[*brrrrring!* Wake up! Time for class!]

[*brrrrring!* No for real.]

[*brrrrring!* Future me, I swear if you’re not up by now… we made these alarms for a reason!]

I groaned and rolled out on the last alarm, smacking myself with [Sunrise]. Another day, another set of classes. To practice!

“Abjuration is the fine art of protection. Any fool can grab a shield. Any idiot can throw up a barrier. Abjuration is so much more than that. Timings. Attack types. Reflections. Barrier load. There are thousands of aspects to protection, and while attacks might not be used that often, there is always demand for shields. Hence, our field of study.”

“Herbalism! The soft breeze carrying the scents of spring, the pure magic that can be unlocked with the right twig and crushed leaf. Let us discuss…

“Magical Botany is a tricky subject, requiring great attention to detail. Take the famous golden apple. Turns out, there are six! Each one only has a fraction of the powers credited to all of them, and…”

“Talismans have the benefit of being single-use items. That is to say, they can skip the entire set of runes required to make an array reusable. There are no considerations on material stress. They take a fraction of the time to write. We will begin with…”

“Golems are the peak of the magical world. Need workers? Need security? Anything you can get another person to do, you can just build your own golem instead!”

“Rituals get a bad rap. We will not be dragging virgins to an altar and slicing them open. No, rituals are a term for skills that require doing a bit more than simply activating them, that require additional reagents, and naturally take longer to cast. Can’t just think of using the skill! The benefits are skills that are stronger than they should be, and can have more power than simply your magic power stat. A common example would be…”

“Companions! This is the class for people who are already life-bonded with someone else. If you’re not bonded with someone, there’s a different class for that.”

“Brrrpt.” Auri laughed as a half-dozen people sheepishly got up and left.

“Right, now that’s done with, my name’s Ashala…”

“An array is a subtype of enchantment that multiple people can work on at once. Now, the exact difference between an enchantment and an array is hard to pinpoint. There isn’t a magical line where one is suddenly the other, it’s simply a way of denoting the largest, most complex enchantments.”

“I can teach you how to bottle fortune, harness luck, brew death and even stopper glory - if you have the patience and wit to follow. Potions. We begin.”

“Enchantments! This is a massive field, with hundreds of subspecialities. In this course, we’re going to get an overview of everything enchantments can do. Now, a basic wizard can make most enchantments, but proper [Enchanters] have additional skills to make their lives easier. One example would be….”

“There are tens of thousands of creatures all over the world, and Zoology is the study of them all! The major empires that we divide species into are Elvenoid, Magical, Intelligent Beast, Monster, Minimus, and Plant. Most of these names are self-explanatory. Minimus refers to all creatures too small for the System to grant classes. Within the Elvenoid grouping we have mortal and Immortal subcategories, and from there…”

“This is the medicine practical course. For those of you who are new, welcome! Here’s how things work: Every patient in this building is stable, that is to say, they are not at risk of dying before we get to them. As a group, we will round on each patient, and every one of you will examine them, determine what ails them, and what image you would form to properly heal them. We will then share that knowledge and information amongst ourselves, to better learn and improve. Now. Here is our first patient. Let us silently examine her together.”

I looked at the woman lying down on the bed. The fact that she looked slightly pudgy with full armor on suggested that she was a dullahan, and the blackened blast marks radiating from the stump of her left hand told a story of an experiment gone wrong.

It had been some time since I last needed to properly form an image, and I reveled in the chance and the novelty to think about medicine properly again. Gods, why had I ever stopped? This was a blast!

I ignored the little voice telling me I’d stopped because pre-working out my problems with [Persistent Casting] was what kept me alive more than once, and I rarely had the luxury of casually and slowly examining a single patient. Even when I did, I’d been so busy that slapping them with a heal and moving on had been the best use of my time.

Dedicated time to just heal?

Sign me up every quarter!

I had too many things I liked, and not enough hours in the day. Grrrrrrrr. Why couldn’t I get some fancy time-warping powers from the fae?

The first problem was that she was a dullahan, and not a human. My one comparative anatomy course had gone over the skull differences between all the different elvenoids, so I could at least manage to properly adapt that part of my knowledge.

