Christie was completely ready for the final exams, yet she couldn’t help but feel nauseatingly nervous. It was an awful feeling, for she knew that she was as prepared as she could, but she didn’t want to fail them, no matter the cost. Which, in and of itself, was a stupid thought as nothing would happen if she failed these exams. Both her dearest father and Teacher Dago had told her that she would remain at this academy as long as she pleased, but she also didn’t want to go against their expectations. For better or worse, Christina Valasela wanted to excel.
They had spent a lot of hours in the study group, so her nerves literally made no sense whatsoever, yet as her pen flowed across the paper as she filled in her arithmetic exam, Christie realized that maybe the worry wasn’t aimed at her. Amongst the study group, there was only one person who was in danger of failing the exam, and it was the one she wanted to see fail the least.
Agatha had done very well during the simulacrums, so she should be ready, yet Christie was aware that everyone could have a bad day. Her heart pounded as she kept thinking about it. She really didn’t want to say goodbye to Agatha. If this year had been so good, it was largely because of her roommate. Because she was there. If she weren’t there, Christie doubted she would have bothered to talk with Shayla again, and instead they would have remained like awkward roommates. She wouldn’t have gotten any friends. And the handling of her femininity would have been even more awful.
Only when she realized that she could lose her did the gravity of the situation weigh her down.
By the time she snapped out of it, the exam was almost over. The redhead panicked slightly and started filling it out in a rush, but fortunately, she was good with mental calculations, so trigonometry wasn’t as daunting to her as it was for most people. Her… friends looked at her weirdly when she told them she could do cosines and sines mentally. And she didn’t understand why they did so, it was trivial.
The exam came to an end, and Christie made a deep exhalation of relief as she managed to fill in all the answers. I guess I will not get a perfect score, but oh well, at least I did not leave the paper empty.
The nouveau riche covertly stretched her body and looked at her roommate. “So, how do you think it went?”
“I would say okay,” Agatha chuckled nervously. “At least half the exam was geometry, so I will not fail if I get all that right.”
“You should try aiming higher.”
“For the time being, I will settle for surviving.”
“Understandable,” Christie beamed a smile at the petite girl. She looked so fragile and scared that the redhead just wanted to cradle and protect her.
As she stood up, a conversation caught her ear.
“Depths, that back page was difficult,” a boy said.
“There was a back page?” Another responded with his hands grabbing his head.
“Poor soul,” Christie murmured.
“I would… defenestrate myself if that happened to me,” Agatha added.
“Understandable,” the tall girl reiterated. She herself was prone to exaggeration, but she wouldn’t be able to cope with it if that ever happened to her.
Whilst the exam period didn’t exempt them from the daily physical education class, it did exempt them from the rest of the classes, so after this one exam, they were free for the rest of the day. As free as one could be with such looming pressure over them. They only had one exam per day – though it lasted a whole four hours each – and only the last day of the week had two, but that was the conjoined Agatecraft-physical education exam Teacher Dago had talked about.
“Do you want to do something to unwind?” Christie asked her roommate as they walked outside the classroom.
“I… I will have to visit Terráquea,” Agatha said sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“Do not apologize, please,” the tall girl grabbed the petite girl’s hands. “But I must admit that I am a bit worried. You have been going to her laboratory these last days even though you are busy with exams. Maybe I should have a word with this Terráquea.”
“No, no! It is not like that!” The blond raised her trapped hands and pressed them against the redhead’s chest. “It is that… well, my own volition? That is the word, right?”
“It is. Though I must say it has been a while since you asked me for a confirmation on your vocabulary.”
“I guess reading is paying its dividends,” Agatha smiled radiantly. What a tautology. She always smiles radiantly.
“So, you can assure me that you are visiting out of your own volition even in these trying times?”
“Yes, yes. You are a worrywart, Christie. But I guess that is what…” The petite girl suddenly stopped talking and blushed.
“Is everything okay?” The nouveau riche pressed on her hands again.
“Yes, perfect, superb, capital!” The living thesaurus nodded repeatedly. “I was just thinking that perhaps paying a visit would quell your worry,” she said between nervous laughs.
“Well, I have nothing to do beyond waiting for the inevitable tomorrow, so I guess I will indulge a bit. Lead the way!”
“Uh…” Agatha mumbled. “You are still grabbing my hands, Christie.”
“Oh,” Christie looked down and blushed. She freed her hands and let out a soft chuckle. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” the villager gifted her a smile before she turned around and made an inviting gesture. “Follow me then.”
