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"You seem excited," Karna commented while looking at Miralen restlessly moving around and sometimes standing on her tiptoes to take a look around.

“Didn’t you hear? They said the Grand Medjai’s personal disciple is going to be taking charge of handing out the resources!” The elf girl replied with a conspiratorial whisper that was actually quite easy for anyone paying attention to them to hear. They were currently standing in one of the large training centers with several other classes, waiting to receive the first cultivation resources sponsored by the Academy. “I’m such a big fan of her! Despite being a canine beastwoman, she is one of the youngest female mages to have reached such a high rank, and she even got accepted as a disciple by the most powerful mage in the entire Magocracy!” She gushed.

“Yeah, imagine the honor.” Rein said with a teasing voice while looking at Karna.

Karna just rolled her eyes at Rein’s teasing. She was actually rather surprised the rumors of her identity had not spread wider. Many of the teachers knew of course, but surprisingly few students did, and the word had not spread all that much. That probably wouldn’t last much longer. “They?” Karna asked instead.

“Well, you know, rumors.” Miralen gestured vaguely around them.

“You should really know better than to believe rumors.” Karna pointed out. Miralen was rather social and got along well with most of their classmates.

“Yeah, what reason would such an esteemed person have to come here?” Rein kept teasing.

“You don’t know that!” Miralen snipped back a little miffed at being denied. “She’s a guest lecturer here, and strictly speaking she’s also still a student!” She was clearly holding onto feeble hopes and didn’t like Rein taking those hopes away from her.

"I'm not sure about the disciple, but I would be interested in meeting the Grand Medjai himself," Shaheera interjected, noticing her distress. "Not that we are likely to be that lucky of course. Still, the rumors are that he’s the only one that has enough talent to rival Ashanti Goldmane.” He took a sideways look at Karna. “Well, so far at least.”

Their little discussion was cut short as the doors to the training hall were opened and several teachers and older students walked in. Karna of course recognized Duskclaw among them, and could hear a small “Squee!” behind her. “Order!” Duskclaw commanded, clearly leading the group. Arjuna had once mentioned that disciples could have a position even higher than many teachers depending on their master and skill level, and it seemed that held true in this case. “Gather around and form orderly groups according to your class.”

The students were rather practiced at such things, and they quite quickly formed lines made up of their classes. This was something that had been drilled into them already. The order within the line was determined by their ranking, but the order of the lines was based on the first-come-first-served-principle. Naturally, the Class I-1 was given wide berth as the other classes knew they could easily get trounced by the highest-ranked class. They still hadn't moved to lessons or tests that pitted classes against each other, but those were coming and the individual sparring during shared lessons had made the gap between them quite obvious.

“Today you’ll be receiving the first set of cultivation resources from the Academy.” Duskclaw started off repeating what everyone was expecting. "You have so far proven yourselves capable enough that you are worth investing in. The further along in your studies you go, the more that holds true, and the more the Academy will invest in you. The first three months have helped weed the unworthy among you, and after your end of term tests in a couple of months, you will finally start seeing a proper investment in your future. Consider today a small taste of what's to come. Of course, you could use your contribution points to purchase even more resources, but most of you don't actually have enough points to waste."

Karna knew that many of the resources that would be handed out in events like these were created by the older students for practice. She’d even created a few things like that herself during her alchemy practical lessons. The really good resources made by advanced student Artificers, disciples, and teachers would be reserved for students of the later years. They were still just first years so the resources they would get would be quite basic. That didn’t mean they were not useful though. In fact, these kinds of resources were one of the main reasons some people applied to the Academy, as many of them were hard to get a hold of. The services of skilled alchemists were rather expensive outside the Academy after all.

“The amount and type of resources you receive depends on your ranking like everything in the Academy. If you have complaints about the difference in what you get, then get better. I won’t bother listening to any whining, especially when it comes to free resources. Now, the teachers and advanced students here will all be taking a single class and leading you somewhere a bit more private so we can distribute the goodies, and we’ll also be advising you in their most efficient use. All of us will have a card like this and you’ll follow the person with the card for your class.” Duskclaw displayed a small board with I-1 written on it. “Get to it! Class I-1 follow me!” She commanded.

She led them out of the training facility and towards a nearby park area with benches scattered around for relaxation among some nature and fountains. "Take a seat as this might take a bit of time. I'll have to advise most of you on what to do with your haul. Take a look first and then I'll explain." Her professionalism was cracking just a bit as she smiled at Karna. At the same time, she waved a hand and thirty small bags appeared and floated to their new owners.

Karna didn’t even bother opening hers. She felt that there were several small objects in her bag and that was enough. “Not curious?” Duskclaw asked with a more restrained voice.

