind {Uncommon} - Level Thirty-Two

        > [Penmanship]

- Cooking {Common} - Level Twenty-Nine

        > [Eye for Sizes]

- Management {Common} - Level Twenty Three

        > [Stock Knowledge]

- Quick Sleeper {Uncommon} - Level Nineteen

- Lie Detection {Uncommon} - Level Sixteen

That was getting satisfyingly long! I could still vaguely remember my character sheet’s information way back when I was little. Nothing more than a few lines telling me that I was sick and unfortunate.

Those were still there, despite best efforts on my part, but now the rest of my stats told a story . It was a story of someone able to kill people with a whole host of poisons and fungi, and someone who wouldn’t care one whit about the same being used against them. Perhaps most importantly, a story of someone who could get away with murder with nothing more than a dumb, vacant look and a smile.

Maybe my skills were hyper focused a little , but, well, I was hyper focused as well. I had a goal, and I was gunning hard for it.

Over the last two years, as new skills and old improved, I unlocked new subskills. Those popped up every twenty levels. Most were small. Little bonuses and ways to make a skill work slightly better, but some were quite potent in their own way.

My [Aura of Growth] skill had, after much work, gained its third  subskill.

[Sustained Growth]

Anything grown under the influence of your Aura will be better prepared for continued growth assisted by your aura. Practice will increase the growth speed of affected plant  and fungal matter.

Surprisingly useful, that one. It meant that I could push my magical aura in a mushroom, and when I did it again later, it would grow even faster and hardier. Sustained use was improved as well.

The skill was still mana-hungry, but my manapool was slowly growing. Soon I’d be hitting one hundred points! A tiny powerhouse.

I waited for the carriage that would lead me to the school, my attention drifting to a flowerbank next to the roadway that gave it a little splash of colour.

Smiling, I let my aura sweep over it, and those few wilting flowers raised their heads.

The next skill with a new subskill, at least if I was going from the top down and not the order in which I unlocked the subskills, was [Druid Sight].

[Health Sense]

Your senses extend to an innate understanding of the health of any biological matter you focus upon.

I focused on one of those flowers.

[Common Primrose] - Common - 2/3HP

A common flower that blooms in spring in small clumps. Sometimes considered a weed.

Knowing the health of a plant was... interesting. This one probably had some sort of issues with the dirt it was in, I guessed. The number of cigarette butts wasn’t likely helping.

I could help it, but it was some random street-side flower. Besides, all of my best plant healing magic was focused on mushrooms. Like [Mushroom Magics] new [Potent] subskill.

[Potent]

Mushrooms grown under your supervision will be significantly more potent than their natural counterparts.

That skill was fantastic in many ways. The added potency tended to align with whatever that mushroom did best. I didn’t need to spend as much time cultivating more potent poisonous mushrooms when those I had already were now significantly more lethal.

I noticed a duo of Bullies passing by. Two big men in bigger suits, their bright blue uniforms impossible to miss. One of them looked my way, eyes bu ried under his peaked cap.

I focused on my [Guileless Eyes] skill for a moment, then smiled at the officer. I was hardly doing anything suspicious. Just some kid on his way to the Academy.

[Guileless Eyes] new [Lingering Look] subskill probably triggered as he turned his head around and looked for trouble elsewhere.

[Lingering Look]

The effects of your Guileless Eyes skill linger on anyone you use them on for a short period after eye contact is broken.

The moment I wasn’t focused on, I poured a little magic into [Notice Me Not]  a new [Unnoticeable] subskill.

[ Notice Me Not ]

By expending  a small amount of mana, you can make this skill more potent. As this skill improves, so will your efficiency.

Just another nobody in the crowd. No one of import . I could feel people’s attention drifting off of me.

I’d have to turn that off soon. Not only did it slowly chew through my mana, it also made it hard to grab people’s attention, which very much went counter to what I wanted sometimes. Hard to ask for directions when no one saw  you.

Well, if I had to run to catch up to the carriage, I could manage that. [Running] had levelled up as well, from all the jogging around I did.

[Runner's Breath]

Running no longer requires you to breathe quite as much as it once did. Suffer fewer penalties while running without breathing.

That one was alright. It made it easier to slip through smog clouds whenever they descended on the city without turning into a coughing mess. And I could drop some of my spore bombs down and just zip through them without getting a lungful of poison.

Not that I had to worry much about poisons. I didn’t want to get cocky, but I had a lot more tools to help me with those. Not only was my own blood a lethal concoction now, I also had new abilities to help.

[Push Through]

It now takes significantly longer for a poison to start affecting you.

That would let me get cured up before a poison started to really affect me. Though it was a bit of a double-edged sword when it came to testing on myself.

I jumped as I heard a clatter coming down the road. My carriage was here!

I tugged my uniform on straighter, then waved for the driver to stop. Then I cursed as he very much didn’t.  

***

Chapter Seven -

The carriages from the Mistbank district (where Digglestein lived) to the Academy cost three half-pennies to ride. A bit steep, in my opinion, but still better than walking.

The Academy was far to the east and north of the city, which meant that technically my home was closer to it than this part of town was. That was, if I just looked at a map and ignored any bridges along the way. In reality, the fastest way to get to the north eastern part of the city was to travel west, up into Pearl Alley (which was a strange district, with lots of really nice shops and well-appointed homes. I supposed it was where the upper echelon of the working class lived) then across another wall into the Ironcliff  district.

Once I was at the Academy, things would settle down a bit. Or so I hoped.

Markham hadn’t prepared me as well for this as I might have hoped. The lessons were nice, practical and useful, beyond this assignment alone, but that’s about where my preparations ended.

Who was I targeting? No clue.

All I knew is that once I was settled into the Academy, I was to meet with someone from the union who would give me written instructions in a simple code. They were supposed to be written as if they were a letter from my father, of all things.

A bit tasteless, but whatever.

I tugged at the uniform collar. Was it wise to be dressed in my uniform already? I didn’t know. I figured it was the safest option, even if the uniform was rather hideous.

The uniform included a dark, navy-blue blazer with the school’s logo on the breast pocket over a white button-up shirt that had a massive collar that was supposed to be worn so that it was over the blazer. The sweater vest was optional, but I chose to wear it regardless.

I wanted to establish that I wore it now. It would help hide any figure I might develop one day. Not that I expected that to happen so soon, or for that matter, tha n  I’d be at the Academy for that long.

The bottom half of the uniform featured a pale blue pair of shorts that stopped at the knees and these awful socks. Oh, and I couldn’t forget the school cap. This little leather thing that felt too small, but that was apparently just the way it was supposed to be.

I wasn’t going to complain about the fashion choices of the academy. I supposed that having a standardised uniform wasn’t the end of the world. It did lend a certain... class to the whole thing. I was really just upset that I had to cut my hair. I had grown fond of having it long, and now I was stuck with this god awful bowl cut.

Could I use [Angel’s Touch] to ‘cure’ my hair back to being long?

That felt almost sacrilegious , but I’d do it anyway once I was done here. In any case, longer hair would help differentiate between the me who went to this school and the me outside of it.

“Hey, kid,” someone said, and I looked up to find a man standing up on the carriage, he had a tray before him, held in place by a few straps.

The carriage was nearly as long as a bus, with two rows of seats facing each other and a corridor down the middle someone could walk down. The driver sat at the front, of course, behind a train of four stout horses that pulled it along. It could hold twenty or so people comfortably. Right now we were a bit past that, and I imagined that I’d only managed to get onboard because I had the coin on hand and because I was so small that I hardly counted.

The guy before me had the same uniform as the driver on, so I imagined he was supposed to be here. “Want some candy?” he asked as he gestured at the stuff he had for sale.

I’d recently gotten the [Bargain Maker] subskill, for my [Social Manipulation] skill.

[Bargain Maker]

You instinctively know when to push and pull when negotiating with someone.

It wasn’t the only subskill I’d gotten from [Social Manipulation].The other was far more valuable, even if it didn’t earn me any money directly.

[Misinformer]

Your lies don’t trigger weaker lie detection skills as often as long as they hold a kernel of truth.

“No thank you,” I said to the man. “Candy’s bad for your teeth, and I’m basically praying that I never have to visit a dentist already.”

The man frowned, but he moved on, probably thinking I didn’t have much money to spend in any case.

Then again, I really didn’t have too much. I’d left most of my savings at home, only bringing enough to get by for a while. The school had a cafeteria I could eat at freely, from what I understood, and I was going to use the hell out of that.

My backpack--purpose bought not to look too shoddy--was filled with a few necessary books, a second uniform with a few extra shirts and socks and underthings, a few small cases filled with spores and crammed-in mushrooms, and one angry panbadger.

There was no real way to leave Sir Nibbles at home, so I decided to bring him along with me. Hopefully I’d be able to lie to anyone who noticed him, and also hopefully, he wouldn’t eat any of the other kids.

That was probably not going to happen... I hoped. I was a little cold-blooded, I’d admit that even to myself, but I didn’t want to harm any kids. Just their parents.

I decided not to ponder  that too much and just enjoy the ride across the city. The Pearl Alley district (why was it called an Alley when it was one of the most spacious parts of the city?) was far, far cleaner than the district I was from. They had shoeshine boys on the street corners and men with poles were cleaning the windows of several shops before the morning crowd arrived.

It seemed as if even this nicer part of the city wasn’t immune to soot settling down overnight.

I sat back and crossed my arms. I was... admittedly a little nervous about everything. I was jumping into the lion’s den here, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to find there. Digglestein’s stories helped, but I wished that I’d taken some time to scout the place out myself before today.

Too late now.

The carriage rumbled through the gate between Pearl Alley and Iron Cliff. A bully hopped on and asked people for their papers, and I prepared a dozen lies for him. He glanced at me once, then moved on to the next person.

Huh. Either the uniform was saving me, or my age made him dismiss me. Or one of my skills let me blend in better. In any case, I wasn’t going to check the mouth of this gift horse.

We continued once the inspection was complete. I had to wonder if this was a newer thing, or if the bullies were always this concerned with safety.

This was my first time in the Iron Cliff district. The area was a maze of crooked roads built on different elevations. The place was well named. There were several steep walls rising out of the ground, bare stone with reddish hues painted across them to mark bands of rusty iron buried in the stone. The homes here were all massive, but for all their size and grandeur, they were still squeezed in tight against their neighbours, and they had to share awkward lot sizes determined by however much flat space they could find to build on.

For a place that seemed so rich and opulent, there was a distinct lack of greenery. Grass couldn’t find root on the gravelly ground and the road was all soot-stained cobbles without a weed in sight.

The carriage stopped at one intersection, and the driver called out the name of the stop.

I gathered my bag and hopped out. This was as close as they’d come. I’d have to walk the last block or so on my own.

I noticed a few students on the road already. Boys in similar uniforms to me. The only exceptions tended to be the colour of their shorts. The school had a few ways of marking out years, I guessed as I followed along.

Half the kids seemed disappointed to be up already, even if it was an hour past the crack of dawn. The more energetic ones were roughhousing and laughing as they walked up the steeply inclined sidewalks.

And then I was at the top of the Iron Cliffs, a large expanse of flat space, surrounded by tall fences. A wrought iron gate stood open, welcoming the students with the words Eden-Powell Academy of Arts and Sciences written across it.

I’d made it.

***

Chapter Eight -

For a moment I was worried that I wouldn’t know where to go once I arrived at the school, but someone had thought ahead. Past the line of waiting carriages where some kids were being dropped off was the main school building.

It was a grand edifice made of off-white stones that rose up three stories and towered above the entrance plaza. The school’s name was carved into the arch above the entrance again. Surprisingly, the building, as big as it was, wasn’t too deep. I could see through the entrance and right out the back on the other side. Instead, most of the building’s space was split into two large wings to the east and west.

Older boys--almost adults--in the same uniform I wore but with long robes on with bright blue sashes across their fronts were directing people through.

“You new?” One of them asked me without any preamble.

I nodded.

“Go through that door and to the other side. Put your bags in the heap. Don’t fuss about it. If you need help, look for a prefect.” He pinched his sash and wiggled it about.

I nodded again and slipped past.

As he said, there was a heap of bags and luggage just to the right of the entrance way. I noticed a couple of adults in robes not too dissimilar to the prefects to one side. Teachers? They looked far too old to be students.

I slipped past them, just another short person in a growing sea of them.

The courtyard behind the academy’s main building was a great big space filled with paving stones. Two large statues stood by the front of men I didn’t recognize, and along the edges were some planters with a few flowers within them. All in dark blues and whites.

The older students were milling around in big groups, with the occasional raucous laugh as someone arrived and met up with friends. The younger students, the ones I’d be joining, were all scattered about, though it seemed as if a few prefects were hard at work herding them into a big, disorganised group by the front.

I decided not to cause too much trouble and slipped into that group.

I was definitely one of the shortest first years, but not the  shortest. Maybe I wouldn’t stand out too much. There were even a couple of redheads around.

Some of the younger students clearly knew each other and were chatting already, but I noticed a number of them just staring around, wide-eyed and lost. Clearly I wasn’t the only one who was entirely friendless here.

I was going to have to put my social skills to work, I figured.

The first thing to do, though, was find a likely target. I might have had a few skills helping me, but that didn’t mean I had great odds of hitting it off with just anyone.

A few candidates jumped out from the rest. Obviously I had to stick within my age group. The older years wouldn’t care to make friends with someone younger, and they likely had friends already. Besides, I was with all of the students in my own year.

A couple of kids were on the outskirts, reading or doodling all on their own. Loners would make for easy friends, especially if they started to be bullied by others in our group, but it would take time to break through to them, I figured.

A few larger groups had formed already, and usually they had one or two outspoken kids in their centre that were carrying the conversation. Those around them weren’t quite sycophants, just less outspoken.

Breaking into one of those would be hard as well.

So I aimed for something in the middle. Small groups of two or three kids, minding their business and chatting together, not part of a larger group, but comfortable all the same.

That would be ideal for me. I didn’t need friends here. Not real, genuine friends. These kids were so much younger than me, at least mentally, that I couldn’t imagine myself becoming close to them. At the same time, however, if I wanted to pass unnoticed and unbothered, having some people to tag along with would be great. They’d also provide me with alibis in case I needed one.

My real goal was to befriend a few select people. Four of them, in this case, but at the moment  I had no way of identifying my targets, and going around asking for them by name would be strange. Better to find out who they were organically and then work from there.

I approached a pair of boys nearby, purely because one of them was a carrot-top and I had a sneaking suspicion that it would make us both targets of some teasing, but just as I was about to introduce myself, there was a sudden bustle. The prefects were now herding us with more urgency, and a lot of conversations died down.

The older students quickly formed up into neat rows, and I found myself stepping to the side to fit into a far-less neat row of my own. Somehow I ended up right at the front, which was very much not something I wanted, but I couldn’t just swap with the kid behind me.

The teachers were filing into the courtyard, and one of them raised a staff into the air then smacked it down.

The ground trembled and the cobbles at the front rose a foot off the ground, creating a stage onto which the teachers came to stand in a flurry of robes. Another tremble and a podium stood up from the centre and a man came to stand behind it while two prefects ran up to the podium and quickly installed a microphone behind it.

The man, who I presumed was the principal from the cut of his robes and his rather stately airs, flicked the brass ring of the microphone and a whine filled the air for a moment.

He took a deep breath while scanning us all and I felt myself pinned to the spot. “We stand before the statues of Lord Eden and Sir Powell, the two great founders of this prestigious academy, and I dare say they would be proud to see so many fresh faces once again,” he said. I wasn’t sure he even needed the microphone, the way his voice boomed. “I am William Board, Principal of this fine institution, and for the next year, at least, I will be watching over each and every one of you boys to ensure that you obtain the very best education. You will not leave this school empty of head or spirit.”

I glanced to the sides and noted lots of fresh faces paying rapt attention, so I did the same. Had he used a skill for that? It certainly felt as if my attention was being... tugged towards him. I suspected that I’d felt a similar effect from advertising before, though this was stronger, more potent.

“To our older students, welcome once again. Our doors are forever open to inquisitive minds. To those of you who are here for the very first time, I hope that your time at Eden-Powell will be the best times of your life. Pay close attention, work hard, and keep a sensible head, and you will discover that there is much this academy can offer.”

I nodded along. That sounded fair.

“No matter your goal, no matter your vision, we will give you the tools to accomplish it.”

That was a bold-faced lie. My goals being accomplished would leave little room for an institution like this one. I blinked as I noticed that I’d missed a line or two.

“On that note, we’d like to present everyone with a few changes. For one, level-one Maths will be presided over by a new member of the staff, Mister Tan.” The Principal half-turned and gestured to one of the robed men behind him who bowed at the crowded students. “And we have added two new minor electives this year. The debate club has  been reinstated after a three year pause, and the Poetry society has found a new chairman and enough signatures to flourish once more.”

And then he started to go over minutiae that I really couldn’t care less about. I listened, but only enough not to get caught out.

I still didn’t know what to expect from this academy, but I was willing to hope for the best.

Eventually the speech finished, and a pair of staff members came to stand before us all with scrolls in hand. They unfurled them and started to read names. Each called someone out in turn, and as they did, a student would run up and gather behind the staff member

“Kilue , Gunther,” the man on the left said, and I jumped as I realized that that was me.

Scurrying along, I formed up at the back of the line, ignoring a few chuckles from others who’d noticed my fumble.

What a great start.

***

Chapter Nine -

I kept my step lively to keep up with the other first years heading to... somewhere. The entire early orientation was a bit of a mystery to me, actually. We left the main school building’s courtyard through a side gate, then along a gravel path towards a rather imposing building.

The academy took up a massive amount of space atop the plateau it was situated on, with wide greens and lots of open space. In a city as compact as City Nineteen, this was a massive show of opulence, though I doubted many of the kids around me noticed.

There were nineteen kids here, counting myself, all staring around wide-eyed or trying hard to look proper and dignified as they followed the staff member who had called out our names.

Mister Drake, if I recall correctly, seemed to walk as if his spine was locked in place by a straight rod and looked like he was trying to gain a few inches of height by poking his nose into the air.

He stopped in front of the building we were clearly heading towards and did an about-face. The gaggle of first years came to a stumbling stop. “We are the house of the Dragon,” he said with a gesture to the building behind him. It was clearly some sort of dormitory building, with a large statue of a dragon at the front spitting water from its mouth into a fountain. “We are the house of nobles and the peerage, each of you is either a young man with good blood in his veins, or a lucky winner of a scholarship.” He sneered a little at the last, and I noticed his eyes sweeping the group and picking out one or two others.

He missed me, but I had my [Unnoticeable] skill on at the moment. I didn’t need this guy’s ire.

“We, unlike the Troll house, are charged with holding ourselves to a standard befitting our class and station, and so I expect each and every one of you lads to do just so. There will be no infighting, no sniping, no backstabbing. If you learn only one thing during your stay at the Eden-Powell Academy, then I want it to be this: Nobility is power, and power is an illusion.”

A number of confused frowns crossed the faces of the kids around me, but I think I saw where he was going with this.

“There will be mandatory etiquette classes, with me, for any of you who fail to discern this important lesson.” He nodded, mostly to himself, then gestured back to the dormitory. “First years stay on the first floor. As your year rises, so will you. Do not bother the older students, though some may volunteer their time to assist you in your classes and lessons. If you need assistance, my office is next to the first floor foyer. You will find in your rooms a list of rules and regulations for the dormitory. This you will  memorise. You will also find the school’s charter and regulations, which, I fear, are too complex for you to inscribe to   memory , but you will familiarise yourselves with them nonetheless. Am I understood?”

There were some mumbled ‘yeses’ and I nodded.

Mister Drake cleared his throat and looked at the lot of us as if we were something a dog dragged over. “First lesson, then. When a teacher asks an open, rhetorical question to a group, your response, if you understand, is ‘Yes,’ followed by the teacher’s name. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mister Drake,” I said along with a few others. It was clear that some had forgotten.

And then this tall kid standing right next to me raised his hand and I gave him a look . Did he really want this asshole’s attention?

“Yes, Mister Wendell?” Mister Drake asked.

“What if we don’t know the teacher’s name yet?”

“Then substitute their name for ‘Sir’  or in the rare case that the teacher is a lady, ‘ma’am’ is an acceptable substitute. Also, you have demonstrated well what a student of this prestigious academy must do when they fail to understand. Raise your hand, ask for clarification. Do not abuse this privilege, but you will find that many teachers would rather you make your lack of knowledge clear rather than see you wallow in ignorance.”

He took a deep breath, then pointedly ignored a few more raised hands.

“Now, do find your rooms. They’re in the south wing of the building. You will find your names next to the doors. You will  look after your individual living spaces. The rest of the floor is to be shared among your yearmates. No other year’s students may enter, with the exception of prefects who are sixth and seventh years. If you wish to work with an upper yearman, then you may use the common rooms, the dorm’s library, or one of the study rooms.” He nodded. “Go on. The others will be arriving soon.”

With that said we were let loose. I was half expecting the kids to run, but a few more dignified examples in our group walked sedately and so we moved as a small pack into the dorm.

The place was... nice was the wrong term for it. There was a grand staircase at the back of a large room with several paintings on the walls and a chandelier hanging above. A few plush seats waited on the sides and there was a room for coats and shoes.

I looked around, but didn’t have much time to explore if I wanted to keep with the group.

We slipped into a large room with more seating and some desks, as well as four separate washrooms. The sides of the space were filled with small rooms, each about the size of my home in the slums.

“That’s my room?” one of the kids asked. “It’s smaller than my mum’s closet!”

I decided not to poke at that and focused instead on finding my room. M. Kilue , said a plaque next to an opened door, and I stepped into the room. It was cosy. A bed, a small writing desk with its surface at an incline, a tiny empty bookshelf, the aforementioned rulebooks were on the bed, and I had a small rug and some curtains over the windows.

The walls were all dark wooden panelling, and the sole light in the room had clearly once been a lamp with some sort of fanciful gas-powered system more recently replaced by a glass bulb.

I could live comfortably here, I decided. Not much room for hiding mushrooms though.

My bag was sitting on the floor next to the door, and I felt a jolt upon noticing them. Who had brought them here already? For that matter, how? The lectures we received hadn’t been all that long, and my bag wasn’t labelled.

I shut the door, dropped to my knees, then opened the bag . Then I was flung back as a miffed Sir Nibbles came flying out of the bag, little teeth snapping at me.

“H-hey, stop that! Stop! Hey!” I hissed. “People will hear you!”

He stopped, but his eyes were still narrowed in suspicion even as I touched my finger to my lips.

“Quiet. We don’t know how people will react to you yet. Better to keep the cat in the bag, uh, so to speak.”

He bit me again, and I winced to hold back a scream.

“Okay, okay, fine, no more bags. You can hide under the bed? Just for now. I’ll get you snacks, I promise.”

Sir Nibbles didn’t seem satisfied with that.

“They have good food here, I bet,” I said. “Better than the stuff we usually eat. Something that isn’t mushrooms even... maybe meat?”

That won him over.

I rubbed him between the ears, the spot he liked most, then pushed him towards the bed. “Go hide, I’m going to socialise.”

Sir Nibbles sniffed, but he did as I asked and slipped into the shadows under my new bed. With the panbadger  hidden, I tugged on my uniform straight, then fixed my hair before leaving the room.

The cliques that had broken up before were all back.

There was that pair of friends with the short kid and the redhead and... and one recognizable guy standing off to one side all on his own. The kid who’d raised his hand to ask Mister Drake a question.

I walked over to him, turned off any of my skills that made me less noticeable, then smiled when he noticed me approaching. “Hey. Thanks for asking that question. I, ah, wanted to know too.”

“Oh, no problem,” he said. “Uh, I’m Wendell. Montgomery Wendell.” He extended a hand to shake.

I grinned. “Gunther Kilue. Pleased to meet you, Montgomery.” I grabbed his hand and returned the shake. “So, are you as hungry as I am?”

He laughed. “I’m starving! They had us standing there for what felt like hours.”

Sometimes it was too easy.

***

Chapter Ten -

“Did you see your class list?” Montgomery asked.

“My class list?” I repeated. “No, I didn’t.”

“Mine was on my dresser, yours should be in your room too. On top of the rules. Which, I think we’re supposed to memorise.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, give me a minute?” I only took a few seconds to dip into my room and return with my schedule, as well as the dormitory rulebook. Montgomery had fetched his list too, and I saw that a few others were comparing notes.

My schedule listed all of my classes and electives at the very top, then spread them out across the week. The Academy year was split into two semesters and so the main classes were also split. One group would have three courses one semester, then they’d switch with the next. It seemed like a reasonable way of limiting the number of students each teacher had to deal with.

Kilue , Gunther

Semester One, Dragons

Main courses

-Maths

-Geography

-Language

Major electives

-Herbology and Botanical Magics

-Introduction to Clockwork and Gears

-Music

Minor electives

-Wandsmithing Club

-Inventor’s Guild

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Geography

Maths

Language

Maths

Geography

Herbology and Botanical Magics

Geography

Language

Herbology and Botanical Magics

Introduction to Clockwork and Gears

-Lunch-

-Lunch-

-Lunch-

-Lunch-

-Lunch-

Wandsmithing Club

Introduction to Clockwork and Gears

Music

FREE

Wandsmithing Club

FREE

Music

Maths

Geography

Language

My main courses were simple enough. Geography would be tricky, since I didn’t know mine all that well despite tutoring on the basics, but Maths would be a cakewalk, and Languages was going to be a joke. I had the experience of someone with a doctorate on my side. I could bullshit an essay with ease.

The major electives and minor electives were more interesting. They’re what allowed a student of the academy to really narrow the scope of their education into some specialised fields.

The major electives were taught by a professional in that field, someone with experience and who could teach.

The minor electives were more... social clubs that worked together to accomplish something while also allowing students to hobnob.

I would never have picked the electives that I had normally. In fact, I had picked exactly one of them. Herbology and Botanical Magics. The rest had been picked for me by the Union.

The reason was rather simple. My targets would be in those classes, and if I wanted to get close to them, well, I needed to be close to them. Sharing a class twice a week seemed like a no-brainer.

“Oh, your electives are all over,” Mortimer said.

“I’m trying a bit of everything,” I lied.

He nodded along. “Yeah, I’m really excited for mine. I’ve got Music too though.”

“Do you play an instrument?” I asked.

He nodded. “The piano. I’m pretty good. It’s my favourite past-time. I can manage on the violin and flute, I suppose.”

I didn’t comment on the fact that my [Lie Detection] skill had gone off at that. If he didn’t like the piano that was his problem. “I don’t know any instruments, and I think I might be tone deaf, so maybe you can give me a hand with that one.”

He grinned. “Sure thing. Double Languages on Wednesday ’ s is going to be torture.”

“Yeah, I bet,” I said. We talked for a bit about our lessons, then he flipped over to the rules and started to scan through them. I did as well, mostly out of idle curiosity. Then something caught my eye.

Rule Nine: On the first day within the dormitory each student must obtain a singular sock and place it in their front breast pocket, else face a dire punishment during roll.

“Wait, what’s that?” I asked as I pointed to the paper.

Montgomery squinted at the rule, reading it slowly. “That has to be some sort of misprint. Or a joke.”

“Or it’s something they’re doing to make sure we’re paying attention,” I said. “Do you have spare socks?”

He grinned. “I do. Should we be sneaky about it?”

I smiled back. “Sure.”

Soon enough, we slipped in and out of Montgomery’s room, a sock stuffed into each of our inner breast pocket, then we found one of the benches in the corner--which was sized for an adult, so we could both easily fit on it, even if Montgomery was unusually tall--and read through the rest of the rules.

Most were common-sense things, but a few, like where to put our dirty laundry, were actually nice to know. I didn’t have many outfits to spare. Eventually though, we reached the end and there was nothing about where to get food, only that we were very much not allowed to have any in our rooms.

“Do you think we can sneak off to the cafeteria?” I asked.

“Might get in trouble,” Montgomery said.

“Right. Better to stay here then. They’ll have to serve something eventually, or call us to get food.”

“I hope so,” he said. “I regret not taking up the maid on the offer to bring some snacks along. Even just a few pastries or something.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, even if that felt entirely out of touch. It had only been a few hours, he couldn’t be that hungry. Then again, something told me Montgomery had never gone hungry for an extended period before which... yeah, I couldn’t be angry  about some kid not going hungry. Being envious, however, was fair. “I should have thought of that too. So, where do you live?”

“Oh, just over in East Town,” he said. “It’s one of my family’s homes and the one closest to the school. It’s just me and my mom right now. Dad’s over in Seventeen. He does trading.”

Once Montgomery got started it was easy to keep him going. He told me about his g o d, Mollikins , whose opinion he seemed to care more about than his parent ’ s  at the moment, and about his favourite games and chocolates. It was a little strange, but I kept him going just by nodding along and asking a few more questions.

It was far too easy not to let him know anything about me.

And then the door to our little part of the dorm opened up and Mister Drake stepped in. “At attention, year one!” he snapped.

A few students seemed to know what that meant, and they ran over to stand next to the door into their rooms. Montgomery and I did the same, and soon everyone had sorted themselves out, standing awkwardly next to their individual doors.

I couldn’t help but notice all the faces in the doorway, second and third year boys looking into the room with obvious glee.

“It will soon be time for dinner, which I’m certain you are all looking forward to,” Mister Drake said. “But before that, I am here to inspect your rooms to see that all is neat and tidy, because they are not your  rooms, but the property of Eden-Powell, and so you’ll treat them with due respect for your betters came here  too , and stayed in these same hallowed halls, and one day your own sons will be staying in these very same rooms.”

Drake marched around the room, opening doors and poking a few students in the chest. When it was my turn he peeked into my room, looked at the front of my uniform, then nodded. He nodded with a few students, and someone by the door was taking snickering notes.

“Those of you with a sock in your blazer, please hold it out,” he said.

I reached into my coat and tugged Montgomery’s sock out. Of the twenty-or so of us, only eight had socks in hand.

“Boys! Come and welcome the first years!”

A bunch of older kids poured into the room. They were divided into two camps, some rushed over to Montgomery and I as well as those with socks, and I found myself the centre of some strange attention. Someone patted my head, another pushed a few things into my pockets, and when I looked I discovered a few chocolate bars.

“Uh, thanks,” I said to the well-wishers.

Then I caught on to what was happening to the others, the sockless.

They were being mocked, with some boys wrestling them to the ground to steal their... well, socks, while others danced about with small cans.

“Alright, enough,” Mister Drake said, and the older students retreated. “Well done. Those of you who weren’t so keen on reading the rules will learn an important lesson today. The rules are important. Each year the challenge is a little different than the last, to keep everyone on their toes, but the punishment is always the same. You will find your dinner within the cans before you.”

The now-sockless boys stared in horror at the cans. Some nice students had left them some can openers and large spoons.

The snickering continued to pour into the room.

“The rest of you, follow along, I’ll show you to the cafeteria.”

That was an important lesson to take in. Not that I had to know the rules and listen attentively, but that the school was more than willing to allow hazing and this kind of sanctioned bullying of its students.

I ignored the sour looks of the sockless first years as I followed Mister Drake out of the dorms. It sucked to be them, and maybe I’d try to help, but that would come after  I ate.

***

Chapter Eleven -

The cafeteria was situated in the main building in the centre of the academy. It was a relatively large room with a few dozen square tables separated into two rows. It became immediately obvious that there was one set of tables for each year group, with the tables on one side for the Dragons and those on the other for the Trolls. The other first years were already at their seats by the time we arrived.

It was interesting to see the contrast within the student body. The Trolls were more lax with the uniforms, and even the way they sat and ate was different. They were louder, messier, and less organised.

Across from them, the Dragons sat up properly, wore their uniforms with clear pride, and ate in a much quieter way, with their mouths closed as they chewed.

It struck me as very human that a bunch of kids being told that they were different would all start to act in such a way that they better fit into their cliques. As far as I could tell, most of these kids had an exceptionally similar upbringing, so the only reason there was such a difference in their behaviour had to be because... because that was how they imagined they should be.

Mister Drake led us to the far end of the cafeteria which was surprisingly modern. There were trays, there was a lunch lady behind a counter, there was lumpy food slopped into plates and bowls.

It all looked somewhat bland, and I wasn’t surprised when one of the other students in my year group piped  up.

“This is what we eat?” he asked.

“Mister Milo, you will find that the freely provided academy food contains all a young man needs to grow big and strong. If you wish to eat something else, then you can arrange that yourself. Perhaps pack a lunch?” The last was delivered with such sarcastic flair that a number of students chuckled at it.

I didn’t complain, just loaded up my platter with a bit of everything while also giving Milo a few surreptitious glances.

He was a hair taller than me, which wasn’t too surprising; I was on the shorter end of the class. Milo had dirty blonde hair and chubby cheeks. He certainly seemed to fill his uniform to the brim, and I imagined he might know a lot about good eating.

He was also one of my targets.

I considered what I knew about him as I walked with Mortimer all the way to the back where the first year table was. Micheal Milo was the first born son of the current Baron Milo. The baron’s noble position had been purchased by the man who would be Micheal’s great grandfather, back before the great industrial boom had really taken off.

The family had once owned huge tracts of land, but they’d since sold most of those to make room for expanding city space.

Their position in the peerage was relatively young, but not so young that they weren’t respectable nobles.

They were targets because Baron Milo currently held the luxury foods market in an iron fist.

If you wanted a luxury food in City Nineteen you either bought it from him, or had it imported from outside the city. It earned the family a great deal of wealth and some influence, at least, that’s what I understood of it.

If all they did was sell food, then they wouldn’t be a problem for the Union. But of course, they had to be asses about it. Baron Milo had messed up the asparagus market.

That was such a strange thing to think of, but it was essentially what they’d done. I looked at my plate and noted that I had a few sprigs of asparagus on my plate, right next to a chicken breast and some mash.

Asparagus used to be a simple, common food about ten or so years ago. Before my time, basically. Then the baron swept through the city and made the growing of them... complicated. It wasn’t illegal to grow, but for a few years people who grew any at home would find their gardens ramshackled and marketplaces had stalls attacked. A few smaller farmers had died.

And then the baron started to sell asparagus as a healthy g ood for healthy people once he was the only one making any. It quickly became something of a staple food on the plates of the better-off members of society. Planting and growing your own was still a risky prospect, if a commoner could even find the seeds for them to begin with.

It struck me as incredibly petty and shortsighted.

So I sat down next to Milo and Montgomery took the seat next to mine. “Do you think we’ll get better food eventually?” I asked.

“I sure hope so," Milo said as he looked at his tray with clear displeasure.

I nodded along, then pointed at a small loaf of bread that had come with his food. “Can I have that?” I asked.

“My bread?” he asked.

“I’ll give you my pudding for it,” I said. He shrugged, and soon I had two loaves. I turned towards Montgomery. “Can I have yours too?”

“Uh, sure,” he said. “Why do you want so much bread?”

“It’s for the other first years back at the dorm,” I said. That got a few looks from the others at the table, but Mister Drake had abandoned us, so I didn’t particularly care. “What? You expect them to eat nothing but raw beans? Bread’s easy to sneak out of here, and it’ll give them something more filling to eat. Plus... they won’t fart as much tonight.”

Milo laughed. “Oh, that’s a riot. Yes, we should sneak some bread over, to keep the smell away.”

One boy who happened to be sitting across from me, sniffed. “I don’t see why we should bother. They didn’t read the rules, so they were punished.”

“I guess,” I said. “But if I were them, I’d want a loaf of bread, and maybe one day it’ll be one of us that’s caught breaking a rule.”

“Makes sense to me,” Montgomery said. “My dad always said that what makes a noble a noble isn’t just his bearing, but his willingness to help his peers.”

I refrained from snorting at that. Willingness to help his peers indeed. And to crush those beneath them went unsaid.

I didn’t have the energy to complain though, not when I had so much free food in front of me. It tasted fantastic. Sure, part of me was aware that this was just cafeteria food. I’d been subjected to it before, in my past life, and this was no better. But my current body had never tasted the like , and it was everything I could do not to just scarf it all down like a starving animal.

I finished my food first, then started eyeing that bread. On the one hand, it might win me some brownie points with the kids back in the dorms. On the other, there was still some room for more.

Fortunately, Montgomery didn’t eat all of his food and when I eyed his tray for long enough, he slid it closer to me.

“You know, eating someone else’s food like that’s not sanitary,” the boy across from me said.

“Didn’t your mom ever tell you not to leave anything on your plate?” I asked.

He shrugged, and that was the end of that discussion. These kids were... more laid back than I expected them to be. Though maybe that would come into play later on.

“What are we going to do with the rest of the day?” Montgomery asked.

“I think Mister Drake will be giving us a tour of the facilities for the afternoon, and then we have a little bit of time to ourselves,” Milo said. “Which will be the last bit of free time we get for a while, I imagine.”

“Is the course load that bad?” I asked.

“That depends. Did you go to a primary or did you have tutors?” Montgomery asked.

“Um, I had tutors,” I said.

“Then it depends on how much of a pain your tutor was. The Academy’s not supposed to be forgiving at all,” Milo said.

“That’s no fun,” I said. “But I don’t mind. I had a pretty good tutor.”

