Lucius sighed just as the light slowly died down atop his finger. He'd been spamming Illuminate since yesterday after he was advised by Elrond specifically to 'cast a spell whenever you can', which he took to heart. Elrond wasn't considered one of the greatest magi in Elyssia for no reason, after all.

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Aether

0/26

Until full recovery: 4h 20m 53s

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After seeing that his Aether had been completely depleted for the fifth time today, Lucius plopped down to his bed before covering his face with a pillow and sighing. He had to admit that even with his fascination with magic, the routine was getting pretty old. Not only that, but he'd have to get up early for PCC tomorrow. Rats. Only if the prompt he'd been waiting for showed itself this time around.

"Oh well. Time to do some quests while I wait," Lucius mumbled to himself under his pillow. An Aether Point took exactly ten minutes to recover for someone like him who had absolutely nothing to help aid his regeneration, though with how rare and expensive materia and passive spells that accelerated AP regeneration were, he doubted that anyone would be any better in his position.

With a huff, Lucius cleared his mind before hopping out of the bed and walking over to his desk. He had plenty of time to kill, or not-to-kill with cleaning jobs ahead of him. After all, the work of a Student Agent is never done.

After preparing himself and walking over to his wardrobe, however, Lucius paused, and his eyes lingered at the clothes Gilly had left for him to wear just for a moment longer than he wanted. Gritting his teeth, he picked some clothes he'd bought with the gold he earned from questing and pushed Gilly's clothes further back in the closet. Out of sight, out of mind. Someday he'd have to do something to get his friend back but he resolved not to think about it for now.

Revenge must always come first. Always.

Lucius rubbed his eyes before walking to the shower to cool his head, but he knew he could only do very little to calm down the emotions that just rose from within him. Ever since he was young, he'd been taught relentlessly to keep grudges and slights very closely in his heart lest he'd suffer humiliation time and time again from the ones that showed him disrespect, and he had no intention of letting Dario walk all over him and his friends any more than he already did. Come the day of the Labyrinth Dive, the bastard will pay for what he had done.

For now, though, Lucius had dorm rooms to clean, and a whole lot of thinking to do as well. Some might call it excessive, but there was no way that he'd make a move against one of the most powerful and influential Primuses in the academy without a perfect plan.

...

"Good job. Now get the hell out of my room. You stink."

Lucius nodded before turning around and leaving the room without a word. Though he was a bit surprised when he first started doing his job as a Student Agent, he was starting to get used to the attitude of most of the students he was doing quests for. Cold. Pompous. Entitled. The mere fact that they didn't have the desire, or so gods help them, an inkling of need to do menial tasks just to survive inside the academy seemed to give them a shallow sense of superiority over him and other Student Agents. Quite frankly, this was the smallest amount of power he'd ever seen go to anyone's head that he almost couldn't comprehend it.

Despite all that, however, Lucius's psyche remained unshaken. The occasional condescending looks and snickers that he'd get whenever he walked by or entered a room he could tolerate no problem. After all, such things were nothing compared to the nightmares and indignity he suffered from the days behind him. At least now, he had plenty of people who acknowledged his presence, even though it was the wrong kind. That, in itself, was strangely reassuring.

"What are you doing here?"

Lucius's musings dropped dead on its tracks as he almost bumped into someone who was blocking his way. He rose from his stupor and looked up only to see a girl wearing the same glasses as Marj was, only the frame was much rounder and big in appearance. Her hair was tied back into an unstyled, functional ponytail, and combined with the fact that she was wearing some dusty, dirt-smeared clothes much like the one he was wearing, he could somewhat guess that she was also a Student Agent fresh off of a cleaning job.

Strangely enough, Lucius couldn't help but look closer into her deep, black eyes while poring over at her delightful button nose and her thin, pretty lips. He'd seen this girl in one of his Mathematics classes before, and plenty of times during his PCM and PCC classes. A person that didn't stand out all that much and wasn't affiliated with any of the four major factions in the academy.

"Ah, Amelia Reina, I believe. To what do I owe the pleasure?" Lucius, despite the exhaustion from his prior engagement, remembered his manners and showed just about enough of it with a short, curt nod, all while repeating 'No bowing.' ceaselessly inside his head.

