Elm stared at the magore in my hand, at the one I had used as a model for it. I was grinning pridefully at my work.

The sentiment was not shared.

“You had to go ahead and finish the fucking equation, didn’t you?” Elm groaned, rubbing his temples.

“What?”

Elm grabbed the created piece of magore and held it out in front of me.

“This is exactly what Arlin wants. Controlled, solid magore that can be easily refined. At this point you may as well be refining it for them.” Elm paused and glared at me.

“Don’t get any ideas. You’re already making your situation worse.”

“I don’t plan on that. I have more control over normal magore.” I admitted, scratching at the back of my head, “Which is why I wanted you to cut the refined magore. Can you make it into a knife?”

Elm stared at me like I was a creature from Corith’s forest.

“You want me to whittle a piece of magore so you can create… knives?”

“Once I learn how to copy the shape consistently enough, I’m pretty sure I could make it on my own without needing a model.” I responded.

Elm’s scowl grew deeper as he placed the pieces of magore behind him on the table and put a hand on my shoulder.

“You want to use the ability to create magore, something that could cause a technological revolution, to make knives?”

“Yes?”

I didn’t have time to react before I felt his other hand slap me across the cheek.

“Fuck no.”

“But I need a weapon. Everyone else here is stronger than me, and if I get backed into a corner or into a fight with another attuned, I’m screwed.” I protested, rubbing my sore cheek.

At least I’ll heal this within the day.

“You’ll figure something else out. The more you master this ability, the more danger you’re in.” Elm sighed and handed the piece of magore I created back to me.

“But what if only I can do it?”

“It doesn’t matter. Researcher General Solomon and his team are not your regular researchers like Matthias. They’re the best of the best. It was why he wanted me on the project.”

Odd way to compliment yourself.

“That’s not something to worry about.”

Before I could turn my head to the door Elm had already formed a knife and thrown it. It landed into the door and pierced out the other side, where I could hear Nicole let out a slight wince of pain. She opened the door with her hand covering her forehead. A trickle of blood was slowly trailing its way down her face.

“Rude.” She complained.

“How long were you there?” Elm asked coldly.

“Long enough. I simply wanted to inform you that Solomon was executed.”

Elm’s cold demeanor dropped. A mix of emotions I couldn’t discern washed over him.

“The Fourth had him killed? Why?”

“Yes. I even heard some rumors that the Emperor did it personally.” Nicole’s cheek twisted upwards in pleased surprise. “Were you fond of him?”

“Don’t avoid the question. Why?”

Nicole grinned, a sight made even more eerie by the blood slowly spreading down her cheek.

“He was part of a conspiracy. One intent on removing the Fourth and restructuring the empire. They seem to wish to consolidate it, to draw back its borders and focus on acting as a trading power.”

I looked in between my mentor and Nicole.

Isn’t that in the direction of what I want? Where Arlin is no longer a colonizer?

“Why didn’t you tell us any of this?” I asked

“It wasn’t necessary for what your role is.” She casually remarked. I felt the desire to finish what Elm had started.

“Fuck off.” Elm snarled at her before I could get another word in.

“I will, although I’d enjoy it if you’d join us for breakfast where you can threaten me with a full stomach. And try not to destroy any more of my house, or give my attendants mana poisoning.”

She walked off, continuing to wipe the blood off of her head. I could hear her mutter something about getting new clothes.

“Sir, are you alright?” I cautiously inquired.

He shook his head and sighed once again, handing me the piece of magore.

“I won’t help you with this.”

“But sir-”

“No. You’re underestimating Arlin’s intelligence and Nicole’s desire for leverage. If she can’t go to the Tisch or us for support, she can always try to appease Arlin. If you believe you need this, do the work yourself.”

Elm pointed me to the door. I walked out, only taking a quick glance back to find him deep in thought.

Is this about Solomon?

I focused on eating breakfast, returning the magore to my room and heading downstairs and to join with my comrades who were happily enjoying their meals. Nicole returned at the same moment as me, wearing a new dress and a bandage covering her small nick.

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

“I’m sorry if I caused any distress for you or Grayson.” She blatantly lied.

“No you’re not.”

She shrugged. “Believe what you wish. You do have to remember the reason I brought you here was for a specific job. Once this is over, you can happily return towards your fight against Arlin.”

I sat down next to Sera who was ravenously eating her plate. Nicole placed herself at the head of the table and leisurely relaxed into her chair.

“Would you like to inform everyone about the auction, North? And hopefully a lead of some sort.”

Oh right. That also happened.

“Well, we didn’t get much out of the auction and the burners specifically. I wasn’t able to link any name or specific smith to each of the individual burners, and it seemed they were all from different makers, which means they could have wildly varying connections. And even then, that might be a dead end.” I paused and saw the dejected reactions of everyone at the table. “But there is good news.”

A collective sigh of relief filled the air. Sera gave me a soft punch in the shoulder.

“The majority of the burners were custom made, rather than stolen from the military. That means that the smiths must have had a way of acquiring illegal magore. They all looked new, so that means that there’s got to be someone supplying the local smiths with magore.”

“Why would the smiths be local?” Sera asked.

