3 The Least Competitive Party

Jack immediately un-summoned the cow and gave his best impression of slight confusion, mild embarrassment, and extreme anxiety. This did nothing to ease the laughter and in fact encouraged a few of the people he directly competed with for the top of class to begin assaulting him.

"Hmph, see what happens when you try to randomly summon your luck is nothing special." No. 5 in class.

"It truly was arrogance that you assumed luck and not hard work would profit you." No. 2 in class wrongly assumed that Jack had tried to get a maximum of profit with minimum effort.

At this point Mrs. Mint recovered enough from shock to return order.

"Every one be silent!" The classroom immediately quieted. Mrs. Mint was a strict teacher and was quick to deliver harsh punishment to disrespectful students. The fact that such a ruckus had started in her class at all was surprising. "Now that everyone has engraved your first rune and summoned a creature class is dismissed. Everyone go back to your dorms and consolidate your cultivation. You've all ranked up so properly absorb some essence to familiarize yourselves with the changes in your bodies. I've recorded all your summons and their abilities. You'll be assigned to parties and notified via your ID Bracelets by tomorrow. Jack please remain behind."

Jack did his best impression of despondence, nodded, and walked over to Mrs. Mint's desk. The rest of the students filed out slowly glancing back at Jack from time to time. Mrs. Mint remained standing in the middle of the classroom while the students filed out. When the room had cleared she walked over and sat behind her desk.

"What am I going to do with you Jack?" Mrs. Mint sighed

"Record my first summon and assign me to a party of course." Jack dropped the poor despondence act and replied calmly. He then re-summoned the cow and spoke, "I suggest a party that's lacking a tank."

"There are no parties missing tanks, Jack. Every party has a fighter or warrior. We even had a paladin this year, the head of the warrior class, you two would have been in a party together." Mrs. Mint tiredly explained.

"I know," Jack calmly replied, "however there is a party with only half a tank."

Mrs. Mint adopted a dissapointed expression, "Is that what you wanted? To join the 'party of failures'? I was shocked when i heard that the top student in the Wizard class engraved a variant oration rune outside of class. I heard you were friends so tell me, are you following her, did you two plan this together, or did you tell her to do so?"

"A bit of two and three. Her descision was her own but she did do so after I'd told her my idea to avoid Party No. 1. Her solution lacks a little elegance though, it's far to apparent that it's intentional. It would be terribly difficult to 'fail' in a profitable manner with any spell runes though..." Jack's response was level and completely devoid of apology.

"Dangit, Jack! Are the both of you trying to throw away you're promising futures? I know you dislike competition and I heard she was the same but this is unacceptable." Mrs. Mint disappointment fully transformed into irritation.

"Of course not neither Rust nor I am that kind of worthless person. We put our full effort into Runic Research and Rune Theory. We merely despise intense competitiveness. We both fully intend cultivate to our full potential and do our best to drive back the Magick Beasts." Jack was somewhat offended at the suggestion that he'd do slightly less than his best.

Mrs. Mint sighed in defeat, "Fine, Jack. You get what you wanted. The 'party of failures' is actually full of misused talents, you might as well join them. I'll just write your summon down as a cow then, the teacher's board would probably still put you in Party no. 1 if they knew it was some sort of Double Mutant."

Jack immediately betrayed an expression of slight surprise, even though she'd been a summoner for a century he hadn't expected her to identify his summon from the brief second it'd been out.

"I am your summoning teacher you know, don't underestimate me too much." Mrs. Mint gave a half smile as she spoke. "Go make something out of those misused talents." Her expression returned to her usual strictness. "You're dismissed."

Jack nodded and walked out of the classroom. Today had gone better than he had expected overall. With the majority of his classmates mocking his summon to defame him or to make themselves seem strong very few would even wonder if his summon wasn't a cow. This was more or less as he desired. He had no way to predict what he would find with the random summon but he'd expected there to be an unimpressive looking double mutant. Even better the most likely person to suspect saw through it but decided to allow him to avoid Party no.1. With her recording his summon as 'cow' no one would question it and he could join the 'team of misused talents'.

He hummed a cheerful tune as he walked back through the forested college grounds. As his dorm came back into view he composed and sent a message to Rust, simply 'I'm in.'. A few moments after he sent it he heard a voice.

