Sharp

At the start of the semester, I had to change my courses. Because I was now a member of the Adventure Society, I was able to take the Adventuring Course. This was mainly full of third-years. It was a double course, and a whole day was dedicated to it. We were organised into groups, with a silver rank overseer, and we took Adventure Society Contracts. Iron-rank contracts here were always for groups and required a silver-rank overseer due to the high magic density of the area. The Academy took care of this for us and gave us an opportunity we did not normally have.

The other course I felt was compulsory for me was Astral Spaces. This course introduces us to the theory behind astral spaces, as well as weekly excursions into the Academy’s Astral Space and occasional excursions to other Astral Spaces.

There were so many course options in year two and higher. We had no compulsory courses any more. However, this meant I only had four other courses to choose from, so I had to drop some I wanted, like the Introduction to the Gods. What I did take was Hiding Techniques, Hunting and Trapping, Introduction to Alchemy, and Armouring 1.

I had to push Weapon Crafting and Maintenance and Melee Fighting into the next Semester. I also had no space for Arena Fighting, much to Val’s disappointment.

My low marks in Introduction to Magic meant I could not get into the Weapon Enchanting and Armour Enchanting courses. Armouring 1 should be enough to give me the knowledge to improve my armour.

I chose Into to Alchemy as my ability to grow ingredients was expanding by leaps and bounds. It would also let me take The Poisoners Art next Semester, assuming I didn’t fail it.

Val tried to convince me I didn’t need Hiding or Hunting and Trapping as I could already do that. She wanted me in Arena Fighting. I knew I had much more to learn about hiding as it was as much an Aura Technique, as a physical ability.

Hunting and Trapping was the opposite as it included tracking and baits as well as countering various hiding techniques, including aura techniques. I was also looking forward to more creative traps.

Semester three brought a change in accommodations. Second Years and up had individual rooms, which were larger to accommodate the courses requiring more equipment space. We had shared lounges and kitchens, although most still ate in the food court. We would stay in these rooms until we graduate at the end of the third year. Previous roommates were placed close to each other, so I had Val on one side and Akemi across the hall. Saskia was next to Akemi, and Nassor was on Val's other side. Melor was next to me at the end of the block. Nassor was the loud one, so I am glad Val was between us.

Everybody was taking Astral Spaces except Akemi, and I shared Armouing 1 and Introduction to Alchemy with Melor. The only courses I shared with Val were Adventuring and Astral Spaces. I had no common courses with Akemi as she was highly focused on the magic classes and specialist Water classes. Nassor was taking Arena Fighting with Val, and it surprised me that Saskia was as well.

I was broke, and now I needed coins. Alchemy is expensive. The alchemy lab is open to us at any time, but we only get enough ingredients for two attempts at each potion. Two attempts are not enough. We are also encouraged to get our own equipment. Just because the lab is open to us at any time, there were a lot of students doing a variety of courses who needed to use it.

There was also a lot of competition for the Alchemy texts in the library, and there were only three copies.

“I have a copy of the main text if you want to share it,” Melor said.

“Thanks, that will be very helpful,” I replied. “What are you hoping to learn from alchemy?” I asked.

“Alchemy is essential for tailors. We soak the cloth in various solutions to change the properties and make it more receptive to enchanting. If you are going down the route of potions in alchemy, this is the only course we will have together, as I am going the industrial route. My father has a specialist alchemist who treats all his thread to strengthen it. Once I finish here, I hope to apprentice with him for a couple of years so we can do everything in-house.”

“Won’t that lose him a large hunk of his business?”

“Nah, He suggested it as he wants to retire and has no one to take over. It will open up a lot of business for us.”

Alchemy is a lot more complicated than I thought. It is not just mixing the right ingredients, and then you have a potion. No, that is Herbalism. Alchemy is about extracting and concentrating the magic in each ingredient and getting the right quintessence added to regulate and stabilise the magic. Sometimes, that requires heat as a catalyst, sometimes cold, void, or any myriad of a thousand things.

Complicated formulas, like the Crystal Wash, are incredibly delicate to make. The crystal quintessence is not cheap if you stuff it up, let alone the pure quintessence. Those are only two of the thirty ingredients. I am trying to use two ingredients and one quintessence to dye a piece of cloth blue—unsuccessfully, I might add. We may get good enough to create a generic minor health potion at the end of the course. Maybe. We will likely only make the cream to smear on minor cuts. Making a successful Healing Ungent Cream is the minimum pass requirement.

