Christie was met by a prone Agatha when she arrived at their dormitory. The blonde lay on her bed with her head facing downwards, looking one step away from the grave.

  “What has happened?” The redhead asked, also noticing how her roommate’s boots were out next to the bed and slightly dirty.

  “I. Am. Beat,” she vociferated in mumbles as her mouth was blocked by a pillow.

  “Hi, Beat, I am Christie. How can I help you?”

  Never before had Christie seen so much hostility in her life as Agatha stood out with the promptitude of an agate summoning and shot her the nastiest of gazes to ever be gazed.

  “So,” the bicolored-eyed girl giggled out of nervousness born from intimidation, “what has happened?”

  “I had to go down,” Agatha sighed.

  “Like… down the island?” Her nervousness intensified as bad memories flashed before her eyes.

  “Yeah…” Her roommate grunted lazily. “Apparently, the recalling range of an agate and the command range are not one and the same, and the difference is greatly amplified due to the agate’s quality.”

  “…wait what?” Christie rubbed the side of her temples trying to understand what the girl had said.

  “Okay, so, the three ranges of agates, right?” Agatha sat crisscrossed in her bed, and she nodded at her words. “Summoning range is the range that affects how far you can summon agates from your body.”

  “Which is touch range for us.”

  “Yuuu-es,” her roommate agreed in the weirdest affirmation possible. To reinforce that claim, Agatha summoned her lone agate on the palm of her hand. “This range only increases through Stratums, so it will be a while before we can summon agates at a distance. Hmm… will quality also affect this range?”

  “I am inclined to think otherwise, but it is not like I know much more about the subject. Teacher Dago did not summon any agate more than a handful of meters away from his body during the spar, and my gut tells me it is just because he cannot.”

  “Huh,” Agatha looked at her with an unreadable expression.

  “What?” Christie crossed her arms. “Something wrong?”

  “No, not at all, I just did not expect you to be the type of person who goes with gut feelings.”

  “Consider this a personal philosophy, but there is no person who does not follow their instincts. Those who deny it are the type of person that we call hypocrites.”

  “Noted,” her roommate nodded before continuing her explanation. “Then we have command range. Simplest of them all. The limit of where you can send commands to your agates.”

  “I actually have a doubt about that one,” Agatha threw a look at her. “I am being serious, this is not a bit!”

  “Alright, do tell,” the villager swayed her torso forward and backward in a rocking motion.

  “My range is so short that I have no issues giving commands, but I have heard that the command range is actually not linear and that it suffers from falloff. Is that true?”

  “Indeed. My agate, for example, has a command range of thirty meters, but that is the absolute maximum. Beyond that point, I can no longer command it. But already at the halfway point, I struggle a lot to command my little sapphire. Normally, my commands are instantaneous and sleek, but when it is so far away, my agate reacts differently and suddenly the commands become sluggish and hard to guide.”

  “Huh, interesting,” Christie pressed her back against the wall as she lost herself in thought for a moment. “I think it will be a while until I can experience that falloff for myself as the only way I have to amplify my range is with, well, the Range command, but I am only able to give one command to my sea of stones, so there is that.”

  “Wait,” Agatha frowned in perplexity. “What do you mean you can only give your agates one command?”

  “I did not tell you?” Her roommate swayed her head. “Oh,” Christie gasped. “My agates – as plentiful as they are – tend to act like a single one for some reason, so I can only give one command to the whole.”

  “You are telling me you and I are both limited to a single command?”

  “To be fair, I believe you will be the first student of our class to reach the Second Stratum.”

  “I mean, yeah, but… you know. Is that not weird?”

  “What? Having a single agate or having all the world’s agates?”

  “Fair enough,” she shrugged. “But we have deviated too much from the main topic. One range remains.”

  “The recalling range,” Christie added.

  Agatha nodded. “From what I have been told, the recalling range scales far better with the agate’s quality than the command range. That is why your command and recalling range are the same. But in my case, because I have the world’s best agate-“

  “Fancy much?” The redhead snickered.

  “You are the one who claimed to have all of the world’s agates a second ago,” the blonde tilted her head upward to meet her gaze.

  “Fair enough,” Christie nodded in acceptance.

  “So because my agate is the best one that there ever was and will ever be,” Agatha continued with elevated extravagance, “it seems that my range is far bigger than the command one.”

  “How much bigger are we talking about?”

