3 weeks passed, Shelly’s mother never contacted him again, David didn’t want him on missions, but Parnell and Shelly were both trying to change his mind.

For now at least, Harlan was mostly trying to stick to helping students that were sent his way.

They were all first year problems, ones that Harlan either never considered problems in the first place or things he had to first learn and then teach.

Many of the students ended up discouraged seeing him never even try what they were having an issue with and then improve fast enough that he could take apart the problem before their eyes and give possible solutions.

“After you leave, try painting. Find a subject, something that you have committed to memory, and then try to paint it from that memory. It will help your visualization.”

Harlan moved with practiced ease as he shuffled a deck of cards, placing them face up on the table for only a few moments before telekinetically flipping them.

“Find the matches, 3 misses and I’ll reshuffle them again.”

The year prior he had more people who came to him for something specific that they were working on instead of him trying to find out why they were having an issue with the lessons and then having to work out how to best help them.

This girl, Charlotte Vale, dealt with most subjects well, but was having issues visualizing the effects that she wanted to make, and as such she was a poor diviner despite her family’s history.

Though, from Harlan’s own assessment, she lacked confidence in her own ability which acted as a block.

Outright stating so had gotten poor results, so he had to go in a roundabout manner.

With only 2 sets left the girl picked up the wrong card.

“This is stupid, why am I doing this without divination.”

“The better you remember things the better you get at divining things. It wouldn’t help at all to use it in this case. Again?”

“I will be back, and I will get them all next time.”

“I look forward to seeing your growth.”

She practically stormed out of the room.

“That was a dirty trick.”

“If I let her win then she won’t learn my lesson.”

“What lesson is it this time?”

“Building confidence. If she argues with me, absolutely sure that I cheated, I’ll tell her what I’m doing.

She is paradoxically too sure of herself, but also she considers me someone with authority so she won’t question me.”

“Are you sure you aren’t just having fun with this?”

“Magic is mental, if her vision is clouded with doubt, it will affect how her divination works.

They are all smart spells, they can’t work any other way.”

“Who is next?”

“Shane Breachwater, he needs to work on his combat thinking but he doesn’t have anyone who can spar with him without the worry of being harmed.”

Harlan made his way to the rings and waited for the boy.

“10 minutes late. I’ll shorten the lesson. I have another appointment after this.”

He had a small bruise that he had clearly tried to heal, but his lack of experience with healing only made it look faded.

“My apologies, Sir Fomoria.”

“What happened?”

“I tripped.”

“6 times?”

“What? No, I just hit my face a little.”

Harlan poked his chest and the boy flinched in pain.

“I’m canceling the lesson.”

“I’ll just go.”

“If you don’t want to talk about it, then at least accept my healing.”

The boy tried to resist, only for Harlan to paralyze him.

Healing him only took a few moments.

“You are under my care, do I need to follow this on my own time?”

The boy was afraid of exactly this. It was bad enough that he had been asked, or rather, forced, to take classes so he didn’t disappoint his family, but now he couldn’t even defend himself.

Harlan did not look like someone trying to help a downtrodden boy, he looked like a predator ready to hunt.

“This is personal, you do not have the right to barge in.”

“I won’t step in, for now, come then, we have a lesson to finish.”

“I thought it was canceled.”

“For standing up to me, I will give you 7 minutes of my time.”

The boy was freezing up more than usual.

Regardless of his words, Harlan would be looking into this.

The boy was a student under him, from an official stance, Harlan would say that he was doing it to ensure that these lessons were not interrupted any further. The simple reality however, was that Harlan felt a responsibility to these children that were sent to him, he wanted to train what he considered personality defects out of them along with any deficiencies in their spellwork.

Lunch was upon them.

Harlan was planning to sit with the normal group but Shelly waved him over.

“I convinced David to let you come with us again.”

“Do I want to?”

“What? You love going out and helping people.”

“David has my back in the field, if I cannot trust him, I cannot say that I want to be out with him.

I will continue with what I have been doing here.”

“Hey, I tried really hard to get him to let you back in. Don’t tell me I wasted my time.”

“I’m thankful that you tried, but unless he wants to say why he refused me in the first place, I won’t join with the three of you again.”

“You are being dramatic, can’t you just set aside your pride for a moment?”

“This isn’t pride, a unit cannot be divided like this. He doesn’t trust me for whatever reason, and you either don’t know or won’t tell me. I don’t blame you for that, he is a friend.”

“David, talk to Harlan, I want him to come with us again.”

“You know why I don’t want him with me. I have no interest in dragging this out.”

She punched him in the arm, but he didn’t move an inch.

By now he was 6’4 with a very knightly build, she just didn’t stand a chance of really hurting him.

Parnell just gave a nod as Harlan walked away.

