«Let us start with the levitation exercise,» Xvim said, oblivious to Zorian’s musings. «Start over.»
He was starting to hate those two words.
Chapter 3
The Bitter Truth
If someone had asked Zorian at the end of the first week what classes he thought he would have the most trouble with, he would have answered Spell Formulas and Advanced Mathematics. Combat magic maybe. Two weeks later, he could safely say the answer was ‘Warding’.
Warding, the art of protecting things with magic, was a surprisingly complex field. You had to take into account what the thing you’re trying to protect is made of, what its dimensions and geometry were, how the ward is going to react with the already existing magic… or you could just slap a general-purpose warding invocation on your target and hope for the best. But the professor would fail you for that answer, so that wasn’t an option in the classroom.
But these complexities aside, the class should have been a breeze, or at least not this confusing — Zorian was a patient, methodical person when it came to magecraft, and had slogged through worse offenders than warding with decent results. The problem was that their teacher, a stern woman with hair cut so short she might as well have gone all the way and shaved her head completely, didn’t know how to teach. At all. Oh, she clearly knew the subject matter very well, but she simply didn’t know how to translate that knowledge into a proper lecture. She was leaving a lot of things out of her lectures, apparently not realizing that just because they were obvious to her, they were not obvious to her students. The textbook she assigned for the class wasn’t much better, and read more like a manual for a professional warder than a student’s textbook.
Question 6: You are tasked with building a research outpost on a first degree mana well in the Sarokian Highlands. The building is meant to support a staff of 4 at any particular time, and the prospectors have expressed concerns over heavy presence of winter wolf packs and an infestation of borer wasps in the surrounding area. You have a budget of 25.000 pieces and are assumed to be a certified second circle warder.
Assuming only mana extracted from mana well is available for powering the wards, which combination of wards do you feel would be the best choice for the outpost? Explain your reasoning.
Draw basic floor-plans of the planned outpost and explain how the planned room placement and shape of the building itself affect ward effectiveness.
Do you think the issue of the borer wasp infestation is best resolved by using a vermin repellant ward or by careful choice of building materials? Explain your reasoning.
Assume that you are commissioned to build not one but five outposts. The budget remains the same. How does this change your answer? Do you believe it is better to make the wards identical for all five outposts or do you feel some amount of difference between them is in order? Explain the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.
Zorian rubbed his eyes in frustration. How was he supposed to answer a question like this? He didn’t take the architecture elective, and wasn’t aware that you had to take it to do well in your warding class. Not to mention that the question assumed they knew what the market rates were buying the necessary materials, or that they knew where the Sarokian Highlands were. Zorian was quite good at geography, and he had no idea, though considering the presence of monsters like winter wolves, he suspected they were somewhere in the northern forest.
At the very least he knew how to answer the third part of the question. The correct answer was definitely wards. Even if the outpost was made inedible to borer wasp larvae, it would still make a prime place to build a nest. Considering how territorial those insects were, you didn’t want them living anywhere near you. Theoretically, the ‘careful choice of materials’ options would free up mana that would otherwise be spent on maintaining vermin repellant wards, but those wards required very little mana flow to stay active. Especially if they were keyed specifically to borer wasps.
His thoughts were interrupted by a girlish giggle coming from the back of the classroom. Zorian didn’t even have to turn around to know what was happening — Zach was entertaining the students around him again. He wished the teacher would penalize the guy for the disruption he was causing, especially in the middle of an exam, but Zach was a bit of a darling to the stern woman because he was the only student acing her exams. No doubt the guy had already finished his test with 100 % accuracy. Which, by the way, made no sense whatsoever — during their first two years, Zach was a below-average student more distinguished because of his charm than magical talent. Kind of like a nicer version of Fortov, actually. This year, though, he was acing everything. Everything. He had a wealth of knowledge and a work ethic he hadn’t had at the end of their second year, far in excess of what could be gained through the normal passage of time.
How does one get so much better in the span of a single summer?
15 minutes later he threw his pencil down on the table, calling it quits. He only filled in eight out of ten questions, and he wasn’t sure how correct these eight were, but it would have to do. He would have to set aside a couple of days for warding self-study, because the lectures were making less and less sense with every passing day. The only other student that stayed in the classroom as long as he did was Akoja, and she handed in her paper only a few seconds after he did and followed him outside. Of course, they stayed in the classroom so long for very different reasons. He stayed so he could scrape in a few stray points. She stayed because she was a perfectionist who wanted to triple check everything to make sure she didn’t forget anything.
«Zorian, wait!»
Zorian slowed down and allowed Akoja to catch up to him. The girl could be insufferable sometimes, but she was a good person overall and he didn’t want to snap at her just because the test didn’t go the way he wanted.
«How do you think you did back there?» she asked.
«Badly,» he answered, not seeing the point in lying.
«Yeah, me too.»
Zorian rolled his eyes. His and her definition of ‘badly’ differed greatly.
«Neolu finished in only half an hour,» said Akoja after a brief silence. «I bet she’ll get a perfect score again.»
«Ako…» Zorian sighed.
«I know everyone thinks I’m jealous but that’s not normal!» said Akoja in a hushed but agitated voice. «I’m pretty smart and I study all the time and I’m still having problems with the curriculum. And we’ve both been in the same class as Neolu for the past two years and she was never this good. And… and now she’s beating me in every single class!»
«Kind of like Zach,» said Zorian.
«Exactly like Zach!» she agreed. «They even hang out together, two of them and one other girl I don’t know, behaving like… like they’re in their own private little world.»
«Or like they’re a couple,» said Zorian, before frowning. «Triple? What’s the word for a romantic relationship between 3 people?»
Akoja scoffed. «Whatever. The point is the three of them do nothing but waste time together and antagonize the teachers and get perfect scores anyway. They even refused the chance to get transferred to 1st tier groups, can you believe that!?»
«You’re too worked up over this,» Zorian warned.
«Aren’t you a little bit curious how they do it?» asked Akoja.
«Of course I am,» scoffed Zorian. «It’s hard not to be. But what can I do about it? Besides, Zach has never done anything to me. I don’t want to cause problems for him just because he has suddenly discovered his inner prodigy.»