They only had one session of each elective per week, but those were three hours long. Far more than Christie expected and certainly enough to make a dent in her infinite patience. It had been her ladylove that had said that she might miss her, but it was now Christie who found herself longing for her girlfriend’s warmth.
Lapiloquia was just that tiring.
One would expect someone to become defeatist and pessimistic after overusing lithorica instead of lapiloquia, as the former worked with the mind, but the thing was that Christie had never felt mentally tired. It was always her body that lagged behind.
Advanced Lapiloquia didn’t consist of anything grandiose, just guidelines on how to use lapiloquia as most of the students here – which was half the class – hadn’t had any real practice with lapiloquia as they had unlocked it recently. Christie just fared a bit better by virtue of having her dearest father, even if she didn’t have many days to practice before they had to march back to the academy.
Christie was thankful for René Dago’s laidback class, because it was honestly tiring to control her lapiloquia. Agatha’s summoner, Terráquea, had said that lapiloquia worked on a bigger scale than lithorica, and the redhead felt that claim on her body. Performing small scale acts was more tiring for her, but considering how brutal her big scale acts of lapiloquia got, this was for the best.
At least I can hide this trick up my sleeve, Christie liked to think like that. She wasn’t trying her hardest not to destroy the training field; she was actually being smart and hiding her true abilities for the Agatecraft exam to surprise everyone. Power and discipline, after all, were mostly a mental thing. As were information and intelligence.
When they were done with the class, everyone scuttled to the changing rooms. She didn’t blame her classmates. Christie was so drenched from using lapiloquia that the clothes were sticking to her skin, and it didn’t help that moving so many rocks around was bound to lift dust and get everyone dirty.
“Did Hasel teach you how to use lapiloquia?” René Dago asked her once they were the only ones left on the field.
“Yes, dearest father gave me some guidelines on how to manipulate stone.” Even though she was aware that her teacher and her dearest father were acquaintances, she couldn’t help but give a diplomatic answer.
“No need to keep your guard up,” the black-uniformed soldier smiled. “If I have not snitched on Miss Malachite, I definitely am not going to snitch on you, Christina.”
Christie didn’t know why, but she couldn’t bring herself to fully trust René Dago. Perhaps because she reminded him of her dearest father, the one when she was young. The father who never told her anything.
“And how did you realize that my dearest father taught me?”
“Well, lapiloquia is a deeply emotional discipline, but your formations have been very controlled and symmetrical. That betrays prior training.”
To avoid creating a mess like when she unlocked lapiloquia, Christe had indeed used neat constructs in the shape of hexagonal pillars. From a deeply emotional crown of earthen spikes to basalt columns like those one could see on the coast. Less breathtaking, but at the same time, even more breathtaking. Though in the literal sense, of course. This geometric beauty wasn’t born out of discipline necessarily, but need. If she got emotional – as René Dago had said – only bad things would happen.
“I see,” Christie added. “It is true that I have been training these holidays as my first attempts at lapiloquia were not desirable.”
“Keep at it, then,” the grey-eyed man stomped and the whole field reverberated. Then, all of the imperfections from the training were suddenly gone and the field was smoother than ever before. “You can already create human-sized columns even though you have just unlocked your lapiloquia. The future is looking megalithic for you.”
If you only knew about my true size… “Thank you.” Instead of continuing the conversation or speaking her thoughts, Christie summarily bid her farewells and rushed for the changing room.
There were showers at the changing rooms, but it felt redundant using them when she had such a good bathroom in her room, so she dry-cleaned herself with a towel to remove the thin layer of dust and changed into her academy uniform before going to her room. Of course, her adorable and radiant sapphire was already there when she arrived.
“Oh, Christie!” Agatha saluted her with such vibrancy that she felt her fatigue fade away. “You took quite a bit of time.”
“Between changing and talking with Teacher Dago, I lost track of time,” the redhead admitted with a sigh.
“Do you want to have lunch?” The blonde asked.
“Do I want to? Yes. Can I?” Christie looked at herself, her saggy clothes and drenched hair. “I need to take a bath first.”
