The next two months passed in a flurry. The test in magical theory proved to be as boring as the lessons themselves, while her mom only taught her the answers to fifteen of the one hundred questions, every half decent mage should be able to get the answers to the rest of the questions by himself. Surprisingly it only took five weeks to teach the lightning spell to Starshadow.
Afterwards he became a scourge for all the animals previously way to big for him to carry or kill.
Just now, she was watching two of the older students fighting it out in the arena, while she saw him hunt a Klym, a evolution between the wild dog and the common wolf. It was really impressive watching the thirty centimeter tall bird fall down and kill a beast seventy times his mass.
Killing him was as brutal as it could get, as the bird was too small to kill it properly.
Mary watched the spectacle being equally disgusted and fascinated by the hunt of her familiar.
After eating his toll, Starshadow took into the air and flew her way. Ten minutes later he arrived at her window and she let him in.
Strangely, although his mana was full he didn't use it to increase his flight this time.
After landing on her shoulder, the bird was suddenly overtaken by a deep fatigue and promptly fell asleep. After checking him for any injuries, she found nothing.
Ever since they bonded his endurance had been greatly increased, no normal falcon was able to stay in the air for a day after all, so seeing him sleep while she was awake was unusual to say the least. Still greatly concerned about him, she tried to wake him, but to no avail.
Without any options, she set him down in the nest she prepared in her room and went to bed herself, the falcons fatigue transferring through their bond.
The academy’s healer would not concern herself with an animal and she wasn't allowed to go into other dorms to get one of the other students look at him.
To her great relief Starshadow was up and about when she awoke. Today was Saturday so she didn't have anything to do. Their group had planned to do some quests in the afternoon again, just like they did every weekend since joining the academy. That still meant she had the entire morning to find out what happened yesterday.
After donning on her armor, Starshadow landed on her arm, where she noticed something strange.
He was a little smaller than before and his manapool had increased significantly.
His coloration changed as well, some of the feathers turned white and black on his back, while the feathers on his belly turn lighter, decreasing the visibility from below.
It took a minute for her to understand what had happened, but after she did, she couldn't help an exclamation of joy, her familiar had evolved.
So after breakfast, she went in the library to find out what he evolved into, she already knew most of the common evolutions of a normal falcon, but she knew none that actually decreased in size.
Sadly, the library was severely lacking information about evolutions of avian species. With nothing better to do, she returned to her room and started a message spell to her father with her mana battery in hand.
“Hi dad!”
“”Hey Mary, what gives me the honor of your call?”
“Starshadow.”
“Oh, what about him, you mean why I told Verecundia about him?”
“No that's not it, I would have called earlier if that was the case, I need help to determine his species, he evolved last night and I don't know into what!”
“He evolved?” Her father asked excited.
“Describe his appearance!”
“All of his senses have improved, he shrank five centimeters in height and his mana pool increased significantly. Furthermore his feathers changed. His belly is now light brown intermixed with white and his back got some black feathers.”
“...”
“Dad, you still there?”
“Yes, I was just surprised, I don't know the specific evolution, but the feathers sound exactly like those a royal falcon has, like the one on our banner.”
“I thought royal falcons were really rare and deeper down the evolutionary ladder?”
“They are, as far as we know any falcon has to evolve at least three times to become one, though you only get to see that specific coloration after two evolutions.”
“So he will be one of the kings of the sky one day?”
“I does certainly look that way, make sure you take good care of him! Now how did you manage to evolve him so fast? The best my people got was one evolving after ten years, most of them die of age before that though!”
“I don't know, I didn't do anything really different, though I did teach him how to use magic.”
“That could be it, I'm sure your mother will want to examine the theory once you get back. Sorry I couldn't be of more help!”
“No problem dad, at least I know I won't have to worry about him once there.”
“Take care of yourself Mary! Make sure to call your mother once in a while, she misses you. Don't worry about Snaketon, I will make sure he understands there are worse things than losing your social rank!”
“Ok, by dad!” She was really happy her mother and her had found a better message spell while working, otherwise a conversation such as this would hardly be possible.
After finding out why she could see through Starshadows eyes, they found a way to significantly improve the efficiency of the spell, which was by now one of the most significant advantages her family had over others.
They next to no need to have precious mana wasted for communication, as every decent mage in their employee had enough mana for a short conversation.
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With nothing better to do than waiting, she called Starshadow to her after retreating back in the gardens. After yesterday he needed a way to kill his bigger opponents faster than picking out their yes and trying to fry their brain with lightning.
There was a spell that would fit perfectly.
It arranged the air in a crystalline structure, just like her first spell to improve her eyesight.
It effectively formed a blade of air perfect for stabbing, so he could use it to directly kill his prey after stunning them.
The blade was useless in a fight as it would easily shatter if it was hit by a real blade, furthermore it was way better at exerting force parallel to the blade itself.
Awaiting yet another morning of repetitive casting of the spell in his body, she was surprised to see he started picking up the basics after only an hour of learning.
After that, she examined his manachannels more thoroughly. The check in the morning had been more a small sweep out of curiosity, without any real depth. Now though she did a very throughout inspection of his mana.
As it turned out, the exterior changes were nothing compared to the interior ones, her familiar’s manachannels had more than doubled. His possible output of mana increased by fifty percent as well, even though only half of the new ones lead out of his body.
his muscles grew denser, which was the reason his weight didn't decrease as much as it should have, furthermore, after letting him fly around a bit, she noticed the spells she taught him before were used like parts of his body, her familiar was the most agile bird she had ever seen.
