Hugo fell back onto his bed and groaned in frustration. The culling trip to go kill monsters was coming up. He knew that his barriers didn’t have much killing power since he wasn’t good with edges yet. So he had turned to his other domain for a solution.

Over the last few days he had been pouring every spare bit of mana into a mithril crossbow. He couldn’t create one all at once, but he could create something if he was smart about it. After his experience with the mithril dagger, he knew that Mithril was strong enough to hold up even if it was full of holes.

Reducing the amount of material he was creating brought the project into the realm of possibility. He still had to make it in parts, a left wing, right wing, and a few parts for the stock. He had just put it all together and strung the crossbow. Which led him to groaning in frustration.

The crossbow wouldn’t bend.

He had used his experience when making an aluminum crossbow when designing this weapon. But the draw weight for an aluminum crossbow and a mithril crossbow was drastically different. His creation was basically useless. He had just wasted three days worth of mana pools.

It was all his fault too. When he had aluminum as his element, he had researched the tensile strength of the element, and known how much it would bend. He hadn’t done that this time. Hugo disassembled the failed experiment and chucked it into his footlocker.

After some serious moping, he dragged himself to the library. He found a book on mithril and looked for the data. Frustratingly, it was a book geared towards enchanters. The data talked about the flex in runes on armors, not the quantities he would be using. He had to do a lot of math to get to the thicknesses he needed for the crossbow.

It didn’t look good for him. With a standard thickness crossbow, he would have to have it ten feet wide to get a standard draw strength. If he made the crossbow thin enough to be usable, it would be at a much greater risk of shattering. The book suggested alloys to overcome the brittleness of mithril, but he couldn’t do that until after he ranked up from the culling.

Which was the point of this whole thing.

He couldn’t get a second element until he had a crossbow, and he couldn’t build a useful crossbow until he had that second element. He threw up his hands in frustration.

Walking back to his dorm room was disheartening. He had already bought fire runes for the exploding bombs he planned on shooting from his crossbow. He had looked that up and powdered mithril did ignite and burn fiercely. Not that it mattered now.

He tried to put the failure out of his mind. It was getting late and there was a party starting shortly. He didn’t exactly feel like partying, but he made himself go. He had spent money for some party snacks and he didn’t want those to go to waste too.

A half an hour later, he arrived at the party and dropped off the munchies. It took an effort of will not to leave right away.

He was a bit uncomfortable every time he first joined a party. He loved talking with his friends and he had been expanding his social circle since the first day of school. These parties should be all fun. But unless he was with good friends, his social anxiety would rear its ugly head.

It didn’t matter if they had been laughing at his jokes yesterday, if he was alone in a party, his brain was telling him that everyone hated him now. It didn’t help that the last party he attended ended up with him getting beaten up. He shook his head, he needed to find some friends.

A quick scan of the room showed that none of his close friends were nearby, so he started making a circuit around the room. The round watchtower was wide enough that it was hard to see the other side of the room from one end. So he made a circuit around the room.

“Jumping Man!” a random drunk classmate yelled at him. Apparently the story of him jumping out of the window a few weeks ago was pretty popular. Hugo was glad that it was that story, and not the story of him getting beaten up that was making the rounds.

Hugo smiled in what he hoped was a convincing way and said, “You know it!” He played along, but inwardly hoped that everyone would forget about that stunt soon.

Eventually, he found someone he knew. Instead of being relieved, Hugo grew concerned. It was Alice. He didn’t know her that well but he could easily see she was very upset. She was sitting on the floor with her knees up. She was holding a cup and staring off into space.

“Hey Alice... Are you doing ok?” Hugo said.

Alice perked up and smiled. She turned to the side and wiped a few tears away and said, “I am fine. Just taking a quick break. You know how these parties are. Sometimes you need a breather.”

Hugo plopped down next to her and said, “Yep. Good idea. I am going to take a breather with you too.”

“Oh you don’t have to do that, I am fine, really. Just go have fun. I will catch up with you.”