This year at the Skyscraper Academy had certainly worked wonders on Christie’s body, for now she walked up several flights of stairs without losing her breath, when once upon a time she would have been panting by the second floor. The more time passes, the more I realize just how over-protected I was. As much as she loved her dearest father, his embrace had been too oppressive. Well, I will be able to check if it is as oppressive as I remember soon. Christie had sent a letter to her father not that long ago, so they would be receiving it by now, and Adrien would soon be here at Knight’s Ascent by the time she was done with the final exam.
When Agatha led her to the laboratory, the first thing Christie noticed was the smell. Or more like the smell noticed her. She nearly gagged from the charged air and the musk.
“And it was way worse before,” her roommate chuckled as if reading her thoughts. Though, most likely, she was just reading her expression.
Waiting on a stool was a woman who looked like Christie whenever she got a cold. Well, young Christie. She now had some fat and muscle to her name. That woman was all bone.
“Miss Terráquea, I presume?” The nouveau riche bowed slightly.
“That would be me, yes,” Miss Terráquea nodded, and Christie noticed the massive hump the woman boasted. “But I prefer Terráquea alone. And who might you be?” Her tone was hostile, to say the least.
“She is my roommate, Christie,” Agatha interjected.
“Oh, so this is the Christina Valasela.”
“Has Agatha talked about me?” The sheer idea of being mentioned made Christie smile.
“Not at all, I only heard about you from René’s mouth, then Cristos,” the emaciated woman said casually.
“Uh…” The redhead’s lower jaw trembled a bit. “When you say Cristos, do you mean…?”
“The Shining Knight? Oh, yes.” Terráquea interjected. “Grumpy old man. He is not shining much as of late, truth be told.”
Christie was agape and horrified at the woman’s words, and as she turned to face her roommate, Christie found that Agatha was equally as agape as her. The Shining Knight was a living legend and a hero; talking about him in that derisive manner was… There just weren’t words in the Crochetan lexicon to describe it.
“Is she always like that?” Christie whispered in her roommate’s ear.
“Yeah,” the petite girl sighed defeatedly. “Hi, Terráquea. I brought Christie here because she wanted to know what we were doing as of late,” Agatha just seemed to ignore her patron’s words.
“Can I experiment on her?” Terráquea unapologetically looked at Christie, and the redhead couldn’t help but feel naked as the woman with the sunken eyes peered at her. She nervously put an arm around her chest and hid behind Agatha, which was a gesture almost comic in nature considering the disparity between heights.
“That depends on Christie,” her roommate said with a very wry smile. “What do you say?”
“Maybe another time,” Christie chuckled nervously.
“Oh well, I can wait considering this girl here had me waiting for half a year,” the military engineer said sarcastically.
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“You are never going to let the subject die, will you?” Agatha proselytized copious amounts of exhaustion.
“Not until you graduate or one of us dies, whichever comes first.”
“Knowing you, you will have it brought up at your funeral.”
“You say that as if you cannot die, girl.”
“At least I take care of my health, corpse.”
Christie looked at the duo of student and researcher in confusion. Is this what they call banter? They are rather… crass about it. Never before had Christie seen two people talk with such hostility toward each other but without being at each other’s throats. She had tried banter with Agatha, but it certainly wasn’t as visceral as this.
“So…” Christie sheepishly interjected into their conversation. “What are you doing with my roommate here?”
“Nothing much, really. We just run occasional tests as her agate is rather uncommon. It should be opaline, but it is neither porous nor that iridescent. It is really spherical and smooth, and of superb quality overall… It is certainly an interesting piece of mineralogy, let alone Agatecraft. I guess I also help her with some commands and whatnot, as your teacher will not help her, and she still needs to get used to the Third Stratum.”
“The… what now?” The redhead turned her head around with lithic slowness to face her roommate.
“Terráquea! That was supposed to be a surprise!” Agatha protested.
“Was it now?” The woman scoffed. “Secrets are only safe with me because I have no people to talk to. If you bring the people to me, that is your fault, girl.”
“Agatha?” Christie stared at the petite girl over her shoulder with eyes wide open as if she was mining her with her gaze.
“It is a recent development, I swear!” The blonde nervously swayed her hands around. “I just wanted it to big surprise during the final exam as it would not make much difference.”
Christie sighed. She really wasn’t mad with Agatha. “I guess it does not. But what about your agate? Should it not look different after the increase in Stratum?”
“Uh…” The girl nervously eyed her patron.
“Show her, girl,” Terráquea said casually with her crossed arms.
Agatha dug into the inner pocket of her uniform coat and took something out. The blonde opened her hand to reveal an agate. Perfectly spherical yet cracked. Not like old stone bricks, but more like the lightning-like structures ice cubes sometimes boasted inside them.
“What?” Christie looked at Agatha’s pendant, which was still carrying her little sapphire. “What?” She blurted out again in genuine bewilderment. “What am I looking at?”
“What you are looking at,” Terráquea started, “is the growth of her agate from the Third Stratum, and part of the Second.”
