Christie had never regretted a decision so much in her life before. Well, she hadn't taken many decisions over her short life, but still, that wasn't the quid of the question. The subject at hand was showing her agates to the rest of the class. For a moment, she comprehended the shame Agatha suffered in the locker room, then the next moment, she was ashamed of even considering that a valid comparison. One couldn't compare showing one's body against showing one's agates.

  The redhead slowly walked toward Teacher Dago. Her steps were as unsure as her mind, but there was physical discomfort, too. The truth was that she wasn't used to wearing trousers. She had tried on the soldier uniform before just to check that it fit her, but this was the first time that she had worn trousers for a prolonged amount of time. Having her calves constantly tightened by the fabric… it wasn't a sensation she enjoyed. Her mental and physical discomfort synergized in the worst of feelings.

  You have done it before, Christie. You can do it again, the nouveau riche told herself in the confines of her mind. She didn't have control over her agates; they always hurt her, and they were ugly, but… she had unfortunately promised to show them. All her classmates had at least shown one already. That made her skulk. She had always felt alienated as she had been locked to her family state, but now that she was finally in a space she could call her own, Christie hated that alienation more than ever.

  "Whenever you are ready," René Dago smiled at her both with his grey eyes and his lips, but instead of being intimidated by it, Christie was comforted by it. Not because of the man's charm, though he carried himself with superb composure.

  No, it was because of that vulpine and familiar smile.

  Christie took a deep breath. "I was not jesting when I said I boasted the greatest quantity of agates in the world. This could get dicey."

  Her tone had never before been this serious. She had released her agates during the statal examination, but at that time the examiners and the examinees were at a safe distance, yet this time her teacher and classmates were close by. She could have stepped further away or told them to step away, but a part of her told her that either she would have been mocked if she walked away or would have been bullied if she were to command them.

  So, she simply decided to be sincere with her teacher.

  "If you speak the truth," he responded calmly, "I will do my best to keep the situation under control. Anyhow, you may start your demonstration."

  Christie took another deep breath. Her fingers trembled in equal expectation and fear, just like that time during the examination. She hadn't trained with her agates since then, so there wouldn't be much difference, but… if she had succeeded once, that meant she could succeed again.

  Agates, she muttered to herself, Sleep no more! Her body trembled from that non-verbal command. As she removed the Sleep command from a single agate, her order rippled down to every single agate as they were compacted inside of her body into a single-item amalgam. They weren't summoned instantly as if she had given the Summon command, but they were near that point. They shook violently inside of her like boiling water, and much like the resulting steam, they desired to get out of the container that was her.

  Christie raised both of her arms and pointed her palms forward. She didn't need the Summon command to get them out when her agates already ached to do so. Instead, she wielded a haphazard Control command before letting go as if nature had called to her.

  A pillar of solid rock flowed out from her hands at a slow speed for an agate, but infinitely fast for rock. It took a handful of seconds for the lithic pillar to reach her summoning range of a measly ten meters, but instead of the agates disintegrating at that limit, they continued sprouting from the end of the pillar like a fountain and made a perfect section of a sphere as they were cleanly cut on the edge of her range.

  Her agates had weight and substance, yet they didn't clunk to the ground with the suitable force as she still wielded the sea of stones with the Control command, as ragtag as it was.

  The redhead let out a nervous exhalation as she turned to face her teacher and class, her arms lagging behind her as they were locked in position.

  "D-does my claim now hold water?" She panted after speaking.

  She felt her body collapsing even though her agates were already outside. It wasn't enough to take them for a walk; they ached for way more. The problem was, Christie didn't know what that 'way more' was.

  René Dago chuckled heartily, his stern expression and soldierly composure completely broken. "Well, if we have learned one thing this lesson is that Miss Valasela is anything but a liar."

  Christie couldn't help but blush at the teacher's words. With some difficulty, she switched the single Control command to another single Recall command. Her order rippled through the sea of stone, and the pillar hastily disappeared in a matter of heartbeats.

