Finley Cai Aies Hall April 20, 20XX

I tried my best to pay attention as the General spoke about the field, but I kept getting distracted. She calmly explained how the structure could support itself and the materials used to make the machines, but I was more interested in seeing how they worked.

Considering how much detail she put into explaining everything, I figured she likely wouldn’t mind giving me the blueprints. I was sure she wouldn’t mind giving me the blueprints for them. That was why I struggled to focus on her descriptions and thought this time would be better spent giving a live example of how they worked and how to operate them.

The General once again noted my expression, although I had tried to keep my face blank, and quickly changed the itinerary to operating the apparatus. Her long fingers dug into the patterned groves on the side of the closest machine to us, and she methodically applied pressure to each in a trained succession.

She then used her free hand to draw her wand and gently removed her hand from the groves. Her fingers flexed around the wand’s hilt a few times before she steadied her grip and released a steady stream of bright bronze magic into the largest grove.

The longer she supplied the magic to the device, the deeper the slightly irritated expression sank into her face.

“Is there anything wrong, General?”

The frown deepened as I failed to call her by her first name, but she didn’t pursue the matter. She pushed out a bit more magic into the machine before giving up and putting her wand back in its holster on her belt.

“Nothing major, but the machine’s magic storage bank broke. I’d need someone to feed it while I run it but Lillian won’t get here for at least another hour.”

I remembered she could somehow read my face more carefully than everyone else and tried to keep my expression neutral, but she still managed to catch on to my disappointment.

“Worry not, Cai. There are still many other things for us to fill our time with.”

There were a lot of other rides and attractions on the field, but this one looked the most interesting. We had set out relatively late, and I was sure I would have to return to the castle soon. It would really bother me if I ended up not getting to see how it worked.

While I didn’t want to sound like a stubborn child, I wasn’t willing to give up so easily.

The General stifled an amused chuckle as she watched me grapple with my options, and I suddenly wondered what she thought of me now that she wasn’t under the influence. While I was glad she didn’t resent me for putting that seal on her powers and that she wasn’t trying to jump my bones every waking second, I was also concerned about the indulgent way she seemed to treat me.

I thought it over again. The thought of just looking around the attractions again was enough to bore me half to death, and I didn’t see any other attractions that seemed as challenging as the one right in front of us. There also wasn’t any guarantee that their ‘power banks’ would work either.

There was also the motivation to avoid any more awkward conversation with the General. Hopefully, it would get better when she got more comfortable and I got a better idea of what I could and couldn’t say to her. As things were, I couldn’t talk about anything from the human world, and she seemed reluctant to talk about anything about her personal life or her career.

I walked over to the groves the General had removed her hands from and gently shadowed her earlier actions. After a bit of focus, I isolated the thin traces of her magic from the hordes of other magic and mapped out the route it had taken within the magic.

It had looked simple enough when she did it, but as expected, it was so much more complicated than just firing a stream of magic into it.

I also couldn’t be sure but when compared to the ‘beginner’ spells the diary had me run, this couldn’t be considered complicated. She likely wouldn’t think it was strange that I could do it. Hopefully.

I weighed my options one last time. The General had said that there would be other guys at this festival, so I likely wouldn’t stand out too much within my cohort. Anything I accidentally excelled at would probably get credited on my being a royal. At least, that was what Esmeralda did when I exceeded her insultingly low expectations.

“General, would you be willing to show me how it works. I might be able to operate it.”

The General held a complicated expression for half a second but soon returned to that indulgent smile and nodded.

“There is no reason for me to be unwilling, Cai. This machine requires a lot of magic to be maintained for a long time so I will have to make sure you can maintain it since it would be problematic if it stooped before I could clear it.”

I pulled out my wand, even though I wouldn’t need it, and held it in one hand while I pushed my magic through the machine. I didn’t need my wand for a spell of this level but I didn’t want to show off any more than was necessary.

As I’d feared the magic in the air flooded toward the wand in my hand and tried to rush in to the machine. Quite ironically, the problem wasn’t in maintaining a certain amount of magic for a long time but was rather restraining the amount of magic that flowed into it.

