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When I made my way back to my room, I instantly fell asleep. Only for an unsuspecting Adrian to wake me two hours later because according to him “Man, it was weird seeing ya’ sleep more than me” was a valid reason to wake me up.

“You are really grumpy this morning, you know?” A cheerful Marissa taunted me at my side.

“Yeah, I haven’t had a good night's sleep for a while now,” I replied with a sigh. “It’s beginning to get on my nerves.”

“Huh, that’s weird.” She commented rushing up and stopping before me. “Why didn’t you knock yourself unconscious then?”

“Huh?” I grunted in confusion.

“You know, the Force Unconsciousness spell,” Marissa told as a matter of fact. “The one in the spellbook you like to read.”

I stood still. I blinked twice. Nay, thrice. My mouth was agape open. I looked Marissa dead in the eyes, exhaustion incarnate emitted from my body. I facepalmed so hard my drowsiness was removed in an instant. Force Unconsciousness was one of the seven-star soul spells present in the anthology.

“I’m a damned moron sometimes.” I sighed once more, this time, louder enough to get some gazes from passerby students. Though that could be attributed to the facepalm itself.

“Only sometimes?” Marissa quipped, to which I responded with a Magic Bolt at point-blank range. A weak wind barrier dissipated the spell without much effort.

“To be honest, I haven’t yet learned the spell so I couldn’t have used it,” I confessed. “But it’s true I could have learned it and used it.”

“Well, then will you tell me why you have problems sleeping?”

“Oh, nothing.” I lied. “Just some soul stuff.”

Marissa looked at me with her eyes ajar. “If I learned something from you, is that ‘soul stuff’ is never nothing.”

“Don’t ponder about it. It’s really nothing.” I dismissed.

In a way, I was being truthful. The foreign author was totally beyond my control. Whilst the prospect of an unseen shadow wandering about the city was worrisome at minimum, there wasn’t any reason why I should really consume myself over it.

“Okay, okay. I’ll let it slide.” Marissa said, not letting it slide. “Well, are we going or not?”

“Right after you.” I pointed at the academy gates.

Sin’fal district was quite far from Thal’mer, and even if it would have been quite a sight to take one of the gondolas that navigated on the canals around the city, it would have resulted in an even slower trip.

So, we just walked.

At least Ferilyn was quite a sight of a city, and the roads were made specifically made for the pedestrians to walk on as carriages weren’t really a thing here. It made sense, if you wanted to transport something you could just use a levitating platform, which was far more efficient and cheaper than an animal-driven wagon. And the city itself was considerably small, so there wasn’t an incentive to not walk.

Damn it, even the nobles walked from side to side. If they were pricky, then they would use some extravagant vehicle engineered by an artificer. Besides, I doubted this island could even sustain grazing grounds for pasture or pack animals.

“Look!” Marissa shouted, pointing at the bridge in front of us. “I can see the bazaar!”

We were currently at Nas’tor, one of the middle districts of the city. Most districts tended to have a circular or square silhouette, this one was the exception which proved the rule, as it had a rectangular perimeter. And it connected Thal’mer and Sin’fal directly, which made it perfectly to travel between the two districts as we only needed to take two of the colossal bridges that separated districts.

The Nas’tor district was also known for its gizmos and tinkerers, that was why the vehicle thing passed through my head before. Apparently, my father was born here, which made sense as he had a workshop of his own and made artifacts that were commonplace in the artificer’s district.

“Come on! Don’t stand there.” Marissa motivated me physically to follow her as she yanked my arm and dragged me to the bridge.

“I know you are excited to be back home, but there’s no need to rip my arm off.” My comment fell on deaf ears as Marissa continued pulling me until we arrived at the bazaar.

“Wow, this place is more filled than I remembered.” She told, finally unleashing her death grip from my arm.

“Now that you say it, it’s true.” The bazaar had always been a place bursting with life, more than any other place I had seen on Ferilyn. Yet it was considerably remarkable today. “Should we investigate?”

“Now you are talking my language. Come on, follow me!” Marissa said as she disappeared into the multitude of myriad-colored ellari.

I sighed after having lost her from my sight. It wasn’t really a problem as I could sense her soul rather easily, but her antics were quite tedious.

My pace was slow as the people-filled streets didn’t allow me for much movement, but I didn’t worry myself as Marissa herself also kept a moderate walk speed by the looks of her soul’s distance.

