Christie wasn’t surprised when the whole academy knew about her roommate’s achievements the very next day. Teacher Dago had been correct about his affirmation, and Agatha was, indeed, the youngest person to achieve the Second Stratum. Apparently, it became easier with each subsequent agate, so lithorists usually took a year for their first agate to reach the Second Stratum, but perhaps they would only take a couple of days for their tenth. If they had that many agates in the first place, of course.

  Could this phenomenon help me? Christie pondered as her body was occupied with the morning calisthenics. It was already the start of the fourth week. I mean, if I isolate a single agate and manage to get it to Second Stratum… could that upgrade ripple like my commands through my inner sea and upgrade them all? She doubted it worked like that, but a girl had to dream, and it was certainly a mighty dream. If it were remotely correct, then she may not be limited to the Second Stratum, but she could be even faster than most soldiers in their increase.

  Her thoughts and delusions of grandeur were cut short as the teacher clapped and marked the end of this class.

  “Good work, class. It has only been three weeks, but you have steadily increased your stamina and managed to end an exercise without anyone panting. This type of diligence warms my heart. Truly,” Christie almost blushed at those heartfelt words, but the truth was her cheeks were already red from the exertion, even if she wasn’t panting like the teacher had said. “Having said so, you can remain where you are. Today we are going to have Agatecraft outside.”

  The class had been mute from their exhaustion, but like clockwork, the news got them whispering. For once, Teacher Dago allowed it, if just whilst the students recovered their breath.

  “I have mentioned this before,” René Dago continued, “but we will take a look at the field of military Agatecraft. For all intents and purposes, these will just be practical lessons to check if you have understood the theory classes. For starters,” the man stomped on the ground and a thick slab of stone rose from the training field, “I will have you try your skills at this. The objective of this exercise is to get through the stone by any means possible. Any. However, going around it is not a valid solution; you need to get through it. Whoever wants to go first can start.”

  Like always, it was hard to come up with a volunteer. Students by nature were coy and fickle creatures, and Christie was the perfect example of that. Yet today, the class was met by a very eager volunteer.

  “Can I do it, Teacher Dago?” Agatha asked already standing still.

  “Sure, Miss Malachite,” he signaled at the thick slab of stone with his palm. “Though I prefer that you try this exercise first with your capabilities limited.”

  “Can do,” the blonde nodded and grabbed her agate.

  Her roommate always overflowed with confidence when it was related to lithorica, but now, Christie knew exactly what command she was going to try by her reaction alone. Call it predictable, but Christie herself found it endearing. Agatha first shaped her agate to make it conical with a very thin tip. Everyone knew arrowheads penetrated deeper than pebbles, even if such things were artifacts of yore; an image that refused to leave the collective unconscious even after centuries of falling into disuse.

  She then shot her little sapphire forward at explosive speeds.

  It was obviously the Speed command.

  However, her aim and the agate’s penetration left a lot to be desired once the dust cleared out. The aim was excusable as Agatha had to first throw the agate with her hands before dotting her stone with Speed – lest she burn her fingertips – as she didn’t have a wand at hand. The resulting penetration didn’t have an excuse. Though it caught everyone by surprise. It was known by now that Agatha’s agate packed a mean Speed command, yet her agate only got through a finger into the slab.

  Teacher Dago clapped and got everyone’s attention. “Miss Malachite did well here by shaping her agate before shooting it. But as you all have seen, the Speed command is not effective against shock-absorbing materials like dirt and stone.”

  “Can I try now with my complete faculties?” Agatha asked, her visage showing an itch to get through that slate.

  “Yes, but first,” the soldier turned to face the class. “As you might all know, Miss Malachite has achieved the Second Stratum.” No whispers filled the class as everyone had known for a while now. “This is perfect for my lessons, as I was worried about what you all might do if you suddenly started achieving the Second Stratum one after another without me having the chance to warn you. Adding several commands to an agate is dangerous,” his tone turned hostile. “Some commands might behave way differently from the way you originally expected once you combine them, or you might even combine them by mistake. Miss Malachite, come here.”

  Nervously, her roommate made her way next to the teacher, clearly intimidated but what the man might do but also embarrassed by being in front of the class.

  “Summon your agate and give it the Control command.” Agatha did as commanded and summoned her agate floating atop her palm, leaving now an empty hole in the slab. “Now give it the Speed command.”

  The blonde obeyed again and her agate predictably shot forward, yet the girl’s visage distorted into confusion and she let out a strangled “Huh?”

  “Can you describe what you have experienced to the class?” René Dago spoke collectedly, him and her roommate sharing apparently sharing a secret between each other that could only be felt through agates.

