As it turned out, the coded documents weren’t as useful as Casimir had hoped. They explained John’s (which as it turns out was the thug’s name) task, and what kinds of information he was supposed to report to his boss… But the information was so thorough that none of them had any idea which parts were important or not.

“What’s the common thread?” Casimir asked himself out loud, pacing as Master Southwind snoozed on a force cushion she had set up. “Movements are obviously useful, but clothes, associates, food preferences, transcribing a selection of things she says exactly, actions taken while alone… are there decoys among this?” On one hand, a boss that’s paranoid enough to spring for suicide enchantments would definitely be paranoid enough to make decoys within the orders… on the other hand, it was such a thorough protection that adding yet another layer of obfuscation would likely be more trouble than it was worth.

After exploring and dismissing several possibilities, Casimir gave up. “Screw it, going to bed. I have a lot of crap to do in the morning.”

---------------

Guildmaster Purz, as expected, immediately understood what Casimir dropped on the table in the back office of the guild hall. “...Where did you find this?” Was his first question.

“In one of those guerilla tunnels, hiding a secondary tunnel network. There were plenty of kobolds behind it.” Casimir replied drily. “I can’t fight that many kobolds by myself, Purz. My students help, but they’re not going to be enough either.” One of the fundamental truths about being a high ranking adventurer is that there’s no such thing as an attack that you can either deliver or withstand all day. Every kind of attack and defense imposes a cost on one’s mana and stamina, even if some are very efficient about it. There are a few tactics that can help you recover such things mid-fight, but tribal monsters are generally smart enough to ruin any bolthole if you give them time to execute it. “I don’t know enough about what I’m working with, and given this? It’s entirely possible they can replenish their numbers faster than I could deplete them if I tried to bleed their warren.” Not to mention the kobolds might decide to just go on a rampage in one of the towns if he tried. Whatever was holding them back from raiding settlements like normal kobolds, who knows how well it would hold up if Casimir tried to press the issue.

The elderly Aviost closed his eyes as he thought on the matter, only opening his beak to speak after a long moment. “There hasn’t even been a hint of kobold activity in over a decade.”

Casimir nodded grimly. “There’s some joker hiring foreigners to act on their behalf, too. They Call themselves the Herald of Malice. Ring any bells?”

“Hm. Sounds like a cult.” Purz said, unimpressed by the title. “I’ve never heard of a spirit called Malice, though. Must be new.” Or it was just foreign.

Ah, Casimir didn’t think of that. Obvious, in hindsight. “Ah crap, emotion spirits are a nightmare.” All mana types had variations, where aspects of the whole were emphasized more so than the others, which reflected the nature of mana as a whole. Most wizards didn’t really bother with unbalanced mana types when casting, except for Alchemists dealing with relevant materials. When dealing with Spirits, on the other hand, the distinctions were very important. “I do remember a cult of Hate, though.”

Purz chuckled at the similarity. “...I remember that. That was a fire spirit, so maybe this Malice thing is less literal?”

“We can only hope.” Casimir said, seriously. “I don’t need to tell you how terrifying kobolds can be if they get the self control to stay quiet this long, or travel this far, so we need to get some serious dungeon delvers here to handle this.” Even Veterans could likely manage it if they were capable dungeoneers, if the kobold situation was only as bad as it appeared to be. Assuming Casimir helped them, of course.

The old Aviost nodded slowly, thinking through his options. “There’s a problem with that.” He admitted. “Over in the Bladespire mountains, there’s a new dungeon that was recently discovered.” In adventurer parlance, dungeons were basically any underground area that had a significant monster population. They’re usually discovered when a small army of them breaks out to wreak havoc on the surrounding area. “Filled to the brim with all kinds of monsters: goblins, ogres, undead, there are reports of dragons… it’s a big mess. Money is flowing like water into adventurer pockets over there.” The Bladespire mountains were a natural border between several nations. The mana flows naturally sharpened the local rocks, which when combined with the high winds made it utterly inhospitable to life unless you had a rather large amount of magic supporting your travels. The kind of bounties the Culdean League alone could post if threatened…

…Crap. Most adventurers willing to travel veteran rank and up will jump at that kind of chance. “Maybe the mage-knights…” For the same reason the guerilla tunnels were abandoned for long enough that the kobolds could set up shop, the modern military weren’t exactly conversant in underground operations. As an island nation, there were very few underground areas to speak of, and the ones that did were usually protected against monster formation just as a matter of course. If these were drakking or goblin caves, it wouldn’t be a big deal, but kobolds? Those knights will almost definitely need a lot of babysitting to not get overwhelmed by traps and ambushes.