“Well, as long as we do better than those guys over there, we’ll be just fine,” Milo said with a gesture across the dinning hall to where the other group of first years were flinging food at each other across their table.

Maybe the school had a point when it came to splitting us up. I wasn’t sure if I could deal with that level of immaturity.

Then again, these first years weren’t all that mature either, they were just quieter and more composed.

Well, time would tell how well I’d fit in, but I had high hopes.

***

Chapter Twelve -

The others had taken the bread we smuggled to them with clear misgivings. Apparently one of the prefects had stayed behind during our lunch hour and made sure to go over the entire ruleset in detail for those left behind.

They were allowed to eat their beans while listening.

So the rest of us sneaking over some loaves of bread was... welcome, even if I think they didn’t appreciate it all that much.

Well, I didn’t care too much either. I wasn’t going to win these kids over with a loaf of bread, no matter how good it was. Maybe that would work with some of the street urchins I passed in the gutters I lived in, but these kids didn’t look like they’d ever known hunger, and the whole thing with the beans was mostly an insult.

They still got to eat with the rest of us that evening.

Mister Drake gave us a tour of the school, pointing out where each classroom we’d have to attend was, and gave us a grand walk around the Academy grounds. It was interesting just how different the air tasted here compared to in the city below. Then again, we were up wind  of the factories and at a decent elevation compared to the rest of the city. I made a c onscious effort to keep up with the others without panting. I didn’t want to start coughing.

The tour ended at the cafeteria where we had our last meal for the day, then it was back to the dorms.

I managed to sneak more food back, this time for Sir Nibbles who did appreciate the still-warm bread and the chicken leg I got for him.

Some of the others decided to chat in the main dorm area, and I joined them, but mostly I talked to Montgomery, who, it seemed, had decided that I was a friend. Milo spoke to us a bit as well, and he introduced us to his own friend, Cedric Fairweather, who just went by the name ‘Fairweather.’

Fairweather was a nice enough guy once I looked past his stuffiness. He walked with a straight back and his nose in the air, and carried himself the same way Mister Drake did, but without that same effortlessness.

The four of us chatted for a while, though I mostly constrained myself to asking pertinent questions to keep the conversation going between the other three.

Eventually though, it was time for sleep.

I rummaged through my things before sleeping and found a very weak, older Dead Man’s Cough which I squeezed next to my doorway. It would fill the air of my room with a very light, thin dusting of spores which would set off the average person’s cough reflexes... probably without killing them.

That would have to do, as far as security went. I couldn’t justify using lethal measures against kids. Not only would it give me away, but I did have some personal reservations against it as well.

I changed in my rooms, then laid down to rest with Sir Nibbles curled up on my feet under the blankets.

The mattress was fantastic.

I woke up early the next morning, picked out some clothes, then rushed to the washrooms before anyone else awoke. I showered in one of the stalls and was dressed and ready to go before anyone else woke up.

That was going to be tricky to deal with in the future, but fortunately the washrooms had lockable doors here.

Those in the gymnasium, however, didn’t. We didn’t have PE on our weekly agenda, but it seemed as if the school still wanted us to keep active.

I suspected that they’d have organi s ed games or something. I’d have to be careful with those.

Mister Drake slipped into the dorm and found me sitting on one of the plush couches, reading one of the books I’d nicked from  the first year dorm’s mini-library. Just a simple biology textbook, probably for one of the electives. It was still a nice refresher.

“Good morning, sir,” I said.

“Good morning, Mister Kilue,” he replied with an easy nod. Then he casually pulled out a small metal device painted a dull green and grabbed onto a rotating handle on its back. “Do cover your ears,” he said.

I slapped my palms over my ears just as he started to spin the device. It made an impossibly loud wail. A siren?

Several doors slammed open and disgorged young boys in various states of undress. Almost all of them were bleary-eyed and confused. “At attention!” Mister Drake snapped.

I ditched my book and sprinted to stand next to my door. I didn’t think we had to be in any sort of parade rest, necessarily, but I tried to stand tall and straight for inspection.

More students stumbled out of their rooms, and I noticed Milo walk out of his room at a slow, lethargic pace, muffling a yawn as he did so.

“Breakfast is in twenty minutes,” Mister Drake said. “Shower and get dressed. I will not have my first years disgrace the house of the Dragon. This is your last wake-up call. I expect all of you to be up by this time tomorrow and ready to face the day.”

And with that, he spun on his heel and left.

I waited until Montgomery was dressed and ready to head out, and discovered that my new friend was on the slower side. A few of the others were already leaving by the time he was ready. “You took your time,” I said.

He yawned. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “And I’m used to waking a little later.”

“I know what you mean,” Milo said as he joined us. His friend, Fairweather, was a step behind him. “The beds here are awful.”

“I should have brought my own pillow,” Cedric said.

I was almost surprised he hadn’t. Some of these kids had come with enough luggage that I wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that they brought entire furniture sets. It looked like some of them were going to use the crap they brought from home to one-up each other, but I stayed out of it.

Our first class of the morning was Geography. The classroom was on the top floor of the main Academy building, on the far west end of the building of where our dorms were, but they weren’t too far from the cafeteria.

We found the cafeteria half full. The Dragon side had most of the students I’d seen there yesterday at lunch already either filling their trays with food, or sitting down to eat. The Troll side was... less full. It looked like only a quarter of them had showed  up, but more were arriving in varying levels of dishevelment.

“They’re quite... laid back,” Montgomery said while looking at a group of Troll first years who rushed into the room and joined the end of the food queue. One of them was still in his pyjamas.

“I guess so. Well, as long as they show up to classes on time, I guess it doesn’t matter,” I said.

Breakfast was eggs, thin slabs of ham, beans, and buttered toast, all in decent enough quantities that I was positive I wouldn’t be hungry later. Which was wild. I filled up on extra ham and ate with the others.

They didn’t notice me wrapping up some ham in a napkin and hiding it away in my uniform. Sir Nibbles was going to love it.

“Anyone know what Geography is like?” I asked.

“Wash your face off,” Milo said. “If my mother saw the way you ate she’d get the butler to pull out the strap.”

I cleared my throat and sat up straighter. Right, I needed to pretend to have some degree of decorum here. I’d practised, of course, but a few hours of practice here and there didn’t overrule a lifetime of starvation.

At least the Trolls on the next table over were eating about as well as I expected them to, so in contrast I wasn’t so bad. I cleared my throat again and made sure to check my accent. I didn’t need to slip back into a more gutter-y speech  either.

Maybe I could pick up some sort of disguise skill at some point that would help with that? In the meantime, I just let the others take over and ate quietly.

We finished up soon enough, then with nothing better to do, headed out towards the Geography class.

Classes here lasted for an hour and a half apiece. With two classes in the morning taking about three and a half hours (accounting for a short break period used to navigate from one class to the next) and lunch giving us an hour.

It meant that we’d be freed from classes a bit before four in the afternoon, with the rest of the day used for physical activities and homework.

I was looking forward to it. It had been a long time since I had a fixed, reasonable schedule to work with.

***

Chapter Thirteen -

My morning classes were Geography followed by the elective I was most excited about. That made it rather hard to get through Geography at all.

Geography was taught by Professor Ortherre. He was a young man, maybe in his mid-to-late twenties in an ill-fitting tweed jacket who was bouncing on the balls of his feet at the front of our class.

The room was on the second floor, with large windows overlooking the grounds at the back of the school where there was a track for running and a large field for various sports currently being tended to by a small team of landscapers with push mowers.

There were seats in neat rows across the room, with a wide corridor down the middle that led  all the way to the front of the class where the professor was standing on a small foot-high stage. The walls were covered in maps; some seemed like they were fresh prints, but a number of them were in glass frames and looked quite aged.

Professor Ortherre had dragged a large globe so that it stood next to him, a big visual representation of what his class was all about.

The Dragons sat on the left, away from the window-side of the room that theTrolls had instantly claimed as their own. Half of them were already paying more attention to what was going on outside instead of the teacher, at least until he clapped his hands.

“Welcome, gentlemen, to your very first class at Eden-Powell. I’m honoured to be your first professor. Though that honour will not shield you if you fail to behave. My class is quite taxing on the mind and memory, and I expect all of you to work and study hard to keep up. I aim to teach you of the world beyond the walls of City Nineteen.”

He spun the globe with a few quick strokes across the equator and the planet spun and spun, drawing everyone’s attention to it until, with a hard smack, Professor Ortherre slapped a hand over the globe, then tapped his index over a stretch of land to the north of the equator.

“This, right here, is where we are. Next to a small continental shelf between the ocean to the west and a large sea to the east, with only a thin channel splitting us apart from the greater empire and turning City Nineteen into a unique part of the greater Free Cities. As you will learn, geography and history are often the same subject, though in this class we will be studying the lands as they are more than the history that made them that way. We will be learning about foreign cities and distant lands and strange places across the globe and the strange peoples that inhabit them.”

He smiled, and I could feel his enthusiasm. Almost literally. Was that a teaching skill at work or was he just young and charismatic?

“But! Today we will not learn of the Rockholm dwarves or the wild cervid of the grand plains, or even of our distant cousins the elves in their Home in Exile. No, we will be starting a little closer to home.”

And then the lecture turned immensely dull as he had us pull out some textbooks from a shelf to one side of the room. The professor walked up to the blackboard and listed a number of pages to read. Then he just read straight out of the book.

I had kind of hoped to learn more about the rest of the world. It couldn’t all be as terrible as this city, could it?

Apparently it could be. Or at least, it could in this ‘Empire’ I was inadvertently a citizen of. City Nineteen was one of the twenty-seven or so ‘free’ cities. Technically we were a monarchy. Just as technically, the nobility had sold off and lost a lot of their power a generation or so ago, and now there were corporate entities that had more discretionary power than the Empire once had at its prime.

The class was too sanitised to really display any of the many, many issues I could imagine existed with this kind of... was it even a system? It was more a loose coalition of agreements between the rich not to step onto each other's toes too much while they tried to backstab each other for greater power. The occasional newcomer upset the balance of power often enough that there wasn’t ever a full monopoly and... and that was about all I could get out of reading ahead here.

The nearest city to ours was City Sixteen, across the channel from us. The nearest by land, however, was City Eighteen, which was substantially larger than our humble little metropolis.

It made me feel impressively small, seeing just how many cities there were, how many people I’d have to kill to set it all to rights.

Near the end of the class the professor took over once again. “City Nineteen, as you have read, was settled in this region for two reasons. First, two dungeons in close proximity to each other is a rare occurrence. There are more satellite dungeons beyond the edge of the city, but they aren’t as productive as the two we have .

“We also happen to be in an immensely defensible position. The better part of the city is defended on one side by the Gutter and the other by sharp, rocky cliffs and nearly impassable terrain.”

That explained the richer part of the city. The rest, however, was all situated in a lower, flatter area. Probably perfect for building in. Probably also susceptible to flooding, now that I looked at it. The place I’d grown up in was only a foot above sea level. What would happen when water levels inevitably rose?

Well, I could imagine. The poor would drown. A few factories would have to shut down temporarily. The parents of the people in this room would complain at length about lost revenue, and then they might deign to build a dike or something to prevent future flooding. Maybe.

I made a mental note to write to the Union about it. The land next to the coast was less desirable. It might be possible to prevent anything before it really started.

Class ended, and I felt... strange? Melancholic and a little conflicted, but also energised. Sure, the lesson was rote and rather dry, but it was still a lesson. I’d missed being in a proper school.

“Which elective do you have?” Milo asked Montgomery.

“Introduction to World Religions is next for me,” he said. “I’m looking forward to it. I heard that the teacher is an archbishop.”

“Yeah, but not of an important god,” Milo said.

Montgomery gasped. “Watch yourself, Milo, they can hear you.”

Milo shrugged, and from the looks he earned from some of the others close by, he’d just earned himself a bit of a reputation there. “I have Introduction  to Herbology and Botany next,” he said. “It’s more practical.”

“Really?” I asked. “Me too.”

Milo jumped a bit and looked at me as if he hadn’t noticed I was a step away from him. He probably hadn’t. “Oh, yeah, my family does a lot of farming. We even have a garden at home.”

“You do your own gardening?” Fairweather asked.

“Father says it’s important to know how to work a garden at least. It scales up to knowing how a farm works, and then you’ll know if your farmhands are cheating you or not. A good noble knows enough about how everything works within his domain to know when a subject is being truthful and how to respond according to each issue in turn.”

That last part was definitely repeated verbatim from someone or something.

“I just like plants,” I muttered, which earned a guffaw from Montgomery and a shake of the head from Milo.

Inevitably we had to split up. The Herbology elective was held out of the main school building and in a greenhouse that was surprisingly close to the Dragon dorms on the east end of the campus.

They were quite pretty, three large glass-walled buildings, their structure a scaffold of wrought iron with a few flourishes. The interior was filled with greenery.

Milo and I were two of four Dragons with this elective. The other two were boys called Andrew and George. We introduced each other with a round of handshakes that felt a little surreal coming from what were essentially kids.

The rest of the class was made up of five Goblins, and they were all eyeing us up as we came to a stop by the front of the main greenhouse. Class wasn’t going to start for another couple of minutes, and no one seemed ready to just walk in.

Seeing as how we weren’t going to do  anything, I decided to extend an olive branch. “Hi,” I said. “My name’s Gunther. Looks like we’ll be in the mud together, so maybe a round of introductions?”

One of the boys, taller and bigger than the others, snorted. “You wish, Gunther. I don’t want anything to do with you. Our blood’s not the same.”

***

Chapter Fourteen -

This guy, taller and bigger than the rest of the house Troll  kids, took a step towards us, and I saw Milo prepare to step back before he shored  himself up and stood his ground. “What do you want? My friend here was just being polite,” he said with a gesture towards me.

The boy scoffed. Then he closed his hand into a meaty fist. It looked like the other boys in his house were tacitly supporting him. “I don’t like your sort is all. I’ve been here for barely more than a day and I already know that what they say about you is right. Bunch of stuck up noble-sorts who think that they’re better than the rest of us. Bet you wouldn’t last a minute in a proper fight. Not without a precious servant or something to throw in front of you, huh?”

I scowled. What an incredibl e tripe  and almost cliched way of looking at things.

“You’re the one starting a fight here, big guy,” I said. “I was just saying hi. I’m not sure how noble-sounding that is, but I’m pretty sure even common folk say hello.”

One of the House Troll boys snorted. And my big new friend spun towards them and glared them down.

This was kind of interesting, actually. I’d seen some posturing in house Dragon already, but it seemed like it was more centred around position and wealth and old reputations than anything. If this was a glimpse into how the other house did things, then it seemed as if they were more open to outright physical shows of power.

Or maybe this guy was the outlier? I didn’t know enough to tell.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

The boy seemed a little taken aback. Milo and the other boys with us, Andrew and George, all seemed a bit cowed by this fellow, but... well, it was hard for someone with an adult mind to be afraid of a twelve year old, even if they were a bit big.

Seriously, what did he think would happen? If he struck me, I’d report it to the proper authorities, with several witnesses and probably a shiner to show as evidence, and then he’d be in a heap of trouble. And if he wanted to push things even further? Then I had ways to make his life a waking nightmare.

Perhaps literally. For all his bigness he wasn’t an adult, and my poisons were dosed for bigger bodies. A few mushrooms with some of the more interesting psychological effects would pair him down.

“I’m Harbin,” he said. “And who’re you? Some duke’s kid?”

I didn’t have time to reply to that  when the greenhouse’s door opened. All of us jumped, having failed to hear or see anyone coming... even though the door was entirely made of glass and the man standing in it seemed impossible to miss.

He was a tall man in proper outdoorsman gear. He had pants that ballooned out of his tall boots and a sweater under a thick coat with several pockets on it. His hair was long and somewhat messy, though it was covered by a slightly crumpled hat. “Good, you’re all here,” he said as his gaze swept over us. “Follow me.”

And with that he walked right in between our two little groups and straight towards one of the smaller greenhouses.

“This isn’t over,” Harbin said.

“I don’t think we even started,” I muttered, but it was only loud enough for Milo and the others to hear.

“I’m professor Jasper Moss. I have twin doctorates in herbology and pharmaceuticals, though my passion lies in turning plants into cures for mankind’s ills, both mundane and magical,” the professor said as he walked.

We reached the smaller greenhouse and he unlocked the door with a ring of keys that he pulled from a belt. We entered after him. This greenhouse had rows of planters set at what was for most of us mid-waist height. For an adult it would probably be closer to hip-height. I noticed lots of herbs, but surprisingly they all seemed mundane.

Parsley, cilantro, thyme, some mint next to basil, even some dill and chives. All the most basic herbs used as spices were here in their own little boxes, separated by wooden dividers. The  professor went to the far end, then picked a small clay pot out and turned to show it to us. “This class will be a little more hands-on than some of your other electives. Yes, we will go over theory. You will learn quite a bit about agriculture here, but we will also cover herbal medicines and some alchemy. Plants make up sixty-percent of all alchemical ingredients. Fungi another twenty. We’ll be covering those as well.”

He frowned, then lowered the plant while he looked at us all, then with a rather expressive roll of his eyes, he reached down and tugged Milo and another Troll-house boy closer together.

“I don’t have time for your rivalries. I have a lot  to teach you in too short a time. Part of this class being so hands-on means that it’s also locked into certain seasons. Plants can be encouraged to grow out of season, but there are consequences to that. Especially  with the more magical sort of plant. Today we will be scouring the woods near the academy for just one such plant.”

He turned the little pot he was holding over to reveal the plant within. It was a few long, thin green leaves, almost rolled into themselves.

I fired off my [Druid Sight] at it.

Enchanter’s Onion [Uncommon]

A species of onion found in areas with higher-than-average ambient mana. Used as both a mana supplement in certain dishes and as a base ingredient in several alchemical concoctions.

Casually, the professor tugged one of the stalks out and showed us... a very small wild onion. It was startlingly green, as if a highlighter had leaked all over it. “Can any of you tell me what this is?” he asked.

I hesitated. This was the only elective I actually  cared about. I wanted to get the most out of it. But standing out wasn’t a great idea. Still... I raised a hand and he pointed to me. “Enchanter’s Onion,” I said simply.

He nodded. “Did you know that, or did a skill tell you?” he asked.

“The latter,” I said.

“That’s acceptable. Don’t trust skills implicitly. The more common skills will leave out much, and even the uncommon ones might only give you surface information. You might have to dissect a plant part by part, examining each one to get a full picture of its capabilities, and sometimes of its dangers. But I imagine if the skill is enough to give you a name, you’ll find this next part easy. We’re going to go harvest some of these. They’re in season early.”

He reached over to a cupboard to one side of the room and fetched a bunch of gloves that were sized more or less for kids our age, then we were given woven buckets with folding handles.

“All equipped?” he asked. “Good, follow me, then!”

As he led us outside, the professor continued to talk over his shoulder.

“Plants all need several things to live, though magical plants can introduce exceptions to these. Mostly it boils down to water, sunlight, time, and space. Given those four elements, a plant can survive. But if you want it to thrive, then you need to give it what it needs and wants. That means better, healthier soil, manure--yes, we will be working with that later.”

A few of the boys weren’t fans of that idea.

“And some plants require other plants and insects nearby in order to survive. Several kinds of flowers need to be pollinated. Others will only grow in soil that contains a certain level of acidity. We will be going through a lot more book-learning later, but for now, some fresh air. Any questions?”

One of the Troll boys raised his hand. “Is it true that there are monsters in the woods?” he asked.

We were heading towards a decently forested patch of land on the south-eastern part of the academy. It was maybe five acres of fairly dense forest with rocky ground and lots of bushes.

“No, but also yes. If you consider goats to be monstrous.”

A few boys laughed.

“We bring them in to eat certain weeds and undesirable plants. Their droppings serve as natural fertiliser, and with a high levelled [Shepherd] at the head of a herd, they won’t eat any of the plants we don’t want them to. I've seen some wild dogs wander into the woods, and a few students have snuck in various pets, but you likely have nothing to worry about.”

So, we wouldn’t have to worry about monsters.

Except, of course, for the most dangerous monster of all. Teenaged boys with little supervision and chips on their shoulders.

***

Chapter Fifteen -

The class spread out across the woods.

The trees and bushes and such on the edge were far enough apart that there was no getting lost, but Professor Moss eventually called out. “The edges won’t have much of a bounty. Don’t be afraid to head deeper in.”

So I did just that.

With all of my stealth and unnoticeability  skills turned on, I slipped behind a large tree so that I couldn’t see anyone, then walked away from the group. By the time they were in my line of sight again, I was a dozen metres  away from the nearest.

The Dragons stuck together, more or less. The boys walked around, hanging onto the sacks that the professor had given out to us in one hand and gripping onto their trowels with the other.

I think it might have been the first time a couple of them even handled any sort of tool.

Well, whatever. I’d leave them to it. I slipped deeper into the woods. The terrain was a lot more uneven here than around the academy, and I realised looking at it, that the ground around the school must have been levelled at some point. This was a craggy, rocky area, there was no way there was a place with that much flat land atop one of the biggest cliffs in the area.

The woods were more natural, with deep dips in the terrain after a while where fewer plants grew, and large boulders and rocks left behind.

As I pushed in deeper, I eventually came upon a wall. It was all brick and mortar, and looked like it had been sitting here for a long time. The original school wall, maybe? It looked aged, with some plants digging into the brickwork and dislodging them and a nice covering of moss painted part of the wall green.

It was still a good metre and a half tall. Taller than most people could jump over, and the top had a wrought-iron filigree on it, with plenty of twirls that ended in sharp, rusty, fleur-de-lys.

Someone enterprising could still get over it, of course, but at least the school had  a wall all the way around it.

Not that it would keep it safe from someone already inside.

I started to follow the wall, heading more or less in the direction the others were in, but my attention was mostly on the ground. I was looking for green shoots, like I’d seen when Professor Moss had shown off that onion.

I wanted to do well in this class. Not only was it a subject I was genuinely interested in, it was also a fantastic opportunity to level.

A good teacher could help you gain levels at a much greater pace, and Professor Moss’ subject touched on some of my most difficult to improve skills.

I’d first need to earn my place in his class, however, and that wouldn’t happen if I slacked off.

So I was pretty happy when I ran into a small heap of [Enchanter’s Onion]s in a small sunny patch not too far from the wall.

I squatted next to them and used the trowel I’ve been given to cut slices out of the earth in a rough circle around the plants. Then I moved them into the sac, careful not to disturb their roots too much.

These weren’t exactly delicate. I was pretty sure I could yoink them out of the ground with little trouble, but being careful wouldn’t hurt, and it would look more professional when I handed my bounty in.

The Professor had clearly chosen these plants for hardiness, however. They’d survive the rougher treatment I imagined my classmates were giving them.

With a bit of a skip to my step, I started to look for more when I heard a not-so-distant oomph .

It was probably all the time I spent on the streets that was responsible, but I instantly placed the sound. It was the noise someone made when they were shoved hard in the chest. It wasn’t a normal hard exhale, but a more sudden, violent one, just short of a scream.

It was the kind of sound that, if you heard in an alley, you’d slip to the other side of the road when crossing it, and it very much didn’t belong in these woods.

I slipped forwards, keeping some bushes and trees between me and the source of the noise until I was closer.

It was coming from one of the dips in the terrain, a small spot where a tiny stream had clawed its way across the terrain and turned the basin at the bottom into a muddy patch where fallen leaves stuck to the ground.

A decent spot for mushrooms. Maybe I could plant some around here?

I poked my head over the edge of the hill, keeping a tree close next to me so that I’d only be exposing as much of myself as I needed to in order to see.

The Dragons were below. Well, two of them were. Milo and Andrew. No sign of George except that I noticed a dropped bag on the opposite hillside.

The Trolls were here too. At least three of them, including Harbin.

He was standing over Milo, who was on the muddy ground, glaring daggers up at the bigger boy.

“So what? You going to go crying to your daddy?” Harbin asked.

His friends--goons, I supposed--laughed behind him, and I found myself working hard not to roll my eyes. I tucked my sack of onions under a root and discarded one of my gloves there too. I needed a better grip on my trowel.

“Shut up, Harbin,” Milo said. “You’re such a typical new blood. Pushing your weight around. But you’re nothing. Just a jumped up ass!”

Well, Milo had some bite, at least.

It wouldn’t do him much good, of course. He was still on the ground and Andrew looked positively useless behind him, shaking in his boots while Harbin’s friends watched him.

So while they had their attention elsewhere, I snuck around. I paid half my attention to the ground, avoiding loose leaves and broken twigs, stepping carefully but quickly onto exposed rocks where I could. The other half of my attention was on the boys, who were doing an excellent job of not looking behind them.

“An ass? That the best you can do, daddy’s boy?” Harbin asked. He pointed to Milo, leaning forwards as he did to tower over him. “ You’re  nothing. Just like the rest of you ‘Dragons.’”

Oh, I could hear those quotes. Harbin has some stuff to work through.

I really didn’t know much about fighting, but when my targets were two kids that weren’t paying attention...

“You’re not any better than any other Dragon. Just some old money that doesn’t know what’s coming for it,” Harbin continued. “Once I’m done making you eat mud, I’ll come for the rest of you.” He pointed to Andrew, who took a small step back... and noticed me standing behind Harbin’s friends.

Well, the jig was up.

I lashed out with a kick to the back of the nearest kid’s knees. He gasped, arms flailing as he started to fall, so I grabbed him by the scruff and threw him down with as much of my weight as I could manage.

Then I skipped over to the other boy who was starting to turn.

I didn’t know how to fight well. I was too small, too weak, to really ever put much effort into it.

But I was also fast, and I'd learned a thing or two about biology. So I dipped around the second goon and jammed the trowel up as hard as I could right into his lower back, more or less where his kidney was.

His breath cut off, and I reached up, grabbing him by the ear and twisting it back and down. That lowered him enough that I was able to press the trowel up against his neck.

Harbin turned, and his eyes immediately caught onto me.

“Don’t,” I snapped, stealth skills shutting off. No point in keeping them up now. “I don’t appreciate you hurting my friend, Harbin,” I said. My attention flitted to Andrew, just for a second. “Help Milo up,” I ordered, and that got him to jump to it.

Harbin took a step towards me, and I twisted his pal’s ear more. The kid made a squealing noise. So, he’d caught his breath? Good for him.

Harbin stopped, hands balled into fists by his side.

I started to weigh things.

There was a good chance that Harbin would come to his senses and realise that he wanted to punch my nose in more than he cared about his friends.

How would that play out? In the long term, his pals might not want to be pals anymore. But I rather liked my nose where it  was.

Could I take him in a fight? He had a dozen kilos on me and a full foot of height. Nah, he’d paste me, unless I used magic. And using offensive magic would probably get me into a lot more trouble than him throwing punches.

I was still doing the maths when Professor Moss and George stomped onto the scene.

I let go of the kid's ear and stepped away, flipping the trowel around into an ice-pick grip as I did so. I reactivated my notice-me-not skills, even if they wouldn’t do much at the moment.

The Professor took in the scene at a glance. “I hope  what happened here is that Mister Milo tripped while looking for onions,” he said.

“Yeah,” Milo said. “Yeah, that’s exactly what happened, sir.” He glanced my way and nodded his thanks.

Harbin  glared at me for a while longer.

It seemed that I’d made both a friend and an enemy.

But hey, I found those onions too, so all in all, a productive class period!

***

Chapter Sixteen

“That was… spectacular,” Milo said. The other two, Andrew and George, were bobbing their heads next to him.

Class had ended already. The Professor had given us a short lecture in the greenhouse once we’d returned. It wasn’t anything too enlightening, just an explanation of the uses for the onion we had gathered. It wasn’t anything more than what my [Druid Sight] had told me, so I only really paid him half an ear.    

The professor had been happy with the small batch I’d brought him (the biggest in the class) and that was enough for me. Then after handing  back our equipment and storing it away (which the professor showed us where and how to do) we were let go.

Lunch was next, and the three other Dragons and I were heading back to the main Academy building. I suspected that the other’s stomachs  were just as grumbly as my own at the moment.

“It wasn’t much,” I said. “They didn’t notice me showing up, so I caught them off guard. I don’t think I could take them in a straight fight. And I don’t want to try.”

Milo glowered his chubby little face off. “Those brutes. No traditions, no proper upbringing. I heard my dad say that the new  rich were nothing but trouble, and he was right. Those Trolls  are nothing but trouble.”

“I’m sure they’re not all bad,” I said. And that earned me a trio of strange looks. I guessed that the nuance of treating others like people was still lost on them. “Well, whatever , do you think we should report on Harbin? Tell the teachers?”

“We should take care of him ourselves ,” Andrew said.

“Yeah. We could ambush him,” George added.

I shook my head as their imaginations continued to run wild.They were plotting their revenge–as ineffective as I suspected it would be–until we reached the cafeteria. In my opinion, it would have been wiser to inform the staff about Mister Harbin’s behaviour first thing. It might not have amounted to much, but it would have been one more tick on his record, and that might have been enough to get him into some real trouble later on.

But thinking that far ahead was probably asking for too much. And really, Harbin was helping me right now. Milo had turned the story of my fight into some epic battle where the Dragons (who were less useless than they had been) were the valiant heroes. It was a wild exaggeration and it painted us as the heroes and the Trolls as villains.

When it came time to eat with the rest of the group, I noticed that some looked a bit more ruffled than usual, and others seemed wired and excited.

I grabbed a full tray of food, then chowed down while the others chatted and gossiped. Our little scuffle with the Trolls wasn’t the only one. It seemed like the animosity ran pretty deep across every class.

I stuffed a bunch of bread and food into a napkin and tucked it away, then after eating as quickly as I could, I excused myself and ran off. I returned to the dorms, [Unnoticeable] on full power to keep anyone from noticing me. Sir Nibbles was excited to see me, and more excited when I gave him some ham and cheese and bread. Soon he was lying across my lap, stomach distended by all the extra food he was getting lately.

I think Sir Nibbles was enjoying his time here, at least.

My next class was another elective. T he Wandcrafting  club ,  this time,  so a minor elective . I wasn't sure if we had a proper teacher for this one, or if the class was going to be taught by an older student. Heck, I wasn't entirely sure what the elective was even about. Wandcrafting , sure, but I'd only ever seen one wand in my entire life.

That had been years ago, at the entrance of the Ditz Dungeon being used by a man that had felt exceptionally powerful.

I imagined that Wandcrafting had something to do with crafting wands, so I had that much going for me. But really, I didn’t know what to expect from the class.

What I did look forward to, however, was meeting my next target.

Alexander Blackwood. He was a Troll student in my year. His father ran a number of smaller magic and enchanting shops and had been a Troll himself several years ago.

It seemed like a surprisingly small industry for someone sending a kid to this academy, but whatever. Maybe enchanting was a more expensive thing than I was expecting. It’s not like I could recall ever seeing anything enchanted tha n  I knew of.

In any case, that was about all I knew about Alexander, so it was going to be an uphill battle getting to know him. The kid being in the Trolls complicated things more too.

Oh well.

I scritched Sir Nibbles behind the ear one last time, then tucked him away on my bed. “Stay quiet,” I told him before heading out. Wandcrafting was held in the main Academy building, on the top floor. I wasn’t sure how many other Dragons were in that class.

The corridors on the upper floor were almost entirely empty except for the very end. A group of two Trolls and a single Dragon were waiting by a doorway. There was a small plaque next to the door that read Wandcrafting  Club.

I walked over, checking out the two Trolls students to try and guess which was Alexander. They were both about the same height, about half a head taller tha t  I was. One had raven-black hair and the other a dark brown. The biggest difference was that one of them, the black haired kid, had the biggest ears I’d seen on a kid ever. His bowl cut didn’t help, really.

“Hello,” I said as I came over. I smiled a little at the lot of them. “Gunther, pleased to meet you.”

The other Dragon was the first to reply. “Simon, he said. “You were with Milo earlier, right?”

“Ah, yeah,” I said with a nod. I quickly dismissed him, however. I wanted to get the other two student’s names, so I turned their way and extended a hand.

They both hesitated, then one of them finally gave in. “I’m Eric,” he said. “This is Alexander.”

“Hi,” Alexander said. So, I finally had a face for my target, as well a pair of huge, unmistakable ears. I hoped for his sake that he grew into those.

“Do you know when class begins?” I asked.

Alexander, surprisingly, reached into his coat and pulled out a small pocketwatch with AB engraved on the back. “We have two minutes to wait, still,” he said.

“Alright,” I said.

“You have a weird accent,” Eric said. “Where are you from?”

“City Nineteen, but the far end. It’s a nice, quiet little spot. To us, you’re the one with the accent. Where are you from?” I’d practised that line, just in case. I had to be careful, and make more of an effort to keep my accents straight. It was surprisingly hard to keep speaking in the more posh local accent. I hadn’t fallen into slum patois just yet, but it was a near thing.

A student came over and opened the door, then welcomed us into the class. “I’m Cain,” he said. “A senior member of the Wandcrafter’s Club. Since you’re all still firsties, you’ll be going over the basics with me. Next year, assuming you pass all of our tests, you’ll be allowed into the club proper.”

The club room was a third classroom, a third workshop, and a third hangout space. There were chairs facing a blackboard on one end, then several workstations with a few small hand-powered tools in the centre of the room and a rack with even more tools up against one of the walls. The far end had a sofa wrapped around an end table next to a small standing fireplace. It was comfy, and the air smelled strongly of oils and recently cut wood.

Cain marched to the blackboard and started to write on it. “Your names?” he asked.

We gave him our names, and he nodded. “Good. In here , you are all members of the club. Your allegiance to your house, whether Dragon or Troll, doesn’t matter. What matters is your loyalty to the club and to the exquisite and ancient art of wandcrafting .” Cain spun around after writing the last of our names down. “What is a wand?” he asked before pointing to Simon.

“Um,” Simon, who was caught a little flat-footed, said. “A wand is a tool to cast spells.”

“That’s the most basic definition,” Cain said. “But it’s not inaccurate. But a wand is more than that. It’s a conduit, a battery, an assistant, and if you are very, very good at the craft, a helper in times of need. It’s a near-living device that allows a mediocre spell caster to become a proper mage. And in this club, we make  wands.  Today, I’ll be starting you off on the very basics. So pay attention.”

***

Chapter Seventeen -

“A wand is made of three parts,” Cain said as he turned to the blackboard. Reaching up, he tugged on the first of a set of rings connected to a rotating unfurling spring roller and pulled it down. I was expecting a map for a moment, or a white sheet for a projector, but instead there was a detailed diagram of a wand.

There were several images, taken from different angles with a few cutaways to the side, all carefully labelled.

“Those parts are the core, the shaft, and the handle. Take notes, please.”

I scrambled along with the others to do just that.

“The core of a wand is the part unseen. It’s usually--though not always, but the exceptions are rare enough not to matter for firsties--entirely encased within the handle and shaft. A core is always magical. It can be a type of wood, a byproduct from a magical creature, or even a magical metal or crystal. Now, the shaft--”

Cain paused mid-speech as he noticed that my hand was raised.

“Yes? Uh... Gunther?”

“Sorry,” I said. “But could you give us examples? I’m curious.”

He considered it for a moment, then nodded. “Fine. But no more interruptions. Some common wand-core materials are goblin blooded pulp for temporary wands. Mage blood can work as well. The bones of nearly any magical creature. Most magical plants will work as cores as well. Over three-quarters of our wands have cores sourced from alchemists. It’s just the best, cheapest way to make a core. Things like unicorn horns can be used too, but not on the kinds of wands made by Firsties. In fact, just don’t keep your hopes up for that kind of rare material until you’re in your final years.”

He glanced at me as if to see if I was happy, and I nodded my head quickly while making notes.

Magical plants, huh? Well, I happened to have no lack of magical fungi. Could I use that as a wand core? Would it last very long? The way Cain talked about it, some of these plant-based things didn’t last very long to begin with, which I supposed was normal for something made by a beginner.

“A wand’s shaft is this part right over here.” Cain whipped out a wand from his pocket. It was a short thing, maybe a foot long, with a thicker handle and a stubby wooden point. “The shaft is usually made from a different material from both the core and the handle, to prevent magical interference between the different parts. The shaft directs the magic being poured into the wand, and will sometimes have inscriptions on it to create a specific spell when used.”

He flipped his wand around, holding it by the end.

“The handle, on the other hand, is usually made of a very non-magical material.” His  looked almost like it was made of rubber. “The less magical the better, except for a small place where the user can come into contact with the shaft. Mine is here, where my thumb rests. Others had contact points near their index, or as a ring near the top. That’s a matter of the wand-user’s comfort more than anything, and it’s one of the few places with wand making where what you pick really doesn’t matter in the grand-scheme of things.”

He reached up and pulled down another sheet over the blackboard. This one was split horizontally, with the top half labelled ‘casting wands’ and the bottom labelled ‘freeform wands.’

“Nearly all wands fall into these two categories. This wand of mine is a casting wand. It lets me do this.”

And in so doing, Cain turned his wand towards us and narrowed his eyes.

I was out of my seat and diving away in a split second.

I landed roughly on the ground, then rolled around to see... that he had just sprayed a mist over the others and was now looking at me, on the floor, with an eyebrow quirked.

