Chapter XLIV (44)- Midterm Projects

Inspired by the History F midterm, Kizu decided to try to use his other midterms to give him a leg up in his expedition. Obviously, the mapping of an astronomy star chart and his piano performance wouldn’t be much use, but in his other classes he managed to find viable ways to twist the midterms to serve him.

For his enchanting class, inspired by his time trapped down in the hole with the vampiric spawn, Kizu decided to make enchanted boots that would be able to stick to walls. He had to be careful with them. Whenever he pressed his toe at a certain angle, it would release the foot from the surface it was stuck to. But with his lame leg, he realized that, even with the leg brace, he wouldn’t be able to put all his weight down on that foot. So, he then devoted an extra two days to enchanting a pair of gloves as well. It felt awkward climbing trying to climb with one foot and two hands, but he got it down in time.

For his midterm in Brewing S, he decided to try something new, alongside the obvious brewing of several explosive fire potions (also including a few fire-resistant potions this time). The crone had never let him experiment with transfiguration potions unsupervised, believing he would use them to escape. But, free of her restrictions, Kizu finally could experiment with them. Non-magical creatures, as it turned out, were pretty simple to transform into. He brewed two very different potions. One was for a tree frog. The other for a fruit bat. Both animals he was familiar with from the Hon Basin

Attempting to test the potions, Kizu immediately suffered extreme vertigo. He had read about the difficulty of adapting to unknown senses of nonhuman creatures, but he had foolishly assumed his bond with Mort would assist him. Turned out, primates were a lot more similar to humans than tree frogs and bats.

It took two hours of floundering around before he managed to even glide as a bat. Not to mention the headache that was trying to ignore the noise echoing in his ears the entire time. Apparently, bats could use sound to coordinate themselves. But Kizu never figured out how they managed it.

The tree frog was a bit easier. But not much. One of the perks was being able to stick to things. But his suction to walls acted completely different from the items he had enchanted. He had to relearn swimming as well, almost drowning in the process. And his eyes pointing in opposite directions made him feel even more clumsy and disoriented than when he drank.

As he climbed a wall, he practiced looking around the courtyard below. He spotted two students, a boy and a girl, and tried to figure out what they were doing with only his limited froggy eyesight. He immediately regretted the exercise. His entire frog body shifted red as he quickly retreated from the courtyard.

The next courtyard he surveyed had several students practicing combat magic. They looked to be practicing body enhancement strikes and blocks. When Kizu spotted Ulric, his nemesis for whom he had to thank for his shattered leg, he almost retreated as quickly as he had at the previous courtyard. But then he spotted Ulric’s sparring partner.

Harvey lashed out at the older boy with a high kick aimed for the side of his chest, but Ulric caught the leg. Somehow, Harvey managed to twist out of Ulric’s grip before the far larger student could use the advantage. Harvey broke away from the spar and fell to the dirt, panting.

Ulric reached down and offered Harvey a hand back to his feet. Then they repeated the exercise. Kizu watched on. Harvey slowly improved under Ulric’s tutelage. When Harvey finally managed to land the kick, he let out a whoop of joy and Ulric actually laughed as they touched fists.

Kizu’s heart churned in his chest at the betrayal. The immediate spark of anger smoldered in him as he watched them practice a different maneuver. He continued to expect Ulric to lash out or chastise Harvey. Not only did he expect it, Kizu secretly longed for it. But nothing. Ulric appeared patient and happy. After a few minutes, Kizu couldn’t take it anymore and he hopped away, trying to accomplish the tree frog equivalent of storming off. Nobody noticed.

All excitement and satisfaction with his new brewing accomplishments felt tainted and dirty. When he changed back into a human, he packed up his potions and walked away. Not with any destination in mind. Just away.

Kizu reassured himself that he had other friends. He hadn’t even really wanted to be friends with Harvey in the first place. He was loud and obnoxious. Now almost everyone in the academy wanted to be friends with Kizu. Letting one friend go in exchange for hundreds of new ones was hardly a poor trade. However, despite his parentage, Kizu wasn’t a trader. He couldn’t actually convince himself the loss was worth the gain.

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But his sister was waiting for him deep below the cobblestone paths of the academy. Where friends failed, there was never escaping blood. He pivoted on his heel.

It was time.

There was no point in waiting for midterms to finish. He had the equipment. All he needed now was to gather enough food for the expedition.

