Regardless of Vallynn's expectations or lack thereof, Izlude is what it is, a town that exists mostly for practical reasons: to hold the port and the airport and serve as one of the main interfaces between Rune-Midgard and the rest of the world. Not very many people live here, most of them staff the place, there's not much in the way of tourism, the only people who stay here for any length of time rather than moving on to the actual rest of the country are here for the one other attraction this city boasts.

Right, that. The boat he came here on—which came from Amatsu, stopped in Brasilis, just got here, and is going to Alberta next—is mostly a cargo ship, not a passenger ship, so despite the presumed high influx of would-be adventurers here he's the only one bound for the Academy on his ship. So it falls to him to find out where to go, as whatever welcoming party there might be when bigger passenger ships arrive is nowhere in sight right now. The port looks downright deserted, if he's honest.

"Excuse me," he says to the first professional-looking local he can find. "Can I have directions to the Criatura Academy?"

"Down the street out of the port to the main road then north past the city gates," says the bored-looking person, not looking up from their clipboard to respond.

"Thank you!" he calls after her aaand she's gone okay. Vallynn supposes people around here must be really used to giving new adventurers directions, and those are easy enough instructions to follow. Onwards, then.

The paved road is pretty wide, as befits a well-used road that sees frequent action, but at this time in the evening it's mostly deserted; most frequent boats probably arrive in the morning, the trip from Amatsu only happens once a week and the trip from Amatsu that stops in Brasilis once a month, so Vallynn didn't have the option to be picky.

There was some amount of pickier he could've been; there's a more frequent passenger boat from Brasilis to Alberta but then he'd have to go from Alberta to Izlude and that'd either be a pretty long trip overland that'd pass uncomfortably close to the Morroc dimensional instability, a second boat to Izlude, or an expensive teleport through the Kafra Corporation services he's heard so much about.

Which, well, he'd probably have gone for the Brasilis-Alberta-Izlude trip, actually, if the Amatsu-Brasilis-Izlude trip hadn't been only a few days away from when he was ready to go. What can he say, he likes comfort.

The main road runs from the airport in the south to Criatura Academy in the north, passing through the plaza and market in the center of the town. At this time in the evening there are very few people out and about, and the Academy is actually the most lively-looking place from this distance, with many lights still on.

Excellent. He'll have time to properly get to know this place later, but for now he'll just follow the lights.

Training grounds with practice dummies and a stable population of different types of porings can be seen from the front of the building, and three people are there still awake and training: a boy fumbling about with a sword, another boy staring intently at a marin as if hoping it will spontaneously explode, and a girl punching her dummy in precise, practised motions, one-two-three like clockwork.

...kinda hot ngl.

Anyway. Into the building

A professional-looking woman is at the reception reading a book, and a short pointy-eared woman is standing in a corner meditating. The receptionist looks up when Vallynn walks in, puts her book down, and smiles at him. "Good evening! How may I help you?"

Holy shit an elf?? He thought the stories about those working for Eden Group were just people making everything more fantastical than reality.

"—hi!" he says after a beat, noticing he'd been staring. "I'm here to register for the Academy."

"Oh! Yes, of course, please give me a moment." She shuffles through some papers until she finds the relevant registration forms and she passes one over to him plus a pen. "Please fill this out. If your name is originally written in a different alphabet please include a transliteration next to it to the best of your ability; surname is optional, prospective guild is optional, please let me know if you have any questions."

"Will do, thank you."

She accepts the form once it's been filled out, reads it over, nods to herself, then says, "Do you have a preference for your roommate being the same gender? We don't have any available single rooms; we do have empty two-person rooms if you'd prefer to be alone for the moment but we'd eventually have someone join you. And you can of course acquire lodgings in the city but the Academy doesn't cover the cost for those."

"No gender preference, and you can put me in a room that already has someone." Good way to break the ice and might get him a potential future party member to boot.

"Allllright, one moment, please..." More looking through files and then: "Ah, here we go, yes, room 107, up two flights of stairs to the right that way," she says, offering Vallynn a key.

"Thank you very much!"

"Of course! Meals are at 7:30AM, 12PM, and 6PM for an hour and a half in the mess hall down that way, so if you drop your things in your new room and come back downstairs quickly enough you can catch the tail end of dinner!"

Oh, right, food is a thing that exists. Thank you, receptionist person, for reminding him of this fact.

Upstairs to his room.

And once he unlocks the door he'll find his roommate was doing one-handed pushups in the middle of the room.

In the buff.