  “My… I can vary the speed of my agate,” she responded in a startled manner and her agate that was zooming away seemed to get slower and faster intermittently until it disappeared on the horizon. Disappeared, not recalled.

  That got a few gasps and frowns from the class, but Christie failed to comprehend their confusion as her knowledge on the Speed command was basically null.

  “As you all might know, you can select the desired value of your Speed command before executing it, but you also clearly know that the speed is set in stone mid-flight once it is assigned. Well, that is no longer the case with the series programming of Control Speed. One can manipulate their desired speed mid-flight as many times as they desire. This is especially effective for feints and distractions, a solid application of military Agatecraft.”

  Truth was, Christie still didn’t comprehend the magnitude of being able to selectively change the potency of the Speed command, but as previously stated, she hadn’t put that command to practice because her sea of stone just didn’t allow her. If she tried to give a single agate the Speed command, the order would send ripples to her inner sea, and the command would just… disappear. Like a ripple from a thrown pebble on a lake, it dissipated quickly.

  “Now, let us try another combination,” René Dago turned to face Agatha. “Miss Malachite, resummon your agate and give it the same commands, but in the reverse order. First Speed and then Control. Also, I do not think I have to explain why you need to apply the commands with haste.”

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  “Understood,” her roommate nodded and performed the order.

  Then a deafening explosion.

  Everything happened too fast for the eyes.

  Christie couldn’t understand what had happened, only that there was a student on the ground hyperventilating, and her roommate remained petrified.

  “What you have seen there was the Speed Control combination,” René Dago explained with eerily calmness, as if nothing had happened. “Control is what we call a ‘modifier’ as it affects other commands. Control Speed produces a synergy where the Speed command becomes modifiable, though the same cannot be said for Speed Control. Here, Control is not modifying the Speed command, but rather, it is affecting the whole agate, so there is no synergy. Now…”

  He walked into the class that was still sitting down from the calisthenics and squatted down to grab two agates next to the student who was prone on the ground. One was Agatha’s, the other was his own. His most powerful one.

  “What has happened is that Miss Malachite has become able to control her agate’s direction mid-flight. Normally, this is not an issue with the Control command as it flies slowly, but it becomes ludicrously hard when the Speed command comes into play, especially when the agate is faster than sound itself, like Miss Malachite’s.”

  It was such a jarring sight seeing their teacher speak so calmly when he had a student nearing a panic attack right next to him. Christie had guessed what had happened before the man explained it himself.

  “When someone tries to control an agate at such speeds, their mind betrays them. They believe their agate is in one place, when in reality, it had been there ages ago. This is what happened and how Miss Malachite almost killed one of your classmates if I had not shot down her agate.”

  Christie wanted to puke. That serene tone that talked about the highly likely death of one of her classmates – which could very well have been herself – unsettled her to no end. But Christie couldn’t even begin to imagine what her roommate was going through. Agatha had remained petrified since the moment René Dago had shot down her agate, and the girl still failed to react to this very moment.

  Casually, the black-uniformed soldier walked back to the Second Stratum lithorist and placed her perfectly round agate on her palm. It slipped out.

  “Have you understood now the dangers of the Second Stratum, Miss Malachite?”

  “Y-yes…” Agatha uttered pathetically as her jaw trembled and vestiges of tears could be seen in the corners of her eyes.

  “This goes for the whole class,” he said with a neutral voice that hit way harder than his drill sergeant tone. “Think it twice before using several commands simultaneously without any type of practice or supervision.”

  Christie couldn’t and wouldn’t blame Agatha's reaction, but now, not even the whole class did. The man had done a perfect job instilling lasting dread into their hearts and minds. Possibly too lasting.

  “Does anyone want to give a try to the exercise?” René Dago commented as if his whole class hadn’t become stone. “No one? Oh, well. Miss Malachite, I am afraid that I still require your assistance for your class.”

  “Mhmm…” The petite student nodded and yelped on the verge of tears.

  “Using the Speed command against the target was not a bad idea, but you could make a better work of it. We have seen the Amplify command already in class, and you already know how series programming works, so give it a try.”

  Agatha bit her lower lip and slowly walked, whilst trembling, as she made some distance between herself and the slab. Her roommate took a loud and nasal inhalation – which may or may not be loaded with snot – before she shot against the slab again.

  If her normal shots normally broke the air, this one decimated it.

  No one was looking at the slab as every single student recoiled in pain and grabbed their ears, Agatha included. Christie thought people were shouting, and they certainly looked like it, but her ears were hurting and ringing too much to verify that. Even after a whole minute, some people were still groaning, and others were rolling on the ground.

