Character Stats
STR: 5 - 22% to next level.
FOC: 8 - 54% to next level.
INT: 6 - 55% to next level.
DEX: 5 - 35% to next level.
VIT: 6 - 15% to next level.
Skill List
Defense Up (Lv3) 15% to next level.
Freeze (Lv5) 15% to next level.
Heal (Lv6) 0% to next level.
Ice Blast (Lv3) 25% to next level.
Ice Shield (Lv2) 20% to next level.
Mana Blast (Lv6) 0% to next level.
Mana Cycling (Lv8) 12% to next level.
Mana Surge (Lv5) 16% to next level.
Water Blast (Lv5) 20% to next level.
Water Cage (Lv2) 50% to next level.
Water Manipulation (Lv8) 30% to next level.
Unlearned List
Detox (Lv1) [5 RP]
Total RP: 82
Aida tapped her wand against her palm thoughtfully. It had been one moon cycle since the placement matches had ended and the actual “education” part of Maglica Academy started for the third years. The classroom life had been a huge relief - when she first got transported into this body, she had felt like she was being thrown into the ocean with no warning, no training, no equipment, and no idea which way she should even be trying to swim. Being confined to a desk and chair and being lectured at had been a great boon in helping ease her into her new life.
The improvements in her character sheet spoke for themselves. Her character stats had been absolutely abysmal when she first arrived, the smallest pentagon she had seen compared to the rest of her classmates. Now at a glance, her pentagon could blend in among the other students’. It was still noticeably paltry compared to her closest friends, the Main Leads of this world, but Aida was grateful just to not be pinpointed so easily among the rest of the school.
Her Skill List had grown as well, the bulk of her RP being earned from the improvements. She had first arrived in this world with only Mana Blast and Water Manipulation, and had been an utterly useless mage. Now, she was still on the weaker end of the spectrum compared to her primary cohort, ranks 6 through 15, with her relatively diminutive mana pool size, but she could feel that her mana was much more efficient than before, and her skills felt much more natural to execute.
She had been gratified to discover that she could stumble upon new skills and earn RP from them. She found Ice Shield on accident in the middle of a Mana Applications exercise (Professor Lloyd had posed the class a question: “You’re all very familiar with using your own mana and element, but what would happen if you were to use a different element in conjunction with your own?”), holding some water in front of her face while standing in a circle with the other four girls in class when Ruth Cadmum (Metal, rank 8) had sneezed, sending her globs of molten metal (courtesy of Natalie Wok, rank 13, who had been idly heating Ruth’s metal) rocketing straight towards Aida. Aida herself had frozen, startled by Ruth’s explosive sneeze, but her mana had detected hostile incoming projectiles, and froze over right before the hot droplets shot through her liquid wall.
Ruth had apologized profusely for losing control of her mana, blaming Bella Kipling (Wood, ranked 10) for activating her allergies with her spores. Bella and Ruth had squabbled for several minutes on who was at fault while Aida examined the ice wall, wondering how she had managed to instinctively create it without the faintest intention. Tera Trippe (Earth, ranked 11) and Natalie had checked on Aida, worried that she was under-reacting. Aida had reassured them that she was fine, it was a mistake, and it was no one’s fault, finally soothing the two arguing girls.
Professor Lloyd had drifted over during the commotion, an eyebrow raised as he listened. After class, Aida spoke with him, trying to draw out an explanation for how she had unintentionally done something useful without giving away the fact that she was not originally from this world. Professor Lloyd, though enthusiastic in their discussion, eager to hear her thoughts on what she thought happened, wasn’t very helpful in giving her a satisfactory answer. She got the impression that his philosophical posits that formed the basis of their Applications exercises were straight up “what if” scenarios he was throwing them into. The other students revered him, thinking he was ten steps ahead of them all, leading them towards some grand, masterful teaching plan, but Aida strongly suspected he was along for the ride, watching them struggle as some odd form of entertainment.
Aida couldn’t even be mad at him for not guiding them in a more traditional instructor-pupil method - his classes were by far the most entertaining classes in her schedule. And after a whole moon cycle, she had to admit she had learned a lot more about the ways she could manipulate her own mana and her surroundings. Hands-on experimentation is a lot more effective than memorization.