"...hello," he says, looking up at Vallynn with a curious expression on his face.

"Hello indeed," Vallynn says almost automatically while the two of them exchange the kinds of looks that only people who are immediately and obviously attracted to each other can exchange. "Am I in the wrong room, or...?"

The other boy jumps to his feet. "Room 107. I assume you're my new roommate? Taharqi, at your service. I'd shake your hand but I would not want to drench you in my sweat."

"I do think I am, yes." He steps into the room and closes the door behind himself. "I'm Vallynn."

"A pleasure to meet you, Vallynn."

He looks around the room. "Is that your bed?"

"It is. You know, you're surprisingly blasé about, ah..." He gestures down at his nudity.

"I mean, it's not like I'm wearing all that much myself, is it," he says, gesturing down at his shirtlessness and very short skirt.

"I suppose," he agrees, giving Vallynn another once-over just for effect.

"Anyway, I should leave my things here and go downstairs to eat, I'm almost out of time for dinner."

"...what time is it?"

"Quarter past seven."

"Shit. Ah, give me five minutes to wash the sweat off and I'll come with?"

"I presume 'putting clothes on' will also feature in that plan somewhere."

"Will it? I quite like the way you're looking at me."

"I can spend dinner picturing you naked if that'll bring you joy."

"It will! Alright, be ready in a minute."

"Thought you'd said five."

"And we're wasting those five so toodles."

Vallynn grins and shakes his head then once Taharqi has covered himself enough that he can go out to the shared bathrooms Vallynn starts exploring the room.

It's not very sumptuous: two beds, two bedside tables, a wardrobe big enough for two, some bookshelves, a weapons rack currently holding two very fancy-looking daggers, and an armour rack currently holding a simple thick leather jerkin with a coat-of-arms engraved in bas-relief on the chest.

Rich boy, huh? Well, Vallynn has places to put his scant few belongings: clothes go in wardrobe (which his roommate was kind enough to leave half empty for him), dagger and staff go on weapons rack, books go in shelves, and then he walks over to the window to look outside.

The room is facing north, so Vallynn can see the ocean to the north and northeast and Prontera in the distance to the northwest.

Now that city looks a lot more like what he'd (apparently subconsciously) expected. He caught glimpses of it from the boat earlier but it looks a lot grander from this close, tall surrounding walls and all. He definitely wants to go exploring at some point.

And a few minutes later Taharqi is back. "Alright, let's go, they're pretty anal about their times."

"Fine by me, I don't like wasting a ton of time eating."

"Roger that." Clothes go on and they can start making their way downstairs. "So, Vallynn, where are you from?"

"Brasilis."

"—really?"

"Were you expecting a Pedro or a Thiago?"

"You caught me."

"It's an elven name."

"You know, that's not any less confusing."

"It's not, I agree."

"Are you telling me to mind my own business?"

"No, I'm just being a shit." He shrugs. "There isn't a story, there. Mom liked the name."

"So no mysterious elven ancestry that will reveal itself in unparalleled magical proficiency?"

"If it does I will be as surprised as you."

"I'm not sure I'd be surprised at this point, honestly, I've foreshadowed it and everything."

"Ah huh." Here's the mess hall, mostly empty at this time of night, and they can get their gruel over there. "And you, where are you from?"

"Morroc."

"...wait, wasn't Morroc..."

"Destroyed when a demon sunk it into the sands, yep."

"Shit. I'm sorry."

He shrugs. "They're rebuilding, there's a refugee camp, there are powerful people keeping the demons mostly at bay..."

...he's not gonna ask but he's sensing that Taharqi may have a specific reason to become an adventurer. Which, honestly, fair enough. Vallynn doesn't, so much—but what he does want to do is make the world safer and more peaceful and prosperous, so "defeat the demon that destroyed a country" isn't a bad quest to work towards.

He shrugs. Then pauses when he spots someone. "Let's sit over there," he says, gesturing with his chin at one of the very few occupied tables.

"—sure."

And the person that was over there looks up when they arrive then sighs longsufferingly.

"Vallynn, this is Annika Elgrsdóttir," says Taharqi, taking a seat. "Annika, this is Vallynn."

"A pleasure?"

"Mm."

"...I saw you punching the training dummy earlier. It looked really cool."

"My form isn't good enough."

"We're always our own worst critics."

"If my form were good enough I wouldn't be here," she explains patiently.

"...fair enough, honestly. Have you guys been here long?"

"Coupl'a days."

"Two weeks and three days."