“Alright! I can wait!” She was almost tempted to say ‘Why do you not come with me?’, but she was so tired that she couldn’t bring herself to tease her girlfriend.
Heh, perhaps the secret to being the perfect girlfriend is being tired all the time, Christie mused as she undressed in the bath.
She didn’t take long because she didn’t want to make Agatha wait that long, and for better or worse, she had built so much stamina over the last years that even after being utterly tired she could still move like a normal person instead of sluggishly. It might not seem like much, but it was a drastic change.
When she came out of the bath, Agatha offered to braid her hair, but considering it was well past noon, they decided to leave it for another time. What Christie didn’t turn down, however, was having the petite lithorist dry her long mane. Doing so with a towel took ages and the towel didn’t do a great job, but an agate that produced hot and localized wind didn’t have such limitations.
“I cannot believe I have grown to like this gruel,” Agatha commented once they sat in the mess hall and she filled her plate with gravy.
“I am inclined to say that what you like is gravy as you are eating gravy with gruel rather than gruel with gravy,” Christie giggled.
“Maybe, maybe,” the mock sapphire swayed her head happily from side to side.
“What has gotten you this happy? Is Agatecrafting that interesting?” The redhead smirked as she snatched the saucer from her ladylove’s hands to pour for herself.
“It actually is,” Agatha nodded. “I am greatly surprised. We have not done anything just yet, but the sheer possibilities have gotten me thinking, and I have found out that just thinking of the ‘what could be’ is really exciting, even if I have no way of knowing if it will be the case.”
“Yes, I know what you are talking about,” the nouveau riche stirred her gruel to mix it with the gravy. “It is this feeling in the back of your head that makes you squirm and happy and makes you feel like you can connect every dot.”
“Sactly!” Her ladylove pointed at her with the spoon, not noticing her accent – or rather, her mannerisms – had shown. “I will not tell you anything about it just yet, because we have talked about some dangerous stuff-“
“Mock sapphire, that is exactly what you do not say to someone to not interest them. You are piquing my curiosity here.”
“Oh, well, dummy doll. I guess you will have to remain piqued, then.” She giggled beautifully. “But I can tell you something… innocuous. That is the word, right?”
The redhead shook her head in a daze. “You have given me the biggest déjà vu of my life here.”
“How come?”
“Well, it has been a while since you have asked me for confirmation of a word, and you did more than once in the mess hall.”
“Huh,” Agatha hummed. “I guess I did. But anyhow, yes, I can tell you something innocuous. Apparently, agates are alive?”
Christie nearly choked. “Alive?”
“Well, no. Depths, what was the word? I cannot believe I heard it a few hours ago and have already forgotten it. Not sapient, the other.”
“Sentient?” The redhead guessed.
“Yes! That one!” The blonde exclaimed. “Our Agatecrafting teacher – or golemancy as he likes to call it; no, do not ask – has told us that agates have like… latent cognition or something like that.”
“So our agates have minds of their own?” Christie frowned.
“I am… not exactly sure. Like, I would need a class or two more before even having an answer myself. But apparently, agates have enough of a mind to make decisions.”
Decisions? Christie limited that question to the confines of her mind as her ladylove just seemed to be spewing out what she heard in class without fully understanding it. She didn’t blame her girlfriend for being an excited, adorable mess, but she also couldn’t deny that the sheer concept Agatha had presented scratched that itchy part of her brain.
“Wait…” The redhead mused in realization. “If agates have limited minds, then is that why they only understand certain commands?”
“That sounds…” Agatha's eyes shot wide open, “…rather rational.”
“I mean, I have no idea what I am talking about and I lack the full context of what you are even talking about, but I love how my words sound.”
“I also love how your words sound,” her ladylove tried to tease her.
“And I love you as a whole, mock sapphire,” and it backfired as she started blushing when Christie teased her back. “But we should not dally, neither on those foundationless thoughts nor on our food. It is getting cold.”
