Chapter 108: A Test Subject Who Takes Notes

The training hall had no windows.

I decided this was deliberate.

Windows implied the existence of an outside, and an outside implied the possibility of leaving, and Zenith had clearly concluded that first-year students should not be encouraged in that direction.

Thirty-six mats had been laid out across the floor in even rows. One per student. Each with a small stone disc set into the ground beside it, faintly glowing.

Selene stood at the front with her hands behind her back.

"Sit."

We sat.

"Legs crossed. Back straight. Hands wherever they are comfortable, as long as they are still."

I adjusted twice, then a third time, then discovered that no position was comfortable when someone was watching to see whether you were comfortable.

Penelope, three mats away, achieved perfect posture immediately.

Of course she did.

"The disc beside you measures mana movement," Selene said. "It does not measure effort. It does not measure sincerity. It measures whether mana is moving through your channels and how much. You cannot lie to it. Several of you will try."

Cedric, predictably, was already looking at his.

"Today you will circulate mana once. Slowly. From your core, through your channels, back to your core. One complete cycle."

Roland raised a hand.

"How long should that take?"

"Between four and eight minutes."

The room went quiet.

"For one cycle?" someone asked.

"For one cycle."

"That’s..."

"Slow. Yes."

Selene walked between the rows.

"You will want to go faster. You will be able to go faster. Nothing physically prevents you from finishing a cycle in thirty seconds, and if you do, the disc will register a beautiful number, and I will send you to the infirmary and then to the Headmaster, in that order."

She stopped near the front.

"Begin."

***

Here is what four minutes of deliberate mana circulation feels like.

Nothing.

It feels like nothing.

You reach inward, find the small dense weight sitting behind your ribs that has been there since you were ten, and you nudge a thread of it loose. Then you move that thread. Not push. Move. The distinction sounds meaningless until you attempt it, at which point it becomes the only thing that exists.

The thread travels.

Slowly.

You are aware of it the entire time.

You are also aware, simultaneously, that you are sitting on a mat in a room with thirty-five other people doing exactly the same thing, that your left foot has fallen asleep, that someone two rows over is breathing loudly, and that this will continue for approximately four more minutes.

There is no sensation of power.

There is no rush.

There is a thread, and there is time, and there is the very strong suspicion that you are doing it wrong.

’This is what I waited five years for.’

[Yes.]

’I want a refund.’

[Noted. Denied.]

The thread reached my shoulder.

Slowed.

I resisted the urge to help it along, which was harder than it should have been, because I could feel exactly how easy that would be. One small push. The whole cycle finished in under a minute.

Selene’s voice from somewhere behind me.

"Vortex."

"Yes."

"Slower."

I had not moved.

I had not even considered moving.

I had thought about considering it.

’How did she know that.’

[She has done this longer than you have been alive.]

’That’s not an explanation.’

[It is the only one you’re getting.]

Somewhere to my right, a disc chimed.

Not a pleasant sound. A flat, disappointed tone, like a door closing on someone who had been about to say something.

"Marren," Selene said. "Stop. Start again."

"I was almost done."

"You were almost injured. Start again."

The thread crawled down my arm.

Then back.

Then, eventually, home.

The disc beside me lit softly and dimmed.

I opened my eyes.

Four minutes and twenty seconds, according to the counter above the door.

One cycle.

One.

Around me, most people were still going, faces tight with concentration. Penelope’s disc lit a moment after mine. Roland’s took nearly six. Mira finished second in the entire room, which surprised exactly nobody who had spent five minutes near Mira.

Cedric’s disc chimed flatly twice before he got it right.

"Again," Selene said.

Somebody groaned.

"Ten cycles today. Twelve tomorrow. If anyone reaches twenty this week I will personally inform your parents that you have wasted their money."

***

By the sixth cycle, I had stopped hating it.

By the eighth, I had started thinking clearly again, which was worse, because thinking clearly meant doing math.

Ten cycles a day.

E-White to D-Black had taken me eight months of the kind of foundation work Valerian designed, and that was without touching my core at all.

Now I could touch it. Four minutes at a time. Ten times a day.

D-Black to D-Grey. Then D-White. Then C-Black, and the White-to-Black step Selene said most people needed years for. Then C-Grey, C-White, B, A, S.

Then SS.

Four years, five months.

I ran the numbers three times during the ninth cycle, which was probably why the ninth cycle took five and a half minutes, and I did not like any of the answers.

It was not impossible.

It was the specific kind of not-impossible that requires everything to go correctly, forever, with no interruptions, which in my experience described no period of my life so far.

’System.’

[Yes.]

’If I did nothing except this. Ten cycles a day, every day, no shortcuts.’

[Insufficient.]

I had expected that.

It still landed badly.

’By how much?’

[Unknown. Core growth is not linear and you have four unbonded fragments affecting variables I cannot measure.]

I paused mid-cycle.

’The bonds affect my core.’

[I said they affect variables I cannot measure.]

’That’s the same sentence with more words.’

[It is a more honest sentence with more words.]

The thread reached my core and settled.

Tenth cycle.

Done.

***

"Same time tomorrow," Selene said. "Anyone who circulates outside supervised sessions this week will be identified, because the discs are not the only thing measuring you, and I would rather not begin the year by explaining that to your families."

Chairs and mats and thirty-six people standing up at once.

I stayed on the mat a moment longer.

Four years, five months.

