The midterms were upon them, and Christie couldn’t deny that she was nervous. Not because of the academic aspect – that one she was more confident than ever before – but because of the military aspect. There was going to be another tourney for their Agatecraft midterm, and she couldn’t say she was prepared. Not only had the whole class now obtained Second Stratum agates except for her – whether they be all their repertoire or a fraction – but some had already unlocked lapiloquia. All men so far, and their numbers could only be counted with a single hand, but that still provided a far more diverse toolkit to anything Christie had access to.

  I do not believe the Grow ‘command’ will be enough to beat them… Christie had only reached so far in the previous tourney because of the surprise factor, and now that she was without it, she doubted her learnt experience from the whole year since then would be enough. I still cannot hold my sea of stones for long, and they might have two whole disciplines of Agatecraft under their control. How… annoying. She satisfied herself with those words because she detected the downward spiral of self-deprecation before she slid right into it.

  Though it was truly an enraging concept that some of her fellow classmates had two disciplines under their belt when she didn’t even have a complete one.

  Christie waited in the grades with concealed dread as the tourney was about to start. She was also partially scared for her ladylove. The previous year, she dominated by virtue of being the only student to boast the Second Stratum, and whilst that still held true for the Third Stratum, one could say with confidence that the difference between them wasn’t as significant. Even plain arithmetic said that it was a twofold increase versus a measly fifty percent.

  But she was well aware that all that needless worry was that: needless. She couldn’t do anything about the situation with just her worry, so she stopped. Or rather, did her best to do so.

  As the first students stood up from their lottery, Teacher Dago raised his voice and summoned two fine yet big agates. They quickly shaped into a more rectangular form.

  “As the power level of your agates has already reached a lethal degree, we need to take some precautions so no one dies,” the soldier said it lightly, but the two who were about to fight instantly became petrified in dread. “Any duelist will put these agates in the front pocket of their uniform; this way, I can save them from mortal danger. Of course, if I am forced to do so, the saved duelist will be eliminated. As an additional clause, thanks to our highest Strata student, you can use wands if the other party allows it.”

  Her ladylove partially blushed at being called out, but this clause wasn’t unexpected. Some students had even anticipated this and brought wands of their own. Whilst wands might have been seen as childish or a trinket for parlor tricks, the truth was that soldiers – at least of this discipline level – were pragmatic enough to ignore any stigmas and take any advantage they could get. Snipers, a certain classification of well-renowned soldiers, were known for using big wands the size of their bodies, after all. Christie honestly believed that was what Agatha might become upon graduation. That or a scout.

  Gingerly, the students took the rectangular agates from René Dago’s hands and put them in their front pockets. With lithic cadence, they stepped into their positions at the opposite extremes of the arena.

  “Begin!” Their teacher shouted and chaos unfurled.

  Most students in the class had an average of more than ten agates, all of respectable quality, so Christie wasn’t surprised when she heard several Amplify Speed agates being shot. She was thankful that at this distance she didn’t need earplugs, though she might have to put them in during her duels.

  Her relatively slow reflexes – at least when compared to her classmates – failed to comprehend the full picture, but none of the first volley of agates landed. All of them had been intercepted by agates of the opposing party. This wasn’t because they all had perfect control of them or fast reflexes, but a result of one of the latest classes of military Agatecraft.

  This was the Protect Control series at play.

  Christie’s dearest father had told her how Protect Summon safeguarded agates from being forcefully recalled, so Protect Control safeguarded the controller. It wasn’t a perfect defense – not by any means as the series was limited by the Control command’s speed and force – but it was a nice passive defense that only took the toll of the commands without needing of active presence of mind.

  That was also one of the recent lessons in command series that René Dago had taught them. The importance of passive commands as they didn’t tax the lithorist’s as much. A concept Christie was deeply familiar with, for Sleep was a strictly passive command. Added on that a First Stratum command was also way cheaper – mentally speaking – than any subsequent ones, that was how she was able to keep Sleep every single waking and sleeping hour.

