“Good morning everyone,” Sage Marta said and sat down on a chair in the front of the room. “You may have noticed that this class seems much smaller than the other classes you had with me before. That's because there are three of these mana manipulation classes for first years. We wanted to keep the class sizes small enough so you could each get individual attention.” She leaned forward and said quietly, “You lot lucked out, I am the best mana teacher by far. I am the only one with mana sight, so I can see when you are getting it right. Just don’t tell the other students, they would get jealous.”

Hugo looked around. Besides the thirty five formation students he recognized from his class, there were an additional forty or so other students. He wondered if they were formation students too, or if this class was a mixed one.

“Now, let’s talk about why this class is important for you,” she continued in a normal voice. “Does anyone know what mana adjusted score means?”

Lenna raised her hand.

“Yes, go ahead,” said Sage Marta.

“It is a common score, the measurement of how much mana it takes to create a one kilo block of a certain material,” Lenna said.

“Technically correct, but missing the key detail we will be focusing on today. If we take two formation mages, one good at his job and another terrible, they will use different amounts of mana. One will create that iron bar only using eight mana, and the other will have to use fifteen mana to create the same size bar. That is why we use the adjusted score, it’s an average between minimally skilled practitioners. Once you get better at this, most of you will be able to beat the mana adjusted score you find in books.”

Lenna frowned and sat back in her chair. Hugo ignored her and focused on the lesson.

“And how do you get better? With practice in mana manipulation. This class will help you be more efficient in creating your elements, or barrier as the case may be.”

Hugo nodded, now he knew which class had been joined with his, the barrier domain students.

“Our first exercise will be to get your mana moving. Each of you has a well of mana, just below your lungs in your soul core. It may be intangible, but your mana has a home, it likes to stay in your core. Your job today is to get it moving throughout your body. You won’t be able to get your whole core’s worth of mana to move at first. Just grab as much as you can, and start moving it about without using your skills.”

Hugo focused on the spot where he thought his core was. Nothing happened at first. When he found it a few minutes later a shiver ran through his body. It felt weird, like he was scratching the inside of his eardrum. He was touching something that he had no frame of reference for.

He tried to grab a bit of mana, but he couldn’t. It just slipped through his metaphorical fingers. Marta was walking through the classroom, congratulating students when she saw that they had moved some of their mana around. Hugo frowned, and tried harder.

It didn’t work.

A half hour passed without any movement of his mana. He was so frustrated. He could easily move his mana about when he used fabricate, but not now. He could sense it, feel it in some weird way, but he couldn’t convince his mana to move. Eventually he gave up trying to move it and just mentally shouted at his mana, calling it bad names.

The internal swear words seemed to do the trick. Mana splashed out of his core before slowly oozing back into place. Hugo stopped. Would he have to have a litany of swear words going through his head to properly manipulate his mana? He didn’t want that.

He focused on the different aspects of how he got the mana to move. He tried each one out individually. It wasn’t the anger, it wasn’t the swear words. It was his raw intent. He had been forming mental hands to grab the mana, but the trick was to try and move his mana without an intermediary. He just willed it to move and it moved.

He was one of the last in the class to get it, but he was still inordinately proud when Sage Marta praised him for it.

Once everyone was able to move their mana throughout their body without using a skill, the sage came back to the front of the class. “Now that we can move our mana, it allows us to move on to a mage’s fallback. The mana dart. Now, before you get all excited, this will probably take you a week or so to get right. The first step is to move your mana to your hand. Pick your dominant hand.”

She touched her stomach and moved her finger across and up her side, over her armpit and to her hand, “You want your mana to follow this path. It is more efficient than going up and over. Let’s all practice that movement for a bit, around the side, up the armpit and to your hand. Once your mana falls back to your core, do it all again.”

The classroom of seventy five students sat in their seats quietly, holding their arm out to the side. After a few minutes there was a small puff of blue light a few rows over.

“Oh how nice, looks like we have a prodigy over here. Good job, Saskia. So everyone knows what she just did, Saskia was moving her mana so fast that she expelled it out of her hand. That little flash of blue light was her mana. I won’t ask any of you to try and repeat that just yet. We want to work on moving smaller amounts of mana first. Saskia probably just spent about eight points of mana in that one move and we can’t practice long at that rate.”

