Chapter CII (102) - Finals

Basil did not show up for Enchanting C. It was their final class before their presentations. Finn was livid.

“Of course your friend would be an unreliable, lethargic idiot,” he said to Kizu. “Imagine anything else from a person who can’t even commit to a single skin.”

“I’m not any happier about this than you are. But Basil’s not an idiot. He’s just lazy.”

“That’s worse! Though I don’t believe it. He’s a buffoon.”

Finn ranted to Kizu for the entire class period. In his anger with Basil, he forgot that he hated Kizu. Kizu sighed and listened to his brother’s tirade. Nothing had the power to bring people together quite like mutual frustration.

Kizu had sent Basil a message a few days earlier about the project via his scrying orb. And received no reply. The worst part was, if Basil didn’t want to be found, Kizu would have no hope of tracking him down. All he had to do was stay away from their dorm and blend in with the student body to become completely indiscernible from everyone else. Kizu would likely need to handle the trigger mechanism himself now.

While Finn complained, Kizu got to work on mapping out the mechanics of the needed enchantment. It really wasn’t very complicated. He thought he could pull it off by the end of the week when the projects were due. Everything else was set up, the bookshelf assembled in the back of the classroom and the other in the crew quarters of Owl’s Respite. Both were enchanted with the correct warding scheme to connect them. Hypothetically, all he needed was the proper trigger. It would be cutting it close, but he thought he could have it finished. They had until the day after the Winter’s End Ball to complete the assignment.

The other finals were taken in class. Astronomy’s class test turned out to be a simplified version of the one he took biweekly for Roba. Only this version contained questions that directly addressed in the class’s lectures. Kizu breezed through it. However, the final question gave him pause. It asked for a report of the school excursion, requesting that he detail out what he learned and how he had since applied it in his life. That proved tricky, as astronomy wasn’t exactly something he really used in his daily life. In the end, he wrote about how the same knowledge from different sources can give a different perspective on the star constellation’s meanings. What he actually learned on the excursion was several unique applications for dozens of different arctic plants and creatures in brewing, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t what Professor Grove was looking for in an astronomy final.

Elemental F was the easiest, as Professor Oasaji just wanted to see a unique elemental spell perfected by the students. Kizu demonstrated the perfected version of his fire fist spell and passed with flying colors.

As it turned out, in Music F, the entire semester they were all supposed to be practicing together for a mock concert performance. If Ignis had mentioned that previously, it had been lost in the cacophony of the class.

“I’m going to miss this,” Gregor said, repeatedly slamming his fist into his drum at an off-beat tempo.

“You’ll be here again next year,” Kizu said.

“Yeah, but you and Yon will be gone. You, to bigger and better things in a more prestigious class, and him to wherever they’ll hire him. It won’t be the same ever again.”

That was true, Kizu realized as he looked around the room. They’d never again all be together making noise simultaneously. The thought made him a bit melancholy.

And then a student started blindly staggering around the room, crashing into everyone’s instruments, his head stuck inside a massive tuba. The melancholy was immediately replaced by relief.

“You’ll survive,” Tara said. “We’ll all still be around in the academy next semester. Nobody’s dying.”

“Certain?” Gregor asked. “Krimpt’s final might very well have a few casualties this year.”

The Brewing S final was a paper test. Kizu was surprised when he realized it actually posed a bit more of a challenge than the standard placement tests. He still answered everything correctly, but a couple questions actually gave him pause. He supposed Knoff wanted to push them with this final test. It was an S ranked class, after all. His peers were still sweating over the test as Kizu handed his in. Since he had spare time, Knoff let him go and experiment with some potions over on the side behind the curtained off area.

Kizu hadn’t forgotten that Knoff was looking for a cure for his fractured soul. And now that Kizu was aware of his own internal defect, his drive for studying the subject was accelerated. Unfortunately, his few tests proved fruitless, the potions fizzling out as a result of a very clear defect.

The next day was the dreaded History F final. Krimpt was ruthless with his test. Kizu stared down at the paper, skimming it for anything he might know the answer to. Nothing stood out to him. Not until he reached the final question. It asked for a short answer written response to - “Why were the witches of the Hon Basin exiled and trapped within their jungle?”

Kizu stared at the question for a long minute. He 100 percent knew Krimpit included this question for him specifically. He longed to answer it just as he had on the very first day, claiming that they weren’t exiled at all. But he remembered the headmaster’s lesson. History was far more malleable than one simple answer. He sighed and wrote what he believed to be Professor Krimpt’s truth. Something about an emperor’s execution of three witch coven leaders after they cursed his daughter. The crone had told the story to him before, though in such a wildly different context that he hadn’t connected it to Krimpt’s question until only a couple weeks ago. He left out the part of the story where the cursed daughter had later joined the covens, thinking that part likely didn’t make it into the history books.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Welcome back!” Arclight greeted them as they all filed into the courtyard. “This semester you have learned the very basics of combat, and I’m incredibly impressed by each of you! You have all improved and you should all take pride in your advancements.”

Kizu looked around at his classmates. They did, in fact, look pretty proud of themselves as they grinned at one another. Arclight’s attitude was infectious.

“Next semester we will be back here again. As you know, this is the only class that is attended every semester of your time at Shinzou Academy. However, it will be structured fundamentally differently as we will be focusing on applying your new skills in a practical sense. So prepare yourself for an altogether different experience.

