Agatha felt an unstable mixture of confidence and nervousness. She had been dreading the academy for weeks now, yet these last days were able to heal her from her affliction. It hadn’t been instantaneous, but knowing that there were also people struggling filled her with sadistic glee. Yes, she was also in a world of pain, but there were other suckers in the pit with her.

  The lessons from the study group also proved helpful. Christie remained the marvelous girl she always was, and she helped her both in and out of the study group. Agatha didn’t know how the girl was doing it, because she was helping her, doing her training routine, and still sparing time to visit Fran?ois and for herself. She had known that her roommate was capable, but these last days she had seen the extent of her prowess, and it left her breathless.

  As for the other teachers… Mateo Librar was a good teacher, but he had the personality of a puddle, and also of a proportional depth. She appreciated his efforts, make no mistake, but if she had been studying alone with himself, she would had defenestrated herself far faster than she was originally planning to.

  Then there was Shayla.

  The Intaksolfani was definitely a character. Agatha didn’t know how the girl hadn’t been stabbed or shot yet, but she always made her presence known, and she was unapologetic about it. It wasn’t like the noble girls who sought to be popular and be seen, but more about how she knew that she was superior. And in a way, well… Agatha couldn’t help but find that hot.

  Incredibly awful person, decent teacher, but nonetheless, what a gorgeous girl. The dirty-blond girl couldn’t tell what it was. Was it the confidence? The dark skin? The bleak sense of humor? Perhaps everything? Whatever it may be, she found it attractive, endearing too. Shayla was exotic in every sense of the word, both in looks and character, and perhaps that was what charmed her.

  Alas, Agatha knew better than to try anything.

  She had learned her lesson many years ago, and she would not try to open up to anyone else anymore. She didn’t want to feel the pain again, feel those troubled and judgmental gazes. After all, she was here to learn and gain a place in the world, not to find happiness. The worst part was not knowing what her mother would say. Agatha had spent all her life with her counsel, yet now she was alone. Months had passed since the last time she had seen her, and she couldn’t help but…

  She wasn’t a momma’s girl! Let’s first clarify that!

  She just wanted to see her mother once again after not having had contact with her for more than a third of a year. That was a lot of time, the longest she had spent without her. She could only remember a prolonged separation when she was young, and even then, that had been a few weeks only.

  But the real issue wasn’t the separation, but the questions and the answers. Agatha wanted her mother’s advice, yet what would she say if she knew about her? About who she truly was? It was a terrifying idea. What if she didn’t…

  Agatha decided not to think about it.

  If she were to visit her mother, it still would take at the utmost minimum another third of the year. If she were to visit Malachite during the holidays. Which she doubted severely. If she were to repeat the journey again, it would be two months of round trip, almost the whole holiday. Though at the same time, that would only matter if she stayed at the academy.

  And if she didn’t…

  The seamstress-in-training let out a grim chuckle. Well, the conversation wouldn’t matter anymore. She would be back at Malachite and would probably need to marry a random boy, if just to better their economic standing. That was the cruel reality. This was the only and last chance Agatha had to prove herself. If she failed… her dreams and her happiness would die. Though at least I would still be alive, she told herself.

  It was a marvelous thing what the mind did under times of high stress. She had spent most of the exam rambling.

  Yes, she was taking an exam right now. Fortunately, it was just History, so she could afford to puke knowledge onto the paper without needing to think about anything but her problems. Of those, she had many. It was truly marveling how good she was at having problems. They should make a career out of that. I would be the best.

  It was actually the constant rambling that got her through the midterms; otherwise, she would be a yarn ball of nerves. Well, an even bigger ball.

  Agatha set down the pen and took a deep breath. Her hand hurt after writing three pages from the front and the back. History exams were monstrous, and the worst part, she still thought she was falling short. After all, she hadn’t known anything about the Targostera Empire until she came to the academy, and apparently, it had been a big country spanning the whole continent that only fell centuries ago, its downfall being marked by the advent of Agatecraft.

  At least according to Missus Ashcroft and the books, because Agatha couldn’t picture how Agatecraft could mark the end of a country. Especially not a hegemony.

  She wasn’t the first person to set the pen down – not in the slightest – but also not the last. She was satisfied with that alone.

  And that was the last exam of the midterms. Well, the last one she was worried about. A smile formed on Agatha’s face as Novela Ashcroft raised her hand and signaled the end of the exam. She was going to enjoy the actual last exam.

  ***

  Expectation had built up these days when the midterms had been taking place, and now all that expectation was ready to burst. It was palpable, truly. The students waited on the grades of the training fields as René Dago stood before them on the ground. He hadn’t revealed the contents of this last exam, but the whole class had already formed their expectations and ideas.

  “Good job surviving the midterms so far,” the grey-eyed soldier started. “These were, however, only a simulacrum of the final exams you will experience at the end of the academic year. Keep that nervousness and dread close to your heart, for you still will need it.”

