The rest of the evening and the entire following day in the magic course went pretty much the same way. While Det couldn't bring his Wordless equipment with him to class, the goal was the same; how could he make small paintings into big renditions?

  The answer was, of course, the kernels he had running through his body. The ones he compressed in either a channel or a node and then pushed into the painting as he prepared or activated it. He still found the same limit of infusing each painting with two kernels to be the maximum, but he was finding himself more readily capable of infusing his intent into the kernels themselves. On expanding that intent to be more flexible.

  It was similar to what they’d said in the alchemy class. The rules from Earth were a roadblock to him. They were true there, so he believed them to be true on Elestar, which interfered with his magic. But… it was magic. It wasn’t science or sleight of hand dressed up to be magic. It was true-blue, honest to goodness magic. That meant it defied the rules his brain thought it should follow.

  He hadn’t fully accepted that, even after twenty years, until somebody pushed him on it. Why did his paintings have to be the same size? There was no good answer to that. Just like he was able to create a kitten of civilization-ending threat levels, he should also be able to make it larger.

  That was what he worked on.

  The class basically passed in a blur, with Det even waving off Sage and Eriba when they went to lunch in favor of staying at his desk and pushing out more renditions. The night before, he'd gotten a better grasp on painting small pictures with his swordbrush, but that hadn’t led to as much direct growth utilizing the kernels as he would have liked, outside of one thing.

  He’d gotten a kernel into his sword. It’d happened near the end of their training session, with a sensation that was best described as being like a pimple popping. He’d been applying and feeling pressure the entire time he’d been working on the paintings, until suddenly a kernel forced its way through some kind of small breach. That had been a start, even though it didn’t get much easier after that.

  Yes, it was still easier to move a kernel into the painting through a paintbrush than it was through his sword. With more practice that evening, though, he’d catch up with pushing kernels through the swordbrush. He was sure of it. But, for the class, it was all about making bigger renditions.

  The morning involved him barely creating a kitten or turtle fifty percent larger than it was on the painting. That he’d been able to increase it in size at all proved he could do it. A proof of concept which seemed to ignite something in his drive.

  By the time his two friends returned from lunch—complete with a sandwich for him, bless their hearts—he’d gotten it up to two and a half times. From there, the growth had been almost exponential, and at the end of class he was able to transform a kitten-sized painting into a tiger-sized rendition.

  Much to the horror of the people sitting directly around him. Poor Aria almost had a heart attack the first time the shadow of an ink-tiger loomed over her from behind. Her head had slowly turned to find its paw in front of her, and then she'd looked up… up… up…into its wide jaws. Into the ink-black eyes staring down at her as if she were little more than a field mouse.

  Rocky, her stone familiar, had promptly hopped out of her hand and then crawled into the desk to hide. Not that Det had summoned the tiger with any ill intent, of course. Instead of eating her, it leaned forward and licked her face from chin to forehead. The wet cow lick—or maybe more accurately a tiger lick—left her bangs stuck straight up in the air. The woman sat in abject shock until it settled on her what had just happened. Then, she was just grossed out by the ink-tiger saliva across her face. How a painting even had saliva wasn’t something Det really understood, but, at this point, there were just some things he wasn’t going to question.

  The progress of it, though, had Det feeling more than a little excited. Suddenly, the paintings that he carried at his side were no longer quite so limited. He didn’t need to have a huge wall mural to summon a pack of wolves, though the thought of it did make him think back to Ironsalt and where his Pack hopefully still lay. He hadn’t asked Beauty about it recently—whether or not they’d found a way to tear down that wall where the mural sat—but he not-so-secretly hoped they’d never be able to bring it down.

  He still planned someday, somehow, to go retrieve the painting. Maybe transfer it to a scroll. Hells, the Wordless dungeons might even give him the means as a reward. That slight daydreaming carried him into the afternoon.

  Riding the successes of the day, he wanted to go straight to the training room to continue working on his magic. Unfortunately, his roommate had a duel, and he couldn’t skip that. She’d been there to support him for his duel—and kind of force him into it in the first place—and attending her match and cheering her on was the least he could do.

  “Any idea what kind of magic the person Calisco is fighting uses?” Det asked Sage as the two of them filed into a section with five empty seats side-by-side. As it was the section reserved for students—unlike the rest of the arena that was filled with citizens of Mount Avalon—they didn’t quite get the front row. Three back was as close as they could get.

  Then again, considering Calisco’s penchant for explosions, having a bit of a buffer wasn’t a bad thing.

  “None,” Sage said. “Don’t even know their name. Do you?”

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  “She called them Pissant, or Pessimism, or something,” Det said, struggling to remember the name she’d given. Considering how good his ReSouled memory usually was for remembering this kind of thing, he should be able to… ah. “Pessins. That’s what she said.”

  “Ah,” Sage said, like he recognized the name after hearing it.

  “Crossbow,” Tena said from Sage’s other side. Like normal, Weiss had taken the far seat to the left, while Eriba stuck close to Det’s right, putting her in the aisle seat.

  “A… crossbow?” Det asked. “Against her explosions? How is that fair?”

  “He’s an Artillery,” Sage reminded Det. “Like her. There must be more to it than a normal crossbow.”

  “Oh, true,” Det admitted. His mind had immediately pegged the man as a Duelist, since he was using a weapon. Except, it wasn’t a melee weapon, so he wasn’t a Duelist. “Did you see him fight in the opening-day fights?”

  “Oh, the one you napped through?” Tena leaned forward in her seat to ask Det.

  “After getting sucker-speared in the face, yeah,” Det said. “That’s the one.”