Stretching out his legs in front of him, Hugo lay back against the wall and said, “Liar. But if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I am going to just sit here.”

Alice curled up on herself some more.

Hugo said, “I’ll leave if you ask me to. I don’t wanna make it worse.”

A long moment later Alice quietly said, “You can stay.”

For the next several minutes they just sat in silence. The party carried on without them. The middle of the room, as usual, was full of people loudly playing beer volleys. There was a guy playing a fiddle badly on the western edge of the room. The buzz of conversation filled the whole room.

Hugo almost missed it when she started to talk.

“I thought, I thought I was protected. I know they play pranks on commonborn, but I thought I was protected. Lenna is my friend and she is in the upper nobility of Tallinn. Elise’s dad is in the inner court here in Reval. But I guess that doesn’t matter. It happened anyway,” she said morosely.

After a moment she quietly said, “I think Mattias had to do it. They probably didn’t give him a choice.”

Still looking straight ahead, he leaned in so he could hear her better.

“It must have something to do with the upper-classmen. Some of them looked like they didn’t want to be doing it, but they made themselves do it anyway,” she continued.

“What happened?” Hugo said. This didn’t sound good and he was starting to let his anger rise.

She must have caught the edge in his voice and said, “They didn’t touch me.” She sighed, “They didn’t touch me, but it still hurts.”

Hugo reached over and touched her shoulder. When she didn’t move, he gave it a gentle squeeze.

She took a shuddering breath and said, “Mattias broke up with me. In front of everyone. He said the whole relationship was a joke. A few other first years did the same thing.” She gestured off to the left, where it had happened. “There were a few third years there, laughing their heads off.

“Those bastards,” Hugo said, “Do you want me to go beat up Mattias for you?” He realized now that this is probably what happened to Alice last time around too. This was the reason they had broken up.

She half laughed at that and said, “No, that wouldn’t fix anything. Mattias is connected. They all are. If you beat him up, he would just get you expelled.”

Hugo slumped back. He had no backers himself, Mattias probably could get Hugo expelled. He said, “Damn him. I hope he trips down the stairs tonight.”

A small smile crept up on her face.

Encouraged, Hugo continued, “I hope he bites his tongue every time he eats.”

Alice smiled brighter, and said, “I hope he stubs his toe every day for the rest of his life.”

“Now you are getting it! I hope he loses every bet he makes,” Hugo said.

“I hope he has insomnia except during class,” Alice replied.

Hugo nodded along, “I hope bugs crawl into his ears every time he is outside.”

“Eww, that one’s gross. I hope everyone forgets his name.”

“I hope his hair falls out.”

“I hope... I hope.. that’s all I got,” Alice said, more at ease now.

Hugo nodded and said, “That’s good. He doesn’t deserve more thought than that. Forget about that loser, focus on yourself. He can play all the childish games he wants, you just focus on yourself,” Hugo said. Then an idea struck him, “And every time he wants to date someone, I will slip a note to the girl, telling them what happened. No one will ever want to date him.”

“Oh that’s evil. You should totally do that,” Alice said with a smile. “Or not. I guess I don’t really care about Mattias. I loved the person I thought he was, but I don’t want to deal with the person he really is.”

“Yeah, good attitude.”

Hugo motioned to a nearby couch and they both moved there to be more comfortable. Knowing how much she liked jokes, Hugo said, “Ok, I got a joke for you. You gotta rate it afterwards. One to eight stars, ok? I think this is an eight star story.”

With a laugh, Alice said, “Ok sure, go ahead.”

Hugo spread his arms, really getting into the story.

“So this archmage guy really loves his dog. He takes this dog everywhere he goes, loves the dumb mutt to bits. But he has to do some business in Reval and can’t take his dog with him because of the law. No animals allowed in town.

"He is in a big official meeting and sees that the mayor has a dog. This makes the archmage angry, how come the mayor can have a pet but he can’t. The mayor points to his dog and says, “It’s all this talking dog’s fault.”

“'The dog can talk?' the archmage says. He is very skeptical, he knows all about magic and he knows dogs can’t talk.

