The moment Wolf started sending Soul Force into the Spell Formation he realized something about this test. The upper limit for the flow of Soul Force was higher than his maximum output, or maybe this restriction didn’t have any limits for the amount of Soul Force it could receive at any given moment.

This meant that there was no way for him to overload the Spell Formation simply by releasing a violent burst of Soul Force. Since such a cheat was unavailable, Wolf slowed down his output to a half and just waited for the Spell Formation to crack.

A minute went by. Wolf was certain that he’d poured more than enough Soul Force to prepare three Fifth Order spells. Seeing that this apparently wasn’t enough, Wolf unleashed his Soul Force unreservedly.

He fed the Spell Formation enough Soul Force to prepare three Sixth Order spells, Seventh, Eighth…

Minutes trickled by, and soon enough Wolf had poured enough Soul Force to prepare three Tenth Order spells.

How could this be a test for a Fourth Order Mage? he wondered. This level of difficulty should be impossible for them!

For a moment, Wolf naively felt respect for his peers, but then came to a more obvious and sinister explanation.

***

Professor Sukhumvit watched as the urchin before him frowned and veins bulged on his forehead before a minute had passed.

The man tried to fight it, but in the end couldn’t help smiling. They were finally going to get rid of the damn sewer rat.

It was ironic. Thanks to this urchin, the elite class this semester had the best pass rate in the last fifty years. Just thinking about it made the man’s smile widen.

However, as minutes passed, the smile and the feeling of superiority disappeared.

The Spell Formation’s deep purple ink steadily grew lighter and lighter and even started giving off a faint glow. At this rate, the runt was going to finish the test before half the time was up.

Sukhumvit wondered how to undermine the youth, but there was nothing he could do without suffering a penalty. He was aware of the scrying sensor above his head and the fact that Headmaster wanted to see the boy fail as long as it was within the rules.

Then the young man’s eyes shot open. That cold, piercing gaze made professor Sukhumvit’s skin crawl.

*Ting*

With a light sound of glass cracking, the restriction shattered and the glowing runes turned into bright dust.

I’m only slightly faster than him when unraveling a Sixth Order restriction. Does that mean he’s a Sixth Order Mage already? the professor wondered.

As for Wolf, the sudden widening of the man’s pupils was all the proof he needed to know that the old fart had tampered with his test.

***

Richard had a fairly similar expression as that old fart, who was less than a third of his age. He gaped at the scrying mirror’s projection with a slack jaw.

“Sir?” he asked in a hollow voice.

How much time would I need to break that restriction? Richard wondered, If he did it in just a tad over ten minutes, then…

Richard silently waited for the Lord of Steel to say something, but the man remained silent. The secretary finally looked at his boss and for the first time in years he saw that the old man was making a genuinely serious face.

“Sir?” he asked again.

“Oh, sorry, I was thinking about something,” Lord of Steel said absentmindedly. “Yes, the boy should be around the Fourteenth Order. Assuming he held nothing back—”

“Sir, that means he’s a graduate. We have a twelve year old graduate!” Richard blurted out in disbelief, at the same time avoiding the subject of the restriction’s difficulty.

“Wrong! He’s still a student, and will remain one until he publicly proves to be an Archmage. And these buffoons are trying to bully him. A True-Namer. Hilarious! This will be more entertaining than watching a show at the theater!” Headmaster laughed heartily and slapped his thigh in amusement.

Hearing such an obvious opening, Richard’s instincts took over. “Sir, you haven’t visited the theater once since the day I became your assistant seventy-eight years ago.”

Seeing his boss’s confused face and watching him fumble for words felt extremely satisfying.

“Anyway, shouldn’t we just stop this farce, give the boy his degree, and send him on his merry way?” Richard asked, helping the headmaster out of the pit he’d dug himself.

“No way. Like I said, he hasn't graduated yet,” Lord of Steel refused adamantly. “The world has to acknowledge him as an Archmage for him to get the paper. Besides, I need him to cull the bastards and bitches I can’t touch because of the limitations of my office.”

Lord of Steel paused for a moment.