The rest? I’d have to use human anatomy, and eat the efficiency penalty twice over. Once on the poor image, and a second time on my healing being primarily human-focused, with elvenoids being secondary to my skillset.

Reconstructing the hand was almost the easy part. The trick was the dozens of tiny little bones in the wrist that I wasn’t sure of the status of. How many were intact? How many had gotten blown off? Which ones were cracked and broken, and needed an image of piecing them back together, instead of a restoring image?

Were there any shattered bones? Bone fragments lodged in random places that needed to be removed? The blast seemed to have been centered on her hand, which likely drove fragments into her arm.

Ouch.

Each question, each detail that I could answer, would improve my image and my efficiency.

Then there was the alien part of the problem, her armor. What was it made out of? The context clues I’d gathered implied that dullahans had different types of metal armors, and the metal mattered. I was fairly certain that my healing would extend towards fixing her… skin? up, but I just didn’t know.

Then there was how to fix it. Humans, as a rule, didn’t have skin after it was exposed to a large explosion. Our patient did, with blackened, charred parts to show for it.

I had to wonder what happened to her organs and bones. Was the armor protective, or did it pass the concussive shock through her system? Was there internal bleeding?

Well, I could answer that one. There wasn’t any internal bleeding now. She was stable, protected in the hospital environment and whatever skills the people running the place had, on top of being within my own personal rapid-heal aura. Additionally, I couldn’t believe that anyone would risk someone bleeding out just for some students to get a lesson. While a concussive blast like the one she went through might cause internal bleeding, I knew she didn’t have any now. One more piece of the puzzle completed!

Damaged, bruised, or lacerated organs were a risk though, and any image I had would need to take that into account.

“Elaine in the purple robe, would you like to start us off?”

I started and did a double-take, before remembering my blasted manuscripts were my own undoing on the name thing. I gave a resigned sigh, but happily started narrating my thoughts on the matter.

“The obvious injury is to the patient’s hand, likely due to an explosive going off that the patient was holding onto. From there, the most serious injuries are to her hand, with numerous secondary to…”

The nice thing about sharing like this?

I got to find out how dullahan armor worked, and the proper image needed to fix it.

Teamwork away!

“Basic geography. We know the world is a sphere, a spinning marble on the vast tapestry of space. There are two continents, one northern, one southern. We live on the southern continent - well, when we’re not on the island, at least - as you can see here on this map. The world is split into a number of nations…”

“Today we will be discussing sympathy! Occasionally it’s called voodoo, but sympathy is the proper name for the field.”

I pushed the pair of sticks on my desk off to the side, hoping for a practical lesson later, but needing the writing room now.

“To start, I want to discuss the three major types of magic, to better understand where sympathy lands. There is sorcery, sympathy, and wizardry.”

I took dutiful notes.

“Speed. Flexibility. Power. Pick any two, and you get one of the major magical disciplines.” The professor twirled his hand, words appearing behind him, three overlapping circles wrapping up two of the three words.

“Speed. Power. That is sorcery, the System-granted skills that you’re able to immediately fire off with a thought.” He explained.

“Flexibility. Power. That is wizardry. Drawing mandalas and preparing spells is slow work, and I’m not even going to touch the education requirements. Needless to say, nothing in wizardry happens particularly quickly, or at least without significant preparation time.”

I nodded. How many hours had I spent just to cast a single rune? Jiwa was easy mode to boot.

“Lastly is sympathy. Flexibility. Speed. This branch of magic is one of the weakest, but it makes up for it by being whatever you need, whenever you need it. Imagination is critical, as well as having a ready source of fuel.”

He hesitated a moment, and plowed on.

“Some of the professors hem and haw at what’s suitable to teach students. Bah! You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have gumption and grit! In an emergency, your own body heat and fat are an easy, abundant source of fuel. You can easily kill yourself, but it beats getting killed.”

My mind raced at all the possibilities.

Fire was an easy, obvious answer. A Fire mage would have near endless energy to use as fuel.

“With sympathy, as you impact one object, a second object is also impacted. Like so.”

The professor picked up one of the two sticks in front of him, and threw one up in the air, where it hovered in place. He took the second stick, and showed the entire class the stick in his hand.

He then broke the stick with his hands, and high up in the air, the second stick broke in the exact same spot.