“This is a misting spell. It pulls water from the air and sprays it out. You use it on plants to keep them watered,” Cain explained while I carefully stood up.

I refused to be embarrassed. That could  have been anything and I had no real way of knowing. Better looking like an idiot sometimes than being dead once.

“I can’t cast that spell myself. Well, I probably could, it’s hardly the most difficult of magics, and the cost of the permit for it is relatively small at a few shilling. But with the inscription added to the wand, it’s significantly easier to cast. Are you comfortable again, Gunther?”

“Yes. Sorry for the second interruption.”

“Hmm,” was his only reply. “Must be awful, being afraid of getting a little wet. In any case, this wand knows one spell, and without an incantation, it can take my mana and cast that spell. There’s still some work on my part, but very little. A freeform wand, on the other hand, doesn’t do that. It acts as a receptacle and amplifier. Some more complex spells require a certain build-up of magic to be cast. Most mages can’t hold that much magic in themselve , so they pour it into their wands while their reserves grow, then once they and their wand have enough... boom! A new spell is cast.”

He flipped his wand around and tucked it away.

“Freeform wands have other uses. They can concentrate magic better, can amplify or magnify it, and can change one kind of magic into another. If you have any slightly-magical skills that mention using a specific kind of magic then you’ll know what I mean. Something like... [Firestarting {Common}] which a lot of people have, is obviously fire magic. A magic-user who wants to cast a water spell might have a wand that’s going to more easily turn their magic into that kind.  It’s complicated, and not something you firsties need to worry about much. Questions about the basics?”

Simon, the other Dragon in the class, raised his hand. “Do wands need to be wand-shaped?”

“A freeform wand, almost always. They sometimes need to be wiggled and moved in a specific way. So wand-users like them to all be similar. But a casting wand like what I have can have nearly any form.”

Cain made a ‘one moment’ gesture, then moved across the room.

He was a surprisingly good teacher for a non-professor. I didn’t sense that he had any active teaching skills, but he did care about the subject and that carried through in his teaching.

He returned with what looked like a very ornate sword’s hilt, only its ‘blade’ was curved around so that the point was near the knuckles, and the blade was made of wood. “This was a project of mine from fifth year,” he said. He frowned and a small shield of glowing light appeared around the handle as a sort of half-dome. It flickered, then died. “It... wasn’t perfect,” he admitted.

The boys chuckled, and Cain smiled, placing the strange wand down on a desk. “So yes, as long as the handle is well designed and the core is intact, and you have a shaft that accounts for the spell inscriptions, you can have a strange shape. But mostly the shape of the handle determines the rest. The wand is a very natural shape to lay things out in, so we tend to use that. I have seen some others in the class make magical mugs, or a knife and even an umbrella. Canes are popular. You’ll see plenty of gentlemen on the roads with canes. Keep an eye out for the handles and you might notice that they’re actually wands. Usually with some sort of self-defence spell worked into them.”

That was good to know.

“Or they have a passively-active [Clean Air] spell at work,” Cain continued.

That was also  good to know.

My target, Blackwood, raised his hand next. “What’s the curriculum like in the club?”

“Well, today’s all lessons. We’ll go into a bit more depth. Next class, you’ll be making a very basic wand with some materials we have. Cheap stuff. Don’t expect to make anything too fantastic, but it’s a good way to learn how to do it. We usually start with a [Mist] spell wand, or an [Eraser] spell, which is really useful.”

I could see a lot of potential in all of this, but it depended on something rather important, so I raised my hand next. Cain nodded to me. “How do you get spells to add to a wand?”

“At the Academy, there’s a small licence-agreement that lets students pick from a variety of {Common} and a few {Uncommon} spells. The latter for sixth and seventh years only, of course. Out of school, or if you want to try something beyond our grimoire, you need to get a licence to purchase spells, then buy them. It’s a bit of a hassle, but it’s only a dozen pounds to expedite the process.”

So basically unaffordable for the common person. Got it. “Thanks,” I said.

Still, this had potential. I was a little glad I’d gotten railroaded into this class after all.

***

Chapter Eighteen

We had a free period after Wandsmithing. I stayed in the class as long as I could, however, chatting with the other students, and especially Alexander Blackwood. Unfortunately, he wasn’t terribly talkative, and I didn’t get much out of him, especially not the sort of undying friendship that would lead him to inviting me into his unguarded home.

Oh well, I wasn’t expecting it to be easy. In any case, I had a whole year to get closer to the boy, so for now a nice, neutral relationship was a good place to start.

Once Cain got tired of us and ushered us out of the club room, I slowly made my way back to the dorms. The last period on Monday was open for me. Some of the other Dragons no doubt had electives in this timeslot, but my schedule was nice and free.

Free time was going to be a premium, I imagined. We hadn’t been given homework yet, but that was only a matter of time. Too many brats with too much free time would be a nightmare for the staff, so I imagined they’d want to curtail that.

In any case, I could use the time for my own projects.

But first, I needed a place for those.

I didn’t return to my rooms in the dorms. Instead I wandered around the first floor, nodding politely to upper-year students and pushing a small but steady amount of mana into my stealthier skills so that I wouldn’t be noticed.

How had I ever lived without [Unnoticeable]?

On the other hand, that same skill was making some of my more introverted tendencies significantly worse. Oh well. I’d have to just make a conscious effort to avoid pushing that too far.

Finding a good place to grow mushrooms in the dorms was proving tricky. There were some larger, communal bathrooms on the ground floor that were humid enough. I opened the tank at the back of a toilet and fished out some select spores to spread within.

I was using more common ones for that, however.

The utility closest  on the second floor had some mops and buckets and such, and it was nice and dark within as well, but the space was tiny, and I didn’t want to put anything lethal in there.

In the end I ended up outside, walking a big circle around the dorms until I noticed a door at the rear that I’d almost missed. It had shrubs growing on either side of it, and no clear path leading to it. No windows, nothing to make it stand out.

It was, of course, locked. But locking technology in this day and age left a lot to be desired. I had a small paper-clip like piece of wire that I could maybe  pick the lock with.

But that would take time. So Instead I twisted the handle hard, then wedged the hard front cover of one of my notebooks into the gap between the lock and the door, pushing in the latch. That was a little trick that Grey had shown me once, and it worked perfectly here.

The door opened up into a staircase leading down, with several spiderwebs hanging across the low ceiling and a yawning chasm of darkness at the bottom.

Shrugging, I stepped in.

Another child might have worried about the monsters in the dark, but not to make too fine a point of it, I tended to think of myself as that monster.

Still, when I reached the bottom of the stairs and looked around, I found that I was in a basement with a ceiling that would force an adult to stoop uncomfortably.

There was something making a strange, rumbling noise to one side, and plenty of pipes. I spun as one of them rattled and wat ch  sloshed through. Had someone above flushed? Interesting. The air was warm and a little on the dry side, which I found unusual for a basement, especially one with a dirt floor and stone walls like this one.

Ducking down, I moved closer to a small, dirt-stained window in one corner, wiping webs away from my face as I went. With that bit of light, I was able to find one of my mycelium containers and I placed a small length of it in a crack in the wall. The walls were cooler than the air in the room, more humid as well.

Perfect!

Pushing a healthy amount of magic into the little mycelium, I encouraged it to grow, and I could feel its little tendrils pushing up and out and deeper into the wall. Very soon, there was a small lump that carefully, slowly, grew.

I continued to coax magic into it over the course of a long half hour until I had a small mushroom that I carefully plucked free and chomped down on.

[Purple Capped Night Watcher] - Rare

This rare mushroom is only found in areas with a particular kind of predatory animal, notably creatures who stalk and predate on others using magical means in unlit environments. While very mildly poisonous, this mushroom allows those who eat it to see in the dark, amplifying natural night vision. Used in several alchemical concoctions.

One of my go-to mushrooms, and one whose flavour I’d grown to enjoy. At this point, the mild toxicity of it was a joke to me.

I blinked a few times, scanning the room even as I saw the shadows receding.

“Ah,” I said as I noticed what had been making that noise. There was a large boiler of some sort in the corner. A big all-metal thing that I imagined was a pain to fit into this basement.

That explained the dryness of the air.

I wandered around the basement with a lot more surety now that I could see my way around. The space was respectably big, with several brick pillars and a few walls dividing the space up. Those no c ks tended to be filled with old handyman supplies. Cans of paint and oil and whatever. There was a very peculiar smell down there too. Burnt dust and old mould, especially next to the cistern in the far rear corner.

There were some pipes leading into the cistern from the wall, and I guessed that it was being filled from rainwater, as well as from what looked like a pump with hoses going to a capped well in the opposite corner. A plunger mechanism seemed to activate the pump.

It was damned near perfect. If this was being used as water for all the sinks and showers and baths, then I could poison half the school’s population with one misplaced mushroom.

But that wasn’t my goal down here. What I was looking for was a place to start a modest little farm.

This basement would do it.

I found some old boxes, shifted them around to create a more enclosed space in one of the darker corners, then I planted some mycelium that I knew would agree with each other in that hidden little spot.

Soon I had a fresh crop of some of my favourites growing. Deadly poisons, far less deadly poisons, a few healing mushrooms, some hallucinogens.

I’d let the last spread their spores in the air. Just enough to make the dust down here more interesting, but not enough to contaminate the cistern. That way someone coming down to explore would quickly find themselves jumping at shadows.

It was a decent plan, I decided as I wiped my hands free.

The last thing I did before leaving was taking a small sample of fresh Dead Man’s Spore dust in a teeny tiny little sown together packet which had once been a tea bag. I could keep that in my back pocket for a rainy day.

I left the boiler room, brushed off a few cobwebs, then made myself presentable before circling around and reentering the dorm.

“Hey! Gunther!” Montgomery said as I entered the main room. “Want to play a few hands of poker with us?”

“I, ah, don’t know the rules,” I admitted.

“That’s fine, we’ll teach you. We’re not betting anything.”

“Yet!” Milo said. He was one of four boys around a table, looking eager as another that I wasn’t as familiar with shuffled a deck. “Join us, come on.”

“Sure,” I said as I put on an easy smile and joined them.

I could probably use a little break anyway. And an alibi. Those were always terribly useful. We sat around a study table, doing anything but, and Montgomery taught me the rules of poker, then Milo retaught them to me when Montgomery got them all wrong.

Montgomery still ended up taking the figurative pot by the time dinner rolled around. The kid was shrewd that way.

It was fun, and I found myself chuckling along to plenty of immature jokes that nonetheless felt funnier than they should have with this company.

Dinner came around, and then the end of the day.

The next day would have its own challenges, but for now, things were going alright.

***

Chapter Nineteen -

The first class the next morning was maths, a class that I was curious about, but also mostly ambivalent for.

Learning how to do maths better wasn’t going to save me, I didn’t think, so there was only so much interest I could give to the class. And in any case, I figured I was leagues ahead of the other students in my grade.

On arriving in the room, we all found a worksheet turned upside down on the tables with a name written on the back.

I found mine and sat behind it, then listened as the teacher explained that he first needed to assess where we were.

We grabbed a pen, turned the sheets over a moment after the bell rang, then got to work. The first dozen questions were about simple single-digit addition and subtraction, then some basic multiplication and division.

I barely read the questions before answering. I didn’t need to think  to know that nine divided into thirds was three.

As I moved further along on the page, the questions grew more complex. Double-digits, then triple, then larger multiplications and divisions that required that I actually think and break things down.

The second page of the worksheet introduced  statistics questions next to very basic ‘find X’ algebra. The third page dipped into geometry, and the fourth page started to combine all of the above.

I was still halfway through and dreading the fifth when the professor called an end to it all and fetched the papers from us. Then he started an hour-long lecture on the importance of maths in a modern, civilised society.

I think the only reason I didn’t fall asleep was because he must have had a skill to keep our attention rooted in place.

Apparently the next class would be divided into thirds, splitting students up based on their results on the worksheets.

That was... actually an interesting way of doing things, and logical as well. Some of the students here had clearly only had a very, very basic education before arriving at the academy, and they’d need help working through the basics. Others, like myself, would be held back if we spent the first couple of months learning how to subtract four from five.

The next class we had was geography once more, and unlike the first class which at least kept up a decent level of energy throughout, this one was more about book work. I read a long text about some neighbouring nation then had to fill out a sheet with long form questions.

It was, obviously, chock full of propaganda and felt like a complete waste of time, but I was probably still picking up a few factoids as I went.

It would be good to have a baseline--even a very biased one--for what places beyond City Nineteen were like if I ever decided to leave. Or if I ever had to go on the run.

Lunch came and went, and I used the bit of spare time I had to gather up some leftovers and bring them back to my dorm room. Sir Nibbles was mostly appeased by the offering, but I promised him that I’d find time to get him out of the room.

He, of course, reminded me that I’d need to let him out sooner or later by leaving me a steaming gift right by the doorway.

Little bastard knew exactly what he was doing too, and seemed to enjoy watching me clean up after him.

After lunch, I had two elective classes to look forward to. Introduction to Clockwork and Gears, then Music. It would be an opportunity to meet two of my targets, the first of which was Silas Lockhart.

Silas was a Troll a year ahead of me, but the Introduction class was split into thirds, and the first of those included year one and two students together.

I was one of three Dragons heading to the class in my year. Myself, Cedric Fairweather, and Andrew from my botany class. There were two older students as well, but they seemed resistant to any attempts to try and befriend them.

It seemed like the Academy’s method of segregating different grades from  each other meant that there was a certain level of... well, it wasn’t animosity, exactly, but certainly a level of ambivalence between students even one grade apart.

I was hoping that wouldn’t make things with Silas  more complicated.

The Lockhart family were responsible for a lot of inventions that had been implemented throughout City Nineteen. My brief didn’t explicitly say why  the Union wanted the head of the family dead, but it did highlight some of their accomplishments.

They were new  rich, like most of the Troll families. Silas’ grandfather had invented a new handloom which his son had improved upon. Then they used their wealth to invent other machines. Sewing machines powered by simple hand-cranks, then goblin-powered mills that could run simple engines that allowed for the use of all sorts of automation.

Nearly every factory in the city had at least one machine invented or created by the Lockhart family, and that prestige and wealth meant that they were going to stay well-off for a long time.

The class was on the top floor of the main academy building, not too far from the main entrance, actually, and immediately, I could tell that I was going to be out of my depth with this one.

The room had several small machines. Steam engines, I suspected. The walls were covered in diagrams and blueprints, and there were dozens of wooden cubicles against the walls, filled with small boxes of brass and copper parts.

The end of the classroom was an entire workshop and what looked like a small indoor forge for working brass and copper.

Most unbearable of all, however, was the ticking. One wall was covered in clocks. Small, delicate ones, and larger clocks with hanging pendulums. They were all clicking slightly off-beat from each other, and I suspected that it would drive me mad if nothing distracted me from the noise.

“Alright, firsties,” an older student said. He looked immensely bored as he pulled out a stack of small manuals and dropped them onto a desk. “Take one each.”

I grabbed one of the manuals and flipped it open. It was one part instructions on how to build  little machines, and one part an explanation on how those machines worked.

“Firsties, you can pick any machine that’s labelled for firsties. Second year students, you know the drill already. If you have any questions, can’t reach one of the boxes, or need something special, ask me. But you shouldn’t need any of that, because all the firstie stuff is in the first few drawers.” He gestured to the wall with all the cubbies.

Fortunately, Fairweather raised his hand before I could, so he got the older student’s ire. “Um, what are we doing, exactly?”

“Pick a project from the book. Find the stuff you need for it, and only  that stuff. Then make it. Don’t mess up. Don’t drop things. And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t make a mess.” The older student stomped off to the far end of the room without anything more to add.

I looked around, then flipped the manual open again. Some projects were clearly labelled with a ONE  in the top corner, so those were for us. Those were relatively simple. A small arm with a scoop on the end, a fan powered by a rubber band, a small toy-car like thing also powered by rubber bands.

These were basically little kids projects, but all made of brass and copper parts and held together by small watch-screws and bolts.

It would almost be like playing, but I bet that it would also be enough to unlock some important skills for someone trying to learn how to build more complex engineering-based stuff.

Which meant that as I failed to get those skills, I’d be quick to fall behind. Joy.

I looked over to the second year students and noticed them studying the manual but deeper in, so I turned to those deeper pages and was actually impressed. Small mechanical animals with motions powered by spring screws, very basic music boxes, gravity-fed clocks, even detailed instructions on how to build a very basic typewriter.

And that was just in the second year.

Did further years branch out towards making their own inventions and making the parts themselves? That seemed to be what the rest of the workshop was for.

I turned back to the start and looked at the very first and probably simplest project in the book. A small, single-action rubber-band gun. The manual at least had a full page explanation of the physics behind it.

I mostly just wanted to see if I could hit someone from across the room with it.

***

Chapter Twenty -

This class, I realized rather quickly, was going to suck.

I had no gift or intuition when it came to making stuff like this. There was a reason I’d never delved into the more engineering-based STEM subjects in my last life. I could get  the basics, of course, but only on an intellectual level. When it came time to thinking  of things in three dimensions, I was pants.

My first creation was a small rubber band-firing gun. It was one of the first projects in the manual and basically only required a few screws, a sort of trigger mechanism made from a bent piece of wire using a nail as a fulcrum, and a small wooden peg to serve as the centrepiece of the mechanism. The hardest part was sawing a few notches and screwing the screw into place at the right angle.

Then I loaded the gun, aimed at the far end of the room where no one was, and fired.

The rubber band did nothing, so I fiddled with it and tried again.

This time, I aimed down to the far end of the room once more, squeezed one eye shut, then pulled on the trigger.

The rubber band flicked backwards and smacked me in the face with a snap.

I heard some giggling from nearby and turned a gimlet eye on some of the other first-year boys. They’d paused in their own projects (though some of them were hardly working) to see me whack myself in the face.

My glare only made them laugh harder, and I supposed that it was kind of amusing.

Then my target stood up and came over. “Can I see?” Silas asked.

“Here,” I said.

He took the rubber-band gun and looked it over. “Yeah, it’s backwards,” he said. “See, the notches is  supposed to be on this  end, so that when the trigger is pulled it fires it that way. You did it wrong.”

“Damn,” I muttered as I took it back. I compared what I had to the manual, and it did look wrong. “Can I fix this?” I asked.

“Might as well start over,” he said. “But as long as you learned something it’s not a bad experiment. At least, that’s what my dad always says. Do you need help?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” I admitted.

“Yeah, I saw you trying to get the screw into place earlier. You’re really bad with it.”

I wanted to protest, but he was both correct, and I was trying to befriend him, so I decided to keep my indignation to myself and help him help me by fetching new materials from the crates on the far end of the room.

Slias was leagues beyond me, and for a moment I felt like an old person who needed a kid to show them how to work a computer as he basically built a new rubber-band gun right in front of me in a tenth of the time it took me to make one.

“Here you go,” he said, handing me the completed gun, rubber already loaded.

I aimed at the far wall and fired again, and the elastic flicked across the room and against the wall with a faint snap. “It works,” I said.

“Yeah. It’s a really easy project,” he said.

“You’re better at this than I am,” I said. “Did you finish your own?”

He nodded. “I did three of them. I’m going to ask if I can do second year projects next class. Those look like they take a while, at least.”

“You’ve got to have a few skills then, or did you just practice a lot?”

Silas smiled. “Yeah! My dad helped me get rid of my first class a year ago, and now I have the Apprentice Inventor class. It’s really good for getting skills that let me make stuff.”

“Oh, what were you before that?” I asked.

“Scion of Wealth,” he said with a shrug. “It’s what everyone gets.”

I had no idea what that class did, but I imagined that it probably gave the kids who got it one heck of an early boost.

Class ended soon after that, and I was disappointed when we had to hand in what we’d made. It seemed like [Part Recovery] or [Disassembly] were skills that older students practised with the things the younger students made, so in light of that, it made sense. But I still wanted to keep the elastic gun. I could totally weaponize it, and I definitely needed a ranged option in my arsenal that didn’t just involve me throwing something.

I was about to leave the class when I heard Silas talking to one of the other students. “Yeah! My dad’s supposed to be coming here today. I’m gonna wait for him here. He said he wanted to see if the course was worth taking.”

I felt a shiver run down my spine.

Silas’ father was coming here, now?  That meant that one of my targets would be here, in the Academy, and not too far from me. Could I do something about that?

It wasn’t too likely. I might be able to sneak some poisonous mushrooms into a carriage or something, but it would be visible and leave traces. Would he be accompanied by someone from the school? That seemed like a reasonable precaution, but then again, this wasn’t a day and age where people were as worried about that kind of thing.

I moved to the end of the corridor, then checked what I had at my disposal.

It wasn’t much. I had a few skills that I could use to maybe kill someone, but not with any ease, and not without leaving some obvious traces. The best bet I had was some [Dead Man’s Cough] powder that I had in a little satchel in my pocket, but how would I even get that to work?

Still... maybe this would let me get some eyes on Mister Lockhart. That might tell me something about him which might come in handy later, and maybe I could insinuate that I was Silas’ friend, opening up doors later.

Mind made up, I moved to the stairwell nearest to the centre of the school, then looked out a window overlooking the Academy’s entrance. There was a carriage coming into the school, almost too close for me to make out completely with the other buildings in the way, but I did notice the stylized “L” on its side, the bottom half drawn like a gear.

That had to be the Lockhart symbol.

My palms felt  sweaty as I waited by the stairs. Then I saw someone coming up the steps. A middle-aged gentleman, with a tophat and cane in his offhand, the same stylized “L” mark on the lapel of a very finely tailored coat.

No one was with him.

I stepped down the stairs, meeting him halfway while fiddling with my satchel with my other hand. “Mister Lockhart?” I asked.

He blinked, only now paying me any attention. “Yes?” he asked.

I brought my hand up, palm filled with dusty spores, and with the added height of being a few steps above him bringing me level to his face, I blew against the dust, spraying it ahead.

Then I ran.

I heard him curse me as an insolent child before he started to hack and cough.

My heart was racing at a million miles an hour as I made it to the ground floor, then started coughing myself. I’d gotten some of the dust in my lungs too? I should have found a way to cover my mouth.

Still, I had a few skills to endure poisons, especially those of my own making. [Poison Blooded], [Basic Poison Resistance], [Poison Handling Expertise], they’d all stack to keep this at the level of a low irritant.

My heart was still thundering away in my chest as I paused in a washroom on the ground floor and washed my hands clean of any evidence. I dusted off my uniform as best I could as well. I’d need to trash this one, maybe steal another first-year’s uniform from the laundry room while I was at it. I didn’t know what kind of skills a detective might have to trace someone in this world, but I didn’t want to risk it.

Then, while my mind was still running through all the trouble I’d just started for myself, the door to the washroom opened and an unfortunate and unwelcome sight greeted me.

“Look what we’ve found,” Harbin said with a mean grin. “Some little dragon-rat, all on its own.”

A couple of his pals spread out behind him, blocking off the exit.

“What do you want, Harbin?” I asked. Then I coughed again, bending over almost double as my lungs burned.

“To put you in your place,” he said.

I was weighing my options when his fist rocketed out and crashed into my nose.

***

Chapter Twenty-One

I woke up in a great deal of pain in an unfamiliar room, and my first thought was to check my mana and prepare to launch as many [Blight] spells as I could.

Opening my eyes, I took in a ceiling painted blue by the light of a setting sun, then the smell hit me. Alcohol, of the medical sort, and antiseptics. That faint stench of vomit that lingered long after someone had lost their lunch, and the sweet tang of blood.

A hospital?

Groaning, I turned my head, then felt everything start to swim. The world spun, and even when I stopped moving my head, it took a moment for everything to resettle.

Still, my foggy vision let me see across a room where several beds waited. A large window at the far end was responsible for most of the light, though there was a small lamp by the doorway humming away and filling that corner of the room with an orange glow.

Definitely some sort of hospital, then. Maybe a nurse’s room? Did the academy have one?

I blinked a bit, not really daring to move my head any more. The architecture was certainly what I’d expect of the academy. So, I’d landed myself in the nurses’ office. Great.

With a tiny bit of focus, I pulled up my stat’s sheet, just the uppermost part of it.

Name: N/A

Alias: Ginger, Gunther Killua

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 10 Years

Mana: 83/94

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Secondary Class: [Angel of Death {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

- Concussed {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

That wasn’t good. The [Concussed] affliction was new, and I didn’t care much for it. I closed my eyes and tried to think.

There was the assassination, possibly successful, of Lockhart. Then... That little shit! Harbin and a couple of his little pals. If you’d asked me that morning if I was willing to kill someone as young as I was, I would have definitely said no, but at the moment, I was reconsidering it.

I slammed a fist into the bed, then hissed as the motion both sent my head reeling into another bout of dizziness, and made my ribs and arms and neck hurt.

He’d really worked me over. I took a deep breath through my mouth, because my nose was one large, humming mass of strange tingling pain at the moment, and I tried to calm down my racing heart.

I’d focus on taking care of him later, once my head was on straight.

First, take stock. How was I otherwise?

My shirt was off, and I had a bandage across my chest. Pants were still on. Shoes were gone. So, a decent chance that the gig wasn’t up on that end. Good. I needed to get to my mushrooms. It would take a day or two, but I could grow a decently large crop of healing mushrooms. That’d get me back on my feet.

And I could grow something special for Harbin.

My thoughts halted as I heard someone walk over, and I blinked as they just sort of appeared hovering over me. Was my head that  out of whack?

“Alright, sit up,” they said. A woman, mid to late twenties, in a white nurse’s outfit, but with a comfy looking cardigan tossed over it.

“What?” I asked, careful to articulate it carefully.

She gave me a look , then grabbed me under the armpits and helped me sit up onto the end of the bed. It sent my head spinning, and my ribs screamed, but I clamped my teeth together and kept it in.

Then the doctor, nurse, whatever, touched me in the middle of the chest and I felt a spear of warmth slam into me, and just like that, the pain burned away. “Oh,” I said.

“Like that, did you?” she asked, a little wry.

“Loved it,” I said.

“Well, don’t get used to it, it costs more mana to cast than you’d imagine.” She did something off to the side, and the top end of the bed lurched upwards. Again, my head spun and I found myself fighting against nausea.

Thankfully, I’d poisoned myself often enough that that kind of thing was barely a nuisance at this point.

“Tough little guy,” she said.

“Not tough enough,” I muttered. “What’s happening now?”

She scoffed. “Now we’ll test your tastebuds.” She left, then returned with a small metal tray with a few small bottles on it. Potions?

“These are potions,” she said, which very neatly  answered my question. “They’ll help you heal and feel better.”

“Why not give them to me before?” I asked. “While I was out?”

“Because you need to drink them. The concussion medication needs to be given while you’re awake and cognizant, and it needs to be administered first. Any more questions?”

“Millions,” I said, which seemed to amuse her, but she put on a grumpy expression anyway.

“Let’s see how many you have after you’ve tasted this,” she said as she uncorked one of the bottles. Immediately, I was hit with a stench that reminded me of fermented fish. I thought I had a pretty good hang of my nausea, but it was really being tested right then. “Drink. Don’t fuss with me.”

She pushed the bottle to my lips, and I reluctantly drank.

It tasted worse than it smelled, and I was sure my gut would recoil, but it slowly leaked down the back of my throat, burning the entire time and sending dizzying waves up and into my head.

“Urgh,” I gurgled once it was done.

The nurse pushed a cup into my hand. “Water,” she said.

I drank, and it didn’t help clear the taste away at all, but the effort was appreciated.

Still, I slowly felt the world warp and twist for a moment, the dizziness hitting tenfold as strong before it all suddenly faded away over the course of about five, long, agonising minutes.

The nurse stood by my side the entire time, a hand, I noticed, touching my stomach without letting go. There was a faint tingle at her touch. Diagnostic magic? That would make sense for a medical practitioner, and it worried me on a whole new level.

“Better?” she asked at least.

“I think so,” I said as I looked around. My focus was clearer, and my head didn’t swim. On a whim, I checked my status.

Name: N/A

Alias: Ginger, Gunther Killua

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 10 Years

Mana: 83/94

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Secondary Class: [Angel of Death {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

No longer concussed. Nice.

“Now, drink these two,” she said. “Don’t worry, the taste isn’t as bad. Not great, but nothing as awful as that.”

“What do they do?” I asked.

“The first will help you heal. Bones mostly, and some flesh and muscle mending. It’ll make you exceptionally tired. The second will help your lungs.”

“My... oh,” I said.

“You should have come here the moment you got the affliction. It’s a serious issue, and there’s only so much a potion can do to heal it. Potions restore, they don’t undo.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“There’s no potion for regrowing limbs,” she said. “Or fixing old scars. You can clear out something like Black Lung, god knows it happens often enough here, but if you let the affliction run for a month or more the damage will be permanent.”

“Oh,” I said. “What’s that like?” I asked.

“Bad. Shortness of breath, a few other issues besides. You seem a little more advanced than I’d like, but I’m not a doctor, so...” She pushed one of the potions at me. “Drink.”

I drank, and this time it only tasted like muddy chalk. Almost right away, I was hit with a sense of fuzzy, almost cold... not pain, but something similar. It raced up and down my body and had me shivering. “Cold,” I said.

“I’ll get you some blankets after this.”

“Will I be staying here?” I asked.

“Overnight. Your head of house, Mister Drake, will want to talk to you in the morning, but... something came up. In any case, drink this one, then I’ll escort you to the washroom. Then we need to see about getting some food into you. Healing is hungry work.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Truly, thank you.”

She gave me a slightly strange look, then nodded and moved to take the empty bottles away from me. “No need to thank me. I wouldn’t have a job if you boys didn’t get into so much trouble.”

“Does this happen often, then?” I asked.

“Often enough to keep me gainfully employed. Though this is the first year I’ve seen someone get such a beating so soon. Usually scrapes end with a bruise or two, nothing quite this... bad. You really made some great friends out there.”

“Yeah, friends,” I agreed. Soon I’d be spreading some real friendship around.

***

Chapter Twenty-Two

The nurse checked up on me early the next morning. That mostly involved her poking at my chest and head while staring with glazed-over eyes at me. It was, honestly, not the best way to wake up.

Strangely enough--or perhaps not so strangely--I felt fantastic. It was like I’d slept for an entire day instead of just a normal night’s rest. I took in a breath, and felt it fill my lungs far more than before, and that familiar tingle that made me want to cough whenever I breathed too much was missing.

Had I been hypoxic this entire time? I doubted it, but there had to be some long-term effects to not taking in enough air for a long period of time.

In any case, once the nurse gave me her seal of approval, I slipped out of the bed and found my clothes folded on a small metal table on rollers nearby. It had been freshly cleaned and laundered.

“Here, you can get dressed, then head back out to your dorm to pick up what you need for your morning classes,” the nurse said.

“I don’t get to skip a day’s lessons?” I asked.

She sniffed. “You wish,” she said. “But no. You’re no longer ill. In fact, I daresay you’re in better health now than you were before your run in with that friend  of yours. No excuses to miss out on classes.”

I glanced at the wall-clock. It was still an hour before classes started, about the time when everyone started to get up and get out of the dorms. If I ran, I’d be arriving just as the last of my year were leaving. “Alright, thank you,” I said.

“Wait,” she said, and I paused. Was she going to give me something to take? Maybe some medication to take twice a day for a week or whatever? I waited by the doorway while the nurse slipped into a little office off to the side. I noticed, idly, that there was a room further in with a small bed and dresser. Was this where she stayed? Did she have to stay here overnight often? I’d been the only student here today, but I could imagine that happening more often.

The nurse wrote something on her desk, then she paused and added a few more lines on a separate piece of paper before folding it up and returning to me.

“Here you go,” she said. “A note explaining your tardiness  this morning. Not a note excusing you from classes altogether. I will hear it if you try to exploit it.”

“I won’t,” I promised easily as I took the notes. I checked the second, folded one, and read it rapidly.

Mister Killua has my permission to visit the nursing station at this moment in time for a check up related to a prior, minor, medical condition. Due discretion is appreciated.

-Nurse Kaeres

Her cursive was a quick, scribbly mess, like a doctor’s note. But I could read it nonetheless. “What’s this?” I asked.

The nurse eyed me for a moment more. “The Academy is the best education anyone can receive. Many parents know that, and want it for their kids, regardless of any other... details. But one day puberty will hit you, Mister  Killua. When that happens, give me a visit.”

I felt the blood draining from my face, but I swallowed and recomposed myself. “Oh. Thank you,” I said. “Miss... Nurse Kaeres?”

“Beatrice,” she said. “Now, get. I don’t want to see you for a while, understood ?”

“Yes ma’am,” I said before ducking out of the room.

I moved through empty halls in a bit of a hurry, clutching onto the folded note with a bit more strength than was probably due. But... but Beatrice didn’t seem ready to toss me out. I was safe, for now.

But my long-term cover was blown.

The smart thing would be to find a way to keep the secret, and a secret was best kept when only one person knew it. At the same time, Beatrice had been kind.  The note itself was more kindness  than I could reasonably expect, and it sounded like I might not have been the only one here.

Well, an issue for later. I’d think about it for a bit, but I was leaning towards simply trusting her for now.

I passed by a large group of Dragons on the way to the cafeteria. A few of them glanced my way, but none of them said anything as I slipped by.

Finally, I made it to the first-year dorms and found the shared common room almost entirely empty. Montgomery was there, though, and he perked up on seeing me. “Gunther!” he said. “You’re back? What happened?”

“Uh,” I said. What was my story going to be here? I settled on the truth, since it was easiest. “You know that Harbin guy, in the Trolls?”

He nodded.

“The ass cornered me in one of the bathrooms. Next thing I knew I woke up in the nurses’ office with a concussion.”

His eyes widened to almost comical sizes. “What?” he asked in a conspiratorial hiss. “When you didn’t come back the rumours said you were fingered as part of the murder investigation!”

“ The what  investigation?” I asked.

He reached over, grabbed me by the wrist, and pulled me towards my room. “The murder! One of the Troll kids was visited by his dad, and he died , right here on campus.”

“Holy,” I said. In my mind, I was swearing up a storm. They thought it was a murder, not some freak accident. That meant there would be a lot more heat.

“The coppers were here and everything, and we saw them leave with a hearse.”

“Was it actually a murder?” I asked.

He shrugged. “That’s what some of the boys are saying. Mister Drake called it an ‘unfortunate accident which will not mar the school’s sterling reputation’ but I think the idea that it was a murder is much better.”

I let out a breath. “Right. I’d rather it be an accident. Can you imagine, if it was  a murder that’d mean that a member of the staff was a killer.”

Montgomery’s eyes widened a bit, but then he nodded as if it made perfect sense. “Anyway, did you spend the whole night with the nurse?”

“Yeah. Well, I spent it sleeping off some potions, I guess. I feel fine though,” I said. “I should get ready for... what do we have this morning?”

“Double Literature,” he said with a grimace.

“Alright, yeah, I should get ready for that.” I moved towards my door, but Montgomery was still there, standing partially in my way. “Um?” I asked, with a vague gesture towards the room.

He looked away from me, then licked his lips. “So, when you didn’t come back yesterday. I went to see if you were sleeping in your room or something,” he said. “And...” Montgomery looked around the common room, but it was mostly empty by now. “And you have a cat?”

I felt my heart sink. “What do you mean?” I asked.

Montgomery gave me a piercing, but excited, look. “Come on, Gunther, there’s fur all over, and I swear I saw glowing eyes under your bed. I put some food on the floor, just a chunk of bread, then when I came back there weren’t even crumbs left. A mouse wouldn’t have eaten the whole thing. It’s okay! I won’t tell anyone! Dragons stick together, right?”

I sighed, then it was my turn to grab him by the arm. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll introduce you to Sir Nibbles. But in exchange, you need to promise to keep him secret, and... and help me with Harbin.”

“Yeah, of course. We’ll beat him right up next time, won’t we? We can get a few of the older years to help.”

That was probably a better idea than my initial plan, which involved sneaking into the Troll’s first year dorms and ruining Harbin’s life in horrific ways.

I opened the door and tugged Montgomery in behind me. “Sir Eyenibbler the Terrible doesn’t just like anyone, so I’d be careful, and polite, and unless you don’t want to keep both eyes in your skull, don’t tug on his tail,” I said.

“I’m sorry, the cat’s name is what? ” he asked.

But it was too late, I’d squatted down and ‘tsk tsk’ed already.

Sir Nibbles slipped out from under the bed with a quick bounce, sniffed the air, then in a split second he was across the room and circling around me to come and rest on my shoulder, body stretched way out to sniff at Montgomery.

“Holy! That’s a Panbadger ,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said as I stood up, a hand on Sir Nibble’s back to keep him steady.

“How did you convince your parents to get you one? Did you bond with it? They’re supposed to be super dangerous! And, uh, hi,” the last was said in a notably higher pitch as the panbadger grinned and pressed a paw against his chest, claws flexing.

“Sir Nibbles, this is my friend Montgomery. No eating him. Montgomery, this is Sir Eyenibbler the Terrible. Do remember to bring him snacks next time. And if he bites you and it doesn’t bleed, that just means he likes you.”

***

Chapter Twenty-Three

I tried to get Montgomery to spill more information about the murder on campus, but he actually knew very little. Only a few of the first years had actually seen  anything, and that was mostly the body being carried off.