Even as hard as I tried to seem average, I knew that managing to run the machine on the first attempt could be considered showing off, but I was eager to get this over with before someone came and took me back to the castle.

I kept a close eye on the General’s face for any signs of shock or any impression that I shouldn’t be able to do this much but aside from looking impressed, she didn’t show any signs of disbelief.

She took into the air and flew around the attraction a few times to ensure everything was in order before getting onto the starting stage.

The first section of the wondrous device was the checkered floor. The alternating square sections of the floor would rise into platforms that smashed against the roof of the device at random, effectively eliminating flight as a transportation option. Running wasn’t a safe option either, as some square sections would randomly sink into holes.

This all happened impossibly quickly when I considered how heavy the materials looked and the dents in the ceiling I could see them make as they smashed into it.

After seeing how violent it was, the attraction made me consider renaming it into a torture device or an obstacle course. I made a silent but very personal vow to never show this to Theodulus for fear he would make me run it without my magic.

As I wondered how the General would clear it, she took off into the air at a fantastic speed and weaved through the poles with a headstrong recklessness that didn’t particularly suit her calm persona. She dodged those she could and blasted through those she couldn’t. Thankfully, the device was self-repairing, although it took a drain on my magic to do so.

The General’s large wings showed amazing flexibility as she banked, rose and bayed with the rising poles. She made headway in passing the first section in record time; she crossed the halfway mark to the second section of the obstacle course.

The second part involved a tall wall that justified the empty segment of the ceiling in the middle of the entire device.

As soon as she came within a few feet to the wall, magic cannons materialized from thin air (again at my expense) and shot out glutinous spheres at her, successfully impeding her flight pattern.

To her credit, she didn’t panic and quickly withdrew her wand into a magic shield. She hooked the shield onto her left arm and used that to pass the second section of the course.

I took a moment to analyze her shield and how different it was from the one I used.

For one, it was somehow more simplistic and yet more complex than the sphere I used when purifying magic and blocking out noise.

The way the magic moved was only a four-line pattern, but it repeated and layered over itself over again until it became virtually impenetrable. The sphere I used was a seven line pattern that crossed and interwove within itself, but it was unstable at parts and would dent easily if I lost focus. I memorized the pattern of her shield and decided to interpret it with the help of the diary later to strengthen my bubble.

As soon as she crossed the wall, her wings suddenly stiffened, and she dropped the almost twenty feet like a rock.

An unfamiliarly high-pitched scream threatened to escape my throat, but I successfully held it back.

In contrast to my shock and worry, the General stayed calm and transformed her wand into a hook. She used a strength I didn’t know she had to hook it onto the top of the wall and quickly rappelled her way down.

Another round of cannons appeared, but this time they held thick orbs of magic. They were loose, two line magic spells that could quickly be taken apart, but hesitating for more than a single second would cause an explosion that would stun the participant. It would range from numbness to downright shock, depending on where these orbs landed.

One or two hits would be fine, but being stunned for that long would leave one open to all the other projectiles and would eventually result in unconsciousness and potentially severe injury.

I was suddenly thankful for the insanely detailed descriptions the General had given earlier.

The General withdrew her wand into a deadly sword and calmly sliced through the projectiles that targeted her face and wings. She moved her body to dodge as many orbs as possible but focused on making it to the ending stage.

One couldn’t even use flight magic in this section of the course, so she had to depend entirely on her body to make it.

She finally made it to the ending stage and plunged her sword into the ticking time-keeping device.

It wasn’t quite a clock or a timer, and I wasn’t sure how I could read it, but that was just one more thing I attributed to the translation function in my locket.

Theodulus had explained that the only reason I could keep up with the languages in the world was because of the locket my mother had left me. There were many functions to this thing, but I had no way of figuring them all out.

I shut off the magic I supplied to the machine and let its functions slow to a stop as the General flew off the elevated stage and down to me.

Twelve minutes.

It was a long time to wait, but considering the average time for this machine was upwards of half an hour, her results were absolutely insane.

A crown of beaded sweat lined her hairline and remnants of the glutinous spheres that had hit her in places the shield had failed to cover. Otherwise, she was fine and completed her journey back to me.

