Sleeping in a bed was very comfortable. I was disturbed all night by various noises, but I would get used to that. I slept in wagons on the trip here. Ardisia planted herself above the door, and the Kai’s curled up with me. I think they liked the bed as well.

“How do you level your skills without monsters?” I asked in the morning.

“Very slowly,” Val said. “The Mirage chambers give some experience, just not as much as with monsters. The skills you use in life will level, like the movement skills I used on the obstacle course, and most of my skills at least get some exercise in the mirage chamber.”

I looked at my skills, and most of them would work in life and the mirage chamber. I was most worried about my Reaping Magic Skills that wouldn't. Everything would level so slowly.

“The theory is to consolidate your skills this semester in the Mirage chamber and start levelling next semester in the Astral Space. We will be fighting Bronze-level monsters, so we will level quickly then.” Val said.

“The crafting students are levelling now by using monster cores, but we will catch up quickly,” Akemi said.

I nodded. I guess it made sense that everyone was as prepared as they could be to fight bronze-level monsters while only iron.

Aura Control was first up this morning, and that was challenging. My basic aura was strong thanks to Farrah and her training, but there is so, so, much more to auras. We practised our auras against each other, trying to suppress the other person’s aura and vice versa. At least my Aura skill was going to level. This was still the basics. I was about the middle of the pack with my aura, but she gave us stealth experts extra exercises to practise. Our stealth is busted the minute someone detects our aura. We need good detection with our aura as well, as some monsters can hide their aura, and when we go into the astral space, we will be against monsters with bronze-strength auras. This will be a lot of work, but I was looking forward to it as I could see a purpose to it.

I couldn’t see a purpose in most of the magic theory we were taught in Intro to Magic. I knew summoning rituals - sort of. But this? What was it used for? Akemi got it. This was her area. I really struggled. How is that design the basis for creating protection wards? It looks nothing like the protection wards. This was going to be hard.

I enjoyed the Understanding Familiars class. The first session was basically a meet-and-greet with snacks and drinks. There were no lectures and no readings this week. We just walked around the room, introducing ourselves and our familiars. This was only the first year class, so there were nine of us with familiars. To meet the rest of the familiars at the academy, we were encouraged to join the Bonds and Familiars club.

There were two with bonds to actual creatures. One was a baby Griffon with a lion body and eagle head and wings. Jasmine, the elf half of the bond, also had wings, and they flew together. The other bond was a young Shadow Panther. Scott the Human half was a full stealth assassin with Dark, Poison and Cat giving the Predatory confluence. He was dressed for the part all in black as well. I was surprised he told us about his essences. He seemed to be boasting a bit. I would have kept quiet. With Scott telling us all this and dressing like a creepy assassin, he seemed to subvert his role, in my opinion. Assassins are supposed to go unseen and strike unexpectedly. He was announcing what he was. I didn’t say what my essences were.

Of the remaining seven of us, only one other person had two familiars. Kai was the only rat familiar, and he kept well away from the shadow panther. The Panther probably only wanted to play, but both it and Scott were young, and mistakes could happen. I wasn’t even risking it a little.

Kai may have been the only rat, but Ardisia was not the only plant familiar. There was a young walking tree. That came from the wood essence and was absorbed into Rodion’s bones.

One girl had what looked like an angel with healing powers. Kai eats things, Ardisia pokes holes in things, and this girl has an angel who heals. When I heard what materials it took to summon it, I knew I would never be able to afford it. The girl and her angel came across as a bit stuck up and looked down on me and my Kai. I just imagined Ardisia with her vines wrapped around those golden wings and Kai feasting. It wouldn’t take much.

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Except for the angel girl, everybody was friendly. In the case of Scott and the Shadow Panther, he was a bit too friendly, but Ardisia bopped a thorn on the panther's nose, and he backed off.

We settled down into a routine: fitness first, then various other classes. In my spare classes and evenings, I worked on homework and my armour.

Solid armour is difficult. I made bracers for each arm, with leather straps to hold them in place and greaves for my shins, but it is surprising how much movement the rest of your body does. I found the best way to test my armour was to wear the pieces through the obstacle course. That soon highlighted where it rubbed, where the straps caught, or where it wasn’t flexible enough.

