For the fourth time, I cursed the organizers of the School’s Fair.

I understood needing to sign up for a slot. I was fine with being told where to go, and what dimensions I needed to work in. Charging a nominal rent for the supplies I wanted to use was only natural. It couldn’t work otherwise, not with the hectic two weeks of controlled chaos that was the School’s fair as the island slowed down.

But I needed to make my own enchantments? Really? Not a single person had ever returned a set of privacy runes back to the Ring that ran the Fair? They hadn’t thought to make some themselves, for alllll the people who wanted some privacy?

No. The easy answer was they were jerks. The more practical reason I’d dug up was they wanted to make sure students were displaying their skills, and not leaning on someone else’s.

None of my complaining mattered as I finished burning enchantments into the last piece of wood, setting up a proper privacy ward for my tent.

Three checks of my runes later - [Warning Bells] only applied to biomancy now, not everything - and I was satisfied that I’d done them correctly. I inserted an Arcanite crystal into the right place, and with a flex of will, powered on the wards.

Instantly the clatter and clamor of everyone else setting up their stations, along with a few early eager beavers dropped away. Blessed peace and silence so I could think.

I looked around.

Large backup arcanite crystal - check. My biggest expense was renting the spherical crystal to use, because running out of mana mid-operation could literally kill someone. I was planning on asking people to bring some of their own to help, but there were no guarantees.

Tent walls - check. It looked and felt like a fortune-teller’s tent, but I was working with the supplies I’d been given.

Two chairs and a desk - check. I was only missing a crystal ball to complete the fortune-teller’s look…

Hang on.

I eyed the arcanite crystal, softly glowing with mana.

Screw it.

[Fortune Teller] Elaine was here! Not the most professional of looks, but I wasn’t trying to make a huge fortune as a biomancer, nor did I particularly care about getting a reputation as one. This was probably one of my only times that I’d be biomancying other people.

I didn’t want to call it practice patients… but yeah, they were practice, and I was hoping I could get enough people to visit in two weeks that, when combined with my magic stats, I could cap my skills before starting to biomancy myself and Iona.

I put the crystal on the table. The ground was at a slight angle - downside of setting up in a field - and the ball wanted to roll off the table.

I frowned, grabbed the Very Expensive ball before anything bad could happen to it, and popped my head out of my tent.

“Hey Auri, could you…” My voice trailed off as I saw what the little bird was up to.

She had a half-dozen different hands working a dozen stations. Mixing, mashing, kneading, opening makeshift oven doors and stirring bubbling pots. A whole rainbow of different colored

flames lit the various places up, and Auri was sitting high up in the middle, her chest proudly puffed out with a tiny little chef’s hat on her head.

Sparks were practically flying as she glared at a student across the way, baking cookies. A rivalry for the ages… or the next two weeks.

Aleesia’s Famous Cookies a crooked sign proclaimed.

The witch in question was glaring at Auri just as hard.

I wasn’t getting involved in this mess at all.

Either way. Auri was way too busy to give me a hand.

I popped back into my tent, forcing myself to think about the problem.

How would [Archmage] Elaine solve this?

Well, that was easy. A sticky rune on the table would keep the crystal ball - errr - arcanite ball from rolling off.

A rune later, and that problem was solved. A dozen runes after that, and I’d lit the interior of the tent with a soft purple-blue glow, completing the look.

Iona had helped me with the local language, and I set up the two-ringed array needed for my advertising, projecting slowly spinning letters in the sky that advertised what I did.

Cheap biomancy!

Pay in mango or coin!

My marketing-fu had gone down in the absence of practice and Amber, but I did at least know how to advertise.

I settled into my chair, cracked open a book, put my feet on the table, and started reading, waiting for the first patient to come in.

The tent flap opened, and I started, stashing my book and taking my feet off the table. I quickly put one hand on the crystal ball, and one on my forehead.

“Welcome!” I did my best ‘booming voice’ impression. “I can see the future! You’re here… for BIOMANCY!”

“Um.” The woman at the door suddenly looked uncertain. “Yes? Are you sure you’re a biomancer?”

I dropped the act.

“Yes, please, come on in. What can I help you with?”

I glanced at the dogkin’s level.

[Laborer - 194].

That was pushing it. It wasn’t an issue of her vitality defending itself against my magic power, I could overwhelm that. It was an issue of mana. In my little stall out here, I didn’t have the gigantic reserves of mana that would be required to perform a large-scale operation on someone with that much vitality and weight.

My plans for Iona included access to the firing range’s prodigious reserves. Or whatever system the School had for large-scale projects like the one I was eyeing up. My rough calculations suggested I was looking at six billion mana for Iona’s modifications.

Before making them permanent.

Fundamentally, biomancy wasn’t part of the few ‘safe’ skills the System recognized, like buffs, potions, and healing. Even then, buffs got horribly abused now and then to practically cause debuffs on people. No, the System considered biomancy to be offensive, giving me roughly the same difficulty that I’d have modifying someone’s heart, as a Dark mage would have deleting a heart.

Given that I could biomancy a major blood vessel closed and kill someone that way, I completely understood. It made biomancying adults a challenge.

Focus. Patients were here and now.

She pulled in a skinny young kid - practically still a toddler - and I mentally breathed a sigh of relief.