I fished around my unfamiliar pockets for a handkerchief. I’d never been one to use them, but there was always one in my front pocket. She gratefully accepted the soft square of cloth and used it to wipe down her face.

“Would you like to try, your highness? I will intervene if it looks like you can’t keep up, so just take it as a fun exercise.”

She looked excited as she unconsciously goaded me into it. I pretended to fall for it, but I was secretly happy. I’d already been planning how to convince her to let me give it a spin, so this worked out perfectly.

“If it wouldn’t be too much of a bother.”

The General gestured for me to get up to the starting stage and waited until I’d successfully landed and stretched before starting the course.

The first part was the movement course, where I would have to maneuver around the poles. I didn’t have as much confidence in my flight as the General, so I closed my wings right away and took off sprinting.

I technically cheated a little since I would see the small activation of magic before the poles sprang up or sank into the ground, but it was a complete fifty-fifty guess as to which it would be.

Then again, it didn’t really matter since they both meant I needed to get off and away from those blocks.

It wasn’t like this was a competition, so my usage of my own abilities shouldn’t really matter.

A tiny spark flared up in the same square that I placed my foot down and launched me into the air before I could get away from it.

Immediately my training with Theodulus completely overrode the playtimes with Cambridge, and I didn’t even have the time to open my wings and take to flight.

I pushed off its edge before it could smash me into the ceiling like a bug and flipped back onto the ground. My legs shook from the impact as I landed into a crouch to catch my balance, but it wasn’t enough to stall me for long.

To prepare for the next part, I took out my wand as I approached the wall and prepared my magic. I took a page out of the General’s book and created a shield around myself, but instead of the single, narrow sheet like hers, I wrapped mine around my body like a bubble. It was still the seven line spell I was used to using but that was all I currently knew.

I extended the wand into a pole and vaulted up at a blank space on the wall. I remembered the cannons had become more aggressive when the General tried to clear the wall with her wings, so I aimed as close to the top of the wall as possible.

I finished the vault, soared through the air toward the wall, and forcibly restrained myself from extending my wings. After the third second of being stranded in the air, I realized I would not clear the wall with this alone.

My body ached as I uncurled myself and reached out for the top of the wall. My arms screamed as I hooked myself onto the wall’s ledge and pulled myself up but I ignored the body strain and put confidence in my body’s capacity to heal itself. I used my wand as a pole again and planted it into the ground, then tried to slide down.

I wasn’t sure how I’d expected it to go, but since I hadn’t secured a base for the pole, the wand tilted to the side and fell toward the ground. My mind raced as I frantically shrunk it down, but it was too late, and I had to take the last few feet with my body. I tried to roll into it and spread out the damage, but thankfully it looked like I’d been close enough to the ground to not have needed it.

I’d initially planned to hold back a bit, but I got too excited and carried away. Since it was almost over anyway, I decided to go all out and come up with excuses of how I could do all of this later. As things were looking, I doubted I’d be able to move like this for the rest of the week. I should try to get as much out of this as possible.

I ran through the flat surface of the third section with my bubble shield around me. Since the last section was just magic orbs, it would be most efficient to just run through. After all, there was no way my magic would lose out to the magic balls the machine made. Doubly so, since the spell I used for the sphere had come from my mother’s diary.

As I’d thought, the orbs melded into the sphere and were filtered out as brand new magic in a few seconds. I made it to the ending stage and plunged my wand into the time-keeping device.

Twenty-six minutes.

My pounding heart slowed down, and I restrained the sense of disappointment I felt.

While I hadn’t been expecting to beat the General, I’d at least expected to come close.

The General flew up to me, and thankfully, she didn’t at all look stunned by how I’d cleared the course, but she did look impressed.

“Most impressive Cai!”

There was nothing to say that she was lying or even just padding my ego, but I was still unsatisfied. A fourteen-minute gap was pretty much unacceptable to me.

Before I could ask to try again, Cambridge and Corin popped up out of nowhere and took a quick scan of me, the obstacle course and my stained clothing and dragged me away before I would so much as say a proper goodbye to the General.