A hearse really had come to the school, along with a couple of doctors from a nearby clinic to properly declare Mister Lockhart dead.

There was also a rumour that the janitors had to clean out the stairwell of bits of brain. I suspected that was hugely exaggerated, but it did suggest that he’d fallen down the stairs. That would be a neat explanation for why and how he died.

In any case, it didn’t look like I was a suspect, so maybe I’d gotten away with it. Plus, I had a fantastic alibi, courtesy of Harbin.

I couldn’t be going around murdering people if I was knocked out in the nurse's office, could I?

Well, that’d be my excuse if questions were ever asked.

Montgomery finished scratching Sir Nibbles under the chin, then we put the panbadger  on my bed. “We should head out, we might still have time to grab a bite.”

“Oh, dang,” Montgomery said. “And we have double Literature this morning, I wouldn’t want to do that with an empty stomach.”

We jogged over to the cafeteria, arriving just as most of the others were heading out. The bell rang as we got to the counter and the lunch lady was closing up, but she rolled her eyes and allowed us to take a mini loaf each.

Montgomery complained that it wasn’t enough food for a proper breakfast, but it was more than I’d had some days, so I wasn’t going to complain. On the way out, I noticed a few Trolls looking my way. Harbin was in the centre of the pack, eyes narrowed as he looked at me.

I flashed him the finger, and his eyes went wide. A few of his buddies gasped too. The Trolls might have liked playing up the ‘uncouth ruffians’ look, but in reality, they were raised in the same kind of prim and uptight homes as any Dragon.

I’d have to figure out an appropriate revenge later. I wasn’t going to kill  him. He was just a little shit that didn’t know his place. A bully. Not a monster.

A problem for later, basically, but I still vividly remembered the pain before I got knocked out. That had to be answered.

Literature class was on the second floor of the main building, but the same staircase that Lockhart had died in, actually. I didn’t see any signs of anything suspicious, though it did smell a little bit like bleach.

The class was already full by the time we arrived. I had to take a seat near the front because that was all that was left, and Montgomery ended up near the rear of the class.

I was sitting there, chewing on my bread, when the teacher came in.

He was a very short man, only a few inches taller than myself, but dressed to the nines, with a well-tailored suit beneath his teacher’s robes which he wore open at the front. The man came to stand at the front of the class on a small elevated section that let him see across the room. Then his eyes locked on me. “Are you eating  in my class?” he snapped.

I swallowed, put the bread down carefully, then reached into my pocket.

“I asked you a question, young man,” he said. “Are you eating in my class?” The disbelief was evident in his voice and his gaze, stern and angry, was locked onto me.

I finally found the nurse’s notes, but I had to see which one I was meant to give him, so I took my time unfolding them while he continued.

“This is not a dining room, young man. This is a place of learning, a sacred place of knowledge to nourish the mind. Not your gluttonous stomach. We are here to learn the beautiful art of communication. Not munch on stale bread. Do you have nothing to say for yourself?”

I nodded, then stood and casually walked over to him. “I have a note,” I said as I extended the note to him.

Maybe if I was really a twelve year old boy like the rest of these firsties, I would have been cowed, but as an adult... well, I’d learned not to be intimidated by someone like a teacher.

The man snatched the note from my hand and read it over. “This hardly gives you permission to eat in my class,” he said.

“But it does give me permission to be late,” I said. “Would you rather I miss the first ten minutes of class while I eat outside? That’s an option too.”

“I don’t appreciate the backtalk,” he said.

“I thought this was a class where we would learn how to communicate,” I said quickly, making sure to slip a word in before he could continue. “That’s what I’m doing.” The ‘you idiot’ at the end was silent.

“Get back to your seat, Mister Killua,” he said, the note crumpling up into a ball in his fist. I returned to my seat, took my bread, and stuffed it into my mouth. I was aware of a lot of eyes on me.

I just hoped that Montgomery at the back was clever enough to stash his snack.

The teacher, Emanuel Lingua, continued with the class, though not without sparing me a few looks every so often. It seemed as if I hadn’t made a friend today.

The first half of the double lesson involved  reading from a text, then the class has a discussion-slash-debate on the themes and motivations contained within the text itself, essentially dissecting it.

The teacher wouldn’t stop picking me to answer his harder questions. But really, this was easy. It had been some time since I’d had to do this kind of work, but my tutor, Mister Digglestein had done something similar with me already, and I was able to make things up like the best of them.

“I disagree,” I said to the teacher after he highlighted part of the text and suggested that it could mean something about the author’s motivations.

Mister Lingua’s eyebrows rose. “Explain, then,” he said.

So I jumped into a small lecture about the same thematic element, but approaching it from a different angle.

The trick to this kind of meaningless drivel was that it was less about finding the ‘right’ answer, the way you would in any scientifically-minded class, and more about formulating an opinion and then defending it. The lesson here wasn’t actually about finding themes and such, it was about communicating what you saw.

Or at least, that’s what I thought it was about. So the best way to score well here was to be slightly antagonistic.

The teacher nodded at the end of my assessment, then casually flicked his hand to the side, dismissing me. “You are, of course, entirely wrong,” he said, but there was a quirk to his lips.

Class ended surprisingly quickly, and I gathered up my things and left in a hurry. I didn’t want to miss lunch.

My life was pretty luxurious these days, if I had grown this used to three solid meals a day.

“That was fantastic,” Montgomery said. “I thought the teacher would rip your head off.”

“You need to learn how to handle teachers,” I said. “They’re just people with an ounce of power, but only within these walls. Besides, I like literature. Debate and discussions like these make for good skills.”

“Maybe, but that class was boring,” he said.

I shrugged. I’d enjoyed it. In fact, I’d enjoyed most of the classes so far. It felt  like I was learning, even if I was maybe a bit ahead in most respects. Or maybe it was just that I’d missed the atmosphere of a school. Academics had always been a great love of mine.

Still, I might be pulled out at any moment.

We got to the cafeteria for lunch, and after grabbing a tray and sitting down to eat, I idly noted a secretary pushing a cart through the rows of seats and handing out letters. Just normal business that I’d noticed before. The students had to have some way of communicating back home, and letter writing was very popular.

I was still surprised when a letter landed in front of me, my name across the front in a quick, scratchy scrawl.

I grabbed it and stuffed it away.

There was only one person that could be from, and that meant I needed to read this, and now.

But maybe I could finish my lunch first. I wasn’t going to skip both breakfast and lunch. There was only so much anyone could ask of me.

***

Chapter Twenty-Four

I wanted to read the letter right away, but I had something of an audience. A few of the boys decided to escort me around, in case the Trolls decided to kick my ribs in again.

It was a nice gesture. A show of solidarity that I definitely didn’t deserve, and which caused me more trouble than anything else, but it wasn’t all bad. I got to spend a bit more time with Milo, and I caught up on the local gossip.

As it turned out, the story about Lockhart had changed from a wildly imaginative murder to something a little more plain. He’d been heard choking on something before he tripped down the stairs. Apparently, his flailing didn’t help him catch onto the rails, and he cracked his head on the way down.

I was, at least according to the rumour mill, entirely safe from suspicion.

The rumour mill didn’t tell me what the staff and administration thought , but I had the impression that they would want to bury this story before it ruined the school’s reputation, and in all likelihood they wouldn’t dig into it too much.

Which was fantastic news for me.

Less fantastic, was  the class I had after lunch. Thursday afternoon Music class.

Montgomery had the same class, so we walked to it together. The lessons were held in a small room behind a comfortable theatre  that I hadn’t noticed before. It was a concert hall with maybe room for a hundred or so in the audience, with a small stage and everything. I imagined that the academy might have used it for performances or something, but at the moment, it, and the room behind it, hosted the Music club.

We walked in, and I discovered a strangely muted cacophony.

Several students were practising with various instruments already. Bizarrely enough, those instruments weren’t making enough noise.

“Oh, that’s clever,” Montgomery said as he looked about the room. There was an area at the rear  with several instruments on racks and in cases for students to grab, and the room had some space for a pair of pianos and plenty of other instruments. I noticed a bookshelf crammed over-full with sheet music books to one side as well.

“Firsties?” a student asked as we came in. He was older, maybe in his last year judging by the hint to stubble on his cheek. A Troll, but he was smiling kindly enough while idly tapping a beat on the desk he sat on. “Alright, come here,” he said.

We weren’t the only first-year students, of course. There were three more Dragons and four Trolls. One of them had to be Harper Lovelace, my next target, but I couldn’t tell who it was with a quick glance.

“Alright,” the older student said. “Welcome to Music. It’s an hour and a half of practice. Marks are handed out at the end of the year based on improvement, so as long as you don’t just waste your time, you’ll do fine. Older years sometimes form quartets or little bands. Playing with someone else is a whole other skill than playing on your own. And we appreciate music here. It’s not all about playing an instrument because your mom thinks you should.”

That got a few chuckles from some of the others, but I refrained from laughing just yet.

“Anyway, grab an instrument, or bring your own, and make sure your circle’s active when you play.”

A hand went up, one of the Trolls. “What’s a circle?” he asked.

“Oh,” the senior said. “Right. See that square marking on the ground? Looks like a metal band inlaid onto the floor? That’s a circle. It’s a magic device that dampens sound. You activate it with the little boxes you see there. Just twist the knob. It’ll nab some of your mana, the longer you twist, the longer it’ll go for, the more mana it takes. You’ll get the knack of it soon enough. Tell me if one of them breaks. Questions?”

“Why’s is called a circle if it’s square?” one of the Dragons asked.

He shrugged in reply. “Why’s a C-sharp the same as a D-flat?”

“Um,” the student said. “I don’t know?”

“That’s my answer too,” he said with a grin. “Ask someone who’s into magical devices and they might know. They call it a circle, so that’s what we call them, even if they’re square. Now, the first few classes, just get used to where things are, don’t fight over instruments. It’s first-come-first-serve, but that doesn’t matter so much when a senior needs what you have. But don’t worry, we have a lot of the most common instruments.”

He  nodded, then wandered over to some other seniors who were chatting in one of the circles while one of them casually plucked at a cello.

“What did you play again?” Montgomery asked while the others rushed across the room to grab an instrument.

“Uh... nothing,” I said. “I thought I’d learn here?”

He rubbed at his chin. “Well, I know the piano fairly well, but they all look taken. There’s some violins at the back! I can show you the basics!”

I followed him, picked out a violin from one of the cases pretty much at random, then sat in one of the circles with Montgomery.

The kid was nice. He actually showed me how to hold onto the instrument, and was clearly trying to suppress his wince at the first teeth-grindingly awful note that screamed out of my violin.

“Okay, uh, no, hold the bow like this,” he said while demonstrating. Montgomery played a few simple notes, then jumped into a little ditty, moving slowly so that I could see what he was doing. It sounded nice.

When he was playing.

When I tried, it was claws on chalk.

After half an hour, I’d managed to barely get every-other-note to sound vaguely correct, but then I discovered that I was both tone-deaf, and unable to play to any sort of beat, even one that was heavily slowed down.

Montgomery gave me a wooden smile as class ended. “Well, at least if you’re graded on improvement, uh. Yeah.”

I stuffed the violin away (we’d switched instruments at some point, just to confirm that it wasn’t the violin but the player that was bad) and clasped the case shut. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Maybe by the end of the year I’ll be able to play Mary Had a Little Lamb without making someone’s ears bleed.”

“I don’t know that one,” he said.

I waved it off. “Just a kid’s song I know. Anyway, thanks. Next time you should go practice on your own, you need to improve too, right?” I patted him on the shoulder, then gestured to a washroom near the exit. “I’ll be right back.”

It was interesting, I idly noted, how guys didn’t accompany each other into the washroom the way women did. Just one of those little things that I wasn’t entirely used to, but which I could easily make use of.

I parked myself in a stall and pulled out the letter and unfolded it.

“Hello, Nephew,

I’m glad to hear that you’re achieving so much so quickly at the Academy! Very impressive!

But remember, moderation is key. Don’t push yourself too hard now, you hear me? Taking the opportunity now to make new friends is well and good, but remember that the best friendships are long-term.

Also, remember to keep up your studies and listen to your teachers. A well-rounded student always fares better, and you don’t want to stand out in the eyes of your teachers, not unless you do so in a good light.

It’s too bad you haven’t enrolled in a culinary class. I have a commoner friend, Jimothy, who runs a stall by the markets near the school. Fantastic cook! You should try his pepper-ball skewers one day. Maybe I’ll get you some as a treat this weekend?

As for your recent request, don’t worry, your usual allowance will be saved up so you can spend it when you’re back. Maybe even with a little extra!

Your favourite Uncle

-Grey Killua”

I grinned, made note of that paragraph with the ‘Jimothy’ fellow, and then tore the letter into small pieces. I flushed half of them at random, and stuffed the other half in my pocket to flush out or burn elsewhere.

So, the Union was happy with my work so far, but wanted me to slow down? Well, that was fair. I did jump ahead a bit, and it was possible that they wanted some targets eliminated at certain other times to play into other plans.

I could accommodate them, for now. It was giving me the opportunity to get a nice, well-rounded education.

Not that I’d ever let them pretend that this was to my benefit. As far as the union was concerned, I was spending time undercover in highly dangerous enemy territory, and my pay had better reflect that.

I met up with Montgomery outside the washroom while shaking my hands dry. “So, Maths next, right?”

***

Chapter Twenty-Five

Maths that afternoon was easy, so easy that I found my mind wandering the entire time.

I spent some time thinking about the letter I’d received, but a bigger part of my mind was distracted by a certain Troll.

That little shit Harbin needed to be taught a lesson.

I wasn’t going to kill him, which actually made it so much harder.

I did have a few ideas, though, but they’d require some planning, so the moment Maths class was done, I zipped out, and then begged off spending time with Montgomery. He followed me anyway, but then I told him that I had to help Sir Nibbles with something, secretly, and he nodded along and gave me a conspiratorial wink.

Montgomery was a good kid, but I wasn’t sure how good he’d be at keeping that secret. Still, I didn’t have much of a choice there.

I did get back to the dorms in a hurry and did pick up Sir Nibbles, hiding the panbadger under a coat which he always seemed to enjoy. Either because it was nice and warm, or because it allowed him to bite me with relative ease.

We snuck back out of the dorm, but I noticed Mister Drake in the main corridor, fortunately before he saw me. I straightened my back, pushed my [Unnoticeable] skill to the max, and walked past him as if I was just minding my own business with just a nod in passing. The man barely noticed me. I circled around back, then into the basement.

“Here you go,” I said to Sir Nibbles as I set him down. “Have fun. Don’t shit in the well.”

The panbadger cackled, then took off running through the darkness without a care in the world. I saw him reach the end of the room, then spin around to run back the other way.

Did panbadgers get zoomies?

Well, whatever, he could use the exercise, and this was a good place for it. I moved over to the boiler and balled up the second half of my letter and tossed it in. it caught fire and disappeared soon enough, which let me return to my little mushroom cultivation in the corner.

It was coming along. The air might have been a pinch too dry, which was unfortunate, but it was dark and I could work on raising the humidity in the corner with a bit of effort. I had a few spores for some of my water-gourd mushrooms, that’d absorb some of the water out of the air most of the time, but if I let their mycelium grow into the cistern, then they’d fill by pulling the water out from there, then when they inevitably started to leak, water could be spread out further from the corner with the cistern.

It was far from perfect, but it might increase the air’s humidity by a tiny fraction, and that would help already.

While I was there, I collected some spores from the [Dead Man’s Cough] I had growing, then I started working on something special for my best pal Harbin.

I left the basement an hour or so later, with Sir Nibbles tired out from his running around and sniffing at everything in sight. He’d sleep well tonight, at least, which was nice. He tended to bite me in my sleep if he was bored overnight.

I... wasn’t sure if Panbadgers were nocturnal or not naturally. Maybe they were like cats? He certainly had some cat-like behaviours.

Making a note to check out the Academy’s library later, I dropped him off in our room, then headed out to get something to eat. It was around dinner time, and when I arrived in the cafeteria, plenty of students were already in line while the brusque lady behind the counter set up for the evening.

“Hey, you’re back,” Montgomery said. He stared at me, then reached up to my head and pulled off a bit of cobweb. “Where’d you get this?” he asked.

“Ah, oops,” I said. “I don’t know. Must have brushed past something.”

“The cleaning people here should work harder,” he said with a shake of his head.

I didn’t have much to say about that. We grabbed some food, and Montgomery subtly asked me what kind of stuff Sir Nibbles liked best. “Meats, mostly, but he’ll eat anything, up to and including trash or bugs.”

“That’s kind of gross,” he said. “I can’t imagine having a diet like that is good for his coat. I’ll try to get some extra for him.”

We ate, laughed at a few jokes from the other Dragons, and I listened to the others complaining about mundane things and spreading rumours around. The recent death was yesterday’s news, and the rumour mill had moved on already.

Then we returned to the dorms. We did have a bit of homework from maths class, and I didn’t want to leave that off until much later. I did let Montgomery feed Sir Nibbles, and the boy only came out of it with a few bitemarks to show for his efforts.

Once I was done for the night, I settled in for an early night, and hugged Sir Nibbles close under the blankets while he idly chewed on my fingers without breaking skin.

The next morning came quickly and suddenly, and I rushed to grab a quick shower before anyone else and get dressed. We had maths again, and I expected another couple of hours of tedium and daydreaming.

But that tedium wasn’t entirely wasted. It gave me time to think, which was, on occasion, somewhat precious.

The class right after maths was Introduction to Herbology and Botany. A class that, notably, I had with Harbin and a few of his pals. That would be the ideal time to deploy my little gift, but I had to do it in a way that he wouldn’t notice and that couldn’t be pinned on me, which was quite tricky.

Maths class finished, and I hadn’t found a quick and e asy solution yet, though I had an idea or two.

I said goodbye to Montgomery, then joined Milo in heading to the greenhouses on the east end of campus. We arrived long before the Trolls did, but fortunately, Mister Moss was in one of the greenhouses already and the doors had been left open to let us in.

“Take a seat,” he said with a gesture to a few stools. The greenhouse was too warm and too humid for comfort. The corner we were in was cleared of plants, however, and there was a blackboard on wheels nearby that the professor was writing some notes on.

“What will we be doing today, sir?” I asked.

“Plant anatomy,” he said. “From root to stem. Mostly we’ll be going over terminology in the first half of class, then we’ll be dissecting some plants, breaking them down manually so that you can get a feel for what each plant is made of, ah, you’re all here.” The Trolls had finally arrived, and he gestured them towards some stools. “Sit, please, we might as well start early and finish early. I’m sure you’d appreciate an early lunch.”

The first half of the class was exactly as he said. He drew, with surprising artistry, some plants on the blackboard and named each individual part of them, explaining what their functions were in broad terms.

It was mostly, I suspected, so that we’d all be on the same page, because I was quite certain that everyone here knew was  a leaf was.

Harbin spent the entire class grinning at me, and sometimes making rude gestures when Professor Moss’ back was turned.

The second half of class was a little more hands-on, which seemed par for the course with this teacher. He brought out small planters, one for each of us, and we were told to remove the plant within (simple daffodils) and dissect it. Each part needed to be placed on a page, glued into place and labelled.

The class got to work, and it wasn’t long before I saw my opportunity to act.

Harbin and one of his pals decided to jostle one of the quieter Dragons as they passed by, and they dropped their flower pot.

It crashed apart, little bits of pottery flying everywhere.

“Mister Harbin,” the professor snapped. “Do help Mister Andrew clean that up. I don’t need someone stepping on a piece of pottery and having to visit the nurses’ office.”

The professor’s attention was soon back on a book he was reading, and Harbin was on the ground, grumbling as he picked up pieces of the flower pot.

I pushed my stealth skills and slipped over to Harbin’s project. Then, with two fingers pinching some dust within my jacket, I sprinkled a small dusting of spores onto his project before darting back to my seat.

I had to restrain myself from smiling as Harbin returned to work, especially as a minute or two later, I noticed him picking at his nose.

Ah, the revenge was going to be so beautiful.

***

Chapter Twenty-Six

I was hoping that Harbin would leave me well enough alone. The contact poison, in as small a dose as he’d received, would take some time to act. I was even worried that it wouldn’t do enough to be truly noticeable.

I had never delved too deep into medicine in my previous life, but working with mushrooms and fungi meant researching their interactions with human biology, and that, of course, meant that I had to know something about the biological processes that fungal matter used to harm people.

When it came to poisons, the magic was in the dosage. Too little would do nothing, and too much of anything was lethal.

Harbin had gotten a dusting  on his hands. Hands were notoriously bad at transmitting contact poisons, but I saw him scratching himself and picking his nose, so I was certain he’d gotten some of the spore dust to make contact with bare skin.

Now, was it enough ?

I didn’t want to kill him, so I hadn’t picked a mushroom that was too lethal. [Dead Horse Head] which caused a number of digestive issues when inhaled or eaten or touched. Surprisingly, it wasn’t an irritant.

I’d known first-hand what it could do to your gut. I had to grow my poison immunities somehow, and having the runs in a controlled environment was better than some of my other options.

Harbin wouldn’t have the advantage of a well-levelled [Poison Resistance] skill of any sort.

I was quite smug as I finished up in class and started to head out. The Professor nodded to us, and we were dismissed--as promised--a few minutes before the bell rang.

I was expecting to use the time to find some of the kids I was growing used to hanging out with, maybe I’d even rope Milo into coming along, and I could ply him for information about his dad.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and as I turned, I got a rude shove against the chest that sent me scrambling backwards. We were only a few yards from the greenhouse exit, and already, Harbin was there, waiting for me with that stupid grin on his face. I looked from him to the others. He had his two pals with him, but some of the Dragons had stopped too. I met Milo’s eyes for a moment, but the boy seemed pinned in place by hesitation and uncertainty.

“What do you want, Harbin,” I said.

He grinned. “I thought you would have gone back home after the last time,” he said.

“The last time what?” I asked.

He frowned. “The last time me and the boys pounded you in the washroom.”

I had a few options here. The best, of course, would be to back off, deescalate, and run. Hell, I could run back into the greenhouse. The professor was still there, and Harbin wasn’t between me and the door. I couldn’t expect the teacher to do  anything, but he probably wouldn’t let two students roughhouse in his greenhouse.

Of course, doing the logical thing was clever and smart, and absolutely not what I did.

“Sorry, Harby, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can you repeat that? You said you and your boyfriends here spent time pounding each other in the washroom?”

There was something incredibly amusing about how easy these boys were to rile up. One heavy-handed implication and Harbin’s cheeks were red as beets.

“I kicked your ass,” he said.

“I must not have noticed,” I said.

Part of me regretted fanning the flames. A bigger part of me wanted to see how big I could make the fire.

Harbin stomped towards me, and I danced back a step or two, keeping space between us while also moving in towards the Dragons.

My heart sank a little as all of them moved back as well. We could  have put up a strong front there, but instead they’d chosen to do what was probably the smart thing and backed away from a fight. Even cowardly little Milo didn’t seem to want to get into a scrap.  

So, thinking fast, I looked around me, then noticed a rock sticking out of the grass. A quick dip, and I had it in hand. It wasn’t much, half the size of my fist, including the bit of dirt that came with it, but it was something.

“What are you gonna do with that?” Harbin asked. “Chuck it at me?”

“I was thinking the greenhouse, actually,” I said. “I wonder what the professor’s gonna say after we all tell him you broke his precious greenhouse windows.”

Harbin paused, looked at me, then back at the greenhouse. It wasn’t so far away, and the glass was enticingly smashable.

“He wouldn’t believe you.”

“Doesn’t matter. There’s more of us than there are of you, and I’ll bet my last halfpenny that you have exactly the kind of reputation that a washroom-pounder deserves.”

“Stop calling me that,” he snapped.

I noticed that he was sweating, and I allowed myself to grin. “How about we call it quits then? You don’t call my bluff, and I don’t get you into a heap of trouble?”

Harbin growled, but he cut himself off as his stomach gurgled loud enough that we all heard it.

“Or,” I said instead. “We get into a nice fight. Instead of you and a few of your washroom-pounders attacking me when my back’s turned, we fight like proper, honourable men. Huh? That’ll be a first for you, I’m sure. You strike me as the sort that likes hitting people from behind. Your friends back there will have to watch out, won’t they?”

I was just talking to talk, to fill the air, because something about people made them really reluctant to swing a fist while in the middle of a chat. Well, normal people, at least.

Harbin took another step towards me, and I stood my ground, shifting my grip on the rock so that its pointy end was pointing down.

Harbin was sweating, hard, and his face had gone a bit pale.

“Yo-you’re not worth it,” he gasped before he started to walk off.

“Hey!” I called. “Wait!”

Harbin stopped, only a few steps away. “What?”

I had nothing to say, but I didn’t want him to just leave. Not when I could keep him here and away from a washroom for just a few more precious seconds. “Do you know what classes we have together?” I asked. “Other than this one?”

“What?” he repeated. There was sweat beading on his brow. “Why do you care?”

“Well, I just want to know which washrooms to avoid. Wouldn’t want to walk in on you, you know? You seem to love spending time there with your pals.”

Harbin’s mouth moved like a fish, and for a moment I thought he might be reconsidering that beating. Then his stomach contracted, his eyes went wide, and the boy spun on a heel and took off.

“Whoa,” Milo said as he jumped away from his path.

Harbin’s Troll buddies didn’t wait for long before running after him.

I wondered if he’d make it in time. I rather hoped he didn’t.

“Well done,” Milo said as he came over and smacked me on the back. “I didn’t think you’d actually stand up to him like that. He’s a scary one. Unhinged, even.”

“Yeah, well, I think he--”

“Mister Killua.”

Milo and I both jumped and turned towards the entrance where the professor was standing. “Come here for a moment,” he said.

I glanced at Milo, then jogged into the greenhouse entrance where the professor stepped aside to let me in. Had he been there for long? Had he seen the altercation with Harbin? If so, was he waiting to step in at all?

“You can leave the rock outside,” he said. I glanced at the rock, then flicked it outside a moment before he shut the door. Professor Moss crossed the room with long strides that I had a hard time keeping up with, then he slid into a seat behind his desk. There was one of the projects we had worked on today on his desk. “From what I gathered, you have issues with Mister Harbin.”

I swallowed. “Yes, sir,” I said. “He landed me in the infirmary a day ago. Had to stay overnight. We’re not exactly friends.”

“I see,” he said. “And what did you choose to do about that?”

“Is there anything I can  do about that?” I asked. “It’ll be his word against mine.”

He stared at me, then touched the project with the dissected daffodil on his desk and brought his finger to his mouth. “I don’t recognize the plant this powder comes from,” he said. “But it’s fungal. Some sort of laxative, if I were to guess. And a potent one at that.”

I blinked, then did what seemed smartest to do. Pretended to have no idea what he was talking about.

He, of course, didn’t buy it for a moment.

***

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Professor Moss stared at me for a while, then sighed. “Who gave it to you?” he asked.

“Pardon?” I replied.

He gestured to the project on the table, still sprinkled with a dusting of spores. “The powder, the one you gave to mister Harbin, who I am certain is even now having an unpleasant afternoon. Who gave it to you?”

I wanted to swallow, or work my jaw, but that would have been far too obvious a tell. “Professor Moss,” I hesitated for just a moment before continuing. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The professor snorted. “You have some powder on your hands.”

“That’s plausible,” I said. “And there are many reasons why that could be.”

The professor leaned back, arms crossing. He had a nice tweed jacket, with leather patches over the elbows. It looked well-worn, despite everything, and I suspected that he was one of the most active professors in the school. “I could hold you here for a while, you know. At least until that powder on your fingers starts to act up. Then you’ll regret your cheek about as much as Mister Harbin is regretting life at the moment.”

He stared at me, and I felt almost naked under his gaze.

“But you’re not sweating, you’re not too nervous, and your temperature seems normal. So, either you took something to prevent the same sickness, or... or something else.”

I shifted to the side. “You’re not going to ask why Harbin was hypothetically made to be embarrassed?”

The professor tilted his head to the side. “You’re either trying to distract, or you really do want me to know.” He shook his head. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, Mister Killua. I have a personal preference for Troll students.. They’re usually from families that have less... tradition within them. They grow up clueless, but innocent. Dragons, on the other hand, are taught how to be noble from a young age, and that means that they often remind me more of snakes than any winged reptile.”

I stared at him, wondering where this would go.

“You want to talk hypotheticals then? Alright. Hypothetically, if you tell me how you’re not affected by the poison on your hands, then I’ll hypothetically listen to why you think Harbin deserves what you did. Then I’ll non-hypothetically decide what to do with you.”

That sounded about as fair as I could hope for. The teachers in this school had a little bit too much power, as far as I was concerned. “Alright,” I agreed. “So, hypothetically, I may have a unique poison resistance skill of unknown rarity that allows me to suffer through a poison, but then gain an immunity to it.”

His eyebrows shot up. “That’s rather... horrific,” he said.

I shrugged. “It usually is. Hypothetically. In any case, this powder has, hypothetically, done what it can to me.” I popped a finger into my mouth, then let it out, free of spores. They actually tasted rather bitter. Like how I imagine sawdust tastes like.

“Interesting. So this was definitely premeditated,” he said.

I glared. “Here’s a non-hypothetical for you, Professor Moss. Last time I had class with you, Harbin decided to start pushing his weight around. He harassed the others in the class, and when I decided to stand up to him, that hurt his fragile ego. A day or so later he and some of his pals cornered me in a washroom and beat me into unconsciousness. I woke up in the infirmary.”

The Professor frowned. “So you poisoned him?” he asked.

“I did no such thing,” I said. “But if someone did  poison him, then I’d think that was just rewards for his previous actions. Maybe some embarrassment will knock his ego loose and he won’t be so quick to assault others. I know you saw some of what was happening just outside your class.”

“You were provoking him,” he accused.

“I was stalling for time in the hopes that a responsible adult would appear and do their job.”

Professor Moss snorted. “Some of the teachers here would be furious to hear you speak that way,” he said. At the same time, it felt like he’d calmed down a little. His arms fell by his sides and he shook his head. “You make a decent point. Maybe next time I’ll act a little faster.”

“I’m sure others would appreciate it,” I said.

“Not you?” he asked.

I pretended to consider what to say next.

In reality, I was working some magic. Specifically, I was twisting my magical aura around, shifting it to my far left and right to try and catch the professor’s attention. Nothing, he didn’t notice it at all.

The next test was easy as well. I used [Blight] on one of the daffodils still in a planter right next to him. Just a little bit, on one leaf at random. It wilted and died and Moss didn’t move an inch.

“I think that I’m able to handle myself,” I said. “But I’m not so cocky that I wouldn’t accept a bit of help.”

He nodded, then turned towards the front of the greenhouse. “Let’s call this one... hypothetically solved,” he said with a grin. “And if you ever want to tell me about that powder and where you got it, do let me know.”

“Is it interesting?” I asked. “Hypothetically, I mean.”

The professor shrugged. “You might not know, but it’s fungal, and not from a strain I’m familiar with.”

He started to walk towards the exit, and I pretended to wipe my brow now that he wasn’t looking right at me, like a student who’d just been stressed out.

My [Blight] spell, controlled by my [Aura of Growth] swept across the desk, and I noticed the project’s daffodil darkening a little bit on the edges.

The loose spores, much weaker than a cutting, would fare much worse.

I jogged after the professor. If he tried to grow anything from those spores... well, good luck to him. I didn’t know how much he’d be able to glean from growing one of my combined mushrooms, but whatever he learned might be too much.

The professor opened the greenhouse door for me, but just as I was about to squeak past, he placed a hand on my shoulder. “One more moment,” he said. “Then you can run off to your lunch.”

“Yes, professor?” I asked.

His eyes met mine. “I can appreciate talent when I see it. Plenty of students take my class because, even if the industrialists would love to deny it, we’re all part of nature  in the end, and their industries require it. But some of my students are more green-thumbed than others. I think I’d like to test your competence next  class. See if you might want to learn more than just what’s on the surface.”

I blinked. “I’d like that,” I said.

“It’s contingent on you behaving,” he said. “Which means not  poisoning others. Hypothetically or not.”

“Right, of course,” I said with an innocent grin. “Thanks professor.”

I ran out of there, putting my all into crossing the open space next to the school. It was nice to just... move. It helped with the tension I was feeling. Also, I wanted to get to the lunchroom sooner rather than later, I was starving.

The cafeteria was full and loud and boisterous as I arrived, but I spotted a few friends, some of whom were in line, and I went up to the front to grab a bite, making sure that I was squeezed in between two groups of Dragons as I did so. I didn’t trust the older Dragons, but I trusted the younger Trolls less.

Once my tray was full, I went back to the others and sat down. There was a lot of hushed whispering and mouth-covered chuckling going on. “What happened?” I asked Mortgomery.

“You’ll never believe it!” he said. “You know Harbin? Of course you know the git. Rumour has it he was caught running towards the Troll dorms with soiled pants.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said with a gasp. “Who saw him?”

“Some of the older Trolls, and they’re the ones that started the rumour, so you know it’s true. But I heard that some of the second years saw him too. Plus, he’s not here now, is he? That proves it’s true.”

Milo leaned over, clearly having overheard. His cheeks were flushed and he seemed excited. “I heard it went everywhere! I keep telling the others it’s because you put the fear of Dragons in him!”

I laughed. “I don’t think I’m that scary, but it’s nice to see him get some comeuppance, isn’t it?”

“Yeah!” Milo agreed.

It was easy to forget, sometimes, that as cruel and vindictive as adults could be, children tended to be so much worse.

I grinned, had a filling lunch, then wasted the rest of the afternoon with my new friends, gossipping and trash talking our  favourite bully. It was... nice.

***

Chapter Twenty-Eight

With how the rest of my first week had gone, I was expecting Friday to be especially eventful. But it wasn’t.

I had Geography in the morning, which crawled past, then Introduction to Clockwork and Gears. That class was especially subdued, and I ended up just following instructions from the book as closely as I could while minding my own. I didn’t get a lot done, and I wasn’t sure if I was really learning  anything, but it wasn’t bad.

Lunch came, and the rumours about Harbin had reached critical mass. A few more students confirmed things, and there was a new rumour going around that Harbin had punched another Troll in the jaw, knocking them out cold.

A third year Troll.

It had done wonders to turn his reputation into something entirely different. Now people were talking about the kid in the same tones they’d used for an escaped, feral animal.

He’d apparently gotten detention for the stunt he pulled, but I was worried that the punishment was a small price to pay for the remuneration . Being violent had... maybe not fixed his reputation, but it certainly helped shift the narrative.

I doubted it was done on purpose, but I could still see it backfiring.

In the meantime, however, it wasn’t an issue for me.

Wandsmithing started after lunch, and the class actually had a small segment taught by an older student on how to use a few tools to cut furrows into wooden blocks and how to use press drills. We wouldn’t be allowed to touch them this year at all, but the class still showed us how to use them and how the older students made their wands.

I was looking forward to making my own. I ended up almost late to Language class as I asked Alexander Blackwood all sorts of questions about wands and their magic. The kid was surprisingly knowledgeable and kind. It was easy to start ingratiating myself with him.

Language class itself was a bore. I could have slept through it without really missing anything, but I supposed that it was necessary. Maybe I’d pay the class more attention later, when it all became more relevant.

And so Friday, and my first week at the Eden-Powell Academy for the Arts and Sciences ended. Not with a bang, but with a satisfying yawn.

I couldn’t complain. I’d gotten one target eliminated already, and far, far earlier than anyone could have expected. The education here was top-notch as well. I had complaints, of course, and some of the... traditions here weren’t what I was used to coming from a more advanced world, but it wasn’t all bad.

There was a small party on Friday night. Nothing too big. The older students got us all outside, as part of some obscure and bizarre tradition, we bobbed and danced all the way around the Dragon dorm while carrying a large stuffed head of some tusked animal.

It was only later that I learned that it was an actual Troll’s head, and the song and dance was some tradition to ‘ward off trolls’ from a distant civilisation that I’d never heard of, a sort of tribal dance that the Dragons had decided to copy one day.

More as a way to mock the Trolls than anything else. I doubted there was magic in the tradition.

There might have been magic in the flasks of alcohol I saw the sixth and seventh year students passing between each other whenever Mister Drake’s back was turned.

There was no way he didn’t know about it, not when I could smell  it. But he seemed to turn a blind eye as long as no one got too rowdy.

Some of the other students had gotten some catering prepared, and some had actually baked their own little cupcakes and such. I was worried for a moment that they might be pranked, but I decided that if they were, then it would be one more way to improve my poison resistances , so  I chowed down until I get  a stomach ache, but I suspect that it was more because I’d eaten too many baked goods than because of any poison.

I snuck some back for Sir Nibbles that night, then laid on by bed, staring at the ceiling, somehow unable to sleep despite being desperately tired.

