Holding out the half-sphere relic, I imbued a small amount of aether into it. The relic flared to life, burning with a quicksilver glow that coalesced around the zone's exit portal. The opaque field of energy rippled and became clear as glass. It was like looking through a window into my rooms at Central Academy.
I gestured for Caera to go first.
"I'd call you a gentleman but I know you're using me as a test rodent for your new toy," she said with a smirk before disappearing through the portal, immediately becoming visible again on the other side.
Walking through it was as seamless as going through a door. There was no discomfort or sense of vertigo, as people sometimes felt when using the teleportation gates around Dicathen. It felt strange to move so smoothly from the Relictombs into my clean, mostly empty rooms at the academy.
Caera was standing in the middle of the room, her scarlet eyes tracking my every movement as I bent down to deactivate the ascension portal. When both of the pieces were pressed together, they made a faint click and reconnected, forming a perfect sphere. I stored the Compass in my dimension rune.
"I'm sorry it didn't work, Grey," she said finally, her gaze softening.
"It's fine," I grunted. "It will, eventually."
Caera gave me a tight-lipped smile and waved a hand across her body, which was covered with spatters of dried blood and black gore. "Anyway, I better go get cleaned up." She glanced out the window, where light was already creeping across the campus. "Looks like we were in there for most of the night. Class is soon."
"You should probably clean up here," I pointed out, gesturing toward the bathroom connected to my bedroom. "It might raise a few eyebrows if anyone sees you roaming the building covered in blood."
Caera looked at the ceiling as if charting a path from my room to hers. "Good point."
After handing her a fresh towel, I sat down at the Sovereigns Quarrel board and mindlessly prodded the pieces.
'Maybe it didn't work because Sylvie is an asura and we were in the Relictombs?' Regis asked, picking up on my own half-formed thoughts.
No, I thought. It felt the same as before, just after I'd formed the aether core. Except now, instead of putting buckets of water into a lake, I'm dumping lakes into an ocean.
With my aetheric reserves having grown ten-fold by fortifying my core with a second layer of binding aether, I had thought for sure I could break the second seal within Sylvie's stone. I was wrong. Instead, I had watched as all the power I had gathered—both from the Relictombs itself and the seed of Three Steps' dried-fruit toy—disappeared into the vast depths of the runic framework, draining away like sand through a sieve.
But you're right, I continued, closing my eyes and letting myself sink into the soft mattress. We shouldn't try it in the Relictombs again. We don't know what'll happen if a full-blooded asura emerges from inside.
Caera appeared from the bathing room a few minutes later, scoured clean of the grime and clad in fresh clothing. "It just occurred to me while I was in your shower that my leaving your room in the early hours of the morning, freshly bathed, might start just as many rumors as if I were covered in blood," she said matter-of-factly.
"Less damaging rumors," I said.
She frowned down at me, one brow raised. "For you, perhaps. But then, you are not a highblood lady with a reputation to maintain."
I tilted my head, holding her gaze. "Do you want me to open the portal so you can cover yourself in blood again?"
Caera deflated and wearily waved my words away. "Have a good day in class, Grey."
When she was gone, Regis's voice filled my head. 'It's impressive, you know?'
What? I asked, sensing some trap in his words.
'How you can be so good and so bad with women at the same time.'
It was obvious how much the mood within the Melee Enhancement Tactics class had changed as I walked down the steep stairs of the room.
After it was established that they would be competing at the Victoriad—in front of retainers, Scythes, and Sovereigns—students began to arrive early, even those who had mocked the idea of learning to fight without magic only a few days ago were eagerly waiting with their peers.
Enola and her subservient friend, Laurel of Named Blood Redcliff—Professor Abby's niece, I found out—had taken up most of the training platform, while the rest had paired up with one another and were spread throughout the classroom, sparring awkwardly.
'What…are they doing?' Regis asked, disturbed and unsettled.
My brows furrowed in confusion as I watched the students.
These were mostly highbloods from powerful houses—including several from Vechor, where young men and women were trained to be soldiers from the moment they could walk—but only a couple of them seemed to have any idea of what they were doing.
Their punches and kicks were lacking, like they were play fighting with a toddler. Of the entire class, only Valen, Enola, and Marcus of Highblood Arkwright looked like they were actually sparring.
I let out a scoff in realization. "They're not using mana."
Alacryans awakened as mages earlier than Dicathians, so it made sense that the majority of their training before attending Central Academy relied on mana to fuel their movements and attacks, rather than muscles and technique.
"Professor Grey!"
I turned my gaze to see Mayla scurrying up the stairs toward me, brows lined with sweat.
"You'll be teaching today, right? Seth has been showing me some of the exercises he read about in a book to help us warm up for your lesson!"
A smile formed on the corner of my lips.. "Of course."
Chapter end
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