Kids were easy to work on. Their vitality was practically nothing, which meant I could manipulate their flesh with minimal resistance. They also didn’t weigh much, meaning there was less I needed to manipulate.

The details were harder, and kids had their own separate set of issues that adults didn’t have, but most biomancy focused on kids anyways, being the primary patient base.

“His face is… weird.” His mom struggled to explain, gesturing at the obvious problem.

His lip was split in half, going all the way up to his nose. A classic cleft lip issue.

Thank whatever divinities were watching over me that my first case ever was a softball.

I smiled at the kid, who was shyly clutching his mother’s skirt. I stood up and walked around the table, pulling the patient chair out.

“Come here! I don’t bite!” I patted the chair. “What’s your name? You must be very brave to come here!”

“Amam.” He said quietly.

“Amam! Well, that’s a great name! Tell you what Amam, after this, go to the stall next to me and ask Auri for a cookie. Tell her Elaine said it was alright!”

His eyes went wide and he looked at his mom. She chewed her lip.

“It’ll be free, we’re friends.” I reassured her.

“Alright! Cookies after!” Her mom declared.

With some encouragement from his mom, and the promise of a cookie after, he climbed up into the chair.

“Okay, now let me take a look.” I put a finger on his lip, and he shuddered and brightened up. Bet my healing just cleared something up!

With some effort, I used [Elvenoid Visualization].

[*ding!* [Elvenoid Visualization] leveled up! 14->15]

I obviously hadn’t come here with no practice using my new skills.

A mental image popped into my mind, a full 3D visualization of what was going on with the kid’s lip.

It had never finished forming. It hadn’t properly stretched all the way across his face, and he also had a tiny cleft palate. I bet when I’d healed him a moment ago, it had been an ear infection. Extremely common with the problem he’d come with.

Ok! Cleft palate and cleft lip, in a young male dogkin! Go!

The entire issue was as simple as it looked. The lip and palate had never met, and they needed to. I simply needed to create the necessary flesh in the gap, hook up the necessary nerves and blood vessels, then tell the body that it had always existed that way.

One step at a time.

For safety’s sake, I blasted another wave of healing through Amam. I wanted to make absolutely sure that he didn’t have anything dumb like a skinned knee, that I could accidentally include in his ‘perfect body’ image. Otherwise, if I did, anytime he got healed in the future, he’d regain the skinned knee.

I then turned off my [Persistent Casting]. I had the image stored, I could turn it back on at any time.

Heart pounding, mouth dry, I focused every bit of attention on what I was doing. A mistake here would haunt this kid for his entire life.

There was a little cough in the background, but I redoubled my focus, tuning everything out.

I carefully built an image of what I wanted. The [Elvenoid Visualization] skill was putting in serious work, giving me a direct reference of what I needed to make. It combined with my knowledge, and I was able to ‘flicker’ through the image, checking different layers. There was the skin layer, the flesh layer, the nerve layer, the capillaries… it was all there.

I had the image.

I checked it four times.

I was stalling.

Gritting my teeth, I opened my eyes and pulled the trigger on my skill.

The gap in his lips was there one moment, and gone the next.

[*ding!* [Smooth as a Baby’s Bottom] leveled up! 1 -> 11]

I broke out in a cold sweat over that. I’d done something wrong, something that the skill had needed to fix. My hours of messing with my fingers at the firing range to cap [Biological Manipulation] hadn’t caused the skill to level.

What had I done wrong?

I heard a dramatic gasp beside me.

“Please let me focus, I’m not done.” I snapped at the woman. She had to know how important this was.

I recast [Elvenoid Visualization], flicking through a dozen different views, looking for any difference. Any imperfection.

I didn’t see any.

I wanted to smack myself. [Warning Bells] hadn’t gone off. Whatever issue [Smooth as a Baby’s Bottom] had fixed, I just didn’t know it.

I made a mental note to talk with Marcelle about it, to see what I had done wrong. However, my fix was better than nothing, and to the best of my knowledge, everything was better.

I cast [Permanence], engraving the changes on the kid. My mana dropped at that, but it was done.

[*ding!* [Permanence] leveled up! 1 -> 2]

I opened my eyes, the kid beaming.

“Are you done? Is everything ok?”

“Yes. No.” I answered in reverse order, then hurriedly corrected myself.

“Sorry! Everything’s ok! I’m not done yet, that was just the first step!” I explained. “I’ve fixed his lip, but he’s got a secondary split in his palate. One moment.”

The second time was much faster than the first. I’d already looked at the kid. I’d already studied him. The split was significantly smaller than the lip, and I followed the same procedure. Checked over what I was doing, made the image, filled in the flesh, checked again for any issues, then made the entire set of changes permanent.

[*ding!* [Permanence] leveled up! 2 -> 3]

I turned my [Persistent Casting] back on and touched the kid, blowing some of the most powerful healing he’d ever experience in his life through him. I then used [Elvenoid Visualization] again, going over his lips and palate to make sure nothing had changed, that the changes were indeed permanent, they’d grow alongside him, and my healing hadn’t goofed something up.

If I found out now, I could fix it.

If he found out in three years, he’d be in trouble again.

Everything was set.

Everything was there.

Everything was in place.

“Done!” My knees creaked as I got up. Just how long had I been kneeling there!? No more kneeling, more comfortable chairs.

The mom took a look at her kid, and burst into tears.