Chapter IV.IX (4.9) - Club Expo

  “You! How about trying out some paint on this canvas?”

  “Ever wanted to get lost in library books?”

  “We have access to an exclusive artificial humanoid to practice on!”

  “Fights aren’t worth watching without us at the helm! View ‘em up close every week!”

  “Potions! We can help you brew stuff that’s unimaginable!”

  Kizu shuffled forward, trapping in a throng of first years. Students with him gaped at the stalls set up in the courtyard. They were manned by older students who shouted, waved signs, offered candies, and even performed little skits. All in an attempt to draw them into their club activities.

  The previous day Kizu had received a note that required him to come to the academy at this time for his semester’s blood testing. Since this was technically his first-year, despite being the age of a third-year, they’d lumped him in with the other new students. He arrived on time with the others and they’d begun traveling to the testing tower only to be ambushed by the different clubs in this courtyard.

  Second semester was the time for first-years to sign up for clubs. He’d known this. But he hadn’t expected it to be so competitive. The first-years all seemed awestruck by the attention being dumped on them.

  Well, most of them. Faible stood beside Kizu, completely uninterested in the many voices directed at them. Lucky for him, the gnome was actually shielded from view from most of the stalls.

  An then there was Akira was further off, smiling condescendingly at the Battle Club as they tried to talk him into joining. He stood beside Harvey, who was already signing the paperwork to join.

  “You’re a gnome, right?” An older female student fought through the throng to speak to Faible, somehow having spotted him despite his height.

  “I…am.” Faible adjusted his glasses.

  “Amazing! Join the Art Club! We need talent like yours!”

  “Kizu is ranked higher than I am in illusions. You should direct your attention to him instead.” He pointed a thumb at Kizu whose groan was lost amongst the crowd’s noise.

  “Really?” The student zero’d in on him. “I don’t recall seeing you in the rankings last year. Where do you stand?”

  “Funny you mention that. I’m currently trying to find that out right now,” Kizu said obtusely. “How about I let you know after I finish the test I’m supposed to be taking right now.”

  “Oh, the blood tests? No need to worry about being late for that! The club expo is accounted for. We do this every year. You all aren’t actually expected to be testing for another hour.”

  Of course. But before Kizu could make another excuse for himself, the student pulled up her scrying orb and quickly scanned the rankings from the previous semester.

  “Then you must be Kaga Kizu! I see you right here ranked…81! We’ll be in Illusions A together! I’m Choko, ranked 43. I specialize in more dimensional illusions. Really good at making things pop out at you.”

  For a second, Kizu’s interest was snagged. But the word ‘dimensional’ seemed to mean something else entirely to her. She talked on about making illusions feel visceral and real as they surround the target.

  “As for the Art Club, I’m a sculptor. I like clay the best, but I’m quite talented with all sorts of materials. Was experimenting with marble last semester. And I even helped replace a golem’s broken forearm! What about you? What medium do you prefer? Drawing? Painting? Mosaic? Oh, wait! Let me guess, you’re something more unique like a glass blower!”

  “I am terrible at art,” Kizu said bluntly.

  She blinked at him.

  “Anyway,” Kizu continued, “I’m really not looking to join any clubs right now. I’ve got a lot I need to do this semester. Maybe next year?”

  He looked back to where Faible had stood beside him but the gnome had completely disappeared from sight. Choko started to recover and rebuff his refusal but he managed to slip away before she pulled him back into conversation.

  Kizu navigated around a group of fifth years who were enthusiastically explaining soil compositions inside a flowerpot. That actually got his attention. The Gardening Club. Of everything he’d seen, this was the only club that tempted him in any meaningful way. An easy and convenient way of learning about growing his own ingredients? That sounded phenomenal. But it seemed like their responsibilities included taking care of the academy grounds and he simply didn’t have the time necessary to dedicate to that, despite how informative it might be in the long term.

  Never enough time.

  “Wish I knew temporal spells,” Kizu muttered to himself. Of course, that branch of spells was one of the most unique and difficult to master. From the little he’d read on the subject, you needed a strong natural affinity to cast anything significant. He’d have to settle for traveling through time like everyone else. One second at a time.

  He caught up with Faible at the Statue of Harold. Faible was leaning against the big toe, reading from a pocket book and mouthing something to himself as he read. Kizu couldn’t read lips, but it looked to be the same phrase repeated over and over with different facial expressions. Fluctuating from scowls to grins to wide-eyed hurt.

  “What do you have there?” Kizu asked.

  Faible snapped the book closed and looked up.

  “Just a little audition speech. Nothing too notable.” He pushed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. “You end up joining any of those clubs? Anything interest you?”

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  “Gardening could be fun. But I don’t have the free time for it.”

  “I’d hold off for a week or two before choosing anything,” Faible advised. “You don’t have to pick right away.”

  “I doubt I’ll choose anything at all.”

  A few other students started filing their way over to them. Harvey gave him a curt nod of acknowledgement and Kizu spotted Harumi, the first-year chatting excitedly with one of his peers. Evie was also there, though she wore a cloak over her uniform with its hood up. Kizu could still spot the Kemon girl’s quills piercing the fabric, even if he couldn’t see her face.

  Their numbers had thinned between the academy gates and the statue, but most of the first-years had survived the club ambush.

  Faible slipped down into the passage and Kizu followed after him with the others in pursuit.

  He didn’t often use the underground passages, usually preferring the open air of walking through the academy courtyards and high ceiling hallways. It was faster and more streamlined to travel class to class down below, but it made Kizu feel crammed and reminded him of the World Dungeon.