"I can check it out later," Karna replied simply, her own smile hidden by the veil. She was more interested in spending a bit of time with Duskclaw, as she hadn't had all that much time to return to Arjuna's tower during these months. The agreement had been for her to come back every few weeks, but the rush of the first months had cut down on those visits.

"I suppose you wouldn't be too tempted," Duskclaw remembered that Karna had used no external resources before joining the Academy. Partially that was because Arjuna wasn't really a supporter of such things, as relying on pills or other resources might come back to haunt you later. Additionally, Karna herself had given off the impression of someone obsessed with their foundation. “Alright, everyone clear on what you got? Good. To some of you, those resources don't seem all that special, I know." She looked at the blond-haired human girl called Callista especially. “However, keep in mind what I said earlier. These are just the taste of what’s to come and you got a lot more than any of the other classes.”

“I recognize the spirit stones, but the others are new.” Rein commented. Miralen smacked him on the back of his head and whispered loudly. “Be respectful!”

“We should still start with those. Spirit stones still have an important use. As most of you know, or you wouldn’t be in this class, spirit stones are just dense concentrations of power. Spiritual Power is all around us in nature, and it is that which we all gather during cultivation to grow stronger. Warriors turn it into Ki and mages into mana. Spirit stones are simply a highly concentrated form of that power. You could use the stones for cultivation but it would be quite wasteful. They are much better used to give you a burst of power when in a protracted battle. However, in the Academy as in many other places, they have a more important use. They are used to power magical formations. The Academy has access to several beneficial formations that are quite helpful for your training, but they all require spirit stones to power. You’re going to have to fork those stones out yourselves if you want to use the formations. At first the formations you have access to are fairly basic, but the further along in your studies you get, the more powerful formations will become available to you. Even the more basic formations can be really beneficial if utilized correctly. Your teachers will guide you to the formations you have access to tomorrow. You'll have to reserve times to use them, and the higher-ranked people have priority. Just another benefit to working hard.” Duskclaw lectured.

Karna knew that spirit stones were a very ubiquitous resource found in most universes. They were extremely useful, which made sure they remained a constant resource and even currency in many places. In addition to formations, many magical items also consumed them, and even the magical street lights were powered by them in many places. She wasn’t exactly shocked to find them to be one of the resources handed out. She’d amassed a decent amount of them even before entering the Academy thanks to winning some bets. Most of the winnings had been in cold hard cash, but some were paid in spirit stones.

"All of you will also find purification pills in your bags. Those pills will help reduce the impurities that have gathered in your bodies. You will also find certain pills that will aid you in your cultivation. Warriors will find Tiger Pills, which will help improve your training for your physique, while mages will find Clarity Pills, which will increase the amount of power you can absorb while cultivating for a short time. A few of you will also find certain surprises in your bag, which I will leave for you to discover. That will be your homework. You will have to find the nature of the pills and the optimal way to consume them by yourselves. Now scoot! Go enjoy!" After instructing the students in the best ways to consume the various pills, Duskclaw waved them away and most students scattered. She still remained available in case the students had questions.

Karna and a handful of others stuck around. Karna because she wanted to talk to Duskclaw, while the others mostly stuck around to see what was going on. “It’s been some time, mother.” Karna greeted her as most of the people had left.

“Mother?!” Miralen squeaked with a scandalized voice.

"I really wish you'd call me aunty or big sister Karna. You know that." Duskclaw rehashed the old argument, but with a wide smile on her face. Karna noted that Duskclaw was much more expressive when not in Arjuna's company. "You should really return home a bit more often. Arjuna is getting cranky without you around."

“Hey, you two work at the Academy! It’s not like you can’t visit me.” Karna protested. Even if her smile was hidden by the veil, her eyes were clearly smiling.

"A fair point, but you know how stubborn your father can be. In his mind, it's your job to visit the tower and him. Please don’t make this into some kind of twisted battle of wills. It’ll just make both of you miserable.” Duskclaw lectured with a warning tone.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. I’m not an idiot. I’ve just been a bit busy. You know how it is. These are some of my friends by the way.” Karna waved towards the three that were part of her usual group. A few other students were also sticking around like Callista, but they stayed a bit further away.

“Aunty Duskclaw. It’s been a few months.” Rein nodded a greeting with a grin.

Duskclaw's eyes narrowed. "You haven't been teasing little Karna, have you? And no making passes at her either! I certainly haven’t approved you making any moves on her.”

