They danced for the rest of the night. There wasn't a dancing Skill, per se, but he knew that Unarmed Combat and Athletics would help him out with that. He had decided not to give away his Athletics skill for the time being. He didn't know what Tyler would do to him.

  He did know that in the morning he would be expected to do some great feats of reading, writing, and running, at the bare minimum.

  For the next week, he rose with the sun and trained all morning with the Grammarian. Each day, he was given more to read, and more instruction on warfare. He was also giving instruction on diplomacy, internal defense, and every session began with a discussion of Senators and their close associates.

  By the end of the first week, he'd memorized thirty influential families that had the power to shape the direction of the Empire. The Empire itself had gotten into a series of entanglements that had finally resulted in it pushing out, as far as it wanted to push out. There were no known societies or civilizations outside of the Empire that they wanted to subjugate.

  The talk had gone to if the world had been fully conquered and brought to heel, or if they needed to begin sending people across the expanse.

  With basically every single inch of the continent under control of the Empire fairly recently, the talk had revolved around what the military needed to do to stay relevant, when there were no other kingdoms to conquer. There were no lands that were not a part of the collective.

  This was good for commerce, but bad for the people that wanted their positions to be saved. When Ludere asked about the threats that the demons posed, with their infrequent attempts to invade the empire, that was brought up as the main reason that the military needed to be around. He'd gone on at length explaining what the purpose of the military was, when it wasn't going out and campaigning for more land.

  Now there was no new land to be had, despite the length and the size of it. They still needed to hold and maintain the land. Otherwise, it would fall into anarchy. Or, at least, that's what the Grammarian said.

  Ludere could understand his position. If there were no more battles to be fought against other near-peer competitors, then why would they have a standing army? And to that, the obvious reason was that there were monsters that had to be killed, and demons that wanted to invade.

  When he brought up the obvious point of counterinvading the demon's world and taking their land, that did not even seem to be an option. But there was a lot of land there, and they had to come from somewhere, and obviously the humans could live there if they wanted to. So perhaps it was time for humanity to plunder the depths of the oceans, or go to the other side of whatever it was, and see what could be seen.

  There was a lot of land available to them, and there were a lot of seas on the outside, and lots of little islands. But if the government was content with what they had, then, to the best of his knowledge, there was going to be an end date for having a standing army. And if the demons didn't attack randomly, but rather chose to move their forces into settlements that had more people, then it was obvious where the new military would be. Or whatever the military would become after this.

  The government had the power. They shared that with the military, and to some extent, they shared that partially with religion. So, as far as he could tell, the religious faction was mostly spies for the various gods' factions, as well as religion taking up the mantle of being the voice for education of the youth. Everything he learned, he learned through some religious scholar. The only difference now was that the Grammarian was attached to the military faction through his family, but worked for the government's faction. The education that he provided was top-tier, something that would prepare him for a job in governance.

  Provided that he did well at the academy.

  The academy itself was in between sessions, due to the fact that everyone was home for festivals for a month. It meant a lot to him to be able to be with his family for this time, but the three weeks he had now seemed to be more like three months of considerable effort to get through.

  Within the first week, he had swapped out and given his friends every skill they wanted, and they were training with him whenever they could. He got Gia to teach him the trick of floating balls of Willpower, and he was now able to reproduce that. He found himself consistently using Willpower, to slowly grind his skills in it. Soul Magic needed him to actively use it, and it was the same for Willpower.

  Spirit Magic was still a mystery to him.

  He knew that he had used it once, but that had felt like an out-of-body experience.

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  The more he read about using Willpower and Will Magic, the more that he understood that it was the basis of the power that the Empire projected. Of the three Skill crystals, Will was the most abundant. Soul Magic was the second most abundant, and he never heard anyone mention Spirit Magic. At least, not anyone besides Xerxei.

  The old man had skipped town, otherwise he would have asked him directly. But Jay was still in town, and he didn't know, either.