After gathering up his bag from his dorm and changing into his new delving outfit, he made his way down to the kitchens. Technically, they were off-limits to students. But Basil had mentioned once off hand that the cooks didn’t mind being bothered every so often for the occasional extra snack. So long as no one student made a habit of badgering them. Of course, they never noticed Basil’s frequent badgering.

Kizu peeked his head inside the painting of the kitchen that hung in the hall not far from the cafeteria. A cacophony erupted all around him. He yanked his head back, narrowly dodging a rogue cast iron pot zooming by. When he carefully stepped through the painting entirely, he had to dodge out of the way of busy cooks as they shouted at one another.

He realized that maybe visiting right before dinner might not have been the best decision.

“What do you want?” A short, balding Tainted man looked at him with bulging eyes. His hands were on his hips, a wand clutched in each fist.

“Just wanted to grab a bite,” Kizu said lamely.

The man grinned at him, baring his pointed teeth. Then he lunged at Kizu, mouth ajar.

Kizu stumbled backward, his bad leg tripping over a bag of flour propped against the wall.

“Stop that, Jim,” a different cook said, catching Kizu’s collar with one hand.

“He said he wanted a bite,” the first cook, Jim, said defensively.

“Very funny. Go check on your salmon. Last week the headmaster found not one, but three bones in his fish. Absolutely shameful.”

The cook rolled his eyes as he walked away.

“You said you wanted a snack?” the new chef asked. He loomed over Kizu. Arms crossed; he eyed him.

“Um, yeah.” Kizu quickly strained his mind for an excuse. “I am actually going to be shutting myself away in my dorm for the next few days to work on my midterms. I was hoping I might be able to get food to last me the whole time so I could dedicate all my time to my studies.”

“Hm.” The chef looked past the busy preparations all around him at a door on the far end of the kitchen. “I don’t like offering it, the taste is bland and there’s not much artistry to creating it, but I do have something that might work.”

The chef navigated through the kitchen with practiced ease, predicting every other cook’s step like a master diviner. Meanwhile, while Kizu followed him, he had to duck and dodge the busy cooks and the equipment flying past him. When he finally reached the door, spots of boiling sauce and soups dotted his new outfit.

“In here,” the chef told him, yanking the door ajar and ushering Kizu inside.

It was brisk inside. It reminded Kizu of the enchanted icebox the lady with the vampire spawn problem had had. Only on an entirely different scale. Shelves lined the walls, several meters tall. Wooden crates and barrels were piled up, consuming the floorspace. Glyphs were etched into the walls repeatedly. Kizu stared at them, trying fruitlessly to memorize the enchantments.

“In here, we keep a supply of different special requested foods. A few of the professors occasionally like to lock themselves away for days on end. Either to work on grading or for their research. Regardless, we came up with this for them.”

The chef pried open a barrel with his fingers and withdrew three vials with a swirl of colors inside, each the size of a child's finger.

“Is this a potion?” Kizu asked.

“Yes. Each vial is designed to keep a normal sized adult satisfied with food and drink for a day.” The chef looked at the vial with distaste. “They’re wretched tasting things. As I said, no artistry whatsoever. The recipe to create them is kept secret by a trading company in Edgeland. But you can tell there was no love or affection used in their brewing. Just mass production.”

It made sense that there would be a potion that filled a person up for a day. Kizu wondered why he had never considered it before. He immediately went over in his head the possible ingredient combinations that might result in a potion like that. He came up with a few hypothetical possibilities, but he was willing to bet that there must be some key ingredient found exclusively in Edgeland. Otherwise, the witches in the Hon Basin would abuse the potion.

The chef continued to rant about the potion after handing Kizu the three vials. While he had his back turned to lead them out of the storage, Kizu quickly stuffed three more handfuls of the potions into his uniform pockets.

After escaping the kitchens, Kizu brought his haul back to his dorm.

With the additional three potions freely given, Kizu had a total of nineteen vials. He likely went overboard with his stealing. Hopefully, he would only need a few vials. He reflected that this was his first real theft. Beyond using something of the crone’s without explicit permission, he had never actually stolen anything before. And he realized he felt completely neutral about the theft. He had expected to feel the stabs of guilt that people often described. But neither did he feel any sort of rush of adrenaline about it. It felt more akin to finishing one of his academic tests. He wondered if there was something wrong with him.

Regardless, he was going to use them to finally find his sister. No matter how deep in the World Dungeon.