I narrowed my eyes to get a better view.

It had broken in the exact same way.

“Now, let us talk about the basic sympathy construct, and the needed ingredients. Link. Image. Action.” The professor drew the three words in front of him, and I made sure I had plenty of space on my paper to take notes on each one.

“Like begets like! The worse the link, the greater the distance involved, and the worse the energy transfer will be.” He explained. “A stick broken in half is nearly perfect with each other, while a dustball and a sword share nearly nothing in common. Attempting sympathy with the second will result in a headache at best.”

My quill continued to take notes.

“Then you have to imagine what you’re doing to both objects. Also, the better you imagine how the two objects are alike, the better your efficiency.”

He waited a moment for quills to stop scratching on paper.

“Lastly, you have to act on the pieces in question.”

A student’s hand shot up.

“From what you’re saying, it’ll always be easier to just impact the object you want to affect directly, instead of going the sympathetic route?”

I almost did a double-take at the question, noting the student. He was sharp. I hadn’t picked up on that!

The professor nodded.

“Exactly! Which naturally begs the question, why study sympathy at all?”

He grinned and tapped the side of his head.

“You’ll have to use your imagination to solve that one! If you can’t figure out a reason to use it, then you lack the proper imagination to be good at it.”

At the end of the lecture, I was staring at the stick in my hand, trying to form the proper image.

The two sticks were one. The same thing. What I did to one wouldn’t happen to the other, no. I was simply impacting both at the same time.

I was strong enough to snap the stick easily. I took it slowly though, steadily ramping up the amount of strength I was using to get a good feel for how hard sympathy was.

And ramping up.

I gritted my teeth and really leaned into it, applying the full force of my strength to the task. The sticks finally snapped, and I sagged with relief.

I only gave myself a brief moment to pause, before narrowing my eyes at the deceptively hard-to-snap stick. Experimentally, without using [Dabble], I tried to snap the half of the stick again.

It barely took a thought.

I was no expert, but that must’ve been what, 30, 40 times as easy to break the stick without sympathy?

I suspected my abysmally weak [Dabble] skill stretching itself into yet another school was responsible, but I was unimpressed.

The school of magic had potential, but I was getting stretched thin.

“Astronomy! We’re mostly a fun class, watching the other planets. Great for working on your [Celestial Affinity] skill, or getting a [Stargazer] class! Ok, a bit unusually, what we can do is entirely dependent on the island’s schedule. I believe we’re due for a nice set of nighttime classes halfway through the quarter, but until then, this class is more on the academic side.”

I wanted to collapse after another exhausting day of non-stop material. Instead, I dragged myself over to my desk.

“I need to study…” I had a pounding headache that no amount of healing was fixing. Just sheer brain overload.

“Brrrpt? BRPT!”

“Wait, yeah. I gotta cut down on classes!” I perked up a bit at that. “And if I cut a class, it means I don’t need to study for it.”

“Brrrrpt.” Auri was smug with her contribution.

I looked at my schedule, and at the two dozen classes on it.

“Ok my little genius, how do I do this?” Thinking hurt, and Auri was smart and capable. I trusted that her advice would get me thinking in a good direction, if nothing else.

“Brrrrrrrpt! BRPT.”

“A ranked list! Perfect! And yes, the companion class is TOTALLY staying.” It was one class that both Auri and I had ‘together’, some time to play and learn from professor Ashala.

Wizardry quickly made the cut, along with my Medicine class. Enchanting went on the list, while I ditched Talismans and Rituals. Arrays ended up in the middle of the list, but it shared the same time slot with golems, also in the middle. That would be tricky.

Sympathy ended up near the bottom of the middle section. I was enjoying it, but it wasn’t lighting up my life. Between wizardry and sorcery, I had everything covered, I didn’t need a third school of magic.

Biomancy easily made the cut, divination being terrible. I decided to group herbalism, potions, and magical botany together, the three courses being synergistic, but then I’d be eating into Enchanting.

Astronomy died a quiet death. I was always able to see the night sky on my own, and the Observatory was open often enough. I could self-study it another quarter.

In the end, my major conflict was between the ‘potioneering’ branch of study, and the ‘enchanting’ branch of study. I could pick one or the other, and by memory, both were long tracks, filled with optional courses, side-studies, and little tricks and quirks.

