121 – Prodigies

Mal would spend the next few days avoiding Rolam.

Rolam still showed up for spell sword lessons with Aston, and they still practiced together regularly, but anything outside of that was restricted to nods and single word responses.

Mal had no issue with this. He figured that Rolam would either get over himself or he wouldn't, and there was no point in trying to push it in either direction.

Instead, Mal's focus was drawn toward preparing the Black Quarter.

After the events of last night, the Cat's Eye gang had transformed from just another criminal organization to something adjacent to Champions of the People. They were able to ask the poor and disaffected for advice on where to set up blockades and any secret entrances, and they were happy to explain it to them. Mal himself had been swarmed by a handful of teenagers, asking how to join the Cat's Eye gang.

Mal felt that this was both a good development, and also that he was a terrible person, but that wasn't really new.

The second thing he was working on was trying to figure out a way to weaponize more of the paralyzing pollen.

He hadn't gotten a hold of any seeds, as apparently the paralytic plant from which the pollen came from only grew in much more humid and warm conditions. The mountain air of Exodi Academy was deeply unfriendly to the plant, and Cassandra's greenhouse wasn't warm enough to support it, either.

As such, the church had instead provided him with the pollen, directly.

He sat at his bench in his room, a bag of the stuff on the edge of the table, and a variety of harvested and dried plant matter to his left.

What he would have liked to do was continue using the "gun," but the man who'd been running the festival stall had long since left for greener pastures, and despite Mal's best attempts at negotiation, he had absolutely refused to give it up. He had quoted an absolutely absurd price that Mal, while able to meet, wasn't willing to pay.

I'll need to stop by the north and see if I can get a hold of a prototype for myself, he thought.

But that still left him with bundles of pollen that he was unable to do very much with.

Mal could have just reached into his pockets and stored it there, then throw it at the enemy, but the range would be short, and it would be hard to be consistent with how much he could throw at any given time.

He scratched his chin and picked up a bundle of Bramblevine. Maybe he could deliver the toxins directly on vines? Up against an agile opponent, it would be tricky to get them by surprise with something so blatant.

What he really wanted was something similar to the false shells that he'd made for the gun. Safe and consistent when stored, but easy to burst when thrown with force.

Mal picked up some of his Elder Root and flexed it back and forth.

He noted a sort of springiness to the leaf section.

Hm. Interesting.

He cut off the leaves and arranged them into a criss-crossing motion, creating a ball. He rolled it between his hands, and the tension was enough to keep it stable.

He threw it against the wall, and the leaves sprung out and fluttered to the ground.

He picked up the leaves from the floor and went back to his bench. A little bit of pollen, then the same criss-crossing motion with the leaves, but wrapped around the pollen.

Mal rolled it between his fingers and felt a faint zap up his arm from the paralyzing agent.

He threw it against the wall, just like the first.

Pollen burst from the bundle in a cloud that reached all the way up to his roof. The springed-up leaves had enough force to disperse the pollen in every direction.

Oh, wait. There's a way we can make that even better, can't we?

Mal made another bundle, but this time he threaded Airgrass in between the gaps of the Elder Root leaf. He made a handful of these, and stored them inside of his satchel.

Now let's hope that I don't bump against a wall too hard. Otherwise that leather is going to be untreatable.

With that done, he cleaned up his desk and set down fabric along the top.

The gossamer sheen flickered with purple light when Mal tilted his head. The fabric was the softest thing Mal had ever touched, nearly feather light, so thin that you could miss it if you weren't paying attention to the sensation on your fingertips.

So this is supposed to have some sort of magical property, Mal thought. But what, and how do I bring it out?

Mal thought back to his other crafting goals from the last month. He still hadn't made the charm to hide his core. Both Cassandra and him had been so busy that her teaching had been restricted to advising him on what books to get and to read.

I really should go talk to her, he thought.

He stood up and exited out of his door, fabric in hand and bundled up under his arm.

"And where did you get this from, again?"

"An old lady."

"And you're sure she said it was from a Marava butterfly?"

"Yes."

“That old lady either had no idea what she had or she really, really likes you, because I know a number of witches that would kill for an item like this.”

Mal rubbed his hands over the fabric. “Why? What’s so special about this?”

“First, it makes the wind mana in your boots look like a candle.” She poked at the edges of the sheet. “You know what a Marava butterfly does, right?”

“...No?”

“They can summon tornadoes, Mal.”

“Oh.”

“The problem is bringing that latent power out.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “So that brings us to our next big lesson, the usage of monster parts.”

“Yes, I was curious about that. How are you supposed to cooperate with something that you killed?”

“A very good question, my erstwhile apprentice.”

She didn’t say anything.

Mal waited for her to answer.

“This is the part where you try to guess, Mal,” she said.

