“Oh, you'll see how much it matters soon lady Keswick, you’ll see.” one of the dimwits said ominously. After that, they proceeded to leave. Well at least I don’t have to come to this idiotic place every day, now, I can have more time to study and–

“So do you want to catch up on the way to the dorms?” Keswick asks. This is going to be annoying.

“Of course.” I answer a bit hesitantly, dreading the one-hour talk I am going to have with this damned neuron-deficient idiot.

The beginning of the conversation was a minefield of questions and inside jokes, thank goodness I talked to Ustos yesterday or I would have probably been found out in the first 10 minutes of the conversation.

Well, it wasn’t all that bad, most of the talking was done by her, mostly about some idiotic rumors or something. Like there was this one about an Earl's daughter disappearing suddenly whilst on a mission from the academy, wary interesting.

So I asked more about it. Apparently, the academy sends the students out on missions as a practical test to get into the third year, and apparently without supervision. And unfortunately, this poor, poor girl suddenly disappeared on one of their missions, and some rumors even say that her soul-bound necklace sent out a signal that she passed away to the academy. How disturbing. Apparently, her family is incredibly pissed off at the academy for being stupid enough to let this happen.

So the academy is rethinking the whole practical test thing. How very interesting.

Finally making it to the dorms we say goodbye and go our spirit paths. Breathing out a sigh of relief, I get back to my dorm and grab my stuff. After which I head to the library again.

Returning I make Ustos right as usual and then practise my quillmanship. Finally, I have a bit of time left over, usually, I would head back to the library to do a bit of personal research but this time I want to play with the ring.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Putting it on, I can slowly start feeling my soul through my mana cipher, it is as vague and weird as last time, but I know what to do now. I start trying to grapple onto the imprinted mana like last time, and also like last time I can sense my great self becoming better and better at this.

Eventually, I notice, that the better I get at controlling my mana the wider radius I can sense of my soul. I can now sense a little part of the mana veins coming out of the core. Well, I suppose there is a long way away from my being able to open a mana breach into my spinal cord.

Realizing it’s getting late, I hesitantly take off the ring and go to bed. The next morning I do my usual morning schedule and head into mana class.

Sitting down on my usual seat I am annoyed and angered by the fact that somebody sat down next to me, looking at who they are I am not shocked to find that it’s Keswick the damned idiot.

Sitting through the lesson, the teacher teaches us about a couple new runes and tells us to study the magic circle of water shot as homework.

But the lesson wasn’t filled with calm listening, Keswick kept trying to talk to me during the lessons, about some stupid inside joke and I pretended to find it funny.

The lesson was all silly and fun for Keswick until, around the halfway point when somebody through a crumpled piece of paper at her, Wow, you've got to hand it to those dimwits; they sure know how to spread the word when they want to.

The paper had “shit fly” written on it, and apparently, Keswick didn’t like it, so she presided to spend the rest of the lesson to write up a letter insulting the honor, family, and intelligence of the rando that through the paper.

“Unfortunately” the letter was so long she couldn’t finish it in mana class, so she had to spend some more time in soul class to finish it up.

I felt her becoming much happier as she threw the letter she crumpled up, into the thrower's face. Well, whatever makes her busy, will probably keep the questions away, so I encourage this behavior.

And after the lesson ended we walked back to the dorms together. At a certain point, we parted ways and bead each other adieu.

Entering my dorm I decide, that I should use the free time I have to extract more knowledge about Keswick out of Ustosis's little shrunken knowledge.

I learned more about the damned woman, I found out what her father's name is when specifically did Ustos, and her first meat and other such silly stuff.