  They walked past a familiar faded sign that marked the Western Tower, where they tested at, and then began their ascent up.

  “Your leg brace is holding up well.”

  Kizu glanced over his shoulder and saw Harvey examining his leg intently as they walked up the stone stairs.

  “No leg brace. I had a recent…surgery. Fixed me up.”

  “No kidding. Mate, if I didn’t know better I would say from the way you move that your broken leg is actually stronger than your normal one.”

  “It’s pretty strong now.”

  “I’m glad.” Harvey gave him a sharp-toothed smile, looking like the boy Kizu had first met for a moment. It was a contagious look and Kizu couldn’t help cracking a smile of his own.

  “I understand.” Kizu nodded sagely. “It would indeed be embarrassing to get decimated in the fighting ring by a cripple. Your fears can now be nullified.”

  “Ha! We’ll see about that.”

  The testing room was exactly as Kizu remembered. The students all circled about, filing into the room. It was far more cramped than last semester. Kizu thought back and recalled how they had staggered the first years’ arrival times. While this was far from the entire class, it was everyone at campus as of now. Mostly they were just missing the Tainted students and a few stragglers who had yet to arrive.

  A James golem handed out the paper tests. They were as heavy in Kizu’s hands as they were his heart. He stared at the stack of pages and frowned. These test questions felt like a near insurmountable challenge standing between him and his sister. The right answers were the simple key to reach her.

  James called out the start of the test and Kizu flipped to the first page.

  He was undoubtedly far better off now than when he first arrived. The amount of time he spent on the test alone proved that point. Instead of flipping through the pages without a clue, he found himself considering and thinking back to conversations as he hit different questions on politics and history. And he was pleasantly surprised to see an entire small section dedicated to Emperor Sasaki’s father. The sheer volume of time Kizu had spent listening to the new emperor rant about his father with Wan’s meticulous corrections could fill a tome twice over. Then there were easy questions about new policies being put into place. He was feeling pretty smug until he stumbled on a question about the creation of the Elites as an organization in service to the throne. Kizu paused. Was that Sasaki’s father’s policy or his brother’s? He tentatively marked it as Sasaki IX’s and moved onto the next question.

  Unfortunately, history and civics outside of that specific era and location were a wash. He knew enough to guess at a few answers about the Kemon tribes and a couple questions about the Ooze invasion. But it was a mere fraction of what the test asked of him.

  He breezed through the astronomy test. There were still plenty of holes in his knowledge, but he knew enough to feel pretty confident about his answers.

  Numerology was by far his worst test. He knew nothing about the equations being asked. His mathematic knowledge didn’t go beyond basic arithmetic, and addition and multiplication in their pure forms were sadly nowhere to be found.

  The easiest test was the one on brewing. As he went through the questions his mind drifted back to the gardening club. Probably best to discard the club as an option altogether. Sadly, the only class it would be applicable to would be brewing. And he was already top of the class. That meant dedicating time to an activity that helped no rank improvements.

  He turned his tests in and traded the smartly dressed golem for a blood vial. He pricked his finger and handed it back. That should be everything. New rankings would be processed in the next hour or so.

  Unlike his first testing experience, they didn’t need to go meet Arclight for a combat test. Those numbers would just carry over from the previous semester. Instead, they were cut loose after the tests.

  Kizu decided to use the time to visit Kateshi’s old classroom and start disassembling his portal to Owl’s Respite. He wanted that out of the way before someone else moved or discarded it.

  He stepped through the painting and entered the lecture hall. All of the Enchanting C projects were still lined up in the back of the room. There was a stain of blood on the ground and he could see gouges in the stone floor from where his enchanted leg brace had held him back from the portal. But the severed leg itself was long gone. The headmaster had likely sent someone to dispose of the limb.

  “Too bad,” Kizu muttered. “I wonder what I might have been able to do with that much flesh from my own body. Could I have designed potions that work uniquely on myself?”

  Then again, using human flesh as a brewing ingredient was widely considered a taboo by pretty much everyone other than witches. Best not to step on any toes. He’d already burned all his bridges in the Hon Basin so not like he had a good place to retreat to if he got in trouble.

  Regardless, his limb was gone. Likely thrown into the rivers of magma under the academy where they disposed of all the blood tests.

  He started dismantling his Enchanting C project, reverting the book shelf into a pile of wooden boards. The spatial runes carved into the wood would likely conflict with any other spatial spells he tried to cast, so that meant carrying them down to town without any jumps to speed himself up. A bit inconvenient, but with his new leg it wouldn’t be too much of a pain.

  Before he left the classroom and started his journey back to town, Kizu decided to pull his scrying orb out of his bag and check to see if the test results were in.

  “Kaga Kizu, Third-Year. Combat 411, Astronomy 205, Divination 91, History 703, Politics 741, Rejuvenation and Restoration 799, Conjuring 800, Brewing 1, Numerology 799, Music 599 (Piano), Enchanting 172, Illusion 79, Elemental 213.”

  Kizu frowned. Those weren’t the leaps and bounds in improvement he’d expected. Overall he’d improved in several areas. Elemental was down quite a nice chunk and with the few other drops, he probably decreased at least about 200 overall in his total ranking number. But he’d gone down in a subject. Astronomy by four ranks which he supposed made sense. He hadn’t been studying it or really considering it anything worth dedicating time too. There were other students at the academy who clearly had been studying over the break. It was an important reminder that these rankings weren’t stagnant milestones to pass. It was a race to the top. A constant battle.

  A fight to the top. And one that he would complete.

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