Ten cycles a day was the maximum the academy would allow.

The academy did not know about the second problem.

『 Sub Quest 1 : Healing Bond Path 1

➤ Objective: Successfully bond with 7 individuals through Healing Bond (0 / 7) 』

Zero of seven.

Duration one hour. Cooldown twenty-four.

Which meant one bond per day. Not one attempt per day. One bond. If it failed, or if I chose wrong, that day was simply gone.

Seven days minimum.

Assuming nothing went wrong.

Something always went wrong.

’System.’

[Yes.]

’Does a failed attempt still trigger the cooldown?’

[Yes.]

’That’s a terrible design.’

[Take it up with the Akashic Record.]

I got up.

***

I found Lena in the corridor outside, arguing with Cedric about whether mana exhaustion and mana depletion were the same thing. They are not. Cedric was losing.

"Lena."

She turned.

"Leader."

"Don’t."

"Roland says it annoys you."

"Roland is correct and I would prefer he stop sharing findings."

She smiled.

"Do you have a moment?"

Lena glanced at Cedric, who was still holding one finger up mid-argument, then back at me.

"Yes."

We stepped to the side of the corridor, near a window, where the noise dropped to something survivable.

"I have a new skill," I said.

"The healing one."

"How do you know that."

"You announced it. In the kitchen. Loudly."

I made a mental note that I had now been informed of this twice and had learned nothing from either occasion.

"It’s called Healing Bond. It increases someone’s natural recovery rate for an hour. Contact required. Twenty-four hour cooldown."

Lena’s expression changed immediately, and it was not the reaction most people would have had.

Most people would have asked what it felt like.

Lena said: "Natural recovery rate. Not healing."

"Correct."

"So it wouldn’t close a wound."

"No."

"It would shorten how long a wound takes to close on its own."

"Yes."

"That’s..." She stopped. Started again. "That’s not exciting."

"Thank you."

"I mean clinically. That’s not an emergency skill. That’s a recovery-ward skill. That’s for someone who’s already stable and just needs to stop being broken faster."

"Yes."

"Why are you telling me?"

Here was the part I had been avoiding.

"Because I need to use it on several people, I don’t fully understand what it does yet, and I would rather find out on someone who can tell me whether it’s working properly than on someone who’ll just say it felt nice."

Lena stared at me.

Then, slowly, she smiled in a way I did not entirely trust.

"You want a test subject."

"I want a colleague."

"You want a test subject who takes notes."

"...Yes."

"Say it properly."

"Lena, would you be willing to serve as a test subject who takes notes."

"Yes."

She held out her hand immediately, palm up, with the enthusiasm of someone who had been waiting her entire life for a reason to observe something.

"Now?"

"Now."

I hesitated.

Not for long. But long enough that she noticed, because Lena noticed the same category of things Penelope did, just aimed at different targets.

"It’s untested," I said.

"You said."

"On a person. It’s untested on a person."

"I understood that when you said test subject."

"I want to be clear that if something goes wrong, I will stop it immediately and take you to the infirmary myself, and you should tell me the moment anything feels incorrect, including things you think are too minor to mention."

Lena’s smile faded slightly, replaced by something more serious.

"You’re actually worried."

"I’m being careful. It’s a different thing."

"It sounds like the same thing."

"It has better outcomes."

She kept her hand out.

"Alash."

"Yes."

"I make experimental mana stabilizers and I test them on myself. Regularly." A pause. "You’re the most cautious person I’ve met since arriving here, and I’ve been here three days."

That was probably meant as reassurance.

I took her hand.

’Activate.’

Green mana gathered around my fingers, thinner than usual, quieter. It did not flare. It did not glow the way healing normally did. It moved from my hand into hers and simply stopped being visible, which was somehow more unsettling than a bright light would have been.

Lena went very still.

"Well?"

"Quiet," she said. "I’m cataloguing."

Ten seconds.

Twenty.

"Warm," she said finally. "Not hot. Not painful. It’s..." She frowned, searching. "It’s like the feeling right after you’ve eaten when you didn’t realize you were hungry. That specific kind of settling."

"That’s not a medical description."

"It’s the accurate one. You can have a medical one in an hour when I’ve watched it properly."

The panel appeared in the corner of my vision.

『 Sub Quest 3 : Healing Path 1

➤ Objective: Successfully bond with 7 individuals through Healing Bond (1 / 7) 』

One.

’That counts?’

[She consented, she is receiving the effect, and she is not injured. Yes.]

’I thought bonding would be harder.’

[You bonded with someone who volunteered before you finished the sentence. Try that with the other four.]

I did not have a response to that.

Lena released my hand and immediately pulled a small notebook from her jacket, which raised the question of whether she had been carrying it the entire time or had simply produced it from nowhere.

"One hour, you said."

"One hour."

"I’m going to write down everything that happens and then I’m going to ask you approximately forty questions."

"That’s excessive."

"You said colleague."

I had, unfortunately, said colleague.

Somewhere behind us in the corridor, Cedric was still explaining mana depletion to a person who had stopped listening several minutes ago.

Six more.

Six more people, six more days, and four of them were currently spread across four different residences with four different schedules, one of whom looked at me like I was a problem she hadn’t finished solving.

’System.’

[Yes.]

’Which one should I do next?’

[I am not a scheduling assistant.]

’You have opinions about everything else.’

A pause.

[Start with the easy one.]

Which was, in its own way, an answer.