  I wonder how powerful this series would be with my sea of stones. Very, she could guess. Alas, Christie saw quite clear that she wouldn’t reach the Second Stratum any time soon, even if she continued to wear several pieces of lithic jewelry to fulfill their teacher’s materialization and mindfulness lesson.

  And the limited scope of that series showed up quite fast as the agates boasting Protect Control had been tossed aside. Not that much of a problem, but that meant that either the summoner would have to actively focus on the agate to summon them again or take the time loss and wait until the agates flew back to them at Control’s speed.

  Normally, it wasn’t a problem. The Control was decently fast at the speed of a sprinting person. Though that heavily paled in comparison to the supersonic Amplify Speed agates.

  In the short time this duel would last, those agates might be virtually nonexistent.

  And talking about short duration, a couple of seconds later it came to an end as one of the students knelt whilst clutching their thighs. Judging from their teacher’s lack of reaction, it had been a stray First Stratum Speed agate that had been shot as suppression fire and had just gotten lucky.

  “Ugh,” Agatha groaned next to her. “I hope the rest of the duels are not like this. How… dull.”

  Christie giggled at her ladylove’s pause, clearly withholding a curse. “Yes, I know that I will not give much game either, but I would rather experience more dynamic duels.”

  “Oh, you will,” the blonde smiled coyly.

  “I will wait with great expectations,” Christie smiled back.

  Unfortunately for the rest of them, the rest of the duels were equally as drab. For better or worse, this was just the optimal tactic. Only two people presented slightly different tactics, one was Shayla – who she had less Second Stratum agates than most – as she used several plain Control agates shaped like shields to protect her like she had done in the first tourney, and the other was a person she had grown to dislike.

  Cristobal Echevarria.

  The blond noble shone like the sun, and that irked Christie. If he wasn’t going to steal her ladylove, he was at least stealing her shine. And she found that preposterous.

  At the start of his duel, Cristobal stomped on the ground and managed to create a two-meter-high wall of rock. He looked somewhat spent after doing so, but the display of lapiloquia left the rest of the class in awe. Teacher Dago was highly conservative with his displays of lapiloquia, so this was the first time any of the students had seen such exaggerated movement of stones.

  His rival tried to shoot down the wall, but like their first days of military Agatecraft, the whole class understood that making it through rock was hard, even with the Second Stratum. As the opponent lost time, Cristobal chucked an agate to his side, far away from the wall. That gesture made Christie raise a brow.

  “Watch command,” her ladylove explained. “He is using that agate to have eyes on the battlefield as the wall has cut off his line of sight.”

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  Christie hadn’t even thought about that. Yes, that wall was a massive and strong defense, but it also had the negative of leaving the noble blind. A moment later, Cristobal shot an agate. It was fast and it flew with preternatural dexterity, making a ninety-degree turn with ease.

  “So that is what Speed Control looks like when you can control your agate’s speed…” Agatha murmured under her breath. Cristobal’s Speed Control agate was fast and agile, a terrifying combination that brought the end of the duel before her ladylove could finish talking.

  As soon as the duel was over, René Dago stomped the ground himself and recalled the wall of rock back into the ground, not even showing a hundredth of Cristobal’s exhaustion as he did so. So he is completely capable of greater displays of prowess. He just chooses not to do so. Which… fair. Lapiloquia is too taxing to perform frivolous acts. And she only spoke from the viewpoint of a trainee. She hadn’t even unlocked the discipline yet, only skimmed its surface with her fingers like a blind person.

  The next duel was Christie’s, and as much as she was growing to hate that noble, she couldn’t deny that it had given her an idea. The redhead walked down the grades and accepted the rectangular agate from her teacher’s hands. Her opponent was Veronica Alfargar, Agatha’s original roommate, and whilst the noble girl wasn’t an eminence in any field, the nouveau riche knew better than to underestimate her.