"Oh, you know me already?" Amelia asked with a small, uncertain frown on her face. "That's strange. This is the first time I saw you, right? Are you a stalker or something?"

"Oh, goodness no. Nothing like that," Lucius replied with a wry smile while waving a hand dismissively in a cool manner. On the inside though, he felt uneasy as soon as he saw the girl's pointed stare, which was quite unusual since he thought he'd lived around Castarossa long enough to be completely impervious to strange, chilling looks.

Amelia, for some reason, felt it necessary to gaze at Lucius for a bit more before speaking once again, "Then why do you know my name?"

"I know every Primus student's names and what they look like. Not just yours," Lucius answered. "I made sure to memorize them all before my first day of class."

"Oh really?" Amelia's lips tilted sidewards, looking a lot more intrigued this time than suspicious. "You think you know everyone, is that it? What a ridiculous thing to say."

"But I do. Well, the ones who are recorded in the student directory, at least," Lucius said. "What, do you not believe me?"

"I don't know yet," Amelia replied, her eyes slightly narrowed. "But even if it is true, it's still kind of creepy. Not everyone has the time to memorize the names of their classmates, after all."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

With a straight face, Lucius answered, "The entire process took me exactly five minutes and twenty-four seconds in total. Not that much time if you ask me."

Amelia frowned and was silent for a while. She then took a headlong glance at Lucius, eyeing him from head to toe before nodding to herself. "Oh, I get it now."

"What?" Lucius asked warily after being ogled at like a piece of meat. The spark of comprehension that seemed to shine in the girl's inquisitive and curious eyes took him aback. Someone was onto something here, and he did not like it one bit when he wasn't the one doing it.

"I thought before that you were one of the weakest, if not the weakest student among us Primuses after you joined our ranks. Though now, I think that despite that pitiful display in your first PCC class, maybe you do have something that separates you from the rest, Ferrian. I'm sorry for doubting you and calling you a stalker."

Lucius was about to accept her apology gracefully when Amelia added, "It appears to me that you're just different. A bit weird, yes, but not a creep."

"I wouldn't prefer to be called that, but it's still an improvement, I suppose. I accept your apology," Lucius said, sighing. "May I leave already? I just finished a tiring quest I'd very much like to go back to my dorm now. I have a very important appointment I must take care of." Lucius was, of course, referring to his spell-spamming routine, but he figured that the girl, whom he barely even knew, didn't need to know that.

"Important appointment? What else could a Primus consider an important appointment if not fooling around and watching those mind-numbing shows?" Amelia said, pouting and looking a bit outraged. "I have apologized, so I think I deserve a bit more of your time. It'll only take just a minute."

"You deserve—" Lucius huffed, a bit annoyed by the girl's very interesting, if not poor choice of words. "In what world—"

"Be careful of the quests you take," Amelia said, stopping Lucius's rebuttal dead in its tracks. "A lot of new Student Agents take their job very lightly and pays very little attention to the nuances of the tasks at hand. I just wanted to make sure you understand the complications that come with these things."

"Nuances? Complications?" Lucius almost chuckled. "In doing menial chores and labor for other students? What else could possibly be simpler than working as a Student Agent?"

At this point, Lucius was starting to get annoyed. His aether had just hit full points right after completing the quest earlier. Every second he spent talking to the forthright—and quite frankly—haughty and tactless girl before him was time wasted.

"There are a lot of aspects in being a Student Agent you still don't understand. I have been doing this for several months longer than you have, so it would do you a great deal of good to listen to what I have to say," Amelia declared confidently, her ample chest heaved forward. "You know, I have been hearing a lot about you lately. It's good that ran into you so that I could tell you some things you need to know."

"Which is what, exactly?" Lucius said, resisting the urge to sigh in his impatience.

"I'm getting there, don't worry."

Lucius shook his head—Amelia's words fading absently as incoherent mumbles in the background. That was it. He wasted more time than he could afford to. With nary a word to Amelia, he lifted his finger and covered it with his other hand before casting Illuminate—the light seeping through and making the hand he was covering it with glow like a lightbulb.