"Anything to tell the newbie?"

"...about what?"

"There's instructors all over the place and representatives of a number of guilds. Training is kind of freeform but there are so-to-speak graduation criteria at least for some of the guilds. Basically, you get fast-tracked into a guild if you look competent enough."

Some of that he knew, yeah.

"How does instruction work, exactly? Like, freeform in what way?"

"You can use a training dummy if one is available, you can ask an instructor to look over your form if one is available—"

"I'm gonna be a mage."

"—you know, I have no idea what mage instructors do? I've seen people practising magic on the porings but I don't think I've seen any magic instructors out on the training grounds."

"I guess it's obvious enough if you're succeeding or not as a mage?"

Just then the boy from earlier that had been trying to concentrate really hard on the marin walks into the mess hall, his clothes and hair looked mildly singed.

"...and that is an example of 'not'," he adds in an undertone.

Annika smiles a bit into her food.

"—hey, wow, you managed to make her smile in less than an hour's acquaintance, that's impressive!"

Aaand now she's scowling again.

"Anyway, I imagine the instructors have all retired for the night by now so I should go find the mages in the morning?"

"Yeah. And afterwards tell me about it, I'm really curious how that goes."

"What are you two aiming for?"

"Monk."

"Rogue."

"Hey, that's a party."

"No healer."

"No?"

"No."

"There could be a healer."

"No, there could not."

"Didn't mean you."

"...then who."

"Someone! Or one of us could pick it up."

"Bit familiar for less than an hour's acquaintance."

"I'm not married to the idea, it's just the prototypical thing to do here at the Academy, isn't it?"

"Sure, just make sure to shop around, parties come and go."

"Yep!"

"So, why a mage?"

"Why not a mage?"

"Stabbing things is cool?"

"Setting things on fire is cool."

"Ah, a firebug, I see."

"I'm not a firebug, I just like raw magic."

"To set things on fire."

"Or freeze them! Or do stuff like this." His spoon floats up to his face so he can take the next spoonful of food.

"...you got a telekinesis spell?"

"Not exactly. This one I figured out the hard way, I haven't gotten any proper Skills yet. Though I think I'm at three or four potential right now, maybe."

"Oh you got telekinesis yourself, like manually?"

"Yeah!"

"Are you sure there's no elven ancestry in there somewhere?"

"It's a pretty small spell, nothing very fancy. Surely you knew how to use those knives even prior to learning any Skills with them."

"I thought it was a lot less straightforward with spells."

"Well, I mean, it's less straightforward but not not straightforward."

"Well, mark me as a lot more interested in this party idea now, a mage that can develop his own spells isn't something you pass up."

"Mm."

"Well, I'm flattered."

"But it's still far too early to really think about that. Once we have a hundred porings under each of our belts we can start thinking about moving on to bigger threats, like fabres."

Annika snorts.

"Gosh, I'm not sure when I'll be ready for that kind of action. Seems a little bit too exciting, you know?"

"Just wait until I tell you about rockers."

"I'm not sure I'll ever be powerful enough for rockers. Fire wolves, sure, but rockers? With those disgusting antennae? Terrifying."

Giggle.

"We're even getting laughter, now! We must be so charming."

...she scowls again and decides that's too much time spent around extroverts. "Good night," she says, abruptly getting up and stalking off.

"I think she likes you."

"Do you think if she likes me enough she'll punch me?"

"I'm sure if you try hard and believe in yourself you can get her to."

"Oh I will try."

"...you will?"

"Have you seen what she can do with those fists? If she punched me like that I'd say 'thank you'."

"I think you and I are going to be very good friends."

"But are we going to be the kind of very good friends who fall into bed together on the same day they met?"

It turns out that they are in fact going to be that kind of very good friends.

The next morning after breakfast Vallynn goes looking for the Mages' Guild representative where he's been told they'd be on the first floor.

The enrobed man in the room, reading from a tome that looks almost as heavy as he is, doesn't look much older than Vallynn himself, maybe 25 if that. When Vallynn knocks on the doorframe he looks up then looks back down and says, "Dancers' Guild is two doors down the hallway."

"—uh, no, I'm looking for the Mages' Guild, actually."

He looks back up and squints. "...for yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Are the clothes throwing you off, is wearing big flowy stuffy robes a strict requirement?"

"Not... as such, no."

"I bet I can find a way to make big flowy stuffy robes sexy."

"Are you really sure sure that you're meant to go here?"

He huffs and shuts the boy's book closed telekinetically.

