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Luo Wei dragged herself back to the dormitory well past midnight.
She'd barely survived the perimeter patrol rotation, and now she was stuck doing community service on top of it.
Headmaster Morrison had sentenced her to fifteen days total. She'd only knocked out two so far — one night guarding the bulletin board at the start of term, and tonight's miserable stint dredging the lake.
Thirteen days left. If they were all going to be this bad, she was ready to grovel. She truly knew she was wrong. Please, Headmaster. Have mercy.
The water room had no hot water at this hour. Luo Wei hauled a bucket of cold water upstairs and washed up shivering, sneezing halfway through.
Great. Was she getting sick?
She sniffled, picked up the bucket, and went back to her room.
Late as it was, she had too much left to do. Sleep wasn't an option.
She adjusted the oil lamp wick until the flame burned brighter, then pulled her hidden map from under the bed.
She'd finished deconstructing all the small Magic Runes across the nine map fragments , over thirty runes extracted in total.
Half of them she'd already tested on mice during her patrol shifts. The results pointed to one conclusion: their primary function was to protect and conceal the magic circle. The academy's circle was remarkable up close. Some runes repelled light and dark elements outright. Others were far more practical , reinforcement runes, waterproofing runes, fireproofing runes, cleaning runes.
The other half was trickier. A few she hadn't gotten to test yet. The rest were simply beyond her current magical capacity to replicate.
That said, her capacity had grown. Bleeding from her eyes and nose repeatedly had apparently done something useful. She'd also figured out that deconstructing small Magic Runes boosted her power on its own.
She used to max out at around twenty runes drawn per day. Now she could push past fifty.
Small runes only, of course. One look at an advanced nested structure like the academy's magic circle and she still went dizzy.
Then there was the Teleportation Rune.
She'd memorized it by force during that dream , the one where the dark Elf carved it out. She'd broken it into wedge-shaped segments and buried them deep in her subconscious, untouched ever since. Part of her worried that surfacing it would start the bleeding again. Part of her worried it had never been real at all.
But Raven's appearance had settled that. The improved teleportation array she'd seen while sleepwalking through The Misty Plains was real. It existed.
The thought made her restless in a way she hadn't felt in weeks.
She needed to speed up. If she could fully replicate the academy's magic circle, a high-level Teleportation Rune would be the logical next step. Tomorrow: catch more mice, test the remaining small runes, start pairing map fragments, and push toward the medium-sized runes.
She set the map aside and fished out an advanced spellbook from under the bed.
With Troy's help, she'd worked through almost everything in it. One spell remained , the Wall-Passing Charm, which she'd been chipping away at for the past few days.
Advanced spells, she'd noticed, mostly affected the caster directly. The Transformation Charm, the Lightness Charm, the Underwater Breathing Charm, the Earth Glide Charm , all self-targeted. Professor Moses had mentioned in class that intermediate spells were different: combat-oriented attack incantations. The kind that let you throw elemental force at other people.
Scientifically speaking, intermediate magic worked by altering the physical or chemical properties of elements. The Water Ball spell stepped up into Ice Arrow. The Fireball spell stepped up into Explosive Fire. Blend two or more elements and you got fusion spells , Sandstorm, for instance, from wind and earth combined.
Luo Wei found it genuinely odd that she'd mastered advanced spells before touching intermediate ones. Learning to fly before learning to crawl.
Then again, she had learned Black Magic, which hit harder than any intermediate spell and drew blood on contact. Heart-Corroding, Bone-Eroding, Gut-Piercing, Lung-Rotting , the kind that made enemies wish they were dead. She just couldn't use it casually. Too recognizable.
She had a working foundation in all five elemental types and Black Magic now. The one gap was light-element spells. She hadn't touched a single one.
Roman had extraordinary talent as a light-element mage. If Luo Wei couldn't find light magic texts, that talent would go completely to waste. The problem was that anyone with light-element affinity tended to end up with the Church , and sending Roman to infiltrate the Church was a bad idea on multiple levels. Roman wouldn't want to. And Luo Wei wasn't confident Roman could resist being won over once inside. That particular problem would need a longer solution.