“That reminds me, your family are Marquesses, right? What do you think, have the people you left in charge sent an assassin after him?” Headmaster jabbed at Richard jokingly. Richard, on the other hand, paled when he’d heard the question.

“They wouldn’t dare,” Richard started confidently, but then faltered for words and his speech grew quieter. “There shouldn’t be anyone that stupid in my household. At least among the people managing it. Maybe I ought to check...”

Finally, he mumbled a couple more words before his body turned into mist and disappeared through the window at the speed of a hurricane force wind.

“Slow down, Lord of Wind,” the headmaster yelled after him, still laughing. “Hahaha, that would be so funny. I can just imagine that headline, ‘Richard Alexandria puts Alexandria family’s council of elders to the sword’, brilliant!”

Headmaster slowly calmed down and wiped the tear from his eye. While he found it extremely funny, in reality, he would be quite sad if something really happened with Alexander’s family. The man was Smith’s long dead friend and a former benefactor.

More importantly, Alexander had the foresight to come up with the inheritance and power distribution which ensured his house wouldn’t stray from the right path as long as they abided by his wishes.

***

“Professor, I’ve made an advancement and I believe I should publicly advance my Mage Order. How exactly should I go about doing that?” Wolf asked, trying to look innocent.

Professor Sukhumvit’s face was dark as he witnessed the horrible acting.

Besides, things were getting troublesome. A genius who had reached the Fourth Order at the age of twelve was a lot less threatening than a genius who had reached the Fifth Order at the age of thirteen. And he had a nagging feeling this youth may have even reached the Sixth Order, which was preposterous.

I have to let Uncle know this boy is a bigger thorn than he’d thought, professor Sukhumvit noted, wondering whether he should remove himself from this power struggle.

His house wasn’t in immediate danger. The only reason he got involved was because his maternal uncle and his children could lose their noble rank.

Unfortunately, it was too late for such thoughts. Wolf had already committed his face to memory.

“Congratulations. You should head to the Student Dean’s office,” he said, trying to sound polite, and Wolf politely thanked him.

As Wolf walked over towards the Student Dean’s office to report his new official Order he inwardly grumbled.

These small-minded people and their petty little plots and games are getting annoying, he thought. Father loved and respected this institution and now it’s crawling with vermin.

As Wolf mulled this, he’d decided that, as the filial son he was, he should do his best to keep the academy clean and proper.

For starters, he would keep an eye out for all these shady characters who made the Mage Academy an ugly place. Then, once he was powerful enough, he would cut out this tumorous corruption with a single decisive slash.

Contemplating a future bloodbath, Wolf entered the Dean’s office. There he demonstrated Walk Unseen, a Fifth Order spell which turned a person invisible for several dozen seconds. After filling out some paperwork, Wolf officially became a Fifth Order Mage.

The Dean politely reminded Wolf that because of the Mage Academy rules, he’d earned a bonus of two thousand Academic Credits, bringing his total to slightly over twenty-five hundred Academic Credits.

This was no small amount of wealth. You could sell an Academic Credit for ten gold pieces, or purchase items Mage Academy sold exclusively for Academic Credits.

Long time ago students could buy them for thirty gold a piece, but as soon as he’d stepped into the office Headmaster Smith changed it to one hundred gold pieces per Academic Credit. It was easy to see that the headmaster was fleecing idle nobles. He faced sharp criticism, but didn’t care one bit. He explained how Mage Academy could use those funds to issue more missions for the good of the state and hire additional staff.

And to be fair, most of the missions for Mage Academy students were for the good of the empire, issued by the state and funded by the Mage Academy.

However, there were exceptions in the form of privately issued missions. For instance, Wolf’s previous “suicide” mission.

It cost an arm and a leg to privately commission Mage Academy students and even the obscenely rich did so rarely. If you really wanted something handled urgently in your territory, you hired mercenaries, or increased the reward of an existing state issued request, making it more profitable and appealing to students.

Students rarely got direct “donations” the way Wolf did on his last mission. And now, with his accumulated wealth, it was about time he started spending it.