“I’ll ask them.” Purz said. “You can’t attack a kobold warren with a conventional army, though. I’ll need you to scout the situation out more thoroughly, so they’ll be willing to send their best.” Yeah, Casimir expected that piece of bad news. It is what it is.

“Just make sure they send someone for the prisoner.” Casimir said as he patted the broken machine. “I have to finish off my classes, have the paperwork ready for an official reconnaissance quest when I come back in the afternoon, please.”

Purz sighed the sigh of the condemned. “I’ll get right on it, Elite Adventurer Toomes.” He walked towards his office, grumbling about the massive pile of steaming trouble Casimir dropped on him.

That makes two of us, old bird.

----------------

“Today is the final exam of Introductory Curse Magic.” Casimir began as he paced through the testing center, looking over his students. From his personal ones, to the various other associated headaches, and to the headaches belonging to other teachers. “By now, you should be able to cast all of the basic curses on command. As such, the final is simple: we will call you up, one at a time, and you will perform all twenty curses in the order we tell you to on one of these test animals.” Casimir patted the pig on the back, who snorted in response.

“I’d be careful with ‘em.” The test pig’s handler, a brown-haired man wearing leather overalls that were magically protected against muck and grime said with a wry grin. “If you screw up the curse, the pigs ain’t gonna like that. Watch your fingers.” The nervous looking kids became even more nervous.

Casimir waved off the warning on behalf of his students. “Now Hal, don’t go scaring them.” A good portion of the students calmed. “I’ll regrow any lost fingers, don’t you worry.” Even more students looked nervous at that news than before Casimir spoke.

“Professor Toomes!” Shouted Ruzum, always reliable when it came to pointing out when he was slacking. “If there are test animals, why did we not practice on them before?”

Casimir chuckled at the naive question. “It’s cheaper to get y’all to curse each other, that’s why.” Literally every curse wizard skilled enough to teach is capable of effective cursebreaking and healing magic, so a mistake extreme enough to cause serious damage among the students was unthinkable, especially when you consider the massive level of bookwork involved before you let them start casting. “But if you do screw up, you’re not hurting each other’s grades this way.” According to Master Southwind, there was a bit of a problem with some students trying to scam a passing grade by getting their partner to screw up back in the day, but that was before even Casimir’s time learning at the school. But she’s been teaching for sixty years, so she’s got plenty of such stories. Elves…

“Moving on, “ Casimir said, “First we’re going to do full body curses. That means Strengthen, Warmth, Invigorate, and Glow.” To make things fair, Casimir floods each pig’s system with foreign mana, making it so that the students that test first don’t have a disadvantage. All of those tricks to bypass that defense were only useful for combat cursing, anyway. If you wanted to make something permanent, you flooded the body with mana beforehand to ensure a stable environment to place the spell matrix.

This class took the final exam as a group with the other four classes on the subject. Between those five classes, there were three professors, four adjunct professors like Casimir, and the one tenured professor that’s in charge of the course, the esteemed Archmage Haverdasher.

As such, administering finals was a long and arduous process, even with a dozen extra proctors to help keep things moving. Call a name, instruct them to cast each of the curses in whatever random order you come up with, and after each one assess the quality of the curse. Once completed, dispel the curse and reset the pig’s system for the next curse. And that’s just for the full body curses. You have to repeat the whole process for the four other curse categories, for twenty total spells each student, and with one hundred students…

It’s exhausting. To make things even worse, as literally the only proctor that had training in combat casting, he was able to go through his parts of the test in a third of the time, meaning that Professor Haverdasher promptly just put even more student evaluations on Casimir’s plate.

There was one bit of fun on that end, however. “Peter Wood.” Casimir announced, and Peter sauntered up to the pig, oozing confidence in his performance.

“Right here, Teach!” He said, mana dancing in his hands. “What first? Hit me.”

How precious. He thinks he’s going to get the regular test. “Force curses first. All five.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “There’s only…” He looked at the evil grin on Casimir’s face. “Right.” In the amount of time it took half of the other students to cast one curse, Peter quickly cast a force curse in all of the tested categories: Strengthen, Bounce, Muffle, Weight, and the one not normally on this exam, Stability. That one lowers the center of gravity, making it very difficult to be knocked over.

