Country of Champions 10

True to form, life did throw a surprise, except that it shouldn't have been that much of one. The academic assessment tests were a lot harder than Orison thought they would be. Social Studies and History were already things the young mage knew were going to be obstacles but he didn't expect that the knowledge of science he took for granted wouldn't only shoot him in the foot, it was also very rusty.

He informed the evaluation panel the moment his results came out that he was going to address the issues in 'juice box'. That didn't stop them from embarrassing him nearly to death by putting him in remedial courses until he 'proved' it. To keep from having to endure the shame, Orison filed an exemption from his first accelerator class to knock out the potholes of his education standards.

The mental boost pod, juice box, was little more than a technological, watered down version of the 'bewildering array that the silk purse had used on him. It was more beneficial and psyche protecting but since he focused on more multipliers to time rather than mental boost, it really wasn't any different. On his first day, while in the virtual, he tried a little of the boosting to find out that all it did for him was make his mind get tired more quickly. His soul had far more computational and memory retention prowess than his mind to begin with.

After finding out that he could file exemptions for accelerator class another four times in a row, he did so. The mocking text from Jacques was the main reason. As juvenile as it was, being belittled in an area he had some pride in stung in ways he couldn't easily ignore. The mockery from the jumping clowns ready to slap him onto the bench to take his seat didn't phase him at all. Rio's slowly deeper growing doubt in him over the following four days did a little.

Once he rolled out of the juice box on day five, Orison immediately marched over to the evaluation office and signed up for his secondary exam. After being advised that there would be a mandatory three month lock out where he'd be forced to attend remedial if he failed, he insisted. Three grueling hours and a late lunch later, he tested out at near perfects. Done with that, he called a secondary education evaluation test and received a pass. It had been a close call on History and Science, however.

The faculty advised him to stay on, polish up some more and shoot for core. They tried to explain that a future in core administration was a much better option and that, with his acumen, it wouldn't be that difficult to get an academic recommendation for the accelerator program. To their disappointment, Orison was dead set on Rowdies.

Early that Saturday, Jacques finally showed up for the first time since their tiff. By the look on his face, the man was not pleased. Orison invited him in with an innocent smile on his face and offered the man a grape soda.

"Sorry, I'd offer a better selection but budget cuts," the young mage said cheekily.

Red faced, Jacques all but shouted, "Am I supposed to be impressed!? A half of a year of Juice Box wasted in a week for nothing more than a barely pass!? How much use, how much could you absorb from so much decompressed time perception? The only thing impressive about your feat is that you aren't experiencing mental echo or some other thing stupid people get trying to push their brains too far."

Confused, Orison said, "I don't get it. I only pushed a hundred days. How is that half a year?"

His first time acting like anything approaching an actual instructor, Jacques angrily spit, "It's based on the 200 days worth of a school year. Now answer me. Why wouldn't you want to shoot for a core recommendation? Even if you didn't accept, it would still get you a little more attention and possibly some more resources for development."

Orison gave a saintly smile, "Let's get all the disappointment out of the way, shall we? Native and Planer Biology, Native and Planar Geology, Planar Anthropology and a few side courses are going to eat up another year's worth of my Juice Box time. The rest will be spent in simulations observing and fighting against planar threats."

Jacques, geared up to lay into Orison for whatever thing the young mage would say, swallowed back down whatever stock arguments he had planned and actually calmed down considerably. "I see. I also think I understand a little too. It's so laser focused, instead of feeling angry, I think I pity you a little. Are you in such a rush to grow up and probably die? It's a coin flip, you know. Do you even have a fallback plan if your fast track gets derailed?"

Orison said, "I think you might be missing a little something here. I'm freeing up more time to focus on the things that can't be learned in Juice Box or at school. I don't know how much you've looked into my actions since I came here but I have an alchemy instructor and if you hadn't stepped into the picture, I'd have poured whatever remaining resources and time I had left into personal magic studies."

"What resources? You blew them on redeeming your Viking man," Jacques said.

The young mage thought about it some and said, "Follow me to the alchemy room, Instructor LeStrange. I'm about to invoke some Master-Apprentice confidentiality."

After having combed through his possessions more than once, Orison had selected some things he felt he didn't really need to hold onto. Pulling out his ring, the young mage dropped the lesser half of his enchantment supply on the table. The vast majority was either not as appealing or, from his basic understanding, far too focused in use on specific things that he wasn't interested in.

"Aside from the more exotic pieces, I have a general idea of what they're worth. It's not some huge reveal, I know but it's still a secret cache big enough to illicit some greed," Orison said.