This was actually my first time using my ‘soul vision’ on a crowd, and I expected to receive some backlash from the accumulation of soul, but no. I just sensed them. As the name implied, I was simply seeing. No sensory overload assaulted me.

Soul Sight wasn’t anything fancy, a cantrip used by mystics. Not even exclusive psychimancers, but available for the whole soul mage spectrum. This two-star spell was as easy as breathing for my current seven-star psychimancer self. It did require a big and trained soul, so I couldn’t have pulled this off when I was a child even if I wanted. This was one of those ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ spells, so to speak.

Though I remember sensing souls in a very scuffed and limited way when I was young.

I finally reached Marissa a solid five minutes later as she had stopped at a street stall that was selling jewelry.

“Did you find out why there’s such an exaggerated amount of people here today?” I asked her as she looked at the pretty stones on display.

“No, not really,” Marissa commented without removing her eyes from the stall. She wasn’t even surprised to hear my voice. “There isn’t an event or anything of those sorts, just a coincidence I guess.”

“Huh, curious.” I gave a look at the trinkets. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing, just some earrings and collars.” She picked up a couple of them without asking the male deep blue vendor who wore white silk that covered his mouth. “What do you think about them?”

“Hmm…” I pondered as I observed the trinkets she picked up. There were two types of earrings, a sapphire one embedded on a golden circlet, and a malachite gem one which was jailed inside a cage made of silvery vines. She also picked up a black choker for some reason. “I feel like the sapphire earring suits you more with your eyes, the malachite doesn’t suit you. If you wanted contrast maybe a ruby or a garnet would work better.”

Marissa gave me a sustained bad look as the earrings hung from her hands. “How do you know this much about gemstones and jewelry?”

“Do I? Isn’t this common knowledge?” I replied.

Was I using my previous incarnation’s knowledge? No, I didn’t get the uncomfortable sensation I usually suffered when I did so. Marissa didn’t stop with her gaze, albeit I was sure about it.

“What’s the choker for?” I asked, putting aside the matter. “I don’t think it would suit you well.”

“Oh, this?” She rose the hand carrying a black collar. “It’s for you.”

“I’m not going to buy that, Marissa.” I told in the most deadpanned voice I could produce.

“Come on! I know it will look good on you!” She shoved it at my face.

“No.”

“Come on, just try it~” Marissa sang melodiously.

The vendor looked at me with an understanding and saddened face. It seems we both knew the aeromancer wouldn’t surrender.

“Okay, okay.” I sighed in defeat. “Give it to me.”

“Yessss!” Marissa hopped in victory and handed me the choker, which to my discomfort, I quickly put on. The vendor wordlessly handed me a small hand mirror to look at myself.

“Huh.” I looked at my reflection in the mirror. “It does actually look good.”

“See~ I have a good eye for these things. I knew you would like it.” Marissa told with an imposing smug.

“I didn’t say I liked it.” I replied, now my turn to give her a bad look.

“Sure, sure. Whatever you say, Edrie~” My response only accentuated more her expression.

To my surprise, the choker did work on me. Maybe it was because of my extensive hair length, or perhaps my long neck, but it just… worked. It also contrasted perfectly with my violet skin.

“Still not going to buy it.” I said from my moral high ground.

“You are such a party-popper,” Marissa replied with an uncharacteristic sigh. “Alright, alright. I will buy it for you. But you must wear it.”

“Okay by me,” I affirmed. “But do you even have money?”

“Of course I have!” She reacted with an exaggerated offense. “It was one time, Edrie. One time I didn’t carry money on my person.”

I tilted my head to the side and slowly swayed it dramatically. “Whatever you say. What earrings are you going to buy then?”

“The sapphire one, I suppose.” Her response didn’t inspire much confidence.

“You know there’s the option to not buy them, right?”

“Eh, it’s my money.” Then Marissa handed the vendor a pair of blue manites and a single pink one.

She then promptly wore the sapphire earrings, putting them nearby her ear’s base rather than at the extreme. Curious, as I had seen that the current fashion for women was to wear earrings at the tip of the ear. Especially if you had obscene long ears like Mother did… or I. I’m not going to wear earrings!

Anyways… I didn’t press on the issue, and we got away from the vendor.

