Mal stared at the picked off leaf stem.

  Cassandra sniffed the air. Her eyes went wide and she leaned back in her chair.

  "Well, I'll be damned," she said. "Nice work, kid."

  He rolled it between his fingers. It had worked. Not a single bit of leakage. Perfectly preserved.

  You've got to be kidding me.

  Cassandra expined to him after the fact that she had been expecting it to close, but not for it to completely shut. Typically, it took weeks of training and meditation in order to achieve what Mal had just achieved.

  And he'd managed to do it in a single day.

  She had him practice it a few more times to confirm it wasn't a fluke, and he did so. None of them were quite up to the level of his first pick, but even he could admit that whatever he was doing was working. Much, much less mana and essence was leaking out from the picked leaves. Cassandra had been so impressed that she'd helped him make a pain relief brew, saying that he should deliver on his intentions and show that he wasn't lying to the pnt.

  Mal thought it all a bit strange, but given that his assumptions had been blown to shreds in the past 30 minutes, he figured that there was probably at least something to what she was saying.

  As he walked back to his dorm room, Mal's mind ran like Philo during a sprint. How was it that mere intent was enough to cause a pnt to stop leaking its essence? And why did the type of intent matter? Why was it that when he wanted to challenge Cassandra, the pnt didn't care, but when he asked for help, it assisted him?

  He just couldn't believe that there was actually some kind of consciousness inside of some wood. There had to be some kind of rational expnation for what was happening.

  Magic was all about intent, in a sense. He willed mana to write a rune across his core. This would create a reaction wherein the mana would take on certain properties based off of the way the rune was written.

  How exactly was he willing the mana to go through his body? That was an unknown. But it was still rational. He just didn't have all the information.

  That had to be what was happening—nobody had ever bothered looking into witchcraft. All of the wizards had thought it was all a bunch of baloney.

  … But it wasn't. Although Mal still found the idea of pnt consciousness absurd, there was clearly something that he was missing.

  I'll just have to be the first, he thought. I'll master witchcraft and learn the normal way, then I'll figure out how it actually works and what's going on beneath the surface.

  When he came to his dorm building, he stopped at the mailbox and peeked inside.

  To his surprise, there was a single letter addressed to him from the Office of Student Affairs. He took it out and cracked it open.

  Dear Malfrasius,

  Normally, a request such as yours would be denied outright. We always encourage our students to try to make do with the circle they are in for a number of reasons. Normally, I would then proceed to expin all of these reasons, then advise you on talking to a counselor to speak about next steps for fixing your retionship with your fellow circle mates.

  However, upon further inspection, our team has become greatly disturbed by the status of your circle. The fact that you were pced in a circle of such a widely varying ability isn't too strange (we like to throw a lower performing student into a high ranked circle, so that the lower performing one will eventually adopt the habits of the higher performing ones), but the exact makeup is highly unusual. Having an elf and a draconid on the same circle, in particur, is very concerning. Although we would prefer that your differences were worked out, we strongly suspect that the best solution may be to dissolve your circle.

  This is no small feat. Circle dissolutions are very controversial and take a great deal of time to approve. It'll have to work its way up to the headmaster after being approved by several other parties.

  For now, stand by and continue to do the best you can in the situation you're in.

  Sincerely, the Office of Student Affairs.

  Mal crumpled the letter and nearly put it in his pocket before he thought better of it and started ripping it to shreds. It wouldn't do for one of his circle mates to find the letter through some twist of fate. He wasn't super concerned if that were to occur—it's just that it would be annoying.

  It was good to know the office was on his side in this.

  It was bad to know that it would take time.

  A circle transfer would've been tricky, but doable. A circle dissolution? That would take quite a bit of time. It seemed that he'd been too successful in convincing the office of his plight.

  No matter. He could be patient. In the meanwhile, he just had to hold out for things to be fixed.

  When he came up to his door, he heard shouting from the inside.

  This can't be good, he thought.

  He put his card up to his door and it unlocked.

  Philo and Rom—who'd been gring at each other a split second ago—gnced toward him and immediately stopped talking. Nima looked at him with a tight frown.

  "Where were you?" Nima narrowed his eyes. "It's te."

  An accusation. Of what? It wasn't Nima's business where Mal was.

  A brittle smile appeared on Rom's face. "Maybe he found a dy friend."

  "That's all you can ever think about," Philo scoffed. "Women and honor. Have you ever considered cracking open your textbook, for once in your life?"

  Rom's teeth smmed together. "You ever stop talking?"

  “Philo doesn’t know, do you ever stop being a blithering idiot?"

  Mal looked between the three. Nima was giving him a pleading look. It hit Mal—Nima was mad that Mal hadn't been here to de-escate the situation.

  Mal shrugged at Nima. What did the boy expect them to do?

  Ignoring Nima's stare, Mal walked past the three and toward his dorm room. He had been able to ignore it up until now, but the headache was returning. All the fshing lights of the unaligned mana were making it difficult to think.

  He drank the brew that he and Cassandra had prepared and instantly felt a wave of relief. After that, he went into bed and shut his eyes. The walls were thin—he could still hear them shouting. Despite that, he somehow managed to ignore it and felt his body drift off to rest.

