“I’d like to take a look around if that’s ok?” I asked Luckdire as we left Grahidin to deal with his pets.

  “Are you considering enrolling?” he asked as he led me out of the guesthouse and back into the psychedelic grounds.

  “I might be. It would depend on what was in it for me.”

  “Hmm. It isn’t cheap. Annual tuition runs at something like twenty thousand gold a year.” Shut up, greed-demon, we’re filthy rich now, remember? “Most students take a loan at very generous interest rates, though.”

  “How many actually pay it back?”

  “Most of them, in the end. Being a graduate of the Academy has a certain cachet. And it makes joining the Adventurers smooth sailing. Our curriculum is very thorough. Just up here, please, Baronet.”

  We had arrived at the foot of one of the rainbow bridges that led up to a distant window. Looking more closely, I realised they were more like French doors than windows. It looked a bit steep, nearly sixty degrees or so, but Luckdire just stepped onto it and walked up casually, sticking out at an angle that should have been impossible, especially if you added in the weight of his mammoth crossbow dragging him down.

  I followed suit and found gravity was more accommodating than I was used to; down was very firmly based on where the bridge was, not the rest of the planet.

  At the top, I found myself in a spacious room, not necessarily one that had had its internal dimensions replumbed, but it was possible. It looked more like a gym than some kind of magical testing facility. Exercise devices, racks of weights, and the paraphernalia of fitness occupied the centre of the room, and around it all ran a double-laned running track. Maybe it had been dimensionally diddled? It should, in theory, fit within the circumference of the tower, but I was beginning to think friend Prenderghast was one of the most prolific spatial mages in the world.

  “This place has been altered? Like by Prenderghast, I mean.”

  “Oh no. The Academy predates him by a few hundred years. Now I think we’ll start on the bench press, if it’s all the same to you?” He slung his giant crossbow to the side like it was made of styrofoam and put it down gently. He gave it a loving pat, then looked up at me as I hadn’t moved.

  “Well?”

  “You want me to work out?” I wasn’t against physical exercise in principle, but I had always assumed it was a thing other people did.

  “Indeed. You can’t be analysed with a scoot, or the mid-tier scanning spells I have, possibly due to your draconic nature… hmm, there’s a paper in this. Those assholes won’t be able to block me like they did with my thesis on duck hunting strategies and the synergy with arcane circuitry construction. Can you believe they refused to publish? My undergrads worked so hard on that paper.”

  “You want me to lift weights and run around?”

  “Does everyone have to repeat themselves with you constantly? Is it possible that the reptilian brain is incapable of processing information related to simple instructions? Dragons are notoriously difficult to deal with… Say, after this is done, do you think I could open up your skull and run some tests on your brain?”

  “Come again?”

  “Definitely an inability to process simple requests and instructions. Fascinating. Well, we can return to that later.” He began to speak very slowly as though I were a particularly dull child. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to see how much you can lift and get some basic sprint tests done to give me an idea of your STR and AGI numbers. Then we can gauge ARM and finally MAG, where we’ll match your signature. Do you understand what I am asking of you?”

  “I just need my magical signature checking off to get the Quaestors off my back while I’m in town. Do I really need to do all the rest of this crap?”

  “Karen, give me strength. Yes. You do. We need to establish a baseline. Your mana channels are all twisted, probably due to you being shapeshifted out of your normal form. We may have to do the MAG test with you in your natural state, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  “You aren’t in the least bit concerned that I am a dragon?”

  “Again, a noted inability to stay on topic. Do you get easily distracted? Walk into a room and forget why you went in there? Do you have difficulty focusing on tasks and thoughts?”

  “Piss off.”

  I strode over and settled myself onto the bench press. Luckdire added some weights and told me to give it a go.

  “Are you strong enough to spot me?” I asked. It looked like quite a lot of weight.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “You saw my crossbow, right? Inability to formulate logical conclusions. Another interesting datapoint.”

  “I figured it was made of balsa wood or something.”

  “Tendency to lean toward obviously stupid conclusions. Fascinating. I can lift the weights, never fear.” The number of sapients on my menu increased by one. This guy could get to discover the insides of a dragon firsthand for all I cared.

  I set myself, I’m sure my form would earn me scathing looks from any gymrat back home, and heaved. The weights shot up. I lowered them carefully, and Luckdire added a few more to either end. I tried again, and this time it took some effort, but it still wasn’t overly challenging.

  “Hmm. At least fifty STR. Let’s see what you’re capable of.” He added half a dozen more weights to either end of the bar. It looked like a cotton bud designed for giants. I pushed and strained, but could barely lift it more than a couple of inches. He removed a couple of weights and told me to try again. This time, I managed a full extension, but my arms were shaking as I lowered it very carefully back into the rests. I did not trust this stickman to be able to help me if I slipped.