  The way he spoke about those feelings that had weighed Agatha down all these weeks betrayed the man’s age. Yes, they all knew that René Dago was only twenty-five, but he always appeared far older than his age and definitely far more intimidating than the other teachers.

  “For the Agatecraft midterm, we will have a small tourney, so to speak.” Whispers filled the grades even if the teacher continued to speak. “You will participate in one-versus-one duels to the first blood. Disqualification means you are out of the whole tourney, so if you find yourself doubting your performance, try to survive as long as possible so you can at least get a score. Some additional rules – as expected – are that harming counts as disqualification. So yes, first blood is not literal. This exam is both a way to evaluate your control and growth rather than your raw power, so have that in mind. That would be all. You will now draw lots to select your rivals.”

  Agatha felt a complete sense of serenity. Serendipity was not a possibility here; she knew she would dominate. Such was the level of her confidence. This was no longer the theoretical exams that she had to study for weeks on end. No, this was her turf, and she was at her peak.

  The students slowly made their way out of the grades as they drew the lots and met with their future rivals. Knowing how Agatecraft worked, Agatha doubted that even this first round of duels, which would be a little more than fifteen in total with the number of students, wouldn’t last that long. Perhaps a duel prolonged to over a minute, but most would end in seconds, if not blinks.

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  Well, perhaps not as fast. We are forbidden from harming. That rule would have scared Agatha once upon a time, but that was no longer the case. Perhaps she still couldn’t control the potency of her little sapphire, but she had an extra command to help with that.

  Her first opponent was surprisingly one she knew: Mateo Librar. The chubby scholarite looked at her with puppy eyes as the boy already admitted his defeat.

  “Could I ask for a bit of clemency, Agatha?” The boy asked before their duel started.

  “Only because you helped me,” she beamed him a smile, though that only made the boy shriek miserably and pathetically.

  “Start!” Announced René Dago.

  Her confidence was so great that Agatha manually removed her agate from her necklace, even if every blink mattered. They were at thirty meters from each other, a distance that most young lithorists couldn’t deal with easily, yet one that was trivial for Agatha. Even before the Second Stratum, the absolute limit of her command range was thirty meters, but now that was almost trivial.

  She calmly removed the Compact command from her little sapphire – which made the opal expand on her hand – and she assigned it a new command. A series of them, as a matter of fact.

  Control Speed.

  By the time her agate became airborne, a barrage of ten agates was making its way to her. They moved fast as they were commanded by Speed too, but the difference between her lone one and the barrage was day and night.

  Agatha hardened her focus and followed the rapidly approaching agates with her eyes. Closest ones first. Then she threw her agate at them with enough speed to break the air.

  Control Speed allowed her to only vary the flying velocity of the agate, a skill that most people already had by default but she lacked. Yet, as simple as it was, it was also scarily effective. The Control Speed series wasn’t without its advantages. It would manipulate the speed far more drastically than innate skills allowed to. And she wasn’t without tricks of her own.

  By varying the speed from full throttle to none, she could then switch the vector of the speed to the opposite direction. This didn’t mean that the agate suddenly stopped midair as inertia was a thing, but it allowed her to slow her little sapphire enough to make sudden changes in directions, even if the agate never really reached the point of opposing its velocity vector and just heavily slowed down.

  Ah, what a terrifying sight it was as her blue agate impacted against one of Mateo’s amber agates, only to immediately change course in a ninety-degree turn and shoot down another agate. And another. Then another one.

  Control Speed allowed her to take the agate to full throttle easily, and while that wasn’t much of an advantage as her little sapphire always gave its best, it helped make the radical turns far more agile. And one couldn’t forget she was still using the Control command. Perhaps she didn’t have as much control over her agate as with the horrifying Speed Control synergy, but her agate no longer moved in a straight line, even if she could only modify its fly path by a handful of degrees.

  Yet it was incredible how much difference a handful of degrees made. Her agate went from a highly predictable phenomenon to one even more chaotic than weather itself. It was impossible to tell the degree she might turn her agate and in what direction.

  Not that this much was useful against Mateo, for in the first seconds of the duel, she had already shot down all of his agates.

  “Too predictable,” Agatha called out after moving her little sapphire back to her and having it orbit on top of her like a watchdog. “You should try to add a bit more unpredictability to your offense as plain Speed agates are easy to shoot down.”

  She felt like René Dago during the sparring of the first day of class, and she only had a single agate of the Second Stratum.

  “I guess there is a subject you can tutor me on,” the scholarite laughed in a pained manner.

  Agatha could guess why. She couldn’t see her classmate’s agate at this distance, and especially not the ones she had hit so hard that they were buried in the ground, but she could guess some had fractured a bit. The villager knew the pain of having an agate fractured, but it seemed she hadn’t hit hard enough as Mateo only looked like he had been jabbed on the stomach.

  Still, I shouldn’t push it. Maybe Teacher Dago says this counts as harming and will disqualify me.