Name: N/A

Alias: Ginger, Gunther Killua

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 10 Years

Mana: 100/100

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Secondary Class: [Angel of Death {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level Three Hundred and Twenty-Five

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Eighty-Six

> [Shaped Aura]

> [Careful Casting]

> [Unrestricted Growth]

> [Sustained Growth]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Seventy-Five

        > [Persistent Death]

        > [Rigour Mortis]

        > [Infection]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level Twenty

        > [Apocalypse Walker]

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Seventy-Five

        > [Druid’s Sense]
        > [Druid’s Ear]

        > [Health Sense]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Sixty-Nine

        > [Super Shroom Zoom]

        > [Mushroom Remaker]

> [Potent]

Angel of Death Class Skills - One Hundred and Twenty-Five

- Cherub of Death {Rare} - Level Twenty-Two

- Guileless Eyes {Uncommon} - Level Thirty-Three

        > [Lingering Look]

- Unnoticeable {Uncommon} - Level Thirty-Seven

        > [Notice Me Not]

- Poison Blooded {Rare} - Level Seventeen

- Angel’s Touch {Rare} - Level Sixteen

General Skills - Level Four Hundred and Fifty-One

- Running {Common} - Level Sixty-Three

> [Surefooted]

> [Sprint]

> [Runner's Breath]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Seventy-One

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

> [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Forty-Five

> [Mana Bleed]

> [Push Through]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Seventy

        > [Too Cute to Kill]

> [Bargain Maker]

> [Misinformer]

-   Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Sixty-Eight

> [Iron Lunged]

         > [Toxicant Sense]

        > [Thick Skinned]

- Academic Mind {Uncommon} - Level Forty-One

        > [Penmanship]

- Cooking {Common} - Level Twenty-Nine

        > [Eye for Sizes]

- Management {Common} - Level Twenty-Four

        > [Stock Knowledge]

- Quick Sleeper {Uncommon} - Level Twenty-One

- Lie Detection {Uncommon} - Level Nineteen

I had three whole skills that had passed the mark where they’d unlock new subskills. That was actually pretty decent progress. My main class, Feronie’s Crusader, had barely budged since I came here, but Angel of Death was improving by leaps and bounds.

It made sense. The school was a social environment, more than anything else. It was giving me lots of experience for social skills.

Anyway, subskills! I should have been paying a bit more attention, but it wasn’t as fun to stare at small, incremental growth when I could wait and reap a larger reward all at once.

[You have unlocked a Sub-Skill!]

[Congratulations! Your [Cherub of Death {Rare}] Skill has unlocked the [Sin Sense] Subskill!]

[Sin Sense]

You are innately aware of how much a person believes you to have sinned according to their own moral values.

That... was one of the strangest subskills I’d ever seen. I’d really have to test it, but if it worked the way I suspected, then it might give me a slight edge in any conversation. If I knew that someone thought I was up to something, then I could act accordingly. That might have been useful earlier in the week.

The moral values part was bizarre, but I supposed that there wasn’t a universal morality to rely on for that kind of thing.

[Congratulations! Your [Academic Mind {Uncommon}] Skill has unlocked the [Taught] Subskill!]

[Taught]

Teaching-type skills used to your benefit are more effective on you.

That was fine. It wasn’t anything too special, but it wasn’t bad either. I wasn’t going to keep Academic Mind for the rest of my life in any case, so I didn’t particularly care if the subskills weren’t great.

The last subskill I’d unlocked was for Quick Sleeper, which while merely {Uncommon} was a favourite skill of mine. At the moment it was mostly letting me get away with six or so hours of sleep instead of a full eight, but if I continued to improve it... well, it would never negate sleep entirely, but it was still more time spent awake.

[Congratulations! Your [Quick Sleeper {Uncommon}] Skill has unlocked the [Light Sleeper] Subskill!]

[Light Sleeper]

You are easily awoken by threats of danger or any attempts to awaken you.

That was the most video-gamey skill I’d seen yet. Was I going to get a prompt telling me that I couldn’t sleep while enemies were nearby next?

I’d take it anyway. The ability to wake up quickly and easily was fantastic.

Now, if only I had the ability to fall asleep as easily, that’d be perfect. I ‘tsk tsked’ until Sir Nibbles grudgingly joined me on the bed, then I hugged the panbadger  close, like a warm, boney  plushie with coarse fur.

Tomorrow would  be another busy day. I had to go check out things outside the Academy. I couldn’t make it all the way back home, to the slums, but I could get messages from home without too much trouble.

That, and the letter I received suggested that I was going to get additional instructions soon. I wasn’t expecting anything good from it, but maybe my pessimism would be wrong for once.

I snorted onto Sir Nibble’s head. I doubted it.

***

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I really wished I could sleep in. Afterall, it was Saturday, and the Academy had a two-day-weekend system going on. Unlike a lot of the factories in the city, which operated a saturday and a sunday shift so that they could keep going seven-days a week while giving workers a day off, the school worked along the same schedule as the government and banks and other institutions.

Basically, we had time off, and that meant that sleeping in was an option.

For the others, at least. With the [Quick Sleep] skill in full effect, I ended up waking up at something approaching six in the morning. That was a half-hour or so more sleep than usual, which did feel nice, but it was hardly the luxuriant lazy morning I was hoping for.

In any case, I was awake, and unless I wanted to lay down and do nothing all morning, then I might as well get up.

Hitting the showers before anyone else had even exited their rooms, I got through my morning ablutions, then returned to my room.

From what I understood, the students were let loose on weekends. Several clubs and minor electives would use the weekend as a time to push projects ahead or get extra practice in, but just as many students left the Academy and returned home.

In fact, a few had left the night before. I supposed there was no harm in leaving on Friday night to sleep in one’s own bed.

I didn’t care for it, though.

Right now, I had the school to myself, and not much of a clue as to what to do with it.

“What do you think?” I asked Sir Nibbles as I rubbed his ears.

The panbadger  laid his head on my lap, eyes half-lidded under the attention. He was enjoying it, at least. I reached over to one of my class books and flipped it open, idly reading through some of the content we’d be covering in Geography in several months without really making much of an effort to memorise any of it.

Eventually though, doing nothing tired me out, and I stood up and stretched while pushing back the last of that laziness.

When I left my room again, a few of the others were up, stumbling around with bleary eyes and many yawns, but they were awake. I found Montgomery just as he came out of his room. “Hey,” I said.

“Oh, hello,” he said. “You look... awake.”

“I got up a little early,” I said. “I wanted to sleep in, but I guess I couldn’t.”

“Already used to waking up early for class?”

“I guess so,” I said. “What are you doing today?”

He thought about it for a moment. “I’m going back home tonight, at least until tomorrow night. But right now... I suppose breakfast is in order.”

I grinned. I could do breakfast . “Sure,” I said. “After that, I was thinking of maybe taking a walk out of the Academy. There’s some stalls nearby, right?”

Montgomery grinned. “There are. My mum gave me a few pounds to spend on whatever. I don’t want to blow my entire allowance in one day, but I wouldn’t mind a few candies.”

I smiled and suppressed that bit of anger in my gut. Pounds as allowance? I was lucky if my little business made more than a pound a day. We were usually dealing in shillings and pence and half-pennies.

In any case, it was hardly Montgomery’s fault that the world  was the way it was. “We should head out with a few more friends. In case we run into some Trolls,” I said.

“I’ll ask Milo,” he said before scampering off towards the boy in question. I followed after him, and within a few minutes, we’d formed a small posse of young boys all eager to get themselves hooked up on sugar and spend their parent’s soft-earned money on things they didn’t need.

After breakfast, of course.

The cafeteria lady was absent this morning, but the food wasn’t. Instead of a lady dumping food onto plates for us, we had a long row of magical containers filled with omelettes and hashbrowns and some warmed up slices of ham. Oh, and beans. Always with the beans.

I didn’t complain, it was free food with lots of protein and in quantities that would please even a lumberjack. The company wasn’t altogether unpleasant either, the boys were hyped up and being a bit silly, but it wasn’t that annoying. I endured it with a bit of patience and eventually got into a decent conversation with Milo about the plants his family grew, of all things.

Once breakfast was done, some of the boys at the table got distracted by the idea of playing football out in one of the fields, but one of the older Dragons told us that they didn’t want ‘twerps’ hogging the field, so that put paid to the idea.

It meant that the group leaving the Academy by the unsupervised front gate was nearly ten strong, a good chunk of our entire year all heading out at once.

We didn’t actually go very far. There was a trolley that climbed up and over some of the rougher hills in the area and which stopped about a block away from the Academy. I must have missed it on the way up last time since I’d come from the east.

It looked like a pretty popular, if dangerous, way to travel around. The trolley itself was suspended in places, and rode on tracks in others, using a fairly simple double-tracked system that I imagined was more complicated than it looked.

The passengers sat on the inside, on benches that faced inwards or by hanging off the side of the trolley from a set of bars. We all elected to ride off the side, which meant that at some points we were clinging to the trolley with a three or so metre gap between us and the ground. It was an insane, rather stupid, way of doing things, but this was a world that didn’t care one whit about personal safety.

The boys all agreed that hanging off the sides was way more of a thrill, and besides, the inner section of the trolley was for women and the elderly.

One of these days I’d have to do some proper investigation into the pervasive sexism of this world. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I would have expected on Earth when the west was going through its own industrial revolution. Then again, back on Earth, most nations which were experiencing heavy industrialization in the west were Christian, and that was a notably sexist religion.

This world was fully polytheistic. Everyone believed in nearly every god and goddess all at once. What separated people was their worship of these gods, as opposed to the belief.

Well, whatever, it was something to wonder at later. “Jump off here!” Montgomery said before putting his own words into action and leaping off the Trolley onto a busy street.

The rest of us followed suit, and then we were cursed out by an angry driver sitting atop the boiler of a smoke-spewing automobile as we all scurried across the road and out of his way.

“Are we going to the market stalls or to the shops?” Montgomery asked.

“The shops are best,” Milo said.

“I want to go to the stalls first,” I said. “Or we could go after. I don’t really mind either way. I don’t have much money with me, though.”

“Ah, don’t worry, I don’t mind sharing my candies,” Montgomery said with a magnanimous nod.

It was a good walk from where we left the trolley to the market, but it passed quickly, with the boys bouncing around and jostling each other and basically acting like clowns and probably making the Academy look bad since we were all still in uniform, but none of us really cared.

The stalls were a collection of well-crafted wooden stalls where merchants were set up to sell all sorts of goods. A lot of these were home-made things, but some were clearly just reselling surplus from different factories. And there was food, of course. Pastries and candies and one enterprising young man had a working cotton candy machine and some experience twirling the sticks he used to make the candy fluff so that it caught the eye.

The prices had me wincing though. Everything was three times as expensive here as back in the slums. The quality might have been better, but I wasn’t sure if it was really worth it.

Then again, I couldn’t install my own stalls here. There were bullies patrolling the area, big fat coppers just walking around and looking quite bored with everything. The stalls were all impeccably clean, and the merchants were no different.

I picked out my mark soon enough, however. A stall off to one side that sold meat on skewers. He had a nametag on his shirt that read Jimothy.

***

Chapter Thirty

“Hey, Jimothy,” I said as I walked up to the stall.

The man behind it was a tall fellow, skinny, with a face covered in blisters and acne. He blinked at me, then rubbed the side of a hand under his nose. “What do ya want?” he asked. “We’ve got chicken, pork, and I have a few veggie skewers too.”

“I’ll have your pepper-ball skewer, please,” I said.

Jimothy jumped, and I figured that whomever had sent this guy didn’t send their best. “Uh, you sure?” he asked. His eyes darted around the marketplace.

Fortunately, I’d come here alone. The other boys were at the cotton candy stall. “Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. “Come on, what do you have for me?” I fished out a shilling and placed it on the edge of his stall.

Jimothy shook his head, then started setting up a skewer. He used his bare hands, and I had real doubts about the cleanliness of his cooking utensils. “Here,” he said as he gave me a skewer with some long strip of fatty pork on it and a few small potato cubes. It did smell great. “And, uh, here.”

Jimothy placed a small folded letter right on the edge of the stall. I swiped it away in a hurry and pointedly didn’t look around.

“Thanks,” I said. “Keep the change. And I’d tell you to forget you ever saw me, but I don’t think that’ll be hard.”

“Huh?” he asked.

“Exactly.” I stuffed the letter away and took off back to the others. They each had a puff of cotton candy on the end of a thin wooden stick, and Montgomery had two, one which he handed to me. “Oh, thanks,” I said.

“No problem,” he said. “What’d you get?”

“Meat,” I replied before offering him the skewer.

He shrugged, then took a bite while I held onto it. “Oh, that’s... not very good meat,” he said.

“Thanks for letting me know,” I said. Then I started eating it anyway. I wasn’t going to waste meat, no matter what.

Besides, it might help me level my poison resistance.

It took some time before I could escape the others long enough to read the letter. I could have waited for a while, until I got back to the Academy, maybe, but ditching the letter out here would leave far fewer traces that I was the one it was destined for.

The others all went into this local bakery and candy store, while some visited a shop that sold books and games and magazines. I slipped into the washroom of the latter, sat on the toilet , then unfolded the letter.

Dear Mister Miloson,

I hope this message finds you well. Firstly, I wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Twenty-six is a big age, and I’m impressed by the stri d es  you’ve made despite being so young.

In addition to birthday wishes, I wanted to touch-base regarding some business-related matters. The last batch of fertilisers we received don’t seem as potent, and I had some serious reservations about the quality of the goblin workers one of my partners brought to the workplace. We should gather and talk in person about it. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated in eliminating these issues.

Thank you,

C. Edison

I tore up the letter, then flushed it.

So, the son of my target Milo was having a birthday? The fact that we called the businessman Milo’s son Milo kind of made things confusing there. Did Milo’s father also go by his family name first?

Whatever, I was getting side-tracked. The birthday party would have two more targets. Someone in charge of producing fertilisers and someone in the goblin-slave business.

And the Union wanted me to kill all three of them.

I puffed out my cheeks and let out a long breath. Tough one. But... probably manageable. Maybe. It would depend a lot on the situation. The only date I had was the 26th, but no month was given.

Shrugging, I left the washroom after washing my hands in the sink, then met up with the others. “Hey, Montgomery,” I asked.

“Yeah?” he replied. “I mean... yes?”

“When’s your birthday?” I asked.

He blinked, then grinned. “Why do you want to know?”

“What? Don’t expect a big gift, I just want to know. In case,” I said as nonchalantly as I could.

“Mine’s on the ninth, in two months,” Andrew, who I shared Botany with, said.

And then I got everyone else’s birthdays, all in a rush. My attention was mostly on Milo though. “The Twenty-sixth, in less than a month,” he said. “My dad loves birthdays, so we always have a big party. It’s awful, most of the time.”

“Why’s that?” I asked.

“Well, it’s all of my parents’ friends, and some of their kids, but they’re all either way older or way younger than me,” he complained. “The gifts are nice though.”

“Well, this year you can invite people your own age,” I suggested, and that improved his mood. “I’ll be sure to get you a gift you won’t soon forget.”

I suppressed a small pang of guilt after saying that.

It didn’t take much to bury it. Our little outing had been fun, and we were returning to the Academy with arms full of candies and all sorts of junk food. A few of the boys were heading back home in the evening, so they wanted to be back at the school sooner rather than later.

Of course, we ran into some complications, mostly in the form of a group of fourth years barring our passage into the Academy. They were Dragons, like us, and they were demanding that we pay a ‘toll’ to be let in.

The toll was paid in gumballs and licorice and in mocking laughter, but I had the impression that we got by without paying nearly as much as the next group of Trolls to try the gate.

This school certainly had... some unique characteristics to it.

“Are you staying here tonight?” Montgomery asked me.

“Yeah. You’re heading home, right?”

“I am,” he said. “What will you do while you’re here? And what about...” He leaned in close. “What about Sir Eyenibbler the Terrible?”

“I think he’ll be fine,” I said with a grin. “As for me, I think I’ll spend some time in the library.”

“Studying ahead? Because if you’re going to do that, you should go to the music room first.”

“Ouch,” I said. “But no, I want to look a few things up. Maybe find something nice to read?”

He shrugged. “Reading is a woman’s hobby,” he said.

“What? Since when?”

“That’s what my dad says,” he replied. “Not that you shouldn’t know how  to read, of course.”

Shaking my head, I said my goodbyes to the boys, stole a gumdrop from the accumulated candy pile that they hoarded onto a desk in our dorms, then I slipped out. I was finally free.

I could have gone into the basement and checked on my mushrooms down there, but I had something else to investigate first. Nothing related to the school but something I might discover in the school’s library.

The library was a large section of the administration building, though it was far from the biggest library I’d ever seen. It was a rather compact little space, with four rows of stacks that ran fairly deep and tall, with wheeled ladders to allow people to grab books that were higher up off the ground.

A librarian sat at a desk by the entrance, reading something with a cup of something warm next to them. “No food allowed in here,” he said without looking up from his book.

“Okay,” I replied. “Can anyone sign out a book?”

“You’ll need to sign for that... ah, first year?” he asked.

I nodded.

“In that case, no. Second-years and up only. You have previous firsties to thank for that.”

“Right,” I said. That was unfortunate. There didn’t seem to be much reading space either. A few comfy looking seats, and three desks, but all out in the open by the front. “I’m looking for a book on religion. Uh, on the different gods and goddesses.”

The librarian looked up, then glanced at the stacks. “See the plaques with letters?”

“Yes?” I asked as I spotted the signs he was talking about.

He leaned forwards and tapped a small brass plate on the front of his counter. It had subjects listed on it, and their code to find them. “Ah, right, thanks,” I said.

There were three sections for what I was looking for. Gods and Goddesses was its own thing, Religions was another, and Divine Workings a third.

I decided to start simple, Gods and Goddesses it was.

Time to find out what I could about my patron. Feronie had been a mystery to me for long enough. If I was going to kill in her name, then I’d best know what there was to know about her.

Or at least, what the world thought to write about her.

***

Chapter Thirty-One

I scoured the library for well over an hour before picking out a few books to satisfy my curiosity.

The search really was just for that. I had questions about Feronie, and no one to ask them to. Poking at any sort of cleric or priest might make them suspicious, and Feronie wasn’t one of those popular gods with their own temples. At least, not within this city.

So that left books.

I’d considered raiding a bookstore before, or outright buying a book on the subject, but then I wasn’t sure if I’d find what I wanted and books were expensive.

If the city had a public library, then I’d never heard of it, and I doubted it let in street urchins in any case.

But now I had an opportunity to look into things at my own leisure, and an entire library’s worth of books to dig into.

There were a fair number of books that explored the topic, a whole section of the library was nothing but books  about religion. Surprisingly, it was next to a section that was entirely about the system. Entire books on skills, classes, and the interaction between them.

This wasn’t a world without science, and so obviously someone had thought to sit down and figure out how levels and skills worked  on a deeper level. If I hadn’t entered the room with a goal already, I would have been sidetracked pretty hard by discovering such a wealth of information just... sitting on a few shelves for anyone to peruse.

But no, I had come here with one goal in particular in mind, and that was what I’d be digging into.

I laid out all three books on one of the tables in the corner. It was the furthest table from the librarian by the entrance, ensuring some level of privacy, and I sat facing the doorway, just in case. Not that I had to worry too much, the library was entirely empty at the moment.

The first of the three books I’d found was more of a list of modern deities. For some reason, the first thing that came to mind when I picked it up was a vague memory from my past self, sitting in an eyewear clinic and idly opening up one of those thick car guides. The sort that they  published a new edition every year with the newest models and some very thin reviews next to nice photographs of the newest cars.

This book felt similar. It was almost a buyer’s guide to religion and worship, though it went by the name Modern Divinity: Deities of the Steam Age . I was pretty sure we weren’t in the steam  age. Coal, maybe, but I supposed that wasn’t the right mental image.

The deities within were listed in a helpful, alphabetical order, so I flipped through until I reached F for Feronie... and found nothing.

The book skipped from Elthine (the scaled whisperer, who was some sort of snake-person god) to Faltir (the Unseen Pathmaker, a weird god of crossroads and logistics of all things) to Festhara (the Hearthmother, goddess of warm homes and suchlike). No Feronie  between them.

Frowning, I turned the book over, then started from the back. Fortunately, there was an index, and that’s where I discovered my mistake. The book was divided between major and minor deities, and Feronie was way at the back.

My goddess had half a page, and no pretty illustration.

Feronie - The Cruel Nature Goddess

Once a major deity before the rise of rationalism and civilisation, Feronie is now an oft-reviled goddess of nature, though unlike many of her contemporaries, this goddess is often linked with bad weather, crop sicknesses, blight, and other natural misfortunes.

Nonetheless, she is not necessarily an Evil god , hence her inclusion within this illustrious encyclopaedia . Rather, she is a goddess of the ways of the past, with few worshipers and less power. There is no praying for her to leave you alone, nor any need to fear her any more than one might fear the winter storm on a warm summer’s day.

I frowned at the description. That was... unkind. And it raised a few more questions. Feronie had  been worshipped more? Did worship matter to a god? And what were Evil gods, and why weren’t they included in this ‘illustrious encyclopaedia?’

Frustrating. And I couldn’t leave the library with this thing either, which was too bad, I’d have loved to read the entire thing, even if it was clearly biased.

So, Feronie wasn’t strong. That wasn’t news to me.

I set the book aside and grabbed the next one. Gods and Goddesses of the Previous Era . This was a dusty old tome of a book, almost too thick to grab comfortably. I opened it, and discovered that it didn’t just look old, it was written in a much older, much thicker dialect. Not quite the super-academic text of a scientific piece, but not too far from it either.

Also, it had a terrible index and no table of contents. I had a headache forming before I’d really dived into it. It took a half hour of scanning through pages and skimming past entire chapters before I found something.

Feronie, a goddess whose name recurrently arises amidst theological dialogues conducted by the clerics during divine communion, is an enigmatic figure indeed. It appears rather perplexing initially, as this divine entity, despite her occasional encounters with the spiritual intermediaries, does not claim a pervasive presence in the everyday discourse of the populace, known, as she is, merely in fleeting mentions. Neither does she reside among the pantheon of deities deemed unworthy of adulation.

Yet, the prevailing sentiment among those faithful to the more recent deities of popular devotion is one of passionate suspicion and marked antipathy towards Feronie. A multitude of religious texts reference her as a goddess presiding over nature, albeit the consensus concerning the specificity of her dominion is far from unified.

On frequent occasions, she is posited as the unremitting overseer of natural calamities, plagues, and various other misfortunes bestowed by nature's caprice. However, such spheres of influence are typically under the jurisdiction of alternative divine entities, whose worship, it is believed, possesses the potential to assuage their celestial ire.

Consequently, the figure of Feronie occupies a curious position within the divine hierarchy. Misplaced within the pantheon due to the ambiguity of her dominion, and yet maligned with consistent distrust, she presents a paradox that perplexes the theological discourse .

My head was throbbing by the time I finished parsing all of that. The entire book was like this, filled with pretentious, overly complex near-gibberish. All I got out of it was that the person who wrote this didn’t know what Feronie’s domain as a goddess was.

I frowned. Wasn’t  she just the goddess of nature? I thought that was pretty self-explanatory. Only... what was  nature? Was it everything natural? And if that was it, then didn’t that mean that her domain basically overlapped with dozens of other deities?

Was that why she was dying? She was being sapped of strength by some other gods?

The third book I’d found wasn’t one I expected to see in the religion section of the library, which is why I’d snatched it up. It was entitled Hymns of Hammer and Anvil , and I’d almost skipped right past it, only the pretty gold leaf on the spine had caught my eye and I’d grabbed it on a whim and opened it up between the stacks.

It wasn’t a book of hymns. It was a book on the gods of industry, of which there were a lot, and while that was interesting all on its own, the book actually contained some texts from the gods themselves.

It always struck me as wildly fantastical that this world had texts written by actual divinity, and that it could be proven to have been written by them because the gods were right there  the entire time.

In any case, I wouldn’t have hung onto the book, except that my eye had caught onto something. Feronie’s name.

It was in a section dedicated to Ghalak, the Hammered Heart.

I was starting to notice that the gods, or at least the clergy, were really fond of titles. In any case, Ghalak was a god of hammers. Or something. It was a lot more complex than just ‘hammers’ but I didn’t care about them enough to really dig into their entire gimmick.

The book contained some passages spoken by Ghalak themselves, and one of these was about Feronie.

Inscrutable she remains, bearing the dual visages of merciless cruelty and tender benevolence. Once, she reigned supreme among us, a celestial matriarch, the primordial nurturer from whom this world first drew breath.  Yet the path she treads into the morrow, we discern, does not align with our envisioned destinies.

With the resolute clangour of our celestial hammers, we assiduously disentangled ourselves from the adamantine chains of her influence. We have sundered these links, an act of divine liberation, not in defiance, but in a pursuit of self-determination. Unshackled, we stand poised on the anvil of creation, our hammers poised to beat out a resonant symphony of progress,  a better world wrought in the crucible of divine resolve and industrious will.

I frowned as I leaned back in my seat. What in the world had the other gods done  to Feronie?

***

Chapter Thirty-Two

Sunday came. Sunday went.

It was surprising how quickly a day could pass with basically nothing of note happening. I woke up a little late. Showered in a dorm that was nearly empty, then checked on my mushrooms, let Sir Nibbles run outside in the woods to get some fresh air (he caught and killed a bird, somehow) and then had lunch.

The evening was spent in the library, at first looking for more about Feronie, then when I found that a bit boring, I started looking at books about skills and classes and such.

It was interesting enough that I didn’t notice the time slipping by. It was only my stomach’s gurgle that alerted me to supper time being close.

After supper, I decided not to strain my eyes any further, so I dipped into the music room and practised with the violin in one of those sound-proofed magical areas. I was still very, very bad at it.

It was going to take more than one evening spent testing out an instrument before I went from awful to passable.

When I returned to the dorm, it was to find  that it was filling up again. A lot of the students that had left for the weekend were coming back, and some of them were clearly disappointed about being back in school.

Couldn’t blame them. I was treating this as something of a working vacation where I hoped to gain a few quick levels, but it was also... not helping me grow in every way that mattered.

Anyway, it was fine. I wasn’t expecting to be here forever, so I’d get what I could out of the experience, and some of the boons had been worth the effort already.

I slept well that night, then Monday rolled around, and it was back to the normal school grind. Geography in the morning meant more time spent learning about the city and its history as well as a bit about the continent and some local geographical features.

The teacher left us to mostly read straight from the textbook, then asked questions to random students to make sure we’d understood what we read. It was the most boring way to deliver otherwise interesting information I could think of.

The period ended, then it was Herbology.

There was a pit in my stomach at the thought of Herbology. One part because I’d have to deal with Harbin all over again, and one part because of Professor Moss.

The Troll’s favourite bully had been in Geography class with the rest of us, and he seemed louder and more brash than ever.

His friend circle had shrunk a bit, it seemed, but the amount of fear he wielded had increased. Rumours were still circulating that he’d gotten into a fight with an older kid and won, which might have been somewhat impressive if ‘older kid’ didn’t mean a second year who was probably only a year older than he was.

I wasn’t being very generous to the kid in the confines of my own mind, but I didn’t feel like he deserved any generosity on my part.

Walking up to Milo and the others heading to our Herbology and Botanical Magics class, I stepped close and stayed there. “Hey. Stay close. It wouldn’t surprise me if he  tried something.”

“Oh, right,” Milo said. “We might have to fight him, huh?”

“Don’t worry, if he tries to hurt you, I’ll do what I can to keep you safe,” I said with a wry grin. I don’t know how reassuring that could be, I was probably one of the shortest ‘boys’ in my class, and definitely one of the scrawnier ones.

Milo didn’t seem to consider that, his back straightening and a crooked grin appearing on his face.

We didn’t end up meeting any of the Trolls until we were already in the greenhouse, and by them Professor Moss was there.

The teacher eyed me, but didn’t say anything before launching into his lesson. It was a recap of the previous week’s work with plant nomenclature, then a lecture on the use of certain common plants as home remedies in the past, leading to more modern medicines that used the herbal properties of those plants.

It started raining hard halfway through the class, which might have explained why we were staying inside. Did Professor Moss have a way to predict the weather? It wouldn’t surprise me that someone so invested in herbology would have a skill that let him do just that.

The greenhouse grew increasingly uncomfortable as the temperature, and most of all the humidity, rose up and up, in the end all of us were tugging our shirts open at the front and we were too busy sweating for there to be any time for the Dragon-Troll rivalry.

Class ended, and surprisingly, we got out without a fight breaking out. Sure, there were a few choice words flung back and forth, but that was it. It looked like Harbin was in more of a growl and bluster mood than anything.

I didn’t complain. If anything, it was one more opportunity to stick close to Milo. I got the boy to talk up a storm just by asking him a few questions about his life at home and what he’d been up to yesterday.

Then came the inevitable ‘what does your dad do  anyway?’ question.

“Oh? I thought I’d told you. Well, whatever,” he said. “My dad’s the Milo in Milo and Sons Herbal Remedies.  We’re one of the oldest and longest-lasting providers of non-magical medicines on the continent. We also produce  a  lot of food .”

“Food?” I asked. I knew something about that.

“Yup! We grow rare, luxury foods. Stuff fit for kings and queens!”

I nodded along. That much I knew. “Baron Milo’s asparagus, right?”

Milo grinned. “Yeah! Have you ever had asparagus?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “If you eat too much it makes your pee smell funny.”

Milo’s face went beet-red and he shook his head. “No! That’s a rumour, it’s not true,” he said. The others immediately started to tease him about it, and he took it in stride. “Okay, so it’s a little true, but we don’t advertise the fact! You need to eat a lot for that to happen.”

“How’d your family get into the food business anyway?” I asked.

“Oh, you don’t know that story?” he asked. “Okay, well, the food part is actually just my dad’s doing. He bought a lot of farms and discovered some locally grown foods that were quite delicious, but the peasants didn’t know how to farm them well. So we set up proper farms and now we grow enough of those foods to feed every noble mouth across the entire city.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. I recalled that the same father had basically broken some local farmers while setting up his little empire. “What about the herbal medicines and such?”

“That’s my great-grandpa,” Milo said.

“Was he called Milo too?” Andrew asked.

Milo bumped shoulders with Andrew, and they scuffled for a bit, laughing all the while. “Yeah! He was. He wasn’t even a baron though. Not until he was an adult.”

“Your line of peerage only goes back four generations?” Andrew asked.

“Great-Grandpa was a knight,” Milo explained. “So he was part of the gentry, but he gained a barony thanks to his hard work and elevated the family to where we are now. His goal was immortality.”

“Immortality?” I asked.

“Yeah! Some plants, especially magical ones, can basically live forever.  And my family has always been good with alchemy. So Great-grandpa Milo came to the continent and scoured it for new herbal medicines and cures for all sorts of sicknesses . He never found anything that made him immortal, but he did find a bunch of cures to common illnesses.”

“That’s... actually really nice,” I said.

He nodded. “That’s how we made our fortune at first. But grandpa Milo then discovered that the peerage would pay more for spices than for herbal remedies. Besides, alchemy is an expensive business, and a dangerous one.”

“Dangerous how?” I asked.

“Well, a lot of the stuff you need to make is toxic,” Milo said. “That’s why some of our best family skills are made to help us resist poisons. And some of the stuff is explosive, chemicals and... stuff, you know?”

“Right, yeah,” I said.

Family skills? Resistances to poison?

I felt a bit of a headache coming on. What kind of a mess was this? The only good thing to come from this discovery was that I now knew that I couldn’t just poison everyone and expect to get away with it.

I’d have to be creative . And that would mean more research and more time to prepare.

“Hey, guys, go on to lunch without me,  I think I need to check something out in the library,”  I said.

There had to be something recorded about the Milo family and their resistance. Was it a bloodline thing? Did that even exist at all?

And here I thought this world was done being blatantly unfair.

***

Chapter Thirty-Three

It took a couple more days before I found time to visit the library again.  I’d had some time here and there to dip in and look around, but a proper search took hours,  and I was looking for something that I suspected was somewhat niche.

First, I dug into some of the local history texts. I considered asking the history professor, but I didn’t think he liked me much, so I was all on my own for this one.

It wasn’t too difficult to find books about the nobility of City Nineteen. It was exceptionally hard to find anything that wasn’t written to flatter someone’s ego. I did find one book, A Compendium of Nineteen’s Nobility , which was one part etiquette book, one part list of local nobility.

Milo’s family, the Milo’s, had an entire page dedicated to them. I supposed that they were merely barons, so they didn’t deserve much more attention. It was surprising to learn that one or two of my less assuming classmates were the children of dukes and counts.

The page didn’t divulge too much, except to say that the family dealt in exotic spices and rare plant life from other continents as well as luxury foodstuffs.

That was all I could find after an evening’s search.

In the end, I decided to just... ask, but to do so in a way where Milo would have a hard time escaping the question.

Which meant waiting until Thursday’s Herbology class.

The sun was out and shining, which was a rarity in this time of year where we mostly had lots of rain and gloomy days.The professor seemed to want to get us outside for as much of the day as he could manage, so almost as soon as we arrived at the greenhouse, he lead u s out and to a large outdoor garden at the back. “Today we’ll be learning the horrifically boring but nonetheless necessary art of weeding,” he said.

Then he launched into a lesson about the different kinds of common non-magical weeds that grew in the area while walking around and plucking some samples out from the planters and the grass around them.

“With the fertilisers we use to encourage the growth of these plants, also comes fast-growing weeds. Weeds don’t care how much you want your own specific plant to grow, they’ll take any rich, nourishing soil as an invitation to plant some roots and choke out any competition, and the reason weeds are  weeds to begin with is often because of how good they are at invading the space of other plants.”

I nodded along. Nothing new, but I didn’t mind the refresher.

We started to take care of the weeding. Ripping out plants and filling in the holes with some loose dirt. Some of the students went around with a wheelbarrow, while others continued to work, and with so many hands and the professor watching over the lot of us like a rooster, it didn’t take all that long for the work to get done.

Once the last weed was ripped out of the soil and tossed into a composting bin, the professor nodded, looking satisfied. “It’s not glorious work, but if you one day keep your own garden, then you’ll need to do it. Or hire someone to do it, but even then it’s wise to know how  to do something before you hire someone else.”

The others nodded, and it seemed like that was just common sense to them.

“Any questions before we move on? We’ll be tackling something a bit more complex next. Magical weeds. You won’t be touching these yourselves, not unless you want to visit the nurse’s office for the evening.”

One of the Troll kids raised his hand. “Some weeds are magical?”

The professor nodded. “Weeds are just what we call any plant that we don’t want around. If there are magical plants, then there are magical weeds. Some of them are even useful, though let’s hold off on that for a year or two. Any more questions?”

I raised a hand and he nodded. “Some of the weeds are poisonous?” I asked. “Should we be worried? I think Milo has poison resistance, but what about the rest of us?”

The professor stared at me for a long moment , then seemed ready to speak when Harbin cut in, voice low so it wouldn’t carry.

“Scared?” he asked.

“Mister Harbin,” the professor said. “You will treat the plants, yourself, and your fellow students with respect, and that means no toying with toxicants and poisonous materials you know nothing about.” His eyes never left me as he spoke. “As for your question, Mister Killua, you will be safe because you will not touch  the plants. None of you will. This is a demonstration. Only fifth years and up are permitted to cultivate and work with magical plants unsupervised.”

The professor eyed us all for a while, then nodded. “Alright, follow along.”

The rest of the class was more subdued, the professor showing us some plants that looked pretty ordinary, but which he assured us were magical in nature.

I had a slight advantage with my [Druid Sight] skill letting me pick up information from the weeds he was showing. Some of the weeds seemed... downright useful.

[Witch's Fingers] - Common

A vine that thrives in places of dark magic. The long, finger-like stems are potent catalysts in the brewing of curses and hexes.

That was a weed currently grasped around the stem of a small tree-like bush. Just for fun, I examined the bush itself next.

[Blood Thorn Bush] - Common

A spiky weed covered with small, blood-red thorns. The thorns can draw blood with a slight touch, and the blood is then absorbed by the plant. It's often used in blood magic rituals.

“What’s that one used for?” I asked, pointing to the bush.

The professor grinned. “This is an example of a plant that’s sometimes a weed and sometimes grown on purpose. Blood thorns have a small liquid in their thorns that acts as a powerful blood thinner and anticoagulant. That means that if a wild animal were to brush by, it would bleed profusely. It has medicinal uses as well, of course.”

There were more, from more common to less, but nothing insanely dangerous. I suspected that the actually  {Rare} plants were kept elsewhere. Or maybe there weren’t any around for the students to mess with, not if they were actually valuable.

Class ended soon after, with the professor insisting that we all clean off at a basin behind one of the green houses. Our uniforms were all stained with mud and dirt, and a bit of water wasn’t going to wash that off.

Then again, some soapy water might be exactly what we needed to avoid getting a rash from touching some of those weeds.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I asked Milo.

He blinked at me. “Of course not, what is it?”

“You have some sort of poison resistance, right? You mentioned it last time.”

Milo nodded. “It’s a Milo-family gift,” he said.

“That’s so cool,” I said. “Do all the noble families have gifts like that?”

“Did yours?” he asked. "Ah, I guess you aren’t  nobleborn. Don’t worry. Most of the Trolls probably only have a basic blessing and maybe a blessing from whichever church did their naming.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. What did that mean? The only thing I had from birth was... [Child of Poverty].