She closed out of her character sheet as a knock sounded on her door. Grabbing a ribbon and knotting it around her wrist so she could tie her hair up later, she opened her door to Sue, Lily, and Vanita’s beaming faces.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
“We sent the boys to bring the picnic baskets this time,” Lily said importantly as they headed down the stairwell. “So we can alternate the setup every moon cycle.”
“Thanks for planning this one,” Aida said, smiling.
“Not a problem,” Lily said briskly. “Gotta spread the workload to make it easier to keep going, you know?”
“Do you need help carrying that?” Aida asked Vanita, who had a wooden crate in her arms. Vanita shook her head, smiling.
“It’s not heavy, just delicate.”
“I’m so excited for you guys to see what’s in there,” Lily said, dancing around them. “Vanita worked so hard—“ she coughed, catching Vanita’s stern eye. “Anyway. I helped.” She sewed her lips shut as Vanita glared harder, keeping her lips swallowed as they finally exited the doors of the girls’ dormitory wing, setting them on the sunny path down to Maglica Lake.
Ezra was laying out the contents of the picnic baskets on a raised mound of earth, shaped as a table, as Levi coaxed some trees to grow their branches over the table, making a canopy covering over the picnic area. Caleb was carefully sculpting seven individual stools out of the earth, evenly spaced around the table.
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“I hope you don’t expect us to go through all this effort next moon cycle,” Sue informed the boys as they approached. She sat herself down on the nearest stool, squealing. “It’s so comfortable!”
Aida sat down as well, marveling. Caleb had kept soft sand on the interior of the stool, so that instead of a hard surface as expected, it molded to the shape of her bottom.
“Well, that’s not fair,” Levi said loftily. “There’s four of you, and two of us. Ow - I mean, three of us.” Ezra had thrown a chopstick at Levi, catching him in the temple. Snagging the chopstick out of the air as it rebounded off Levi’s head like a boomerang, he held it out to Aida silently, who hid her smile as she pulled a stream of water from the lake’s surface nearby to clean the chopstick. “Oi, how dare you! My face is clean!” Levi said indignantly.
“Very well, you can have this one then,” Aida said pleasantly, tucking the chopstick into the breast pocket of his fitted green flannel. Snatching the chopstick out of his pocket, he glared at her with mock irritation, unable to keep the smile from his lips.
“How have you been? I didn’t think the teachers would keep us so busy that we couldn’t even eat together.”
Aida sighed, settling back into her seat. Everyone else was already engaged in conversation, catching up with each other. “I’ve been doing better. I was worried how classes would go, since - you know, Pritchard, but it’s been surprisingly smooth.” Levi nodded sympathetically. The third years had been split into three separate classes, each with their own schedules. The top five students (Class 1) had their own schedule, ranks 6 through 15 (Class 2) had their own schedule, and Class 3 (ranks 16 through 30) had their own schedule as well. Aida was expecting some sort of mixing between all three groups, but only Classes 2 and 3 shared mealtimes together. None of the other students seemed miffed about the segregation, so Aida had been wary of questioning the school’s system.
After the placement matches held over the course of two star cycles, Aida had barely made the cutoff to be placed in Class 2, with her bully Pritchard Spoak and his cronies. She had been expecting the bullying to ramp up with all the extra time and fewer classmates around her, but Pritchard had been leaving her alone, albeit with a pinched expression Aida assumed accompanied his toilet time. She wasn’t complaining though; the less time she had to devote to watching her back, the more time she could spend on catching up.
Vanita began doling out food, passing plates so they could all begin eating. “Let’s begin sharing how things have been by rank order, so we can all catch up. Ezra?”
Ezra stared at her, a clump of rice partway to his mouth. Dejectedly, he put the rice back in his bowl, carefully patting it down so that no one could tell it had ever been disturbed. “…Things have been fine.” He studiously avoided all the expectant expressions, reaching for side dishes to add to his side plate.
“I’ll tell everybody,” Sue said, annoyed. “Things have been great for him. None of the professors bother him in class, because he’s so perfect. Meanwhile, the rest of us are being treated like we’re the bottom five instead. Constantly pushing us to ‘do better than last time,’” she finished bitterly.
“Wait, why?” Lily asked, shocked at Sue’s vehemence. “We were expecting you all to - I don’t know—“
“Have picnics every day?” Aida suggested. “Go on exclusive field trips with the professors? Learn some fancy new techniques?”
