Chương 13: A Warranty Request

Ch 13: A Warranty Request There wasn't a single neuron in my brain that considered Principal Dickhead competent, but why did he have to be so damn good at handing out punishments? What I hated most was that there was no escaping his layered punishments, forcing both Sahirah and me to suffer through every single step.

"Please tell me this is the last trip," Sahirah said as we each carried another small patch of fresh grass, something we'd had to buy with our own credits and haul by hand from the school entrance all the way to the atrium.

"I think we still have at least three more trips before we've replaced all the dead grass." The walking itself wasn't even the worst part of the punishment. The real torture was passing in front of the food court every single time. At this hour of the morning, the place was packed with students and even Grey staff keeping an eye out for Mimics, and every time Sahirah and I walked past carrying our pathetic handfuls of grass, someone laughed.

"Brace yourself for the food court," she warned, quickening her pace in the faint hope that nobody would notice us. It didn't work. The moment we passed the entrance, a chorus of elven laughter erupted from inside.

"Go! Go! Go! Gardener couple! I believe in you!" one elf shouted.

"I don't," another replied. Sahirah stopped dead in her tracks, her lips pulling back just enough to reveal her sharp teeth in a clear display of aggression. I didn't let her linger. Resting a hand against her back, I gently pushed her forward.

"They're not worth it. Let's be the adults in the room." Then I immediately added, "When my system becomes a world-spanning piece of infrastructure, I'll give every one of them the title Gardener, while everyone else gets cool titles like Dragon Slayer." Without missing a beat, she said, "A girl can only hope she's around to see it." A smile spread across my face. For once, she wasn't trying to put out the fire. She was adding fuel to it. Somehow, it was reassuring that she didn't hate that side of me.

We continued walking between the atrium and the school entrance, and somehow an even crueler sight awaited us. The kitchen staff were already clearing away breakfast. In other words, we had officially missed it. Sahirah stopped and looked me in the eyes.

"Do you blame me for pushing you into going to the meditation garden?" I laughed. With one dirt-covered finger, I reached over and very deliberately smeared a streak of soil across her forehead.

"No," I said.

"Though I'm not sure I want to attend Meditation class anymore." Teacher Niori would probably make our lives miserable from now on, and dual cultivation seemed to do everything ordinary meditation promised, only faster, better, and without the boring parts. Sahirah wiped the dirt away with the back of her hand. For a second, I thought she'd retaliate. Instead, she sighed.

"I don't want to attend it either... and I hate myself for saying that." Wait. Was I hearing this correctly? Was Sahirah Fiora of Leodore, the straight-A student who never skipped a class, actually saying she wanted to skip one? I was about to tease her about my terrible influence when a familiar voice called out from the corridor ahead.

"I need your help with something, human." Sahirah and I exchanged a glance. As we rounded the corner, Niko was waiting there, my newest sales representative.

"Did you make a sale?" I asked.

"No." He crossed his arms.

"But something happened with our copy of the system, and I want your opinion." I turned to Sahirah with a perfectly straight face.

"Do you mind handling the last gardening trip by yourself?" The mischievous smile she gave me told me exactly what was coming. She reached up and planted a dirt-covered palm squarely against my neck.

"No," she said.

"Go have fun with your furry friend."

Niko remained silent on the way to his room, which was on a floor I'd never visited before. Several doors stood open along the corridor, revealing shared rooms where the Zufi seemed to sleep two, sometimes even four, to a single room. Niko noticed me looking and explained, "The Grey don't give everyone individual rooms. Only the rare species get those."

"Really?" I replied absentmindedly.

"You and that girl are lucky," he said.

"I bet you two don't even know we have room inspections. They make sure males and females never end up in each other's rooms, day or night." Well, it made sense. The Grey probably didn't want to deal with a fresh batch of cubs, hatchlings, or whatever the furry kids were called after every school year.

"I don't think you can call Sahirah and me lucky. It's quite likely we'll never see our own people again, so sharing a room for a while is a pretty small problem by comparison." I meant every word. Niko stopped walking and looked me in the eyes.

"I... never realized you two had it worse than us." I couldn't help laughing.

"Go ahead. I don't mind if it makes you feel better. If there's one universal truth, it's that no matter how bad your situation is, there's always someone out there who has it even worse." Niko smirked and patted me on the back with far more force than my frail body could comfortably handle.

