With the morning school bell sounding Alexis arrives in her classroom to find Jim waving her over.
"Hey I saw Mr. Henry talking to what looked like one of the recruiters from Tallitopia college last night at the café" whispering so only she can hear, he nods enthusiastically.
"What!" Gasping, Alexis can't believe it. "Seems like this years finals could be pretty important, did you hear what they were talking about?"
"Sadly not" He shakes his head. "But either way it seems that impressing Mr. Henry is a safe bet towards getting in." Jim says while nodding.
Thumping Jim twice on the shoulder with her fist, Alexis sits down at her seat, with new thoughts racing through her mind.
The class bell rings, waking Alexis out of her train of thought, Mr. Henry stands up and points at the projector board. "If you look class, the first three days of this week will be devoted to your pre-finals for math, science, history, and writing. While the last two days will all be magical theory, for half the day you'll be doing your pre-finals, and then after lunch you will have study for the rest of the day" Mr. Henry says while Pointing to the board, where a schedule is shown from the projector.
"The math pre-finals will start in 30mins, better use the bathroom, and study what you can now" The teacher announces.
While eating lunch, Jim comes over and asks how the test went.
"The question about how to calculate the rune if three mages using a fire elements tier I ring with three different grades combined into one stumped me for a bit, but then I realized I could just make a scrolling limiter with 3 input points on the rune to control the power sources from different tiers." she explains.
"Oh I didn't even answer that one, sounds like you probably aced it then huh?"
Jim shows a thumbs up, and starts to eat.
Arriving at the green house after finishing her lunch.
'I wonder how much my Blood Tulip has grown, the book I read before said after the Blood Tulip fully flowers, the bulbous portion will contain many healing properties that promote healthy lungs, if it seems effective, I can then use that healthy tulip to help germinate more sprouts with these two other tulip sprouts. Then dad will have a steady supply, and heal up in no time.'
'Hopefully dad can get better soon, so when I go to college I know they'll be fine without me.'
Carefully spraying the bulbous part of the blood tulip with her special spray. 'That should be all that I have left to do here today, guess I'll just go sign out then. Let's see, I've already told the job center I wouldn't be looking for work during pre-finals and finals. So I'll just go home and train more.'
Alexis makes her way to Mr. Henry.
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Arriving in the class room, Alexis can see Mr. Henry sitting down at his desk writing.
"Hey Mr. Henry, I'm going to sign out early to study at home."
"OH, Hey there Alexis, sure just sign out at the front office, and don't forget tomorrow will be the science pre-finals. I remember you've been interested in runes, science, and math are very important in rune study. See you tomorrow."
"Thanks Mr. Henry, see ya."
Arriving home, Alexis heads straight up the stairs to open her window. Sitting down in a meditative position, she starts drawing in the wind elements. Continuing to train long into the night.
Continuing this trend for the next couple days, Alexis finishes her pre-finals on all but the last magical theory class. Which is on the agenda for today.
"Eaahh" Alexis stretches out loud as she gets up from a bed.
'Just two more days of pre-finals, I wonder if that recruiter Jim saw is interested in the pre-finals, or the finals, I havent' seen anyone new around lately.'
Heading out the door after getting ready for school, Alexis waves good bye to her parents.
Arriving at class, Alexis takes her seat.
Taking a look around, Alexis sees that many new posters with different magics hung up around the room. One poster has different sized fireballs listed with an estimated amount of the elements needed to form said fireball. Another has different ring tiers, comparing the flow of elements within as well as an estimation of how many elements are needed to make them.
As Alexis is taking a look around at all the posters, Mr. Henry walks in.
"Attention class." Mr. Henry shouts after walking in to gather everyone in the class rooms attention.
"Today will be a little different than the last few days of pre-finals that you've had, the tests will be all day long, as such we will also be starting a little later, specifically an hour later, in this time we will all be studying together."
"So to start off with, I'm sure you've all noticed by now, the new posters hung up around the room, let's start off with the one to your right that shows all the different elemental rings. As I'm sure everyone is familiar with higher tier rings have higher elemental capacity, but as shown on the poster, sometimes the flow of elements will be very large, but that usually means the control of the elements will have more of a burst output, and on other rings, you'll notice many smaller flow points to allow more control on the output, now who can tell me the point of these two different flow outputs?"
Seeing Alexis's hand in the air, Mr. Henry points towards Alexis and says "Go ahead Alexis".
"When your casting a spell that needs a lot of elements but isn't very complicated, a larger flow ring is more ideal as you can usually cast it faster than someone with multiple small flows on their ring, but if you ever need precise flow control, a large flow ring could find it impossible to cast such a spell unless augmented with flow control rune equipment." Alexis explains.
"Yes exactly, and you bring up another good subject, rune equipment, not only can such equipment help control flow, but can even be used to store extra elements with the right materials, and much more. Many new things are still being discovered even now with rune equipment, but such things are for detailed study with professors outside of regular school curricular, for now everyone should just focus on the basics of magic theory and worry about external factors after you've perfected your current studies."
Confidently leaving school having finished her first day of magic theory pre-finals, Alexis arrives home to find her parents celebrating.
"Huh? You two seem pretty psyched up, what happened?" She asks as she takes off her shoes.
"Hey sweetie, your dad scored a big one this time." Her mother answers
"Yep, I was helping an old man today who had got knocked down from a few kids riding by on their flowboards. But ends up his son is the owner of that local market a few blocks away and they decided they could use some insurance."
"That's great Dad."
After celebrating a little with her family, but not joining them in any wine tasting, Alexis says "I still need to study a bit more before the last day of pre-finals tomorrow, love ya mom n dad". Hugging her parents, Alexis makes her way back upstairs to study.