It didn't seem like the wisest move but he needed to know if he could trust his instructor. If it meant losing the material half of his nest egg, Orison considered it worth the risk. He had too many secrets and he needed to be able to display some of them to get any use out of them.

LeStrange looked at the items and back at Orison. "Tell me truly. Are you a walk-in that slipped past the net somehow?"

"Since I'm going to the Rowdies, does it matter?" the young mage countered.

The man was silent for a moment before slowly shaking his head. "So you decided to fence this three or so million worth of materials through me instead of Liberty?"

Orison said, "No. I decided to hand this over to you to see how you'd treat me. These are my possessions, not stolen goods. I want to know. Aside from low balling their value by at least half, what do you plan to do about it?"

The man said, "I'm going to take this and pay off your debt. From there, I'll get some of them properly identified and make a proper accounting of it. Other than the twen- ten percent I'll take for my time and effort, I'll put half into your account and save the other half back for serious training with you when you're ready... Anything else you'd like to declare and save some effort?"

"Time and trust, Instructor LeStrange," Orison said blandly.

The man packed the materials away and left still softly shaking his head.

"Fencing goods through Liberty, ha! If her laces were any straighter, they'd be reinforced with rebar," the young mage shot at Jacques' departing figure.

It hadn't escaped Orison's notice that when he came down to the basement with Jacques, the sounds coming from the training room became much more subdued. Due to the good insulation between rooms, he'd have no troubles focusing on alchemy even if a battle was going on in there so he knew that it wasn't out of courtesy. Poking his head in, he noticed Rio and two rather physically fit girls looking like they were still recovering from exertion.

After using spirit sight and his heightened sense of smell to check for signs of unapproved activity and finding that it had 'mostly' been legit, Orison let the little slips of excitement and slight amount of heavy petting pass. Things might have escalated to areas not acceptable if he hadn't showed up but he couldn't very well take Rio to task for an almost that didn't happen. They had been legitimately training and one of the girls got a little too into the contact.

Orison looked at the 'barely' adult he figured was suckered into coming to fill the 'responsible adult' clause of his deal with the teen. "I'll approve you to chaperon and use our private equipment but keep it R-15 in here, alright?"

The young lady said, "Don't you mean pg-13?"

Orison shrugged. "A happy compromise between that and the R-17 you let it get to today... You two better wash your hands before touching anymore equipment in here and everything gets wiped down after you're done."

The girl that was around the same age as Rio blushed and said, "Thank you for letting us use your training room. I'm, uh, sorry. It won't happen-"

Simultaneously Rio was muttering something Orison couldn't hear that clearly but knew what he would be feeling if he was in Rio's place and let it slide.

"Don't make promises you don't even know if you intend to keep. I'd appreciate it if you didn't full out break my rules and have to get barred, though. I'm glad Rio's finding some... friends." Orison said.

He briefly took a moment to remember what they looked like. There was a family resemblance between the two, most strikingly obvious from the identically colored sets of strawberry blonde hair. They also had fairly similar modest endowments in areas that it was hard for a guy not to notice even when he tries not too but the older one that was barely in his 'okay to pay attention to' zone had a men's class ring on a short necklace.

Figuring that he'd said what needed saying, he made his way out only to find that the older one was following him up. "I don't get it. I know looks can be deceiving around Avalon but you two don't really have the vibe of family. Why do you support him and keep him on the up and up? It's only casual curiosity, mind you. I'm not snooping, just speaking my mind."

Seeing more harm than good over being too tight lipped, he said, "I was a friend of his adopted father. The man was there for me when I needed him, though I ended up taking care of him more. He was a good guy."

"Rio bad mouths him a little but you can tell he cares about the man a great deal. Never said his name, though. Not that uncommon around here but, damn. How many hidden hex masters can there be in Avalon? Trisha, by the way, Orison," the young lady said.

The young mage held back a sigh and said, "Demons and devils can do things with a name freely given too but I see your point. Is there something I can do for you Trisha?"

The young woman's smile slipped a notch. "Just trying to be friendly. You are letting us use your training room."

As he checked his touchscreen for messages, Orison said, "Least I can do for Rio's friends."

After an awkward moment of silence, Trisha walked back downstairs. After a minute or two, he had their public information pulled up on the touchscreen. Trisha was a holdover for a complicated training injury. She was a C-class physical enhancement mutant with a touch of artifact assisted D- class wizardry magic, active Rowdies program senior who was earning some merit by working as an assistant trainer. Daphne, her younger cousin downstairs, was in training to be a technomancer in front line support.

