R-S Chapter 11 (Patreon)

For these next three months, I needed to buckle down and learn everything I could exploit to get stronger quickly. The easiest way to do that was to chat with my classmates but all of them thought I would be gone soon anyway so they didn’t bother talking with me. People outside of the mage class didn’t have giant sticks up their asses and didn’t judge me as weak just because of my capacity.

The good news is there was a school newspaper that I could get every single week that would talk about the things that were happening around the city. The first issue was there being a huge accident which affected the school's shields. The shields would stop people who weren’t white-listed from casting large-scale offensive magic, but that’s why it was taken down. It was pretty obvious seeing it from hindsight. I wonder how many of these events were pre-planned like this one to make what they did possible.

I had my head down when the class started and Mr. Rights once again approached me asking if I was determined enough to stick it out. Once again I was given the two-drop ambrosia and once again I was sent to the infirmary. I could feel a dramatic difference compared to the first time I took it though, I didn’t pass out for one and managed to make it to the hospital by myself.

I picked the wand and dagger combo again, this time picking two completely different spells as I already had the basics down for the other four. Wind/rock wall, wind blade, manipulate earth, and now wind armor and earthen fists. My repertoire was rapidly improving but even still, unless I gained access to something significant the most I would change this time around is how prepared I’d be to hold my breath.

The second week the news talked about repairs being done to the shield. That was when they most likely made the changes to who could use it if I had my guess. They still weren’t prepared enough to just stop all the teachers from using magic inside otherwise it would have been even more one-sided than before. It would have alerted them that something more nefarious was going on and the sudden withdrawal of the mage students meant that if they attacked early and someone’s heir were to die then there would have been a possible civil war in the opposing army command structure.

Now that I thought about it, I was told to quit before the attack. I viewed it at the time as someone disliking me for struggling to become a mage but it was possibly someone trying to reduce the casualties of mages in the future after the nobility killed the king and took over. The teachers could tell I had previous help cycling and kneading my mana and both teachers thought they’d have to unteach me so I could learn it the right way.

Little did they know they were the ones who taught me how to do things and both quickly learned that I had been taught up to their standards. I didn’t take any other classes, once again focusing on just the mage class, which meant no healing lessons and the self-study for support magic meant I was still just stuck reading books.

It seemed that something big happened and grabbed the cover of every weekly newspaper. A higher-up in the military died. They didn’t outright say it was assassination but he was someone from a family still loyal to the king. Another string of manipulation I would try to stop when I had the power to do so. While I was still taking my training seriously, I wasn’t as solely focused on it as I was my first time through.

Meeting up with Brutus at the food court I could tell right away by the group following behind him that I was spot on that he’d become well-liked. I eyed the butch brunette keeping close to him and think that he might be the only one who didn’t notice her infatuation with him. We talked and played around a bit as I ordered food before asking the big questions. “So… Anything big happen in your class?”

I would need to find people inside every class going forward but it was something I needed to do so I didn’t miss anything obvious. With a mouthful of noodles, he asked. “Big as in important? Not really. Someone broke their arm during combat training, does that count?” Hmm, not really, unless the person was targeted but I wouldn’t know until I took the magic warrior class in a different reset.

“No, just… If anything big does happen, let me know.” I was just preparing for the future, I wasn’t planning on taking the magic warrior class for at least four or five resets. It was the last class I was going to take after healing, support, infiltration, and possibly mage again. I was guaranteed a two-drop ambrosia if I picked mage.

That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when the other classes didn’t get any and I was guaranteed a two mana capacity increase it made mage more appealing to me than the other classes. The good news is, after this time if the reset did happen, I could play a little more fast and loose with my money. I was still planning on buying another ambrosia for the second month and convincing Brutus to let me have the third for the last month. That would bring me up to seventy-seven capacity by the end of this reset.

Another week went by and I bought another newspaper and my eyebrows rose as I read it over. The person who recently won the lottery was murdered. I started to memorize the details as I could be the person who won this lottery once I got all the details. I only had his name, I would need to go to his funeral this reset to see what he looked like then the next reset I could wait outside the store until he went inside. Then I’d know how many tickets he bought before he won the twenty zell prize.

I needed to learn if a larger group attacked him or if it was a crime done by a single person as well. If I wasn’t buying the newspaper every week I would need to now just to keep up with this story for my future resets. His funeral wasn’t for another three days and I patiently went to classes in the meantime as I waited for that day.

The funeral was small. The man wasn’t important, him winning the lottery was the most important he would ever be and it got him killed. He was below average. Shorter than average, slightly ugly, slightly overweight, slightly balding. No family, a few friends and that was all who showed up for him. I asked around trying to figure it out. It was most likely a crime of opportunity.

He kept all his winnings on him, flaunted his money in front of people, and got drunk. Pretty open and shut to me. I narrowed down when he could have won the prize to a few days after school started. Now I had to figure out which store he bought the lottery ticket from. He wouldn’t know he won until the lottery was drawn and he’d have to be there in person when the lottery winner was chosen.

That would have put eyes on him, if I won it would put eyes on me. If I did win, I’d have to be more careful from then on otherwise I could end up dead, but the twenty zell was worth it. Another week passed and the newspaper finally didn’t have anything important inside it. I did have something else to look forward to. The first cross-class event where the magic warriors won would take place in just a few days. I was planning on joining this time around.