It was hard enough with one person in a conspiracy.

  Having three? It was like having a whole hype squad. As it turned out, Cire did not have Soul Magic. She hadn't, until she swapped skills with him. As it turned out, her highest skill was Glam. He was beginning to see a trend.

  He gave her a sideways glance at that, but she wasn't going to admit a thing about it. Skills that gave anything useful were apparently in short supply. He knew what he was about, and even though Cire’s parents had given her the best advantage, this still left her with less skills than he had been able to scrounge up.

  It had taken him almost three days to get Cire the skills she hadn't had from his list.

  He wasn't able to even find something to swap with her, aside from one legitimate swap.

  She had Sword Proficiency, which felt useless at the moment. All they had access to were practice swords, but a few days of training was sufficient to get him to level ten with it. At the very least, she walked him through some of the basics. Then he taught her Unarmed Combat. She appreciated his candor, and he appreciated not losing to a girl repeatedly like he knew Gia was capable of.

  He still had his standard spear, but the academy was holding onto it for safekeeping. This in itself felt like an insult but he was no stranger to those. He could deal with it if he had to, he just wished that the practice spears could be good enough for actual combat. Their weighting was off, which was annoying.

  The real problem was that he wasn’t making any gains. His spear skills were not being challenged.

  There was just something in being able to reach out and touch your enemy from what felt like a mile away that appealed to him.

  He preferred it.

  It was another reason why he liked his new trick of using the shrapnel to get people. Demons never expect to be hit by shards of rock. It was disabling in the worst case, and outright killed demons in many cases, especially the rank and file. Humans wouldn't appreciate it, either, but he didn't have anyone that would be willing to take a hit from that. The practice dummies that were frequently replaced were exactly what he needed to relieve the steam of not being able to see the Oracle.

  To add insult to injury, they were supposed to start sparring practice soon, and he knew that several of his companions were basing their training around the Skills that they'd gotten from him.

  He couldn't say that was a bad idea. He had great Skills. The fact that he was able to trade them around made everything even easier.

  He had dreams of getting every Skill out there. That was achievable, wasn’t it?

  Having all the Skills would be great, but he didn't know if he could handle the responsibility. Plus, he might forget about some Skills he got if he had too many. Two magic Skills moving to Adept level made him a national treasure. Getting any more interesting Skills would just make him all that more of a juicy target for anybody who wanted to try to recruit him for their house.

  He might even start his own dynasty at the end of this, but it would probably take too much paperwork. That is, unless he could hire someone to do the paperwork for him.

  “This is the setup for the dueling brackets. You’re going to have to do your best. Class standing will be affected by these, though a great many of you won’t be able to adjust your standing much unless you win it.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Grammarian Logatio had given the eloquent speech that lead to an uproar as every student in the third class wanted to see their ranking. Ludere had no issues waiting, leaned up against one of the stone pillars outside of the classroom.

  He knew that he was going to be picked against somebody who was strong. They knew his record. He knew that they knew. Unless they put him against someone who had better battle skills than he did, he would win. The crowd took a while to examine the matchups and several people cried.

  Cire walked up to him. "You got off easy this time. None of the first-class guys are even on your side of the bracket."

  "I suppose that's good. Are either of you…?"

  Mila walked up. "I got Bel first round."

  Ludere winced. Even though he was nominally on their side, and he gave them information that they'd been looking for, he was a very strong contender for a position with the military. Honestly, he could have chosen any of those positions with his test scores. He was quietly intelligent. He knew people.

  Ludere knew people, but he hadn't grown up around them. Everyone knew him as a Regnicus here. He came in with baggage. Bel got to drop off his baggage and be with his friends and the children of his parents' friends.

  Mila was good at fighting. She was sort of a disorganized chaos-goblin in the making, who was able to blow down the walls that people put up in their defenses. Somehow it was socially acceptable for her to use one of the most difficult instruments that they had available in her fight. She had chosen Spear Proficiency and gotten ridiculously good with it in the short week that they worked together. A lot of this was due to, if one was feeling uncharitable, how much Ludere had allowed himself to be stabbed by a blunt spear.

  It had been a lot. As it turned out, skills advanced when someone actually tried to stab you, even if the actual stabbing was ineffective. He hadn't gained any levels in Spear Proficiency, but she jumped up to level fifteen within one week.

  Cire? She was a machine, where one put in compressed spite, and unhappy men came out. Despite all of this, her Unarmed Combat was not the most annoying thing about her. That was her mastery of Willpower, much to his consternation. His raw power was greater. His skill was higher but it really wasn't just about that. The quality of their skills were increased. He didn't know if it was because they were women, or because they were grasping it better, but he wanted what they had.

  "I don't know if I can defeat either one of you if you're serious. And if we're being completely honest, I don't know if I care."

  Mila placed a hand in front of her mouth. "You don't care about your ranking?"

  Several people walked around him giving him odd looks. The crowd had finally dispersed a little bit and they were able to talk.

  "I understand that I'm not one of them, and I can never be. They might give me so called 'respect' but they are never going to think that I earned it."

  Mila shook her head. "I know exactly where you're coming from. But none of them? I can actually feel that. They were all about themselves, and they're barely noticing anybody else. It's almost like they trained them to weed out the uninteresting, unimportant parts of life."

  "You both sound depressing. Live a little. I'm sure that the grass is going to be greener on the other side."

  Ludere knew that the grass was green on the side that you watered. He wasn't going to say anything about that, because if anything, he had learned how to butter up people that thought that they were his social peers.

  Cire and Mila had gotten Will Magic since the last such tournament. They had to register that with the school, as it opened them up to more combat possibilities. Ludere had to rack his brain to think of if he had ever seen gladiators using magic… he hadn't, but he could imagine it becoming a real issue.

  "The grass isn't on anyone's side. This is all just sand, Ludo."

  He nodded. "Well, it's just sparring, right? We do that everyday. And the way that the pyramid is set up, you only need to win four times to make it to the top sixteen."

  That would be sufficient to give them a bump in standing. He could see anybody then rising up to the first class if they actually wanted it, but it wasn't like there was an infinite amount of slots in first class for everybody. There were only sixteen spots there. Those positions gave those graduates an edge on all the competition, in so many ways that he couldn't even begin to describe it. He was thinking about what it would be like to win and get his pick of any government position anywhere in any branch.

  He could do the honorable thing and decide not to take any of them. Or he could decide to take the one that would bring the most chaos to the most people.

  He loved his country, but he hated its government.