“In the meantime though, I believe you all have a final to complete. It’s a simple enough assignment. Just as we first met, you must come at me with everything you can muster. Show me your growth!”

They lined up by height, just as Kizu had done on the day of his arrival at Shinzou Academy. He stood in the back and watched as his peers stepped forward to attack Arclight. Every blow attempted was parried, blocked, or dodged. Still, Kizu actually could see the improvement in their actions as they attacked. Most lacked the wild abandon they first arrived with, and none of them used wands or other conduits.

Evie’s fight with Arclight surprised him the most. On her first day she had failed to properly conjure a monster, messing up its binding marks, and Arclight had needed to step in to save the Kemon girl. This time though, Evie went with an entirely different strategy.

She enhanced her quills to function like needles and shot them at Arclight. And, as the battle mage blocked them, the detached needles burst with different elemental magic, attempting to pierce through Arclight’s physical shield of air, only to be stopped by her steel-like antimagic shield.

The strategy reminded Kizu of Basil’s tactic against the bloodspawn. He had flung pieces of his oozey flesh to act as a conduit for explosive results. Unfortunately, Evie was significantly less successful than the Ooze Harbinger.

Arclight still seemed pleased by the showing and praised her for the ingenuity of her technique. Then she sent her aside with the other spectating students and moved on.

“No familiar, Kaga Kizu?” Arclight asked as he approached.

“He’s sleeping. I didn’t realize this would be the assignment, otherwise I would have brought him along.”

“Too bad, I wished to see how you’d improved with your bond. Nevertheless, this is meant to represent a sudden fight, with no time to prepare. So show me what else you’ve learned!”

Arclight beckoned him forward with a hand.

Kizu stood still, feet planted solidly in the dirt and waited. And waited. Finally, Arclight cocked her head and opened her mouth to speak, then Kizu attacked. He jumped behind her, leaving behind an after image illusion of himself. If it bought him time, it made no difference as she spun with inhuman speed and blocked his enhanced punch with a raised arm. Kizu opened his fist just before impact and gripped the professor’s arm, then he lit his hand up with flames.

Arclight’s smile widened, completely unbothered by the fire on her arm. Kizu prepared himself to disengage, expecting an antimagic shield at any moment. Instead, Arclight jumped to the side.

He stumbled forward, no longer pressed against the professor, but caught himself.

“I see. This is what Roba’s been teaching you? Excellent choice, Kaga Kizu! But can you land a blow on me now?”

He scattered half a dozen mirror images of himself throughout the courtyard and overlay himself with one of them as well. He added a defect to the form of the one over himself, making its jaw unevenly matched with its cheekbones. The idea was to make himself indistinguishable from those other illusions and mask himself from her spellsense, the defect hopefully making her write him off as a fake.

It was dizzying, but he then engaged in each of the illusions jumping around the courtyard, striking at Arclight.

She also rapidly jumped around, narrowly dodging every strike from himself and the illusions alike. Kizu thought he had her, overwhelming her with numbers, but then she closed her eye.

His illusions’ attacks passed harmlessly through her, but as he jumped beside her, she jumped away immediately. She had another way of sensing him. At first, he thought it was a more advanced version of spellsense, but then he realized his problem. His illusions made no noise. She simply listened for his approach and blocked out all other distractions. And she was likely closing her eye to give him a hint of her new tactic.

For the next five minutes he played cat and mouse with the battle mage as she jumped around the courtyard. A couple times he felt himself get dragged a bit off course by the academy’s beacon, but for the most part his jumps were exact. Finally, she opened her eye and caught one of his blows.

“Incredible improvement,” Arclight said, stepping back and evaluating him. “Tell me, why didn’t you attempt to jump into me, like you did with Ulric? Don’t tell me you’re squeamish?”

The question startled him, he hadn’t known she knew about that fight. For a moment, he was hesitant to admit to breaking the older student’s knee, but if Roba already knew there was no point in not telling her.

“You likely have an innate protection,” Kizu said once he recovered. “If I attempted that it would have put me at a disadvantage as you would have known better than me where I’d actually end up.”

“Very good! An excellent appraisal of your opponent. You would have indeed ended up redirected in front of my fist.” She raised her arm and showed him a tattoo that circled her wrist like a bracelet.

“Overall, leaps and bounds superior to your first performance. Before, you had skill with your illusions, but now you’ve learned to be imaginative and inventive with them. Next semester you’ll learn to cover a few of your current weaknesses in your new classes. I look forward to seeing what you have for me in a few months! This year’s tournament will certainly be entertaining!”

Kizu bowed awkwardly and walked over to join his classmates.

“That was amazing,” one of them whispered. “You went toe to toe with Arclight.”

Kizu recognized the speaker as one of the student’s he had fought in the weekend contests. He had humiliated her in front of a crowd of onlookers. Shame burned his cheeks with the memory.

“It wasn’t like that. She was just testing me and pushing to see my limits. All she did was dodge and block, the same as everyone else.”

Still, despite him pointing that out, his other peers continued to praise him. And with that test out of the way, all of Kizu’s finals were complete save for Enchanting C’s.

Arclight launched into another speech and Kizu listened with a smile. While he wasn’t as good as the others in the class thought, he had improved. And that was the most important thing.