“You’re making it unfairly difficult to resent you. I’d be happy to have company, but you’re welcome to change your mind later.”

“Resent me? Why?”

Sylph rolled her eyes. “You took to magic like a fish to water. You’ve clearly never trained a day in your life, but your magical energy is unbelievably high and your power seems strong as well. If anyone other than you asked me that, I’d think they were fishing for compliments.”

“Oh,” Damien said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know,” Sylph said, sighing. “That’s the problem. You’ll have to forgive me. You’ve been nothing but kind, and I’m acting rudely. My emotions have gotten the better of me.”

“It’s okay,” Damien said. “We all have those days.”

His wise words sounded a lot less sage with the knowledge that he’d had a mental breakdown the previous day, but Sylph didn’t know that. Probably.

That was, of course, rather typical of mortals. Always giving advice and pretending to know what they were talking about when none of them had the slightest clue.

“Let’s go before we knock something over for real,” Sylph suggested. “Unless there was something you wanted to look at?”

“Not really,” Damien said, shaking his head. “I actually got pressured into coming in here. The woman at the desk, Auntie, kind of ignored me when I said I wanted to look at the quest board.”

“Strange,” Sylph said as the two of them made their way back towards the door. “She didn’t do that with me.”

Damien just shrugged. They reached the door and Sylph opened it. The guards and Auntie didn’t even glance at them as they stepped out of the Treasure Pavilion. They evidently had some magical means to ensure that nothing was moved or stolen from the room.

They walked over to the quest board. Each slip of paper had a different quest on it, their difficulties ranging from F to S. The papers had a quick description of the quest requirements, the number of contribution points for completing it successfully, and who had requested it.

The majority of the quests looked to be asking for mages to defeat local monsters plaguing farms or small towns. Damien scanned through them, but he didn’t take any of them off the board. Nothing said how long he’d have to complete the quest, and he didn’t want to accidentally get someone’s farm destroyed because he’d taken the quest, stopping someone who would have completed it faster from doing it. Once Damien was satisfied, the two of them headed out of the Treasure Pavilion.

“Well, we’re not meant to go to meet Delph until a few hours from now, so we’ve got some time to waste,” Damien said. “Were you planning on examining any other buildings on campus?”

“None in particular,” Sylph said. “I don’t have the credits to spend yet, and I’m not eager to add more things to the list of stuff I can’t afford.”

“We might as well head over to the arena early then,” Damien suggested. “Maybe Delph will get there early.”

“That’s fine with me,” Sylph said, nodding.

They set off through the campus towards the portal that would take them to the arena. A short while later, after reaching the portal being transported to the stands, the two of them hopped the railing and floated down to the sandy arena.

A small group of people already stood at the arena, watching Delph as he sparred with Mark. The boy had covered his vitals with large plates of condensed sand that acted like armor.

Delph glanced in Damien and Sylph’s direction as they arrived. He rolled his eyes, tilting his head just far enough to the side to avoid Mark’s punch, and flicked the boy in his chest. His armor shattered and Mark tumbled backwards, landing in a heap with a groan.

“The armor was a good addition,” Delph said, giving him an approving nod. He walked towards Mark, extending his hand. Damien winced as Mark reached out to take it.

Delph raised the boy back to his feet, then socked him in the stomach. Mark shifted his body, narrowly avoiding the punch and hopping back to disengage from Delph.

“The fight isn’t over until your opponent is incapacitated or I say it is,” Delph said, parroting his words from earlier that morning. “Good reaction time, though. You can relax. The fight is done.”

Mark nodded, lowering his arms and brushing the remaining sand from his clothes. He walked back over and joined the group, which included the Grays and the other six students in the class.

“As you can see,” Delph said, nodding in Mark’s direction, “he has a companion that has given him access to earth magic. His companion comes from the Immortal Plane, which tends to have powerful elementals. Can anyone tell me what this means?”

The students glanced at eachother, nobody wanting to draw Delph’s attention upon themselves. The professor massaged the bridge of his nose and sighed. Finally, the bald boy stepped forward.

“His companion is an earth elemental?” he guessed.

“You only know that because Mark mentioned it earlier today,” Delph said. “In fact, that was a trick question. It tells us little to nothing. The Planes all have more magical creatures than I can count. Those creatures tend to share one attribute, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have any others.”

Delph pointed at Reena.

“Your companion is from the Plane of Stars. I won’t reveal what it is, but that means it has at least a little talent for space magic,” Delph said. “Now, is your companion’s main type of magic space?”

“No,” Reena said, shaking her head. “It’s wind.”

“And there you go. All the creatures in one plane share an attribute, but that doesn’t make it their main one,” Delph instructed. “If you want to figure out your opponent’s weaknesses and strengths, you need to know their actual companion, not where it’s from. This is, of course, quite impractical. If you can plan ahead for a fight, you should. However, you can’t always be prepared, so you need to learn to think on your feet.”

The students nodded, although it was hard to tell if they were agreeing because they understood or if they were trying to avoid drawing Delph’s ire. He didn’t seem to care either way.

“Now, I’m aware that not all of you have access to the Ether yet. I will be working to help you all see it today after an announcement. For those of you who can already access your magic, you may practice on your own however you deem fitting.”

Damien and Sylph walked over to join the crowd, drawing several glances from the other students. Damien reddened. It felt as if he’d shown up late, even though they were several hours early.