  “Begin!” René Dago shouted and the sea of stones was unleashed.

  As expected, Veronica jumped into the air to avoid the tide of agate. A normal lithorist could have finished her off now that she was immobile in the air, but alas, that wasn’t within Christie’s capabilities. Instead, the redhead covered herself in a lithic cocoon. Whilst not as thick as her perfect sphere from the Range command – which technically would have been an instant victory if she didn’t have a modicum of competitiveness and honor – it was still thick enough not to be broken any time soon.

  “Are you fine?” Christie heard a voice out of nowhere in the privacy of her cocoon, which scared her, but she promptly identified the source as the lithic tablet in her chest pocket. It was Teacher Dago talking to her.

  “Yes,” she responded, even if she wasn’t sure he could hear them. “This is just part of my strategy.” A dirty strategy at that, but far more honorable than just filling the whole arena with agate.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t give any command to her sea of stone as she needed to keep the Range command on to even get close to Veronica, but thanks to her Grow ‘command’, at least she could interact with the battlefield. Or rather, she was the battlefield. In a way, she wasn’t fighting as a lithorist, but a lapiloquist. Which was of great irony.

  Veronica recreated Agatha’s tactic from the first tourney of creating anchored platforms to basically walk in the air, but even though the raven-haired girl had several Second Stratum agates at her disposal, unlike the villager back then, she still wasn’t as proficient with the platform hopping. Her occasional shakes and loss of balance only made Agatha shine more in retrospect.

  Perhaps not the best in lithorica or lapiloquia, but no one could even come close to the radiance her ladylove had in battle.

  Christie, focus on your own battle, she had to remind herself of the duel she was in; otherwise, she would have just been lost in thought thinking about Agatha.

  Whilst she wasn’t sure what Veronica was doing as she moved around the arena without staying still in one place, Christie knew she had to do something. That movement is annoying… Is that why she is doing it, or is she just searching for weak spots in my cocoon?

  Veronica shot a handful of agates from time to time to test the waters, which was problematic as that meant that Christie couldn’t leave her cocoon. Or maybe I can…? I am the whole arena, the ground is covered with my agates, agates that I have learned to manipulate. So technically…

  With a lot of mental and physical effort, she wordlessly commanded her agates to rise. It was hard doing so as she also had to keep her sea of stones from growing any further, but she was able to manage enough movement to create a tunnel. Agate rose and split apart to create a covered passageway for her to walk freely.

  Now the whole battlefield was her cocoon. A vitreous sea of red and green stone.

  Before she got too tired, Christie rushed from the middle of the arena and stopped with her tunnel generation. The arena is thirty meters long and twenty wide. By being in the exact middle, I can cover almost all of it without Range. By default, her agates only had a radius of ten meters, giving her a diameter of twenty. Not enough to cover the whole field, but thankfully, Veronica didn’t bother to put herself further away, whether it was because she thought it would make no difference or because she needed proximity to make her attack.

  Regardless, that was what Christie needed because if the noble girl flew any higher, she wouldn’t be able to reach her.

  Christie took a deep breath and switched off the Range command, the agates outside her reduced radius instantly getting recalled. Before Veronica could react, the redhead used a command she wasn’t used to.

  Summon.

  Her sea of agates needed time to grow. Not much, but it still took time. The same couldn’t be said for the Summon command. In one infinitesimal slice of time, there weren’t any agates; and in the next, a pillar the size of a building materialized on top of Christie, locking her opponent within.

  Controlling the ground to your desires was scary, and the ground flying up to you was even more so. But all of that also being instantaneous? Lapiloquia didn’t have anything against the innate might of Christina Valasela.

  “The duel is over,” René Dago announced through the agate with a hint of worry. “Can you recall your agates?”

  Unlike that first time when she summoned her whole sea of stone before him that ended with her momentarily falling unconscious, Christie was now in complete – or at least solid enough – control of her faculties.