Harlan sat with the normal group in the end, minus Zella.

She found a group of third years that approached her to be friends and she was trying to branch out and avoid the label of ‘Amber’s friend.’ It was worse on account of people seemingly ignoring what she had done in the past and now Amber was just ‘Harlan’s sister.’ She wasn’t even getting second billing at this point.

Adina gave him a peck on the cheek when he arrived and he did the same for her.

Public displays of affection were looked down on, but at this point people were mocking him for never moving past a kiss on the cheek.

“I heard you stop by another table, was it Shelly?”

“She got David to agree to bring me back, but I refused. I’m not going to trust my life to somebody who clearly has a grudge against me and won’t talk about it. I just hope it is political and not personal.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“That is unfortunate. Do you have a guess as to why?”

“Yes.”

Claude arrived late.

“What are we talking about?”

“Nothing important. Anything happen with your meeting?”

“When Aria saw that array she knew you made it. No idea how. You should expect her to visit you.”

“How long did it take for her to tear it down?”

“About two seconds, close to three this time.”

“Ha, I’ve gotten better.”

“Why don’t you just start taking array classes? You clearly like it and her.”

“I’ve already got too many classes and I’m teaching first years every weekend other than the ones I go home for. If I took them as night classes I wouldn’t get to see her anyway.”

“She would be upset to hear you talk about it like you don’t even care about arrays.”

“That is where you are wrong. So long as I keep feeding you arrays she knows that I care. It’s like leaving flowers.”

“How romantic.”

Harlan stayed only long enough to finish his mean, Shane left without finishing and another group left not long after him with malice on their minds.

Harlan trailed behind the boys, his simple invisibility was fine as long as nobody was looking for him, but even the most basic divinations would break it

The upside was that it barely cost anything for him to use it on account of hover based flight letting him make minimal physical movement.

The deal with Harbinger, after speaking with Sepul, was that Harlan was to be given only the most simple of stealth spells which could be used together to make invisibility.

Finally they struck after catching Shane alone.

Harlan didn’t know who any of them were, and he cared little.

The three boys kicked him while Shane was down.

Harlan grabbed one of them by the throat and squeezed.

“Fucking coward, had to get the monster to fight your battles.”

“He asked that I stay away, but he is my student, and I will not allow this to continue.”

“Sir Fomoria, leave, I’m fine.”

“Really? Because it looked to me like these three were kicking you while you were on the ground failing to shield your vital organs. Also, you, leader of these idiots, coward? For stopping a three on one? Yet you all stopped attacking the moment you saw me.”

“He knows he deserves it.”

“I’m not going to ask why, that is between you and him, but this will be your only warning. Shane, get up, go see the healers.”

One of the other boys brought out a hammer and tried to strike Harlan whose armor prevented him from actually getting harmed.

He got a wolfish grin.

“As you have attempted to assault me. I have the right to demand a duel. I’ll be seeing you later with an official decree from my house to yours.”

He had no real desire to fight the boy, but he was sure that whoever he was, his parents would be none too happy to hear that Harlan had the right, for a month at least after putting forward a case, to demand a duel at his leisure.

Harlan dropped the one in his hands and dragged Shane away.

“Let go of me.”

“If I have to step in again, well, do not make me step in again.”

“Stop trying to fight my battle.”

“What’d you do, insult their parents?”

“This doesn’t concern you.”

“I would do this for anyone who I saw being attacked. My concern is what I say it is, this problem is not going to get any better without my involvement. Now, if you could fight your own battles, I wouldn’t need to step in, so pay attention in class.”

The medical staff were confused at the boy who refused to be looked at, but Harlan’s presence meant that it wasn’t even worth questioning.

He would get a strongly worded letter condemning him for his rude actions, then nothing would happen, just like every other time he did something like this.

Two more weeks passed of little happening.

Harlan was just on a mission with a group that was missing a member and asked for his help.

It was the same girl who he was tricking with cards.

“I’m sorry to have called you for this, Sir Fomoria, but we really do need these merits.”

“I don’t get it, what do merits even do?”

“Did you not read the student handbook?”

“I’m sure that they said it, but I think the last time I read it was for something specific and I skimmed the rest.”

“Merits are the way in which others know how well you have done, they represent honor and courage.

They have no monetary value, but they open many doors for you after the academy is over, you might join the army without needing bootcamp or even skip ranks. When the king has to choose nobles to get certain benefits like dividing land after a house collapses they are taken into account. In the courts they will show up as a record of who you are, like a tally of virtue.”

“So they’re worthless.”

The girl was speechless for a moment, but didn’t want to argue with him.

“This is our first hunt, there should be 3 orcs that escaped another clearing and have been corralled over to this area for us.”