“Mom, I’m eleven.” Karna pointed out with resignation, having turned eleven after the semester started. Rumors were bound to be created. She could already imagine them. The rumors usually only had tangential relations with what had actually happened, so if she was a betting woman, and she was, she’d bet on something along the lines of there being rumors about an arranged marriage between her and Rein in a few days. There would always be rumors about her since she was the number one student of her year, so one more didn’t matter.

“I have not!” Rein protested at the same time, noticing the talk took a weird turn.

“Relax, I’m only teasing you. I know Karna would just kick your ass if you tried anything.” Duskclaw waved his concern away.

“Buh-wuh-buh-you know each other as well?!” Miralen finally managed to ask in a shrill voice.

“Yeah. She’s my…well, I suppose step-mom would be relatively accurate?” Karna asked while looking for help from Duskclaw.

“Eh, close enough.” The beastwoman in turn waved the subject away.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME!?” Miralen screamed and shook Karna while holding her shoulders.

“I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it. Besides, it’s easier to show anyway.” Karna retorted while batting the elf girl’s hands away.

“What’s this?” Duskclaw questioned with amusement and exasperation rising inside her. She had met quite a few people with strong opinions about her. Those could be both positive and negative. She wasn’t quite sure if it was a good or bad thing that one of Karna’s new friends was one of those people, even if she seemed to be in the positive camp.

"Apparently she's a fan. It seems some people aren't aware of how much of a doofus Arjuna is, and by extension, they think some overinflated things about you as well." Karna teased a bit.

“KARNA!” Miralen protested with an outraged expression. She was also furiously blushing at the same time, apparently having trouble deciding between being angry at Karna’s words and being bashful at finally meeting her idol in such a weird way.

“Ah yes, it’s such a burden to be as awesome as I am.” Duskclaw struck a heroic pose with her chest thrust forward and her hands placed at her waist.

“Aaaanyway, this is Miralen. She’s number three in our class and a part of our group. Also apparently an honorary member of the Duskclaw Fanclub. This on the other hand is Shaheera, number two in our class, and also part of our group. He’s from the Aegean Empire in case that was not obvious.” Karna made the introductions.

“Lady Duskclaw. It’s a pleasure. I’m Shaheera Goldmane.” The Leonin made a small bow and noted the obvious question coming. “No relations to that other Goldmane.”

“That would’ve been a little weird.” Duskclaw’s relief was obvious on her face. “As Arjuna and Ashanti are the two most obvious geniuses to rise in recent history and also both graduates of the Academy, they’re often pitted against each other as rivals, whether they agree or not. It could’ve been a bit awkward if you were his son or something, getting friendly with Karna of all people.”

“Yes, that could’ve been a little inconvenient, although I wasn’t fully aware of her parentage until now. I heard some whispers but I thought they were exaggerated. That said, we do have a relative of Ashanti in our class. Luckily for everyone involved, he seems to hate Karna.” Shaheera once again had that curious look on his face. “Tell me, have the two actually ever met? I’ve always wondered but I haven’t heard anything concrete.”

As The Magocracy and the Aegean Empire were separated by such a large distance, they rarely had reason to come into contact. “I can’t say for sure but I suspect Arjuna may have taught him at some point as he is a couple decades older and was already giving guest lectures at the time Ashanti would’ve studied here. That said, I’m not sure if Ashanti even took courses that he taught, not to mention being assigned to Arjuna’s class. They likely ran into each other at some point though.” Duskclaw speculated.

"Interesting," Shaheera muttered while losing himself in his own thoughts. That was a habit and a potential weakness the Leonid boy had that Karna had noted. He was prone to lose himself in thought and when it happened, he was almost completely unaware of anything happening around him.

Karna noticed that Miralen was about to explode with questions and knew that if the girl didn't get to ask them then she'd bombard Karna with them later on. "Mom, would you mind entertaining Miralen here with a few answers? Otherwise, she's going to have a fit. We can go have dinner later tonight if you're still around by then. I'll need to deal with these anyway." Karna shook the little bag with the spirit stones and pills.

“Fine. I suppose I could also ask her about how you’re dealing with school since you’re not going to tell me anything anyway.” Duskclaw looked a little mischievous. Karna suspected that her ‘mother’ would also likely try to embarrass her in some way. Likely that included some embarrassing stories about her childhood, which Karna really didn’t need to stick around to listen to. So a quick escape was in order.

She found a relatively deserted corner of the park to check out the contents of the bag. She idly also noted that Callista was also close by looking at her with some hesitation like the girl was considering something but was still undecided. Karna was tempted to confront the girl to ask what she wanted but decided against it. The girl would have to make up her own mind. No need to push things. If the girl made the decision in her own time, then that would be preferable anyway, as a confrontation might lead to her becoming defensive.