They all looked over and Saskia nodded.

Hugo went back to focusing on his mana. He found that the more he moved the mana along the same path in his body, the easier it got. And the faster too. He didn’t try and push the mana faster though, he needed every drop of mana for formation class after lunch. The more he practiced, the more natural it felt.

...

Sage Rasmus started his class with a short review on how to avoid heavy metal poisoning. It amounted to saying the same thing several different ways. "Don't inhale gaseous metal, you moron." After he was sure they had gotten the message, he put a new equation up on the board.

“Raise your hand when you have solved your equation, and I will come check your work. Once I am satisfied that it is error free, you can begin,” Rasmus said and sat behind his desk.

Hugo stared up at the equation on the board. He knew that this was math, he could recognize that much. But he didn’t know anything beyond that. He started by copying the equation down on his paper, then looking into his pamphlet for the amplitude number for aluminum. He wrote it down in place of the variable. Then he just stared at his paper. He had nothing. Despite Rasmus just showing them how to do this, none of it made sense.

Lenna raised her hand, the first one in the classroom to do so. Rasmus walked over, impressed at her speed.

“This is a beautiful equation, but this isn’t an equation for a bracelet. Certainly not a mana focusing bracelet,” Rasmus said.

“Yes, I know. It is for a lasso, I wrote it up last night. I figured that would be more useful for me than a focusing bracelet, considering my element,” Lenna replied.

"You may attempt it, but after you fail, I want you to create the bracelet," Sage Rasmus said.

Lenna frowned, but nodded her head.

After frustrating for a little longer, Hugo took a big breath and brought his paper up to Sage Rasmus’s desk. “Sorry to bother you. But I have never done a polynomial slope before. I tried to pay attention when you were explaining it, but I just don’t get it.”

“You have never done one before? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I thought I could figure it out,” Hugo said.

“This isn’t something you are going to pick up in a day. Go hire a tutor, you are going to need one. For today, let me solve this equation for you,” Sage Rasmus pulled the paper out of his hands and quickly scribbled out the answer. It was sixteen digits long. “The magic works much better when you understand the math yourself, so this is a one time thing. That said, a focusing bracelet is simple enough, just go slow and you will be fine.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate it.”

“You are welcome, just get yourself that tutor.”

He nodded and walked back to his crafting station. In some ways, life was simpler when you were very poor. Hugo didn’t have to count up his available funds and carefully interview various tutors to find the best fit. He had no funds, and a tutor just wasn’t an option. He would just have to figure it out on his own.

Shortly after he sat down, he heard Lenna swearing to herself. Hugo looked over, and he was confused at first. She had created a great looking lasso. It was tightly woven spider silk, in the shape of a thick rope. Then she picked it up and Hugo understood.

It was all stuck together. Several coils of rope had been glued together into one unusable lump. She had correctly calculated the form for a lasso, but had forgotten that spider silk is sticky. With a frustrated sigh, she got out a piece of paper so she could calculate out the design for a bracelet.

With a small smile on his lips, Hugo went back to his own work. He didn’t quite understand the math Sage Rasmus had done on his paper, but he knew how to make a bracelet. It is just a little oval. The curving edges might be difficult, so he focused hard on the intended shape.

He failed the first time.

The second try took the last of his mana, but not only did he succeed, he was awarded with a little blue screen.

Level Up!

Fabricate has advanced to level two.

That was nice. Apparently the successful creation was enough to level up his skill. As far as he understood it, the higher the skill, the faster and easier it would be for him to create things.

He examined his creation. It was a slightly lumpy bracelet, one with far to many curves and whirls to wear comfortably. Checking his finished product against the design on the board, he determined it was close enough.

He moved his hand around. Supposedly this would let him focus his mana better, so he could shoot out a mana dart, even as a level two. Normally that is something that would require rank eight, but this thing was supposed to skip that requirement.