I felt something cold and slimy run down my back. Had that been my blessing? Was it what every kid born in the slums got as a reward for being born impoverished, while children like Milo started off with an actual, proper blessing?

I refocused. I needed to befriend Milo, not start ranting in his vicinity about the unfairness of the world. “So, your whole family gets poison resistance?”

“ Just for plants ,” he said. “It’s not the greatest blessing, but it’s not bad. George’s family has  a famous blessing that lets them know how loyal someone is.”

George looked up and smiled. “Oh? Ah, yeah. I guess that’s handy.”

He was the fourth son of a count, so I imagined he probably found the skill somewhat lacking, but I could imagine a dozen scenarios where that kind of thing could be a lifesaver.

In any case, I had my answer, somewhat. Milo was partially resistant to poisons. Plant-based poisons. That meant that other kinds would probably work just fine.

Of course, all of my poisons weren’t plant-based , but they were pretty damned close.

I’d need to figure out some other way to handle the Milos . I had... no idea how I was going to do that. Stabbing them to death was out. I didn’t have help for this mission. I didn’t have any potent non-poisonous weapons. “Do you even get sick?” I asked him on a whim.

Milo shrugged. “I guess not? At least, not from bad plants? Do people get sick from that?”

“Yeah, all the time,” I said.

“Why don’t they use a ring or amulet?” George asked. He seemed a little less shy now that we’d included him.

“A what?” I asked.

“You know,” he said before raising a hand to display a small ring around his index.  “A ring of poison resistance?”

I filled the silence of my mind with ample swears.

***

Chapter Thirty-Four

I spent the rest of the week thinking through my predicament and trying to do some research to find a way around it.

The research was surprisingly difficult. For one, the library didn’t have an easy way to just look up the downsides and problems with poison resistance equipment. I did eventually find a mention of them in a book about common household magics, but it was just a short passage informing the reader that they should be aware that some poison resistance items only worked on a limited kind of poisons.

Useful to know, but I somehow doubted I’d be able to succeed with my assassination by dosing my victims with dozens of different poisons from different sources in the hopes that one of them wasn’t countered.

I did have one solution, but it was a massive gamble.

My own poison resistance skill had proven very useful to me so far, but I did notice that when I dosed myself with a poison, I was still affected.

It wasn’t a poison immunity, it was a poison resistance .

Mechanically, I think it meant that for the most part, the skill assisted the body in fighting against the poison and made its effects less palpable. Maybe it weakened them, maybe it used some sort of magical ability to lessen their impact, but when I poisoned myself, I still felt it.

I’d gotten the shakes, diarrhoea, headaches, fevers, I’d even fainted a few times, and my poison resistance skill, [Basic Poison Resistance] was at level forty-five. That felt like it was pretty strong, especially since I had a second skill reinforcing it.

If the toxins I worked with could still make me feel ill despite my resistances, then there was no way that a mere enchanted ring would stop my poisons from working.

At least, that was my theory.

Fortunately, it was a theory I could test!

That coming weekend, I begged off heading to town with the others and instead spent a good portion of the day in the basement. It gave Sir Nibbles some time to run around and stretch his legs, and it gave me time to grow some mushrooms.

I started with [Dead Man’s Finger] and [Bug Agaric]. Both of them were the base mushrooms for several of my combination mushrooms. They were basic, simple, found in this region, and their poisonous effects were relatively weak.

[Dead Man’s Finger] was potent enough to kill a man, but only when the dosage was very high. Someone would need to eat a basketful to croak. I even nibbled on one myself and found that it did no worse than give my stomach some rumbles a few hours later.

The next day, at breakfast, while chatting with the boys and jostling each other around at the breakfast table, I dropped a few small pieces onto George’s plate, amongst his breakfast scramble of eggs.

He ate them without even noticing or commenting.

George spent the evening visiting the washroom and coming back. His mood was hardly diminished and he didn’t look sick, but he did keep leaving and returning.

So, his ring countered the worst of it, but didn’t stop the poison outright. It wasn’t quite as much proof that my hypothesis was correct as I’d want, but it was a fantastic start.

My next test was with the [Bug Agaric]. It was a very close match to fly agaric, which I was familiar with in my previous life. I didn’t know if this one’s active ingredient was psilocybin or if it was another hallucinogen, but I did know that when I dosed myself with a large quantity of it, it made me dizzy and I’d have small, short hallucinations. Mostly flashes of light and moving shadows. Nothing too impressive.

I had spent the time I wasn’t plotting with Montgomery and Milo. Montgomery had become a somewhat close friend, and Milo was just a nice kid most of the time. Completely out of touch with the reality beyond the privileged space he lived in, but nice all the same.

That’s why I only gave him a miniscule amount of [Bug Agaric], dropping a small morsel into his soup at supper time, then hanging out with him for the rest of the evening as he slowly lost his mind.

Fortunately, the dose was small enough that it didn’t last all that long, and for the most part, he only looked clumsy and maybe a bit lightheaded, laughing at jokes that weren’t really that funny with loud exuberance and jumping at shadows.

“I think I’m not feeling so good,” Milo said as the evening progressed.

I rubbed circles into his back. “Don’t worry, Milo, everything will be alright ,” I said.

And it would be, because he’d just helped me prove that his family’s blessing didn’t counteract poisons outright.

I decided to try and make it up to him, and deepen our relationship, by spending as much time around Milo as possible over the next few days. Fortunately, we had several classes together, and Milo was just kind of a nice kid.

“So, your birthday’s coming up soon, right?” I asked. We were in Friday afternoon Language class, and things were going pretty slowly. The teacher had given us all sheets to fill out, basically lines that needed to be changed from one tense to another, and it was all rather... too easy. There was a near constant murmur of conversation throughout the class.

“Yeah,” Milo said. “In TIME THAT THE AUTHOR SHOULD KNOW . I hope it’ll be good. Last one was a little boring.”

“Oh?” Montgomery asked.

Milo nodded. “Didn’t I tell you? Last year it was nothing but lords and ladies and really mostly my parent’s friends and family. I have a few cousins that came over, but that was it. I was paraded around like a prized hound for most of the evening. The toys were nice though. One of my second uncles gave me a hunting rifle that shoots pellets! For hunting quail  out in the countryside.”

“Do you think we could come?” I asked outright. I’d been buttering him up on the idea for a little bit, but I wasn’t sure if this was a good time to spring the trap. “I’m not sure my gift would be more appreciated than a hunting rifle, but at least you won’t be alone.”

“That’s a good idea,” Montgomery said, instantly enthusiastic. “It could be fun! A whole day away from school and you can show us that hunting rifle you got!”

Milo seemed a little hesitant for a moment, then he smiled and nodded along. “That does sound nice,” he said. “Alright. I’ll ask my parents, but I’m sure they know yours. We can have invitations sent out.”

“That sounds perfect,” I said.

I might have to sneak in, then. Or steal another kid’s invitation.

Fortunately, from what I remembered of being an adult, one kid at a party was much like any other. The moment I’d be in, I doubted any of the adults would care to notice that I wasn’t meant to be there.

Once classes ended, I headed out back to the dorm along with the rest of the class. The current gossip was about one of the equestrian riding classes. The horses they’d brought in for polo were being cared for by a young lady, and the boys had an expected amount of respect for a young woman that they all seemed to find attractive. Or at least, that they were all pretending to.

Typical boy shit.

On arriving at my room I tugged the door shut, then rooted around my things for a blank sheet of paper. I had to write a letter to my ‘uncle’ informing them of the birthday event that was coming up. It was possible that I’d need help sneaking in, and that I might need some additional equipment.

I jumped when my door opened a crack, then Montgomery slipped in and closed the door behind him with a click. “Why are you so obsessed with Milo?” he asked.

I blinked at him. “What?”

“Milo. You’ve been obsessed with him lately. Why?”

“I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said as I backpedalled mentally. Had I been too obvious about trying to befriend Milo?

“If you don’t want to be my friend anymore, that’s okay,” Montgomery said.

It hit me then, and I couldn’t catch the laugh before it slipped out of me.

Montgomery’s cheeks reddened, and he turned to leave, but I was just fast enough to catch his sleeve and keep him in the room. “Wait, wait,” I said.

“Why should I?” he asked.

“Sorry, it’s just... no, I think of all the boys here, you’re the one I’ve spent the most time with, but I didn’t think there was a competition for friendship going on.” I decided to add a bit of honesty to the mix. “Besides, between you and me? I’m mostly talking to Milo to get to attend his birthday. I bet his family does good food.”

Montgomery cracked a smile. “Yeah, I bet they do.”

I had to postpone my letter writing to do some friend upkeep, which wasn’t something I expected to have to do when taking this job.

***

Chapter Thirty-Five

The very next Saturday, I was out of the school and back onto the not-so-mean-streets of city Nineteen’s wealthier district. I left early enough in the morning that most of the boys were still either sleeping in because it was the weekend, or were groggy from having just woken up.

It was... interesting, going back to school again with the mind of an adult. The level of challenge that I recalled as nearly insurmountable as a child was basically nothing now. Most of the work we were given only required basic levels of discipline and some small amount of effort to accomplish.

It was easy.

Then again, I was also only in the first year, and I imagined that with skills and classes tipping the balance, the school would expect more and more from its students. I’d even overheard that the school fully expected a student to have a second class by their fifth year.

Skills and classes and such would be a topic that the student body would study, but only in their third year. Before that, a student with a poor class choice and awful skills would be forgiven for making that kind of mistake.

I suspected that the school had a way to see a person’s class. And I suspected that I wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter.

That’s the kind of thought I was running through my head as I made my way to the marketplace. It was too early for the contact I’d been notified of via letter to show up, but I preferred to be a little early than too late.

Besides, I was in the school uniform. I fit into this environment.

The same couldn’t be said of my contact when they finally showed up. Two men, one I recognized, one I didn’t, both wearing their best clothes and yet sticking out like sore thumbs. They weren’t even as clean as the local service people.

I made my way across the square to where they were trying to look inconspicuous by smoking and leaning against a lamppost. “Follow me,” I ordered as I walked past them without slowing down.

Both of them jumped, then they jogged after me and into the nearest alleyway.

I kept moving, even as they both told me to slow down and stop. I did, but two blocks down in another alley squeezed between two residential homes. The fences here were all wooden, so we couldn’t be seen, and the buildings were far enough apart that no one would likely hear us. Also, it was about as clean as an alleyway could be. “Alright,” I said as I turned, arms crossed. “Let’s chat.”

The two of them stopped, but only one was clearly out of breath, the other was eyeing me up and down, and he started to grin. “I knew you were a boy!” he said.

“Hey, Gary,” I said. “And... what?”

“I’m earning some good coin for this,” he said.

I frowned, then looked down at my uniform. Did he... “Uh, you know that uniforms can be changed, right?”

“Nah, you look  like a boy. You have to be one,” he said with a very confident nod. I decided not to burst his bubble. Mostly because it could be funny to let him continue to believe whatever he wanted.

Maybe I’d show up at the Union headquarters in a suit one day, then a dress the next? Just to mess with him. Or not, that seemed like a lot of effort.

“I didn’t know they’d send you here,” I said.

“They needed someone who’d recognize you,” Gary said. “But he’s the one you need to talk to.” He gestured to the side, to the man still catching his breath next to him.

“I’m Tommy, Tommy Ten Fingers,” the other guy said. I glanced at his hands and noticed that he was missing two fingers on his right hand. “I’m the one what’ll be helping you with your mission. Can’t imagine what sorta business the Union’s got with a fancy whelp like you.”

“He’s not fancy,” Gary said. “He’s one of us. Trust me.”

“And trust me when I say that you really don’t want to know what the mission is. For your own good. Actually, it’d be best to forget everything you can once this is done.”

Tommy squinted at me, then nodded. “‘Ight, I can do that,” he said. “So, the boss, who’s not your boss, but mine, said that I had to give you the rundown of our plan.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Right, right. So, fancy bloke’s birthday party, right?” Tommy said while tugging out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He offered it to me, and I waved him off. “Big place. Nice place. Not a very safe  place. Big hour smack in the middle of the old-money part of Nineteen.”

“Alright,” I said. “And what’s the plan?”

He struck a match and lit up. “Right, yeah, so, plan’s easy. Catering company’s got some ties to the Union, and no real love for rich folk. We’ll be replacing a couple of members with some... friends. They don’t know more than I do. Just doing a job, ya know?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, yeah, so they’ll be setting a few little things up. Place is three floors, with little passages for the help. We’ll be leaving those open and unlocked. Ropes on the third floor to the nearest building to get in and outta there, if you need it for whatever you’re doing... are you robbing the place?”

“Something like that,” I said. “It’s union business,” I said.

“I’m Union,” he said, glaring a bit.

I sighed. “We’re there to steal some documents. Rich people scheming stuff that’ll be bad for the Union. If everything goes right, no one will know,” I said. It was all a lie, of course, but I didn’t need Ten Fingers here thinking I was stealing some precious jewels he could then take off my corpse. Or that I was going in to kill people. That amount of heat was way too much for the average person to want to touch. Him not knowing made it all more legitimate anyway, if he got caught.

“Nice, nice, stick it to ‘em, eh?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “So, that’s my escape route?”

He shook his head. “One of them. Basement’s got servant’s quarters. There’s a tunnel down there. Then there’s another way in out the back. That’s meant to be locked, but we can stuff someone your size in a box and carry you out, easy-like.”

“That could work,” I said. “I like having lots of exits.”

“Need an entrance?” Gary asked.

“No, I think I’ve got one planned. What I do need is access to the kitchens at some point. Or... you said you were with the catering?” Tommy nodded, and I grinned. “Well, that might just work out even better. If I give you something special, can you arrange to have it sprinkled into the food?”

“Might, yeah,” Tommy said. “Sounds like something we can do. What’re you thinkin’?”

“I’m thinking you might just have made my job a lot easier,” I said.

Of course, I couldn’t just poison the food. I couldn’t control who ate what, and what if... I don’t know, Tommy poisoned the fish and one of the targets happened to dislike trout or something? It was too much of a scattershot approach.

But that didn’t mean that it was an entirely bad idea. Not if I spread the right kind of poison around.

Then all I needed to do was find a way to hit the right targets with something else. “Gary, I need a gift, for the party.”

“For the kid?” Gary asked.

“No, for the dad. I think I want to go in there looking like some new-rich person, maybe make it look like my family’s trying to get on the good side of the Milo’s. I’ll need a gift that the dad might want to open up. Wine, or something alcoholic like that,” I said.

That’d require more testing on my part, but it was yet another option. “Tommy, do you know if there will be a bar?”

“Should be,” he said.

“Then I really need the bartender to be on my side. It’s important,” I said.

Tommy scratched at his patchy chin, then nodded. “‘Ight, I’ll see if I can manage that.”

“Good. And thank you. Gary, get me that gift. Tommy, do what you do best. If there’s nothing else? I have a cover to keep so I can’t be seen out here. Tell the Boss that I’ll get his work done soon enough.”

Our goodbyes were curt, and with a final nod, I slipped out of the alley, leaving them behind.

As I walked, my mind churned. There were a lot of pitfalls and problems, but I was pretty sure I could come up with a solution or two.

First, I needed something that would lower people’s faculties...

***

Chapter Thirty-Six

The next weeks or so flowed by at a pace that was at once glacial, and yet too fast. I had three plans for the assassination, which I divided by the amount of risk they’d put me in. If everything went well, which it wouldn’t, then the first plan would be more than enough to accomplish everything. I’d be out of there without looking suspicious in the least, and my targets would be out of there in a trio of body bags.

I didn’t expect that plan to work, but I still had to prepare for it. The first part of that was stealing some alcohol. Specifically, high-proof alcohol which I filched from the nurse’s office. It was for disinfecting cuts, not for drinking, but it was more than good enough for me.

I needed to ensure that the poison I made was alcohol-soluble, and that it wouldn’t lose its potency in a drink.

If the poison broke apart, then I’d need to find a new vector for it. If it wasn’t soluble in alcohol, then I’d also need to find a new vector for it.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t just walk up to my targets with an angelic smile on my face and tell them to eat a handful of strange mushrooms. That kind of behaviour set off the wrong kind of alarm.

But first, I needed a mushroom that was potent enough to kill a fully grown man, one that may or may not have natural poison resistances.

It took some thinking before I remembered a kind of mushroom I’d gathered and grown a few samples of, but which I’d never bothered to combine with anything else.

[Magebane] - Uncommon

A mushroom that requires elevated levels of ambient mana to grow. This mushroom’s spores are attracted to mana and will absorb the mana of anything touching or consuming them in order to fuel their eventual growth. The mushroom itself, if eaten, will disrupt the consumer’s magical channelling abilities for a time.

[Magebane] mushrooms were a pain to grow. Worse, they were just plain dangerous. The mushroom needed a constant infusion of magic during its entire growing phase. That was basically two to three days of me pushing my [Aura of Growth] at the mushroom just for it to grow at all.

Then I had to be careful. A single spore of it touching my skin was enough to start cutting into my mana regeneration. Not in a big way. It wasn’t even noticeable. Not unless I had a good dusting on me, in which case I might suddenly discover my regeneration cut in half.

The spore also stuck  to anything magical. They didn’t feel sticky, so I supposed that the mechanism was itself magical in a way.

Dangerous little thing. I’d eaten a piece once and discovered that my mana regeneration was basically cut out for a couple of days. Worse, I couldn’t cast spells with the mana I had left. Any magical skill I used would come out... wrong. Twisted into unusability.

Which was why I was planning on using this very mushroom as the centrepiece of my plans. Could it counteract the effects of a ring of poison resistance? Maybe. I was actually counting on it being pretty good at it.

The thing that reminded me that I could use my [Magebane] mushrooms to begin with was something in geography class. Apparently, there had been other sites looked at for the settling of City Nineteen. The two dungeons here were a great reason to settle a city, but there were other places with dungeons within a fair distance of each other.

The problem was that some dungeons had stronger magic than others, and disruptive magic could interfere with enchantments, rendering them less useful or outright breaking them.

That sounded a lot like what [Magebane] did.

Still, [Magebane] on its own wasn’t lethal. Not unless someone needed their magic to live. And while running out of mana was a painful experience, it wouldn’t outright kill my targets. No, I needed something more lethal to add to this cocktail.

[Dead Man’s Agaric] - Uncommon

A highly toxic mushroom. The spores cause the lungs of mammals who inhale them to inflame, and consumption of the mushroom’s meat causes internal haemorrhaging within two days of the time of consumption. Leads consumers to a heavy trance-like state where they will hallucinate vividly.

One of the mushrooms that I’d forgone  in favour of my [Dead Man’s Cough]. The [Dead Man’s Agaric] didn’t have the spreading spore clouds. It released its spores at a much slower rate, and without the explosive burst. Plus, it was slower to kill.

But I didn’t mind that so much. If I poisoned my targets in the evening and they died in the morning, then that was a whole night’s separation between me and the target’s time of death. The hallucinogenic part was just a lovely cherry on top.

So, my week was spent cultivating both mushrooms in secret, growing them quickly until they were mature enough to harvest, then combining the two.

The first batch was an abject failure, and I almost gave up then and there.

But I decided to give it another go. The [Magebane] portion of the new mushroom might have been the reason for the failure. Maybe I just hadn’t given the mushroom enough of what it wanted. Raw mana.

I stuffed the mycelium of the combined mushroom into a pocket and carried it around with me for a couple of days. It drained my mana all day long, which was fantastically annoying.

Still, the result was... probably worth it.

[Dead Mage Agaric] - Rare

A powerful hallucinogenic mushroom that feeds on the consumer’s mana to create a web of mycelium within their body. Will continue to grow as it infects its victim until the victim expires or runs out of mana, after which it will break through their skin and spread fresh spores.

I wasn’t going to test this one on myself. In fact, I wanted nothing to do with it. But... well, it seemed too perfect not to use.

Also, the mushroom was just the cutest little guy. It had a broad hat, with purple striation and white warts all over it. The stem was fat and chubby, leading to a rim of ridges under the cap where the spores were stored. It was nice and squishy, too.

I cut the mushroom up into little chunks, then fitted those into a small bag. My tests showed that the mushroom’s effects weren’t diminished by alcohol, but it wasn’t breaking up in it either.

The targets would have to drink some small pieces mixed into their drinks. Maybe the bartender could pass it off as something else?

Well, I’d have to see.

As much as I wanted to keep on preparing things forever, that was impossible. Before I knew it, Milo’s birthday was only a couple of days away.

“I’ll be having it on Saturday,” Milo said one day at lunch. “Even though my actual birthday’s on Friday.”

“So that you can invite people?” I asked.

“Yeah, and because most people are off on Saturday. Dad said that his friends might want Sunday off, to sleep off the party,” Milo said.

“Do you think they’ll serve alcohol?” Andrew asked.

“Of course they will,” Montgomery said. “But not to you.”

“Hey, my dad lets me have some wine sometimes. And I’ve tried his bourbon. It tastes awful,” Andrew said.

“That’s because it’s a man’s drink, and you’ve got no hair on your chest,” Milo shot back.

There was jeering from across the table at that, and Milo looked particularly proud of himself. To be fair, he’d grown a little more confident over the last couple of days. I think my attempts to ingratiate myself and get to his party had been noticed, but it mostly meant that more people were trying to attend. Milo was basking in his sudden popularity. Even some of the Troll students had accosted him, asking for invites.

Sometimes, at night, I wrestled with the pre-emptive guilt.

Then I’d pop open a book in the library and see mention of some of the families of the Dragons in my year and the years above. They’d profited from famines and started wars to line their pockets with more wealth. The most innocent amongst them were those who’d merely profited from generations of accumulated, hoarded, wealth.

It was hard to feel bad for them in the abstract. It was only when I got to know them that it stung a little.

Not that it would stop me. I had a job to do.

And soon enough, the time came to do it. The last week was there before Milo’s birthday, and I’d secured a spot for myself as one of Milo’s friends.

A box arrived for me that same week, from my ‘uncle.’ It was filled with a random assortment of toys fresh off some assembly line. The Union likely had people on the line slip them away weeks before they were meant to be sold.

It was a decent enough gift to get me past the door and to provide some cover.

All my anxiety came to a head the Friday before Milo’s birthday. I snuck out that night and let Sir Nibbles out. If I couldn’t make it back to the school, then I’d at least want him to be free.

It was time to do my job.

***

Chapter Thirty-Seven

I woke up the morning of Milo’s birthday and jumped out of bed. Sir Nibbles not being in the room somehow made the tiny space a little more lonely than I would have expected. I was used to waking up at all hours of the night because he was taking a bite out of a finger or something.

It felt like a bit of an ill-omen, to wake up on the morning of an assassination feeling a bit sad.

I powered through it. I had a heap of things to do and not as much time to do them in as I would have liked. First, a shower, then I dressed in my best uniform. I didn’t have better, more presentable clothes, so I hoped that the academy’s uniform would let me pass as just another one of the boys.

There was a lot of power in being dressed a certain way. It allowed you to pass through doors that might otherwise be closed off. A servant would go unnoticed in a noble’s home, a janitor was invisible in bland corridors, and worker’s garb allowed you to pass through nearly any factory unbothered. I was hoping that the standard uniform would do the same for me.

Tugging on my jacket, I made sure it sat right before I left the washroom and then lingered in the main room of the dorms. I had a box with me, one covered in thin red wrapping paper and covered with a bow at the top.

A few of the early risers stared at the box, clearly curious, but I kept it close while reading through one of the books from the first year dorm’s little library. It was a text on how to improve memorization skills, basically an exercise book with simple maths questions where you had to recall a variable from several pages prior to solve the problems. It was actually kind of taxing, which meant it was probably a decent way to level skills like my [Academic Mind] ability.

Milo eventually stumbled out of his room, looking a bit droopy and yawning hard, but he perked up at the sight of me, and of the gift on the table. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Good morning Mister Milo,” I said without looking up from my book. “I’m certain I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Milo snorted. “Nice try, mister Killua, There’s a box between your feet. Also, you shouldn’t put your feet up on the table like that, if Mister Drake sees you, he might show you his cane.”

I grinned and pulled my legs back so that I was sitting properly. I had to guard the gift from prying hands. “Well, it seems to me that it’s a strange red box. There’s a small tag with your name on it, but I’m not certain if you should open it just yet.”

Milo laughed. “Oh, come on!”

“I don’t know. Do you deserve it?” I teased. Then I snapped the box away as Milo made a half-hearted attempt at it. “Ah-ah! Go take your shower, the mysterious box will still be here when you return.”

“I don’t need a shower.”

“You definitely need a shower. Aren’t you going to be meeting with a bunch of fancy folk today?” I challenged .

“Just some of my parent’s friends,” he dismissed, but he did trudge  off to the showers and returned in short order, hair still dripping wet. By then a few more boys had woken up and were enjoying the weekend vibes.

Montgomery slipped into the seat next to mine, then pointed to the gift. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Assurance,” I admitted in a low tone. “I’m going to guilt Milo into inviting me along with the promise of additional gifts. Plus the public display of me giving him a gift in front of everyone else will force him to have to reciprocate.”

Montgomery stared at me for a moment, then he snorted. “You’re not supposed to say it out loud, you know?”

“Oh, my bad,” I said.

Milo finished greeting the others, many of whom were wishing him a happy birthday, then he came over and placed hands on hips. “Can I open it now?” he asked.

I tossed him the box and he caught it, then there was a rush as wrapping paper was torn to shreds and so was the box beneath. Milo tipped the contents onto one of the coffee tables, and they spilled out as two pouches and a board.

“The board’s whatever,” I said. “But the pieces are neat!”

“It’s a chess set!” Milo said. He seemed genuinely pleased with the gift, which was a white and black set of pieces. They were made of forge-pressed lead and painted quite delicately in the form of little metal soldiers and mages and knights. The bishops had actual religious symbols on them, and the towers were replaced by mages, but otherwise chess was chess. “Is it enchanted?”

“You’ll have to do that yourself,” I said.

That seemed to light a fire under him and he started chattering on excitedly about the idea. I let him, and later on, when the time came and Milo said he was going to ride to his place, I bumped my shoulders against his and asked him if he would mind terribly if I rode along.

He grinned and said that it was fine.

Strange how I had to bum a ride to the house of the person I’d be targeting, but that’s just how it worked out.

I missed having my own car.

In fact, I kinda missed cars in general. Walkable cities were nice, but horses weren’t. They were too big, they stank, and I had the impression they didn’t like me very much.

Milo was heading out in the afternoon to be a bit early to his party, which suited me just fine. He left the dorm with a bunch of his friends, and I begged off, telling him I had to grab something before I could head over. I said I’d meet him by the gate.

First, however, I needed to pick up my poison of choice.

That meant circling around the Dragon dorm and heading to the basement where I slipped downstairs and looked for my stuff. I had some [Dead Man’s Cough] powder in a little sack, ready to be sprayed in someone’s face or to clear a room, some of that [Dead Mage’s Agaric] for the main job, and a few bits and bobs for emergencies. If I had to work in the dark, or if I got injured, then I’d have something to work with to get me out of there.

I hoped it didn’t come to that. At the moment, my nerves were on edge and I could feel my heart racing.

Maybe that’s why I wasn’t paying as much attention as I left the basement.

The first I noticed of Harbin was a hard shove to the side that sent me crashing down onto the grass in the shadow of the dormitory. I landed hard, but I’d been raised in the roughest part of town. I knew that staying down was as good as asking to die, so I rolled, even if it hurt, and bounced back to my feet.

Harbin was grinning, looking particularly proud of himself as he stood in the sun just a few feet away. “I knew you’d be there,” he said.

“What?” I asked as I looked around. There was only the two of us. Harbin hadn’t come with any of his friends.

“The basement. I saw you sneaking down there. So I waited. Did you think I’d forget about the lies you spread about me?” he asked. He closed a hand over a fist and cracked his knuckles.

I put two and two together. “You’ve been waiting to ambush me?” I asked.

“Just need to remind you of your place. And this time there’s no teacher, no friends, just you and me,” Harbin said.

This wasn’t great. I had a job to do, and I didn’t have time to waste on this. “Harbin, sod off,” I said. “I don’t want to play your stupid games.”

Harbin spat between us. “Too bad.” He started towards me.

“Hey!” I said. “You know what’s great about not having friends or teachers around.”

“You’re not talking your way out of this one, Killua,” he warned as he came closer.

I ignored that. “The great thing is, there’s no witnesses.”

I wasn’t a fighter. My skills and classes didn’t lend themselves to fighting, and I didn’t have the right mindset for it. What I was, however, was someone who was always desperate to win, and I had tools to make sure I’d come out on top.

Harbin paused as I let loose the shackles on my mana. I’d noticed that a few students had a small utility spell or two, but most barely touched on real, skill-based mana at all. That was reserved for the mages, the upper-years who wanted to be personally powerful instead of wielding power through capital.

Harbin’s eyes narrowed. I don’t know if he noticed the grass growing greener around his feet or the air smelling sweeter.

“Please, just go back to your pals, leave me be,” I said.

“I’ll leave you be once I’ve knocked a few teeth loose,” he growled back.

“Okay,” I said.

Then I turned the magic swirling around him into a [Blight] and waited for his screaming to stop.

***

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“About time,” Milo said. “I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”

I grinned and pulled myself up and into the carriage, then flopped down onto the seat opposite Milo with a huff. “Sorry,” I said. “I had to run all the way here.”

Milo’s carriage, or the Milo family carriage, I supposed, was a rather ostentatious old thing. All dark wooden panelling with silver paint to embellish it. The doors had a large crest that I had no idea how to read on it. If it wasn’t for the large M atop it, I might have been confused about which carriage to get into.

The interior was nice. I glanced around, taking it all in. There was embroidered cloth on the ceiling and a multitude of tassels, the seats were fat and plush and rather comfortable. It reminded me a little of a luxury car on Earth. Which only made sense, the first luxury cars were probably modelled after coaches just like this one. “Nice carriage,” I said.

“Hm? Oh, thanks. We don’t usually take out the nice coach, but seeing as how it’s my birthday and all,” Milo said dismissively.

“That makes sense,” I said.

“So, what made you nearly late?” Milo asked.

The truth was that I was picking up after myself. Or rather, after Harbin.

I... I didn’t kill him.

I wanted to. He was a pain in the ass, and he knew some stuff which might jeopardise my operation here. But I didn’t. He was just a kid. A jerk of a kid, who’d probably grow up to be a jerk of a man, but I couldn’t bring myself to just kill him.

Maybe I was too sentimental.

There were practical reasons too, of course. A dead student would require investigation. Two deaths in the same year would be impossible to cover up. Even if he went missing, that’d still require some investigations.

But those practicalities weren’t why I did it. I left him alive for purely sentimental reasons.

“Gunther?” Milo asked.

“Hmm? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I tripped on the way out of the dorms,” I said. “Banged my foot up real bad.”

“Really? Do you want to go back to the nurses?” Milo asked. He was smiling, clearly thinking this was funny, but he was setting aside his mirth to see if I was okay.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I managed to run all the way here, didn’t I?”

The truth was that I’d used [Blight] to attack Harbin, rotting away his flesh in a few spots. Then, when he went down with a scream, I laid into him with a few good kicks to the gut and ribs.

The damage would look like he’d gotten a beating, which he had, and which he honestly deserved. I left him alive back there.

He knew about the basement, but if he ventured down there and got himself killed from touching the mushrooms I had growing then that was on him. I didn’t think he’d be able to do much more than crawl his way to the nurse’s office. And if he told anyone that I’d kicked his ass, then that would only ruin his reputation more.

“Did anyone see you?” Milo asked with a grin.

I laughed. “No, I don’t think so. I hope not!”

We continued to chat as the carriage took off. I heard the ‘yeah!’ of the driver above and the crack of the reins before hooves clattered on the cobbles and we took off.

The ride was surprisingly smooth. I’d been led to expect carriage rides were all bumpy and hard, but this wasn’t so bad. The extremely plush seats helped too.

I watched the city scroll by in fits and starts as we made our way across the hillsides of the nicer parts of City Nineteen. Milo and I kept up the chatter, of course. We complained about teachers, spread baseless gossip, and Milo told a few amusing stories about his previous birthdays and a few vacations he and his family had been on.

I could hardly meet his stories with my own, but I could ask questions and keep him talking.

Soon, we were out of the nice, rich part of City Nineteen and into the old, rich part of the city. The mansions here were larger, with better stakes on the land. There was actually some farming going on here, if wine vineyards and a few pastures for prize livestock counted as farming.

We rolled past a few estates with grand gates and tall fenced-in walls before the carriage turned off the road and onto a more private roadway. I resisted the urge to gawk as we finally came to a stop.

The driver jumped down, and before I could reach the door it was opened to let us out. “Welcome home, Mister Michael,” the driver said as Milo jumped out.

Right, I’d have to keep that in mind. Milo was the family’s name, and what everyone called the men of the family, but at the moment, Milo’s father was the resident... Milo.

As I stepped out of the carriage I noticed that a few of my plans would have some issues.

For one, I expected the home to be closer to the city itself. Maybe a large home with its neighbours relatively close by, and while this estate wasn’t enormous, the nearest homes were some hundred yards away to either side, past tall wrought-iron fences and through yards with hedges.

If I had to run it would be impossible to disappear into the city.

The mansion was a large, blocky building made of locally quarried stone. The main building was three floors, with the wings on either side reduced to a single floor each. In a way, it mimicked the layout of the Academy, though writ small.

“Come on, Gunther!” Milo said. “I’ll show you around before people start to arrive.”

“Sure,” I said. “Hey, do you need help with your bags?”

Milo waved my concern off. “The help will grab them,” he said.

“Right, of course,” I said as I kept up with him and moved up the steps into the entrance. I noticed that there weren’t any other carriages around, so we were the first here.

The interior was just as grand as the outside. The doors were heavy, ornately carved slabs of wood that lead into a parlour that was so bright it was almost an assault to the eyes.

The walls had several paintings on them, mostly of colourful fruit or exotic birds, and the rug laid out on the carpet was a woven tapestry of rioting colours.

“I know,” Milo said. “My mother has a thing  for bright colours. Dad convinced her that she could decorate the parlour and only the parlour. The rest of the house isn’t so weird.”

“That’s alright,” I said as I followed him to the left.

“Kitchens and such are on the east wing,” he said with a gesture to the right. “Washrooms are all over. The doors are left open so they’re easy to find. Oh, this is the family living room.”

We entered a room with a few velvet-covered sofas surrounding a coffee table. A bookcase ran the length of one wall, and its opposite had several windows looking into the back yard. A set of oil paintings hung on the walls, paintings of the family. A younger Milo was featured in the latest of these paintings, though the previous ones showed his father going from an aged man to a young boy himself, with members coming and going from the paintings.

There was history  to this place, I realized.

And I was about to add a dark cast to that history.

With Milo leading the way, we traversed the house, through wide hallways and spacious rooms. His mother's taste in decoration did, indeed, seem to stay relegated to the parlour. The rest of the house was a balance of refined opulence and sober practicality.

We went up a staircase, then Milo brought me to a door which he threw open. “This is my room!” he said.

It was a nice room. Large and well-appointed, with a bed that had more space than my home in the slums and a few shelves stuffed full of toys and trophies. There was an easel with an unfinished landscape painting on it, and a violin in a case.

“You play the violin?” I asked.

“A little,” he said shyly. “I like it, but not enough to join the music club. You play it too, right?”

“No, I make horrific noises beyond human comprehension with the violin, it’s not the same.”

Milo laughed. “Oh! You need to meet my parents. And sign the guest book too! Come on!”

I followed after him. The more I travelled through the house, the better prepared I’d be.

***

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Oh, you must be Milo’s little friend. He mentioned you in his letters, you know.”

“Mum!”

I smiled up at the middle-aged woman standing before me. Misses  Milo was quite the pretty lady. Tall, with the same aristocratic cheekbones as Milo himself and currently dressed in a fashionable gown and flashy heels. She didn’t seem like the eccentric woman that I’d imagined after seeing that opening room.

Then again, her dress was on the more colourful side, as were her shoes. “It’s nice to meet you,” I said while giving her a little bow. “I like your dress, it’s very colourful.”

She chuckled. “Little charmer. Why thank you, I’m quite fond of it myself. Now, do avoid  teaching my little boy how to be suave, I have enough difficulty with his father.”

“Of course, ma’am,” I replied.

She patted me on the shoulder, then gave Milo’s forehead a smooch which left a lip-shaped print just below his hairline. “You boys have fun now, and no misbehaving, even if you think you can get away with it on your birthday.”

“Yes, Mum,” Milo said. As soon as his mom was past he started to vigorously rub at his forehead. “I hate it when she kisses my head like that. It’s embarrassing.”

“It’s not so bad,” I said as I licked my thumb then started to smear the makeup on his forehead around some more. Milo grimaced, but he didn’t stop me from helping.

The two of us were back on the lower floor, now in the eastern wing of the building in a corridor next to the mansion’s ballroom. It was a large room made somewhat smaller by the presence of two grand tables surrounded by seats.

Milo and his family would have pride of place, of course, but otherwise it seemed that anyone could sit wherever they wanted.