  “Come on, give it a try,” the azure-eyed girl invited him to attack again, but mistake not her confidence for arrogance, as she still kept her defenses up.

  This next attack was far more unpredictable as Mateo had slowly approached Agatha as they spoke, therefore putting her well within his command range. This increased maneuverability made it possible for him to give his agates Control instead of Speed and place them somewhat close to her. The strategy was obvious yet effective: creating confusion on what agate he might shoot next.

  And it worked.

  Well, or rather, it intimidated Agatha enough to stop playing around as she didn’t want to lose the tourney in the first round. She took down the first two agates Mateo before shooting her little sapphire towards the boy before he had the chance to shoot a third agate at her. Even though she lowered the speed of her perfect agate significantly, she still chose to aim for the leg in case she might harm him.

  “Ah!” The boy’s grunt confirmed her success.

  “Agatha of Malachite is the winner. Next participants, take the stage.”

  There was no fanfare over her victory as it was the expected outcome, even for her classmates. She approached Mateo and extended him a hand as the boy had fallen down after getting hit on the thigh.

  “Are you okay?” She asked.

  “Yeah, it is more the scare than the pain that made me topple,” the chubby boy stood up easily, though with a taxed groan.

  The two students made their way to the grades as they observed the following duels. Agatha became aware of hidden aspects of this exam as she slowly realized what her classmates were capable of. All these weeks – months now – she had seen only spare acts of Agatecraft from her classmates, nothing too serious. While most had the same tools at their disposal, people always had styles of their own, and now she saw them in display.

  The most surprising of all was Shayla’s. For a non-noble, the girl had a lot of agates, sixteen in fact. If Christie weren’t in their class, she would have probably been the student with the most agates in their grade. Though unlike those of nobles, the quality of those agates was dubious. They were ugly, but serviceable with their big size. That was what made the Intaksolfani’s fighting style. Instead of pelting people with agates, the bronze-skinned girl played defensively by shaping her agates like shields and then forming a barrier around her. There were many gaps, yes, but it wasn’t a bad strategy by any means. She reserved her highest-quality agate for attacks, but the rest were solely focused on defense. A tactic especially useful against students, for they could only have a single try to shoot down agates as they couldn’t turn their agate midflight like Agatha or René Dago.

  That solid defense and passable attack was enough for her to pass to the next round through sheer numbers as her rival only had seven agates. Though defending with only the Control command was awkward as the Intaksolfani’s agates didn’t have much strength and could be shoved around. They weren’t the immovable walls Teacher Dago had shown, but just agate formation floating in the air and susceptible to foreign displacements.

  What interested Agatha, however, was Christie’s duel. Even René Dago looked tense as the redhead stepped into the arena. Does he know of Christie’s capabilities? That reaction alerted Agatha, but she didn’t linger too much on it. Truth was, she didn’t know if she should be worried about Christie or her rival. Christie was strong, far stronger than any of the students, but she couldn’t control that strength. And the seamstress-in-training was worried that might spell the defeat of her roommate.

  “Heh,” she chuckled to herself, which made Mateo look at her as if she was crazy. Look at little ol’ me, I’m more worried about Christie’s duel than my own.

  The more time passed by, the more she cared about Christie; Agatha couldn’t help it. She loved being with her, she loved how endearing and supportive she was, she adored when she behaved sillily – if that was even a word, which it should be – but that was what made it hurt even more. She knew there would always be a distance, no matter what she did. That was the way of life. That was what it meant to be herself. It meant being alone.

  But even if she… couldn’t get what she desired, she still wanted to support Christie. She wanted to reciprocate on all the help the redhead had given her. Not out of infatuation, but out of humanity.

  “Start!” René Dago announced, and the duel kicked off.

  Christie’s rival was a boy whose name Agatha couldn’t remember for her dear life. Though that was applicable to any other classmate. She wasn’t good with names to begin with, and she wasn’t interested in the slightest in her classmates, the boys the least. A lot of things could be said about Agatha of Malachite, but she had her priorities set straight.

  Yet the identity of the opponent mattered not, for the duel was over the moment it started. Whether it was out of panic from her first-ever duel or a calculated effort, Christie had unleashed her sea of stone at the poor boy. The redhead’s countless agates didn’t manifest instantly like normal agates, but it still only took a handful of blinks for the lithic wave to barely reach the classmate’s ankles as the sea was almost cut by the limit of its recalling range.

  That’s a lot of range, Agatha thought calmly. I guess she has used the Range command to cover the distance. She had seen her sea of stones so many times that it no longer petrified her upon seeing its depths. Though it surprised her to see how René Dago was equally calm. Christie has definitely shown him, it’s impossible he wouldn’t react upon seeing a whole field covered in stone.

  The people who did, in fact, react were the rest of the classmates.

  ““Uh???”” A choir of the utmost greatest and delicious confusion echoed across the training fields. Agatha couldn’t help but puff out of her chest in pride, as if those agates pertained to her, and she certainly wished they did. Just in a different sense than most.

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