However, her usual smile was gone, and she was frowning at Jim while looking him up and down. "Is there any particular reason you're not attending the start of semester exams?" she asked, sounding like she wanted to remain polite, but was finding it hard to do so.
Jim looked at her, confused, before furrowing his brows. "Professor Waters, I thought those exams were tomorrow," he muttered. And perhaps there was enough genuine confusion to be found in his voice and in his face for the woman's frown to lighten a bit.
"Today is Monday," she informed him slowly, catching his blue eyes with her light green ones.
"That's impossible, I arrived yesterday, on the ship. I remember it clearly," Jim argued. "I went straight here, read in preparation for the exams and then went to sleep…" he trailed off as he considered the fogginess in his mind. The sort of tiredness that came from sleeping too much, not too little. "Unless I slept for two days?" he asked himself dubiously. That had never happened before.
"I am starting to believe that I should be escorting you to the school nurse, not to any sort of exam. Although your mana emissions seem to be stable from what I can tell."
Jim shook his head. "I'm fine, I'm fine." Perhaps he'd needed to sleep longer to assimilate all the memories from the future. He stepped out of the dorm room. "I can take the exams right now, no problem," he boasted, gaining a doubtful look.
"You don't want to perhaps first get dressed in something that isn't," she paused as she inspected him more closely. "pyjamas?"
Jim blushed before stepping back and slamming the door shut in the professor's face. One minute later, he came out dressed in the proper attire, a black robe with brown boots. He’d still yet to get the pink ones.
The professor nodded upon seeing him, and they quickly left the dorm. Professor Waters taught mana awareness. Her internal awareness expansion class was mandatory in the first semester, and if Jim's visions were correct, she taught external mana sensing as an elective in the second.
"We’ve had students not arrive in Sredina, but never had one check in the dorms and then skip the exam," the woman mused as they rushed through the academy gates and onto the wide space of the campus with its boring vegetation and classical architecture.
"How much have I missed? It starts with a written exam, right?" Jim asked.
"It's just a two-hour refresher to see how motivated people were over the winter break. It helps sort out who isn't going to waste a professor's time if they get to take an elective past the mandatory combat class."
Jim hadn't qualified for any elective classes last time. He probably wouldn't have taken one anyway, even if he had. To graduate, you just needed to pass combat. That and a sufficiently advanced mana shaping exercise qualified you for being a second circle mage after graduation. This was all he needed, or wanted. The fact that the academy hadn't really been expelling students for anything other than bad behaviour in the last few years hadn't really helped his motivation. He realised that they wanted to raise the number of mages in the country, but he thought they were going about it wrong. They should have just opened a secondary academy if that was their goal. Lowering the bar on the high-end institution just demotivated everyone with actual talent, like Jim.
They arrived in front of the exam hall, a large colosseum where professors had materialised chairs for the theoretical exams, and tested students on the more practical aspects of magic. A severe-looking mage with protruding ears was standing guard at the door, and only reluctantly moved to the side as the two of them approached. They arrived at the colosseum, but before Jim could enter the open space where everyone was sitting their theoretical exam, Professor Waters stopped them.
"You missed a quarter of the exam. You're not going to get additional time for missing it, so just go in and do your best. The first free table next to the entrance is yours. The exam and the pen are on the table. Referencing any hidden material is obviously forbidden, and you have to stop writing when the examiner calls for it," the professor quickly recited, giving an abbreviated version of the talk the staff usually gave at the start of the exams to save on time.
Jim nodded, having already gone through the exam once before. He'd gotten a decent enough 55% of the grade, stumbling on some of the more obscure questions towards the end. His practical skills had been abysmal back then, that part, at least, was much improved now.
The professor shoved him forward gently when she saw that he was ready, and he entered the colosseum grounds through one of the side entrances he'd been led to. It was less awkward than he'd expected coming into the large sand-filled arena during the middle of the exam. Everyone was too busy scribbling away to spare him any attention, and Jim managed to trudge his way through the sand to his table in relatively little time with no more than just a few glances being thrown his way. The main offender was Dew Waterflower, apparently already done with her exam, but clearly not done judging his life choices. He sat down and picked up the feather, dipped it into the inkwell.
He sighed after elaborately signing his name on the first sheet of parchment.
Writing his name was always his favourite part.
Essay question 1: You cast basic ward around an unspecified location. What are the easiest methods for an intruder to enter regardless? List three.
They always liked to start with the easy questions, Jim mused. The answer was obvious.
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Someone can easily enter a warded area if they are in possession of an artefact enchanted by the creator of the ward. As long as the intruder can suppress their signature so as to be surmounted in presence by the artefact, they can simply walk in. This can be either achieved by a very high mastery of one's magic or simply by being unconscious.
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Overloading the ward structure is the fastest solution to the problem. Finding the focal point to do so is the issue, however. Would require a decent skill level in mana sensing.
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The intruder could try to bribe me to let them in.
The next question followed a similar, simple vein.
Essay question 2: What facet of a mage's skillset determines their success in the four basic shape exercises?