***
Military Engineering was a different class to Advanced Lapiloquia, not just because there were way fewer students, though Christie saw a bunch of familiar faces like Shayla, Mateo, and Christina – the noble one – but because the teacher wasn’t René Dago. As Military Engineering had the same schedule as Advanced Lithorica – which totally screwed whoever wanted that combination – they had another teacher to give the class.
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Not problematic as such, but it was weird for Christie to have another teacher instructing them in Agatecraft. Her ladylove didn’t seem to have as many issues, but she did have several educator figures. In Christie’s case, she didn’t consider her dearest father one as the miner had only given him guidance instead of hands-on education like her girlfriend. The redhead wasn’t sore about it; she was the one who hadn’t pressed for a more direct instruction, after all.
But it did annoy her a bit that it was she who had to ask. That she even had to ask.
Their new teacher had yet to make an appearance as the whole class – well, like the seven of them – waited for in the training grounds. Christie had expected a subject with engineering in the title to be more theory-focused, but this was indeed the location of the class. Students naturally drifted to their select groups, in this case, the former study session group – which had yet to gather this year – and the nobles. Basically because the rest of the students were nobles and Christie and the rest were the ones that didn’t match the mold.
“So, you are in this class?” Shayla questioned Mateo.
“What do you mean by that?” Mateo arched a brow and asked back with a hint of aggression in his tone.
“Someone is grumpy today, eh?” The Intaksolfani snickered, which only made the scholarite more irritated. “But I asked because you were not in the Agatecrafting elective, something I would consider prime scholarite interest.”
“For starters,” the auburn-orange-haired boy all but spat at her, “Teacher Dago recommended getting into the elective in the fourth year, even if that meant not getting the second year of Agatecrafting. And secondly, there are more pressing things for me at the time being. I have to get ready for something, and time is very limited to do so.”
“Oh?” Shayla’s eyes lit as if commanded by Light. Curiosity was a brutal driver. “Any hope of telling what those pressing things are?”
“No,” Mateo answered harshly, his tone leaving no space for a follow-up.
Nor did the world want that conversation to continue as their teacher finally appeared. Though appearance was a bit of a misnomer, spawning or outright materialization would be more correct as a black-uniformed soldier suddenly appeared from the sky barely a couple of meters atop of the gathered class and landed on the ground with their two feet as if the fall wasn’t high enough to break someone’s knees.
“Ugh, I do not know how he does it.” Their teacher groaned. An oddly familiar female voice. “How does he move around Gates with that agility? I cannot understand it for the life of me.”
Even though there were a handful of students before her, Christie had a clear line of sight with the soldier by the innate virtue of her height, which towered over every single person present. Even the boys.
Their teacher, whom Christie recognized as that woman she met at the start of both years and yet again she forgot her name – alright, she didn’t, but it was amusing acting like so – fixed her hair from her airborne acrobatics as her eyes lingered across the class.
“Well, I am glad you are all rather silent. I had been told this was a blabbermouth of a class,” the teacher finally spoke to them as her eyes lingered on Christie longer than any student. “I am your teacher for the elective of Military Engineering. The name is Sandra, and that is all you will get from me.”
The austere yet simultaneously pompous presentation raised whispers amongst the students, which were swiftly interrupted by a powerful clap.
“No chitchat here,” Sandra stated imperiously. “The fact that you even dare to do so means that René has been too soft on you. What part of you, students, do not understand about the military epithet in the military academy name?”
Well, she is certainly sterner than the other times I have spoken with her. Back then, she seemed to be more… libertine. Christie almost blushed as she recalled the contents of their previous conversation, and also her awful advice.
“Now, if I hate something more than lack of discipline is the sheer idea that René is more likable than I am, so I am not going to hound all over you for small things, but I demand a minimal respect and discipline. You are halfway through becoming soldiers, and not just any kind, but elite ones. So act like it. And now that we have got the talk out of the way, let us start with class. What do you all think that Military Engineering is?”
The class shared a few confused looks, even if they all had read the paper that explained what military engineering was. But people hesitated to respond, whether because it was out of shame, lack of confidence, or because it was a trick question. That didn’t stop Mateo Librar.
