Only ten days were left of the three-month deadline, and James looked immeasurably older—the young man of their first meeting had turned gray-haired. It was the price of burning through his mind; James had been using mana to keep up the appearance of youth, but by now he no longer had the heart for it.
He sat slumped on the floor, waiting for Adam to finish building the last unverified meditation method, his heart full of despair. Years of research, years of effort—it was about to end, all of it. In the end he was simply a man without talent; advancing to Mage on pure spiritual power alone had indeed been a vain hope. And the truly pitiful part was that he had not even managed to raise his total spiritual power by much.
He clutched the experiment report in his hands, and it was shredded by mana leaking out unnoticed. James thought in despair, I'm going to die, aren't I? I'll just fade out quietly like this.
Adam's spiritual power collapsed once more, scattering the fragments across the floor. He shook his head at James and said, "It still doesn't work. It can't be made self-consistent—the Mage Armor built from this meditation method has no way to carry mana."
James stared at him with vacant eyes. "Forget it. Starting tomorrow you don't need to come. The experiment on the structural stability of the spiritual-power solidification rune has failed, and so has the construction of a complete rune group. The lab will be disbanded in ten days."
Each word came out softer than the one before, and the despondency in his voice made even Adam frown. Adam opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, James went on: "In ten days, if you want, you can come collect this month's pay. If you'd rather not, I'll just transfer it into your balance. Also—I'll probably be leaving."
Adam set aside what he had wanted to say for the moment and asked, "Leaving? Where to?"
James gave a bleak smile. "Leave the Mage Continent. Find an island. Leave behind descendants. And then... that's that." He shut off every optical projector in the lab and destroyed all the experiment reports, then said quietly in the dark, "Adam, don't research meditation methods any more. You're not like me—there's no need to waste your talent here. I really do envy you. What does it feel like, being a full-fledged Mage?"
Adam opened his mouth again. The darkness was no barrier to an apprentice's eyesight, and James cut him off. "No need to comfort me. At least, compared to ordinary people who never amount to anything, I've had a taste of magic's wonder. That's enough. Go on ahead—I want to be alone for a while."
Adam walked out of the lab helplessly. He had actually wanted to tell James that, after countless trials over the past two months, he was confident he could distill a self-consistent meditation method—he just needed a few days to organize it. But James had not given him the chance to speak. It did not matter, though. Ten days was plenty; he would simply sort it out early and lend it to James.
Some three months had passed, and the mood among the new apprentices was no longer what it had been at the start. Where there are people there is strife, and among a crowd who fancied themselves heaven's favored it was worse than elsewhere. In a mere three months many apprentices had banded together, forming organizations under all sorts of pretexts.
Most people's energy stones had run out. Beyond their studies, everyone's eyes had turned to the mission hall, and the problem appeared at once: the jobs suited to greenhorns like them were very limited, mostly cleaning, record-keeping and serving. Nor were there many even of those—certainly not enough to meet the needs of nearly a hundred people.
By now everyone had mastered more than one spell. With the academy's tacit permission, clashes were commonplace, and the full-fledged Mages treated them like air. That permission and indulgence only made the apprentices with more backing and better talent come to look down on everything.
The five from the deserted island were still united, and they had no choice but to be—no other group was willing to take them in. Their strength was decent enough: William had successfully mastered three fire spells, and Ophelia was coming along fairly well on the body-refining Mage path. But they were too few, and so they remained the ones being pushed around.
At that very moment a conflict was erupting in the mission hall. It started over a short-term job sorting metal for a senior apprentice in alchemy. The job paid two units of energy stones—generous—and Randy wanted it. But at the same moment a native apprentice spotted it too, and worse luck, he was the very one who had first shown contempt for the island apprentices. Everyone had since learned his name: Sean, the descendant of two Mage apprentices.
"What, a bumpkin wants to earn energy stones too? Ha! Can you even tell one metal from another?" Sean stepped out and blocked the path in front of Randy, swaggering as he spoke. His companions behind him apparently found this hilarious and dissolved into laughter.
"Get out of the way, Sean. Do you want a taste of trouble?" Randy's face darkened. He did not know why Sean kept hounding him like a mad dog—there had already been many insults of the same kind.
