Unlike the past two Mondays when Alira was summoned to Professor Daw’s office first thing in the morning, she was spared this time around. All thanks to the physician’s statement that she wasn’t considered fit enough to take a scolding yet.

  A piece of clean, white cloth covered her eyes, tied just tightly enough, keeping glaring light and Professor Daw’s angry nagging away. It wasn’t like she wanted to purposefully get into trouble. Just that every move she made seemed to come at a high cost and a lot of commotion.

  Alira sat at her study table inside her shared bedroom that had received a couple of renovations to house a deer and a guinea pig. There were facilities at the Academy made to provide and care for Spirit Familiars, specifically those of noble children and rich kids, at the low price of three Foen per day. Nothing much, just the cost of the daily expense of a commoner’s family, and maybe even two days if they squeezed in.

  Alira and Maria, like the majority of the Academy, chose to keep their familiars in their room. Not that Alira particularly wanted to. The Loch very strongly refused the idea of staying with other Spirits, and she was obliged to keep it happy to improve their connection, which in turn would make it easier for her to use its abilities.

  A makeshift nest with bundled up logs and a simple straw mat inside it stood at the far right corner of the room, away from Alira’s side. Beside it was a smaller bed that consisted of a short fence that circled a small straw bed for Maria’s familiar.

  Neither of the beasts stayed in their designated section of the room. The Loch, which she had decided to call Loch for its name, occupied her bed, nestled asleep at the center like it wished it could take up more space than it did and claim everything for itself. The guinea pig was even fancier, choosing her lap as its bed. With how clingy it was to Alira, anyone who didn’t know better would have assumed it was her familiar instead of Maria’s. Not that she minded.

  On this day, blessed with yet another late spring shower in its early hours, a fluffy lump of warmth was welcomed on her thighs.

  Alira would have given it another pet on its small head if she weren’t afraid of losing her progress and having to start over. Both her hands were occupied; one traced the bumps of a page from a braille book while the other occasionally checked on the guide to the alphabet and symbols whenever she needed double-checking.

  Who would have known getting a familiar would end up with her having to learn Staywes’s standard braille code?

  “Miss Alira, maybe you should take a break?” Maria’s voice was as light as a flutter of a butterfly’s wings.

  “One more page,” Alira replied. Her hearing had mostly come back, but loud noises were still harsh on her ears.

  The diagnosis came back as an extreme case of mana overuse that had put too much stress on her barely established core, especially for someone with Lower Bronze mana affinity. It was normal for the damage she suffered, they said. Time should heal. Rather, they found it bizarre that she didn’t have it worse, considering the implied though not specified ‘messes’ she made in the forest.

  That was only because the physicians and healers, most of whom were mages, didn’t know about the duke’s Bind on her. The actually strange thing was that the physical damage remained unhealed. That shouldn’t happen, according to every text she had studied about Complete Bind.

  But since it was happening, it only meant she was still lacking critical information about the Bind. Alira didn’t want to waste a second. If the Bind could be bypassed unbroken, though the injuries were non-fatal, there was a chance that injuries that were fatal could as well.

  That was the reason she had made a fuss to gather all the braille books about Alchemic Bind she could get her hands on. To not strain herself, Alira decided to go easy by only going through the books she had already read through a couple of times before to check if she had missed anything. Alira sighed, marking the page she was on before closing the book. She had come across nothing new so far.

  “What class do we have today?” Alira asked. Despite having approval, Alira didn’t want to use up her last few permitted absences.

  Maria’s careful footsteps approached. She draped a silk blanket on Alira’s back, wrapping her in it. “Shouldn’t you rest, miss?” Maria said, placing her slightly cold hand on Alira’s forehead. “You’re still a little warm.”

  “It’s alright. I will just show up for the sake of attendance,” Alira said, subconsciously rubbing into Maria’s coolness.

  “We have our usual Monday Alchemy class in about an hour. Then, I have an elective class right after, while you’d normally have about five hours until your next class. But Professor Sigor is evaluating the test and also a brief about our familiar today.”

  Alira nodded. “So, Alchemy, two hours break, and then Professor Sigor? Sounds doable.”

  The two got dressed up with Maria doing most of the work, even more so than usual. Even when Alira tried to button herself up, the girl would brush her hand out of the way to do it herself. Alira could only accept her fate and the fact that she had lost all of Maria’s trust.

  They walked to the auditorium, which Alira hadn’t been to since two weeks ago. The walk wasn’t as pleasant as the one she had from the Vesper Reign forest, where she couldn’t hear all sorts of mumbles and grumbles.

  Most were about the changes in the Academy syllabus, which hadn’t been revised for a decade, and one of them where the first years were equipped with a familiar so early. From there, some strayed towards the things a certain first year from a certain duchy did during the test, but they were all speculations and rumors, with none of them seeming to know anything concrete.

  She planned to find out from Raine after class, since today also happened to be their alchemy study day. The protagonist had, very coldly, not shown up once to check up on her. Maria said he wasn’t looking very good the few times she had seen her since the test. Unlike the frosty Raine, Alira felt the need to check up on him—though mostly to make sure he was keeping up with his alchemic studies. It was more like checking whether the engine of her return vehicle was oiled properly.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Maria picked two seats that should be mostly out of Professor Daw’s sight. Neither of them was exactly her favorite student if she had one. As soon as they sat, Professor Daw’s heels clicked as she walked into the auditorium on time as always. The auditorium, filled with chattering teenagers that had been bustling like a market just a moment ago, instantly died down.

  “Good morning, class,” Professor Daw said, marking the start of the class. “Today’s the last alchemy theoretical class of your first month. We’ll finish up this month with the third and final use of alchemy. F of E.L.F. Fuse.”