“Oh.” Mal rubbed his chin. “I’m almost tempted to say that you don’t. Monster parts are used in potions all the time, and obviously, wizards have no rituals for harvesting magical beast parts.”

“Almost, but not quite," she said. "Yes, some of the properties of magical beast parts are so powerful that the method in which they were harvested doesn’t matter. Those properties will come out no matter what you do.”

She picked up one end of the sheet that was hanging off the side of the dining room table and flopped it around. “The sheen, for example, isn’t a physical property. This is purely magical, a small amount of water-type mana distributed over the top to create a reflective surface. It will continue to reflect, regardless of how it was harvested."

"However—” Her tone sharpened. “there are some properties that remain inaccessible when harvested incorrectly.”

“But how would one harvest correctly?” Mal said. “You’re still killing the damn thing, no matter what you do.”

“That isn’t strictly true for all magical beasts, but yes. There are some magical beasts for which this is unavoidable.”

“So how am I supposed to—”

“I was getting there.” Cassandra scoffed. “Magical beast parts, especially the very powerful ones, have far more of the creature’s consciousness left in them compared to a plant. That means that you can bargain with them.”

“...I have to bargain with a sheet of fabric?”

“Welcome to witchcraft.” She waved him off. “This is something that’ll take a great deal of time for you to work toward. Working with magical beast parts is exceptionally difficult, even for the most powerful of witches. Don’t expect very much success early on.”

Mal stared down at the fabric, then bundled it back up and set it to the side.

“Well, that brings me to my second topic.”

“A second topic? All in one day? I ought to charge you."

He ignored her.

“We need to make that charm to hide my lack of a core.”

“Ah, yes. I forgot to get you the seeds you needed.”

“And what exactly do I need?”

“It’s a rather unusual recipe. It relies on mist-type mana, something that’s very hard to get hold of naturally. It took a great deal of time, but I managed to crossbreed my Fireglove with my water roses and—”

“It’s a crossbreed between those two?”

“Yes, it is.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Why is that so interesting?”

“Because I already did that, and I’m currently growing those plants at this very moment.”

A pause. The air held its breath.

“I’ve been working on those plants for the past two months," she said, very slowly. "And you already were working on it without telling me?”

“I thought it was just an interesting experiment. I didn’t think it would be practical.”

She stared at him for longer before she sighed. “Well, fine. It’ll be better for you if you were the ones who bred the plant, anyway.”

For the next thirty minutes, Cassandra walked him through the construction of the charm and how it functioned.

The mist-type mana was the key. By settling it on a necklace directly over his heart, where the core was, it created a passive field that made it extremely difficult to see what Mal’s core looked like, clearly. All but the most powerful of perception spells would make out nothing but a faint, cloudy mist.

Mal dutifully took notes in his witchcraft journal, then thanked Cassandra and headed back to his room.

The charm had been easy to make after that. Mal harvested the strange misty petals, dried them out, then set them on a small chain encased in resin to make it a bit less fragile. He could notice the difference instantly. When he looked down at his chest, the cyan blue mist-type mana made everything underneath behind it impossible to make out.

The next thing Mal worked on was "listening" to the gossamer fabric.

...

As Cassandra had said, he could hear nothing, even with his Shattercore features.

“I’ve come to bargain,” he said.

The fabric did nothing, because it was fabric.

After ten minutes of this, Mal decided he was wasting his time and set the fabric aside.

The last thing he did for the day was go outside and check on his raised bed garden.

He’d been doing this daily and the plants had sprung up nicely.

But today—

Something had chewed through his tomatoes.

He crossed his arms and thought about what to do. He could have put up a fence, but that was time intensive, and not really scalable.

Mal circled around the plants and noticed that several of them had had nibbles taken out of them, except for the Fireglove, which the animals had avoided.

Curious, Mal plucked off a small leaf and pressed his tongue against it.

Sweat burst out across every inch of his skin.

Hot.

Burning hot.

He reached into his satchel and quickly gulped down water, but it didn’t improve the pain.

After about three minutes of rolling around on the ground in writhing pain, the stinging stopped and died away.

He crawled over to the Fireglove, plucked several leaves, then mashed them into a fine powder using his mortar and pestle. He then sprinkled this over his outside garden.

The darkness of the setting sun cast long shadows over him.

Evening. Best to get done for the day.

He walked back into his dorm room, passing by Philo and Rolam. Rolam instantly stopped talking, while Philo raised a hand in greeting.

“Ape! How goes the gardening?”

“Good.” Mal’s eyes flickered over to Rolam. “What are you guys talking about?”

“Just the upcoming practical exams," Philo said.

“Oh.” Mal made to walk into his room, then stopped. “Wait, what practical exams?”

“It'll be a test to get us ready for finals.” Philo stared at him. “Did you not know?”

“No. How soon is this going to be?”

“Two days.”

“Crap.”