  “Recall,” she whispered, and her green and red agates vanished. She switched to Sleep the next moment as she was spent enough that if she didn’t do so, she might have let her inner sea flow free.

  As Veronica stood petrified in the air on top of her platform, clutching her chest and hyperventilating, Christie couldn’t help but think again of when she showed Teacher Dago her lithic might for the first time.

  He cleared a hole by shooting into my agates instead of forcefully recalling them like dearest father had done when I first awakened my agates. Why so?

  Her opponent still needed a moment to recover from the shock of being entombed, though Christie wasn’t particularly worried. Summon might be instantaneous, but it wouldn’t hurt anyone, only trap them and suffocate them if given enough time. Hmm… Maybe, just maybe, it is a bit dangerous. Veronica finally stepped down from her platform and they both gave the agate tablets back to René Dago.

  The last duel of the first round was finally her ladylove’s turn. She hadn’t told Christie her strategy, so she just waited impassively until the black-uniformed soldier announced the start.

  “One moment,” Agatha interrupted before Teacher Dago could speak and she directed to her opponent, one of the three boys who managed to unlock lapiloquia. Though the redhead doubted that it would make much difference. “Can I use a wand?”

  “Uh…” Much to the boy’s credit, he did think about it for a second. “I would rather not.” But he also knew better than to give more tools to Agatha.

  “Oh, thanks!” Her ladylove said with a blinding smile.

  “Wait, what?” The adversary proselytized his bewilderment at the girl’s elation.

  He was, however, unable to get an answer as Teacher Dago announced the start of the duel and he was forced to focus on the girl in front of him. Christie shared the boy’s confusion as she also couldn’t understand why her ladylove would be excited to have a handicap, but it soon became clear.

  At first, Agatha defended herself from a volley of incoming Amplify Speed agates with an amplified series of her own: Amplify Protect Control. It was the same as Protect Control, only that the agate had more maneuverability, speed, and hardness. Perhaps a solid defense if one had several of them, but the petite girl’s lone agate proved to be a bit outnumbered as more than one enemy agate got a bit too close to her. At that point, she abandoned all pretense and just commanded her sapphire with Invert Summon Range.

  Agatha’s agate vanished from existence as not even the sapphire was protected from its own series. The boy got even more confused than with Agatha’s previous delight as his agates were suddenly recalled. From her position, Christie saw René Dago frown, but he didn’t say anything.

  “W-what?” The noble student exclaimed midst of battle. “Why can I not summon my agates?”

  “Just a funny trick,” the villager grinned and cracked her knuckles. “You are going to regret not letting me use my wand, though.”

  The moment Agatha said that, she broke into a sprint. Small she might be, but she moved with a different type of lithic cadence. Instead of the power of mountains, she had the speed of agates.

  The boy panicked and used his lapiloquia, stomping on the ground to call a wall of stone between him and the rapidly approaching blonde, but unfortunately for him, Agatha just used the raising rock formation as a vault, jumping high up into the air and doing a completely unnecessary somersault in the way. Then another one in the ground, but that one was actually necessary to break the fall.

  Christie could see the panic in the noble’s face as he kept trying to summon his agates and they continued to ignore him. He also didn’t seem to try to perform any more lapiloquia as he was pretty spent from that singular wall, even if it was smaller than Cristobal’s. By the time he raised his arms in defense, it was too late. Agatha was right in front of him, and the villager had no inhibitions whatsoever.

  The petite girl threw a nasty haymaker at the somewhat tall boy’s gut. It came too fast for him to stop it, and he could only curl into a ball after being knocked down in a single punch.

  “Ugh…” The noble groaned as he clutched his stomach and rolled on the ground.

  “Ah, it has been a while since I have been able to throw one of those!” Agatha shouted with her hands on her hips, completely ignoring the boy’s suffering.

  Ah, Christie mentally gasped as she looked at her ladylove. She was covered in dust from her gymnastics and there was a gagging noble in her feet, but the redhead could only just bask in her radiance. I love you so much.

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