The pig did not appreciate the stacked effects, but they didn’t cause a resistance reaction, so Casimir cleared it without trouble. “Mind curses.” Naturally, Peter was slower with mind mana than he was with force, but that’s true of most students in the school, given force mana’s primacy in the curriculum. Calm, Mind Shield, and Sharpen Sense were cast with the ease of long practice, but he couldn’t be blamed for not putting in much effort to master the full body Reflex curse or the auto-function Ignore curse. Still, his insistence on doing as much studying with mind mana as possible to allow him an excuse to spend time in Illivere’s presence was still worthwhile, so he was able to cast them without much trouble.

His work with life mana went just as smooth, all four of the required curses cast with ease and the bonus mana interaction curse, Sterilize, with only moderate difficulty. This was good, as the three mana types were collectively Casimir’s favorite ones to use. You couldn’t really heal most things without life mana; mind mana enabled so many new kinds of spells it made your head spin, although ironically making someone dizzy could be done in a few other ways than the Dizziness curse; he didn’t even need to go into why he liked force mana.

Of course, those three mana types represented eleven of the twenty exam curses, so the amount of practice he put in those was also understandable in that respect. Let’s see how he does with one of the other five mana types on the exam. “Light mana.” Casimir said next.

“Uh…” As expected, he locked up a bit. He did cast Glow and Blur after a pause, and then Sunsight, which is the curse that protects your eyes from flashes of light, and after another moment he remembered that Casimir did show him how to make pretty much any full body spell into a variable focus one, so made the glowing pig shine out a more focused light out of its snout, a bastardized Shine curse. “...I don’t know any auto-function light spells, Teach.” Peter admitted.

Casimir sighed. “Peter, the reason why these are considered basic spells is because the matrices are as simple as they get: mana type and effect type.” Time to see if he has what it takes to be considered a curse wizard instead of just a wannabe. “Think of the auto-function spells you do know, what they have in common, structure wise. Then, think about the nature of light mana, what those other spells have in common.” Peter nodded along with his lecture.

“Auto-function spells have a simple structure: If this happens, then the curse activates and does this. Trigger, effect.” Unless you could blend mana types in a single curse, there was some pretty severe limitations on what a curse could set as a trigger, as it had to be something that related to the mana type of the curse. Bounce took a normal force mana interaction and added more power to it, purge toxin could only act on toxins that affected you, etcetera. “This is what divides a wizard from a spirit mage. We cast our spells through understanding the mystical forces that dictate the natural world, and by creating the structures of spells, the magical effect happens not because we desire it to, but because that is the natural result of those conditions.” This was partly leaning into wizardly arrogance, as while it was theoretically possible for a perfectly designed and executed spell structure to create a spell when the wizard doesn’t know what it’s supposed to do, merely by following the casting instructions, in practice the wizard’s intent to create the effect smoothed over any mistakes in either the design or in the wizard’s recollection of the details. “You know light aspected mana, how to create it and shape it into a stable structure. You’ve learned many auto-function spells in the past. Your advanced spell project, Attune Senses, was created by way of adding auto-function and mana interaction components onto a variable focus spell.” Peter looked at the glowing pig, putting more thought into it. “You can do this.” Casimir said in encouragement.

“I can do this.” Peter repeated. First, he dissolved the other four curses he put on the pig. Smart move. Then, he gestured to where he had left his bag, and his slate jumped out of it into his hand. Casimir passed him a piece of chalk and he quickly sketched out the beginnings of a spell matrix. After a moment, he filled in a few bits, nodded to himself and started casting on the pig.

As expected from the spell matrix he drew, the pig suddenly looked very strange, as most things tended to have things like shading, and shadows. Instead, it looked more like a particularly terrible illusion, as the pig started glowing or darkening in exact proportion to the ambient light hitting it. Peter frowned at the result, clearly expecting something different.

“Ah, the Paintskin curse.” Casimir said, grinning. “It’s not remotely useful, as any benefit you could gain from it can be done better with a different kind of light curse, but it’s an auto-function curse nonetheless.” He gestured to some of his fellow proctors. “Making up a curse you’ve never seen before means you can call yourself a curse wizard with pride.”

Peter grinned at his achievement, an ear to ear smile at accomplishing something he wasn’t expected to be able to do until at least another whole semester passed. Casimir continued. “Now, fire mana.”

“Got it, Teach!” He said as Casimir cleared the pig’s system once more.

He didn’t manage to get five curses for every mana type, but he gave it a good try.