“The application of engineering to lapiloquia,” he responded.
“Dry yet confident; serviceable.” Christie didn’t know what it was, but the way Sandra said that made her think there was a hidden message behind those words. “Yes, that description works for us. Sometimes there is no need to complicate things with needless descriptions. Now let us get moving.”
Before anyone could ask the inevitable question, a massive Gate opened behind their teacher. Whilst the light was a bit distorted, the surface of the Gate was so great that it allowed Christie to clearly see the trees on the horizon. Even before stepping through it, she was aware that it was the surface. Firm ground.
“Now, now. Do not make me wait,” Sandra said after stepping through the Gate. “If Anchor is a passive command and Control an active one, then Gate is a hyper-active one.” Then she frowned. “This is not a lesson, children. I am getting a headache. I am a lapiloquia teacher for a fractured reason, so get over here!”
As the rest of the students hesitated – and with reason – because they hadn’t ever crossed a Gate, Christie decided to step first. Now, she did technically use one, but the validity of that claim was dubious when she did so whilst unconscious. However it may be, the nightmare she got at the beginning of the first year no longer haunted her. Nothing would bisect her in half. Though she stepped through with a lot of haste.
Better safe than sorry.
Her bravery motivated her classmates and they started crossing. Well, now I know why she came through a Gate at the start of the class, Christie mused as she looked at her surroundings. It was definitely the surface, no longer the flying island in the skies which hosted the academy. The place reminded her of the clearing her dearest father made near the estate to help her and Agatha train.
The moment the last of the students finally crossed the Gate, the massive agate vanished. Christie was well aware that the agate was hollow to even make it that big, but a stupid part of her brain liked to think that it was a full one. I could make a full Gate, she realized. Well, if I manage to get the Gates at least ten meters apart. That much distance is negligible and useless.
A distance that wasn’t negligible was between the academy and the ground level. Two hundred meters minimum, and that was just the height without taking into account the length between the two destinations.
“Uhm,” Christina – yet again, the noble one – raised her hand meekly.
“Yes, Miss Rivera?” The fact that Sandra knew their names, even if none of the students besides Christie had seen her before, was remarkable.
“How have you done that?” The brunette-blond noble asked.
“I believe I have stated already that I used the Gate command.”
“Well, yes, but…” Christina hesitated for a moment at the soldier’s harsh tone before gathering her confidence and pointed at the horizon. “But we are pretty far away from our starting point.”
Everyone followed the student’s hand and they saw the flying island. Very, very far away. At least two kilometers, Christie guessed by the fog alone. Near things usually didn’t get foggy.
“Nothing complicated, the fact that you have not come up with the answer or a theory on your own is worrying,” Sandra stated harshly. “Does anyone here have a theory of their own?”
“Range command relay?” Christie guessed.
“Correct, Miss Valasela,” the black-uniformed soldier smiled in a vulpine manner. “There is a bit of nuance there, but your theory is correct. My agates are of sufficient quality that just chucking them on the ground once in a while is enough to make an interconnected path. You can save agates by giving them Amplify Range, but then you are shifting the cost to your mind. A summoned agate is free; an agate with two commands is not. The tax is small, but not negligible in the long run. If anyone wants to try this, do not forget to give both extremes of the relay Amplify Range to activate the Gate command.”
“Wait,” Mateo interjected. “You do not need to give Amplify Range to the whole relay to transmit the commands?”
“You would know that if you had heard my previous monologue, Master Librar.” Christie definitely preferred the laidback Sandra more than the soldier Sandra. Too much bite. “Agates are not aqueducts. You do not need to flow the command through the whole path, only to the agate that you want. In this case, the extremes. That is where Amplify Range’s additional command range comes into play. Otherwise, you are just needlessly taxing your mind.”
“Dully noted.” Instead of shying away or scoffing at their teacher, Mateo just acted politely once he got his answer.
“Now that we have finally got the whole Gate spiel out of the way,” Christie got a small déjà vu out of that sentence, “let us finally begin with Military Engineering!” Sandra said that with a bit of irritation.