  “Ten times,” her roommate stated plainly.

  “Ten times,” Christie reiterated.

  “Ten times,” she affirmed.

  “Your recalling range is… three hundred meters?” The nouveau riche felt a headache gathering on the back of her head.

  “Tell me about it,” the villager collapsed on her bed. “It is horrendous!”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Do you not mean horrific?”

  “No, horrendous,” she stretched her body and jumped back into a sitting position with her back upright. “Think about it. Any time I overshot, I would need to go look for my agate. And you want to know how much it took me to find it?”

  “Five minutes?” Christie easily guessed considering the girl’s indignation.

  “Okay, you got me there, I was bluffing. It was five minutes. But only this time!” Agatha snapped at her. “Imagine if I lost it in a forest? How long would it take me to find it?”

  “Have you thought of running in the opposite direction so the agate gets automatically recalled?”

  Agatha opened her mouth, then she closed it without muttering a word. She then raised her hand, only to lower it the next moment. She smacked her lips.

  “I did not think about it,” she stated plainly.

  “I mean, three hundred meters is a lot, but even in the academy you can just walk the other way and get your agate back at some point.”

  “Why did I go searching for my agate on the dirt then?” Her roommate asked in a distraught state as she grabbed her head.

  Christie couldn’t help but chuckle at her suffering. “Ask that question to yourself, not me.”

  “Ugh, I know the answer well enough…” She lay back on the bed and mumbled to herself, but the sounds were so soft and incoherent that Christie didn’t manage to catch a single word.

  “Anyhow,” the redhead clapped in an imitation of their teacher. “What are you going to do this weekend?”

  “Besides going over the classes we have had to check that they have stuck to my head and rest… not much really,” Agatha responded whilst prone.

  “W-would you like to… do something together?” Christie fidgeted with her fingers as her cheeks gained a bit of color. This was the first time inviting a friend, and she… well, she felt awkward. She didn’t know how the process was. Do I need to file a petition? She thought to herself non-ironically.

  Her roommate rolled to the side to face her. “I mean, sure. Why not? But where?”

  “Well, I was thinking we should take advantage of the fact that it is the weekend and explore the city a bit.” She actually couldn’t believe what she had suggested. The idea of taking the lift again terrified her, but at the same time, she couldn’t think of a better way to go out. It’s always a stroll around the city on the novels, no one takes a stroll in their academy! Christie guided herself out of the stories she read, for this was the first time she had had something in her life that could be called a friend, and she didn’t want to lose it because she found her boring.

  “Were you not going to train?” Agatha confronted her. “You know, building your stamina and such?”

  “I had a… tiresome tutoring lesson with Teacher Dago, so I would rather rest today,” Christie explained as she continued to fidget.

  Out of nowhere, the blonde jumped out of the bed and rushed toward her. “He did not do anything to you, did he?” She said with the most hostile tone she had ever heard. Not even her dearest father or René Dago’s outburst during the first day of the school year could compare.

  “N-no, not at all!” Christie began shaking her hands and her whole body out of nervousness.

  “Really?” Agatha’s gaze intensified.

  “Y-yes!” The girl shrank upon being looked at in such a powerful manner. She had been gazed at in many ways, but that was a new one for her, and it intimidated her to no end. “H-he was just checking my a-a-ga-gates and I overworked myself! I am merely tired!”

  “That is fine then,” her roommate removed from herself and let her breathe, but by the way she looked at her, it did not seem at all that it was ‘fine’. Yet at the same time, it seemed that no matter what Christie said to her would not change her thoughts. “So, do you have anything thought out, or do you just want to walk around the city?”

  “Well, we will have many weekends…” Christie started once she regained her composure. She felt her agates slightly tremble, but she quickly subdued them. “There is no need to rush it, so just looking around and making ourselves acquainted with the city is more than enough.”

  “That sounds nice, yes,” Agatha nodded and her visage finally softened. “Though we better go after having lunch, if I am honest, I am a bit hungry right now.”

  “I am quite ravenous myself too, better to make it down to Knight’s Ascent with our bellies full lest we faint on the way there…” As she was speaking, Christie realized that she had to ride the lift down. “Now that I think about it, maybe it is a better idea to get some food in the city. You know, trying the local cuisine and all of that,” she added with a nervous giggle.

  “I am not against that, but… it is not like I can afford to eat outside,” the blonde responded dejectedly.