  “Okay, that one is on me,” René Dago said with a modicum of shame on his face. “I did not expect Miss Malachite’s agate to be shot at several times the speed of sound. Take this as another lesson: bring ear protection to a battlefield. And also during training, you will thank me in the long run.”

  The man looked so unfazed that something told Christie that he was already half deaf.

  “Going back to the exercise…” This time, he didn’t avoid the subject out of serenity, but out of shame. And it was so obvious that it was infuriating. “If you all look at the target, even an agate with this much speed has not made much of a difference. A few fingers more – which is definitely more than enough to kill any person – but still not enough to get midway through the bedrock. Miss Malachite, let us instead try another series of commands. Do you know the Spin command?”

  The girl shook her head in negation with a cringe on her face. From the looks of it, her ears were still ringing. Which made a lot of sense, because Christie’s were too, and she had been a lot further away from the explosion. It almost looked like the ringing had shaken the dread out of the girl. Almost.

  “Watch the following example,” René Dago summoned an agate that was shaped inequality. A flat blob with a side far more inflated than the other. With Control, he made it float vertically on top of his palm, and then he applied the so-called Spin command as the deformed agate started spinning. The rotation was easy to see thanks to the uneven shape. He also seemed to oscillate the spinning speed with the same Control synergy she had shown before, only that now with Spin instead of Speed. “Did you get that?”

  “I-I think so, ye-yes.” It hurt Christie seeing how much Agatha trembled and how soft her voice was. She was supposed to be the feeble one, not Agatha. Her roommate was the bright one and not… this.

  “Now, it is important that when you apply the rotation it is perpendicular to the tip of your agate. Do so, then shoot it with Speed.”

  The blonde shaped her agate into a cone and applied the Spin command. Her agate was so perfect that it was hard to see any rotation, but the stone was indeed spinning as it blurred a bit and made a lot of sound. Like always, Agatha’s sapphire did things grandly, and now it was rotating so far that it created a piercing and screeching sound. Some of the nearest students backed off a bit as the noise was very violent, definitely not something you wanted to be near.

  Christie could see the doubt in her roommate’s face. After everything that had just happened, she didn’t want to shoot her agate. It took a deep breath and a frown from their teacher before she substituted the Control command that had kept the agate spinning in the air for the Speed command.

  And the spinning agate shot forward.

  A lot of differences could be noted even before the projectile impacted against the slab. First of all, it was way more silent than normal. The rotation produced a lot of noise, yes, but it also seemed to dissipate part of the noise from the Speed command. Secondly, the agate flew in a perfectly straight path. There wasn’t much distance for a fall-off, but even then, the straightness of the projectile surprised Christie.

  Yet all paled in comparison to the result.

  Before, the agate had failed to penetrate more than a finger into the slab, a handful of them with Amplify, but still, it didn’t make a dent. Yet it made a hole so deep that the agate couldn’t be seen from the outside. Still not enough to make it all the way through, though.

  “Excellent execution, Miss Malachite.” René Dago clapped to get his students' attention.

  “How?” The girl softly asked, her fear somewhat muted by her growing curiosity. “How has spinning made this much difference?”

  “Oh, several factors. You will learn this in Physics class when the time is due, but there are many advantages to applying Spin on a flying agate. One is the gyroscopic effect that makes it fly straighter, the other is that the centripetal force of the tip that helps dealing far more damage as the agate now is applying force perpendicular to the target instead of only forwards. You will be surprised by how obscure knowledge can be used to increase the lethality of any given application.”

  René Dago raised his arm and pointed at the slab. Christie had unfortunately blinked at that moment and missed it, but from the sound, she could tell the soldier had shot an agate. The next instant, the slab of bedrock collapsed from a single point of failure.

  “Miss Malachite’s agate was of higher quality than the one I used, yet I managed to not only get through the slab but also collapse it, whilst she fell short of the former. Let this be a lesson that intelligent applications of commands are far more important than Stratum, quantity, or quality.”

  He then stomped the ground, and the pile of dirt and bedrock retreated to the ground, as if it were alive. The teacher stomped a second time, and he invoked several more slabs like the first one. This act of strength seemed to take a bit out of him as he let out a sigh of exhaustion before addressing the class again.

  “In these coming weeks, we are going to practice military Agatecraft so you can all further your skills and understanding of your agates. The objective is simple: get through the target with your current, limited capabilities. If you somehow manage to get to the Second Stratum, you are welcome to use it. Furthermore, you can use any quantity of agates you desire. The rules are simple: get through the bedrock by any means.”

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