Sean turned around and cried out in an exaggerated voice, "Oh! Dear me, listen to him—he wants to teach me a lesson!" Then he turned back to Randy. "You? A bumpkin? Oh, right, right, right, I forgot—you're a genius with a soul inclination. What was it again? Curse affinity? Hahaha! Go on, try cursing me! I doubt you could so much as ruffle a single hair on the great Sean's head!"
Randy clenched his fists, veins standing out. Three months was enough time for the apprentices to gather information on one another, and every apprentice who had shown a soul inclination in the aptitude test was remembered—Randy was the exception, because curse affinity was simply too obscure and too useless. It made him a laughingstock, and it was the one nerve no one was allowed to touch.
"Damn you, you mongrel!" Randy lost his head and charged at Sean, eyes red. Quentin, who was never far from his side, hurriedly grabbed hold of him—fighting here would never do; the senior apprentices would not allow it.
Sean stayed where he was, watching them mockingly, then let his companions crowd him forward to shove them aside and take the job.
The senior apprentices watched the scene lazily. It was far too ordinary—so ordinary it stirred not the slightest interest in them. They had walked through this stage themselves; after their first taste of cruelty, the greenhorns would realize how childish and foolish these clashes were.
Randy stood there panting like a wild animal, and in a voice so low it was almost a snarl said, "Mongrel, do you dare duel me?"
The mission hall went silent. Clashes happened often enough, but so far they had stayed verbal; no one had ever actually dueled. Having seen the power of magic, they knew an apprentice duel could never be a matter of trading punches—one small mishap meant death.
Sean, nearly at the door, turned back and stared at Randy in disbelief. "What did you say?"
Randy broke free of Quentin and walked up to Sean step by step until they were almost nose to nose, like fighting cocks. "I said, a duel, mongrel."
Sean involuntarily took a step back, panic surging up in him, but the very next second he was furious at his own reaction. "Fine! Then a duel it is, you worthless thing. Since you want to die, the great Sean will oblige you!"
The first duel among the newly arrived apprentices became the hottest topic among the greenhorns for days. Adam knew nothing about it—he had gone back to shuttling between his dormitory and the library. He learned the news only while chatting with Elliot, who, seeing Adam again after several months, expressed his regret over what had happened to James and over the time Adam had wasted.
"Speaking of which—you're from the deserted island too, aren't you?" Elliot asked offhandedly.
"Mm." The book Adam was reading was titled <i>A Discussion of Rune Stability</i>; its explanations of runes were of some help to him in constructing his meditation method.
Having gotten that confirmation out of Adam, Elliot leaned in, all gossip. "I hear that island apprentice with the curse affinity is dueling someone today. Don't you want to go watch?" Useless as curse affinity was, it was still a conspicuous label—which was why Elliot had no impression of Sean at all.
"Oh." Adam answered perfunctorily and kept turning pages.
Elliot pursed his lips and leaned a little closer. "Isn't he from the same place as you? Don't you want to go take a look?"
Adam turned to the last page, closed the book, and put it back on the shelf properly. "No."
"Why not? It's the greenhorns' first duel! You've never seen one either, have you? Tsk, tsk. Thinking about it really takes me back—we were like that once ourselves." Elliot drifted into reminiscence mode, completely scatterbrained.
"Boring. They've barely touched the shallowest scrap of power and already they're putting their minds to petty brawling. Stupid. Besides, what's worth watching in their duel? Two people standing across from each other desperately constructing rune groups?" Adam turned to leave as he spoke.
"Uh..." Elliot pictured it and promptly lost interest too. But he was so very bored, and with apprentices so few, it was rare to find someone like Adam willing to chat with him. "Come on, let's go take a look. You were heading back to the dormitory anyway, right? It's on the way—it won't cost you much time."
Adam was helplessly dragged along by Elliot. Fortunately the other threads kept computing day and night, so his everyday thread would not hold back the task's progress, and there was no need to spoil Elliot's fun. So the two of them left the library and headed for the dueling ground.
All the way there Elliot chattered on, boasting of his own record as a greenhorn and repeating at every turn the glorious history of how he had poisoned his opponents flat. And so they arrived at the dueling ground.
Along the way people kept greeting Elliot and turning astonished looks on Adam beside him, unable to work out how this "abandoned apprentice" had ended up keeping company with the potions instructor.