“But… it is separate from the agate?” The redhead pointed out the obvious.
“That is the Duplicate command, dear.” The military engineer laughed, and Christie wished she hadn’t, for she sounded like a ferret wheezing on its deathbed. “Contrary to what the name might suggest, the command does not double anything, but instead takes the mass of an existing agate to create another pseudo-independent one.”
The nouveau riche blinked twice. “So Agatha has two agates now…?”
“Not quite. The Duplicate command is usually a rather useless command. Having an extra agate is commonly not worth it because the resulting agates are now boasting one less command slot each as it is occupied with Duplicate. Though of course, for our little friend here, another command is technically speaking a fifty-percent increase in her capabilities, whilst a new agate is a one-hundred-percent increase in her output, so she is in the small subset of people who can benefit from the Duplicate command.”
“Alright… I think I am getting what is going on. So you have ordered Agatha to use the Duplicate command so she can hide half the mass of her agate.”
“Eh, more like she asked for my help to hide it herself, but yes. That is the gist of it.”
“One more question, though,” Christie continued. “What would happen if someone were to use the Duplicate command on a First Stratum agate?”
“Nothing useful,” Terráquea answered, baffled by the stupid question. “You will get two agates of halved mass, but they will be inert ones. And also, one small clarification, as I have seen a lot of people make the mistake before: half mass does not necessarily mean half volume.”
“Yeah?” Christie replied, baffled by the stupid statement.
“Oh, thank the earth!” The emaciated woman raised her hands on top of her head. “Your reaction has made me recover a little bit of faith in humanity.”
“No… problem?” Agatha’s patron confounded the redhead to no end. She didn’t know how to react or respond at any point in the conversation.
“But yes, the Duplicate command allows Agatha to hide her current increase of Stratum, and further ones, if she wishes to.”
“Let us leave that for whenever we reach that bridge,” Agatha rejoined the conversation. “The Duplicate command has now become my favorite! It is just so marvelous! I am no longer limited to a single, lone agate!”
“Technically speaking, you are still using the same agate,” Terráquea interjected.
“Oh, shut up!” The blonde groaned. “Can a girl not enjoy a bit of her life?”
“No, not at all,” the dark-haired woman said without any hesitation.
“So…” Christie cut them off, as otherwise she had the feeling the two would continue bickering for eternity. “So you now have two agates?”
“Who said anything about two agates?” Agatha grinned radiantly and laid a hand on her pendant. She removed the hanging half of her little sapphire and placed it on her palm alongside the other half. Then Christie blinked and the agate was whole again.
Agatha’s Third Stratum agate was quite big for an agate. It had gone from an average-sized marble to…
“Wait!” Christie raised her palm. “Is that not too big? The volume of an agate should not increase that much after a change in Stratum, right?”
“Ah, that is a peculiarity of Agatha’s agate,” Terráquea explained. “From what I have observed, each increase in Stratum seems to increase the radius of the sphere her agate has by a whole centimeter. I am surprised you have only been staggered by the agate’s volume, for the increase between First and Second Stratum was by a factor of three, yet the difference between Second and Third Stratum is only by a factor of two!”
Factor of three and then a factor of two? Wait a moment… “Then how much does the agate weigh now?” Christie asked with deep interest.
“No, no!” Agatha clutched her agate with jealousy. “You ruined the mood! I was going to do an amazing demonstration, and you suddenly started speaking about arithmetic!”
“That is what life is, girl. Numbers,” Terráquea shrugged.
“You… can do your demonstration, Agatha,” the redhead smiled nervously with a soft blush, embarrassed by the fact that she had interrupted her roommate.
Agatha pouted audibly but then exhaled and raised the hand carrying the agate in a dramatic manner. “Behold!”
Christie blinked, and just as the two halves of the agate had fused together before, now they were separated anew. Only that there were fourths instead of halves.
“What?” The nouveau riche blinked several times in amazement. “Well, consider your demonstration successful.” She was without words and turned to face Terráquea. “Did you not say that the Duplicate command halved the volume of the agate?”
“That is what the default Duplicate command does, yes,” the emaciated woman explained.
“But that is not what I am doing!” Agatha interrupted excitedly. “This is the Amplify Duplicate series!”
“It indeed is,” Terráquea sighed. “The Amplify command increases its potency when applied to the Duplicate command in the shape of one extra unit per Stratum, so instead of dividing the agate’s volume by two in the Third Stratum…”
“It is dividing it by four…” Christie mused in understanding.
“I would like to finish my sentences, but yes,” the woman nodded.
“Then why have you said that the Duplicate command is useless? That seems pretty useful to me.”
