Four months ago.

“Sir, the members of the faculty have submitted a request for us to consider,” Richard said as he entered the headmaster’s office without knocking. “They wish to make certain changes and additions to the semestral test.”

The man waved an official petition. Lord of Steel took a glance at it and read the content. He also made note of the twenty-seven signatures below the request.

The ancient man with a youthful appearance smirked.

“Who’s the worst student of the class?” he asked.

“Barbara Charter, followed by Annabelle Didot,” Richard replied calmly.

“Charters, hmmm…” Lord of Steel mused exaggeratedly, causing Richard to roll his eyes. “They aren’t complete bastards, while the current head of the Didots is a scum of the earth,” he paused.

“Well, I guess the Charter girl’s luck is just that horrible,” he said after a moment. “Fine, let them do what they want, but since this is a precedent, make sure we add it to the rules as something we can invoke whenever we need it. That would be all Dick.”

“It’s Richard, Sir,” Richard said automatically before nodding and leaving to handle things.

“Sir, what if the boy gets kicked out of the class?” the secretary asked just before opening the door.

“Dick, he’s at least of the Sixth Order. If he can’t have a perfect score, he should leave on his own.”

“It’s Richard, Sir,” Richard said and left the office.

As for Lord of Steel, the man smirked in his chair. He wondered how many people he’ll knock out of Mage Academy using this new tool they’d given him.

***

Present day

Who’s constantly scrying on me? Wolf wondered grumpily. They’ve been observing me on all four tests. Are they making sure I don’t cheat? Dumbass nobles…

Wolf had finished his fourth exam. This one took the longest, about an hour. The stack of papers he submitted was almost as thick as the book from which the test was from. After he’d slammed his answers on the professor’s desk the youth went outside. He stretched his back and rotated his wrists, as if he’d done the writing for the past four exams himself.

Wolf wanted to teach the rest of his group Invisible Scribe, a Third Order spell that could transcribe thoughts on a smooth surface at a rate of twenty-five hundred words per minute.

Ink and paper or parchment were required for the spell, but it didn’t need a quill. The spell wasn’t in any way inferior to the magical quill that the nobles used for the exam. Quite the contrary, it didn’t have the physical restrictions of a quill scratching on paper.

Much to Wolf’s surprise, nobody wanted to learn the spell. All four of them had magical quills, and they thought learning a spell that performed slightly better was a waste of their valuable time. They weren’t even certain they’d manage to learn a Third Order spell in the ten days before the exam.

Wolf sat down in the hallway outside the classroom, thinking how silly his friends were for not wanting to learn such a useful spell. A spell he himself used to scoff at when he was younger, doubting his father’s wise words.

Wolf sat, patiently waiting for his friends to come out. The four of them, just like every other normal student, stayed inside all the way until the end. Everyone left only once the professor took their papers.

As soon as they got outside, Wolf saw they were nervous. Anna, who was the most nervous one in the group, approached him and whispered. “Wolf, the professor was reading your answers, and he had a really nasty look when he was collecting our papers.”

Wolf didn’t find it strange. For starters, he’d submitted close to one hundred thousand words written in diminutive handwriting just to screw with the examiner. He’d also used references from a lot of other books which were part of the curriculum, citing even the page and the paragraph he’d used.

He did this because he’d realized that this was how you returned pettiness to petty people. Now the little scammer that tried to screw him over can spend a couple of days deciphering his paper.

Some questions in the exam were identical to the ones his friends had asked him. To them, Wolf provided as on the point answers as possible, unless they wanted to know more. The examiner, on the other hand, got layers of double meanings, a few of them even open insults if the man read them the right way.

After a moment of silence and of Wolf enjoying his petty triumph, everyone started chatting about how well they had performed and how many questions they answered.

As expected, Barbara had answered the fewest questions out of the five of them.

But hearing people outside their group gloomily complain about their answers made the young woman immediately cheer up.

Thankfully, she’d joined Anna’s study group. Otherwise she would’ve been the one kicked out of the elite class and that would’ve been the end of her freedom.

Barbara smiled brightly. Wolf couldn’t see a hint of the grumpy girl had originally met.

“Guys, thank you very much for helping me prepare for this exam. How about I take you out for some sweets in a gelateria I know?” she offered, practically singing.

“How about we go tomorrow?” Matilda squeaked. “It’s getting late and we might get into trouble if we miss the curfew.”

Naturally, everyone agreed. Barbara promised to treat everyone to lunch and sweets tomorrow as they split, two going to the men's dorm, three going to the women’s.

***

While the youths chatted about ice cream and made plans for lunch tomorrow, adults were busy with their own affairs.

In his office, the headmaster and his secretary were using a scrying mirror to observe what was going on with Wolf during the test as well as what was happening with his paper once he’d left the room.

The man noticed what Wolf had done with the book references and layered meanings of his answers. The matter elicited a chuckle from him and eased his suspicion that Wolf wasn’t really a child. A grown man wouldn’t have bothered with such nonsense.