Jim tore through the test in what had to be record time, given his late start. Questions he didn't know the answer to, he simply skipped. It wasn't like the answer would come to him through some sort of divine revelation. And those that had come to him through his future visions had already arrived safely in his head two days ago.
Quite frankly, the test was done sooner than he thought, and he ended with still a few grains of sand in the gigantic hourglass one of the professors was projecting into the air above his head, right before the first row of tables and students.
He had just enough time left to get into a petulant, glaring contest with Waterflower, who once again turned her head to stare at him when she saw him finishing early. He gave her an arrogant smirk and refused to look away first, which is how they spent the rest of the time until the invigilators called a stop to the exam session and started walking around to collect the parchment bundles.
It wasn't even a second after he had stood up that he was assaulted by Lebowski, who'd apparently been taking the exam somewhere close by if he'd managed to come over so fast.
"Where were you? I was banging on your door like a maniac yesterday," the boy hissed as he leaned into Jim's right ear. "So much has happened in just one day. Professor Mirtol got assassinated. The academy held a spontaneous tournament to decide the next combat instructor. Waterflower was seen begging in front of the staff building to be allowed more electives. I was almost robbed! Then I was saved by some total hottie who invited me for a meeting of some sort of secret society."
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Lebowski was a chatterbox, his love for rumours and gossip second only to his love of drink. Had it been a normal day in the past, Jim would have surely been hanging out with his friend, and likely would have been dragged to watch the tournament and to hear it all as it happened in real time. He was glad to have been unavailable for the tournament, as he'd seen the entire thing once already, but the near robbery concerned him.
"Waterflower will always be an overachieving suck up, but what is this about getting robbed?" Jim asked as he furrowed his brows.
His friend just waved him off. "Some six losers or so got me in an alley. Very weird bandits, I'd always thought people like that couldn't afford good dental hygiene. For a second I was wondering if I was in the wrong business. Then this crazy woman in a red robe jumped in like a vampire and just lasered them. And by crazy, I mean crazy hot, you get me? Anyway, robbery? Definitely not for me."
So, for some reason, while Jim had been rushing to get to the dorm room as fast as possible, Lebowski had entered the same alleyway in which Jim had gotten waylaid in one of the possible futures. He'd gotten the same invitation, too, by the sound of it.
"Honestly, there's definitely too much thievery happening, someone actually stole my coin-purse while I was sleeping on the ship," Jim shared and while his friend's eyes widened and he was surely about to offer a word of support or a promise to find those responsible, a cold voice spoke up from next to them.
"Savant, maybe you can refrain from embarrassing everyone at the next exams. Or is that maybe too much to ask for? Oh wait, you won’t be accepted into second year anyway, so I guess it doesn’t matter," Waterflower said. Her blue hair was messy, seemingly a result of her worrying through it as she took the exam, but the rest of her clothes were as impeccable as always.
"Nobody asked you, Dew," Lebowski replied with a roll of his eyes and a rude, but very well-hidden gesture of his fat fingers.
“The second year is optional,” Jim sang, dragging the word out like a child mocking a teacher. “Oooooptionallllll.”
Dew snorted and ignored him. "Waterflower for you, Kabaj. Anyway, the two of you should probably get ready to get called on for the practical portion, the professors always test the worst students first. Means they can progress faster before stalling towards the end with those who actually have something to show," she finished, before stalking off, probably to harass someone else.
The tables and chairs had vanished during his conversation with his friend, and the professors were setting up the little squares of space in which they would test the students.
"Kabaj!"
"Krowell!"
"Savant!"
The adults suddenly started shouting the last names of the attending students, and after a quick promise that they'd talk more later, Jim and Lebowski parted ways towards separate ends of the arena.
Funnily enough, it was not in fact the same person testing Jim as it had been the last time. Instead of some assistant professor of a subject no one cared about, he would be getting tested by Professor Waters. The woman gave him a wan smile as she consulted a sheet of parchment in her hands. "Alright, Savant, why don't you cycle through the basic four? As you know, it's considered something of an unwritten expectation that students can use all the spells reflexively by the end of their first semester. If I'm reading this correctly, you only managed to achieve this for the fire-making and the telekinesis spell?" she asked.
Jim nodded to confirm. Then he held up a hand, palm up and extended his pointer finger upwards. He'd naturally gotten even better at the fire-making spell since his last performance. It was a useful spell for lighting candles. A small spark burst into existence over the tip of his finger before immediately shooting upwards to create a stream of fire going a foot into the air. It wasn't very hot, but it was visually impressive.
The professor looked at the flame appreciatively as it shrunk back down to a more sustainable size. She noted something down on the parchment in her hands before nodding at him. He took it as a sign to continue, so he extinguished the fire with a shake of his hand and bent down towards the sand floor, putting a palm above it. A bit of mana and grippage, essentially the creation of a shapeless and invisible third hand… Jim stood up. Left in the ground was a head-sized hole. He'd used quite a lot of mana on that one, knowing that the test wouldn’t require much of it.
"Decent size," the professor praised before waving him on to continue.