The Armourer Course is interesting. We are delving into the different types of armour, what it is strong against, and its weaknesses. You not only had the traditional weapons to look at how they interacted with the armour of the day, but you also had a myriad of skills to consider. Insulation underlays under metal armour can help resist flame and lighting attacks but could become brittle and useless when frozen. Then, we must consider how the armour interacts with the wearer's defensive skills and, like me, camouflage skills.

Some armour will increase mana use when worn while using some movement and teleport skills. Teleports are tricky about interacting with the magic on armour, and the essence the skill comes from can give a clue as to how it might react.

Armour that comes from a Skill also has strengths and weaknesses, which the right undergarments can help mitigate. I can see why Melor is doing this course with me.

We alternate the theory with practical armour design, and in some cases, we make pieces. The Professor has lots of sample armour for us to examine: cloth, wood, leather, carapace, crystal, steel, dragon scales, and everything else in between. Just the variety of different leathers is mind-boggling, let alone the different metals.

It is going to take me a fair bit to get my head around, but I think I am on the right track with my Resin armour. Because it is from one of my essences, it should not conflict with my other skills, especially my movement skills. Hunters Step will supposedly add a teleport at Silver, which could be a problem with external armour, which is modified to work with my Blend Skill. I just have to find the right design as Ardisia and her thorns and later her vine tentacles are classed as one of my defensive skills.

I already made some simple alterations to my bracers and greaves that I should have thought about before this. I glued strips of Braided cutting web to the outside of them so I could use them as weapons. They are thin, and Blend is Level 5 now and can deal with it. When I block an attack with my bracers or kick something with my greaves, there is now cutting damage as well, especially as my Sharpen Skill will enhance it, and it will accumulate Reapers Blessings. It will be particularly good against grappling attacks like my Hunters Tether.

We are making a single metal greave at a forge at the moment. Later, we will have the opportunity to make something for ourselves. I sold the Hog hide, but it would have made some really tough belts for me to wear. I need to find something similar at iron rank and at bronze for later.

Once this course is over, we can specialise in different materials in later courses. I probably won’t go beyond this course, although the Wooden Armour and Weapons looks like a useful course.

I was right that the Hiding course has a very strong emphasis on Aura manipulation. This is not just retracting your aura, as that could just leave an empty spot for those who are hunting you. You need to try to blend your aura to match the ambient magic around you. This will be almost impossible for us to do while at Iron Rank, but once we rank up to bronze and beyond, we will really notice the difference. This course is really laying the foundation for the future. Our class time involves a lot of hide-and-seek games. It is fun, if a little frustrating, as I don’t have the control over my aura that I need yet. I am a good hunter with my enhanced senses, and I can help my classmates fill the holes in their stealth skills. Later in the semester we are heading into the Astral space to hide from the bronze-rank monsters.

Hunting and Trapping is good, but it is also a little frustrating. The hunting part overlaps with the Hiding course, but we also focus on using all our senses to hunt and track, whether the senses are enhanced or not. I have a big advantage over my classmates with three enhanced senses.

The frustrating part is the trapping. All my classmates who came for the trapping only wanted to know how to use their trap skills the best. They have skills like my Hunter Tether, and that is as far as their thinking goes. None of them thought about how to make traps without using pre-defined skills.

When I described the pit trap we dug for the Ratlings, they stared at me, stunned. The professor was delighted and wanted me to recreate the net traps we used on the tree panthers. I got the feeling that this was a battle the professor fought every semester, and now he had someone with recent experience and new examples to use. That was all well and good, but I didn’t learn much. I was essentially teaching, not learning.

The two traps identified two types of traps: those triggered by the creature trapped and those manually triggered by the hunter. The second tree panther was also technically a manually triggered trap, but it involved skills and familiars rather than items. We baited it in using the first panther. I could have had nets set up there as well, but we didn’t know which direction the second panther would come from, so using people's flexibility and Smokey was the better option.

The professor also had some good hints for me, like if I had poisoned the cutting webs in the net, the poison would have seeped through the cuts the web made and enhanced the damage, or I could have used a type of poison to slow the fast panther. I had the bronze-rank rot poison at the time as well, but I never thought of it.

I hope we will get to some different traps later in the semester.

The remaining two courses were Astral Spaces and Adventuring.