Sage Marta’s class this morning was supposed to help him circulate his mana well enough to use this device. Sadly, he couldn’t test it out yet. He would have to wait a few hours for his mana to regenerate. It felt like forever. The sage said that proper meditation could improve on a persons natural mana replenishment rate. But that was a skill that took most people years to develop, so he was stuck with his slow mana replenishment for now. His rate was based off a combination of his wisdom and regeneration stats, which didn’t add up to much yet.

After another boring session of reading about monsters, Hugo decided it was time to do something about his missing math skills. The academy had a huge library, there was certain to be a few books about polynomial slopes.

When he got to the library, he realized that he didn’t know where to start. He was glad he had been here before, and walked around the grand staircase to talk to the attendant at the information desk. He was happy to see someone he recognized.

“Hello Rahne, good to see you. I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of some math books.”

She laughed quietly, “Math is a big subject. You are going to have to narrow it down a bit.”

“Do you know anything about how formation mages use polynomial slopes to create their elements?”

“Can’t say that I do.”

“Neither do I. Do you know where I should start?”

“I am not sure. There are a few places you could try. Up front near the doors on the left there is a section of remedial math books. But those are usually for ritualists that are bad at calculating their final designs. If that isn’t what you are looking for, then I would suggest looking on stack eighteen in the formation section. That’s where the M’s are, there might be a math book or two in there for you.”

Hugo thanked her and walked to the front of the library. There were several math books of varying difficulties on the shelves there. It took him a half hour to determine that they weren’t what he wanted. He understood all the math in these books.

He walked back to the formation section of the library and started hunting through the books there. Stack eighteen had nothing, but a few more trips to the information desk eventually yielded a useful tome.

It was a large book that explained all of the mathematical concepts in formation. Apparently there were several new concepts that Hugo would need to learn about, not just polynomial slopes. He was going to have to learn about derivation of invariant rings, semi-meromorphic homomorphisms, and contra-negative substitutions.

With a sigh, he checked the book out and took it back to his room to study. He grabbed a snack on the way and started working through the book. It was slow going. The author made generous assumptions of the reader’s skill level, and Hugo had trouble parsing the meanings of several terms. He took the book to bed, knowing that it was going to be a long night if he was going to half-way understand this.

Oskar knocked on Hugo’s bed frame to get his attention. “Hey, put that down. It is time to go to the party,” he said.

Hugo looked up from where he was studying, “I can’t. Rasmus said that I need to understand this math myself, otherwise my creations will never form correctly.”

Squatting down, Oskar said, “I let you miss the first few parties because you were just getting used to the academy. But you need to go to this one. You need to go to most of the parties.”

“I don’t need to go to a party. I need to study,” Hugo said.

“That’s where you are wrong. You really do need to go to the parties. Your social life depends on it.”

“I might have to kill my social life if I am going to graduate from the academy. You all have had a lot of training that I never got. I am just trying to catch up here.”

“This is more important, trust me. You are right about most of the nobles already knowing all the math. They have had excellent tutors, and never had to work a day in their life. Let me ask you this, why are they here? Why didn’t they just get another tutor to teach them formation?”

“I don’t know, maybe there aren’t a lot of good formation teachers out there,” Hugo said.

Oskar shook his head, “They are all here because this is where you make friends with the important people. Our city is run by their parents. If you want a job in a train yard, you talk to the Rajad family. If you want a job rune crafting the city walls, you talk to the Seinad family. And how do you get an introduction to those families? You start by making friends at these parties.”

“So you are saying the hiring decisions are made in these parties? What about merit? What happened to the most qualified person getting the job?”

Oskar stood up, “What kind of academy do you think this is? After we are done here, we will all be qualified. They don’t produce crappy mages here, that's the harvesters outside the city. Every one of us will be able to fill a position posted. The one that is going to get that position is the one that everyone likes. Someone that is fun at parties is also great at leading a cadre. These parties matter.”

Hugo set down his book, “Alright. You convinced me. I’ll come. Maybe I can just make an appearance and finish this later.”

“Great idea. Just come, socialize with everyone, and you can go back to your studying when everyone gets drunk.”

Hugo smiled and swapped out his uniform tunic for something a little more stylish. It might be good to have a little break anyway. Then he could come back to the math more focused.