Even the higher evolutions her father's people managed to obtain were nothing compared to her familiar now. As lunch approached, she sent him to hunt something for himself, promising herself to watch closely.
She met Taimanu and Dehla in front of the mess hall, and started chatting with them.
“Did something happen mary, you are kinda distracted?”
“Mhm!”
“And what?”
“Mhm!”
“Are you even listening?”
“Mhm!” ‘Suddenly the face of lynxkin appeared in front of her.
“BOO!” Jumping slightly out of her seat, Mary looked into the grinning face of her friend.
“Got you, for the first time! What's the matter?”
“Oh, Starshadow evolved over the night and I was kinda distracted, trying to figure out what happened.”
“There is no cause for evolution, it just happens when you are ready!” Dehla stated.
“Of course there is, everything in our world follows certain rules, we just haven't found them yet!”
“And you want to do that, when even the greatest minds of the past failed to do so?”
“Of course I do, there are few things more interesting than magical research!”
And with that, she zoned out again, watching with increasing fascination how her familiar tested out his bodies new boundaries. At first, he saitiated his unending hunger with prey normal falcons ate, but soon enough, he moved to pry normal falcons had no hope to catch, either being too fast, heavy or simply too big. The Klym he hunted yesterday had been all three of those things.
She was reasonably confident it had something to do with that, but had no way to be sure.
After lunch they assembled in front of the central tower, the dwarf being last as usual.
The quests available were better than two months prior, they advanced a rank after all, next week they would be allowed to take another advancement quest, having completed a total of fifty quests, half of those in the rank. The quest had been as easy as anything else, they had to hunt down a small group of tribeless kobolds that caused problems for the farmers by reading their fields. The seven were easily found and taken care of, though Mary had to puke once the deed was done, while kobolds were seen as monsters, she always felt a strange kinship to them, just like to goblins.
The reason she puked was another though, these kobolds had been the first intelligent beings she had ever killed, something that didn't sit well with her consciousness. That night, she cried herself to sleep, something that didn't happen for a long time!
The last time she did was the third night after leaving the orphanage. The first two days had been too full for her to properly process everything around her and the full realization of never seeing her friends again came crashing down in that night.
While she still wasn't comfortable killing the sentient monsters, she was able to do it now, though with half of her team sharing the sentiment they tended to avoid them.
Todays quest would, once again prove way too simple for their liking. One of the farmers discovered a nest of rodents near his field. While they had yet to cause serious problems, they would in time as they were breeding way too fast and the forest around their nest was quite devoid of plant life and anything they could hunt.
As location had already been given to them, Mary only had a routine glance over the area, intending to let her familiar continue his hunt afterwards. As it turned out, the nest was already out of control, there were hundreds of rodents, In equal parts horror and fascination, Mary saw the group hunt a deer by piling on it and biting it to death.
Luckily, it didn't look like they were enough to develop a hivemind, because if that were the case, they wouldn't be able to deal with them.
Before they entered their territory, Mary put up a windshield that should keep all but the biggest rodents from closing in on them.
“Alright everyone, we are nearing their territory, they will probably try to swarm us with numbers, so I put a shield up, make sure you don't leave its perimeter or you are lost! They are only strong because of their numbers, so hit them with any area of effect spells you have, while the melees kill those that manage to break through!”
A minute later, they crossed the boundary to the rodent territory and the attacks started, at first only small groups of four or five discovered them and were promptly dealt with, but a short while later their numbers increased with every passing minute, fifteen minutes after entering, they were surrounded by the group that just hunted the deer and they started piling up around her shield, the light ones being blown away when they tried to pass, while the fat rodents easily penetrated it only to be killed by their melee fighters.
Mary and the rest started using their most powerful area spells, killing dozens of the little beasts with every attack. Soon enough, the numbers around them started to decrease significantly and they were once again able to advance.
They found the nest two hours later, and had Taimanu burn it to the ground for good. Of course there was no way to get all of them , but they didn't have to, the quest only called to destroy the nest and kill all rodents they met on the way, which they did. Overall Mary estimated they had killed about five hundred of them.
After returning to the academy, Mary went to the counter to submit the quest. As there was no way for a single team to take a proof of kills for beasts like this, the guild used truthstones that determined if the party did as they said.
“We completed the quest, though that was way more than most Tin ranked teams could handle!”
“How so?”
“We killed at least five hundred of them, give or take three weeks and there would have been enough of them to form a hivemind and you know how dangerous those are!”
“I’ll make sure to forward you complaint. Anyways, if you would testify the completion of the quest here so I can update your cards!”
“Thank you very much, and congratulations on surviving!”
They left for dinner afterwards, where one of the elves looked at her.
“Are you sure they could have evolved in a hivemind in a week?”
“Yep, they are at the upper limit of beasts that can form one, so they would need about one and a half thousand individual to do so, but you know how fast they reproduce. Though I'm not sure it would count as evolving, groups of small beasts like this usually get smarter the more of them are there, but to reach true intelligence they need a certain amount of themselves. A true hivemind would have killed us there, it would have traps ready, and even getting through my shield would have been relatively easy had they worked more as a group and less as a mob!”
“So we were lucky to survive?”
“No, I knew we could handle it, you can normally recognize the territory of a young hivemind quite easily and then I would have called a retreat!”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Most of my time back home was spent reading in my father library!”
“Didn't you have any friends?”
“Not really, we didn't have any children in the mansion and all the other noble children I met were dismissive of everyone below them I never wanted to see them after the first time.
Furthermore I trained many things so even if I wasn't reading I was busy!”
“I can't really imagine what something like that would be like, I'm so glad i was born as an elf!” The girl said.