The party was meant to be somewhat informal, from what I’d gathered. At least, as informal as a party for the nobility could be. There were maids and house staff bustling around, cleaning up last minute things, setting up the tables, and generally preparing for the arrival of the first guests.

“So, do you want to get the introductions done now or later?” Milo asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know, the cheek pinching and the handshakes. We can either stand by the door and suffer through it all in one go, or we can linger around here and get ambushed every few minutes.”

“Oh, right. Probably best to get it over with. Plus we’ll be able to see if any of our friends arrive.” I grinned. “And we’ll be able to see the gifts coming!”

Milo laughed. “That’ll just make it worse. You know I don’t handle anticipation well.”

I patted him on the back. “Yeah, but it’s funny to see you squirm.”

Milo snorted in a very inappropriate manner, then led the way towards the front of the house and that strangely decorated parlour.

During the tour, we’d slipped past the kitchens in the east wing, and I’d noticed some temporary staff working there. They were easy to make out, seeing as how they didn’t have the house’s uniforms which all featured the Milo ‘M’ heraldry over their hearts.

I’d have to find a way to get in touch with some of them later. For now, we moved over to the side while a few footmen came in and out. Milo started talking about a sporting event he’d been to a while ago with his father and I listened while making the appropriate sounds.

A few carriages were lazily pulling into the driveway. The party wasn’t due to start for another two hours, but it seemed like punctuality was something of a way of life for some nobles. Milo and I stepped outside, but remained at the top of the stairs. There was an order to this. Milo would stand a step ahead, trying hard to look proper and dignified while I stood a step behind and to his right. Out of the way but still present.

Had I been to his left, that would have marked me as a sort of manservant of something. At his right, I was a friend who was giving him pride of place, which was only appropriate seeing as how this was his birthday.

The amount of little moves and systems of propriety was frustrating for an outsider like myself. There were a few books about it in the Academy library, but what was and wasn’t in fashion changed often enough that those were nearly useless.

The only purpose it served, besides acting as a sort of social lubricant to keep things moving, was as a way to make interactions between those ‘in the know’ and those without as obscure and confusing as possible for those not in the in-group.

No wonder the new-rich thought the nobility were so incredibly snobbish.

I wondered if these traditions would hold. At the moment in City Nineteen, a lot of the wealth was in the hands of industrialists. The nobility were older money, slower to move and slower to gain new capital, but still hanging onto their old wealth and definitely still holding onto old political power.

It was a bit of a headache.

Milo did a good job of navigating it, greeting people as they came up the steps with smiles and handshakes and earning his fair share of additional lipstick stains on his cheeks. I got off a bit lighter.

Eventually a few more boys from the Academy arrived, a couple from our year, and more from the senior years. That made our group large enough that we were crowding the steps, but that was fine.

Then a carriage rolled in, and I found myself straightening a little.

The heraldry on its side looked like a kiteshield, one face had a green square and a blue-and-black striped quarter. The other side had the side-profile of a goblin’s face, teeth bared.

The carriage came to a stop and a hobgoblin leapt from the driver’s seat and opened the door.

The man and women who stepped out ignored the hobgoblin as though it were never there. They were both dressed appropriately for the event, and the woman had a small gift-wrapped box in her hands.

“Is that Count Coller?” I asked one of the boys.

He glanced at the man, then nodded. “And his wife, yeah,” he said.

Count Coller was a somewhat influential noble, not to mention one who was rather prosperous. His family had been some of the first to establish themselves in City Nineteen. Unlike many of the others, instead of focusing on gaining wealth by working the land or starting an industry, they had focused on servicing the other industrial needs of the city.

His workers formed a block of trained employees that could be rented out to any factory in need of professionals. It was a decent service in a city with so many factories. He also had other services. Accounting, security, foremen and clerks, all available to those willing to pay.

If that was all, then I don’t think the Union would have cared too much about him, though his people often served as scabs.

What made this man a target was his ownership of something like three-quarters of the goblin slave population in the city. He had long ago pivoted from using trained human employees and now ran most of the disposable goblin labour systems.

It made him a very rich man.

Milo greeted him with a smile, and he returned it. The count was fairly young, maybe in his early thirties, and he seemed both energetic and charismatic, rubbing Milo’s head and making a few quick jokes with him before moving on.

I kept an eye on him as he moved inside. One of three targets confirmed.

The next didn’t take long to show up.

Their carriage was an older one, but well-maintained. The noble that stepped out of it opened the door on his own and walked over. Most noblemen carried canes as a fashion statement, but this man needed his. He was an elderly gentleman, rough and rugged looking.

Baron Erspell, an older family that had never risen to any great prominence. He had several thousand acres of land some ways from the city, and he had a number of smaller factories on the edge.

He cared for livestock and fertiliser, and I was uncertain as to why he was a target. There wasn’t much I could dig up on him. Did he mistreat his workers? That was possible, but they were so far from the city that it was hard to tell.

In any case, he shook hands with Milo who then shook his hand out once the baron was past. Looked like the old man had a hard grip.

I nodded to him as he moved on, and he didn’t return the gesture.

Two of three, and the last was Milo’s father. It was about time to move on to the next part, then.

***

Chapter Forty

Milo had a heap of gifts placed in the dining room by the time the last of the guests were coming in. More than that, he had a lot of friends around too. Kids that I recognized from the Academy, a few that were a year or two too young. They even had a few girls, though they were being a little standoffish at the moment.

The birthday party had that energy to it that I hadn’t felt in a lifetime. People were talking, laughing, and having a good time. I was mostly stuck with the boys, and the adults were giving us all a wide berth since the boys were... louder than might be appropriate.

At the same time, it felt entirely allowable for the kids to be kids right then.

Unfortunately, I had a job to do.

There was a small bar to one side of the main ball   room, a long counter with a few staff members behind it. One of them wasn’t wearing the Milo family insignia.

I glanced at Milo and the others who were starting to head out to the back, then I peeled off.

With all of my anti-notice skills pushed to their limit, I just walked across the room towards the bar counter. I was just another one of the kids, maybe one who was a little thirsty. There was nothing weird to see here.

I came up next to the bar, then waited for a little bit. The staff member that was part of the house staff was coming and going with small crates of bottles. They set one down, then left. Which meant that the only person behind the counter was my contact.

“Are your tips shared?” I asked.

The bartender jumped. He was a younger guy, maybe in his late twenties, with a bit of fuzz on his lips and that sort of clueless look that suggested that he wasn’t the brightest spark. “Huh?”

“I said, are your tips shared?”

He blinked, then nodded. “Yep, sure are. Did you, uh, plan to give one?”

“Less than a pound,” I said.

He nodded again. A call and response code like that wasn’t exactly elegant, but it was more subtle than me just asking him if he was my contact. “Here, you can have some water,” he said as he reached for a clear glass bottle from a shelf. There had to be some sort of magic or enchantment at play, because the bottle had a small wave of vapour coming off of it.

“Thanks,” I said as he poured me a cup. As I reached for it, I dropped a small vial on the counter which rolled over to him. He snatched it up without comment. “You know which drinks to put that in?” I murmured.

He should have known, but I wasn’t all that confident in the ability of the Union when it came to this kind of job.

“I know,” he said. “Enjoy your water.”

I thanked him and swallowed the entire cup in one go. It was surprisingly nice and refreshing.

With that bit of my job done, I headed out again.

If everything went perfectly, then that would be the entire job. The poison would kill all three targets. I suspected that it was fairly slow acting overall. It might take an hour or so for them to pass from it.

More than long enough for me to get out of here once the party ended, I hoped.

My initial plan was to make myself scarce right about then, but the mansion was too separate from the other buildings in the area. I couldn’t just sneak off into an alleyway. Besides, that plan made me look a little suspicious.

I found the boys in the backyard, kicking a ball around. There were two goals made from a few yardworking  tools obviously stolen from a shed, and some of the adults were lingering around, watching the kids have their fun.

As I joined the boys in the backyard, I noticed that the sun was just starting to dip towards the horizon. Had it been that long already? I kicked the ball around, shouted some, and generally tried to blend in with the others. We weren’t playing hard, not with so many mothers standing nearby ready to tug on some ears if anyone got their clothes muddied up.

After a few minutes of kicking the ball around, Milo’s mother came outside. She smiled as she looked over us all, then she clapped her hands for attention. “Excuse me, everyone, dinner is about to be served! Come! Let me welcome you into the dining room.”

Everyone filed in, though it was at a leisurely pace. I darted to the washroom to wash up, then headed back into the dinning room where I was quick to find a seat not too far from the doors further into the house.

It would leave my back uncovered, but would give me a good view of the front of the room.

People took their time to sit down while servants and staff ran around setting the table down with last-minute things. Once everyone was settled, the man at the end of the main table stood. Milo’s father, who was unmistakably related to the boy. He was a bigger, larger Milo, with an extra foot on his son and an extra chin as well. “Ladies and gentlemen, young friends of my boy Micheal , and the rest of you old bandi ts ,” Baron Milo began, his voice projecting across the room. I felt a warmth suffuse me, warmth and a companionable joy. A skill? That’d make a lot of sense for a political figure to have. “First, let me thank you all for coming to celebrate my boy’s birthday today. Seeing him, seeing my family, surrounded by such amazing friends fills my heart with immense happiness.”

The speech continued for a while, and I realized that no amount of oration skills would turn a long-winded speech into something actually enjoyable. Still, the speech did serve a purpose, it let the staff start to serve people in a quiet frenzy.

The speech ended with a quick round of applause, then the dinner started for real. I didn’t just stare across the room. There was a family of three sitting across from me, mother, father and daughter, and the mother struck up a conversation with me about the Academy and how I knew Milo. Innocent banter of the same sort that I could hear across the dining hall.

The food was fantastic. Lots of vegetables and thin cuts of meat with some sort of succulent sauce. It was genuinely hard for me to eat at a reasonable pace. Of course the Milos would try to show off with the food, it was the family’s main business so it was only reasonable that they show off what they were able to make.

Once the main courses were done, the wine came out again, for the adults, of course. There didn’t seem to be an official end to the meal. People just relaxed, stood, and started to form little groups here and there while the staff came out with dozens of plates with small slices of cake on them.

More staff came in, carrying the boxes and gifts that Milo had received and creating a big heap to one side. Soon enough, the birthday boy himself was there, ripping boxes apart while others watched on. I joined the other boys in that corner of the room, but my attention kept straying to the other end.

Milo senior and a few of the adults were gathered together, pipes came out, and they seemed to have moved on to talk about business.

The bartender moved over to them, all smiles as he let the men pick cups from the tray he held in one hand.

As he turned, our eyes met, and he gave me the slightest nod.

It was done.

Or it would be, probably. I watched as the men all gathered up and started to move through the ballroom. At a guess, they’d be heading upstairs, to one of the smoking rooms where they could be on their own and do their own thing.

I watched lord Milo take a sip from what I suspected was a cup of brandy. He grinned until he was out of the room.

Then I had to turn back and pretend to pay attention to Milo and his gift unwrapping.

The evening continued. People laughed, they gossipped, Milo showed off his toys and thanked those that gave them to him. It was a nice event.

Then someone stumbled in from upstairs, looking a little pale. “Is there a healer here? Baron Erspell  has fainted !”

****

Chapter Forty-One

There was a hush after the news came, then a sudden spark as the nobles and busybodies started to chatter between themselves.

One ran over to the staff member that had called for help, then they both darted out of the room. “Will he be okay?” I asked.

“That was Lord Gills,” Milo said. “He’s a doctor, so he should be able to take care of Baron Erspell.”

“Oh, that’s good to know,” I said. It really wasn’t. I hadn’t considered it before, but it was entirely possible that a doctor from this world could mitigate or stop the effects of my poisons outright. A doctor from Earth wouldn’t be able to do anything, not without access to a full medical suite, but here? There were probably spells and skills that could work against a poison. “We should go see what’s up,” I said.

Milo blinked, then looked at all of his toys and the devastation he’d left in his wake as he opened them. “I... guess so, yeah,” he said.

That was enough to encourage all of the others to follow suit. Not that it would take much to convince them. Watching Milo open his gifts was probably not nearly as fun for them as it was for him, and whatever was going on upstairs was much, much better gossip.

As one, we filed out through the room, then Milo gestured to the side and out into one of the corridors away from the stairs. “There’s another staircase up,” he said. “For the staff. No one will be guarding that one.”

That was nice to know. Milo led our little group of gossips  and troublemakers through his home, then into the staff quarters which were, unsurprisingly, full of house staff and contracted help. They didn’t seem ready to stop the lot of us from climbing up a much tighter staircase up to the second floor.

Once at the top of the stairs, Milo opened a door and peeked his head out. “It’s clear,” he hissed back.

This had suddenly taken on the airs of some sort of spy fiction. The bad sort. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes as the boys snuck out of the stairwell and into one of the corridors deep into one of the wings of the house.

“The smoking room is this way,” Milo said.

We moved back towards the centre of the mansion, but came to a stop by the next corner. There were voices deeper in, men talking to each other in frustrated tones.

Milo came closer to the corner, then leaned in. The rest of us squeezed in closer. I would have rather not been stuck in the middle, but that’s where I ended up anyways.

Since I didn’t feel like being squished, I stepped out to Milo’s side, then crouched down onto one knee and stuck just enough of my head out so that I could see around the corner with one eye.

There were three men arguing out in the corridor. Milo’s father, Lord Gills the doctor, and Count Coller. Behind them were the open doors leading into a study, and more men milled within. From the downcast looks and the number of drawn brows, it seemed as though no one was happy.

“This is a travesty,” Baron Milo said.

The doctor shook his head. “It happens more often than you’d think. We’re just fragile creatures in the end.”

“Are you certain there’s nothing you can do?” Count Coller asked.

“I’ve told you already, I can’t bring back the dead. Call a coroner, or a brother of Dearil. Maybe try not to let the children and the women see this.”

“Better do that sooner rather than later, Milo,” the count said. “Wouldn’t want old Erspell stinking the place up .”

“Be civil, Coller, he was our friend.”

Count Coller sighed. “Yes, he was. Dammit. We have to tell Cecile.”

Baron Milo groaned. “She’s going to be loud.”

“She’s always loud. But yes, she will make a scene. Are we sure she didn’t poison him?” the count asked.

Baron Milo sniffed. “No, I’m certain she would have done that twenty years ago. His kids... ah, we’ll need to let them know as well.”

“They’re not here, are they? We’ll figure that out later,” the count said. He turned to Lord Gills and patted the man on the shoulder. “Thank you for your help. Do you think you could go down and wait for the coroner? We’ll try to be discreet  about this.”

“Of course,” the lord said. “I’ll stay here for a while though, I’m used to dealing with the... dead, more so than most.”

“Thank you,” Baron Milo said. He pressed a hand to his chest, and the count turned his way.

“Are you okay, Milo?”

“Fine. The stress is giving me heartburn. I’ll go to the kitchen and grab a glass of something from there, you two stay busy.”

The baron started our way and Milo and I slipped back in a hurry. “Quick! Back downstairs!” Milo hissed.

The boys hurried back towards the entrance to the staircase--which happened to be in the middle of a wall, the door was designed to be nearly invisible once closed. I followed them for a ways, then moved to the side and into an open washroom. I pulled the door quietly closed behind me and activated all of my stealth skills. Hopefully no one would notice that I was missing for a moment.

 One target was down and dead, and it didn’t seem as if anyone was suspecting foul play. That was... actually, pretty darned good.

If the rest of the mission didn’t amount to anything, then I’d still be in a pretty good spot. I could tell the Union that the opportunity to take out the other two didn’t come up, and I’d be able to leave without raising any suspicion.

Baron Erspell  was an old man. I didn’t have his exact age, but he was at least in his late seventies. He’d been married for well over forty years, and that was with his second wife. He was part of the old, old blood.

His keeling over mid-party wasn’t all that surprising. Sure, there were magical items and potions to keep one healthy for longer, but there was only so much they could do against ageing, and judging by the shape of the man, he was a fan of drinking and eating his fill.

People died at unfortunate times, it happened, and hopefully that alone would be enough to disperse any suspicion.

That the doctor hadn’t caught on to anything was good too. Maybe his skills relied on healing the living, and those who were dead, and therefore  beyond healing, were beyond their ability to do anything about?

Maybe the coroner  would figure something out.

I pressed my ear against the door and listened to the boys scampering down the stairs. They were far from stealthy. Then Baron Milo came down the hall. He was moving at a much slower rate, and I thought I heard him grunt.

Had the poison reached him too?

The door rattled, and I stepped back and quickly pulled on the chain of the toilet. “One moment!” I called out. I took my time washing my hands, aware that the person on the other side--the baron, obviously--hadn’t moved.

“There, all done,” I said as I unlocked the door and opened it.

Baron Milo was looking a little pale, pale and sweaty. “Ah, thank you,” he said. “What are you doing upstairs?”

“Needed to use the washroom, sir. There’s a line of ladies downstairs. You know how women are.”

“Heh, yes, I imagine, go on now.”

I slipped past him, then paused to watch the Baron move on by. He was not well.

I wasn’t sure what the effects of my [Dead Mage Agaric] would be on an adult human, but I imagined that it would kill rather rapidly in most cases.

The baron, with his familial blessing to resist poisons, wouldn’t be the ideal case.

The door shut, and I glanced around. There was a bench nearby. I moved over to it, then carefully, slowly, lifted it up and brought it down before the doorway.

It was a last-minute thing, but if the baron never left the washroom, that might stall anyone from discovering his corpse for that much longer.

With a quick check to see if I still looked presentable, I made my way down the corridor and around the bend, walking as if I had every right in the world to be there. Being semi-familiar with Milo’s place helped.

On passing by the entrance of the smoking room, I slowed my steps and looked within.

The men were all to one side. There was a cloth draped over a body sitting on a lounge chair to one side of the room. A small table sat next to it, two glasses of alcohol resting on it.

Two?

I searched for Count Coller and found him talking to the others, looking as hale and hearty as ever.

So, I’d only gotten two out of three. Somehow that was more frustrating than getting one in three.

Maybe I could do something about it?

***

Chapter Forty-Two

I returned to hang out with the other boys, and discovered that they hadn’t even noticed that I was missing. I didn’t envy the job of anyone trying to investigate this whole situation, not when there were so many potential witnesses and half of them weren’t paying attention to much at all.

Then again, it was probably to my benefit that the people here weren’t attentive to much. It would make covering my tracks that much easier. Plus... I suspected that the nobility here weren’t used to being questioned about anything.

If a bully came up to one of them, would they even give the officer the time of day? These were, ostensibly, the rulers of this city. There was no way that they were willing to subject themselves to an inquiry.

Hopefully that would be enough to muddle any pursuit.

The poison I used was definitely mushroom-y, and I’d have to be careful moving forward. Any future targets taken down with the same method would point in the same direction, and that was probably not something I could afford.

The party continued on for a little while. The staff served a second course of deserts, this time mostly small pastries and warmer drinks to chase off the evening’s growing chill. Some of the adults had clearly been drinking more than their fill of wine and were a bit on the tipsy side of things, but no more than I would have expected from a party of this size.

I could almost feel the news circulating. Shocked gasps, looks of incredulity, people looking around in momentary confusion before they realized that there was nothing they could do.

The boys, of course, were aware that something  had happened. They just didn’t know what . And that, of course, lead to rampant speculation.

“It’s a conspiracy,” one of them said. “Obviously Milo’s dad is in on it, so’s the count, and now they’ve discovered that someone leaked their plans. There’s probably a spy in the house.”

“That doesn’t go against my idea that they’re covering up a murder,” another boy said. He was one of the older boys here, a third year at the Academy, which made him all of fifteen with the confidence of a twenty-five year old.

Milo nodded sagely. “I bet I know what it is,” he said.

“Oh?” I asked.

“They called Lord Gills up, so it has to be that someone’s sick . Maybe Baron Erspell  walked through the poor quarters of the city and picked up some sort of weird peasant sickness.”

“That’s silly,” the fifteen-year old said. “That’s not how sicknesses work.”

I was a little annoyed about the insinuation that just a walk through the slums I’d been born in could make someone sick, but it was probably not entirely inaccurate. Sickness was rampant. Mostly because the very people in this mansion didn’t care enough to push for better sanitation and more medical help, but that didn’t prevent it from being true.

“Maybe he got one of those gentleman’s curses from visiting a lady friend,” one of the boys said with a devilish grin.

The others ‘ewwed’ appropriately at the insinuation.

“Maybe everyone’s right?” Andrew asked.

“How?” Milo asked.

“Okay, so it goes like this... there’s the conspiracy between the lords, and because they want to keep things hush-hush, Baron Erspell visits the slums himself. Of course, their contact would have to be a lady of the night. He spends the evening with her, probably yesterday. Then he comes to this party with his wife, of course. But it turns out that the lady was a counterspy the whole time, and she poisoned him, so he came here, and dies while having a smoke with Milo’s dad.”

“That could work,” one of the boys said.

I shrugged. “Sure, that’s as likely as anything,”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Milo said.

“I’m not convinced that anyone has died,” I said.

The rumours continued even as the news itself spread. A few people took it poorly, and I noticed more than one lady run out of the ballroom in tears. Then a group of them came to encircle one older lady in particular. She was led off, clearly confused and dreading something, to a room off to one side.

The door was closed, but we could still hear her anguished screams.

“Does that sound like the scream of someone that discovered their husband cheating, or dead?” one of the boys asked.

It earned him a smack in the side. “Don’t be an ass. Lady Erspell just got some bad news.”

The boy huffed. “Still funny,” he muttered.

I noticed a few families starting to pack it in to leave. The boys left, one after the other, and once enough people started to leave, it started something of an exodus. The party was officially over, even if no one had declared it.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do from that point on. My original plan had been scamper  away, but I wasn’t so sure now. I sure wasn’t going to spend the night here though.

Then I noticed Count Coller coming downstairs and meeting his wife. They spoke a bit, then she nodded and left the area. He headed towards the front exit and from where I stood I was just barely able to see him grabbing his coat from a hook. He was waylaid by a few others who started to chat him up, however.

“I need to use the washroom,” I said before leaving the others. It was incredible how versatile that excuse was.

Slipping out of the back, I quickly jogged around the mansion and towards the stables.

A number of carriages were being tended to already. Some had occupants, but most were just being checked over by their drivers. The parking situation was somewhat complicated in a way that I wasn’t used to. Not only were carriages a lot larger than cars, they had horses. It wasn’t like they could just turn the carriage off and leave it there. The horses needed to be cared for and watched over for however many hours the event lasted for.

A few staff members seemed to be hard at work keeping everything orderly, but they were so busy that a boy in the Academy uniform slipping past them wasn’t worth their notice.

Finding Count Coller’s carriage was easy enough, it had his family’s coat of arms slapped onto the side. And, of course, the carriage was guarded.

I moved past it as if looking for something else, but there was no mistaking the two hobgoblins working on the carriage as anything other than trouble. Maybe if there was only one, I might have been able to deal with them, but two?

Cursing my luck, I moved around the back of the stable, then started walking down the driveway towards the exit.

The situation wasn’t ideal, but, I did know exactly where my target was at the moment, and where he’d be for the next few minutes.

Which was an opportunity, of sorts. I just had to come up with some way to exploit that opportunity.

What did I have on me? A few powdered mushrooms and... not much else.

Maybe that was enough?

The moment I was out of the gate, I looked both ways. To the right led deeper into the part of the city with more mansions. The left led back towards the city proper.  Coller was... old money. One of the oldest noble families in City Nineteen, actually. So it stood to reason that his family’s estate would be closer to the city itself.

It was the best guess I had.

I took off at a slow jog, then stopped and slowed down some ways ahead. The road up here was paved and well-maintained, even though it had little traffic except for nobles travelling about. It also failed to branch out. There was one road in, and one road out of this section of the city, and I could vaguely recall some of the sections at the base of the hills having older fortifications.

There was a section with three sharp turns that allowed a carriage to travel down the cliffs  and into the rest of the city. I watched a carriage come around the first corner. The carriage had to hug the cliff’s wall to make as wide a turn as possible.

There were some bushes there, clinging to the cliff face.

I grinned. I had something of a plan, then.

Running up to the wall while there weren’t any carriages around, I scampered up the sharp incline, cursing as I collected gravel in my shoes and scuffed my knees against the rocks. Still, I managed to climb up and behind one of those scraggly bushes.

When the next carriage passed, it was close enough that I could almost reach out and touch it.

Perfect.

Now all I needed to do was wait for Count Coller to pass on by. That took a long while. I sat in the growing dark, deeply aware of the chill of night creeping in while I clung onto a small jar filled with mushroom powder. It was just a tiny amount, enough to maybe spray into a person’s face in an emergency.

I had no idea if this would work.

The clatter of hooves further up the road had me peeking out from behind the bush again, and I found myself tensing with anticipation as I recognized the carriage and the hobgoblins riding it.

They came closer and closer, riding along at a peaceful pace. The only light around now was the carriage light planted next to the drivers. “Slow down for this bit,” one of them said.

“I know what I’m doing,” the other growled back.

I bit my tongue and opened the jar.

Then the horses were right in front of me and my arm shot out.

I sprayed a heavy dusting of mushroom spores into the air ahead of the horses.

And then they were past, and so was the carriage.

I leaned back against the stone wall and waited. It was done in any case, whether I succeeded or not.

A  whinn e y  from further down the road, followed by some shouts from the driver had my heart leaping up in my chest.

I scampered down the hillside and ran to the edge of the road, only stopping when I hit the guardrail so that I could see what was going on.

One of the two horses pulling the carriage was going nuts, its head swaying while it whinied and panicked. The drivers tugged at its rei g ns, but it was too late. It had taken a nice sniff of some of my most potent hallucinogens.

The horse swerved into the rocky wall, smashing itself into it, then the carriage. The hobgoblin drivers tugged it the other way.

It went that way.

I gasped as the entire carriage charged off to one side, smashed into the guardrail, then rumbled right through it. The horses and drivers screamed as they were sent flying off the cliff.

I pulled back.

Either the count had made it, or he didn’t.

In either case, I needed to get back to somewhere warm.

***

Chapter Forty-Three

The last Language class of the day ended with the ringing of the Academy’s bell, and I let out a long sigh as I leaned back into my seat. The sheet in front of me was nearly complete, but nearly wasn’t entirely.

It was only a couple of months into the school year and already the homework was starting to pile up. I glanced at the others in the class, and it was easy to tell at a glance that I was ahead of most of them. Less work for me tonight, but less wasn’t none.

At least it was a Friday. I could put off doing the work for a little bit, though it would be better for me to take care of everything in one go.

“Hey, Gunther, you going to sit there all day?” Montgomery asked.

“I’m thinking about it,” I said. Still, I got up and started to pack my things away while the boy waited for me. “Early supper?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “After we stuff things in the dorm though, I don’t want to carry our stuff into the cafeteria.”

“Yeah, that’s not a bad idea,” I said. There were a million reasons why kids would pick on each other at the Academy. Bringing your stuff into the lunch room was just one of them. Montgomery and I slipped out of the class, some of the last ones out since I’d held us up.

“Feels weird,” he said.

“What does?”

“We were all kind of together, you know? The first years . Then Milo left and now everything’s different.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I said. It had only been a week since Milo’s birthday party, and the rumours and news about it were still on every lip. Four members of the nobility dead  in the same evening. Just one dying on Milo’s birthday would have been enough to set tongues wagging, but so many?

No one thought it was a coincidence. And no one knew what had happened or how.

I’d been keeping up with the news, and the stories that had gone mainstream so far were terribly and wildly inaccurate. No two papers agreed on the causes, but it was easy to see where their biases were. The more new-rich influenced papers called it a series of tragedies. Baron Erspell  had died of old age, Baron Milo had passed from the shock and stress of the incident, and the Count’s carriage going over a cliff and killing both himself and his wife was an unforeseen accident, likely caused--they suggested--by a lack of regulations with regards to goblin work.

The newspapers owned by the nobility suggested that Erspell  and Milo were both either poisoned or killed by some vile, treacherous magic, and that the same had been used on the Count’s drivers to drag them off a cliff.

That was disturbingly close to the truth, though when the boys in my class spoke of what they’d overheard from their parents, it became increasingly clear that they all suspected that someone within the ranks of the new rich was responsible for the murder of so many nobles.

Lines were being drawn and tensions were escalating .

There would probably be a lot of problems in the near future as the noble and the new rich factions slip apart even more, but this one incident wasn’t the root cause of it all. It was just a big step forward towards something nasty.

There were too many pieces on the board with too much history that I didn’t know for me to even begin to guess at how it would all go down.

I knew that no matter what, it would be the people at the bottom that would hurt the most from everything .

Mortimer and I got to the dorms, and after he dumped his things in his room--which from a glance, was a mess--he joined me in mine, mostly so that he could get his fingers bitten by Sir Nibbles some more.

Once my stuff was tucked away in its place and Mortimer was nursing a couple of small nibblemarks , we headed back out and towards the cafeteria. “I wish I had a panbadger,” Mortimer said.

“Because you want to be bitten?” I asked.

“No, not that. They bond for life, you know?”

“I’ve heard as much, yeah,” I said.

He nodded. “Plus, they grow big enough that you can ride them. Though I guess they’re slower than a horse.”

I stopped mid-step. “They grow how  big ?” I asked.

“Well, they never stop growing, do they?” he asked. “Didn’t you ever hear stories of adventurers and explorers who have panbadger companions? It’s why they’re so popular. An ancient panbadger is like, one of the only things a dragon fears. At least, that’s what they say.”

That... would be a problem.

A future problem, at least. Right now, Sir Nibbles was only about the size of a housecat. Maybe a large housecat? He had grown a fair bit though in the last few months, but I thought he was just going from a teenaged panbadger to an adult.

If he continued at that rate, how big would he be in a year? The size of a smaller dog? Then a medium dog the year after?

No, there had to be decreasing returns with time. He only ate so much, so unless there was some weird magic involved, he couldn’t grow that  quickly.

“Ah, shit,” I muttered.

Mortimer’s eyebrows shot up. “What is it?”

“Nothing. I’m just... in so much trouble.”

Mortimer had a good laugh at my expense while I tried to figure out what I’d do with a Sir Nibbles that was large enough to ride . I’d have to change his name from Sir Nibbles to Sir Chew Your Head Off.

We came around the back of the main school building, then stopped suddenly.

Across from us was a familiar face, staring back at me with wide, fearful eyes. Harbin took a small step back, then spun around and ran off so hard he kicked up some of the grass in his wake.

“What did you do to him?” Montgomery said.

“Nothing,” I lied.

The boy looked at me. “No, really,” he said.

I laughed. “We just had a frank and honest conversation about... being civil towards each other,” I said.

“Man, I would have paid to see that.”

The Troll boy had been more than a little nervous around me lately. He sat as far from me as he could get and generally kept his mouth shut around me. That timidity was turning some of his friends against him. He’d gone from the charismatically brutish leader of his own little group to an outcast of sorts.

I suspected that in the long run, this might have been for the best. His attitude would only get him so far before he ran into someone who wouldn’t take his shit.

Well, someone other than me. I figured that I’d proven the point I wanted to make already.

We stepped into the cafeteria, which was predictably crowded. A few students had been pulled out of the Academy over the last week, and rumour had it that a few of the important families had gone on vacation, but for the most part they were a slim minority. The cafeteria still felt packed.

Once I got my tray full of food, Montgomery and I found a seat at the first-year table and got down to the business of eating and chatting and basically enjoying the fact that it was a Friday.

I wasn’t expecting it when someone stepped up to the table before me. "Are you Gunther Killua?”

I looked up and found a seventh-year student looking down at me. “Maybe?” I said.

He sniffed, then tossed an envelope onto the table before me. “This came into the main office. The secretary told me to deliver it.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said as I took the letter. It had an address on the front that led to the noble quarter. An address I recognized.

“Who’s that from?” Montgomery asked.

“My uncle,” I said. “Must be important. Give me a bit?” I took a last spoonful for the trip, then climbed off the bench and headed out. It didn’t take long to find a washroom to read the letter from, a convenient spot to dispose of it, too.

I popped the letter open.

Hello, my favourite nephew,

I heard that you’ve been doing well, and that gladdens my heart. I know that the situation in the city is scary, but you don’t have anything to worry about, just keep your head focused on your schoolwork for now, and everything will work itself out.

Remember what I always say, work well done pays best! So you buckle down and keep it up.

Your aunt sends her regards as well. She’s been heading to town a lot lately , mostly to that nice tea house not too far from the Academy. Maybe you’ll run into her if you go over on a Sunday , but she’s always there with her gossipy friends, so maybe you’ll want to avoid that!

Stay sharp, my dear boy, and remember, now is a time for study and self-growth. I’m sure you’ll grow up to be a sharp young man.

Take care,

Your loving Uncle

I crumpled up the letter, then leaned into the side of the stall I was in. The work never ended, but sometimes it did let off a little. It seemed that I had a bit of a break in my near future. Which meant more time to improve myself for the next step, whatever that might be.

***

Epilogue

Feronie watched, in her own way, as her little crusader went about her little life.

As a goddess, understanding was never entirely out of her reach. She had seen eons pass, history had faded into obscurity as she watched and tended to the world. There was little that happened that she didn’t understand at least in part.

Or... perhaps it would be better to say that she understood the greater picture, the broader strokes.

What mortals did and why they did these things had been so far beneath her notice for so long that now she was uncertain of what to think of the actions of her Crusader.

Feronie wanted death and devastation, a great cleansing fire that would allow new sprouts to grow. She had given her Crusader gifts to that effect. Powers and abilities that had cost Feronie something she could barely afford to give, and which should have made her Crusader perfect for the task.

Instead, it seemed as if her little Crusader was more focused on pruning some few mortals.

The goddess was prepared for disappointment... but it worked. In little ways, each death travelled through the great mortal city and changed its form. Anger was stoked, suspicions rose, and the interest of dark and malevolent gods was pulled into the wake of her Crusader, the kind of divine being who hungered for intrigue and backstabbing and chaos.

Feronie decided to conserve her energy for the moment and watch as her Crusader did her work.

Trust had to be earned and reciprocated, and Feronie trusted that her Crusader would bring about the end of this little mortal world in due time.

***

>werds go here<

Count Coller

Baron Erspell

this chapter will be Mushie seeing her targets, maybe going over why they're evil

then... hmm

Okay, how about...

She talks to the bartender, who happens to be in the union's pocket. She gives him some of her new mushroom designed to kill the targets.

Party goes on normally, but then one of them doesn't take a drink at all

The other two start to feel ill, but one of them leaves and goes to drink some potions to cure himself.

Then one of the targets just... dies

obviously, the authorities are called

So Mushie is now racing against the clock. She finds the one with the potion and kills them in the washroom, then returns to her friends as if nothing happened

The second body is found

She decides to leave with some others who are also evacuating the area because she doesn't want to be there when the police arrive

Then she sneaks into the last guy's carriage and kills him on the route out?

[Dead Man’s Finger] - Common

A common wood-rot fungus. Its flowering scent, though unnoticeable to most, repels many insects. Inedible. Consumption leads to digestive issues.

[Bug Agaric] - Common

A mushroom prized for its utility as an insecticide and as a drug.

Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Forty-Five

Feronie is a goddess that comes up fairly often whenever a priest or cleric has a communion with their god. This might seem strange at first. She is hardly ever spoken of in the common day, and is known only in passing. She isn’t considered one of the unworshippable deities either.

And yet the common new god seems to have a passionate distrust and dislike of their deity. Many texts speak of her as a goddess of nature, but many of them disagree on the precise nature of her domain.

Often, she is attributed as an unreconcilable goddess of natural disasters, plagues, or natural misfortunes, but these are all domains occupied by other deities, often deities whose worship can alleviate their divine wrath.

Feronie is a curious goddess, therefore, because she is at once misplaced, and yet also mistrusted.

Secondary targets :

Fertilizer guy

Goblin guy

Why is green?

Jimothy gives Mushie her note

they finds a place to read it

Discover that Milo's B-day is coming up soon

and that a lot of industrialists will be there

Mushie feels a little conflicted about it

library visit!

Wandsmithing

language

Look at library, research goddess

It’s too bad you haven’t enrolled in a culinary class. I have a commoner friend, Jimothy, who runs a stall by the markets near the school. Fantastic cook! You should try his pepper-ball skewers one day. Maybe I’ll get you some as a treat this weekend?

Harper Lovelace - In Music, a Troll

Brbr birb eating

Brb, learning about wands and sticks

Kilue , Gunther

Academy Students

Troll - Students:

Harbin- tall, bully-like kid, in Introduction to Herbology and Botany.

Dragon - Students:

Montgomery Wendell - first year, surprisingly tall boy. Worships Millikins. Has Music and Introduction to World Religions

Michael Milo- First year. Chubby dirty-blond. Target. Has  Introduction to Herbology and Botany

Cedric Fairweather - First Year. Tall, black hair, very stiff and formal. In Introduction to Clockwork and Gears.

Andrew - Has  Introduction to Herbology and Botany +  Introduction to Clockwork and Gears.