“'Yep, I can talk,' the dog says.

"The archmage is just flabbergasted, can’t believe his ears. He wants to know more about the dog so he says, 'So what have you done with your life?'

“'I’ve led a very full life,' says the dog. 'I was a sentinel up on the wall, helping kill monsters for years. Then I served my country in the three-years war. And now I spend my days teaching children to read.'

"The archmage is flabbergasted. 'This is why aren’t pets allowed in town? Why not have more of these wonderful animals?'

The mayor says, 'Because he’s a liar! He never did any of that! I have enough politicians around here as it is. I can’t allow any more animals around. Otherwise we will have more liars than I can handle.'

Hugo spread his arms wide again with the punchline and smiled.

Alice chuckled.

“Well? What did you think? Perfect score? Eight out of eight?” he said.

She shook her head and held up two fingers.

“Two? Two? That joke was top tier. I know you haven’t heard of a better joke than that one. Come on, give me a better rating.”

In response, she just lowered one of her fingers.

Hugo fell back, hand over his heart as if he had been stabbed. “You wound me.”

This drew real laughter from Alice and she lay back too. After her laughter subsided she put her head on his shoulder.

They sat there for a bit before Alice said, “Thanks for that.”

“You are welcome. Anyone that hears my amazing joke should be thankful.”

“No, that was terrible. Thanks for stopping and talking with me. You are a great guy,” Alice said. She lifted her head back up and said, “Too bad you are already taken.”

“Um... I don’t know what you have heard, but I’m not dating anyone,” Hugo said, confused.

“Ok, not taken, spoken for. One of my friends really likes you. It would really hurt her feelings if I tried to be more than friends with you.”

“Who likes me?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Yes? Is this a trick question? Because I would like to know who likes me.”

Alice shook her head, “That’s for her to say, not me.” She got up and said, “Thanks again.”

He stared after her, watching her walk away. He was happy to see she was in a better mood, but now he was seriously wondering who she had been talking about.

His first thought was Lenna. He had dated her in his last life, and he knew she was friends with Alice. But he hadn’t really had much interaction with Lenna this go around. She was in a different domain program, so they rarely saw each other. He thought that Oskar was going to make a move on her with how much he talked about her.

He knew Daniela had flirted with him in the past, but she hadn’t talked to him in weeks. And as far as he knew, Alice had never talked to Daniela. She probably wouldn’t care about the girl code for someone she wasn’t friends with.

The only other girl that Hugo knew Alice was friends with was Elise, but that probably wasn’t who Alice was talking about either. Hugo hadn’t really talked to Elise after she said that she hated him. He got the impression that she thought they were in a competition within the barrier class. He often caught her staring angrily at him.

He tried to think about the other girls in his barrier class. If anyone had a crush on him, it was probably someone he had plenty of interaction with. Or maybe it was the opposite? He wasn’t sure if his personality really drew the girls in.

He knew that he was better looking now, maybe someone was admiring him from afar. Now that he thought about it, that was the most likely scenario. He would have to bug Alice about it later. And he would be paying attention to who laughed at his terrible jokes now.

As he fell into bed that night, he thought about his weapon problem again. Since he couldn’t make his crossbow work, he would have to make something simpler.

The logical choice would be a large spear or halberd. They were deadly, and didn’t require as much training as a sword would. It would suck to miss out on his range advantage the crossbow provided, but at least he would have a working weapon.

If he remembered right, barrier mages used spears often. Of course, they were usually spears made of mana, but the principal was the same. If he had to get used to fighting with spears, he might as well start now. He could buy a wooden shaft and fabricate the spearhead.

He realized that he also needed to work on his armor. The school had leather armor that he could afford, but it wasn’t enough protection for some of the monsters he knew that inhabited the forest they would be visiting.

Thankfully, there was a simple solution to that. He could create thin sheets of mithril and use them as inserts in the armor. He just had to make them thick enough to withstand a good hit, and then slip them in between two layers of leather.

Then he sat up in bed. He had an idea to solve his weapon problem, sandwiches!