"I never doubted it," He was slightly startled and glanced around, that voice was definitely Rust but he didn't see her anywhere... Mrs. Mint had said that Rust engraved a variation of the oration rune was it the voice transmission rune? This old rune was originally a mainstay of cultivators it's function was to directly send ones voice to a specific location in sight, With the invention of modern communication and the ID Bracelets in particular it had fallen out of use. Jack immediately sent a message with his assumption as he walked to the door of his dorm. It was unlocked. He smiled, opened the door, and entered. As Jack entered he heard Rust again.

"Kitchen." He headed towards the kitchen, it was on the ground floor but it was still a little ways from the front door. Rust was sitting at the kitchen table drawing a runic guide in a program on her ID Bracelet. Rust's ID Bracelet was a ring like most of their peers and was decorated with the Vermilion's family crest. According to Rust her family selected that for her and she's have rather had a plain bracelet.

Jack walked over to behind her and took a look at the rune she was designing. The base of the rune was standard, amplification. Wizard's would add these to most of their complex runes to bolster their effect while decreasing the essence cost. Of course only the base rune was standard, a mind rune had been added in the center and integration loops had been added to the edges. All things considered it would still be a fairly standard advanced combination for a person breaking through to Rank 4, for a Rank 1 designing their second rune it would be incredibly ambitious.

"Integrating your first and second runes? Do you have enough essence for that?" Jack asked expecting a no. Integration was some of the most costly designs and if Rank 2 was enough to properly utilize it he'd have heard of it. As he'd assumed she shook her head in response.

Her long dark hair covered her face from the angle Jack was at but after being friends for four years Jack could guess her expression. Her looks had made her popular from the first class their first year the dark hair she'd inherited from her mother contrasting against the pale skin from chronic sunlight avoidance. Luckily for the introverted Rust her family name scared off a good portion of the young men attracted to her though it did nothing to dissuade her noble classmates. Partway through first year Jack and Rust had been paired up for a Runic Studies activity the activity was originally for four people but since nobody else could match them they'd ended up as a two person team. Of course they'd still taken first. They'd been friends ever since though it'd been a few months since they talked since they were both so busy.

Jack went into the kitchen proper to make some tea for them, any time they started discussing runes they'd lose track of time. Nox was sitting on the bottom of the cupboards and jumped onto Jack's sleeve as he opened Dandelion's front door. He chuckled and borrowed some nectar to sweeten the tea while Nox climbed onto his shoulder.

When he'd finished the tea and walked back out Rust had stopped fiddling with the rune and was looking at him.

"How'd it go?" Her lips barely moved as she spoke, even in such close proximity with a friend she hated talking.

Jack adopted a pained expression, "It wasn't easy for me, I don't have a powerful background so unlike a certain wizard I couldn't willfully engrave a random rune and get myself conveniently placed in a party out of the spotlight..."

Jack faked a bereaved sigh, "I had to engrave an altered random summoning rune and search long and hard for the weakest looking Magick Beast I could find."

Jack summoned his cow and continued, "Even then after all that effort Mrs. Mint saw through it... I guess you can't fight a century of experience."

Rust's eyes began to widen in surprise and concern before she remembered he'd already said he was in. Her eyes immediately narrowed in displeasure. Jack grinned and quickly finished his explanation.

"Luckily she accepted my decision and wrote down my summon as a Common cow."

"So the rune worked as expected?" Rust asked. She only ever talked this much about Rune Theory.

"Yeah, it worked flawlessly. Even better than I expected. I had a look through all the creatures the rune found and this was the only one that fit my requirements. Every single other creature was obviously a magic beast at a glance. I got lucky with this guy being there at all."

"Hmmmm... A shame you had to waste such a good rune on a creature like this." Rust commented.

"Not at all, this Beast," He patted the cows flank and de-summoned it, "will make an excellent wall for us to hide behind seeing as how we don't have a proper tank yet."

"Mmmmm, we have quite the team, I'll introduce you tomorrow. It might be... a difficult party..." Rust murmured. They spent several hours catching up and talking Rune Theory before Rust had to leave to avoid breaking curfew. Jack spent the rest of the evening absorbing and condensing essence before going to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be ... interesting.