George - Has  Introduction to Herbology and Botany

Alexander Blackwood - Second gen Troll. In the Wandsmithing club. Target. FAther runs magic enchanting store. Black hair, large ears, bowl cut

Cain - 7th year student, in charge of teaching the Wandsmithing club

Student Targets:

Michael Milo - Same year - Introduction to Herbology and Botany

Harper Lovelace - In Music, a Troll

Silas Lockhart - Introduction to Clockwork and Gears  / Inventor’s Guild

Alexander Blackwood -  Wandsmithing Club

Eden-Powell Academy of Arts and Sciences

Kilue , Gunther

Semester One, Dragons

Main courses

-Maths

-Geography

-Language

Major electives

-Herbology and Botanical Magics

-Introduction to Clockwork and Gears

- Music

Minor electives

-Wandsmithing Club

-Inventor’s Guild

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Geography

Maths

Language

Maths

Geography

Herbology and Botanical Magics

Geography

Language

Herbology and Botanical Magics

Introduction to Clockwork and Gears

-Lunch-

-Lunch-

-Lunch-

-Lunch-

-Lunch-

Wandsmithing Club

Introduction to Clockwork and Gears

Music

FREE

Wandsmithing Club

FREE

Music

Maths

Geography

Language

Curriculum:

Divided into two semesters/year, each with three classes

Semester A :

Maths

Geography

Languages

Semester B:

History

Economics

Sciences

Noble students start with Semester A, new students start with B. Students who joined on a scholarship (like Mushie) join in A as well to bolster their ranks.

Class types are divided along three lines:

Main courses: Things that every student needs to learn. Maths, history... ect. They are graded on a 1-4 scale at the end of the semester. A 1 gives 1 credit, a 4 gives 4.

Major electives: Classes taught by teachers specialized  in a subject. Things ranging from Introduction to Magic, to Introduction to Factory Management. These give either 0-1-2 credits at the end of a semester. Each student gets 3 per semester. Can be repeated at will or increased in level of difficulty.

Minor electives:  More social classes. Card games, tea parties, ballroom dancing, equestrian riding... ect. Give 0-1 credit based on participation.

Each semester has:

3 Main courses

2 Major electives

2 Minor electives

Major electives:

Herbology and Botanical Magics

Introduction to Elemental Magics

Introduction to Enchantment and Spellcasting

Dark Magic Defence

Introduction to Sword and Spear combat

Magical  and mundane Zoology

Literature Appreciation

Introduction to Potions and Alchemy

Introduction to Runes and Ancient Languages

Introduction to Medicine and Healing Magic

Astrology and Astronomy

Music

Introduction to World Religions

Spellbinding

Cooking and Gastronomy

Introduction to Clockwork and Gears

Introduction to Engineering and Mechanics

Minor electives:

Ballroom Dancing

Debate club

Chess club

Equestrian club

Wandsmithing club

Poetry society

Metalworking club

Inventor’s guild

Arts and crafts club

Painter’s society

Staff:

Head of House Dragon

Johnathan Drake

Very serious, pompous fellow. Tall. Rumoured to actually be an elf.

Head of House Troll

Tim Bugglesworth

Laid back man who really doesn’t seem to care about much.

Principal

William “Bill” Board

Maths teacher
Mister Tan

In a deep rivalry with a Ms Cosina from the woman’s Academy of Arts.

Curly brown hair, green eyes. Very passionate about numbers and practical uses for math. Mean-looking, but patient and kind.

Geography teacher

Herre Ortherre

A young man with chestnut brown hair and brown eyes. Colourful clothes. Has never travelled. Still has stuff from all over the world. Is always just a little bit wrong.

Languages teacher

Emanuel “Manny” Lingua

Man with a strange accent. Very short, possibly a half-dwarf. Dresses to the nines. Fluent in several languages. Expects students to enunciate correctly.

History teacher

Mister Arch Eulogy

A middle-aged man with thinning hair and a stern expression. He wears a tweed suit. Was an archeologist. Expects his students to know dates, names, and places by heart.

Economics teacher

Penny Wise

A stern older woman. Once a banker, now retired but teaching because she loves the subject. Doesn’t  take shit from anyone. Not-so-secretly rich AF. Dislikes nobility.

Sciences teacher

Dr. Erl Meyer Flask

A studious gentleman passionate about mechanics, engineering, and chemistry. Often has the  class do hands-on stuff. Dislikes skills and magic as shortcuts to progress.

Herbology and Botany Teacher

Professor Jasper Moss

A rugged, outdoorsy man with short, tousled brown hair and a thick beard. He is an expert in the identification and cultivation of plants, and often takes his students on field trips to collect specimens in the nearby woods and meadows. He wears hiking boots and cargo pants, and his pockets are always filled with plant clippings, seeds, and soil samples. He has a no-nonsense attitude, and expects his students to be disciplined and focused in their studies.

Nurse

Beatrice Kaeres

A kindly mid-20s woman. Can cast some minor healing magics. Figures out MC’s deception.

Student Targets:

Michael Milo - Same year

Harper Lovelace - In Music

Silas Lockhart - Introduction to Clockwork and Gears  / Inventor’s Guild

Alexander Blackwood -  Wandsmithing Club

[Thick Skinned]

Your skin is resistant to the effects of touch-based poisons unless they break through your skin.

[Mind for Numbers]

As long as you’ve done the work before, you remember all mathematical equations you’ve worked though.

[Penmanship]

Your writing is easier to read and decipher. Doesn’t improve its appearance.

[Eye for Sizes]

You have an instinctive appreciation for how much of any given ingredient goes into a recipe .

[Stock Knowledge]

You have an instinctive feel for how long the stock and supplies on hand will last.

IT was actually a container meant to hold different sizes of drill bits that I picked up at a market.

Eden-Powell Academy of Arts and Sciences

[Cooking {Common}]

[Management {Common}]

[Quick Sleeper {Uncommon}]

[Lie Detection {Uncommon}]

System Shit

Rarities:

common uncommon rare legendary unique

Skills:

[Skill Name {Rarity}]

System messages:

--- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Rarity Order:

Common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary

---

[You have unlocked a Sub-Skill!]

[Congratulations! Your [X {Y}] Skill has unlocked the [Shroom Zoom] Subskill!]

---

[Congratulations! Your X Skill has reached level Y!]

---

[You have unlocked the X Skill!]

[Do you want to add the X Skill to your known repertoire of General Skills?]

---

[Congratulations! You have Obtained the X Skill!]

---

[Class Name {Rarity}]

Description in second person

Class requirements:

Class Skills: Three skills

---

[Do you want to accept the X Class? You can reject a Class at any time.]

---

[Congratulations! You have unlocked the X Class!]

[The following Skills have been added to your repertoire:]

---

480 halfpennies > 1 pound

240 pence > 1 pound

12 pence > 1 shilling

20 shilling > 1 pound

---

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: .6 Years

Mana: 08/10

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

General Skills

-

-

-

-

-

---

[The General Skill X has Transformed into Y and is now a Class Skill!]

---

Name: N/A

Race: Human {Common}

Age: .6 Years

Mana: 08/10

Primary Class: [Agaric Cleric {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Black Lung {Common}

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Agaric Cleric Class Skills

- Mycologic Growth {Uncommon}

- Druid Sight {Uncommon}

- Mushroom Magic {Rare}

General Skills

-

-

-

-

-  

Afflictions

Black Lung {Common}

You are afflicted by blackened lungs. Your breathing is hampered, as is your natural ability to process mana through respiration.

Child of Poverty {Common}

Marked as a child of poverty by lack of care, education, and opportunity, you carry the handicap of poverty.

Blessings

Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Uniquely blessed by the Goddess of Nature. Your soul connects with greater ease to all things natural. Nature knows that you are its friend and ally, just as much as the unnatural sees you as an adversary. All talents and skills and classes related to nature will grow with greater ease and will be more readily accessible to you.

Skills

Angel of Death Skills

[Cherub of Death {Rare}]

Blessed by the divine and instructed to kill, you can more easily weaponize your willpower and will be seen as innocent by those who observe you.

Category: Divine magic, Social skills

Subskills

        [Sin Sense]

You are innately aware of how much a person believes you to have sinned according to their own moral values.

---

[Guileless Eyes {Uncommon}]

By locking eyes with a creature and pushing your will towards them, you can make them believe the unbelievable.

Category: Social magic

Subskills

[Lingering Look]

The effects of your Guileless Eyes skill linger on anyone you use them on for a short period after eye contact is broken.

---

[Unnoticeable {Uncommon}]

You can pass unnoticed at will, slipping through crowds as just one more person or seeming as though you belong even when you don’t.

Category: Stealth, Social skills

Subskills

[Notice Me Not]

By expending  a small amount of mana, you can make this skill more potent. As this skill improves, so will your efficiency.

---

[Poison Blooded {Rare}]

Your blood becomes imbued with the effects of any non-magical poison you consume at the cost of your own mana, becoming itself lethal to any who consume it. You become immune to any poison you absorb.

Category: Physical enhancement, Poison magic

---

[Angel’s Touch {Rare}]

You can, with prayer and the will of your god at your side, bless those you touch with minor healing or minor curses.

Category: Faith magic, Divine magic

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Feronie’s Crusader Skills

[Aura of Growth {Rare}]

By pushing your will and mana into the environment around you, you can encourage the growth of all natural things. As this skill grows, your range and focus will increase, and you may be able to help yourself grow as well.

Category: Nature magic

Subskills

[Shaped Aura]

You can more easily move and manipulate your aura. With practice, you will be able to move it entirely away from yourself, to bring growth to all that need it.

[Careful Casting]

You become more aware of how much assistance all natural things need in order to flourish, and in doing so, are better able to conserve your own strength. Practice will increase your efficiency.

[Unrestricted Growth]

Even in places where growth is improbable, you can endow the seeds you’ve planted with your essence, encouraging the unrestricted ability to grow on all you touch. Practice will increase your efficiency.

[Sustained Growth]

Anything grown under the influence of your Aura will be better prepared for continued growth assisted by your aura. Practice will increase the growth speed of affected plant and fungal matter.

---

[Blight {Epic}]

Your mana and will gains  the tint of rot and death. At will, you can make your presence force sickness, rot, and necrosis onto those you consider your adversary. As this skill grows, so will your range, and you will be able to empower yourself from the natural rot you create.

Category: Nature magic, Necro magic

Subskills

[Persistent Death]

Your Blight’s magical effects sink deep into living matter and remain there, active until the living passes away or endures through the Blight.

[Rigour Mortis]

By applying your Blight onto the living, you can force their muscles to contract, their skin to tighten, and their organs to writhe with the early symptoms of death’s grasp.

[Infection]

Once [Blight] has dug its roots into a victim, the lingering mana will spread through their bodies and can move from host to host as long as they are in physical contact with each other. Blight will now use the affected’s own mana to sustain itself.

---

[Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary}]

Deep within a dungeon you shall dive. There you will plead with your Goddess, and with a loyal heart shall prevail. The gift given unto all sentient-kind will be revoked.

Category: Apocalypse magic, Forbidden magic

Subskills

[Apocalypse Walker]

You are immune to all offensive and harmful uses of Apocalypse and Forbidden magics

---

Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level One

Your sight alone will allow you to better understand nature itself, its whims and desires, as well as its many dangers and threats.

As this skill grows, your senses will sharpen faster, helping you identify and learn from nature.

Category: Body Enhancement - Vision

Subskills

[Druid’s Sense]

You have gained a heightened sense for an area’s attunement, or lack of attunement, to nature.

[Druid’s Ear]

You have listened to nature long enough that you have an empathic understanding of natural things. This will improve with practice.

[Health Sense]

Your senses extend to an innate understanding of the health of any biological matter you focus upon.

---

Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Twenty

You can infuse any fungi you find with your magic, either to transform and help with its growth, to give it magical properties, or to turn it into a deadly weapon.

As this skill grows, you will learn new methods to use your magic and its use will become more efficient.

Category: Nature Magic

Subskills

[Super Shroom Zoom]

All fungal bodies will grow at an increased speed as long as you are directly applying magic to them.

[Mushroom Remaker]

As long as you have a spore linked to a previously self-grown mushroom, you can influence its growth along a similar path.

[Potent]

Mushrooms grown under your supervision will be significantly more potent than their natural counterparts.

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

General

[Running {Common}]

Move all of yourself as efficiently as possible to gain speed and cross distances faster.

As this skill grows, you will find running, jogging, and sprinting easier and less tiring.

Category: Physical Movement

Subskills

[Surefooted]

You will find yourself tripping less often as you push yourself to run faster. With practise, you will no longer lose your balance and momentum as you run.

[Sprint]

You conserve stamina better while pushing yourself to move faster. As you practice you will gain speed and endurance and become a better runner.

[Runner's Breath]

Running no longer requires you to breathe quite as much as it once did. Suffer fewer penalties while running without breathing.

---

[Knitting {Common}]

You can weave strands of cloth together, forming clothes and items for you to wear and use.

As this skill grows, so will your proficiency with your needles and cloth.

Category: Item Crafting

Subskills

[Clicky Clacker]

You have become proficient at knitting faster. As you practise, your speed and focus will sharpen.

[Patterner]

You can more easily notice and copy knitting patterns, and creating new ones comes more easily to you.

[Resizer]

Your exceptional experience with adjusting and modifying garmen t s allows you to resize them with greater ease.

---

[Basic Poison Resistance] - Common

You have grown used to the ravages of poison. As this skill grows, so will your ability to shrug off the negative effects of poisons.

Subskills

[Mana Bleed]

You will naturally leech away from the mana from negative magical effects pushed into your body, subsuming it for your own use and weakening the effects.

[Push Through]

It now takes significantly longer for a poison to start affecting you.

---

[Social Manipulation] - Uncommon

Lie, cheat, misinform and confuse others with greater ease. As this skill grows so will your ability to trick and beguile.

Category: Social skills

Subskills

[Too Cute to Kill]

As long as people perceive you as weak, innocent, or defenceless, they will find it much harder to suspect you of any activity they imagine to be morally reprehensible.

        [Bargain Maker]

You instinctively know when to push and pull when negotiating with someone.

        [Misinformer]

Your lies don’t trigger weaker lie detection skills as often as long as they hold a kernel of truth.

---

[Poison Handling Expertise] - Rare

Handle dangerous materials and poisons with greater ease, while also gaining the ability to craft and cook new volatile poisons. As this skill improves, you will gain a better understanding of the poisoners art and additional resistances to the very mixtures you create.

Category: Poison making, Poison-based combat

Subskills

[Iron Lunged]

Your body and natural magical affinity are attuned to poisons you have grown and created, conferring a major resistance to aerosolized poisons and a minor resistance to injected and contact poisons.

[Toxicant Sense]

You now have a subtle sense of what is or isn’t toxic, poisonous, or otherwise capable of causing you ill.

[Thick Skinned]

Your skin is resistant to the effects of touch-based poisons unless they break through your skin.

---

Academic Mind {Uncommon}

This skill helps you recall, remember, and apply anything you were taught, read, researched, or noted down previously.

Category: Academic skills

Subskills

[Penmanship]

Your writing is easier to read and decipher. Doesn’t improve its appearance.

[Taught]

Teaching-type skills used to your benefit are more effective on you.

---

Cooking {Common}

The ability to prepare and cook meals for consumption. As this skill improves, so will your cooking.

Category: Cooking skills

Subskills

[Eye for Sizes]

You have an instinctive appreciation for how much of any given ingredient goes into a recipe.

---

Management {Uncommon}

The ability to keep track of personnel and employees, of having supplies on hand when needed, and of running a business.

Category: Managerial skills, social skills

Subskills

[Stock Knowledge]

You have an instinctive feel for how long the stock and supplies on hand will last.

---

[Quick Sleeper] {Uncommon}

You’re quick to fall asleep and quick to awaken.  As this skill grows your need for long rests will decrease. Shorter, more potent sleep will allow you to function as though you were well-rested.

Category: Sleep skills, Dream magic

Subskills

[Light Sleeper]

You are easily awoken by threats of danger or any attempts to awaken you.

---

[Lie Detection]

This skill gives you a passive sense of when something you are told is an untruth according to the person who is saying it. As this skill grows, so will your ability to detect lies and falsehoods and exaggerations.

Category: Social skills, Social magic

---

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Agaric Cleric Skills

Mycologic Growth {Uncommon} - Level One

You are able to nurture and encourage the growth of all fungi from spore to mushroom. Further growth of this skill will allow you to influence the direction of fungal growth, picking out the most desirable traits and expanding upon them.

Category: Nature Magic

Subskills

[Overnight Growth]

All fungal bodies under your care will grow much faster over the course of the night, or when in extremely dark areas.

---

Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level One

Your sight alone will allow you to better understand nature itself, its whims and desires, as well as its many dangers and threats.

As this skill grows, your senses will sharpen faster, helping you identify and learn from nature.

Category: Body Enhancement - Vision

Subskills

[Druid’s Sense]

You have gained a heightened sense for an area’s attunement, or lack of attunement, to nature.

---

Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Twenty

You can infuse any fungi you find with your magic, either to transform and help with its growth, to give it magical properties, or to turn it into a deadly weapon.

As this skill grows, you will learn new methods to use your magic and its use will become more efficient.

Category: Nature Magic

Subskills

[Shroom Zoom]

All magic applied to fungal bodies will take less time to react to your will. Moderately decreased casting time for all [Mushroom Magic] abilities.

---

Fungal Grafter {Uncommon} - Level One

You have discovered the first step of the ancient art of tailored evolution. You are now able to more easily combine fungal bodies to discover new and greater effects. As this skill grows, so will your ability to graft more difficult and disparate fungal bodies.

Category: Nature Magic

---

[Commune with God {Rare}]

You have opened the path to speaking with your divine through  ritual, prayer, and sacrifice. Your pleas were heard, for better or ill. As you improve with this skill, your ability to speak to your god will improve, though it will have no bearing on whether they choose to listen.

Category: Clerical Magic

---

[Cherub of Death {Rare}]

[Guileless Eyes {Uncommon}]

[Unnoticeable {Uncommon}]

Mushrooms

[Brown Chanterelle] - Common

An edible mushroom frequently picked and eaten by small mammals.

[Mana-Infused Brown Chanterelle] - Uncommon

An edible mushroom frequently picked and eaten by small mammals that has grown in a mana-heavy environment. Will restore some of the eater’s vitality and mana.

[Horse Head Mushroom] - Common

A common edible mushroom. Mostly tasteless, but filled with nutrients. Commonly found near places where bodies are buried.

[Magical Horse Head Mushroom] - Common

A common magical edible mushroom. Mostly tasteless, but filled with nutrients and mana. Commonly found near places where magical bodies are buried.

[Dead Man’s Finger] - Common

A common wood-rot fungus. Its flowering scent, though unnoticeable to most, repels many insects. Inedible. Consumption leads to digestive issues.

[Bug Agaric] - Common

A mushroom prized for its utility as an insecticide and as a drug.

[Green Spirit Mould] - Common

A kind of mould frequently found near areas with large amounts of spiritual activity. Glows faintly when in the presence of ghostly spirits. Inedible, but not poisonous.

[Beige Puffball] - Common

A common sight next to rotting wood and other detritus. The puffball is an edible mushroom in its early fruiting stage which grows into a ball filled with dust-like spores that are released on impact or from strong winds. The spores are a mild irritant. Not very nutritious, but considered tasty by most who enjoy mushrooms.

[Blackbottle] - Uncommon

A mushroom frequently found in humid climes. It will fill with water and when ripe, will burst apart releasing watery spores onto the ground around it. A source of untainted water.

[Blur Glow Lichen] - Rare

A lichen found in several dungeons and which will glow when in the presence of mana. Often used by alchemists to create mana-activated potions or lights.

[Purple Capped Night Watcher] - Rare

This rare mushroom is only found in areas with a particular kind of predatory animal, notably creatures who stalk and predate on others using magical means in unlit environments. While very mildly poisonous, this mushroom allows those who eat it to see in the dark, amplifying natural night vision. Used in several alchemical concoctions.

[Ghoul Button Mushroom] - Uncommon

A mushroom that grows on flesh, though it prefers the flesh of undead creatures and will grow with startling speed on those. If consumed whole it will make the eater more resistant to necrotic influences.

[Skunk’s Lament] - Common

A small mushroom that, when squeezed, releases a cloud of minuscule spores which emit a potent foul odour. Has some use as a revitalising reagent.

[Healing Chime] - Rare

A small mushroom that accelerates healing when eaten raw.

[Blue Cleangill] - Uncommon

An aquatic mushroom whose fruiting body collects detritus from the water it grows in and feeds on it. The mushroom isn’t naturally toxic, but it may become so as it collects contaminants from the water it is grown in.

[Lumbershroom] - Common

A thick, wood-like mushroom which grows into a long stalk which captures and disperses water out of the air to spread its water-borne spores. Inedible except by wood-inhabiting mites and insects.

[Magebane] - Uncommon

A mushroom that requires elevated levels of ambient mana to grow. This mushroom’s spores are attracted to mana and will absorb the mana of anything touching or consuming them in order to fuel their eventual growth. The mushroom itself, if eaten, will disrupt the consumer’s magical channelling abilities for a time.

[Sludge Moss] - Uncommon

An uncommon growth found in environments with toxic materials that remain stagnant for long periods. The moss only grows in mana-rich environments, and its main body is fed by the toxins it extracts. Commonly used as a means of collecting several alchemical reagents.

[Blue Gilled Sleeper] - Uncommon

A mushroom frequently found in arboreal regions next to specific sorts of thorned bushes. These mushrooms, when shaken, release a spore that can make a person feel tired and lethargic. Eating the flesh of the mushroom acts as a potent muscle relaxant. It is entirely edible.

[Tubershroom] - Rare

A mushroom that is both nutritious and healthy when eaten raw. The Tubershroom has a weak but long-lasting healing effect that assists in the repair of tissues and the growth of those eating it regularly.

Combined mushroom types.

Blur Glow Lichen / Green Spirit Mould

[Green Burn Lichen] - Epic

A form of lichen which spreads rapidly and which glows brightly in the presence of mana. Too much mana though, and it will set itself alight, spreading the spores of its fungal form around. It will also ignite on contact with spirits with a spiritual flame that is harmless to flesh but dangerous to spiritual bodies.

Horse Head / Purple Capped Night Watcher

[Purple Horse Head] - Uncommon

An edible mushroom which gives the eater a slightly improved ability to see in low light conditions. Otherwise nutritious.

Blackbottle / Purple Capped Night Watcher

[Blackbottle Night Watcher] - Rare

A rare mushroom not found in any natural environment. This small, edible mushroom contains a basic alchemical reagent that allows the consumer to see in low light conditions. Can be used in several alchemical concoctions.

Blackbottle / Beige Puffball

[Black Puffball] - Uncommon

A common sight next to stale water and other humid detritus. The black puffball is an edible mushroom in its early fruiting stage which grows into a ball filled with spores in a muddy goop that are released on impact. Not very nutritious.

Blackbotttle / Brown chanterelle

[Brownbottle] - Uncommon

A nutritious mushroom frequently found in humid climes. It will fill with water and when ripe, will burst apart releasing watery spores onto the ground around it. A source of untainted water. Its meat is nutritious and healthy, though the stem will contain the impurities filtered out of its water.

Brown chanterelle / Dead Man’s Fingers

[Dead Man’s Member] - Common

A common growth near rotting woods. The dead man’s member is a mushroom that can act as a mild aphrodisiac, though it also gives the eater digestive issues if eaten raw.  

Brown chanterelle / Horse head

[Brown Horse Head] - Uncommon

A cultivar of two popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly and is nutritious. Can be found next to decomposing meats.

Brown chanterelle / Horse head +Magic

[Mana-Infused Brown Horse Head] - Uncommon

A magical variation of a cultivar of two popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly and is nutritious and mana-rich. Can be found next to the decomposing meats of magical creatures.

Bug agaric / dead man’s fingers

[Dead Man’s Agaric] - Uncommon

A highly toxic mushroom. The spores cause the lungs of mammals who inhale them to inflame, and consumption of the mushroom’s meat causes internal haemorrhaging within two days of the time of consumption. Leads consumers to a heavy trance-like state where they will hallucinate vividly.

Dead man’s finger / horse head

[Dead Horse Head] - Uncommon

A magical mushroom that is high in nutritious content and has a smell that will tempt mammalian creatures into consuming it. Very mildly poisonous, and will impact the digestive tracts of any who eat it.

Purple Capped Night Watcher / Beige Puffball

[Purple Starball] - Uncommon

This magical mushroom unleashes clouds of glowing spores that, if inhaled, will cause a mammal to have vivid visual hallucinations.

Dead Man’s Finger / Beige Puffball

[Beige Puff Finger] - Common

A fragrant mushroom with a pleasant, earthy scent. Attracts insects, especially wood-burrowing insects.

Bug Agaric / Beige Puffball

[Bugball] - Common

A small, puffball-like mushroom whose spores attract insects. The spores contain a neurotoxin too weak to kill most mammals, though it remains effective against insects. The spores cause mild hallucinations in mammals.

Dead Man’s Agaric / Beige Puffball

[Dead Man’s Cough] - Rare

A mushroom filled with highly toxic spores. Inhalation of these spores will cause immediate inflammation in the inhaler’s lungs, followed by trance-like hallucinations and internal haemorrhaging, possibly leading to death.

Dead Horse Head / Beige Puffball

[Horse Pop Mushroom] - Uncommon

A slow-growing mushroom which fills with spores and methane. It will grow until it pops, releasing spores which will dizzy most mammals who consume it. Mildly poisonous to consume or to inhale.

Blackbottle / Horse Pop Mushroom

[Bottle Pop] - Rare

A mushroom which fills with flame-proof spores, water, and methane, each within their own separate sacs within the fruiting body. On receiving a strong enough impact, the mushroom explodes, lighting itself on fire and spreading its hardened spores out around it to penetrate nearby materials. The spores are mildly poisonous. The fumes created by the explosion are mildly toxic.

[Faerie Fire Cap] - Epic

An exceptionally uncommon mushroom once cultivated by the fair folk. This mushroom is explosive, and on bursting will release magical spores which will attach themselves to the nearest source of mana and burn with bright purple flames. Once used to prevent invisible intruders from entering sacred groves.

Skunk’s Lament/Horse Head Mushroom

[Horse Dropping Mushroom] - Common

An edible mushroom which can sustain itself next to fresh manure. Has a strong flavour, and little nutritional value.

Skunk’s Lament/ Dead Man’s Finger

[Dead Man’s Gas] - Common

A powerful insecticide that, when flowering, will release an odour that will attract insects while killing them slowly. Will use the corpses of insects to spread.

Skunk’s Lament/Beige Puffball

[Brown Puffball] - Common

A common sight next to manure heaps and sewers. The puffball is an inedible mushroom which grows into a ball filled with dust-like spores that are released on impact or from strong winds. The spores are a mild irritant. They carry a faecal smell with wards away fungivores.

Skunk’s Lament / Faerie Fire Cap

[Faerie Fart] - Rare

A rare mushroom which, on detonating, will release magical spores which can turn breathable air into a noxious but non-lethal gas which is mildly flammable.

Ghoul Button/ Dead man’s finger

[Ghoul Finger] - Common

A common wood-rot fungus. Its flowering scent, though unnoticeable to most, repels many insects. Inedible. Consumption leads to digestive issues. Will rapidly spread from the corpses of dead insects.

Ghoul Button / Bug Agaric

[Death Agaric] - Uncommon

A powerful hallucinogen, capable of befuddling the mind of the undead with mere contact to its spores.

Ghoul Button / Purple Capped Night Watcher

[Purple Ghoul Watcher] - Rare

This rare mushroom is only found in areas with predatory undead. While very mildly poisonous, this mushroom allows those who eat it to see in the life essence of those around them.

Ghoul Button / Faerie Fire Cap

[Dead Fae’s Lament] - Rare

An inedible mushroom which grows in rings around the location where a fae was buried for its final rest. These mushrooms react to any necrotic magic by releasing their spores, which will light themselves on fire on contact with undead flesh and will disrupt necrotic magics.

Ghoul Button / Healing Chime

[Ghoul Chime Mushroom] - Rare

A mushroom that, when consumed by the undead or grown on their body, will replace lost flesh with a fungal simulacrum.

Healing Chime / Brown Horse Head

[Brown Healing Horse] - Rare

A cultivar of several popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly, and is both nutritious and healthy. Promotes healing and has a soothing effect on the digestive system.

Healing Chime / Beige Puffball

[Puffy Healer] - Rare

An uncommon mushroom which, when squeezed, releases a thin cloud of spores which can reknit broken flesh and assist in healing minor lesions. The resulting clotted skin becomes a vector for the mycelium to grow within.

Healing Chim/ Purple Horse Head

[Purple Eye Mushroom]

A mushroom which, when eaten raw, will improve the eater’s eyesight.

Healing Chime / Blackbottle Night Watcher

[Healing Bottle] - Rare

A mushroom filled with potent healing characteristics. When consumed in its raw form, the mushroom will encourage rapid healing in the consumer until the mushroom passes through the digestive system. Spores will grow within the consumer’s faecal matter.

Blackbottle / Blue cleangill

[Blue Spongebottle]

An uncommon magical mushroom which will swell up when placed in a liquid medium. It will absorb toxicants, and when squeezed, will only release the cleaner water it contains.

Blackbotttle Nightwatcher / Blue Cleangill

[The Alchemist’s Sponge] - Rare

A magical mushroom which, when absorbing beneficial potions which are made with natural ingredients, will improve their potency. Increases toxicity of ingredients.

Sludge Moss / Green Spirit Mould

[Ectoplasm Moss] - Uncommon

A thick moss that grows best when feeding off the ectoplasmic remains of the ghostly undead. A valuable alchemical reagent.

Sludge Moss / Blur Glow Lichen

[Glowing Sludge Moss] - Uncommon

A moss that grows in the presence of toxicants, and which itself is mildly poisonous to the touch.

Tubershroom / Healing Chime

[Feronie’s Bell] - Epic

A tasty and hearty mushroom packed with nutrients. This mushroom has small protrusions beneath its cap which are magical in nature and which contain powerful healing properties.

Tubershroom / [Brown Healing Horse]

[Tubular Healing Horse] - Rare

A fast-growing mushroom which imparts some of its speed onto its eater.

Tubershroom / [Puffy Healer]

[Long Puffy Healer] - Rare

A rare mushroom which, when squeezed, releases a thin cloud of spores which can reknit broken flesh and assist in healing minor lesions. The resulting clotted skin becomes a vector for the mycelium to grow within.

Tubershrrom / [Purple Eye Mushroom]

[Long Eye Mushroom]

A mushroom which, when eaten raw, will improve the eater’s farsight.

Magebane / Dead Man’s Agaric

[Dead Mage Agaric] - Rare

A powerful hallucinogenic mushroom that feeds on the consumer’s mana to create a web of mycelium within their body. Will continue to grow as it infects its victim until the victim expires or runs out of mana, after which it will break through their skin and spread fresh spores.

Poisons

[Purple Ghoul Watcher]

This mushroom contains a weak magical poison that lowers the consumer’s body temperature. Over consumption can lead to death. Consumers may experience trembling and numbness in their extremities, and may suffer from a mild fever without their conscious notice.

Characters

Irene - old bitch

Roger - Dada, redhead, works as a mechanic

Tessa - MC’s mom, blue eyes, works at a factory, seamstress(?)

Martha - older woman, fat, who watches over the kids in the neighbourhood.

Bet - Young girl who knows how to read a little, befriends MC

Doctor Livalis - works in a clinic in the slums

Debra - homeless woman living close to MC’s place

Stew - homeless man, missing right arm and leg from a dungeon excursion.

Larry - Dad’s friend. Union organiser

Bill/Willian Worthington

Terrence Arthur - Works at Arthur’s Alembic alchemy shop

Phillipe Greene - Experienced Dungeon delver

Tyro Green - Phillipe’s son, inexperienced delver

Joe, William, Jack and Averell - Mooks

Hortense Digglestein - Mushie’s tutor

Aunt Nicole - Cook who works at the union. Cooking tutor.

Underside Gremlins

Philip - big handsome guy from a nicer family. A runaway

Brick AKA Tooth - Has missing teeth, reedy and thin, leader of his little group

Knuckles AKA Nose - big busted nose, bit brutish

Ratesco’s Union
Gary - an assassin/rogue working for the Ratesco Union

Dregs - a Hobgoblin working for the Ratesco Union as hired muscle

Markham - a leader with the Ratesco’s Union. Operates the area of the slums Mushie lives in.

Acolytes of Galen

Eight-Three-Eleven - Young woman 10 years older than Mushie. Friendly, but takes her work seriously.

Five-Oh-One-One - Older priest of Galen. 8311’s mentor

Delvers

George - Trap checker - long poles, knives

William - ranger - repeating crossbow

Grace - striker - short sword, collapsed spear

Nathan - vanguard - shield, short sword

Jack Cavendish - Striker/Vanguard (team lead) - short sword, buckler

Tyro  - Striker - warhammer, knives

Phillipe  - Fortress - warhammer, knives

Mushie’s Crew

Bet - Childhood friend, a few years older than MC,

Willow - Tough tomboy beater. Might have worked in the sex trade? Left. Likes beating people up. Very protective of Daisy.

Daisy - Willow’s little sister, shy, more reserved

Academy Students

Montgomery Wendell - first year, surprisingly tall boy.

Pantheon

Feronie

Goddess of nature.

Represented by a beautiful woman. Is injured.

Galen

God of mercies

Represented by a young man with spectacles

Dearil

God of funerals, and killer of the undead. Symbol is a tombstone.

Followers wear beige clothes and cover their faces. Call themselves living brother/sister

Lorris

Recorded knowledge

Seb

Home and hospitality

Vista Lida

God of workers and industry

Plot

Parents learn she renamed someone

Investigation goes underway, but no one suspects her

Parents ask, and she admits that it might be her fault

Parents hide her

Time goes on

Learns to sneak out and explores around her house

Father gets injured, talks about a dungeon

Goes to look at dungeon

Finds a place to grow shrooms and starts a small farm

-> Dad continues to get drunk

-> Continue to merge and try things with different strainsstrands of shrooms

-> Create a poisonous mushroom

- >

Is approached by a gang who demands food in exchange for leaving her alone offer to help her make drugs, she refuses

Dad dies, killed by pinkertons

Mom starts falling sick

Mc starts cultivating mushrooms in earnest, goes into dungeon

Magic

Needs to be cast with a command and a cost

The cost and command depends on the complexity of the spell

Spells can be written, signed, spoken, or played out as notes

The cost is consumed in the casting

Magic pre-dates the entire system that governs the world

Character Sheet

Name: N/A

Alias: Ginger, Gunther Killua

Race: Human {Common}

Age: 10 Years

Mana: 100/100

Primary Class: [Feronie’s Crusader {Epic}]

Secondary Class: [Angel of Death {Rare}]

Afflictions

- Child of Poverty {Common}

Blessings

- Blessing of Feronie {Unique}

Feronie’s Crusader Class Skills - Level Three Hundred and Twenty-Five

- Aura of Growth {Rare} - Level Eighty-Six

> [Shaped Aura]

> [Careful Casting]

> [Unrestricted Growth]

> [Sustained Growth]

- Blight {Epic} - Level Seventy-Five

        > [Persistent Death]

        > [Rigour Mortis]

        > [Infection]

- Ritual of Sporemageddon  {Legendary} - Level Twenty

        > [Apocalypse Walker]

- Druid Sight {Uncommon} - Level Seventy-Five

        > [Druid’s Sense]
        > [Druid’s Ear]

        > [Health Sense]

- Mushroom Magic {Rare} - Level Sixty-Nine

        > [Super Shroom Zoom]

        > [Mushroom Remaker]

> [Potent]

Angel of Death Class Skills - One Hundred and Twenty-Five

- Cherub of Death {Rare} - Level Twenty-Two

> [Sin Sense]

- Guileless Eyes {Uncommon} - Level Thirty-Three

        > [Lingering Look]

- Unnoticeable {Uncommon} - Level Thirty-Seven

        > [Notice Me Not]

- Poison Blooded {Rare} - Level Seventeen

- Angel’s Touch {Rare} - Level Sixteen

General Skills - Level Four Hundred and Fifty-One

- Running {Common} - Level Sixty-Three

> [Surefooted]

> [Sprint]

> [Runner's Breath]

- Knitting {Common} - Level Seventy-One

> [Patterner]

> [Clicky Clacker]

> [Resizer]

- Basic Poison Resistance {Common} - Level Forty-Five

> [Mana Bleed]

> [Push Through]

- Social Manipulation {Uncommon} - Level Seventy

        > [Too Cute to Kill]

> [Bargain Maker]

> [Misinformer]

-   Poison Handling Expertise {Rare} - Level Sixty-Eight

> [Iron Lunged]

         > [Toxicant Sense]

        > [Thick Skinned]

- Academic Mind {Uncommon} - Level Forty-One

        > [Penmanship]

        > [Taught]

- Cooking {Common} - Level Twenty-Nine

        > [Eye for Sizes]

- Management {Common} - Level Twenty-Four

        > [Stock Knowledge]

- Quick Sleeper {Uncommon} - Level Twenty-One

        > [Light Sleeper]

- Lie Detection {Uncommon} - Level Nineteen