“I underestimated him,” Lord of Steel finally said. “The speed at which he reads, processes information and comes up with answers is on par with a Mage of at least Eighth Order. That’s already way above the level I was at when I was his age.”

The man tapped his nails on the desk for a moment.

“What do you think is the true extent of his power?” the headmaster asked his secretary.

“Sir, is it possible that some other race planted him here? True-Namers that know the True Name of Soul can in theory switch bodies and possess other people or corpses.” Richard said with a serious frown.

“Don’t go spewing nonsense, Dick,” Headmaster said offhandedly.

“It’s Richard, Sir.” Richard said mechanically, only to get ignored once more.

Headmaster Smith continued talking, as if no disturbance ever happened. “Even if we ignore the existence of the Emperor. True-Namers that know the True Name of Soul would only do something like that if they were dying.

“Using the dark art of possession permanently halts their progress on the path of True-Naming. Not to mention that the bodies they inhabit tend to decompose quickly, eroding their souls at the same time. Nobody would use such drastic means to spy on an academy that yielded no significant result in the past couple of decades.” However, even as he said this, headmaster Smith paused for another moment before continuing.

“But I keep having this feeling that something’s off about him. Did you run a background check on him like I asked?” the man asked and eyed Richard seriously.

“Neither you nor I could divine his past or future,” Richard said, all business. “I used Pastsight to follow in his footsteps, but even that information is sketchy. I know he has two alter egos in the city. One he has used to feed the city’s beggars ever since he had come into the city. The other he has used to help out a small-time local merchant and some trivial settlement in the wilderness. However, doing a detailed check like this would take years.”

“What are the chances of noble houses getting this information?” Headmaster Smith asked, but didn’t seem worried.

“Well Sir, unless someone is as idle as you are, and can afford to send a First Order True-Namer to check into the background of a twelve-year-old beggar, their chances are about the same as morning frost in the fiery depths of hells,” Richard said flatly, trashing his boss while he was at it.

The boss, however, didn’t give a damn about the critique.

“Then it’s fine,” he said leisurely, then began shouting excitedly. “Look! Look at that bastard! He wants to destroy the boy’s paper!”

He then chuckled and a clay disk appeared in his hand. He loved this kind of entertainment.

“Professor Al Bayan, what do you think you are doing?” the headmaster said sharply. He was a master of sharp words, sharp speech and sharpness in general.

The professor in the scrying mirror jumped immediately when he heard those words from his pocket. After patting his robe a bit, he fished out the Far Voice from his pocket.

“N-Nothing Sir! Just a small attempt at practical humor! Haha,” the professor said while sweating.

After issuing the warning, Lord of Steel had seemingly forgotten about the man in the mirror and once more focused on Wolf. “I’ve never sensed malicious intent from him, nor do I have any feeling of future threat when I look at him. My gut tells me he won’t hurt us. Did you find out his last name by any chance?”

Richard shook his head. “Unfortunately no. He never introduced himself in the scenes I had seen. The only thing that could be a clue is that he regularly has meals with an insane beggar. I tried questioning the man, but got nothing but mad ramblings and nonsense. When I checked what had happened in the alley in the past, that Wolf boy had stumbled upon the man years ago and took pity on him and, for some unknown reason, he decided to feed him once a week.”

Lord of Steel nodded absentmindedly.

“He’s got so much potential... Just imagine it. He could be the first ever Edict-Maker in recorded history. Oh well, if he kills us, he kills us. I want to see this through! Just imagine, remaking the laws of the world in whichever way you see fit,” Headmaster said with a somewhat deranged giggle of his own.

His secretary, however, sighed helplessly. The old man really was utterly insane. It was better to talk about something else and not think about the principal’s state of mind. “Sir, I’ve caught wind that a group of nobles is hatching a proper plan to get rid of the boy.”

The headmaster waved this information off with his hand. “Let them. I can bet that they are preparing an assassination plan for a Fifth Order Mage. Maybe Sixth, if they have some truly paranoid bastards in their midst. I bet that the looks on their faces when their elaborate plans result in loss of money and retainers would be priceless to see. Unfortunately, I’m not that idle. I don’t have the time to scry on them all the time.”

“You are idle Sir, just look at what you are doing now.” Richard said flatly to his boss.

“I’m auditing my employees while simultaneously checking the test quality, and protecting the student body from fraud. I’m doing at least three jobs at the same time. How is that being idle?” the headmaster asked, trying to look hurt by this groundless slander.

“Sir, don’t try and use such flimsy acting on me. Even eighty years ago I wouldn’t have fallen for it, let alone now,” Richard said, looking down at the still sitting headmaster.

Surprisingly, Lord of Steel sulked. “You’re no fun. Your father was much more interesting.”

