The next day, Max got up early. After some light morning exercises, he went to breakfast. He checked his tablet on the way and saw a few messages that he decided weren't important. Dealing with them could wait. He had a lot to do, even though he wasn't going to class.

At the cafeteria, he scarfed down breakfast as quickly as he could, making sure not to make eye contact with anybody, lest they take it as an invitation to talk. Then he got a few meals to go and went back to his room. He decided on the way back that he should probably look into room service or something of that nature. The feeling he was getting was that his imagined aura of menace or mystique that the other students might feel was starting to fade. As a result, he was sure he could have more annoying social interactions in the future.

One advantage of being in the Summoner Academy is that the Summoner students, by and large, were not exactly the bravest people in the world. He had to give them respect for killing a monster on their home world to even be here, but that could have been out of desperation as much as anything. Still, a lot of them were bored, especially the first and second years. Max didn’t want to turn into a Summoner circus animal.

As he stepped back into his dorm, he reflected on his chain of thought–specifically that so many Summoners were shy–and wondered how that was even possible. After all, if the Paths given in the in-between world were truly random, then why did it seem like so many more timid people became summoners?

He actually sat down in his sitting room to think about it, which was only the first or second time now that he used the sitting room for its intended purpose. Max pondered for a while.

All the potential challengers who came to the in-between space, who were going to be awarded a Path, had a set number of Paths that they would be compatible with. And it made a certain sort of sense that someone who was more cautious and not exactly a warrior-type would not be well-suited for, for instance, the Mystic Spear Path.

And perhaps…people might also be classified by not being too afraid of spirits or strange things…and have the ability to make odd friendships more easily. That would definitely make someone a candidate to be a Summoner. Now Max felt like he might be onto something.

Maybe if a new Challenger was quiet and just had a highly developed sense of empathy, they would probably be a good Summoner too. And if the universe functioned the way it probably was supposed to, with Summoners roughly being on par with all the other Paths in terms of power, their natural personality quirks would be working in their favor, not against them, unlike at the present moment.

The more he thought about it, the more Max grew irritated that Summoners had been screwed over for so long. The real injustice was that with Summoners screwed over, it meant that people on their home worlds would be less protected once the Summoner returned.

Irritated from his current direction of thinking, Max got up from his chair and put his food away in a cleverly hidden refrigerator in one of the walls. That was when he realized he'd forgotten something.

"Damn it," he muttered. Bones.

He went back to the cafeteria and asked for bones. The staff directed him to the back of the cafeteria, where there was a loading dock to the kitchen, and for the first time since Max had been in the Quartet, he wondered where the cafeteria got its meat and other supplies from. The more he thought about it, the more of a mystery it was. After all, based on his understanding, the Quartet was just the four academies, the central area, and living spaces for the workers in the central area and Quarter-born that functioned with a micro-dimension system. He filed the mystery away to revisit later but decided the most likely answer was farming micro-dimensions. Or maybe the Quartets weren’t as isolated as they were all taught. In fact, considering the eventual inter-Quartet competition, that would definitely require some travel between Quartets. So even if the food didn't come from outside the Quartet, travel of some sort between Quartets had to be possible.

Max felt like he was on the verge of understanding something deeper, something bigger about the Quartet system, but it was just on the tip of his mind. He kept pondering it, but hadn't had any eureka moments by the time the rear doors opened and some cooks brought out an entire rolling bin of bones. In Max's head, Salironbegan gibbering in excitement. Max pulled a plastic bag with all the bones in it out of the bin, tied it off, and threw it over his shoulder for his walk back. Once he was safely back inside his dorm, he said out loud, "Lavinia, where do you think I should put all this bone stuff?"

His spirit appeared before him with a hand on one hip and a thoughtful expression. "If you would have asked me a day ago, I would have said the magic workroom, but now I actually think you should put it in the dark room."

"Why?"

"Well, that's obviously Saliron's favorite room, and it won't bother me if it's there, or any other spirits for that matter. It’ll be out of the way for you there. You're only going to really use the bones like once, right?"

"Well, maybe once in a great while."

"That’s okay. Whenever you go in the dark room, can you keep the light down, like maybe only use a single candle?"

"I guess. What's the reason for that though?"

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"The longer a room is dark, the more dark it stays, the better it feels for spirits. That's why that room that you used to live next to in your old dorm has so much spirit activity."

"About that," said Max, "are you ever going to tell me anything more about that room?"

"I'm working on it. Please just be patient."

"Okay, okay," Max held up his hands. "I'll use the dark room, thanks.”

“When you first set up the bone gateway, it's okay to use an extra candle, two, but—"

Max cut her off. "One should be fine. After all, I can just divert more mana to my eyeballs so I can see better in the dark."

"Okay, glad to hear it. And thank you." Lavinia vanished from sight, but Max knew she was still there. It was strange developing a friendship with somebody who was almost always there unless they chose not to be. There were some advantages, though. It sure did reduce the amount of time it took to catch her up to speed on things that had happened. Max chuckled at his own lame joke while he dragged the bag of bones to the dark room.

