“Good morning, Eugene, Irene.”

  “Why are you pretending to be polite today? You didn’t bother hiding your true feelings yesterday? What did you tell Lara, Felix? I’m sure she wouldn’t have behaved like that if it weren’t for you.” Eugene almost snarled at him. He made no attempt to hide his hostility. But he was no master actor. Felix could hear the slight quaver in his voice, and he looked like he was trying hard to hold back tears.

  “Look, Eugene, I’m sorry for what I said to you the other day. And I didn’t say anything to Lara, but you can’t tell me you haven’t seen the way your new friends behave? How did you think she’d respond?”

  He watched Irene out of the corner of his eye as he said it.

  “Ha! As if anyone would believe that, you’re clearly just jealous of Eugene. He’s told us how you tried to keep him away from that little girlfriend of yours, even back on your homeworld. You seriously expect us to believe you didn’t go crying to her about how crippled you are, begging her to ignore Eugene and help you instead?”

  “What, no! I would never do something like that!”

  Eugene looked like he didn’t know what to believe, but Irene refused to relent.

  “Oh, so you didn’t go dragging her away to have lunch with just you and that pet of hers? Didn’t Eugene have to promise to help a loser like you just to be included in your private little parties?”

  “It’s not like that!”

  “It’s exactly like that? Do you deny wanting to exclude him from your lunch dates? Do you deny driving a wedge between them before you even came here?”

  “I–”

  “What, cat got your tongue?”

  “Stop that! You’re just twisting everything, nothing was like that!”

  Irene sneered.

  “See that, Eugene? He has nothing to say for himself. You should be clear on what happened. You don’t need to worry about a spineless worm like him. He might have sabotaged your relationship with that girl, but you still have us. They’ll all be forced to see just how good you are when you get into that elite program, while this loser is stuck here trying to play Traveller.”

  “Eugene, don't listen to her! She’s–”

  “Enough.”

  Eugene sneered.

  “I saw you laughing at me yesterday. Why would I believe anything you say? You basically admitted to sabotaging my relationship with Lara. I won’t forget this, Felix. I don’t care if you’re jealous of me, but you don’t get to ruin my reputation behind my back. You should have just accepted that you failed at becoming a Traveller.

  “Go learn to count crops or something, I don’t want to see you again. Let’s go, Irene.”

  Still bewildered by the sudden turn of events, Felix couldn’t think of anything to say to stop them.

  “Spokes. I guess that’s it for the apology, huh?”

  Felix stared off in the direction they had left. He felt surprisingly calm. He’d promised Lara he’d apologise, and he’d done that. He wasn’t the one being unreasonable to start with. The fact that Eugene couldn’t see that, wasn’t his problem.

  “It’s not for you to decide I failed Eugene, I’ll become a Traveller, one way or another.”

  With that, he left for the dorms to practice his spell in peace. It took Felix three more days to successfully cast the spell. He thought it would be easy at first, but it turns out keeping an image of sleep in your mind while connecting to the constantly energetic cloud of life mana wasn’t easy.

  He limped his way back to the gym every day, but the instructor would only let him do stretches for the first two. He had his second real training session just before he succeeded. His body’s exhaustion helped calm the chaotic life mana just enough for him to finally manage to communicate his intent.

  He felt the mana react the second he communicated with it. The chaotic maelstrom of mana entered a more organised flow. The mana normally felt like someone had set free a pack of overexcited puppies to run rampant, doing as they pleased. As soon as the spell took hold, the feel of the mana changed. Still just as energetic and eager to move, it felt like the mana suddenly had purpose.

  He was so entranced by the sight that the spell almost failed. Felix had spent so much time working on just getting it to cast that he’d forgotten that the spell said it needed to be channeled. As soon as his concentration wavered, some of the mana tried to go back to its chaotic state.

  Noticing what happened, he quickly started focusing again. His mind mana affinity must have been doing something to help, as he was able to split his focus just enough to still see what the life mana was doing.

  The mana marched through his body, flowing into every aching muscle, into every bone and nerve. The mana disappeared at a staggering rate while more mana flowed into him from his stomach and lungs. His heart rate slowed, and he felt a tingle all over his body as the mana underwent some process beyond his understanding.

  He quickly became thirsty and hungry, and he considered breaking the spell to get something from Agrona. Before he could decide one way or the other, the mana marched its inevitable march towards his head. He started feeling drowsy exactly as the spell had described. He just managed to notice a sharp change in his mind mana before he drifted off into sleep.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  When he awoke the next morning, he had a pounding headache, and his mouth was so dry his tongue felt swollen. He felt like he hadn’t eaten in days, and he smelled like he desperately needed a shower.

  Not wanting to subject Agrona to his current smell, he cleaned up as quickly as he could before rushing downstairs.

  “Ha! I see you finally managed it, huh? Congratulations!”

  “Agrona, please! I’m starving, and it feels like I haven’t had anything to drink in a month.”

  “Haha, I told you to make sure you don’t skip dinner before you cast that thing. You wouldn’t be in this state otherwise. Here, have some marsh berries and tea while I whip something up for you.”

  “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.”

  Felix gorged himself on berries and quickly finished his tea. Fortunately, Agrona wasn’t gone for long before she brought him back a massive platter of fruits, salads, and smoked meats. Along with a pitcher of tea.

  After he’d gotten over the worst of it and started slowing down, Agrona looked at him with a twinkle in her eye.