“Sir, my granduncle was your previous secretary,” Richard corrected. “I know you've been getting on in years, but forgetting your attendants is really poor taste…”

***

“Mmmm! This is so tasty!” Anna exclaimed after taking a spoonful of ice cream. “Your family owns this place, right Barbara?”

“That’s right!” Barbara said proudly. “A century ago, my grandfather hired a talented ice Mage after they expelled her from the Mage Academy. As a side project, she modified the cooling boxes and made freezing boxes magic items. She earned him a fortune that way, and it allowed our chef to come up with this tasty treat!”

“I don’t like that term ‘expelled’.” Anna said with a long face.

She knew that one day she would share the title of a dropout.

“Only a handful of people graduate from the academy anyways. The minimum requirement to graduate is to reach the level of a Tenth Order Mage. The rest are forced to leave or they stay on campus as staff and academy faculty. They toil away for the chance to listen in on the advanced classes, hoping they get to become nobles in their own power.” Matilda tried to soothe her friend in that squeaky voice of hers while Wayde nodded his head in agreement.

“Their requirements are unreasonable for most people,” he said, then pointed towards Wolf with a spoon full of ice cream. “On the other hand, I bet this monster here will graduate before he’s thirty, at half the maximum age!”

Wolf laughed at the jibe.

“I saw the maximum age for each Order table in the Mage Academy rules,” Wolf said seriously. “It’s kind of silly, if you ask me. Why would anyone need five years to advance their Order?”

Four sets of eyes silently gazed at the offender.

Barbara was the first to recover and say something. “You know, a lot of people worked really hard to push it up to five years per Order. I’ve heard that once upon a time the deadline was three years per Order and it started at fifteen, not eighteen. Back then, there were very few graduates. You had to become an Archmage before forty to qualify for graduation—”

“There are too many Mages,” Wolf muttered, apparently unaware of the atmosphere, interrupting Barbara’s soliloquy.

However, he couldn’t help but feel reluctant about calling all those people Mages.

“Not really.” Barbara shook her head, surprisingly not offended by the rude interruption. “Most dropouts reach the Third and Fourth Order. Those take on artificing, scroll scribing and alchemy.”

Then she continued after a slight pause. “Well, assuming they have the knack for it. The ones who don’t work as the cheapest tutors for merchant households and are considered hedge wizards by all other Mages. The higher Order Mages either take up military careers or teaching positions at the Mage Academy.”

“What’s the benefit of graduating?” Wolf asked suddenly.

He could graduate now if he wanted, so he might as well ask what the benefits were. Not that anything could tempt him from ignoring his father’s wish. Besides, he’d found the student life quite amusing.

“Only a Mage with a degree can be recognized as a noble just because of reaching the required Order. As far as I know, that’s the only benefit.” Barbara offered. “So, if you’re kicked out as a Ninth Order Mage, nobody is obliged to hand you a title unless you earn it through other means.”

“Do any Mages really care about a title though?” Wolf asked with a smirk.

“Well, no. Actually, it’s their families that benefit from this. Most Archmages and True-Namers with a degree stay holed up at the Mage Academy or at the Duke’s palace. But helping your family is very important!” Barbara explained, firmly believing her proper words.

“All right, all right. Does anyone know when the results will be out?” Wolf changed the subject, not caring about Barbara’s point.

He had no family and, given his condition, it was bound to stay that way.

Barbara harrumphed, her patience finally running out.

Luckily, Wayde answered seriously. “Several weeks, probably. The next exam is in seventeen weeks, then we get the semester end break. The test will be a measurement of our Soul Force. I don’t know the exact details.”

“I heard there is only a pass and a fail in the test. I don’t know how they set the difficulty,” Matilda added in a whisper.

“Four months? In that case, I’ll be seeing all of you in twelve to fourteen weeks. I have a mission with my name on it!” With that Wolf ran away.

“Better think of it as three and a half months!” Wayde prudently shouted after Wolf, who ran off as soon as he finished his ice cream.

“That boy seriously lacks manners,” Anna muttered.

Anyone looking from the side would’ve thought that Wolf had pulled a dine and dash.

“He’s already taking missions?” Barbara asked.

Everyone in the class knew it, save for the girl skipping almost as much as Wolf was.

“This should be his third. As far as I know, he took some of the toughest missions available.” Anna said with a hint of admiration.

“I heard a rumor that he turned in more than a hundred heads after his last mission,” Matilda squeaked out.

Her words sparked the girls to gossip. As he felt ignored, Wayde could tell that the girls, including Anna, greatly admired Wolf. It was no wonder. He was talented, knowledgeable, and very powerful in the real world. Wayde thought that Wolf’s strength was probably comparable to most twenty-year-olds from the Mage Academy.

Wayde sighed. He felt envious, but knew there was no point. He just had to do his best and maintain the relationship he had with Wolf. Wolf was his ally, which was something Wayde was sorely lacking at the moment, and having a fight with him over a mostly disinterested and completely biased woman wasn’t worth it.