Did I want to focus on making potions, or learn how to properly enchant a sword?

A review of my notes, and my prior desires, made the answer blindingly clear.

My [Runic Scribing] skill was basic, as simple as they got. Wizardry, and the offshoot fields, enchanting, talismans, arrays, and the like, were all about that simple skill. Dedicated wizardry classes or enchanting classes had the skill as their premier skill, and the remaining skill slots were support skills.

Like when I’d seen the professor generate a huge chunk of wizardry in the middle of his demonstration - it was a support skill to the main skill.

It was similar to how [Radiance Conjuration] was my main sorcery skill, with [Nectar] and [Solar Corona] being support skills, or how Artemis had [Earth Manipulation] as her primary skill. I didn’t need support skills, but they made life a heck of a lot easier.

I could get away with just [Runic Scribing], and not have a single shortcut. I could enchant swords, needing to manually engrave every rune. I could cast spells, having no skills to help me remember runes, or to smooth or speed up my writing. It would be hard.

But I could do it.

Potions, on the other hand, would require a full, dedicated class to them. I’d need to evolve [Student of the Ages] into an [Alchemist] variant, and I had to admit, there was some minor synergy between my classes and [Alchemist]. Notably, I was entirely immune to fumes, accidental poisonings and the like, while my Radiance magic and control would let me perfectly heat cauldrons up.

It would be a ton of work and expenses, and I was still hoping to get a hobby class for my third class once I’d figured it out.

Cultivation fit, although I still needed to go do some research on what the catch was, and why everyone wasn’t a cultivator. Problem was time. I had my hands full already just keeping up with everything, and researching higher priority items.

The class itself could tell me what the catch was, and if there wasn’t?

Well, I didn’t have a good cultivation starting class, however, I knew I could direct a class I’d taken in that direction, and side-step into it. Like, if I somehow hit my head and took [Paragon of Patience], at level 32, assuming I did the right things while leveling up the class, I could get a class like [Cultivating Patience], and work from there.

Magical Botany made the cut purely because of [Snapdragon]. It was on my shortlist of classes to take, and I wanted to know more about plants before making a decision.

With that worked out, the rest of my classes fell into place, Sympathy squeezing into an open slot, and I had a schedule.

Companion class

Comparative Anatomy

Practical Medicine

Introduction to Wizardry

Introduction to Biomancy

Introduction to Enchanting

Introduction to Arrays

Magical Botany

Introduction to Abjuration

Cultivation

Zoology

Basic geography

Sympathy

12 classes. Not the worst, and I even got a couple of two-hour windows opened up throughout the week! That should dramatically help depressurize things, and give me a few chances to eat food at normal times, and get some studying in so it wasn’t all last second cramming at the end of the day, or sneaking in some time when the library was quiet.

“Does this look good to you Auri?” I asked my little pyro.

She tilted her head at the list.

“Brrrpt?”

“I want to improve my shield down the line, and it links back to wizardry.”

“Brpt.”

“I think it’s fine.”

“BRPT!”

“Alright, alright, I’ll remove sympathy.”

“Brrrpt.”

Happy that she’d ‘helped’ me along, Auri fluffed up in her little ‘nest’ she’d made on my desk. One of my top priorities, even before a second set of clothes, was to get her a better nest.

Gods, Auri was the best thing that ever happened to me. My little light in the darkness.

My only friend here.

I stripped, having no pajamas to change into, flopping onto the hard mattress with the thin sheets.

Gods.

I was exactly where I wanted to be, having the time of my life.

Keeping busy.

Keeping myself distracted.

I wasn’t quite tired enough to simply pass out, instead my treacherous brain reminding me of my old, soft bed.

The bed I’d grown up with, shared with my parents in our small home.

The sheets I’d wrapped myself up with in the Argo, the Ranger’s wagon. I’d never asked the story of the Ranger who’d briefly been on their team and died, whose equipment I’d used. It was too morbid, I didn’t want to know.

Now everyone was dead. Everyone except a few people, of which only Auri was here.

I turned over, facing the wall as I wept, my brain once again betraying me in numerous ways.

Focus on Auri.

Focus on my light.