Quill stared at the bounty poster on the table.

  It was a rough sketch of him and Yereth, a ‘dead or alive’ bounty of ten silvers each for whoever catches the escaped convict. Haref had found it in the city square earlier in the day, but he reassured Quill that the City Watch hadn't caught on to them in the slightest.

  It wasn't accurate at all. All of Quill's drawings were of a tall, skinny man with an angry look in his eyes, and Yereth was portrayed as a thin and frail-looking woman. While that may have been true just a few weeks ago, their exact frames now were healthier with just a little bit more muscle and fat. Even Yereth had gained some weight, looking healthier every passing day.

  It was going to be a stretch for the City Watch to find them just with this information. And that only worked to Quill's favor.

  Quill shook his head, setting aside the posters before writing Scripts in the air.

  He was inside the training room up on the second floor, the wooden boards below his feet leading up to a set of wooden dummies on the other end of the room. He wrote the last of the Scripts before he then pressed against them, and at once, two Marble Hearts manifested right in front of him, floating in the air, before it took another minute for the Marble Body to manifest and consolidate around them.

  The Marble Puppets manifested themselves right in front of him. It’d been another week since his last iteration of the spell, and he had finally added the Scripts to the Marble Body, ones that were needed to make the Marble Puppets .

  It was a long process, writing ‘push’ and ‘pull’ Scripts for each moving part of the Puppets. It was like building muscle strands for each joint, and Quill had to change their relative strength and values more than a hundred times to achieve a workable and balanced gait for the Constructs. The first few iterations were just them shaking and falling over themselves.

  Quill’s experience with the undead and weaving ‘mana muscles’ proved to be more than useful here. Normally, it would've taken a month, but he’d done it in less than a week thanks to his necromancy experience.

  He stared at the two Puppets right in front of him.

  He had since given their bodies Marble Armor. It was a hardened exterior wrapping around the Marble Body of the Puppets, protecting their soft interior with a rigid set of plates. He had modeled it after a knight, a cuirass that shielded most of the torso and chest, along with vambraces and greaves, and an interlinked set of ‘chainmail’ that skirted over their legs. A helm dominated their head, modeled after a frog-mouth.

  On their hands were spears made from Marble Weapon, a single long line of solid White that ended with a sharp point. It was hard to mimic the properties of wood, and it was a time sink researching how to make White mana sharp like blades, but in the end, it was worth it.

  Quill mentally commanded, and at once, the two Puppets dropped to the ground with a resting on a knee and the spear beside them before bowing their heads to him. The Mana Link had successfully carried his command over to them, but even more than that, their Marble Brains had finally worked.

  Along with everything else Quill had been working on in the past week, he had also created a simple brain for the Puppets. It was so that they could understand and interpret more complex commands, allowing him more flexibility instead of having to mentally produce step-by-step instructions every time.

  Creating the Marble Brain was hard. There was only a small amount of research conducted on the human mind, and most of them were qualitative in nature. Still, Quill’s experience in undead organ repair came in handy. Inside the Puppets’ heads were simplified models of a brain that could recognize patterns through probabilities, taking in stimulus from their Marble Eye and Mana Link and converting them to a sequence of moves.

  Quill commanded the two Puppets to rise, spears in their hands before he then commanded them to him. They stirred to stand, pulling their weights and turned their heads to him. Their Marble Eyes burned through their helms before they ran straight at him.

  He needed to test how well they did in combat.

  The first Puppet whipped its spear, turning its momentum into a force driving the end of the spear’s blade. Quill followed, turning to his side to dodge before he then wound and rammed a fist straight to the Puppets' chest, sending it back before it fell to the floor with a skid.

  Quill whisked his wrist. His knuckles were red. The armor really was hard as rock, his skin blistering on impact. The second Puppet dashed and drove a spear straight at him, but he managed to deflect the blade with a whip of his hand, countering with a kick straight to its knee. The Puppet toppled and dropped to the floor with a .

  “Stop” Quill commanded them as they pushed off the ground. They then stirred and rested their spears before standing in place like immaterial statues, only awaiting his next orders.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The construct’s fighting techniques were amateur at best. Their plan of attack had no rhythm to it, only using their spears and nothing else to try to land a successful hit. The only thing going for them for now was their rigid armor, but even then, higher-level mages could easily overpower them with a blast of magic.

  Quill commanded one of the Puppets to fetch his pen and notebook. He was surprised to see that both of them turned and started for his bag. The first Puppet fished for his pen while the other produced his notebook, before they then returned and handed them over to Quill.

  It was a strange malfunction on the side of their Marble Brains. Quill noted it down along with his other key observations, naming the two Puppets Pen and Notebook in his book.

  Quill opened the Register before reading over the texts.

  His first complex spell was functionally complete. It was still going to be a long and hard process refining and improving on the Scripts, but he was right on track just before the academy examinations.

  Quill broke the Mana Link connecting him and his Puppets before they then crumbled into chunks and evaporated into thin air.

  It would've been better for them to retain their physical form when the Mana Link broke, but Quill was done for the day. He shook his head and only pinned the thought in his mind as he headed straight for the bathroom.

  “You smell like a dead body.” A voice said. It was Rhena leaning on the doorframe, blocking his path. Something told him that she had been there for a while now.

  “What do you want?” Quill stopped right in front of her. He tried squeezing past, but she wasn't exactly budging. “Can you move out of the way? It's already my turn in the baths, and I’m not going to miss my schedule.”

  “Try getting past me then.” Rhena spread her arms over the doorway. She was taunting him with a childish grin over her face.

  Quill only sighed. There was no way he could outfight a Rogue mage like her in melee combat.

  “What?” Rhena said. “You're just going to stand there?”

  “Yes.”

  Rhena sighed before giving him the right of way. Despite that, she followed him through the halls, walking by his side before stopping him short of the stairs.

  “You’re terrifying,” Rhena said. “You're progressing much faster than I’ve expected.”

  “Is that so?” Quill said.

  Rhena nodded. “At first I thought Haref was a fool to take you in, but I saw for myself now. No wonder he agreed to protect you without so much of a hitch.”

  “It was a transaction.” Quill stared at her. “I don't make promises that I can't keep, and I don't go back on my word. I said that I’m going to excel in the examinations, and I don't plan to have it any other way.”

  A strange smile stretched across Rhena's face. “I hope I can rely on you, then.”

  Quill only sighed. “A mage shouldn't have to rely on anyone.”

  “Is that so?”

  Quill started down the stairs. He arrived at the first floor before turning to the bathroom at the edge of the main hall, grabbing a towel as he did. Yereth was by the kitchen, cooking up a meal, apparent from the sweet smell lingering in the air.

  It was strange how a person can adapt so fast. A few weeks ago, both he and Yereth were living day to day with stale bread, and now they had warm baths and good food. Quill could only hope her sister wouldn't get taken away by the luxury and grow fat like the other nobles.

  Yereth waved over to him as he entered the bathroom. She was about to say something over the kitchen counter, but Quill couldn't hear her fast enough before the door closed with a .

  He stepped inside with a hum, closing the door behind with a He noticed the door handle was broken, and the lock wasn’t working as intended. Still, his body was already starting to itch, and the smell of rotten vegetables was starting to grow over him. He really needed that bath now that he was mortal.

  He stepped over the stone floors, his slippers clacking with a rhythm before he made his way to the square pool. The smell of burnt wood accompanied the steam, obscuring his eyes, but he couldn't wait any longer. He ran up to jump into the water, and that was when he heard a groan on the other side.

  “No jumping in the pool, young mage.”

  Thanks for reading!