Wolf had no intention of cashing in his Academic Credits, so he went to visit the Mage Academy’s store.

Just like the Alchemists’ Guild, Mage Academy had its own shop. There, they sold anything students might need, as well as excess goods students brought from their missions.

Since the end of semester exams were taking place for all the classes, the store was bustling with students looking to do some last-minute purchases, either to advance the power of their soul, or directly increase their Mage Order if they believed they had already mastered a spell, but lacked the Mind Hall scroll to cast it. This was something common for most Mages, but Wolf had never experienced it, and considering his Order, he never will.

There were over two dozen attendants, but all of them were busy. They scanned the crowd for students with the nobles’ arrogant air and approached them, hoping they were big spenders.

The clerks, who worked on commission, ignored Wolf because of his diminutive stature and the lack of haughty air.

Wolf didn’t mind being ignored. He was amused watching attendants dancing around their customers, doing everything in their power to secure a sell.

Smartly dressed, handsome men twirled around the female students, complimenting their good taste, while well proportioned, pretty women tried their luck as they flashed charming smiles at the male students.

Students without attendants, like Wolf, could either browse the selected items in display cases, or go through the apple-wood tablets, which had the complete index of items Mage Academy had in stock.

As Wolf walked around the store, he saw a section with Monster Cores. His heart raced, and he ran over to the tablet to check what Mage Academy had in stock.

The youth grinned when he saw that Mage Academy actually had Tenth Order Monster Cores up for sale. Their prices were obscene, and like everything else in this store, they were nonnegotiable. The cheapest Monster Cores started at two thousand Academic Credits, and the price went all the way to three thousand.

The nominal worth of a Tenth Order Monster Core was between ten and thirty thousand gold coins. Even though Mage Academy sold them for the equivalent of forty thousand gold or more, these goods were unavailable in the open market.

All smiles, Wolf went over to the clerk behind the counter. He bought the cheapest Tenth Order Monster Core, with no one getting a cut from the sale.

Several clerks almost choked when their coworker said: “That would be two thousand credits.”

They burned Wolf’s face into their memory. Just that one commission would’ve netted them twenty Academic Credits!

“Do you require anything else?” a fast thinking woman dumped her current customer.

The man was still uncertain about whether he really needed Bloodstone powder, even after contemplating it for a quarter of an hour.

She knew that customers buying expensive goods usually only bought one thing, but you never knew.

“Do you have anything to assist a Third Order Mage with breaking through to the Fourth Order?” Wolf abruptly asked.

He wanted to help Wayde. That way, all five of them could go on missions together once everyone’s ready.

The clerk immediately began listing items and a couple of minutes later Wolf left the shop utterly broke. He now had zero Academic Credits to his name, and only a couple of platinum pieces.

As Wolf contemplated his poverty, he suddenly remembered those assassins and the scout, blessing the generous nobles in his heart. He already had an idea about what to spend that money on.

Wolf went back to his room, where Wayde was waiting for him on the couch.

“You passed, right?” Wolf asked as soon as he saw his mate.

“Naturally. Maybe not as quickly as you. But I passed,” Wayde said, with little joy.

He would’ve preferred it if he’d been able to advance his Mage Order and pass without having to take the exam. Now, he turned into the worst student of their new class, since he lagged behind the rest of the class when it came to Mage Order.

“That’s great! I got you a present. Something to prepare you for the new semester,” Wolf said with a smile as he took out two bottles from his Ring of Holding and handed them over to Wayde.

“What are these?” the Duke asked in confusion.

His life’s experience made him wary of whatever others offered him.

“They will help you advance your Order. I bought them for you at the Mage Academy store just now. First drink this one, and then that one.” Wolf tapped the vials in Wayde’s hand in order. “That way you get the greatest effect.”

Wayde looked at Wolf with shock. This present must have cost a fortune.

“Thank you,” he said and looked down at the ground.

Wayde now had a strange, uncomfortable feeling in his gut. He felt guilty. Thanks to this selfless gift, the caution with which he’d kept Wolf at a distance considerably lessened.