I did eventually manage to cast teleportation circle, and as I did, I was brought into the middle of the grotto’s paths. Once I got back to my room, I spent the next few weeks before finals hit desperately tying up as many loose ends as I possibly could. I visited the student market and purchased some vials that I could fill with bloodline power. Annoyingly, in order for them to work, I also needed to fill it with my own blood, which meant I wound up having to beg Jackson for some of his healing miracles to stop myself from dying of blood loss.

  Amos delivered the serpent skin, and I was pleasantly surprised with the size. It was a bit over six and a half feet long from tip to tail, making it nowhere near as large as Aqil, but significantly larger than Amos himself, and almost as large as the wadjetktt that professor Toadweather had summoned for her demonstration. The staff to snake conversion was expensive, and I wound up spending some of the ether crystal dust I’d earned from professor Toadweather over the break in assisting her with the summoning of creatures for the solstice break. Still, I managed it, and to my pleasant surprise, was able to use my bloodline to recoup some of the costs needed in mimicking the wadjetktt bloodline.

  I wondered if some of that had to do with the similarities between sun and fire based bloodlines. They weren't quite the same, but they were close, and I wasn’t sure if I’d get the same effect if Jackson had managed to down one of the giant ice serpents and let me use it instead.

  After that, I set to work on learning life barrier, paper swarm, and arcane wall, alongside the two remaining spells in my grimoire: convert breath weapon and amplify dragonfire. I didn’t think that I’d be able to master all of the spells before finals, but convert breath weapon was a simple enough fourth circle spell, albeit one that wasn’t super useful to me in my current state. Being able to exhale a blast of hyper-concentrated acid, lightning, or cold, instead of my flames, was neat, but I simply didn’t have the reserves to use it for long. Maybe once I fused my dragonfire and my ether pool, I’d be able to make better use of it.

  With time ticking down, I spent almost all of my remaining focus on paper swarm and life barrier. Life barrier because it would help get me some extra bonus points for my abjuration class, and paper swarm due to how well it matched my abilities. There was an argument for dropping life barrier in exchange for one of my other spells, but I couldn’t bring myself to simply ignore school like that. I’d already mastered the fifth circle spells for transmutation and conjuration. I wasn’t going to leave abjuration behind.

  Of course I was still working on Yushin’s ritual in the background, and several of the artifacts that I’d gotten from Stone did help. None of them were the most dramatic things in the world, none of them re-wrote my understanding of the ritual or underlying connections between magic types, and none of them were even about cultivation, but they were still useful to help increase my overall understanding of affinity rituals.

  One particularly funny moment that happened was when I was speaking to the strange, green haired man with an artifice affinity, however.

  “Why do you make your bracelets with an offset sphere of protection? It’s been bothering me. What if someone holds their hand out to the side, or if they’re a race with especially distended limbs like a treefolk? And it’s creating a loss because you have to translate the effect to the side and up.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to have to use their blood as a binding target,” I said, shrugging. “I could make the bad luck in combat exclude anyone who touches the bracelet, but that felt easy to exploit.”

  “Why not just make them necklaces, then? The sphere of luck protection would be centered roughly around the neck or chest, making it easy to extend to the heart and gut.”

  I stared at him, then sighed and rubbed my hands.

  “Because I didn’t think of it. Yeah, that would be a much more effective way to do it.”

  The new design didn’t take long to put together, and wound up being almost as effective as when I bound it to a specific person through their blood. That was good in an objective sense, but it sure did make me feel like even more of an idiot.

  Before I knew it, it was time for finals. Last year, I’d been a touch worried about them, but far more stressed about the looming threat of Gerhard and losing my freedom. This year, I was in another strange place. I was actually less stressed about them than before, as I felt like I was beginning to truly hit my stride as a wizard. What’s more, the pressure I felt to perform well was still overshadowed by the looming threat to Yushin.

  But regardless of how I felt about them, they were here. The written examinations for classes went well enough. I didn’t score quite as well as I’d hoped in transmutation’s written final, only getting a mid-B grade, but I was hopeful I could drag it back up with the help of the practical exam, which coincidentally was also the first one I took.

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  “Well, it has been quite a busy year for you. Continuing Silverbark’s Practical Magecraft course, alongside my own and two additional courses for different schools of magic. Quite busy indeed,” professor Gemheart said as I stepped into the spell range where I’d been directed to meet him. “How are you feeling?”

  “Better now. I struggled about a month and a half ago, but I got things under control.”

  “Glad to hear it! What was going on?”

  It didn’t take me long to realize that the questions were more than friendly – he had been charged with poking at me and ensuring I wasn’t falling victim to the Creep. I tried to focus on how I’d gotten help from Emir and used techniques in my ethics courses, and after some time, Gemheart seemed satisfied.

  “Why don’t we start with the transmutation focused ether manipulation, and then run through the spells?”