The Arcane Sphere wheezed to life like a man on his deathbed. It formed in Mal's hands, jerky and faint. He pointed his open palm out and it ejected toward the tree, then landed with a soft thud.

“Fifty seconds,” Philo said. “Philo hates to be a downer, ape, but—”

“But it's unacceptable, I know.”

They were at their usual training grounds behind the dormitory. Mal had proposed a group study session, and everyone had agreed.

An Arcane Sphere shot by Mal's head and hit the same tree with a loud bang. Sections of the bark fell off and flew through the air, one notable splinter exploding into wood dust upon hitting the ground.

Mal looked back to see who had cast the Arcane Sphere. Lusia tilted her head at him, the mana circling her body wrapped around her like a blanket.

Damned A-core heroine prodigies.

“Did I meet the minimum standard?” she said.

“I think that was a sub-second cast,” Mal said. “You more than pass.”

“Philo doesn't quite understand how you haven't gotten your Arcane Sphere to improve very much,” he said. “You've gotten better, Philo remembers that much, but you're still so far below average, it's somewhat impressive.”

“Thanks,” Mal said. “What a kind thing to say.”

Rolam stopped his own Arcane Sphere and looked at Mal with a cocked eyebrow. Mal didn't respond and averted his own gaze back to Philo.

“What's the bare minimum?” Mal asked.

“Ten seconds, Mal. There's no possible way you're going to be able to shorten the amount of time.”

“I won't? No, you guys just worry about passing. I think I'll be just fine.”

“Where are we going, master?”

“To collect some materials. Non-magical ones.”

Mal slid between the alleys of the Black Quarter with ease. His boots splashed against the stagnant water and scattedred it across the stone bricks. At this point, he was down here often enough that navigating this place had become second nature. Overhead, he caught sight of one of the Cat’s Eye gang members. She nodded at him, then resumed her watch.

Good. We've started getting this place ready for a siege. I don't know how much longer it'll be before they attack, but—

“You seem worried, master.”

“I am. The Three Quarters found out what happened to the head of the Vermillion family.”

“Is that bad?”

“It's very bad. The man we've been sending to meet with them barely escaped with his neck.”

On the plus side, their takeover of the Vermillion family was more or less finished. Everybody in a middle management position had been swapped out with people friendlier to Mal's cause. Functionally speaking, the Vermillion family was now theirs, and Mal had taken and Hemp had used those resources to great effect, setting up traps all across the Black Border to slow down any would-be intruder.

Mal stopped in front of the Cat’s Eye gang hideout door. He rapped on the wood, and it opened up without a word. He strode inside, and Hemp glanced up from her spot at the back and away from the papers strewn across the desk.

“Boss.” She stood up. “What's up?”

“Hemp, how much do you know about explosives?”

“That's one hell of a way to start a conversation.” Her eyes flickered to the maid, to Lusia. “Did you have to bring along Miss Talkative?”

“Yes,” Mal said. “After what happened with Nima and the Tenth Vessel, I'd prefer to have my most useful weapon close at hand.”

Hemp snorted.

“What a title,” she drawled. “And she's okay with that?”

“I live to serve,” Lusia said.

“Right.” She walked around the other side of the desk, then looked off to the side and raised her voice. “Hey, you! Get over here!”

One of the Cat’s Eye gang members rushed up to Hemp and saluted. “Ma'am?”

Mal noted the lack of stutter or unsureness. Aston had doubled down on their training, and it seemed to show. In just a few weeks, they'd improved by leaps and bounds.

“Go out into the town and go into the warehouse and get me these ingredients.” She mentioned the names of a few chemicals that Mal had never heard of.

The young man nodded, then raced off toward the door at a light jog.

A few minutes later, he came back with several small paper bags. Hemp took them out of the man's hand, then sat on the floor and took out a dose from each one using her fingers.

She mixed it together on the floor, then glanced back at Mal. “Can you light it up?”

Mal leaned down and brought his index finger to the mixture.

As soon as he did, it erupted into flame and light. A small explosive.

“Can you emphasize the light?” Mal asked. “And find a way to slow it down?”

“You need it to burn long? Like a flare?”

“Yeah, basically.”

Hemp tapped her chin, made a sort of high-pitched grunt, then poured out a few more of the chemical powders and dust together on the floor.

She pointed at Mal. “Go ahead and do what you did before.”

Mal did as she asked. The light burned at a lower level, not as bright as the early one. It continued on the floor for several minutes before it died with one last flicker.

Mal blinked hard, his vision dark. He rubbed his eyes, then nodded at Hemp.

“I think that's exactly what I need.”

He paused, a thought hitting him.

“How difficult would it be to contain this stuff? And does it act strange around biological matter?”

“Well, that's a rather strange question.”

“You see, I have this idea...”

Mal was going to get through this practical without any issue, he was certain of it.