The boy jumps then looks intently at Vallynn again. "Oh...kay. Um. Right."

"Are you the mage instructor?"

"No, I'm her assistant. She's, uh, still asleep."

"...I see. Any idea when she'll wake up?"

Helpless shrug.

"What's a mage assistant do, then?"

"I wish I knew."

He sighs. "She has me fetch her stuff and do chores and answer basic questions and turn people away..."

"'Turn people away'."

"A lot more people think they can be mages than actually can. I'm meant to get rid of those."

"And so you turn people away if they're not wearing robes."

The boy flushes. "I didn't turn you away, did I?"

"Not for lack of trying!"

He squints. "...you're messing with me."

"I am."

"I'm older than you."

"Only barely."

"And more senior."

"Also correct."

"...so stop that."

"Sure. So how do you usually turn people away, if it's not that they look too hot to belong in a dusty old wizard's tower."

"Well, if they don't know any magic."

"...isn't that a bit backwards? Aren't you meant to be the ones teaching magic?"

"Well, sure, but after there's, like, they've shown any aptitude."

"Like after they've successfully electrocuted a marin to death and not themself?"

"...oh you've met Pierre. Yeah. Wizard Mara does not want to be bothered by people who can't electrocute a marin to death without electrocuting themselves in the process."

"So suppose someone shows up who wants to be a mage but doesn't know any magic and wants to start from scratch, you...?"

"...tell them to go take the basic lessons downstairs on how to get Skills and then lend them a book on the basics," he says, pointing at a pile of small thin books over in a corner.

"I suppose that optimises very neatly for not wasting Wizard Mara's time."

"Which is exactly as intended," calls a voice from the door behind Vallynn, making the other boy jump.

Vallynn doesn't jump, though, and just turns around and grins at her. "And you must be Wizard Mara. It's a pleasure to meet you, I'm Vallynn."

(Also: she is totally making the flowy robes look sexy, with the bodice and the cleavage and the fluff around the neck, it's simultaneously regal and wizardly and really attractive.)

(Not his style, though. Not quite.)

"Mm, that's to be determined, Vallynn. Did you give poor Bjorn a fright with your, ah... skirt? Loincloth? What are you wearing, dear? Actually, don't answer that, I don't care." She walks past him towards the back of the room where another door, this one closed, leads to presumably her office or... something. "Bjorn, let me know when this jungle man has proven any good—"

    "Uh, actually..."

"—yes?"

    "Um. He did telekinesis?"

She turns around to squint at Vallynn. "You wasted an entire Skill on that? It'd better be truly impressive range and power."

"Uh, no to all of those."

"Beg pardon?"

"It's not very impressive range or power but it's also not a Skill."

"Show me."

Up into the air goes Bjorn's book, to the boy's chagrin.

"...well well well. Interesting. Maybe you do have potential, jungle man.

"But I don't want my time wasted so how about you go talk to all of the other instructors in this shoddy building and make extra sure there isn't anything else you're missing and come back when you have? I'll be rather cross to find any gaps in your education."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Now shoo, you're distracting Bjorn."

Down drops the book.

Bjorn yelps—the book is very heavy—and Wizard Mara snorts before retreating into her room.

"Right, then. Instructors downstairs?"

"...uh, yeah. Uh, Skills and Stats and basic field first aid and, uh, tactics 101? I think? Oh and elemental theory. ...and, uh, cooking? I'm not sure you need that one."

"I'll keep it in mind, thank you, Bjorn. It was a pleasure bothering you."

He scowls and tries to look for the page he'd been reading before his book got so rudely shut closed in his face. "Now go away."

"Aww, I thought we were building a rapport."

"Leave."

He leaves, but not before grabbing one of those beginners' books.

"Fancy seeing you here."

Annika doesn't look up or miss a beat in her combo against the training dummy. "It's not."

"No?"

"No."

"Is it because you're always here at this time in the morning?"

"Yes." One-two-THREE one-two-THREE one-two-step-FOUR...

"I see. That makes sense."

...he is trying to get some reaction out of her, she's sure of it, but she doesn't know what it could be.

And she doesn't much care.

One-two-THREE one-two-THREE one-two-step-FOUR one-two-THREE...

Mmhm. Anyway, he grabs his two fancy-looking daggers and gets to practising, himself. And in a certain sense, his style couldn't be more different from hers if it tried.