  It was quite a dumbfounding scene. Normally, agates appeared and vanished in something far shorter than a blink. It took but one instant for them to materialize into existence or be sent to the nothingness. Yet that wasn't the case for her. Because she couldn't command all her agates, the command had to ripple through them, which took time – even if it wasn't that much – and provoked this sort of… well, rippling effect.

  But precisely because it wasn't instantaneous, her agates lingered inside her body for a short span without the Sleep command, which decimated her. Even a handful of seconds of the agates awake inside her was enough to make her lose her breath and send her heart into overdrive. Christie clutched her chest, heaved out a bit of air, and dwindled on the hot feeling that assaulted her body.

  She was hot. She was boiling. She was fading away. She was…

  A clap broke through the searing pain. For a moment, she thought it had been one of those that Teacher Dago liked to do, but as she raised her head and her ears sharpened, she realized that it didn't come from him. The next moment, more claps joined the first one, and more after that until a cacophony filled her ears.

  The whole class was clapping at her. Christie… didn't know what to feel. Some of the students bore expressions of confusion as they clapped, clearly led by the herd rather than their own willingness, but at least no one seemed to clap with malicious intent. That should be good. Christie was sure that it was good. Yet… she couldn't help but shrink. That kind of screaming attention wasn't something she enjoyed.

  "This may tarnish my reputation already on the first day, but I fear I must go back on my word," Teacher Dago commented once the claps started to die down. "I was confident in managing the whole class by myself at once, but… Miss Valasela has truly demonstrated a superb gift with the quantity of her agates, one that I am not confident to tackle alongside thirty other students. So," he turned to face Christie, "could I ask you to stand away from this one sparring, Miss Valasela?"

  Christie slightly became petrified at getting referred to – even if it wasn't by far the first moment – but she managed to give a shy nod before the words came out of her mouth. "Not at all, Teacher Dago. I appreciate the breather in any case."

  She wasn't just being polite; she actually needed that break. During her Agatecraft test, she had many minutes to rest whilst waiting in the queue, and there weren't any people that she might hurt the moment she unleashed her agates, but this wouldn't be the case if she were to spar.

  "Delightful!" René Dago accentuated with yet another clap. "Now, students. Get ready for a spar. I will place myself on the extreme of the field, whilst all of you wait on the other for my signal. As for the rules of the encounter, it will obviously not be to the first blood. I will use a special command to make my agates cling to your body harmlessly. If they do so, you are out. Reciprocally, if anyone manages to hit me, whether it is physically or through agates, you will win the encounter. Have you all understood the rules?"

  The students let out a series of hums, nods, and noncommittal grunts. As for Christie, she walked to some nearby stone stands and sat up in one of the tallest seats as they would provide her with a better view of the encounter. Between her exhausted body and the grueling steps needed to climb the stands, both the students and the teacher had already positioned themselves by the time her bottom hit the cold stone. She had to give it to the trousers on this occasion, though; they made it far easier to sit down.

  Christie didn't have the best eyesight, but she clearly saw René Dago raising his hand, and a moment later, a blood-curdling shriek covered the whole training grounds. What in the crown in the heavens was that? Christie cursed to herself as she cradled her ears. The rest of the students – whilst some astonished too – didn't react as viscerally as she did as they understood that the shriek was the signal.

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  Students instantly rushed towards their teacher.

  Some had maddened expressions, really taking to heart the 'intent to kill' statement. Most didn't hesitate to summon their agates already and shoot them at their teacher with the Speed command, but without a fault, they all fell short. The arena was thirty meters in length, and whilst most people had enough recalling range so the agate didn't vanish out of existence, their Speed commands weren't strong enough to reach their target before the agates lost all their momentum.

  Christie had seen examinees circumvent this limit during the Agatecraft test by making a multi-staged shot, that was to say, having one agate as a container and then another as a projectile that wielded a delayed Speed command so it activated a bit later, but in the heat of the moment, they hadn't pondered that far. Apparently, that kind of sketchy plan of action was far easier than refreshing the Speed command, but Christie wouldn't be able to tell as she had never really used that command.

  Still, as they all rushed with their agates and bodies, two individuals seemed to maintain their calmness in the heat of the battle.

