Chapter 60: On-Demand

Things calmed down after that.

For about three days, nothing tried to kill me, nobody proposed marriage to my roommate, and no system popups interrupted my breakfast. It was deeply unsettling, in a way. I’d gotten so used to having something to do.

I had to attend classes. Like, actual classes. With actual assignments. Because I was still enrolled at Stellaris Royal Academy, and apparently "saving the world’s plotline" wasn’t an excuse to skip Spirit Theory homework.

[Who designed this curriculum? Oh. I did. Of course it’s tedious.]

Marisol was the bigger problem. She’d made a small fortune betting on the tournament outcomes, riding my underdog wave all the way to my fight with Serena. Then she’d bet against Serena in her fight against me and promptly lost all the money she made.

Gambling is indeed bad, after all.

"You don’t understand," Marisol said, draped across my bed like a deposed empress. "I had a system."

"I don’t think you can call ’believe in Kohaku no matter what’ a system, as flattering as it is."

She rolled onto her stomach and stared at me. Her uniform was slightly rumpled and her curls were a mess.

"... Buy me dinner."

"Marisol."

"Lunch, then. Somewhere cheap. I’m not proud."

I bought her lunch. She ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. I didn’t argue.

---

"Mana circulation efficiency," Sabine said, kneeling between my legs in her office with the door locked, "depends on what three factors?"

Her tongue dragged up the shaft before I could answer. My fingers dug into the armrests of the chair.

"S-Signal strength, core capacity, and... pathway, pathway saturation..."

"Pathway saturation. Good." She took the head into her mouth and sucked, and my brain left the building for a second. Then she pulled off with a pop and looked up at me. "What happens when saturation exceeds ninety percent during active casting?"

"Uh... Spirit recoil. The excess mana, ah, backs up into the nearest unregulated channel and-fuck, Sabine-"

"Language." She ran her tongue along the underside and I about left the chair. "Finish the answer."

"... and the caster takes unmitigated backlash damage proportional to the overflow volume!"

"Correct." She swallowed me to the base.

[HOLY SHIT!]

She held there for three seconds, and pulled back.

"You’re improving. Both retention and stamina." She winked.

"Can we maybe do this without the oral exam component?" I wheezed.

"I find it improves focus." She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and stood up, straightening her blouse like she’d been reviewing paperwork. "Same time Thursday. We’ll cover recoil mitigation techniques."

"... Recoil mitigation?"

"Yes."

"That’s not a euphemism for what I think it is, is it?"

"Oh, dear. Kohaku. What do you think? I’m a professional."

---

I spent most of my remaining free time in the library. Not because I was studious, but because that’s where Odette Yun-Salera lived. No, really, I was fairly sure she slept behind the reference section.

We sat across from each other at a corner table, three textbooks open between us. I’d been staring at the same page on mana circulation for ten minutes. Odette hadn’t looked up once.

"Your diagram is upside down," she said without raising her eyes.

"You can tell without looking?"

"You’ve done it three times. Am I wrong?" She still didn’t look.

I checked. It was upside down.

I turned it right-side up and leaned forward, resting my chin on my hand.

"You know, Odette, if you keep paying this much attention to me, people are going to talk."

"People already talk." She adjusted her glasses. "But thankfully, I’m not wildfolk. Currently, the most popular theory is that you’re running a beastkin harem operation out of the commoner dormitories."

"What the fuck?" I muttered.

[... I really need to put these rumors to bed.]

I let my chin drop into my hand and stared at her over the textbooks. She was still reading, still not looking at me, but there was color on her ears that hadn’t been there a minute ago.

"Odette."

"Mm."

"Do you want to study together again tomorrow?"

"We already study together every day."

"Right. So I’ll see you tomorrow, then."

"... I suppose you will."

[She’s not saying no!]

So... Yeah.

Things were fine. Lily had the Benediction. She was getting stronger every day. The male leads were still out there, doing whatever hot boys do.

[With any luck, Lily’ll be making out with one of them before the semester’s over. Definitely. Probably.]