“It may seem so at first, but you need to realize that sacrificing mass also means sacrificing quality. Agatha’s four agates might be now ever-so-slightly bigger than when they were at the First Stratum, but that only applies to her, as she has a base high-quality agate, something most do not. And even if she did not, her current four agates have wasted two command slots. And even then, that is without taking into account the added mental strain from the new agates needed to be commanded. The extra strain accumulates quite fast.”
“Wait. Are you telling me that the Amplify Duplicate is applied to every single agate?” Christie inquired, her mind lodged on a previous statement.
“I mean, that is what the name says: duplicate. It is a perfect copy of the base agate, with a bit of wiggle room here and there, of course. So any command applied to the base agate prior to the duplication is applied to the rest. Fortunately, subsequent commands can be applied independently to each agate; otherwise, the Duplicate command would be truly and utterly useless.”
“I see, I see…” Whilst having four agates instead of one sounded incredibly useful, Christie knew better after her time in the academy. Four First Stratum agates were virtually unusable compared to two Second Stratum agates. “So… can we now go back to the weight of the agate? Considering that Agatha’s agate seems to increase its radius by one centimeter for each Stratum and knowing that volume grows by the cube, then it must be pretty hefty now, is it not?”
“Check it out for yourself,” Agatha said, and as soon as Christie blinked, the four agates had joined into a single one and it was coming at her as her roommate had chucked it to her.
“Oof!” Christie grabbed the big agate close to her bosom and was surprised by the inertia that the stone packed, let alone the weight. She heaved it up and down on her hand. “That is… surprisingly heavy.” The not-so-little sapphire was heavy for an agate, but not unbearably heavy. “How heavy is it?”
“Almost a whole kilogram,” Terráquea responded.
Christie arched a brow at the weight. “Agatha?”
“Yes, Christie?” Replied her roommate.
“Were you really planning on giving everyone a surprise, or was it that you just did not want to carry a whole kilogram of stone around your neck?”
The blonde raised her open palms. “Guilty as charged. I really, really cannot have that hanging on my neck. One kilo is not that much, but when you think that I always have to carry it, and that I am carrying it with a string that is constantly rubbing on my skin… Yeah, it was the Duplicate command or now use my agate as a bracelet, and I really wanted to keep my necklace.”
“I do not blame you; it is completely understandable.” The sheer idea of carrying that ball of stone already made Christie’s neck hurt. “But either way, I think some congratulations are in order! You have more than one agate now, Agatha!”
“I know!” Agatha shrieked loudly and grabbed Christie’s hands. The girl proceeded to jump on the spot with shared happiness. “It is a dream come true!”
“I now know why you were not anxious about the final exams,” the nouveau riche giggled. “I do not know how you have managed to contain this much excitement!”
“I do not know either!” The villager laughed gutturally. “Like, I was stressed from the exams, but I also could not think of anything negative when I have such a great agate!”
Ah, Christie suddenly stopped jumping as she looked at Agatha’s close face.
“Is there something wrong?” Her roommate inquired.
“N-not at all!” She pressed her – and Agatha’s – hands together. “It is truly marvelous!” So, so marvelous… she mused as she looked at Agatha’s radiance. It was fulgurating, but a big part of her loved to be incinerated by that heat. The notion of jealousy had never flown inside Christie’s mind at any point. She just wanted to bask in the blonde’s light.
“I get that you are happy and all,” Terráquea interrupted and then – and only then – was Christie brought back to the real world, where Agatha didn’t literally shine. Regretfully. “But I prefer it if you do not shriek when someone has a headache.”
“Oh, I am so sorry!” Christie freed her hands in a frantic rush and bowed to the woman in apologies.
“You always have a headache,” Agatha, however, scoffed at the emaciated woman. “Have you been eating and sleeping as I have told you?”
“Yes, mom~” Terráquea said sardonically.
“Uh…” Christie professed her confusion.
“Do not worry about her,” her roommate told her. “She is just a grown baby that does not know how to do anything by herself.”
“Oh, I do know. I just do not want to,” the malnourished and lithe woman said smugly.
Agatha deflated and arched a brow. “You realize that is way worse, right?”
Terráquea shrugged. “You protest a lot and such, but are you two not occupied with the final exams?”
“Well, yes, but-“
“I do not care,” the military engineer cut off her protégé. “Go study. I do not want to see you until next year, so you better pass all your exams. Got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Agatha nodded, though she didn’t speak that passionately.
“Scram now, then! Shoo shoo!” Terráquea summoned stone walls like René Dago usually did and pushed them away. Only when the girls stepped out of the laboratory out of their own volition did the woman recall them.
“So…” Christie mouthed, still a bit confused from the whole interaction. “Do you want to study together?”
“I always want to study with you, Christie,” Agatha said so sincerely that Christie couldn’t help but blush, even if she didn’t know why.
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