  “So, now that you aren’t on the verge of starvation, how do you feel?” Her knowing smile said she already knew what he was going to say, but he hadn’t even taken stock of himself since waking up.

  Standing up, he tried to move around, and he quickly realised why she was looking at him expectantly. He tried stretching and even did a couple of pushups. Before he looked at her in shock.

  “I’ve completely recovered, not a single sore muscle.”

  “Ha! Not so bad for a spell that manages period cramps, is it?”

  Felix quickly looked around to make sure the hall was empty. Fortunately, it was.

  “Not so loud, would you! What if someone heard?”

  “Oh, c’mon, no need to be so shy. You’re getting to the age where you need to learn about these things.”

  When Felix kept watching the hall as if someone was about to jump out and laugh at his spell, she rolled her eyes.

  “Well, at least you understand now, what do you think will happen if you train every day and you’re fully recovered by the next?” She asked him with a smirk.

  Felix’s eyes widened in shock.

  “You think I’ll be able to keep up with the people who have knight talents?”

  Agrona quickly held up a hand to stop him.

  “Whoa there, don’t get ahead of yourself, you’ll quickly reach the upper limit of what your body can handle for your age. They’re able to use mana to break past that limit. Don’t go trying to compete with them physically. Besides, you’re using your spell to reach your natural limit. They’re able to do that on their own. They still have spells on top of their physical advantage. In a head-on fight, they’d wipe the floor with you.”

  Felix looked down. Even after all this, he’d still be the weakest.

  “None of that moping.” Agrona menaced a wooden spoon at him.

  “You’ll still be surprised how far your body can go. Besides, they won’t be getting any more spells. If you keep working at it, you’ll quickly find a few more. Not to mention that you haven’t even figured out everything this spell does. Boosting your recovery is just the first effect. Keep at it.”

  When Felix later visited instructor Grendel and told him that he’d managed to cast his spell, the instructor looked like Felix had thrown him a surprise birthday party. That should have raised alarm bells in his head, but in his naive excitement, Felix missed the warning signs.

  By the time they finished their workout, the instructor had to ask Henry to carry Felix back to the dorms.

  “Sorry about this.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I saw how hard he pushed you. I think even the demon twins would have had trouble doing all that.”

  “The demon twins?”

  “Ah, you don’t know them? There are these two girls who spar with each other in the afternoon. They’re super cute, so when they first started, a few of the guys went to cheer them on. As soon as they started fighting, basically everyone was scared off. Those two are so strong that instructor Grendel had to move them to a stronger arena. They kept breaking the ring.”

  Felix looked at him in shock.

  “One of them wouldn’t happen to have pink hair, would she?”

  The guy nodded.

  “Ah, so you have heard of them?”

  “I guess you could say that, demon twins, huh?” Felix asked with a smirk.

  “By the way, I haven’t seen you hanging out with Eugene’s group lately.”

  Henry thought for a while.

  “Oh! You’re the guy with the interesting affinities! I thought you looked familiar when we met in the Library. Yeah, I mostly focus on my training, I don’t have much time for socialising. Did you end up finding what you were looking for in the library?”

  “Hmm, not really. None of the books I got were very helpful.”

  Henry nodded.

  “Yeah, my starting books didn’t help much either. Don’t give up on it, though. The more you look for knowledge, the more you find. I’ve been reading some of the books in the library that I think can help with my gates.

  “One time I needed to cross a canyon, the library had books on weaving, so I tried to see if I could make a rope out of some vines. After I crossed it, the Ways added a new book to my study, ‘A Practical Guide to Wild Plants’. It showed me how to identify useful plants and harvest them. It’s been a huge help.”

  “Wow! I didn’t know the Ways did that. I wonder if it will give you more spells. By the way, did your books have anything on affinities? I keep feeling like I’ve purposefully been given books that avoid the topic.”

  “Huh, now that you mention it, I don’t think it did. I’ll look into it again and let you know.

  Well, this is the dorm. Will you be alright from here?”

  “Yeah, thanks again for the help, and for the tip with the books. I’ll let you know if I figure out any useful tricks of my own.”

  “Don’t worry about it, see you around, Felix!”

  Felix spent the next few days visiting the library after his morning training. It gave him a chance to recover and had the added bonus of being closer than the dorms. He tried to dig up anything that would help him with his gate. It didn’t take him long to realise that his current schedule was unsustainable. If every trip to the gym was going to leave him incapacitated, he’d need to start going before bed.

  The problem was how busy the gym was in the evenings. If he went, then he wouldn’t get nearly as much help from instructor Grendel. However, as soon as he realised the second benefit of his spell, it stopped being as much of a problem.

  Within a few days of learning to cast the spell and learning to make sure he was fully satiated before casting it, the time he spent asleep started decreasing. With Agrona stuffing him full of meals rich in life mana, his body had all the fuel it needed. Add in his conscious guidance through the spell, and after a week of practice, he was down to sleeping only four hours a night.

  He was absolutely kicking himself for not listening to Alvara and learning the spell as soon as he got it. He’d wasted so much time sleeping when, with his disadvantages, every moment counted. Soon, he adjusted his schedule. He’d be awake all night and head to the gym early in the morning. After that, he’d go to sleep, waking up just in time to have lunch with Lara and Aster.

  The two were mortified to learn that he’d found out about their demon twins moniker. He’d even joined them once after lunch to watch them spar. After seeing them go at it, he decided it was probably best not to tease them too much about it.

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