In this case, Christie didn’t blame her. They had lost a sizeable amount of the session before it had even started.
“As Master Librar said before, this elective is the application of engineering toward lapiloquia. But engineering is a very big field, so big that the word means nothing. Military engineering, the actual military engineering, is all about the logistics of war and the battlefield. Here, it is the same. Only through the lens of lapiloquia. That would be the more accurate description of this elective. Now,” their teacher tapped on the ground with her boots, “does anyone notice something about the soil?”
“It is dry?” A boy said without much confidence.
“Yes, but that would not be all, Master Trastar. Anyone else?”
“Uh,” Christina started, “it is porous?”
“Some would say that is a synonym, but a good addition nonetheless, Miss Rivera.” Sandra sighed. “Come on, class, do not only look, think too!”
Christie tapped on the soil herself, and as she did so, she was reminded of the ground on the estate’s clearing. But more concretely, the earth after she had unlocked lapiloquia.
“The ground has been commanded,” she said.
“Finally!” The brunette teacher nearly rolled her eyes back. “Yes, Miss Valasela is correct. This soil has been repeatedly worked and devastated by lapiloquia. Does anyone want to try commanding it?” A few gazes flew here and there amongst the students, but none raised their voice. “I guessed that much. Even if you do not have much knowledge or experience of lapiloquia, you instinctively know that it is a very bad idea to work on unstable ground. Now, you could go airborne and use an Amplify Range agate as a proxy, but that is…”
Sandra stomped the ground and a quake spread through the spent earth.
The ground collapsed and opened.
The students reacted both viscerally and quickly. By now, most were used to the antics of airborne and flying people, so even if they hadn’t personally flown just yet, they were quick to summon an agate with Anchor on their feet or hands.
The same couldn’t be said for Christie.
She had so many thoughts in mind that it just collapsed, unable to make a decision. She felt her body plummeting down.
Airborne, the redhead finally realized.
Using her recent control over her sea of stones, she liberated the Sleep command and substituted it for Control. Then she let out just a teaspoon of her agates. Well, it felt like a teaspoon for her, but unless the tea was for a behemoth, then the platform underneath her feet and hands was closer to a bathtub in size.
Just enough agates for her very poor-quality agates to counter her bodyweight.
“…boring.” Sandra finally finished her sentence.
It was only then that Christie realized that only a fraction of a second had gone by. It definitely didn’t feel like that for the redhead, and her accelerated heartbeat seemed to think the same.
Partially dazed, Christie stood from her prone position in the glorified bathtub and looked around. The rest of the students were perfectly fine as they levitated, if a bit jolted. She was the only one who had lost her cool. The only one who was on firm ground was Sandra, and that was because the soldier had manipulated the ground so it created a long yet solid protrusion of rock that hung dangerously unsupported.
“Well, everyone has reacted in time. I cannot say that is always the case,” Sandra calmly stated her abuse as she stomped back and the ground slowly reformed.
Demented harlot! Christie blinked several times until she realized she wasn’t hearing voices and that those were her actual thoughts. Oh my… That was very… unbecoming of me. It rattled the redhead that she even dared to think like that, even if she hadn’t uttered a single word. After all, insults start in the mind. The best way to never utter them was to not think of them in the first place.
The nouveau riche calmed herself by looking at the moving rocks, soil, and bedrock. Well, she is certainly more effective at lapiloquia than Teacher Dago. This would have had him in a cold sweat at the very least, but she is not even fazed after fixing a whole ravine.
It wasn’t very deep of a ravine, but it still was a huge volume of rock displaced. Perhaps almost as much as Christie’s unlocking, yet there was a striking difference in exhaustion. For one woman only seemed to lose a singular breath, and the other had fallen into a coma.
“Alright, students,” Sandra said after the ground was fixed. “First lesson of the military engineer: you are more structural engineers than lapiloquists. So learn you have to make things collapse once in a while.” She said amusedly.
Oh, it would appear I was correct, Christie mused as she recalled her agates and softly landed on the ground. She is a demented harlot.
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