  “Fuse?” Alira murmured. One of the main reasons she decided to attend today’s class was that she’d thought today’s lecture would be on Bind. “Is she skipping Bind?”

  Maria leaned in, tilting her head up to whisper into Alira’s ears. “Professor Daw covered Bind last week.”

  Oh, right. I skipped one class, and it just has to be one topic I care about.

  Professor Daw turned to write down the three initials of alchemic applications and circled the first two. “While most alchemic studies recognized three aspects of alchemy, we technically only have two in practice. As we already covered, all casts of Link, or Bind as most prefer to call it, are a form of Bind, a one-sided bind. The one distinctive aspect of alchemy is Fuse.”

  She held up a small piece of dark, flaky graphite and a nugget of dull, soft iron. “Unlike Link or Bind, which involve two targets where the cast goes A to B or B to A or both, Fuse brings together A and B.”

  She pressed the pieces together. With a flash of heat and a shower of sparks, the impurities fell away as ash, leaving behind a single, sleek, grey-silver lump of metal. “Steel. We skip the furnace, but the principle remains. Anything that exists can be fused, in some ways, but that brings the topic of what should be fused.”

  She placed the metal down and dusted her hands.

  “Alchemic Fuse is a powerful ability. As with all powerful abilities, it's extremely easy and tempting to misuse.” Professor Daw took a brief pause. Alira could guess why she was being so careful.

  “It's a difficult topic, but one we cannot and must not evade,” Professor Daw continued. “Alchemic Fuse allows the characteristics and stages of two or more targets to be merged into a single outcome.” Her voice grew heavier. “Hybrids are victims of the violation and misapplication of alchemy. An abuse that strips anyone who commits such acts of both the title and the rights of being an alchemist. Everyone who walks the path of alchemy must not only be told this, but we ourselves must understand exactly why.”

  Alira was the only hybrid in First Class, and as an outsider with different worldly views, she didn’t really care about it. Though she quite liked Professor Daw’s firm acknowledgement of hybrids being victims without the presence of pity or shame in her voice—as if being hybrids were something to be ashamed of, which wasn’t true at all. The sin went to the committers and the slave traders.

  It took her back to the day she crash-landed on Staywes. If Duke Ravon had done one good deed in his life, it had to be him nuking salve dungeons.

  Professor Daw continued on the topic, most of which were already covered in another module named “Alchemy and Morality”. As she’d promised Maria, Alira didn’t listen for any longer than a few minutes, dozing off until the end of the class when Maria poked her awake. The blindfold doubled as a sleeping mask. As long as she kept her head from swinging around like a tube man, it would seem as though she had been paying full attention in class the entire time despite her temporary troubles.

  Alira woke up with her brain feeling like a brick. A couple of female students had been whispering among themselves the entire duration of the class. Now that she was fully awake, their voices were actually familiar. It was the group of noble girls who followed Lillian around.

  Lillian...

  Alira’s mood dampened, soaking up the sound of the rain that echoed emptily inside the auditorium. It had been over a week, yet she hadn’t heard anything about the girl. She sure hoped that the Academy and House Orllel had made any progress, and she simply hadn’t been informed about it.

  Moreover, as today was Monday, and she had been waiting for the vision to come to her from the first minute past midnight.

  Still nothing yet...

  Alira dismissed Maria pinpointed Raine’s location from his firm footsteps and the unique scentless scent of cool water that came from him. Even without sight, she could find her way around just fine thanks to her keen, fluffy ears and sharp sense of smell. Only when Alira had caught up with Raine did Maria allow herself to be dismissed and head to her next class.

  “What?” Raine asked, stopping for no more than a few seconds when he heard Alira approaching from behind.

  “Don’t be such a stranger when I’m wearing the ring you gave around my neck,” Alira said teasingly. She gave him enough time to ask her to return the artifact, but he didn’t. “Not to mention we have our secret session today.” She nudged at his side, wishing she could see the speechless look on his face.

  Raine exhaled with exasperation. “I will keep up with the study by myself. You should go rest and stop making people worry.”

  “Oh,” Alira raised her brows. “Worried, you say. I wonder who—”

  Raine didn’t allow her to continue. “The girl just now, your maid or friend or whatever.”

  Alira laughed inwardly. “Aww. Are you all cranky because you didn’t manage to stop me from my late-night underwater adventure, and I got all hurt? Come on, now. You know about my special healing ability.”

  “I’m not cranky,” Raine said. “And I know exactly how you’re still here only because of that ‘ability’.”

  Alira laughed, this time not containing the light chuckles to herself. She wished she could tell him how true he was. The two spent an hour or so at the library before they had to leave for lunch. Only when they were about to head for the supplementary class, Alira remembered she hadn’t brought along the main class material—her Spirit Familiar.

  “Help me out, won’t you? I can’t make it back to my room by myself,” Alira asked.

  “No,” Raine snapped. “I can’t just barge into the female dormitory in broad daylight. Why did you leave behind your familiar?”

  “I don’t feel like taking a whole deer around the campus. It didn’t really want to come with me anyway,” Alira said with a shrug. Then, feeling the urge to poke at Raine, she tugged at his sleeve and smiled in a way that instantly earned herself a groan from him. “Plus, not like it would be your first time inside my bedroom. Don’t tell me you forgot all about it.”

  “That...”

  Alira snickered at his loss of words and pulled his sleeve to lead him down in a random direction she hoped was toward the dormitory building. “I was just teasing you. Seriously, though, you should know from past experiences that it’s not hard to just not run into a discipline monitor.”

  Also, you’re technically a woman.

  Alira fought the urge to say it out loud. She heard Raine sigh before he pulled back his sleeve. “Oh, come on. I really need your help.”

  She heard another groan, followed by some rustling of clothes, as Raine smoothed out his shirt.

  “That’s not the way to your room.”