  The best guess he has was that it was a locked secret that he'd learned the academy through the use of their library. His home library, and the books of the Grammarian brought him, did not get him any closer to what he wanted. There was no record of the Skill Swap skill, and there was no record of the Spirit Magic skill. So either he figured something out, or he'd gotten a Skill that he wasn't supposed to have. It tickled his interest that maybe demons were on to something that the humans didn't know.

  If that was how they made their Gates, which was the best guess, then he needed to learn how.

  And if he could learn how through them, then he would do that.

  One afternoon, he found himself once again laying in bed with the Oracle. They were both panting from exertion. Somehow, she had a way of getting past his Skills, even though she also had Athletics now. That just meant that their passionate love was a lot more athletic than he'd expected.

  "Do you know anything about Spirit Magic? Because I cannot find a single thing out in any book I've read. I know you understand Soul Magic. I know you understand Will Magic. I know you've seen what I've seen. But I cannot get any answers anywhere. And I don't want to ask somebody."

  The Oracle nuzzled into him.

  "Spirit Magic? I've not heard of it. But every Skill inside of your soul has a book you can look at. For you, it's got to be a very interesting experience of seeing your soul. When I go into my soul using Soul Magic, it's like every Skill has its own shelf and you can kind of read books from those Skills to get better."

  Ludere took it in. "Have I been stupid this whole time, or…"

  "I assure you that you've been stupid this whole time. I'm still naked, and I'm still ready for another round."

  Ludere was happy to oblige.

  Despite all of her teaching and guidance, she didn't know how to use Spirit Magic, and neither did he. When he went into his soul, it was like it wasn't really there, in a sense that every other Skill he had had a sort of user's manual that he could reference. Spirit Magic just showed him himself. Soul Magic was far more forthcoming with it. And the more he developed a skill, the more that he was able to see how he could develop it further. He knew what he needed to do to advance his Willpower. He knew what he needed to do to advance his Soul, but his Spirit?

  It was utterly opaque. If only he could get the demons to actually talk to him, then maybe he could get some traction. But the days dragged on, and he wasn't able to figure out that skill. He was told to do his best to get the information he could, while he could, before he got into the academy.

  At the academy, when he got out?

  If he didn't know by then, then there was a chance that humans didn't really understand it. If he needed to find a demonic tutor, then that would be a problem for him in the future. He did not want to have to make some sort of deal that involved him being in debt to a Demon.

  He was pretty sure they didn't want to deal with him either, but there had to be some way that they communicated. They pretty efficiently used him in one loop.

  He didn't want to think about how he'd been used. But it bore repeating in his mind, until he had the inkling of how they had done it. That made him think that it was a Soul Magic manipulation, not anything else.

  But his studies progressed, and he felt more confident in what he learned. There were tiers to the academy, and only the best succeeded.

  For sure, a lot of it was being in the right place at the right time, and having enough money from your parents to cover it, or a wealthy benefactor, but… According to what he had heard, they only looked at how well one did inside of the academy for their placement. And then, at the end, your placement at the academy determined if you were eligible to compete for some of the top spots inside of governance or the military—spots that would have gone to high performers, went to those that did not take private contracts.

  It took a lot of money to pay off someone's tuition. So if somebody wanted to pay to sponsor a student. Then it was a large financial burden off the student's back, as well as making it clear that the person that was paying had an interest in what was about to happen to that person. This made them easily pliable and generally willing to take whatever position was offered to them by that family or organization.

  The fact that a Senator was doing this meant that governance had taken an interest in him, and likely the military as well. He would have choices. Especially coming in with skills in the range that he already had. He could easily get a position in the military. He couldn't guarantee it, by any choices, but if he chose governance, and if he did really well, then he might be able to pick his station. That was the thing that the top ten percent got to do. They got to pick where they went, and that was the great equalizer.

  It took him all that time to get his skills up. He would be facing down against others of equal skill levels who had all the advantages growing up. The only thing that he had on them was that he was able to repeat a terrible scenario hundreds of times to grow. He wasn't ungrateful for the experience, but he was happy that he had a leg up, and that no permanent damage had been done.

  The night before he was to ship out for the academy, he was sure that he was forgetting something. It didn't help that the Oracle was trying to make him forget everything. That, at least, made him smile.