A gentle hand landed on my right shoulder. I looked up.

[Oh, speak of the devil.]

Lily was standing there, with a blank face.

"Can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Sure. See ya later, Odette."

She waved a hand in goodbye without looking at me.

---

Lily and I walked back behind the academy.

Lily stopped walking when we were behind the training hall, where the dumpsters were. It smelled like old cabbage.

She turned to face me, and I could tell she’d been chewing on something for a while.

"Why did Serena give me the Champion’s Benediction?"

"I told you. We worked something out."

"That’s not an answer, Kohaku. That’s a deflection." She folded her arms. "Serena Frostfall doesn’t hand over divine cores because someone asked nicely. She despises me. She’s despised me since... since orientation."

[Really?]

I scratched the back of my ear.

"She gave it to you because I asked her to."

Lily stared at me.

"You asked her to."

"Yeah."

"And she just... agreed?"

"Not immediately, but-"

"Kohaku!" Lily threw her hands up. "That’s not a thing you can just do! You can’t walk up to the strongest student in the academy and ask her to hand over a divine artifact! That’s insane!"

"I mean, it worked-"

"That doesn’t make it less insane!" She took a breath. Then another. "Why would she even listen to you?"

"Because I made a case."

"What case?"

[Oh boy.]

I leaned against the wall.

"Lily, let me tell you something. I entered the tournament for one reason. I was trying to win the Benediction so I could give it to you."

She went quiet.

"I trained for weeks. Sabine drilled me, Cassian helped with the beam, Serena gave me the opening for the Aldric fight. I climbed from Rank F to Rank C in a month. All of it was for that one item, and when I couldn’t win it myself, I went to Serena and I asked her to hand it over instead."

Lily was staring at me like I’d grown a second tail.

"Why?" she whispered.

She probably meant "but why did Serena hand it over to you?"

I, instead, blinked, and answered:

"Because you’re my friend."

And then I flashed her the best smile I had to offer.

Lily stared at me for another two seconds. Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me and pressed her face into my chest.

[Oh. Okay. This is happening.]

I put my arms around her. She was shaking a little.

"Thank you," she said, muffled.

"Hey, don’t mention it. Really. Please don’t mention it to anyone, actually, because I have enough rumors-"

"Shut up."

"Okay."

---

I woke up to someone knocking on the door at six in the morning. Lily was still asleep, curled up in her bed with her pillow clutched to her chest. Cute.

I stumbled across the room in my underwear and cracked the door open.

Serena Frostfall was standing in the hallway, arms folded, in full uniform at dawn.

"We need to talk."

[What now?]

I pulled the door open a bit wider and leaned against the frame.

"You know normal people sleep at six in the morning, right?"

"I want you to look into my future," Serena said. No preamble, no greeting. "Go."

"Right now?"

"That’s what I said."

I rubbed my eye.

"Serena, it doesn’t work like that. I can’t just summon it on command. The visions come when they come. Sometimes I get pieces, sometimes I get nothing for weeks."

She clicked her tongue.

"That’s very convenient."

"It’s not convenient. It’s inconvenient for both of us."

"Was it a lie, then?"

The temperature in my spine dropped about fifteen degrees.

"The reason you gave me. That Everdawn needed the Benediction because you’d seen something in her future that would kill her." Serena’s red eyes locked onto mine. "If that was a fabrication, I’ll kill you myself right here."

[She’s not bluffing. She is absolutely not bluffing.]

My MP readout sat at 100. I’d been hoarding it since the Benediction payout, but being dead was worse than being broke.

[Five points. Manuscript, speed-read. Give me something, anything, about Serena’s near future.]

The text spilled across my vision in fragments.

Words, sentences, page numbers scrolling past too fast to read. Most of it was noise, Chapter summaries and dialogue I didn’t need, and then a passage crystallized and my breath caught.

[Oh... That’s coming up?]

I looked up at Serena. Her jaw was tight, her fists were clenched at her sides, and her red eyes hadn’t left mine for a single second.

"Well?"

"... Yeah," I nodded. "I saw something."