He got the impression that Daphne was just a sporty teenage girl that took a shine to Rio but Trisha didn't give him innocent vibes. It wasn't anything overly ugly but there was a least a touch of angling going on. She'd racked up some debt and probably didn't want to start her Rowdy career with too much hanging over her head. After all, interest was deferred til a person left education.

From what he'd learned, a D-class wizard was close to being classified as an arcanist. Being that both were reliant on tools to not only focus but direct essence, the only real difference was that wizards at least had a reserve to hold some magic in them where an arcanist really only had an innate magic affinity. Such knowledge did flip Orison's misconception about all mystics in this magic essence stingy world being emitter types, on it's back. With emitters and extra planar sources around to generate essence, even neutral types could use magic.

A little curious, Orison looked up the difference between an arcanist and a person who might have practiced some legitimate ritual magic for awhile. Aside from magic channels that didn't serve much purpose without a reserve, there really wasn't one. Then it dawned on him. The UTF might not care but Avalon would. On certain planes, an arcanist would be like a magic machine gun.

Without a reserve behind it, an arcanist's magic channels would be like a vacuum cleaner, sucking magic from one side and pushing it out the other. They'd just have to be careful not to overtax their channels and they could easily be more useful than a sorcerer in some places. They would also be more likely to face dire consequences if ambient essence was tainted with something bad. It sparked a nasty thought in the back of his mind.

With a little more searching, Orison got a decent idea of what happened to E and F-class Wizards. There was more 'merit' in turning them into arcanists. After a little more digging, his intuition sluggishly joining to satisfy his curiosity, Orison was fairly certain he'd discovered another nugget of ugly hidden beneath Avalon's glittering facade. Not only did they have a way to turn wizards into arcanists, judging by some records and statistics that seemed unrelated unless looked at side by side, there was a directive to make that happen.

In fact, although it was subtle, over the last five years there was a correlative drop in wizard discoveries that corresponded almost directly with an increase in S-bar discoveries of arcanists. Following further down the rabbit hole, his intuition seeming to catch a whiff of something beneficial to himself, he started seeing a pattern of increased arcanist presence in places that WERE essence tainted. He immediately called Jacques back over. There was nothing about the situation that benefited Avalon at the end game and that's just not how the place worked.

Grumpy but curious, Jacques gave a text saying that he'd be back over right after he dropped off the materials in a safe place. Orison was fine with that because there was one last thing he wanted to look into before his instructor arrived. Walking back down to the basement and seeing real training happening, the young mage quietly got Trisha's attention and motioned her to follow him into the meditation room.

Once he got her there, he said, "I looked into you two. Nothing major. Just public records."

Red faced, Trisha said, "Well that's a little insulting."

Orison nodded in agreement and said, "But honest and you'd do the same in my position. First of all, sorry. Secondly, I have an interest in supernatural biology in relation to the medical field and I'd like to examine your injury. I'm open to compensation as long as it's reasonable."

She looked at him dubiously and said, "How would you 'examine' it?"

"Using my sensitivity. I want to see what an essence, sorry, mana reserve injury looks like to it. As you can see on my record, it's not high but it is directly focused on identifying and tracking ess- er, mana," Orison said with his best neutral business face.

She insisted on seeing his S&M bars before she said, "Swear an oath that you'll only look and nothing else. I'll also want 10,000 merits."

Orison spluttered a little but checked his budget to make sure there wouldn't be any problems and said, "Alright. I swear that all I intend is to look at your injury with my spiritual sight. I will only do more if I am convinced it will be beneficial to you and will ask permission first."

He felt tenuous bonds of some kind sink and cover a small portion of his space's latticework. Looking down, Orison saw a faint spatter of magic pattern dance in Trisha's palm. Irritated but somewhat understanding, he let it go.

After a little preparation, Orison imitated Pelenel's gentle method as best as he could as he slowly increased the intensity of his spirit sight. As droplets of essence enriched intent collected back up within her aura, he slowly dove towards the reserve spot near her heart. Immediately he saw an issue that would make it hard to see what he wanted.

Grinding his teeth for a moment, he let the tension go and said with false cheer, "I don't think you'd have any objections to meditating here? It's a free refill for your tank."

She agreed after he withdrew his intent. It took her nearly half an hour to balloon out her pitiful, less than ten unit reserve and he could tell that it pained her some but she was being a trooper for that 10,000 merits.