"So keep in mind, you have to select your quests very carefully. Some of the students here, especially regarding your situation, are people you do not want to associate yourself with no matter wh—Wait, what are you doing?"

"Oh, don't mind me I'm just training my light spell. 'It's all about efficiency,' a wise man once told me, well, yesterday." Lucius answered with an unbothered look on his face. "But please, do carry on."

Amelia, on the other hand, didn't look quite as unbothered as him. With a hand on her face, she muttered, "Looks like the rumors were true."

"Rumors?" Lucius tilted his head sideways. "What rumors?"

"I've heard some things about you from Marj. Not exactly someone whose word I would normally trust, but it looks like she was right. You're a weird one, aren't you?" Amelia sighed, but then pushed on regardless. "Whatever, I guess. Now, where was I?"

"Something about students who I wouldn't want to associate myself with," Lucius replied nonchalantly from the back of his head.

"Good. So long as you're listening," Amelia nodded, then continued, "On the note of just doing whatever you want, you have done work for Secundus student called Maritess, am I correct?"

"Yes, I have. What of it?" Lucius took his eyes off of his hand before turning to Amelia with a serious look. Just like that, the girl had his full attention. She was really good at doing it. "And you know this, how?"

"Us Student Agents get around, and we know things. Naturally, we aren't allowed to disclose any of the information we receive while we're out doing quests, but we share what we have to amongst ourselves. That way we have a better understanding of how things work and change here in the academy. It's how we separate quests we want to take from those we don't."

Lucius nodded, agreeing with Amelia and believing everything he just heard entirely. Not that he never thought of it before, but he was surprised to hear that working as a Student Agent could also be used as a cover for subterfuge if done correctly. He suspected he was better off keeping that thought to himself though.

"I assume all this correlates with me doing a quest for Maritess?" Lucius asked earnestly. "As far as I saw, she's actually a pretty good client. Pays well. A great one, if not for her...more obvious flaws," Lucius said, scratching the back of his ear as an image of Maritess flashed in his head. That girl was something else, he thought to himself.

"Ugh. Of course you would say that. Boys," Amelia rolled her eyes as she mumbled. "If only you knew why none of us wanted to clean her room for her all this time. Well, none of the boys anyway. I've been doing some quests for her from time to time before you came in out of nowhere and took my spot."

"Still that doesn't tell me why doing quests for Maritess is a bad thing," Lucius said, feeling a bit uneasy as he saw the look on Amelia's face. Foreboding. Pity. It almost told him everything he needed to know, and it wasn't good.

"Oh, it's a bad thing alright. Especially for you," Amelia replied. "And also note that every male Student Agent before you had been beaten black and blue before quitting the Academy on their own entirely. That's how bad it was."

Lucius frowned as he felt the tension within him rise higher and higher by the second. "Where are you getting at here, Amelia?"

"Maritess is Dario's girlfriend...or so I've heard."

"Wh-What?"

"Uh, well it's more like a one-sided thing but that's the gist of it. I'm not much for that kind of rumors, after all," Amelia revealed somewhat bashfully. "Now do you see what's wrong? You'd best stay away from her, just in case it's not too late."

Lucius's eyes widened. At that moment, it felt as if something in his chest crumpled and caved in, as an occurrence beyond his calculations had apparently been going on without his knowledge.

"Wh-What did you just—"

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Epithet Obtained

Description

You have trained enough to understand the most fundamental secrets of light magic. You are now an Apprentice Luxmancer.

Rarity: Uncommon

Bonuses

Animus↑5

AP cost of all Light spells ↓10%

Power of all Light spells ↑10%

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Lucius's frown only lifted slightly after seeing the prompt flash before his eyes. Under normal circumstances, he'd most definitely be overjoyed, but the news he'd just received was enough to put a damper on this otherwise happy occasion.

"Well, that's all I wanted to tell you," Amelia said. She started walking away, but looked back just a few steps from Lucius before saying in a somber tone, "Be careful out there."

Then finally, Amelia was gone, leaving Lucius with a bitter taste in his mouth as he contemplated his predicament and what it meant for him and his plans in the future, only to realize that he might be in deeper trouble than he imagined.