I was saving up my allowance for another awakening stone, but I had to spend some coin on the companion skill book “Introduction to Flexible Armour Crafting.” Solid pieces were not working for me except for my bracers and greaves.

There are many types of flexible armour, but in the end, I settled on a chain mail type. The links in the chain were made from resin and I made them large enough to allow my fur to poke through. My fur was resistant to cutting and piercing, and the linked resin was there to help against blunt force. My fur showing through also makes my Blend skill work better, and Ardisia could poke her thorns out. The links were weaker to heat and flame, but I couldn’t have everything. At least they were easily repairable for me.

I made a chest piece and trousers from it, extending down to my elbows and knees. The difficult thing about flexible armour like this was not letting it flap around and catch on things. At least the resin didn’t clink and clang against stuff like metal, but it would catch if it was not firm against my skin. My belts and pouches helped, and in a couple of key areas, I would melt the chains together on my legs and arms to get them tight. I decided the leggings would need to go under my shorts, so I made a small hard codpiece to protect my vulnerable man bits. No, not small. Medium-sized. I was not large anywhere. Not for a Leonid, maybe in comparison to a human or elf, I was large.

This actually took me months to make and test various iterations. We were coming up to our first monster hunt in the mirage chamber, which was pushing me to finish.

A helmet was the other difficult piece. Male Leonids and a sizeable mane, which was good but made helmets difficult at all times. The purpose of the chain links was to spread the impact of blunt force, so it was lessened in any one place. Nothing short of a solid plate would be resistant, but this didn’t seem to work so well on my head. I had no solution when the first mirage chamber exercise arrived.

What I did work on was how to access my Hunters Pack more easily. I created a wooden cover for a belt buckle, and I could access small items that fit through it, like coins and small snacks. I created a larger wooden pendant that went under my resin chain so I could retrieve larger items. It was not large enough to get my axe through, but I could get my spear and the javelins I created. It looked really weird with me pulling a spear out of my chest, but I was planning to always do it in private and not to show off my abilities, unlike a certain assassin wannabe. For anything larger, I needed to use a shield or something, and that was fine.

The routine was nice. The work was a lot, but I really only found Intro to Magic hard. I should scrape through with a pass, just. The credit for that would be becuse of Akemi’s help. I didn’t really understand a lot of the theory, but I could memorise ritual diagrams. This diagram created a ward that would set off a noise if triggered. Great, I could do that. Akemi’s knowledge of the underlying theory allowed her to disable the ward without triggering it in several different ways. Ok, it was a simple ward, but that showed me that I should never rely on magic wards. They might work against beasts, but they would never be the only defence.

I met weekly with Healer Remore, and that was going well. I was feeling better about things. She wasn’t above giving me homework to do on top of everything else. Her homework was more on getting me to interact with other people and not be such a loner. It was her homework that pushed me to join the Bonds and Familiars Club. I stayed away from the panther and angel girl, but some of the upper-year students were nice enough.

What pleased me was that the club had negotiated some Mirage Chamber time for their members. There was an hour scheduled each week for up to twelve at a time. The weeks were listed with different environments. I stayed away from the ocean, cliffs, and volcano environments, but I could go to most others if there were space. The desert environment was not pleasant, and I didn’t stay long. There was a sign-up list, and the first twelve names got the slot. With only about forty people in the club, there was a good chance of getting a place.

I questioned why they had a volcano environment when there were only three fire-based familiars, but the flyers liked the updrafts and turbulent air of the volcano environment, and the earth and rock familiars found it a nice challenge. They generally didn’t have monsters in these spaces; it was just somewhere to go and let loose with your familiars. They would include normal animals so the familiars that liked hunting could practice. I imagine there are not many places in the city where a firebear could let loose.

I found it a good place to practice my stealth and scouting with Kai. We practised the traps on normal animals, and Ardisia dropped on them from above when they were caught in my Hunter's Tether. It wasn’t challenging, but it was good practice.