  René Dago and Agatha of Malachite.

  Their teacher kept himself in the same spot without moving, but her roommate slowly advanced forward with her arm and finger extended, aiming at him. Then she shot at him. Christie instantly recalled that moment during the Agatecraft exam as the air suddenly exploded and provoked a shriek not that dissimilar from the one René Dago had made at the start of the battle. But Agatha's wasn't just an innocent noise.

  Her deep-blue agate screeched through the air at ludicrous speeds, and it didn't take but a blink to reach their teacher. For a moment, Christie thought that Teacher Dago hadn't managed to react – as she definitely hadn't – and had been hit by the scarily fast agate, but soon she realized that he had seen it coming.

  For he had dodged it with a slight tilt of his neck.

  Now the man found himself smiling with such savagery that Christie could no longer attribute it to a fox, but to a monster. René Dago was enjoying himself in the face of death.

  All this exchange lasted but three blinks.

  It was a moment later that a handful of students turned their heads back as they now processed what had happened with Agatha's agate and they thought it was an attack from their teacher. That quickly didn't prove to be the case, but their distraction proved to be critical as René Dago decided to attack now. His agates were far bigger than the students', but not because they were of better quality – which they were – but because they had been shaped like disks standing vertically.

  Whilst that shape wasn't exactly aerodynamic, that didn't stop the black-uniformed soldier from shooting them forward at speeds equal to the rest of the students' agates. The multiple disks had the added advantage of working as shields as they managed to block several of the agates shot by the students. What surprised Christie wasn't the speed of the disks but the force they carried as they were undaunted by the constant pelting of the agates.

  And yet, the scariest thing was how fast everything was happening.

  Agates moved fast.

  Christie knew that even if her own didn't, but only now she realized how chaotic they could get. The whole battle was happening so fast, in fact, that now some of the students who had been distracted by Agatha's shot and were looking behind at the girl got swallowed by the disks.

  Swallowed.

  Christie didn't quite understand what had happened, but the moment the disks impacted against the distracted students, the teacher's agates deformed like a cloth and covered the students like someone had dropped a blanket on them. The next instant, those blankets were gone, and the teacher summoned new agates.

  Most students hadn't dared to look behind, boldly assuming that they wouldn't get him from their backs, yet surprisingly, the teacher didn't capitalize on that.

  Now the fight truly became chaotic as the students reached a range where they could start directly shooting at their teacher. René Dago responded with a simple yet effective tactic: he surrounded himself in multiple translucent disks. Most agates bounced off the lithic wall, and the moment the students got ever-so-slightly distracted, the soldier shoved a section of the wall forward and covered more than one student with the fabric-like disk.

  That was when some razor-sharp students tried to exploit the opening in the wall, but when their agates managed to get inside the teacher's defense, those got shot down.

  Floating on top of René Dago, a single agate waited. It was unshaped and was rather spherical with a powerful crimson color. The crimson agate orbited around him and acted like the last line of defense that shot down the enemy agates that got too close.

  It was a defense so brutal that Christie just didn't have words against it. The lithic wall was already insurmountable, and yet if an agate managed to sneak through, they would be shot down by an agate with far more power without skipping a heartbeat.

  Even though only a handful of seconds had passed since the start of the sparring, the number of students in the field had been cut down by a significant amount. The firsts that got eliminated now arrived at the grades as they were close since they hadn't had even the chance to move from their starting spot. No one spoke as the confrontation took place, as there was simply no time to comment on it. The utmost minimal of distractions was enough for you to lose on the whole exchange.

  Christie's eyes darted between the teacher and two students: Agatha and Master Echevarria. She didn't pay attention to the blond girl just because she was her roommate, but because she and the blond boy were the ones who had managed to push back René Dago. Or more accurately, the ones who got close to pushing him. Obviously a noble, Echevarria wielded the greatest quantity of agates amongst the students without taking Christie into account. He wielded verdigris agates that weren't appreciable at the distance of the grades, but she recalled them from his demonstration in class.

