At some point, Kynos was about to turn eight.

Actually, Mithandra was about to turn eight and said to him, “It's annoying to have to decide another date, so your birthday will be on the same day.”

How unfair, but Kynos thought that birthdays didn't particularly matter. He had never celebrated one, as Axal was still eight himself.

Somehow, working behind the scenes, coercing adults left and right, Mithandra had managed to turn it into a big deal.

It turned out that Mithandra was born to wealthy nobles, which was to be expected from the non-magic class. Furthermore, she was an admiral's daughter, the admiral belonging to the largest island country to the east, which was the largest trade partner to Incanta. On top of that, she was the youngest sibling of a large family, which meant she did not have the lineage obligation of her eldest brother, or the marriage obligations of her two older sisters.

In short, she was rich, free of obligations, spoiled by her entire family, and a self-proclaimed genius.

Well, she was actually a genius though. She had long since surpassed the university level, and she spent a vast amount of each day holed up in a lab, researching who knows what. No one understood why she was wasting time in primary school, and no one had any idea what the word 'shota' that she kept giving enthusiastically as the reason meant.

She also revealed to Kynos that her mana was immeasurably large. In order to directly manipulate magic in or within the extreme vicinity of a person, a mage had to overcome a person's entire residual mana pool. Mages were able to offset the amount of mana consumed with more skilled magic manipulation, both on offense and defense, and generally used an attempt at intrusion as a measure of another person's mana.

It was why Kynos couldn't force Steve's shadow to move, and why most mages used mana to form phenomena instead of trying to exert control inside or near another person. Non-human races and monsters commonly had innate mana as well.

Mithandra, despite absolutely no affinity with any magic, even after extensive nature magic testing, could not be intruded by the most powerful mage in the school, Charlotte. As a matter of fact, she could not even be intruded on by the most powerful mage in Incanta's council. Even though it was regarded as a more or less useless trait, it could help somewhat against assassination. Also, it was celebrated just because it was extremely rare, to the point where no one currently alive should have as much as she did.

As Kynos thought, 'rare is better after all. Maybe if he could get his hands on a rare cake, the party would...' As if reading his mind, Mithandra dropped a bomb.

“Of course, if you come with me, you can bring Axal, as he's the son of one of our bigger trading partners, and there will be a giant cake with sweet fruits from the ocean you've never eaten before.”

It too good to be true. If he could get a giant cake on birthdays, he would remember to celebrate it every year...no, every month.

After a bit more convincing with some vivid descriptions of the cake she was presented last year, Mithandra convinced him to relent. They would be going to celebrate on the next break.