“This is barely a hunt. But sure, so, what is your plan?”

“I hoped you would have something?”

“You are the group leader, are you not?”

“What? I assumed you would be, since you are stronger than the rest of us.”

“I am just a filler. You set this up, you gathered the others, it is your job.”

“Right. So here’s what we will do…”

The three orcs knew that they were trapped, but they also knew that they were stronger than the humans, all they needed was a moment of weakness to escape the encirclement.

In the sky they saw a man of dull metal floating downward towards them.

When he touched down he just stood there, making no overt offensive actions.

Something told them that they shouldn’t fight him.

Three more small ones arrived shortly after the scary one and surrounded them.

Greyskin would grab the smallest and use her as a shield to get past the other humans.

Stupid things didn’t hurt their own, fragile stupid things.

He gave Badaxe and Greentoe their orders.

With a faintly magical warcry the little ones trembled, Greyskin was too smart for his own good, sometimes, he even thought through his plans.

Charlotte didn’t even have a strong enough spell at the ready to stop his charge, the acid burned him of course, but not only did his flesh heal fast enough that it barely slowed him down, his pain receptors were entirely dead.

Suddenly something was sticking out his front, red inside stuff painted the girl.

Something smelled good.

Oh, Badaxe was on fire, stupid idiot, why would he do that? The little one he was after barely jumped over his axe and avoided losing his feet.

Now, what is sticking out of his front?

Hand, metal man hand.

I need to kick back.

Can’t move.

Metal man holding backbone in hand, sticky green stuff melting.

“Do you plan on sitting there for the rest of the day?”

She spit out the blood that had splattered in her mouth and got to her feet to cast a spell.

“Don’t hit this one, help your group.”

She took the head off of the orc going after the other boy in the group, letting the three of them all team up on the last orc for a little bit.

Stupid Greentoe, let himself be put in melty hole in ground.

Not like proud Greyskin, just need to get myself fixed up and beat metal man to death.

“All of you should give up on doing this in your first year, how did you manage to pass the competency tests?”

“Hey, we held our own, it was just Charlotte that needed to be saved.”

“Do you think that the orcs fought like amateurs for no reason? That they kept slipping on the dry ground? All of you are going to get yourselves killed, or worse, you are going to get somebody else killed.”

They hung their heads low.

Ha, stupid metal man think us dead.

Leap at small boy and break legs, drag him away, eat to regain strength, make new tribe, Greyskin tribe strongest in world soon.

Huh? Small girl, get away, stop pointing at me.

“Sir Fomoria, are you sure he is dead?”

“Are you questioning me?”

She opened her mouth and no words came out.

She took a deep breath and clenched her fists.

“Yes, I am going to double check.”

“No need.”

Harlan threw out a powerful acid, the kind that you needed to make with alchemy instead of magic, and the body along with a few feet of the area around it were bubbling and letting out noxious fumes.

“You pass.”

“What?”

“A diviner needs confidence. Also, you have won every game of cards for the last week. I cheated with illusion magic. Oh, but you all failed this hunt, wait 6 months, get in some real experience with goblins or something, nobody should’ve ever let you near orcs.”

He got an earful from the adventurer that was shadowing them about how they wouldn’t learn anything without real danger, but Harlan ignored it.

Why should he care about anything some blade for hire has to say?

Harlan wasn’t doing all of this extra work purely out of the goodness of his heart.

“So, do you think you have enough now?”

“By the time I have the summer off I should be ready to make a golem to teach magic to the children.”

“Is it really a good idea?”

“If I want to mold them into people who can do work for me, then I want them to have magic.

It benefits them even if they choose not to work for me. I also want everyone under me, including Isha and Kass, to learn magic.”

“If you could see me, I’d be smiling. How are you going to deal with David?”

“I might just need to find a way to get in contact with Shelly’s mother, either telling her the truth will send her over the edge and David might make a move, or she understands and David pulls back.

Then there is May, you are sure that she wouldn’t want me dead?”

“The May that she knew would never condemn a child for the sins of their parents. How he turned out like this is a mystery to me. Maybe you could directly contact her? She would set him right.”

“I’ll ask. The question is who. Parnell might not tell me, Shelly probably won’t, David wouldn’t.”

“You should be able to just send the letter through the mail service, they can find her with just the name.”

Harlan wrote a letter and marked it.

To Lady May Haywood.

The woman who was processing the mail that day said he should expect it to arrive in just over a week since the Haywood house was in a coastal area in the east.

She didn’t give an expected reply time on account of nobles being fickle.

----------------------------------------

The man was livid, he spent no small amount of favors and coin and that monster destroyed it all by chance.

He drank a large flagon of wine to calm his nerves and spoke with his son at the academy over his amulet.