Karna opened the bag and took stock. There was a generous pile of spirit stones in the bag. Ironically some of them were clearly made by Karna during her alchemy lessons. The teacher had probably purposefully stored them just so they could be given to Karna in this manner. Usually, any products the students made during practice would go to the Academy and likely given to other students as rewards. The exception was of course if the student provided the materials personally and only used the Academy's facilities and equipment. Even then there would usually be a price to be paid in the form of merit points as rent of sorts.

"Well, at least this way I can be sure of the quality of the spirit stones." She muttered. There were also seven other pills in the bag. Two of them were once again something she had personally created. They were rather simple Clarity Pills, as they had not yet moved on to more complex pills at this point. At least they were of high quality as well. She could suppress herself from using any too advanced techniques during the lessons, but she couldn't really produce inferior products. It was simply not in her nature to make mistakes on purpose. As a result, the quality of the pills she produced was exceptionally high, but the teachers couldn't really fault her for being able to follow instructions with perfect precision.

It was the other pills that caught her by surprise. She had expected purification pills in her bag, but apparently whoever was giving these resources out was aware of her lack of need for such pills. Four of the pills were rather high-quality mana boosting pills that would be a big help for anyone trying to reach the next rank as they would give a large boost to one's mana reserves. Using such pills would also naturally introduce impurities into the user's body due to the artificial boost in cultivation, but due to her phoenix heritage, she wouldn't really need to worry about that as long as she didn’t overuse them. Of course, even for her, using multiple such pills had diminishing returns. The pills would not be enough to bring her to the border of forming her third circle, but they would shave off months of the time it would take her to reach that point. She might even make it by the time the exams came.

Finding a single pill of such type in her bag wasn’t too shocking, but four? Using all four of them could have adverse effects on a normal person’s future cultivation. They were also quite expensive. So either whoever had given them to her was trying to sabotage her, or they knew of her bloodline and wanted to help her reach the average rank for first and second-year students before she took the tests to move to the second year. Or they were testing her, which was supported by the last pill.

The last pill was by far the most expensive out of all of them, and it was pricey enough that even noble houses would have difficulty buying more than one of them every few years. The rather blatantly named Epiphany Pill would put a person in a trance that would give them a different perspective on the universe. Such pills were often used by cultivators to seek enlightenment, better understanding, inspiration, and to break through bottlenecks that resulted from mental hang-ups. As ranking up often required a certain amount of enlightenment in addition to having enough power, such pills were quite valuable to many people. Just the ability to change your perspective for a short time was quite coveted.

The pill was also utterly useless to her. She’d lived countless lives, cultivated to the apex more times than she bothered to count, and she’d had about every kind of martial enlightenment that one could have and she’d thoroughly studied and experimented on how mana and Aura worked. With the enlightenment part already handled, the only thing she needed was more power and time. Yet now she had been handed an expensive pill that one couldn’t just acquire any time they liked. There was no way the bag of the first ranked student of the first years usually contained pills like this. Someone had given it to her for a reason.

She could sense the implicit test that came with the Epiphany Pill. If she wasn’t a reincarnator, then the pill would be extremely useful to her. Combined with the other pills, it would all but guarantee her fast improvement. If she consumed the pill, then she’d also owe a rather sizeable debt of gratitude to the one that had gifted the pills to her. Not so large that she’d refuse the pill, but enough that such debts couldn’t just be ignored. On the other hand, since she didn’t need the pill, there was no point in consuming it and taking on that debt. Yet she suspected that was the point of this test.

Someone had given the pill to her with the intention of having it refused. If she did consume it, then fine, they’d manage to help someone who supposedly had a really bright future ahead of them, and they could collect on that debt later. If she refused or did something silly like gift the pill to someone else however, that would also be quite revealing. Even if mages didn’t require such a heavy emphasis on enlightenment while cultivating, she wasn’t just a mage, was she? A normal kid in her position would use the pill to help with cultivating her Aura. No one in her position would refuse such a gift without a good reason. Unless she didn’t need it of course…

‘I’ll have to keep it for now. Whoever planned this must have had some purpose in giving it to me. Let’s see if I can find out what that purpose is. That should be keeping in my character I think. I can then come up with reasons to refuse if I have to, if that becomes necessary.’ She decided. She considered for a moment that she could claim she’d already gotten a pill like that from Arjuna, yet she suspected it wouldn’t be that simple. ‘They’ve likely asked him if he’d ever given me one, or they know he’s against using such crutches while cultivating. There’s no way anyone clever enough to design such a test would leave such an obvious path out of the trap. Somehow things have become complicated.’