  I nodded and started the exercise. Though I hadn’t practiced it as much as I perhaps ought to have, I hadn’t completely neglected it. As I picked it up, I was surprised with how much easier it was than I remembered. With my mastery over wall of stone and greater paralyze, I’d gotten a lot better with shaping ether in the patterns common to transmutation spells – and thus, this technique.

  With that done, I started running through all of the spells that I’d learned in the class. I cast the room in shadows, sharpened my senses, and levitated a pencil. I cast haste, animated some clothing, turned my staff into a serpent, and unburnt a pile of ashes into a piece of paper. After that, I took control of the winds in the room to create a small tornado and directed it in all four directions, temporarily transformed a rusty old dagger into a perfect mithril one, and turned myself into a blob of water before changing back. When I cast stoneskin to cover myself in granite, he frowned and leaned forward.

  “You have too much feldspar and too little quartz in your granite. It’s not bad, but it’s on the lower end of what granite can be. You should work on the ratio and composition. Still not as bad as some. A few people are going with marble.”

  He said the last with such disgust that I couldn’t help but smile, though I did note that there was clearly something more to the stoneskin spell than just improving the defenses, at least with the way that he said it.

  To complete the exam, I raised a wall of quartz from the sand in the spell range, which I then used erode matter to remove. The last part wasn’t on the exam, but I knew that if I didn’t, someone else would have to come by and fix it, so I figured that I might as well make their job a bit easier.

  “Well, already casting fifth circle spells? How many is that now? Three?”

  “Six,” I said, shaking my head.

  “What?”

  “Six. Wall of stone, life barrier, teleportation circle, greater paralyze, planar adaptation, and paper swarm.”

  “My goodness. Do you realize what the minimum needed to graduate is?”

  “I know it’s several, but I don’t know the number,” I admitted.

  “Five. Technically speaking, you qualify to graduate a year early. Would you like for us to submit an application to–”

  “No,” I said, cutting him off with the wave of a hand. “Just because I’ve collected a mishmash of spells doesn’t mean I’m actually a wizard stepping into the full of my power. I might have taken a small step, but that’s all it is.”

  “Well, I can’t deny that. Let’s see. With your inferior granite, that’s a point docked. With the ten additional points from mastering a fifth circle spell, and an eighty-four on the exam… that puts you at a final score for the course at ninety-seven, rounding that half-point. Excellently done! Can I count on you for Advanced Transmutation?”

  “Thank you professor,” I said, shaking his hand. “You can absolutely sign me up.”

  The next day I had my abjuration final. Professor Caeruleum went through the same series of questions about my mental state, before I went to demonstrate the spells. I used my buckler to block a thrown ball of yarn, tossed my grimoire in the fireplace to show I’d cast ward tome on it, conjured a shield from arrows, and called up a windshield. I cast energy barriers over the both of us, placed a protective rune on a chest, a dreamshield over a pillow, and spun a cloak of fire around me before eating it.

  “Huh. I knew you could eat fire, but I must say, it’s very strange to see you doing it,” professor Caeruleum said, raising an eyebrow. “What does it taste like?”

  “All fire has a different flavor,” I said. “Flames produced by ether mostly taste like… well, not quite nothing. But it’s the default, almost. Like, if a campfire is a good whiskey, then this is a glass of room temperature water. Nothing wrong with it, but it’s a bit basic?”

  “Fascinating,” they responded before gesturing for me to continue. I summoned a small elemental, then banished it back to its plane, threw up a sphere of spell protection to protect us from the detonation of the protective rune, used reverse enchantments to throw a sleep spell that they cast at me back onto them, and cast true form on a coin I was presented, causing it to transform into a slime creature. Finally, I conjured a life barrier, causing professor Caeruleum to raise their eyebrow, and we had a brief repeat of the conversation I’d had with professor Gemheart.

  “Glad to hear you don’t plan to graduate early,” they said, smiling. “I think you’ll enjoy year three of my course. Not many students get that far, but those who do usually have the knack for abjuration. It should give you ample room and time to match someone for your archmage title.”

  “That’s right, I need to find someone who underwent the specialization willing to duel me,” I mused. “I wonder if that half-giant who was stupid enough to try and attack you counts.”

  A frown flitted over professor Caeruleum’s face and they shook their head.

  “He would, but I’d ask that you don’t. He and his family are under significant pressure, and it’s helped worsen his path to the Creep. He’s not the only one, either – several people this year seem to be doing worse than usual.”

  In an attempt to put that ominous note behind us, they clapped and smiled.

  “Well, between your perfect score and extra credit, along with such a high grade on your written exam, you more than pass. Though it is funny – you would not believe how many people forgot all the laws around protective rune. Half of them are going to have to retake their certification for it.”

  On that note, I was dismissed, and went to study for my two remaining finals.

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