  “He can charge his bolts for varying effects,” Weiss said, ignoring their practiced back and forth. Tena had long gotten past any guilt she’d felt for breaking Det’s face with one of her spears. Now, she just rubbed it in that she’d beaten him.

  “Anything powerful?” Det asked their group’s Medic.

  “Versatile more than powerful, I’d say,” Weiss said. “I believe I saw him use at least one charged-type shot that had moderate destructive potential. Nothing on the same scale as what Calisco can do.”

  “Did she pick him just to bully him?” Det asked, though he looked around the arena as he spoke. There were a lot of people in the arena. The place was practically full, just like it had been when he’d fought Aarak… and Fourth. The people on Avalon really liked their duels, even if the official dueling circuit hadn’t started for the cadets.

  The noise of that excitement was really starting to amp up too, with Det having to practically shout to make himself heard to the others.

  “Not at all,” Tena answered. “She actually picked him because he’s one of her worst match ups from the Artillery class. He’s what I’ve been help her practice for, kind of like we did for you before your bout with Aarak.”

  “How is he a bad match up?” Eriba said in her whispering voice that Det somehow still heard perfectly.

  “Speed,” Sage guessed. “Many Artillery who use weapons—like crossbows, bows, slingshots, etcetera—don’t need physical ammunition. Some still do, and they infuse it, but they tend to focus more on damage output. Pessins isn’t one of those. Without needing to manually reload after each shot, his rate of fire will be far beyond what a normal crossbow could do.

  “Even Eriba, who has been getting much better with the weapon, can likely only fire at one-tenth the speed somebody like Pessins could.”

  “He’s going to machinegun a crossbow?” Det asked.

  “Potentially,” Sage said. “If the battle stays at range—and lasts more than an opening salvo—he could overwhelm Calisco. Her explosions are slow to create, relatively speaking, and if Pessins stays mobile and keeps his finger on his trigger, he actually has a good chance.”

  “They’re both glass cannons,” Eriba whispered.

  “Exactly,” Sage said. “This whole fight might end in the first exchange.”

  “Basically, Pessins brought a gun to the fight,” Tena said. “While Calisco brought a hand grenade. She can do more damage, if she can get it to him before he shoots her.”

  “And that’s what you worked on?” Sage asked.

  Instead of answering, Tena winked at Sage. “Just watch and see.”

  “More like wait and see at this point,” Sage said, neither of the two fighters in the arena yet.

  “While we wait,” Weiss said, looking past Sage, to Det. “I have a question I’ve been meaning to ask you, Det.”

  “And that is?” Det said.

  “You said before you can’t create guns,” Weiss said.

  “Sort of,” Det said. “I can make them, they just don’t work right.”

  “Except you said you made something like a landmine,” Sage said. “And it worked fine.”

  “Because I built one before,” Det said, which got a few strange looks from his teammates. “School project, okay. There weren’t any explosives in it.”

  “Good thing Calisco isn’t here right now,” Sage said. “You know she’d find a joke in there somewhere.”

  “Or she’d just appreciate he was blowing things up,” Tena said. “Can never be too sure which way Cali is going to go.”

  “Back to my question,” Weiss said, bringing things back on track. “You told us you’ve been having success creating larger renditions from small paintings. Something you previously thought impossible. Have you tried making a working gun again recently? With your magic growing not just in power, but also in flexibility, it may be time for you to reconsider things you previously thought impossible.

  “If there is one thing I learned from my own situation, it’s that sometimes the shackles we place on ourselves are only as strong as we believe them to be. You may be limiting yourself without realizing you’re doing it.”

  Det paused at the well-thought-out question. Not that he should’ve been surprised, coming from Weiss and all that. “I… haven’t tried again,” Det said. “I basically gave up on it since I couldn’t get it to work before.”

  “Would a gun really be helpful?” Tena said, though she glanced at Eriba as she spoke. “A normal gun, I mean?”

  She couldn’t come right out and talk about Eriba’s Wordless creation, but the other members of the group got her meaning.

  “It wouldn’t be normal, though,” Sage said. “It would be created by his magic. Meaning, it would be as strong as his magic is. Or can be. It’s worth trying again, Det.”

  “It is,” Det agreed. “And… what else am I ignoring that should be obvious?”

  “Considering the nature of your magic,” Sage said. “Likely a lot. Perhaps it’s something we should spend some time on in the future.”

  “Definitely,” Det said, mentally adding it to the list after he got more comfortable with his Wordless swordbrush.

  “You could…” Tena started to say, then cut off when the volume of the crowd kicked it up a notch. It had gone from a dull roar in the background, to booming thunder from all sides. Hands were coming together in applause, while hoots and hollers shouted above general conversation.

  Why? Because somebody had entered the arena, of course.

  The same announcer-slash-referee who had presided over Det’s match. Hands in the air as he walked to the center of the arena, he was definitely basking in the adoration of the crowd. Projection was his name, and as he reached the center of the arena, he more than lived up to it.

  “Welcome back to the Amphitheatre of the Twin Suns,” Projection said, his magically-amplified voice reaching every corner of the space despite the roaring crowd. “Welcome back to the arena. We all know why we’re here, so I won’t keep you waiting, but let me just refresh you all on the rules before we welcome our fighters.

  “Two competitors enter, they beat the hell out of each other for our entertainment, then one walks out with their head held high. In this sanctioned—but non-ranked—duel, there will be no quarter given.”

  Almost word-for-word what he said before my match.

  “Now, without further ado,” Projection said, his hands going to both ends of the arena where the gates were already rising. “Let’s welcome in our fighters.”