"Your sense of humor is difficult to understand, Eric." Being called Eric instead of human felt like a small victory, and I kept smiling as he led me through the Zufi dormitory. We stopped in front of a room that looked no different from the others. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Except for one thing. The doorknob was gone, along with a large chunk of the door around it. Forced entry. That was the only explanation.

I crouched and picked up one of countless wood splinters scattered across the floor. Whatever had done this hadn't used just a little force.

"Did someone steal your copy of the system?" I asked before even stepping inside.

"Worse," he replied as he opened the door. The room's layout was similar to mine, though this one had two desks instead of one, one for Niko and one for his roommate. As expected, the floor was covered with fur, but that wasn't what caught my attention. Tiny scraps of paper littered the room. Runes. My runes. The fragments were so small, and none of them showed even the slightest sign of burning, that only one conclusion made sense. Someone, or something, had painstakingly torn the sphere's paper core into pieces.

"Mimics." The word escaped my mouth before I even realized I'd spoken.

"We reached the same conclusion," Niko said.

"Some people in my pack don't want me to repair the system. They think it'll only invite more attacks. But I can't accept the risk of one of us already being compromised. I need another copy of your system... and a better door." Instead of bringing up the subject of replacing his copy of the system, I asked, "How were you using the system? Were you scanning everyone?" Niko bent down, picked up a fragment of the shattered sphere, and brought it to his nose, sniffing it.

Apparently disappointed by something, he said, "Yes. We use your system to scan everyone who enters our floor, and even when I'm not here, my trusted guards make sure no one enters without being scanned." Could it be that the Mimics, instead of simply attacking me, had decided to destroy the copies of the system as well? I frowned at the thought. If those creatures were smart enough to wage guerrilla warfare, then both I and every one of my clients were in serious danger...

He placed a hand over my shoulder, pulling my thoughts back to the present.

"Uh... do you have another sphere to sell me?" I did. Two, in fact. They were older versions without the data crystal for tracking individual progress. And I'd planned to sell them through the sales representatives, but Niko's system was still under warranty. And I wasn't about to charge him twice during a crisis when there would be plenty of opportunities to earn that money back later. Smirking, I reached into my pocket and pulled out another sphere.

"This one's free. My warranty covers Mimic damage." He smiled, but shook his head.

"I'll pay for it. It would stain my pride as an alpha to keep accepting free gifts from you."

"The price today is one credit," I said.

"Special offer, valid only for the next purchase. You wouldn't want someone else to claim it before you, would you?" By then, my credit crystal was already in my hand. And Niko laughed. He raised the crystal he wore around his wrist, and a moment later both crystals glowed. +1. The tiny number appeared on my crystal.

"If you ever decide to attend combat class," he said, "you'll have a friend there to help you with that weak body of yours, human." So he'd known all along that I was physically weak. And apparently I'd already been demoted back to human. I smiled anyway. Maybe I'd attend combat class one of these days just to see what it was like. But first... Creating a Mimic-killing spell had just become my absolute top priority.

And I was going to finish it today, even if Sahirah turned out to be the only person with enough mana to use it effectively.

The sun was already nearing the horizon when I drew the last rune. This time, I hadn't relied on my usual modular design. Instead, I'd inscribed the entire spell circle onto a single oversized sheet of paper I'd bought specifically for this spell, all to increase its durability during casting so it wouldn't burn itself away too quickly. The ink wasn't cheap either. When I'd asked for an upper-middle-grade mana ink with high resistance, even the Grey clerk had raised an eyebrow. And the vial...

it had cost me eighty credits, despite holding only half as much ink as the cheaper ones. Worth every credit. As I carefully checked the runic syntax one last time and found no mistakes, I finally allowed myself to smile. This original spell definitely had enough raw power to kill a Mimic. Of course it did. Thirty heat runes covered the page. Compression runes concentrated the heat into razor-thin streams, while an equal number of vector runes forced those streams into a violent spiral.

This thing packed enough ass kicking to melt an entire body and reduce the Mimic inside to ash. The only problem... I didn't have enough mana to cast it, and I doubted even a senior student who practiced meditation every day for an entire year would have enough. Fortunately, the girl next door had mana to spare, and if something ever smashed through my door in the middle of the night, I had no doubt she'd come charging in like my knight in shining armor before anything disgusting could take over my body.