She recited the Wall-Passing Charm a few more times and found she was too wound up to sleep.
After a moment's thought, she pulled several sheets of papyrus from the drawer and wrote out some basic physics formulas she still had memorized. She added the working principle of a helicopter rotor for good measure. She'd considered writing up passenger plane aerodynamics, but that knowledge simply wasn't there anymore. She remembered that lift came from the pressure differential between the upper and lower wing surfaces, and nothing else.
Her head throbbed.
Why had she spent her whole past life fixated on materials science?
She stayed up the rest of the night.
Early the next morning, Luo Wei dragged her battered body out of bed and shuffled off to Astrology.
Astrology was the strangest entry on her transcript. She'd barely studied for it and yet somehow held the top grade in the year, consistently.
Professor Tobias found her exhausting. Every time she had to assign class participation points, she spent far longer than usual deliberating.
Every other student worked with a crystal ball or a tarot deck. Luo Wei showed up with a turtle shell. And somehow she answered everything correctly , not just the questions meant for her, but the questions meant for everyone else too. Timing questions for the crystal ball students, dilemma questions for the tarot card students. She walked out of every class with double the credit.
Today was no different. Luo Wei submitted answers for both question types on her own.
Professor Tobias looked at her and sighed. "Luo Wei. You. Ah..."
Luo Wei held the turtle shell in both hands, its surface a green so vivid it almost glowed. She met the professor's eyes. "Professor, please just say it. I can handle it."
She genuinely felt bad. The turtle shell had been causing the woman grief since day one.
"I'm not trying to criticize you," Professor Tobias said, her expression complicated. "I simply don't know how to teach you."
When Luo Wei had first produced the turtle shell, Tobias had assumed the worst , that her divination talent was so weak, neither tarot cards nor a crystal ball had accepted her. What followed had dismantled that assumption completely. Class after class, question after question, this student had answered correctly. Sometimes more accurately than the professor herself.
This wasn't poor talent. This was talent so developed it had formed its own methodology.
Professor Tobias finished sighing. "Good child — may I see your divination tool?"
"Of course." Luo Wei held it out without hesitation. "Here, Professor."
"Thank you." Tobias took the shell carefully. She'd wondered for a long time how Luo Wei used it for meditation. Today she'd finally given in to curiosity. She closed her eyes and waited.
Nothing came. No matter how long she held it, the spiritual world stayed closed to her. She opened her eyes.
"You're a born astrologer, Luo Wei. If you ever chose it as a profession, I have no doubt you'd earn a seat among the Magic Association's astrologers."
"I appreciate that," Luo Wei said, "but I still want to be a mage."
"I've reviewed your full academic record. Your spell class scores don't compare to your Astrology scores — not even to your Magic Rune or Potions scores. You have a longer road ahead of you in Astrology." Professor Tobias paused. "I'm saying this because I mean it."
The spell class scores were a sore point, and not one Luo Wei could easily explain. Her wand had broken during the final month of last semester, which tanked her class participation marks. She couldn't exactly say that. So she nodded instead. "Thank you, Professor. I'll think about it."
Tobias read the resolve behind the politeness. She didn't push. Her advice had come from genuine care, not from any other motive , she couldn't stand the thought of an Astrology talent like this ending up on a lesser path.
"Whenever you change your mind, come find me. There's no age limit in this profession."
"I know. Thank you, truly." Luo Wei meant it.
In the second row, Athena lowered her head.
Contempt flickered through her eyes and was gone.
An astrologer. High talent in Astrology , what did that matter? Astrologers were dead weight in actual combat. Athena's own spell class ability already surpassed Luo Wei's, and that gap would keep growing.
One day, she would break Luo Wei's neck without breaking a sweat.
She would not make the same mistake she'd made in the wine storage room.
➤ Next: Cleaning the Bell Tower
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