Time, like a river, flew inevitably towards the sea. For Yuriko, the days leading up to her Mum’s promised ball seemed to race. But at the same time, so many things happened in the intervening days that it seemed a year or more since she first came to Realmheart.

That evening, after she walked in on Miya and Jon Abrigo…er, kissing, Yuriko managed to get herself into the Mishala landcrafter and had the pilot bring her to the city estate. Unlike the ones in Aerule Garden, the Imperial city manor was more in line with what she expected houses should look like. Made of bricks, stone, cement, and with flat roofs.

Saki and Ryoko had followed her from Aerule and attended to her that evening, despite her protests that she could change her clothes, bathe, and do her evening ablutions by herself. She ended up capitulating to their puppy dog stares and pouty lips anyway.

The next morning, she went down to breakfast and faced another surprise. Reinhardt and his attendant, Shara, along with his remaining bodyguard, Michi, were also there. Reinhardt was seated at the table, though he wasn’t eating yet, while Shara stood beside him. Michi was by the corner and looked bored.

“Good morning,” Yuriko offered after a stunned silence.

“Good morning, Miss Mishala.” Reinhardt stood and gave her a bow, deeper than he’d ever given her before. “No doubt you’re curious as to my presence.” He grinned. “Your honoured mother tasked me to keep you company and to aid you in any…hmmm, sticky social and political situations that you’d find yourself in.”

“She did?” Yuriko said in bewilderment. “Why would she? Uhm…”

Miya…well, Yuriko thought her cousin would be the one to guide her, but considering what the older girl had been up to, she wasn’t sure about heeding her advice. She was pretty sure that Jon had his hand down the front of her dress, too, and that she had hers all over his bare chest. Was she even here?

“Good morning!” Miya, defying Yuriko’s expectations, walked into the dining room looking quite upbeat. “Ah, the exiled prince. Yuriko.” She nodded. “Let’s eat. We’ve got a full day ahead, and you’ve still another set of exams to do.”

Yuriko eyed her cousin doubtfully, “You seem…”

“Ehehe, what did you expect, little cousin?” She murmured in Yuriko’s ear, “Did you like what you saw?”

Yuriko felt her cheeks redden while Miya giggled all the way to her seat. Soon enough, only she was standing, and the attendants couldn’t serve breakfast without her being in her place. As soon as she sat down, a parade of servers whisked platters into the dining table. Ryoko placed a napkin across Yuriko’s lap, filled her glass with lavan berry juice, and would have probably spoonfed her had she allowed it.

After breakfast, all three of them headed to the campus.

“I’m supposed to take classes, too,” Reinhardt said. “I’m only a year older than you, and I’ve really got nothing better to do.” He sighed.

“Don’t you…I don’t know, do you have a plan to return to your country?” Yuriko asked.

She and Miya were seated at the back seat of the landcrafter while the prince sat across them. Their ride today was different from the one from yesterday in that it looked more like the carriage Yuriko rode to Lucenti City. There was even a table between the seats, where Ryoko and Shara, along with Miya’s attendant, a brown-haired young woman named Gina, served tea. The pilot drove slowly, but it was early enough that they didn’t run the risk of arriving late.

Reinhardt shook his head and laughed ruefully. “My cousin has the parliament, half of the military, and the aid of another country. I’ve got nothing but Shara and Michi. Whatever plans I may have, it will take a long time before they come to fruition.”

“Or you could marry into power,” Miya said with a sly wink.

Reinhardt tugged at his tight collar. He was clad in his usual robes that practically concealed the shape of his body.

“There is that.” He agreed with a smile.

“Oh.” Yuriko murmured. “I guess you could look for allies in the Academy.”

Miya chortled while Reinhardt stared at her for such a long time that Yuriko felt discomfited.

“You mean me?” she finally asked.

Reinhardt nodded. “If you will.”

“We hardly know each other.”

“That hasn’t stopped any arranged marriages,” Miya said.

Yuriko frowned. “No. I refuse.”

“You refuse what?” Miya asked idly.

“I will not be married to someone I haven’t even seen, or to be a political pawn.” She answered fiercely.

Miya just chuckled. “Well, my dear cousin, you have to be far stronger if you want to dance to your whims.”

With those uncomfortable words, they lapsed into silence. Reinhardt looked quite uncomfortable, but he offered her an apologetic smile. Yuriko glared back and gritted her teeth.

“What did Mum promise you?”

“Nothing.” Reinhardt shook his head. Then added under his breath, “Merely a chance.”

Yuriko sniffed and settled back into her seat. She ignored her cousin, the prince, and the rest of the staff while poking at Damien.

‘And what do you have to say to this?’

He seems like a good start for your harem.

‘What! I don’t want one!’

She felt as if he shrugged. To each his, or her, own.

_____

The Animus manipulation examination went much as Yuriko expected. She did all of the exercises they asked her to do, then demonstrated above and beyond what a student of her year level would have been capable of doing. In fact, according to Master Ruminos, Yuriko’s Animus manipulation skill was above a typical Sharom graduate.

The test was a variation of the Tracer Board essentially. She merely had to extend her strands and go through an obstacle course on the board with those strands and fill a jade dot with her Animus. Since she could split her control over ten strands, it had been ridiculously easy for her, since the threshold was only about three or four. Many students could pass it if they can reliably control two strands at once, too.