  “My treat! My treat!” The redhead jumped at her. “Consider this but a payment for having you skip lunch.”

  “Well, if you insist, I will not turn down free food…”

  “Nice, nice,” Christie clasped her hands as a nervous smile formed on her visage. “But I like to get changed before we go down to the city.”

  “Why? Did you dirty it?”

  “No, not at all. It is just that it feels weird to me going around with the uniform when we are not at the academy.”

  “I do not see an issue with that,” Agatha shrugged.

  “Well, I do. And I am getting a bit tired of wearing the same outfit every day. I would like more colors in my life,” the nouveau riche strolled to her closet and rummaged through its contents. “Why do you not dress up too?”

  “Uhhhh… I do not have any attire beyond my uniform and the outfit I used for my travels,” the villager responded with a mixture of a blush and a pout.

  “Nothing at all?” Her roommate swayed her head. “If that is the case, I could lend you a dress.”

  “I do not think they would fit me, Christie.”

  “Nonsense!” She leashed out. “You are very… very beautiful, Agatha. Surely I have a dress or two that matches you.”

  Agatha giggled. “Thanks for the compliments, but I meant the size, not the looks.”

  “Oh,” Christie blushed. “Yes, I guess I am a bit too tall. Sorry.”

  “Why are you apologizing? It is not like you can control your body. And either way, the main offender is not your height.”

  “What else if not?” She inquired in true bewilderment.

  “Those,” her roommate pointed at her chest.

  “Oh,” her blush intensified. “Sorry!”

  “Why are you apologizing again?” The blonde said between laughs. “You are not at fault here.”

  “Well, it was rather indecorous of my part not to notice that.”

  “If we are talking about indecorous things,” Agatha giggled again, “I am the one who just pointed at your boo-bosoms.”

  “That much is true,” Christie found herself giggling too. “But you really have not brought anything to wear?”

  “Well, I have one thing, but I do not believe it is appropriate to use when you are going to wear one of those gorgeous dresses.”

  “I believe I am the one who should be the judge of that,” the redhead walked away from her closet without having chosen an attire just yet, and she stopped in front of her roommate. Then she clasped the blonde’s hands. “Can I see it?”

  “Uhm…” Agatha turned her gaze away as her cheeks gained a bit of color. “You have seen it already…”

  “When?”

  “…The statal examination.”

  “Oh!” She gasped in surprise. “The dress that you were wearing back then?” Her roommate nodded. “Then why should it be inappropriate?”

  “I mean, well, it is made of linen instead of velvet or silk, and uhm, it has a look of patches. I think it would be an insult to your dresses if I wore that at the same time as you if we are to go out together.”

  It was Christie’s turn to giggle. “Definitely, I am the judge of that. I do not know if you have noticed, Agatha, but they are my dresses, and I do not believe they would get offended by yours. In any case, it is your dress that worries me. What if it gets envious?”

  Agatha softly undid the clasp on her hands and approached her wardrobe. She opened it to reveal the patchwork dress that she had worn when they had first met.

  “I think I know my dress better than you,” and then chuckled. “Especially when I am the one who made it.”

  “Wait, you made it?” The redhead’s eyes shot wide open, revealing two paired agates, and then she clasped the blonde’s hands again in overflowing wonder.

  “Yes?” The girl pushed her head backwards and squinted.

  “Magnifique!”

  “Magnifique?”

  “Magnifique!” Christie reiterated. “Yes, the materials are not the best, but it is rather well done! Especially the choice of patches, both in color and shape! I am no seamstress myself, but I can appreciate the artistic composition.”

  “I… uhm… well…” Agatha blushed. “Thank you,” her words were soft, and her mannerisms even more so as she turned her gaze away.

  “Wait, if you are a seamstress, why do we not just modify one of my dresses?”

  “I could not do that to them!” The blonde’s embarrassment was abruptly substituted by passion. “I am not a seamstress as such yet, only an apprentice, and these dresses are too high-quality for me to touch them up!”

  “So, what you are saying is that once you have enough experience, you will do it?” Christie responded smugly.

  “No! Well… uhm…” Agatha liberated one of her hands from the clasp and scratched behind her earlobe. “If the offer is still up once I have that experience… then maybe.”

  “Let us pray for that day then,” she beamed a smile at her roommate.

  Yes, this is how friendship is supposed to look like! Christie thought to herself as she still grabbed one of Agatha’s hands with blinding joy.

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