The dwarves were forced to reveal themselves and their duty to the surface world to garner aid for the defence of the continent.

  Cedric Bospian. In The Last Dragon War, 1st ed.

  ---

  The twelfth week of class was upon them, and all the professors were focused on preparing for the end of year exams while the students focused instead on the end-of-year dance.

  Zale had begun doodling dress designs instead of taking notes, her desire to plan the perfect outfit warring with her general nature as a sensible and attentive student. Luckily for her, she had a friend who could give her perfect word for word transcripts of each lecture and he owed her some copied notes.

  “I’m only making these for you because it takes basically no effort,” Kole said.

  He’d found, much like he could will spell components to appear, he could transcribe the lecture by running his finger across the page rapidly making the words appear as fast as he could recall them with the aid of the book’s magic.

  Kole had been lying, however. He’d have done it even if it was difficult, both because at this point he was fairly certain he’d do anything Zale asked, and because he too hadn’t really been paying attention.

  In the wake of the rift closing, Kole thought things would settle down. He’d been wrong. The sudden push for everyone to prepare for the end of the semester stressed him more now than when the interdimensional rift to a land of nightmares had been standing open in the city.

  Life was weird that way. One’s problems, no matter how small, always seemed to grow to fill all of one’s capacity to stress.

  Kole didn’t even understand why he was stressing. With the aid of his spellbook, his history, astronomy, and arcana classes would be a breeze. As for his more practical classes, he’d already far exceeded the requirements for WIZ 205 with all the spells he had learned, and judging by the training duels in class, he was going to be fine with the practical aspect of the exam where he had to face a professor.

  As for Martial 102, he’d actually started to improve a lot this past semester. His repeated life and death adventures had taught him the importance of being able to defend oneself without magic, and he’d found motivation to apply himself to the lessons. He knew for certain he’d have run out of Will much faster in that kobold infested cave if he’d not improved so much with the quarterstaff and had to rely on his shield bracer to survive. That last Shatter had used the last dreg of his Will and he’d not have made it to the end of the match without that.

  For PREVENT, he had both more and less to worry about. Having made it to the final battle royale of the winners’ bracket, he’d guaranteed a pass. That coupled with Underbrook’s tentative acceptance of Kole’s mentorship meant he had nothing to worry about.

  But despite that all, he was still worried. About what, he wasn’t quite sure. He knew part of it was the hardball final, he did want to win after all. There was also the whole impending invasion of the remnant of the Midlian Empire, but that too seemed to be well in hand. Professors Donglefore and Tailor had traveled to all the major cities in Basin over that past week, sharing their means of disrupting the rifts.

  Kole had provided sketches of the maps he’d seen in the tent on his infiltration through the rift, and the professors had quickly identified which cities those had been and prioritized the establishments of defenses there. They even had proof these measures were working as incursions near cities had essentially ceased.

  There was the constant worry of what Zale’s mother would do to him on her return if Kole’s desire to date Zale became a reality, but that too seemed a bit dramatic.

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  So, while everyone was busy preparing for finals and the dance, Kole did what he always did: worked on his magic.

  He’d still had no success with the Font of Space but had decided to dedicate a little bit of time to it each day.

  The recent adventure had impressed on him the need for Kole to improve his senses. Turning invisible was helpful, but sometimes being able to see from further away would be good enough if not often better.

  Scrying spells were things he’d be able to learn some day, as many utilized the Font of Light, but those were beyond his current ability. Instead, he learned a cantrip called Looking Glass.

  This cantrip was a ‘structured cantrip.’ Normal cantrips were simply the wizard’s activation of a Font, cast by activating only the path component of an existing spell without the spell effect part. This allowed a portion of the Font’s energy to enter the world in its purest form, sometimes taking some small level of guidance from the caster.

  These were useful for two reasons. The first being that they cost essentially no Will to cast, the second being that they took up no room in a mental vault since they were simply a partial casting of an already prepared spell.

  Structured cantrips were somewhere between a cantrip and a spell. They still cost a negligible amount of Will, but they had with them some small spell construct elements to shape the Font’s power. These types of cantrips weren’t very popular amongst adventuring wizards, used primarily for wizard working in specific fields were access to specific cantrips greatly increased productivity. While free spells were useful, they were not worth the cost of a spot in one’s mental vault, limited as those were. Limited, at least, for people without ensouled spellbooks.

  Kole spent the week learning as many of these as he could. Looking Glass allowed him to focus the light in front of his eyes to simulate a telescope and view distant objects up close. Mental Nudge drew on the Font of the Mind to telepathically send a small and brief idea to someone nearby. This was a vast improvement over the normal cantrip of this Font, Emote, which sent an emotion out to everyone in the immediate vicinity.

  Lastly, he learned Eavesdrop which was a one-way version of the effect of the Sound cantrip Message. This let him draw the sound from a nearby source into his ear without allowing them to hear his surroundings in return.

  All together, these three seemingly simple cantrips drastically improved Kole’s performance as an infiltrator, a role he was regrettably realizing he would not escape. He now saw a lot more clearly why Mirage Knights from back home had such poor reputations.

  In pursuit of this, Kole had started to focus on acquiring the ability to cast spells while concentrating on another. Up until this year, this had been extremely low on Kole’s lists of wizarding goals, but he’d rapidly checked off most of the things above it and was now putting his considerable focus on it.

  To do this, he went about his day with a concentration spell active as much as possible. When he was in class, he’d cast Darkness, creating a small bubble of perfect blackness under his desk, maintaining focus on it as he worked on his spellbook, all the while passively absorbing the lecture to be recalled later—as a side effect Kole was getting very adept at multitasking.

  When he wasn’t in public, he’d spend his time invisible, as the spell took far less Will than Darkness. In switching between the two, Kole quickly discovered a difference. Holding the sorcerous spell’s concentration took less effort than the wizard’s spell Darkness. This was a known effect he discovered when he asked Underbrook about it.

  “Wizards who are also sorcerers have a leg up in many ways over the rest,” he explained. “This is just another. Sorcery spells are easier for the mind to hold onto because they operate on instinct, not thought, so disrupting the mind doesn’t disrupt the spell as easily.”

  Underbrook had advised Kole to use Invisibility or Silent Image and work on casting wizarding cantrips.

  “Hold one in your mind, the other in your subconscious,” he said. “Once you’ve mastered this, the rest will come quickly.”

  He’d taken the advice to heart, and one day in the middle of class with a small illusory quill sitting on his desk conjured by Silent Image, Kole did it. Suddenly Professor Tailor's dull droning was screaming in his ear, as he’d successfully cast Eavesdrop.

  He bit down a shout of surprise, but the shock of the noise disrupted the Silent Image spell. Trying again a moment later, he was able to cast the cantrip without losing his grip on the first spell.

  Later that day, he tried doing the same with Invisibility and Darkness. Despite his previous success, casting cantrips while Invisible was more difficult. The Invisibility spell had always been a fickle one, prone to fall apart at the intrusion of any foreign Will. But with focus and careful review of his failures in his spellbook, Kole eventually worked it out, and just as Underbrook said, the wizard spells were right behind it.

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