Annika's relying on intense perfected physical form, being able to do exactly the correct thing every time; this makes her predictable, of course, but she overcomes this issue by the predictability not mattering, because it really makes no difference if she's precise enough no one can dodge and strong enough she can punch through whatever defences are put in place.

Taharqi, on the other hand, is being unpredictable. No two hits cut the same place and his stance is constantly shifting, so light on his feet he's almost floating, hit-dodge-hit-hit-dodge-hit-dodge-dodge. It's almost more of a dance than fighting except for the way the training dummy is very much feeling the hurt here.

...huh. Maybe he's more than just talk.

But neither of them would be here if they didn't need the practice; the Academy only takes people starting at age 19 or 20, maybe 18 if they're precocious enough (which she is), so they've had a while of training already if they're worth their salt, but the smart thing to do is to acquire at most one or two Skills before coming here at all. You don't want to lock yourself into something that might be very inefficient or not what you wanted, and then it's very difficult and expensive to lose a learned Skill (or alternatively you don't do that and instead just have a useless Skill taking up space in your head forever which is unthinkable in Annika's opinion). So Annika herself has some minor self-healing not taking up any Skill slots, just the basics anyone tracking for the Church learns in preparatory classes before joining the Academy, and she's not planning on using up her first potential until she's ready to actually leave.

More people arrive at the training grounds to join them, practising with swords and daggers and arrows and guns and hammers and their bare fists and magic. There are not enough training dummies for everyone, but there are enough porings: roughly spherical slime creatures with easily identifiable elemental affinities that aren't permanently killable but which can be temporarily taken down before they reform. They vary a lot in power, and the Academy makes sure they don't merge too much before being killed, but they're great for many types of practice.

Such as, for example, elemental practice. Just before lunch Vallynn walks out of the building, squints at a poring, and calls a lightning bolt onto it.

It explodes with a wet plop like Jell-O being punched really hard, and he smiles to himself, pleased as punch.

(...the boy who'd gotten himself singed last night (Pierre, Bjorn had said?) walks back into the building, looking dejected.)

...yeah, sorry, man. He didn't mean to show off.

(Much.)

Liar.

Taharqi walks up to him, half-smiling. "Is that another non-Skill you got on your own?"

"No, no, that one was a Skill. Lightning Bolt."

"Which you didn't have this morning."

"It's still morning."

"Ah huh."

"Oh, come on, I did say that I had three or four potentials. Surely if you tried to get a new Skill right now you'd get it quickly, too, especially if you had a book about it."

"Oh, no, not me, I'm all full up."

"...really? Why?"

"There was not really any question of what I was getting and I had good enough access to tutors, so."

"...huh. So what'd you get?"

"Four ranks in Double Attack."

"Which presumably does what it says on the tin."

"Pretty much! Think once act twice kind of thing, it's not really a very active Skill, it just kind of happens."

"It's really weird how Skills do that, actually, like I'd been told but it just feels a lot different to actually experience it, the difference between my teekay and the Lightning Bolt Skill."

"Yeah, I know what you mean. It is very much me who is doing the things I am doing but I am not, really, all there for it, you know?"

"It must be so much creepier when it's physical Skills like that."

"I wouldn't know. No magic here."

"I'm of the school of thought that all Skills and Stats are magic."

"...walk me through that?"

"I will but get back to stabbing that training dummy, that was hot and I want to watch."

"Yes, sir." He gets back to what he'd been doing, paying somewhat less attention to it but his form suffering only a little bit from it.

"So. What's magic?"

"...you're lucky I like you because I don't like where this is going. I don't know, Vallynn, what is magic?"

"Any phenomena that permit creatures with a will to change the way the world works," Annika recites, without looking up from her dummy.

"—right!"

"Uh huh. Seems useless."

"Useless?"

"Everything's magic, then. Talking is magic, building things is magic, what's the point of having a word that means everything?"

"Okay, fair, so the thing is we want something that means the obvious things like Lightning Bolt and doesn't mean the other obvious things like talking and build things. Right?"

"Sure, that sounds reasonable enough."

"And then we have the word 'spells' for the kinds of Skills that mages and priests use, right? But not for, for instance, your Double Attack."

"With you so far."

"And 'Increase Agility' is a spell, right?"

"...yes..."

"But 'Improve Dodge' isn't."

"It's... a passive Skill..."

"'Improve Concentration'?"

"I guess I would accept calling that one a spell."

Vallynn shrugs, but the other two aren't looking at him (though a couple of others have started half paying attention, too).