Jim managed to create a bright ball of light without using an incantation or a gesture, but it was on the last one of the basic four that he stumbled. He'd never quite gotten the hang of gathering water in general, let alone doing so without any mental aid. For him, already gathering up a thimble of the liquid from the surroundings was a win, although the professor wasn't particularly impressed. She did nod, however and noted down his results.
"Well, I'm glad to see you worked over the summer to get the other two basics to reflexive levels," she mused. "Now, I'm obliged to ask if there is anything else you would like to show me for extra credit. Just because something wasn't on the curriculum doesn't mean it's not good to learn it."
Jim hesitated for a few seconds, unsure if he should show off his mage shield and magic missile; however, if the future happened again, then the new professor, Professor Kyros, would work his class exclusively on those two spells, and then it would come out anyway. Also, what did it matter if people knew he could cast the two spells? Maybe he would finally get recognition for his genius. "I can demonstrate a mage shield and magic missile," he eventually said to the clear surprise of the professor.
The professor blinked and looked down at her sheet, as if checking that she didn't have the wrong student in front of her. Jim didn't know if he should be offended or not. On one hand, he hadn't come to the academy to please the professors; he came to fulfil the minimum requirements. On the other hand, this was sort of insulting. If they wanted him to perform better, they should have heightened the standards, he would have risen to meet them.
"Alright, mage shield first," the professor ordered.
The number of times that Jim had been forced to practice the spell probably numbered somewhere around ten thousand. It was something of an obsession of the combat professor; he wouldn't let any student leave his class until they were capable of casting it in less than a second. A force field erupted out of Jim, creating a blue membrane made out of head-sized hexagons all around him. He heard a few shouts of exclamation rise up from behind him, where the other students were waiting for their turn.
"Jimmy boy!"
Professor Waters, for once, seemed impressed. She started pacing around the shield, prodding it with a finger glowing with blue energy, the same energy also now present in her eyes, changing them from green to blue.
"Well formed. Hexagonal isn't my favourite, but it works to defend against progressive overload attacks. Very fast execution. If you were working on this instead of the water drawing spell then I think your inefficiency is excusable. I won't bother testing it, since I can already tell it's quite well formed. Also, I want you to be able to show me the magic missile without getting exhausted."
Jim dropped the shield before looking around. He saw other students demonstrating their own basic four, shaping exercises and some extra-curricular spells. One student was demonstrating a whip made of fire, the sand underneath it sizzling whenever it struck down. Another was showing off an illusory projection above their heads.
What Jim did not see was a good target for his magic missile. "Where should I aim it?" he eventually asked hesitantly.
"Cast it at me," the professor supplied, a mage shield springing up around her as well. It was the most basic one, a simple bubble of mana. However, considering it was being cast by a professor, Jim was unlikely to succeed in cracking it. He would try anyway.
A ball of mana manifested over his shoulder before shooting off in a blue streak. It smashed against the professor's shield, dissipating without leaving so much as a metaphorical mark on the professor's seemingly impregnable defenses. Jim frowned and formed another one, and then another one. One over his right shoulder, one over his left. He couldn't quite make out the professor's face from behind the blue, but he did feel like he saw a quirked eyebrow. The two magic missiles slammed into the shield at exactly the same spot, but they accomplished just as little as the first one had. Namely, nothing. Jim sighed and gave up. He still had the mana for a few more attempts, but it was futile. "That was it," he said, and the blue shield around the professor flickered before caving in on itself.
The woman was already writing in her bundle of parchments. Jim didn't know if he had to be there anymore. He didn't have anything more to show.
"Concurrent casting," the professor eventually said, looking up from her notes. "Show me your instances," she demanded.
The student lifted a hand, two blue mana constructs coming to life atop the palm and swirling around each other. An instance was the minimal unit of magic required to form most spells. This shaping exercise generally determined how many spells a mage could cast simultaneously, since every circle indicated the use of an instance. Jim concentrated and shifted the two instances into rings, which slowly started to orbit around each other.
"Makes sense, makes sense," the professor muttered. "You can't form two different shapes yet, right?" she asked, and Jim vehemently shook his head. That was the prerequisite for casting two different spells at the same time. The jump in difficulty was immense, which was why it was one of the abilities required to become a third-circle mage. Jim had barely managed to become a second circle after a whole year at the academy.
"Alright, this definitely evens out the basics and puts you in the running for an elective spot," the professor said happily. "You should definitely consider picking mana sensing, it's a meta-skill just like shaping. The more you can tell about a mana construct after it leaves your sphere of influence, the better you can adjust the creation process. Anyway, that will be all," she finished, thus dismissing Jim, who turned around and started walking towards the exit, which was blocked off by a group of students all waiting for their turn.
Surprisingly enough, he wasn't able to find Lebowski in the crowd. It was odd; he'd expected his friend to wait for him. Anyway, Jim had things to do as well. He needed to go to the gendarmes to report the theft of his coin pouch and then to the bank to pick up a new one. Wandering off into the tunnels, his thoughts on money and what he'd do with it, he didn't notice the intense eyeballing he was getting from one student in particular.
Dew Waterflower was looking at him as if she'd seen a ghost, and it wasn’t one of the nice ones.