  The next morning, Mal woke up before dawn. When he exited out to the living room, he expected to see Philo waiting there as always.

  But there was no one there.

  He looked around from left to right, as if Philo would suddenly materialize into existence. When nothing of the sort happened, he crossed his arms and frowned.

  Did he leave early? That seemed rather unlikely. Mal doubted Philo was angry at him for not getting involved in the conflict st night.

  With no other options, Mal walked over to Philo's door and knocked on it.

  "Enter," a sickly voice said.

  Mal turned the knob and walked in.

  Philo was lying on the bed, head sunk deep into his pillow. His scales had somehow lost their sheen and his eyes fluttered weakly.

  "Philo," Mal said. "Are you well?"

  Philo groaned. "What do you think?"

  "I'm assuming you're sick," Mal said.

  "No kidding? Philo couldn't tell. Philo really needed you to confirm that for me. Thanks for the insight, ape.”

  Mal rolled his eyes. "I'll go ahead and tell the professors that you're sick—"

  "—wait, wait," Philo sighed. “Philo’s sorry. He’s not himself. As soon as he woke up, it was like his head wanted to explode." He muttered under his breath. “Philo knew that damned elf was up to something."

  "You think Rom poisoned you?"

  Philo stiffened. “Philo wouldn't say that in quite those terms."

  "But that was what you are implying."

  "... Yes."

  "Can I ask what exactly makes you think that?" Mal asked.

  Although Mal wasn't particurly concerned about their inter-team dynamics, it would be amusing if one of the destined heroes had poisoned the other out of pettiness.

  "Before we were… talking yesterday, he poured all three of us a gss of water. Philo hadn't thought anything of it at the time. Philo assumed that he was simply being polite." Philo growled deep in the back of his throat. “Father always told me to be wary of elves and their schemes. He always told Philo that what they cked in intelligence, strength, moral character, resilience, and general hygiene, they made up for with their degeneracy."

  "Not cunning?"

  “They’re too stupid for that,” Philo coughed. “And anyway, Philo really should've seen this coming. There was nothing smart about his scheme, Philo was just too idiotic to realize an obvious trap."

  Mal still had his doubts about Rom poisoning Philo. It felt very out of character for the one who's constantly preaching about honor to do something so base as to poison an ally—albeit a nominal one.

  But then again, he didn't really know Rom particurly well. It was entirely possible that beneath that veneer, he was actually a deranged sociopath with zero moral compunctions.

  "Do you want me to brew you something for making the illness go by faster?" Mal asked.

  Philo looked over at him, eyes wide. "You’d do that for Philo?”

  "Yeah. There's a new technique that I've been practicing from the textbook. I wanted to go ahead and get it down."

  "Well, if you're sure."

  Mal followed the recipe from the herbalism textbook to the letter—with one difference. Every single ingredient that he picked was picked by asking the pnt for its aid.

  He tried not to linger too long on how ridiculous it all was—though he wasn't sure that it worked.

  Either way, within half an hour, Mal had finished making the infusion. He brought the tea over to Philo and set it on a dresser to the side. Philo sat up in his bed and took the cup. He took a sniff.

  His face scrunched up like he had just sucked on a sour lemon.

  "Is it supposed to smell this pungent?" he asked.

  "Probably."

  “Philo really doesn’t like the ambiguity in that answer."

  "I'm sure it'll be fine."

  Philo looked between Mal, the drink, then Mal, then back to the drink. He brought it to his lips and slowly consumed it. Tears appeared on the edges of his reptilian eyes and his cws shook. Finally, he finished the entire thing and set the cup down.

  "It was so strong," he coughed into his hand. "It was like I was drinking perfume."

  "It's supposed to be that way." Mal gnced around and spotted a stack of paper. He knew that Philo would be the type to have paper on the floor. He picked up the paper and brought it next to Philo. "I want you to record the status of your body every two hours. I want to get a handle on how effective this new technique —"

  "New technique!?"

  "Yes, new. Do try to keep up."

  “Philo thought you were just copying the recipe! If Philo knew that I was going to be your… your guinea pig, I would've never agreed to this!"

  "Why do you think I didn't tell you? Now hurry up and contribute to the development of magic. Record down your initial state."

  Although Philo continued to grumble, he did pick up the pen and write down his observations on himself and how he was feeling. Mal knew that Philo wouldn't pass up the opportunity to learn more knowledge. It was in his title, after all.

  Philo froze. His neck rotated around in concentric circles. "Why is the world spinning? The axis of symmetry seems to be broken. Philo's seeing geometric shapes unlike any he's ever seen before."

  Mal walked over to the paper and added his own observations—in code, of course, so that Philo wouldn't read it and find out things he wasn't supposed to know.

  Note: Subject is experiencing hallucinations. Definitely not in line with what the textbook says should be occurring. Enhanced harvesting techniques the cause? No, probably the enhanced ingredients created by the enhanced harvesting techniques. Different parts of pnt Essence flow out at a different rate? Probably should've consulted with Cassandra.

  Philo fell backwards and fell unconscious.

  Mal looked over at him, then wrote down a few more words on the paper.

  It'll probably be fine. Check back in six hours and if he isn't awake take him to the clinic.

  With that, Mal walked out and waited for the rest of his circle mates to wake up.