By now, we were on the more ‘established’ part of the bazaar, where standing shops were more commonplace than little wandering stalls.

“Hmm,” I pondered as I noticed where we were currently. “Novela’s shop is close by; we could pay her a visit.

“Sure, why not,” Marissa said dismissively, as she caressed her new earrings. Then picked up more steam. “We can go to measure our mana pools! They certainly must have grown up from last time!”

Marissa then proceeded to stroll before me, intercalating her steps with small hops, the sapphire swaying from side to side with her energetic movement. This girl was incredibly gleeful, and small things like these made my day.

“Wait!” I suddenly told Marissa.

“What?” She stopped dead in her tracks and gave me a confused look.

“Nothing,” I quickly observed our surroundings, “let’s just better go through this way.” I pointed at an alleyway at my left.

“Why?” Marissa asked. “Novela’s shop is that way.” She pointed forward.

“Don’t worry, just allow me this small detour.”

“Alright… lead the way then.” She was a bit suspicious about my sudden decision, but she didn’t question furthermore.

Why had I made this detour, you ask? With my Soul Sight, I had sensed the Offensive Coalition recruiter who I had seen a few seasons prior before I went to the academy. I recognized his soul as it was quite darker than the average citizen, so in a way, I blacklisted it (pun intended). I didn’t want to walk across the main street in the small, small chance I was recognized by that man. And I had the small suspicion the tumult of people was spawned by that man.

I know, a foundationless statement, but I trusted my gut in this issue and took the long way towards Novela’s shop.

Even though we took a detour through Thal’mer’s alleys, our travel time wasn’t increased by that much. The small alleys which separated each house had their charm as there were small bridges made of colored tapestry that created a makeshift ceiling, giving what should be dark alleys, a welcoming and colorful image akin to a gallery.

Soon enough we found ourselves in front of the shop with a red banner that had two twelve-pointed stars, silver and golden, sawn one inside each other. Now, unlike when I was a child, I could recognize that it represented the Starry Tier.

While I reminisced on old times, Marissa cheerfully opened the shop’s door, a bell ringing as a consequence of her actions.

“Welcome…” A not-so-cheerful Novela saluted the coming clients.

“Welcome to you too, Novela.” I told the witch-like mage.

“Oh, if it isn’t little Edrie and his friend Marissa.” She spoke in a deadbeat manner, though she began picking up steam by the end of the sentence. “So, what brings you here, you two?”

“Well, we were visiting Thal’mer after a long time, and we decided to pass by.” Marissa told her.

“Oh, so you just came to visit this old lady?” Against her wording, Novela’s tone and hand gestures were quite seductive and coquette.

“We also wanted to check our mana pools.” Marissa shot me a bad look as I said that. Come on! She was literally playing with us and you knew it.

“I see, I see,” Novela responded in a feigned saddened voice. “Let us better get going then.”

Novela stood up from the counter, leaving her heavy and comically large witch hat on top of it. She approached the platform that she had previously used to measure our mana pools.

Before the gap year, Marissa and I were shown to possess deep blue mana pools, which while they weren’t considerable in the grand scheme of things, were better than our peeps. That reminded me of one thing.

“Can we use that accurate mana pool reader you told us about?” I vaguely remember she commented something like that a solid decade before. How did I even remember that then? Dunno.

“Sure, two blues.” Novela commented nonchalantly.

“Two blue manites to have our mana pools examined?” I asked about the surprisingly big fee.

“Oh no, two per head. Both would be four.” She had seemed to misunderstand my question, and the price became even more insulting.

“Couldn’t you make a frien—“

“No.” Novela quickly cut me off, not even letting me end my phrase.

“Uh, I don’t have that much money on me.” I gave Marissa a look as she talked. “What? The earrings and the choker were expensive.” The fact that the choker I was wearing was bought by Marissa did arose a faint smile on Novela’s unexpressive face.

I sighed. “Alright, give us the free check.”

“Going.” I saw a more pronounced smile appear on Novela’s visage. Why? You are literally the one losing money here!

“Do you have a better way to check the soul’s mana pool? If I remember correctly, this method mostly showed the body’s mana pool.” I had a discussion with Marissa a year ago because she didn’t believe that my combined mana pool was bigger than hers.

“Yes.” She affirmed.

“Then—“

“It’s called paying.” Goddamit, Novela.