  The advantage of wielding so many agates – without stepping into an overbearing realm like Christie – was the number of angles one could attack or defend from. Teacher Dago had already shown the defensive applications with the walls that surrounded him, but now Master Echevarria demonstrated the offensive ones. The blond student decided that his best course of action was to assault the teacher from the skies, as that was the only side that he hadn't covered with his translucent walls.

  That approach seemed to work as he rained down agates on Teacher Dago, completely negating the teacher's flying agate. No, Christie realized. It isn't negating the agate; he's driven it into a stand-off. He's using fifteen agates to stop a single one. The sheer thought scared Christie. If a single agate from a soldier was equivalent to fifteen agates – and relatively good ones, as she had heard that controlling more than three agates at a time was very hard – then how mighty might be all of René Dago's agates if he wasn't forced to use them defensively?

  Seconds were precious and crawled slowly. It quickly became apparent that the bottleneck wasn't the agates – which were vicious stones of violence and death – but the reaction time of the students. René Dago was a sharp and shining blade that handled a dozen of them with ease, whilst the students were old and dull butter knives.

  The students had managed to form a semicircle around the teacher to surround him, but they still struggled to keep up with the soldier. Now that Christie realized it, Master Echevarria's movements were orthopedic and orthodox. His agates moved in a clear line in bursts of haste born from the Speed command or repositioned themselves in clunky and predictable movements from a mind that couldn't handle multiple Control commands at the same time.

  But now all of René Dago's agates were being pressured. By then, only a third of the class remained, but that was still a solid hundred agates that peltered the black-uniformed man. Master Echevarria still only focused on Teacher Dago's last line of defense, which also surprised Christie now that she thought about it. I wouldn't have thought that a boy like… him would be satisfied with playing support. Her dearest father had warned her many times that men were brutish and crude people who always looked for glory, and all nobles regardless of gender already did that, so a noble man was the worst kind of human being that there was, according to him. She hadn't interacted with any noble men, but if her experience in the girl's dormitory were to be trusted, the part about nobles was definitely correct.

  Something happened that snapped Christie out of her ramblings and captured the attention of the other students in the grades.

  René Dago's walls started to crack.

  Agates were not unbreakable – even if they were quite durable – and after being assaulted by non-stop barrages of thousands of shots per minute, they started to hit their limit. Their teacher seemed to shake in response. Christie had heard that it was apparently painful to the lithorist when their agates cracked, but René Dago simply seemed to be out of breath.

  That explained his next course of action.

  The previously static walls that only counterattacked when they saw an opportunity suddenly launched forward without any warning or appropriate timing. A handful of student agates got close to hitting the soldier in that instant, but they missed by an agate's width. Yet the disk walls took half of the remaining students with them.

  That was the only chance left for the standing students. Perhaps agates could vanish and be summoned instantly, but that was only the physical effect. It still depended on the lithorist's reaction time to handle them, and Teacher Dago was still being overwhelmed.

  Echevarria couldn't defend himself as he used all his efforts to stop that single agate, but that seemed to be exactly what René Dago wanted as he didn't attack him. As far as the soldier was concerned, he was sacrificing only one of his many agates to severely cripple the students' numbers.

  In those scant fractions of a second, the surviving students shot all the students their agates with Speed commands. Yet the teacher responded in a way that no one would have expected at an Agatecraft sparring.

  He jumped over them.

  That wasn't quite right. From what Christie could see, the man had extended his arm and grabbed a lower-quality agate that he had been reserving until now. Instead of using it to attack or defend, the man used it as a fulcrum, and with a slight jump, his body separated from the ground and practically did a somersault of his whole height, leaving his body upright yet upside down as he supported all his weight on that unmoving agate he was grasping with one hand.

  Because agates commanded by Speed were so predictable, as they could only move in a straight line, it only took one single aerial handstand to dodge them. Whilst he was standing upside down, René Dago now finished the rest of the students with his recalled walls.

  All except one: Agatha.

  She had positioned herself exactly behind the teacher and used her last chance. The girl shot her sapphire agate at the man at monstrous speeds, but now that Master Echevarria wasn't holding back the teacher's last line of defense, even Agatha's hasty agate was shot down.

  A wall came for her the next moment.

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