“They were terribly made. Half of them would have fallen apart over any longer journey, and with how badly secured the magore was, it probably would have caused a reaction.” I answered, a bit of my pride as a technician shining through.

Sera and the rest nodded along, pressing me to continue.

“So… find the workshop, then use that to find who supplied them with magore?” Ruby said.

“That’s the best shot we have. It’s not a guarantee, but if the person going for Nicole’s seat needed money and power, Magore is completely untapped.”

A small clap came from Nicole who was smiling ear to ear.

“Good work, North. I shall work out a plan for your next steps. You can do what you wish in the meanwhile.”

“Sure. I’ve got something I need to work on. Do you have a place where the servants won’t go that I can clean up afterwards?” I asked hopefully.

“The basement has a wine cellar. As long as you don’t go around giving every non-attuned person in my household mana poisoning, you can do what you wish.”

I accepted the offer, went and grabbed the magore, and began to work.

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

I bit my lip as I continued to chip away at the magore. It was a small piece, smaller than I would like for what I intended to create, but I needed something to start.

A servant gave me a knife to use, and I’d simply moved into the cellar and sat down on the floor to begin my work.

Ruby could clean this up fairly easily.

The end of the magore was in the shape of a triangle, but it wasn’t sharp in the way I wanted it. I needed to thin the piece down to make it actually usable as a blade, and then pray to the mana that I could build off of that image into a full knife.

It would have been easier if it weren’t for my inability to reshape refined magore.

The mana in refined magore listened to me like all mana did, but it was limited. The refinement process stabilized the mana. That made it good for use in weaponry, but bad for me. I could tap into its power, but I couldn’t alter it into another solid shape.

I took a small break as a terrifying thought came to mind.

Could I turn the mana within a person into magore?

I ignored the idea, as it seemed impractical.

A knock came on the door behind me, and I turned to see Sera stepping inside.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” I responded back, and continued to whittle away at the magore.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a model so I can create magore weapons.”

“You’re… what?”

I lifted up the knife in progress to show her, and went back to focusing on cutting away at it.

“Why isn’t Elm helping you with something like this?” She asked. The pit in my stomach I was trying to ignore suddenly got deeper.

I gritted my teeth. “Elm refused to help me. He doesn’t agree with what I’m doing, because it could maybe put even more of a target on my back.”

“Being the leader of a rebellion feels like a big enough target already.” She joked as she sat down next to me.

I nudged her playfully and got back to work.

“I still don’t get it.”

“Get what?” I asked, lacking context.

“All of your bizarre connections. We’re both attuned, but you just get it differently than me.” She took a deep breath and rubbed her hand against the floor, brushing up against the scattered bits of magore I’d chipped off.

“It’s not like I get half of the stuff you do. You can actually fight back against other attuned. The most I can do is blind them.”

Sera shrugged at my extremely fair assertion.

“I was jealous sometimes. Before we escaped the camp.” She admitted.

My whittling came to a sudden stop at her words. I’d never taken the time to really think about how she might have perceived me.

“I didn’t know that.”

“You were focused on a lot of other things. We never had time to talk about it, even when we were heading south. I just didn’t want to distract you. Learning my own attunement felt like I was just… catching up.” Sera added to her statement by letting a bit of lightning dance between her extended fingertips.

I chuckled. “Now I feel like I’m the one catching up.”

“I mean, Elm talked about extremely strong beams of light being usable as a weapon. Have you ever tried that?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I could ever focus the light enough. My ability to control mana has always been my strongest attribute, so I thought I should try to lean into it. I never expected it to go this far though.”

The shape, while not perfect, was around what I wanted. It was a small blade that could fit in my palm, but it was enough of a model for me to expand on. I let my palm feel out its edges to get a better mental image in my head.

Mana, please help me copy this shape.

I opened up my other hand and felt the flow of mana go through me and condense, growing thicker and thicker until I could physically feel it on my palm. When I opened my eyes again, a near perfect copy of the small blade was in my other hand.

“By the flow…”

I focused again on it, seeing if I could somehow stretch out the shape. The bottom of the blade seemed to shimmer before extending outwards, taking the magore that was there and spreading it out.

What was left in my hand was the bare minimum of what one could call a knife. The handle on the blade was still too short, but that didn’t matter for the moment.

“Now I just need to produce a few more of them until I can do it on my own.”

“So you can just create magore whenever you want now?” Sera asked incredulously.

“Uhh… yes?”

Sera stood up and looked down at me with pity.

“Okay, now I get why Elm was worried.” She laughed and left me alone in the cellar before I could ask for clarification.

I looked back at the tiny blade in my hand. I couldn’t use this to harm anyone, not yet. I didn’t even need to place any physical pressure on it to know that the knife I created was fragile.

That might be a good thing.

Having a piece of magore stuck inside you would be debilitating, regardless of whether or not you were attuned. And since I could theoretically make as many of them as I wanted, I wasn’t losing anything by breaking my weapon.

The knife wasn’t heavy, and the thought came to mind of me throwing it. That would solve the range issue I was suffering from. I’d done some practice with throwing weapons with Cedric, since that was part of his “assassin’s education”, but it wasn’t something I’d considered as a genuine option until now.

I let the magore fade back into the air and cracked my knuckles.

I had a lot more knives to make.