“Yeah, something fun,” Lily nodded.
“No, the professors are trying to ‘polish us up’ so that we can be ‘presentable’ to the Affiliates when they come and meet with us in the new sun cycle,” Levi said glumly, sketching air quotes around each phrase. “I never heard the third years from the other graduating classes complain about this kind of treatment, so I wasn’t expecting this at all.”
“What’s it like in your classes?” Aida asked Lily and Vanita.
“Similar to second year, I suppose,” Vanita said thoughtfully. “Nothing too different, honestly, just mostly covering things from Advanced Techniques.”
“What about your classes, Aida?” Caleb asked curiously.
“Well,” Aida said slowly. She picked at an egg and ham stirfry. “I’m enjoying my classes quite a bit. A lot,” she amended. She smiled at Lily’s jealous expression. “Pritchard has been leaving me alone, and since we’re a smaller group the rest of us are getting along pretty well.”
Lily sighed, thoroughly mixing the toppings she had stacked into her rice bowl. “Sounds like you get the best of both worlds. You get to do something different, while not being pressured to overperform.”
Sue agreed. “It would be nice if we had some more people, to buffer us against Lara.”
“Is she still causing trouble?” Aida asked, concerned.
“Not explicitly. She’s focused on executing the professors’ feedback, so she doesn’t exactly pay attention to the rest of us…but she’s also pretty unfriendly.” Levi wrinkled his nose. “She treats us all like we’re just a waste of time.”
“Being classmates with her…it makes the stress seem even heavier,” Caleb agreed glumly. “I’m glad we are able to support each other, because I would have felt incredibly inadequate.” He nodded at Sue, Levi, and Ezra. Sue smiled shyly at him, while Levi gave him an up-nod and Ezra returned a regular nod.
“Well…I’m sorry to hear about your difficulties,” Vanita said hesitantly. “But I have something to give you all…”
Lily’s eyes rounded. “Ooo yes, give it to them!” She cleared the space in front of Vanita, so that she had somewhere to place her crate. Carefully digging through the wood shavings, Vanita pulled out a small sculpture with a base the size of her two hands. She handed it to Lily, who carefully accepted with both hands. Walking slowly and carefully, a wide grin on her face, she handed it to Caleb, who was seated next to her.
Vanita and Lily carefully distributed the sculptures Vanita pulled out of her box, murmurs of awe floating in the air as each person received their gift. Aida examined hers. In the middle of her statue was a luxurious red gem an inch in diameter. Set around the gem were seven figures, each painstakingly painted to resemble the seven of them sitting around the bonfire from their first picnic. The edges of the sculpture were rimmed with blue and green gem clusters, looking like water and grass.
Aida inspected her figure. The details were exquisite - she supposed being able to manipulate earth with only a thought was a distinct advantage when it came to sculpting stone. Even though she no longer had her original face, somehow the figure with long, dark hair and deep blue eyes had a distinctive look that made Annie instinctively aware that it was her.
“It took me several star cycles to grow the gems to make these statues,” Vanita explained. She twisted her fingers nervously. “And the pigments to paint the figures were made by Lily.”
“Wow,” Sue said softly. She blinked rapidly. “Thank you. This is lovely.”
“And that’s not all!” Lily crowed. “Try feeding some mana into that ruby in the middle.”
Curious, Aida poked her finger at the gem, sending a small trickle of mana in. The gem glowed, before it sparked and a small flame lit up, floating above the gem. “Wow!”
Vanita was blushing, but looked very pleased at everybody’s reactions. “I’m glad you like them.”
“This is incredible work,” Levi said, examining his piece. He poked his finger into the flame. “Did you use some Helms secret techniques on these?”
Vanita nodded, her cheeks pink. “I took this opportunity to practice. These gems wouldn’t be sale-grade anyway in our distribution network.”
Aida recalled Levi’s explanation that Vanita’s family was the primary grower of gems for mana batteries. Fascinated, she tried pouring more mana into the lustrous gem. It greedily absorbed her mana, but the flame didn’t get any bigger.
“I suppose with these gifts, we can’t initiate a war on you,” Ezra said. He held his statue delicately on his fingertips. His silver eyes moved to Levi, while Caleb discreetly dipped his head below his statue. “It would look very bad if we carried out your plan.”
Levi chuckled, feigning ignorance as four cold expressions turned to him.