In the hallway, he realized that as he was chuckling, Saliron was also chuckling in the back of his head. Max abruptly stopped. He didn't honestly believe that the dark spirit would end up warping him to start loving bones, but there was no use in tempting fate.

***

The bone doorway was complete. Max studied the whole thing with the light of his single candle and ignored the rest of the room. It was a little strange how the darkness seemed to press in on his light, but he wasn't going to light up the space anymore for his own comfort. Besides, it shouldn't be affecting him like this in the first place. Normally, actually, it wouldn't be. Max was not afraid of the dark. The only explanation for his weird discomfort was that the room was likely full of spiritual energy. For those who were not used to spiritual energy, it could play havoc on their nervous system a bit. That’s what he’d read, but this was his first time experiencing it.

Saliron had helped him build the bone gateway, and the spirit was happy with the result too. "Yes," the dark entity crowed out loud, his cracked, growling, cracked voice echoing in the empty room. "This is truly an edifice worthy of displaying just a tiny portion of the wealth that my contractor has just received. The nibbly, lovely bones piled against one wall, so pure, so randomly stacked, displayed to the world in random beauty. Charming. Absolutely charming.”

The licking of lips, which Max knew was not even physically possible for the spirit to do, on top of Saliron’s horrible voice was just the creepy icing on the cake. Even though he was with his own spirits and Max was too old and too seasoned to be really afraid of anything, he didn't really like being in this dark room very much with Saliron smacking his lips.

"All right, here goes…anything," muttered Max. He touched a bead to the bone doorway that he'd prepared ahead of time, and just like back in the dungeon, a spatial ripple appeared. His list of inventory inside came up, but he really didn't need to interact with it. Lavinia already knew what she wanted and had sent a spirit through the doorway as soon as it had formed. Two seconds later, it looked like everything Max had wanted to extract was pulled out. He watched until the last item was through and then canceled the magic. Unlike last time he’d used the bone doorway though, this time the structure stayed mostly intact.

"Oh, that's handy," said Max. "Now I won't have to build a brand new doorway out of troll bones in order to use it again."

"No," rang out Saliron's voice. "It is not acceptable to disrespect the charming bones so. These bones must be put to rest and never used again. Well, put to rest after being tasted, of course. Tasted many, many times.”

Before Max's eyes, in the dim light of his candle, the bones truly began to disappear. It looked like dozens or maybe even hundreds of tiny unseen entities were taking bite after bite of the remaining bones.

"Is that really necessary?" asked Max.

"Of course," drawled Saliron.

"If that’s the case…then maybe it’s about sacrifice, or…exchange. It does actually sort of make sense if the bones are more of a conduit or an idea than a structure," said Max.

He didn't realize he'd actually spoken out loud until the spirit chuckled and replied, "You grow in wisdom, Max Cunningham."

Max rolled his eyes and grabbed the items he was taking out of the room. All the troll bones could stay against the wall in case he needed to make another gateway. Once he’d left he shut the door, he blew out his candle and went directly to his magic workroom. There, he laid out the two swords he brought from Earth and gave them a once-over. They would definitely be good for Gantry. Perhaps they wouldn't last as long as the weapons he was going to get his other friends, but Gantry was most likely destined to go farther than them anyway. He’d be able to get his own replacement weapons on his own.

The other items that Max had brought from the gateway, he set on a shelf in case he needed them later. Then he folded his arms and tapped his foot. "Lavinia," he said.

"Yes, that's my name, don't wear it out!”

“This isn't 1998, and we are not on Earth. You sound ridiculous.”

“Whatever, bruh. Cowabunga.”

Max sighed. "Lavinia, chill with the weird dad humor for a second. I have a question."

"Then I might have an answer. No promises though. Smokin’!"

Now it was obvious that she was being goofy on purpose, so Max ignored her. He said, "Okay, so Headmaster Mong Hao Han basically made it clear that he's been spying on me with his spirits. Do you think they can see me through the wards that you helped me set up around the dorm?"

Lavinia shook her head. "Probably not, because you specifically created them against eavesdropping and things of that nature. I also helped you close off some tricky loopholes that some Summoners might not know about."

"That’s right. You're really like an ex-hacker turned cybersecurity person, except with you it's the exact opposite order."

"Huh?" she asked.

"Oh, I guess you haven't gotten that far in my memories yet. Just wait till you hit some epic YouTube rabbit holes I went down when I was procrastinating in my senior year of college. Anyway, I want to try getting a message to the headmaster, so let's do a quick experiment, alright?"

He didn't wait for an answer and promptly went to the doorway of his dorm. Then he stepped outside. There was nothing out there by his security golems. Even so, he spoke out loud to the empty air. "I am just talking right now, not talking to any golems. Just talking. I need to talk to Headmaster Mong Hao Han because I need to leave the academy and go to the central area. I'm going to stay in the academy right now for most of the day, but I want to leave in the early afternoon so I can get back before most of the Quartet students usually go to the central area. This is an attempt at communication. I'm trying to be a team player and avoid problems."

Then he gave a sly grin again to the empty air and went back into his dorm.

"Well, that's one way to do it," said Lavinia.

"Yep, now let's see if I get a message back."