"Anyway, my point is, while there's a kind of fuzzy boundary between Skills that are and aren't spells and they bleed into each other, there is a very sharp difference between stabbing something twice and Double Attacking it. Like, in both cases, you're deciding to stab, right? It's still you, a creature with a will, using your will to change the world. But when you use Double Attack you are changing the way your body works to make it do a thing that you don't, yourself, know how to do, and that you couldn't just do on your own—at least not yet. When you learn a Skill you're very directly using your mind to cause an effect in the world without going through intermediate steps."

"Right... because I need to actually work out and exercise physically to be good at stabbing things but with Double Attack it kind of just happens?"

"Yep."

"And Stats?"

"Same deal. You're absorbing the strength off monsters but that's not the same as going and, as you say, working out yourself. If nothing else, there's no amount of working out that'd let our friend Annika here punch through steel the way she'll be able to in the future. That has to be through Stats."

"Mm."

"...that feels... wrong."

"Oh?"

"I don't have a good way to... I mean, why is exercising different from killing monsters?"

"...when you exercise, there is a specific thing that is happening to your muscles, they are getting stronger and more resilient. When you increase your Stats, you can do the punching-through-steel thing even without a single noticeable change to your actual body. You've seen monks? They're ripped but not, like, built like oxen, working out enough to get like that should not be enough to do what they can do."

One-two-THREE one-two-THREE one-two-THREE...

"It shouldn't?"

"Their bones aren't any harder to break once they're dead."

"Big difference there, that 'once they're dead'."

"Well, yeah, but that's sort of it, right? The kind of muscle that lets you stab very well is still there when you die; the kind of Stat that lets you stab something twelve times a second isn't."

"And you're saying that's magic."

"Well, I mean, words are words. But if there's anything the word 'magic' means that isn't just 'the Skills that are also spells' then that's what it is."

"Hmm. Seems a bit... philosophical."

"I am a mage," Vallyn says, wryly. "Prospective."

"Speaking of, Mr. Mage, you should go back to exploding porings, you're distracting me and worse you're distracting Annika."

"Isn't."

"You mistimed three punches over the past two minutes."

She stops to stare at him. "How did you—"

"Situational awareness. It's a gift."

She huffs and goes back to practising and definitely tunes other people out this time.

Sure, he'll go explode some porings.

Later at lunch Pierre is picking at his food, still looking dejected, sitting at a table where a few other people wearing robes are also eating. Most of them look substantially less upset than he does.

Oh is that the mages' table? Sure, he'll sit with them.

"Oh if it isn't Mr. Prodigy," sneers one of them when Vallynn sits down.

"—I'm sorry?"

"Bjorn told us about you," she says. "Teekay without a Skill, and then learning Lightning Bolt over two hours. Are you sure you're not too good to sit with us mere mortals?"

...he really hadn't realised all of that was that exceptional. Like, sure, he's not bad by any means, but.

"I had already studied it," he says, which is kind of true but only in the most technical of senses. "So it's not all that."

"Uh huh."

"Anyway! I'm Vallynn. It's nice to meet you."

"We'll see about that."

    "I'm Magnhild," says another mage. "And these are Georgina," the girl who was talking before, "Pierre, Natalya, Inga, Astrid, and you've met Bjorn."

        "Hey," says Bjorn.

            "Hiya," says Astrid.

"Pierre, you look kind of down."

He mumbles something too low to be heard and continues to pick at his food.

"Come again?"

"Must you rub it in?" he repeats, more loudly, and sighs.

"Rub what in?"

    "Are you this daft on purpose or does it just kind of happen?" wonders Georgina.

        "Georgy, don't be such a bitch to the new guy," says Magnhild.

    "Well he shouldn't be a bitch to Pierre, then!"

"It's fine," says Pierre. "He's not being a bitch."

Man it's not his fault that Pierre is incompetent not helpful.

"Sorry, that was a bad opening. Um, what I meant to say was, do you want some help?"

"...'help'."

"Yeah. You know. With Lightning Bolt. At least I assume that's what you were trying to learn?"

    "What would Mr. Prodigy even know about helping."

        "Georgy..."

"That's not the problem..."

"No?"

"I... already have a lightning spell. But it's a bad one. And I'm trying to make it work, 'cause if I don't then I'll have to actually learn Lightning Bolt and then I'm wasting my Skill slots."

"...ah. You're trying to get Lightning Bolt to extend your existing lightning spell? That sounds hard."

"And Bjorn found me this book that has some theory stuff that could be helpful but it involves coming up with some novel non-Skill spell and I'm not a prodigy."