At four o'clock in the afternoon, the exam on general education was over. Staying till the end of the seven-hour test period was not necessary, but there were hundreds of multiple-choice questions, and thinking through each one took time. Hardly anyone left before the time was up, and I saw very few smiles when it was over.
The school's harsh reputation was earned.
I think I did—not terribly. Saying I was satisfied with my performance would've been a lie, but the goal of not standing out was certainly met. I saved my best efforts for the parts exclusive to the Magic course in the coming days, anyway. Today's results didn't matter.
Forget about it.
Applicants from further away could stay at the dormitory free of charge for the exam period. Emily Troyard was one of these cases. I overheard her talk about her plans on the way. I considered asking if she hadn't changed her mind, a bit worried she might get into more trouble if left to her devices, but lost sight of her in the departing crowd. Oh well.
Since I went out of my way to poke my nose into her business this morning, I would've liked this story to have a happy ending too, but we each had to be the captain of our own fate.
Our household had an auto, which put the home only two hours away, so I returned to the Ruthford estate with Ms Asia and Charlotte for the night. Ms Asia insisted on driving on the way back. She clearly had experience behind the wheel and confidently overtook the line of departing carts and wagons and older automobiles. Our vehicle's engine was way ahead of the competition, and my aunt's steering style could be compared to the charge of a wild boar. It seemed to me like her maneuvering set one cart off the road, but the incident went by too fast to see clearly, and I didn't feel like looking back. She'd be the talk of the town for weeks to come, and definitely not in an admiring way.
So much for upholding the good name of the Ruthfords.
Instead of trying to do any last-minute theory cramming, I spent the evening at home quietly relaxing. Nobody could claim to be all-knowing when it came to magic, but after working as a war mage for most of my life, I was confident I could handle a school exam. It was important to sometimes let your mind rest too. I was definitely not being only lazy and complacent.
I played pool with Ms Asia in the manor's dedicated game room, and we forced Charlotte to play with us. The maid destroyed us both with ease and won five hundred crowns from my aunt, who was stupid enough to start betting after a few glasses of courage. When she suggested I could strip if I had no money, I saw it wisest to retire.
Gambling was never worth it.
Dusk neared and I went out into the backyard garden to seek the Sylphid fountain. Despite everything, skipping the routine was out of the question. My mana control had improved maybe a notch over the month, but water sports weren't on the program tonight.
The argument earlier in the morning made me realize something a bit alarming: I knew practically no non-lethal techniques.
My output may have been reduced to a fraction of what it used to be, but all the spells I knew were designed solely to inflict severe physical damage. I couldn't blow up castles in my current state, and the higher rituals were unusable, but ordinary humans were startlingly fragile. A proficient mage should've been able to control the deadliness of her spells at will, but such inhibitions had been deliberately removed from me.
The crisis was safely resolved this time, but if a real fight ever broke out at school, I wasn't so sure I could subdue my opponent without fatalities.
That said, I didn't feel like turning the other cheek either, and let myself be one-sidedly beaten to protect the Kingdom's dirty secrets. I had to develop some safer methods of self-defense.
The faux telekinesis wasn't suited for combat. Too little force and it could easily be repelled. The innate mana flow of magic-users increased resistance to external effects. In other words, the very act of casting spells provided a mild protection against other people's spells, and that made it difficult to estimate how much force could be safely used. Increasing the power to overcome the buffer could easily end up torching the opponent with friction.
Air was dangerous to play with in general. Even at the level where the current didn't cause direct damage yet, it could still penetrate the skin to the blood circulation and cause gas embolism. Tiny air bubbles blocked the veins, preventing oxygen from reaching the heart or the brain. It was an assassination technique that couldn't be detected without advanced sensory skills. Not appropriate against bullies.
The other low-tier techniques I relied on most of the time were Rend and Spindle.
Their effects were comparable to a fencer's slash and stab, respectively. Basic actions, but they did the job in nine cases out of ten. It was irrational to hit a fly with a bunker buster, if a simpler way existed. But cutting, stabbing, or crushing students was obviously not allowed.
I had to come up with a new trick, while minding the condition of having to include a direction and velocity in the technique. That inevitably turned to throwing things. But when an object was forcibly moved, it became inherently dangerous. This was harder than I thought.
I'd never developed new techniques entirely on my own before. I was more a doer and less a thinker, so how did I end up with the most brain-intensive job in the world? Master was always there to advise me before. I'd bombard him with questions until he gave in and told me what to do…No, why was I still calling that guy "Master"? He wasn't here anymore. Old habits were the hardest to kill.
But it was high time I learned to stand on my own.
Trying to think but not really thinking, I held out my hand and started to route air idly along a path, continuously adjusting the angle. Maybe the answer was in the trajectory? Regardless of what was moved, as long as the collision was indirect, it should've reduced the damage.
My skill as a mage was built on vectors, straight paths formed between two points. But converting a line into a curve didn't take so much mental gymnastics, only a bit of calculus. You had a direction and then added to it by a continuous function until it looped.
Somebody once said you couldn't be a great mage unless you were a mathematician, but I was never any good with numbers, and never had to be. Nobody I knew consciously counted Pi decimals in their head. You visualized a plain circle and your brain took care of the heavy lifting. Like so, I bent the control path until the termination point was equal to the initiation point. If the points met on the x-axis, but not on the z-axis, you had a spiral, which formed the base of the technique I called Spindle. But if the values met on both axes, the result was a clean, flat loop.
A wobbly, sputtering, hair-thin ring appeared drawn against the garden backdrop.
I didn't put much power into it, but driving air along such a strictly limited curve caused a rapid build-up of heat. The circle glowed faintly golden as energy escaped it by radiation.
Shrinking the radius made the loop revolve faster and hotter, even though the power input stayed more or less constant, and the glow changed hue to a darker scarlet. Conversely, when expanded, it cooled, and grew dim and translucent. I compressed the loop until the spell was about the size of an apple seed. The light now shone dark blue and could hardly be seen. But I definitely felt it. Even from a few feet away, it warmed my face like an open stove.
That thing was by no means safe to touch. Even bringing it near exposed skin was sure to cause burns. In trying to create a safe technique, I only came up with something even more dangerous than usual. Useless.
Back to the drawing board.
But as a stable, standalone phenomenon, the circle was at least easy to control. It had speed and direction, yet was stationary at the same time. I could lock the loop's center coordinates to my hand, and swing the whole thing around like a small, hot knife. It could be handy in fights where I didn't need to worry about the opponent's safety.
How should I name the technique?
It came across as a bit childish to name spells, but assigning a clear, verbal symbol for a technique made it easier to recall in need. Associating the method with the name through practice, you no longer had to think about how it was done, precisely, but could execute the effect intuitively through the label.
The appearance of the magic reminded me of a thin cotton thread in its base form, so I'd call it String, for now. It made a good addition to my anti-personnel sewing kit.
I waved my hand absentmindedly around, experimenting with the distance.
The String loop was so small now, my eyes lost track of it in the dim sunset lightning.
Zip. The spell brushed a decorative cherub standing on a pedestal by the path. A sharp chink rang out, and the arm of the grinning alabaster babe broke off and fell, shattering on the pavement. The stump of a shoulder was blackened and smoking, spreading the putrid scent of burnt stone over the scene.
Okay. Definitely not safe.
It was going to take more than one night of brainstorming before I had an appropriately scaled technique to take on students in a showdown of spells. In the meantime, maybe just staying out of trouble was the best choice.