She failed the runescript exam, and of course, the Spellweaving. The former since she didn’t know enough runescript words and formulas, and the latter simply because she had never been formally trained in it. Aunt Kiyo had given her a book on it, but she lost it by the time she arrived in Kogasi.

“Now then,” Ruminos said after Yuriko completed the exam, “during your combat examination, you revealed the ability to create an Animus construct. This is not part of your inlaid Facet?”

“No, sir,” Yuriko said.

“Kindly demonstrate.”

Yuriko nodded, though she hesitated in picking what to create. The sunblade was the best she could create since the sunshards were merely an application of it. Of course, she used Animus blades back in Kogasi and those were developed from creating an Animus pen.

She flared her Anima enough to create a space for her Animus construct and made a side-blade. It took her a couple of minutes to shape it, but at the end, she demonstrated its use by cutting into a block of wood they provided for the demonstration. The edges smoldered and smoked, but the cut was otherwise clean. Afterwards, she created the sunshards. Which took her under a minute to create and made them fly.

“Impressive,” Master Ruminos said. “You’re just a couple of steps from Materialisation.”

“Eh?”

“Observe.” He held out a palm. Animus and ambient Chaos swirled above it, creating a miniature maelstrom. Yuriko watched with Chaos Sight active and saw how his Animus formed a pattern, a scaffolding, which then drew in the ambient Chaos. The process lasted for several minutes, and by the end of it, the man held a pebble in his hand. A pebble.

“That’s…”

“Yes, it’s real, and not an Animus construct. It will not fade away should my focus waver, and nothing distinguishes it from any other pebble in the dirt. Materialisation.”

Yuriko nodded. “I’ve brought water into existence once, when I was stuck inside a plane that was so dry that the condenser canteen didn’t work properly.”

“You have?” Ruminos’ eyebrows went all the way to his hairline. “How did you do it? Well, water is one of the simplest things you can materialize but even so, that’s beyond what’s normally doable by someone your age.”

“Well…” Yuriko explained how she used distilled Chaos and just pressed her Intent into it. Rather simple, really. But from the expression on his face, it was anything but. Still, he only nodded, made a few more notes into his crystal screen then dismissed her.

“You’ll receive your new class schedule this evening. It will be sent to your city residence. Have a pleasant day, Miss Mishala.”

And that was the end of her series of placement exams. It was only a couple of hours after noon, and she didn’t quite know what to do. After a moment, she decided to take a walking tour of the campus.

By the time evening came around, she’d determined that the Imperial Capital’s Academy campus was larger than the one in Rumiga, but the layout was nearly identical. Even the building names were the same. The eateries and cafes were different though, and there were a few buildings not in Rumiga.

The Central Reserve was currently being used for Agaza students performing a tactical war exercise, and she watched them with interest, albeit from some distance away. She’d actually scaled one of the trees in the reserve, mostly to escape the bevy of annoying boys, and not a few girls that popped out of the woodwork as soon as she walked out of Song Building, Sharom’s main administrative area.

The persistent boys almost always recognised her as a Mishala, which seemed to spur them on. Not a few propositioned her, one even asking for an offspring contract, whatever in Chaos that meant. Her hostile stare was usually more than enough to drive them away, but there were hundreds of students and as soon as one was rebuffed, another tried his luck. Or her. There was more than one girl, older than Yuriko to be sure, who eyed her from head to toe and asked her if she wanted to learn how to be a woman. All while licking her lips and giving her a suggestive wink.

Anyway, the tactical war exercises were interesting to watch, and she couldn’t help but draw parallels between her fellow countrymen and the beast folk of Lucenti and Vizugmon. The one thing that stood out was the students moved in small squads of five to ten, while the Lucentians did so in bigger groups.

Much like how she and the others of her year were divided in the training camp. Each squad acted independently, but when multiple squads grouped together, a hierarchy was immediately formed. Which squad leader deferred to the other, whose Warder took the front, who was the rear guard. The ranged Strikers attacked with coordination, often hitting the same target moments in succession, such that the first projectile broke the Protective Field while the second took out the target.

They did all this as though they were of one mind. It was a marked difference from how she had coordinated with the units on that battlefield. By the time she returned to the mansion, she had much to think about, and many many things to consider.

When her schedule arrived, she found out that she had much more free time than expected. She only had six classes throughout the week. Hateful Arithmetic. History. Social Sciences. Natural Sciences. Geography. And lastly, Specialties. That last would tackle runescript and spellweaving. As for Sorcery, the track that she was supposed to be on, there were no classes or even any preliminary reading for it.

“You can’t really practice Sorcery until you become a Knight,” Miya replied when Yuriko asked. “There are some exercises and abilities that mimic true Sorcery one can practice at lower levels, but I think you’re better off working on your foundations. And don’t think you’ve got nothing to do the rest of the day, Grandma arranged for tutors to catch you up. You'll still be busy for quite some time.”

And that was how Yuriko spent her days. She trained in the sword, under the tutelage of a swordmaster, Armsmaster Kinohara who had kicked up a fuss when she found out that even though Yuriko had completed her Martial Sciences requirement, hadn’t taken on a graduate program.

“Waste of talent!” Armsmaster Kinohara decried, and muscled her way into becoming her sword tutor.

Afterwards, Ryoko and Saki took turns reading to Yuriko from her textbooks. They came upon the idea when she complained of her reading headaches. Then she went to class, and returned almost immediately afterwards for more lessons, more being read to while the other attendant pampered her.

Well, perhaps studying wasn’t so much a pain now.