“Just do the damned check.” I perfectly maintained the balance between my two mana pools, so in theory, I could know my combined mana pool by just knowing one.

After being played by Novela, she finally decided to check our mana pools, only to add to the suspense she asked us to close our eyes so she could reveal both results at the same time. Unlike when we were children, Marissa didn’t react badly to the slight soul probing, maybe only a minimal eyebrow twitch. Me, on the other hand, I didn’t even notice it.

Which was incredibly worrying as it showed that my soul had grown too big to notice such small intrusions. And that was what we called ‘security breaches’ on Spell Cryptography.

“Alright, Marissa’s mana pool,” she started, “is at a violet level. Considering she was last time at a deep blue, that’s a good increase.” I was actually agape by the fact that the deadbeat Novela reminded something as mundane as Marissa’s mana pool was to her. “Edrie’s mana pool, on the other hand, it’s at a shallow violet level. Someone’s lacking~”

I didn’t fall for Novela’s taunt, as my actual mana pool was at the same level as Marissa’s. Unlike the Starry Tier, mana pool classification worked by a scale of two, rather than orders of magnitude. Namely, a violet was twice as big as a shallow violet mana pool. And considering I had two mana pools of the same size, that made Marissa and I equals.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Common ellari mages possessed ten percent of their total physical mana pool on their soul. So, in theory, her mana pool was a little bit bigger than mine.

Either way, it was nice to see that we were on the same playing field even when my superb affinity handicapped my total mana pool growth. This meant the insane, and probably unhealthy, hours that I dedicated to meditation had borne their fruits.

After some belittling from Marissa and Novela (which they totally knew it was unjustified) we left the shop. As Marissa herself wanted to meet her parents after two seasons without seeing them, we decided to split up and go to each other’s homes and meet up tomorrow morning to go back to the academy.

It was weird coming back home after this much time. Well, it hadn’t been that look in reality. Just two seasons. But they certainly felt much, much looonger. I had too many revelations and challenges in less than a year. I hoped the rest of this year would be less intense.

Without any more hesitation, I knocked on the door before me.

A few slow steps were heard inside the house as someone descended downstairs. It took only a few seconds for a short and youthful housewife to open the door.

“Who’s there?” She asked with the door already open, only to lay her eyes on me. She stood there, with her hand on the door handle, looking directly into my eyes for a solid ten seconds. Then she jumped at me. “My little baby!”

“Hello, mom. Nice to see you too.” Mother assaulted me with a deathly embrace, forcing me to kneel as I supported her whole weight on my shoulders.

“My little Edrie is back!” She put more strength into her hug.

“Please, mom. You are gonna snap my neck.” I told in a slow, yet friendly manner.

Mother undid her embrace and took a step back. “Sorry, sorry. It’s been so much time since I saw you that I couldn’t contain myself.” She then took another look at me. “What’s this choker?”

“Can we go inside first?” I asked as her theatrics gathered a few gazes from the neighbors.

“Sure, sure.” She guided me in. “Your father will be surprised when he sees you.”

“Is he home?”

“No, there’s still a few hours before he makes his way home from the workshop.” We made our way upstairs towards the living room-slash-kitchen, then mother began making tea. “Today we will have a feast! So, can you help me in the kitchen to have it ready before your father arrives?”

“Sure.” I wasn’t unbeknownst to cooking, especially after my parents were such enthusiastic cooks.

As Mother said, a pair of hours later, Father arrived home. Father was shocked to see me, but his reaction was quite less… exaggerated than Mother's. More controlled, let’s say.

I told them that I would reunite with Marissa tomorrow morning, so I would stay for the night, which mother was thrilled about. She also wanted to see Marissa after so many seasons, but that was for tomorrow.

After we finished what could only be called a banquet, I went to my room. The place was unchanged, thought that was fairly unsurprising. Before going to sleep, I did my daily nightly meditation, yet I found myself in a conundrum.

“I can’t sleep.” It wasn’t because of my late insomnia, but my bed.

I had grown too used to the bed at the academy bedrooms, that I could no longer sleep on the pile of pillows I had as a bed. Our home had no beds, so my best idea was to sleep on the sofa in the living room where the pillows were bigger and more bed-like.

Oh boy, mother was not happy when she found me sleeping on the sofa in the morning. Funny enough how I managed to get a scolding the second day I went back home.