The endless drudgery of academics ed up at three p.m., and—as the schedule indicated— up was extracurricurs. Despite what the name would suggest, they weren’t optional. Everyone was required to enroll in at least ohough more could be taken if chosen.

  Natalie didn’t intend on pig up any pointless hobbies, not in an official capacity. Holy, she didn’t uand the people who did. Drama, art, band, and so on, weren’t pursuits to be disrespected, but as a delver? Surely people had better things to be doing, sidering their profession. Doubly true for first years. Despite that opinion, Natalie khe art clubs didn’t hurt for members. But she herself wouldn’t be joining their ranks.

  Which left practical pursuits to fill the mandatory requirement. In Natalie’s case, that was dueling, or a harvesting discipline.

  As a padin, and a person intending to take up the mantle of tank, she was leaning toward mining. The ores that could be gathered from deposits in the dungeon made excellent equipment, supernaturally powerful, imbued with stat-boosts and other advantageous effects. She would have to pay a fee for a metal-worker to hahe material, but it would be vastly cheaper than purchasing the gear ht from the Exge.

  Today—and tomorrow—was a ‘career day’ of sorts, advertising potential options, since many students hadn’t chosen their extracurricur yet. Undoubtedly most had giveopic plenty of thought before arriving to Te, but on strategy was to pick a harvesting disciplihat matched your css, which wasn’t received until eighteen. Jordan, for example, never would have goathering without having received a css that seemed—so far—ined tooisons. Simirly, Natalie wouldn’t have sidered mining if she hadn’t received a css—padin, a heavy armor tank—that made good use of the ores she’d collect.

  For two hours—the alloted extracurricur time block set by the Te schedule—Natalie wahe various stations advertising their clubs. She spent the majority of her time at the mining station, listening to the lecturers and pig through the provided information.

  Unsurprisingly, the profession was more plicated than Natalie had first thought. Not simply bashing a pickaxe into veins of material and hauling away the valuable resouratalie would o spend fair effort both prospeg for arag the ore. Even so, it had a reputation for not being the most plex task. Jordan’s chosen profession—herb gathering—would require a ing amount of memorization: the ten million variations of pnts found in the dungeon.

  So while not simple, it was simpler than many disciplines, which meant mining Natalie’s alley, who didn’t care enough to put excessive effort into her extracurricur. By the end of the informational speeches, she felt fident enough she would be itting to mining that she signed her name on the provided sheet. Tomorrow, she would spewo hours at the mining hall, rather than tinuing to explore the career fair.

  With that event out of the way, and with the official school day pleted, Natalie set out—reasonably—to practice. She was already drained from the previous nine hours, but delvers o be aced to long days. Some delves sted entire weeks. Not for low-rankers, true, but high rankers, much less top rankers?

  Apparently, trips to the Lower Reaches, much less The Depths or The Abyss—the st categorization of dungeon levels prising twenty-oo twenty-four, and near mythical to the general popuce—could take entire weeks to explore properly.

  So, Natalie o ac to long days. Nine hours of csses—both bat and academic—had been draining, but she would make use of the rest of the day, regardless. Plus, she’d be taking a break in the form of the uping start-of-semester party, soon enough. Until then, she had a few hours to keep refining the most gring weakness of hers. Which was to say, illusions—i general.

  Natalie’s idea was far from uhe training facility was almost as packed as it had been in the m, when attendance was mandatory. She worked her way through the halls mostly from memory, then found her way out into the courtyard—the same one she’d taken csses with Tess in.

  There, she scooped up a hammer from the rack of prop ons and got to work.

  The noises and distras—both visual, and the odder sort of pressure in her head of magic filling the air—faded to the background as she fell into a routine. Frustrating as this process was, she was gettier. Especially now that she hadn’t locked herself into minimizing movement, like many mages did. Natalie had always been a hands-on girl. There was a reasohrived in physical fights.

  So, being able to gesture and link the swinging of her on to her illusion spell helped massively. She even thought she might be able to work something simple into spars tomorrow. Definitely, she’d have a grasp—a bare, bare grasp—on the ability by the time week rolled around, a allowed them to start delving.

  She practiced her ‘fsh’ spell, first and foremost. It was the simplest application she could imagihat would be useful. But as thirty miicked into an hour, and sweat beaded on her forehead, she started pying with other ideas. More plex illusions, which weren’t as difficult to struct as she’d have thought. Or, maybe she was gettier.

  There were many illusions Natalie could imagine being useful in a fight. Misdire was crucial, and rather thas of a normal sort, could Natalie cover herself with an illusion and mask the dire her attacks came from? A literal feint, where her blow came from a false dire? For that matter, could she make herself invisible? How about other distrag images? Something grotesque, that made her oppo hesitate? The fsh was useful, but perhaps a crude, unrefined first idea. Could she do better?

  That gave her pause. Unbidden, a ‘more refined’, yet ironically, more crude, idea popped into her head.

  A fsh … of a different sort. That would be effective, wouldn’t it? For drawing attention, or distrag someone?

  Natalie flushed, gng around the courtyard as if someone could read her mind. Rather than a grotesque image, or a blinding burst of light, what if Natalie jured … other sorts of imagery that was distrag?

  Would that even be allowed? Well … of course. While it would be odd, Te didn’t put puritaris on how a student could fight. Victory at all costs was the motto of the dungeon, and while dueling had slight restris on bat, general spars didn’t. So lewd illusions to stumble her oppo? Oable … just weird. And would probably earn her a reputation.

  Again, gng around the courtyard out of paranoia, Natalie saw no one aying attention to her. Obviously. They were occupied with their own training. No one was even close enough to see what she po do.

  Blushing, she turned back forward. She felt pelled to test her idea, even if plex imagery had been hit-or-miss.

  She steadied her thoughts, focused, drew mana, and executed a natural-feeling pivot, activating [Illusion] with a swipe of her on. The motion was being quickly instinctive.

  She kept it small, barely the size of her hand, so that nobody saw on the off ce they looked over.

  It worked.

  Except, it wasn’t a hazy image, hard to jure and maintain, but bright, clear, and so much better than anything else she’d managed so far.

  A naked, hand-sized copy of Jordan hung in the air. Natalie’s brain bnked out, seeing it. She hadn’t meant for it to be Jordan. She’d let her instincts guide her, the first thing to pop into her head.

  Panig, Natalie waved her hand through the mist-like illusion and dispelled the image. Her face burned scarlet, and she frantically looked around, but again, nobody was looking her way. Why would they be?

  Still, why had she dohat? Tested the idea at all … much less with Jordan?

  Natalie swallowed, then checked the clock hanging on the courtyard wall. She had about an hour before she o go take a shower ao the party to meet up with Sammy.

  Enough time to do a little more testing.

  Just, probably not here. Too indiscreet. Too likely to get caught, sidering what she wao try.

  Natalie hung up the hammer in the on rack, then scurried away, headed for a secluded bathroom iraining facility.

  With how easily the first illusion had e into life, how much more could she do?