Not a perfect solution. We weren't glued together, and we spent most of the day apart. Still, it was good enough to let me sleep peacefully. I was about to take the spell outside so the remaining sunlight could dry the ink when I heard a doorknob turn. A sound I heard every day. A sound I knew by heart. Ignoring the ink stains covering my arms, and probably my face as well, I grabbed the magic circle and hurried outside.

"Wait, Sahirah! Your shower can wait. We need to talk." The words left my mouth before I'd even opened my door. When I stepped into the hallway, she was already there, waiting with a pout, absentmindedly rocking on the tips of her shoes. I didn't forget our daily ritual. Reaching into my pocket, I activated our shared copy of the system, letting both of us verify each other's status before anything else. We exchanged brief smiles of relief. Safe.

"So..." I said.

"My Mimic-killing spell." I lifted the enormous magic circle for her to see.

"It's finished. Mostly, I want to test weaker versions with cheap ink first, if you're willing. But that's tomorrow's problem. If the Mimics come tonight, we skip straight to the live demo." I couldn't help enjoying the way her jaw dropped as she crouched to study the dense network of runes. The thing was enormous, complex, and completely non-modular. Very different from my usual style. And I'd even built in a safety feature that required both hands to touch specific activation points before it would respond.

I was pretty sure even Sahirah would have to deliberately push mana into it to make it fire.

"What's it called?" she asked. If I'd been in her place, my first question would've been whether it was safe. But since she wanted a name...

"I haven't decided yet. It's either Fuck Everything into Oblivion or Mimic Barbecue." She crossed her arms.

"Let me guess. You don't have enough mana to use it."

"How did you know?"

"The name is too cool for someone with twenty-eight mana." That one caught me completely off guard. And she laughed at my stunned expression while I could only smile in defeat.

"I heard about what happened with Niko," she said.

"The Zufi haven't been talking about anything else. I assume you're worried we might be attacked in our sleep."

"Exactly." I handed her the spell.

"If it's not too much to ask, I'm hoping you'll come rescue me if you hear a loud noise coming from my room." She didn't answer immediately, and her gaze drifted from me... to her door... to the spell in her hands. Then she looked back into my eyes.

"Wouldn't it be easier if I just slept in your room from now on?" Now it was my turn to stare. At her. At the doors. At the spell. How had that solution never occurred to me? From a defensive standpoint, it was the most obvious answer imaginable. So why hadn't I thought of it? Scratching my chin, I asked, "Do you want me to help you move your bed into my room?"

"We can do that after I take my shower." She disappeared into her room, leaving me standing alone in the hallway with a stupid grin on my face. Yeah... Somewhere on another floor, Niko was probably dying of envy that there were no room inspectors assigned to ours.

Tired of waiting for Sahirah, I went back to my room. As I sat there with nothing to do, an idea struck me. And it was so brilliant that I couldn't wait another minute to try it. I pulled off my shirt and sat down at my writing desk. Dipping my quill into what remained of my expensive mana ink, I began drawing directly onto my own skin. My left arm, to be precise.

Carefully, I filled the circle with the runes for Kinetic Push, arranging them so I could activate the spell straight from my skin without relying on paper at all. Sure, Elitha Hearthstrong's tattoos had planted the idea in my head. But this ink wasn't permanent, and even someone with as little common sense as me knew I needed a lot more experimentation before trying anything that wouldn't wash off with a good shower. I'd even designed the runic syntax so the spells would activate only in short bursts.

Between the higher-grade ink and the structure of the spell itself, my skin shouldn't burn as long as I cut off the mana supply quickly enough. Once Kinetic Push was finished, I switched to my right arm. Using my clumsy left hand, I painstakingly began inscribing the Pain-Inducing spell. By the time I was about to use the last of the ink to inscribe Haste onto my leg, Sahirah walked into my room without knocking. She stopped in front of me and stared at my bare chest for what had to be five full seconds.

Then, without warning, she reached out and, in such a slow way that seemed almost intentional, collected a sample of the ink from my chest. In the process, she lightly scratched my skin with her nail, sending a shiver through my body.

"Let's skip the explanation and go straight to the part where you tell me what catastrophic outcome I should prepare for this time, Eric." A dry chuckle escaped me.

"Well, if a Mimic pays us a visit tonight, I'll be ready. And if it doesn't, tomorrow will finally be the day I try combat class." Smirking, I raised my ink-covered arms.

"Because believe me, this ink is expensive, and I'm not about to wash it off in the shower without using it."