Day two thousand five hundred. Three weeks left before Ren's academic life ended.
He walked the main corridor of the academy with his mind at that specific point in the future and his feet in the present, which was a combination that let his mana escape a little and produced the kind of walk that people who didn't know him well described as "presence" but that was actually just Ren thinking about several things simultaneously without having consciously decided what to do with his face, which had settled, without his input, into serious eyes and a slight narrowing that the ambient mana around him was making considerably more severe than intended.
Three weeks also until the formal betrothal announcent, before joining the wall army for a few more years.
Three weeks during which he still needed to finish determining whether his new control over crystallization had reached the point where Sirius's system could receive the intervention required to bring it back, or whether he was going to have to accept that 'Mooshito' at Gold 3, arriving in about three months, was the threshold he was still missing, and that the announcent was going to precede that capacity by a margin he hoped was not too dramatic to make him feel insecure.
He wanted to give himself the benefit of the doubt. He had, after all, brought down a Diamond-rank dragon. With help, yes, but down.
The fourth dragon had gone reasonably well.
It was enormous, and resistant proportional to its size in both directions, more mass ant more surface for the attacks to cover, more regeneration capacity drawing from the mountain it was connected to, more raw volu of health that had to be depleted before the engagent resolved. The ti it took had surprised everyone, despite the fact that they had always held the advantage in rate of fire and had known from the beginning they had everything needed to win. The pure scale of the regeneration on a body that large was a variable none of them had fully modeled in advance.
Dragarion taking down 3 of these alone was genuinely sothing else…
The dragon had taken longer than expected, but the defense they maintained had been sufficient for the group to return without serious injuries, which was the correct asure of "went well" in that context. The outco was good and they also had arrived back on ti to avoid tragedy.
Ren's beasts Ranks now stood at: dormant Mooshito at Gold 2, the Hydra at Gold 2, the Wolverine at Gold 2, and the Mantis at Silver 3. In power he had surpassed the general capabilities of both Selphira and Victor, a threshold that three years ago would have seed aspirational in the most generous reading.
His fusion of two Gold 2 beasts wasn't individually more powerful than their Gold 2 and Gold 3 combinations, but the advantage of having more than two beasts in the configuration ultimately pushed his totals past theirs in the categories that compounded. Still, the distance between where he was and where he needed to be for the next stage was visible and concrete. Two Gold 3 beasts weren't going to be enough to approach what Dragarion had been able to do with two Platinum beasts in fusion. The gap was real and the path to closing it required ti that couldn't be compressed.
The three-way fusion was still a theory… Maybe having his 3 secondary beasts at Gold was enough?
Mooshito at Gold 3 might be the bridge between the theory and the practice, but Mooshito at Gold 3 would arrive when it arrived and not before.
Ren accelerated his pace slightly without noticing.
Liu's hand landed on his shoulder from the side.
"Brother."
Ren didn't slow down.
"Brother." Liu matched the pace with the ease of soone who had spent enough years alongside Ren to have calibrated exactly which walking speed corresponded to which ntal state, the fast, distracted one being among the more recognizable entries in the catalog. "You're frightening the younger years..."
Ren looked ahead.
Then looked to the sides.
The corridor, which under normal conditions had the standard circulation of an academy with several hundred students moving between classes, currently had a specific geotry: two lines of people flattened against the walls at the angle that living beings produced when sothing their nervous system had classified as dangerous was occupying the center of a corridor they needed to cross.
The first and second years had the expression of people who had received information through their nervous systems before their minds had finished processing it with the body responding before the interpretation caught up.
The third, fourth, and fifth years had the expression of people who already knew what they were looking at and had decided the wall was a reasonable position.
So female students of various years had expressions that didn't fit neatly into the "frightened" category, reactions that were more accurately described as fast breathing close to hyperventilating, or what appeared to be sudden intense warmth and red faces that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature.
Liu raised one eyebrow.
Ren exhaled.
"You're right," he said. He relaxed his gaze and reduced his pace to sothing the younger generations' nervous systems could interpret as "notable VIP walking" rather than "primordial mana-teorological event with unknown intentions".
The corridor relaxed perceptibly.
"Take it easy," said Liu, settling into the new rhythm without remarking on the transition. "You're the strongest tar in the city now. You made that giant dragon explode and you still haven't reached your limit. There's no reason to be this…" he made a vague 'serious face' gesture toward the general state Ren had been projecting without aning to.
"Thank you for waking up. You're right, we have ti..." Said with the direct sincerity Ren used with his friends. "I should relax."
Liu shook his head.
"No… thank you." The tone of soone who has been waiting for the right mont to say sothing and has decided this one is good enough. "For asking them to extend my enrollnt last year. Being able to finish the year with everyone, that ans a lot to ."
Ren looked at him.
"Leaving having only covered through seventh year," Liu continued, with the voice of soone being more honest than he usually was about things, "would have sat badly with forever… Like an incomplete task you carry even when there's nothing left to do about it."
"Well… The wall command wanted you as soon as possible," said Ren. "But when I told them you were part of my most central and important team and that I wanted to attend graduation with you in my year, getting the extension wasn't difficult."
Liu looked at him with the face of soone processing the "most important" and deciding whether to address it or not.
"I also told them I'd make sure your power increased further before we left for the wall," Ren added.
Liu nodded slowly… Then laughed.
"At this rate one day I'll be able to bring down one of those real Diamond Dragons by myself."
Ren looked at him.
"Yes."
Liu had said it in the tone used for things that sound good but that one doesn't expect to be taken seriously, the rhetorical confidence of an ambitious statent. But Ren's "yes" arrived with the quality of soone who had evaluated the numbers and saw no reason to disagree.
Liu swallowed hard thinking of the harsh training and cultivation still needed for that.
♢♢♢♢
They had arrived at the door of the hall where Ren would spend the next hours. Liu stopped with the naturalness of soone who knew this was his point of separation, the particular ease of a routine so established that the goodbye didn't need announcing.
"Don't run this ti," he said, with the smile of soone who had been watching a dynamic for years and found it more entertaining than he probably should.
Ren laughed. Quiet, genuine, the kind that ca out when sothing surprised him pleasantly rather than catching him off-guard.
"I don't need to run anymore," he said, low enough that it didn't carry past Liu. "But sotis what happens when they catch you is more interesting if you pretend to be suffering a little first."
Liu went red.
Looked ahead.
Then looked at Ren with the expression of soone who wasn't certain they had heard what they thought they had heard from whom they heard it.
Ren was already pushing the door open, his back to Liu, without any kind of expression that would have confird or denied anything.
Liu remained in the corridor for a mont.
Then continued on his way with the face of soone who had new information to process and preferred to do it in motion.
Larissa was already in the classroom.
Not on the bench where they usually sat. She was at the front, standing next to the instructor's table with several docunts spread out, she had reviewed the material enough tis to have specific opinions on each section and had organized those opinions in a pedagogical order.
She glanced at Ren as he entered.
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