  “So STR is about seventy-six. Impressive. Do you need a minute to recover before we do the AGI trials?”

  I did not. This trial initially involved running around the track as quickly as possible. I blurred around the relatively small room, passing Luckdire every few seconds. He held a small device up to his face, clicking a button every time I passed him.

  “Around the sixty mark. Very nice. We need to do the dodge tests to really hone in on this one. Iudicium Fucum!” I managed to track his mana and note the sigil he used.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Iudicium Fucem

  My first stolen spell! A blob of light appeared, hovering to one side. It floated there unmenacingly, and Luckdire resumed speaking.

  “This will launch non-damaging attacks at a variable rate that you need to dodge. This will let me pinpoint your AGI statistic. Are you ready?”

  I nodded, then leapt to one side as a shard of blue immediately shot towards where my head had been.

  “You’re sure these can’t hurt me?”

  “Struggles to understand basic information. You really are a fascinating creature. I’d love to get my hands on half a dozen of you and do some serious vivisections.”

  I wasn’t paying attention to his words; I would see if I could find an opportunity to eat him later. I was switching from stance to stance and from one evasive Dragon Fu move to the next as the little darts shot out at ever-increasing speeds. Drop-And-Roll turned into The-Floor-Is-Lava, which flowed into The-Final-Countdown. I was running through my evasive moves almost as quickly as I could think. Spider-Dodges-Newspaper left me crouched to one side just as a dart pinged me in the forehead, and I blinked owlishly. It hadn’t hurt.

  “Sixty-seven. Also impressive. If you’ll follow me, we can head to the range where we can complete this process.” Without another word, he turned and headed across the gym to a door in the far wall. I trailed along, scheming retribution and sneakiness.

  “So you guys offer classes for magic? I’d love to look in on one of those. Might sway me towards paying to join.” Greed worked on me; surely it works on others?

  “Term doesn’t start for a few weeks. If your MAG skill is high enough, you could earn a spot on the premium course, but naturally, the prices are higher.” Greed-demon began sending me detailed memos involving recipes for slow-cooking wizards.

  “If it’s worth it, it’s worth it,” I ground out, ignoring the hurt look Greed sent my way,

  “Oh well, if you’ve got money to burn–” I hated this man, “–I could put in a good word for you, assuming your MAG is decent, and I am suitably recompensed. I hear the duck hunting is good up north. Say, you’re little town is on the river, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure we can arrange something.” I was proud of myself. The sound of my teeth grinding together could only be heard in my head. Probably.

  “Lovely.” He swung his mighty crossbow over his shoulder with a grin and led me through winding corridors and spiralling staircases that shifted and moved as we approached. Sometimes they moved away, forcing us to circle to one side, but usually they came to us and let Luckdire lead me deeper into the tower without issue.

  I was confident we were deep underground when he took a doorway that let out into a long room, a good fifty metres wide that stretched away into the distance.

  “This is a shooting range?” The near end was occupied with booths, with what I could only describe as firing lanes leading down to… nothing. There were no targets or machinery to move them around.

  “Simple observations remain within your capacity, despite your other conditions. I wonder… Yes, this is a room we use for aim training and offensive magic practice. Spell discipline is vital. I appreciate that you don’t understand most of what I’m saying, but if you’d like to go stand over there, we can get the ARM testing out of the way.”

  “You want me to stand out there. Where you’re presumably going to shoot magic at me to see how strong I am.”

  “Survival situations seem to increase mental acuity. Indeed, dear sir. That’s pretty much the gist of it.”

  “I’m not a fan.”

  “I’m afraid this is part of the registration process and is mandatory. If you’d be so kind? I can assure you no lasting harm will befall you, Sir Bob.”

  Against my better judgment, I moved fifty metres or so down the range and turned to face Luckdire, who was smiling in a way I found distinctly worrying.

  “Mortem Fucem!” was yelled twice in quick succession.

  New Syntheticus unlocked!

  Mortem Fucem

  My Latin wasn’t that great, and I had no wish to ask why the fu– beloved system liked it so much, but I knew Mortem was something to do with death, and I hadn’t liked the sound of fuck ‘em the first time round.

  Two armoured sentinels appeared, floating light forms crowned by solitary, glowing eyes. Said eyes swivelled in my direction, and the world went white.

  I was knocked backwards, arms crossed in front of my face. My heels slid across the floor with each hit, booms echoing in my ears. I rolled to the side and, as the shots tried to track me, transformed back into my proper body. A flap of feathery wings let me cross the distance in a couple of bounding leaps, eating the shots on my scales as I closed the gap, and I slammed through the booths, swatting the drones with a claw apiece.

  My snout came to a stop a few inches from Luckdire's terrified face. He’d swung his crossbow over his shoulder and was pointing it shakily in my direction.

  “ARM is very high, sir. It’s over nine thousand!” he squeaked