After the battle concluded, everyone dropped down on the ground, finally able to relax. Despite the victory, there was no place for joy or celebration. The Trawn woods would bear a scar that could take, months if not years to heal. The three kings were already discussing how to rearrange the borders of their areas of influence, to prevent future food shortages to affect them too harshly. Lith, instead, was still pondering on the young bear memories, comparing their lives. It was only because he had been reborn in a good family that he had not ended up obsessing with power, being able to afford taking care of his body. In its place, with the fierce competition of the wilderness, he may have been tempted of doing the same. All his life up to that point had been all a huge risk/rewards assessment too, Lith had simply been luckier. It was the second time in a single day that his victory had been hollow. He started to feel depressed, making the adrenaline rush dissolve much faster. Soon exhaustion would have taken its toll, he needed some real sleep. Before going home, thought, there were still some things he had to do. First, he gave the Shyf a whole boar to eat, then Lith proceeded to heal its atrophied leg. He couldn’t do it before, because the fatigue from recovering from such a wound, coupled with its already debilitated state from the prolonged battle, would have made the Shyf faint. Being a healer was almost a second nature to Lith at that point. He also wanted that whatever happened next in the woods, they would face it on their own. Lith had already enough on his plate, all he wanted was to sleep and eat for a week straight. Second, he finally could express not to one, but to three powerful magical beasts, his doubts about tier four magic with a practical example. With the energy he had left, Lith executed with true magic a scaled down version of the tier four Lightning God’s Finger spell, weaving together fire and air magic to conjure a small sphere of plasma. "The real deal would be bigger, hence doing more damage but also requiring much more energy." Because of its nature, plasma was highly volatile and would disperse at the smallest mistake. It could indeed generate temperatures in the orders of thousand degrees, even striking with surgical precision, but it was incredibly slow to move, and Lith couldn’t find a single practical use to justify spending so much mana in just one spell. Both the Ry and the Shyf were natural air magic masters, so they could immediately understand the nature of the spell and its underlying effects. "That’s just useless!" Reaper blurted. "It the prettiest waste of mana I have ever seen." Protector laughed. "With much less energy and effort, you could wipe away an entire acre of the woods. I think the problem is not you, but the spell itself. According to what you told me in the past, humans deems each other so stupid and untrustworthy that they divided magic into steps, or tiers, as you call them. In my opinion either the human that invented that cr*p did have more free time than brains, or the spell is incomplete on purpose." "Are humans really so idiotic? To teach their cubs how to kill a prey but not where the best parts are?" The Shyf was flabbergasted at the idea. "Another dead end." Lith sighed, his depression getting worse. The Ry was his last hope to make head or tails of the magical conundrum. "I’m sorry, Scourge." The Ry said. "But us magical beast have a much more practical view about magic, most of your human issues are either senseless or idiotic to me. Another problem is that we are uncapable of controlling the whole world energy. Only king level beasts can manipulate two elements, while the most complex spells you showed me sometimes use three or more. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚 I would love to help you further, but between my duties and this tragedy, I need to focus on avoiding the impending famine. Sorry." The Ry and the Shyf left him, starting to discuss how to make the whole forest, especially the zone most damaged by the Wither, survive the coming winter. Lith could feel his headache getting worse by the second, so after bidding them goodbye, he started to move as fast as he could towards home. "So much for a second and third opinion. If the Ry is right, then we are f*cked up big time. No academy means no tier five spells, which in turn implies that we will be stuck with tier three as our main source of inspiration. Not to mention that I really do not envy all those students that waste a whole year of their life practicing incomplete spells." "Actually, I have been pondering about what Nana told us, and I think there is yet another possibility. Maybe tier four and fire are so rare to come around because they are strictly related to a mage specialization." Solus suggested. "What if the Lightning God’s Finger isn’t an offensive spell, but rather an energy source for constructs? Or maybe it’s the only way to carve magic runes in the hardest materials used for weapons or armours. We know nothing about forgemastering, potion brewing or anything related to indirect magic." "F*ck! You are probably right. And that adds insult to our injury. Seems we are destined to live four very uninteresting years." As soon as he came home, Lith refused to move a finger, going to bed right after dinner, hoping that the next day would bring him good news. Yet months passed, his birthday was getting closer and so was the deadline for applying to any academy. Meanwhile, Count Lark hadn’t been sitting on his hands. He had used every single opportunity, every pretext, no matter how flimsy, to seek audience with the King, and when that failed, he worked his way down the Court’s hierarchy. He had pestered everyone so much that many would hide at his presence, or pretend to not even notice him to not give any opportunity to persist in his fool’s errand. But the Count was a stubborn man, he knew rules and regulations inside out, and by using real problems related to Lustria County as a cover, there was only so much they could do to avoid him without setting a dangerous precedent. He was able to endure hours long waits like they were nothing, and then still have the energy to plea for his case until his hosts were so exhausted that to get rid of him, they had to at least promise to consider his claims. When Headmistress Linnea talked about wanting to send a political message, this wasn’t the result she was hoping for. Soon her name would get associated with ingenious curses and swearing, and so her bloodline until the seventh generation. Count Lark soon become a hot topic, receiving the same degree of attention an impending flood or plague would get. One way or another he achieved part of his objective, making the whole Court discuss the possible implications that Headmistress Linnea’s new rule could cause in the future. Was it really worth to bar the road to a promising magician because of how or where did he/she learn her spells? Why punish the victim of a crime just because he/she had asked to uphold the law? Should a Headmistress of such an important institution be allowed to change the rules of admission on a whim, without any form of control? An important discussion like that needed time, but most importantly peace and quiet, so the Court unanimously resolved to grant Marchioness Distar, the true ruler of Lustria County, extraordinary powers, to face Count Lark as she thought best. In other words, she was left with the short end of the stick. Now Count Lark would relentlessly pester her, while everyone else would live happily ever after. Marchioness Distar already had her fair share of trouble, Trequill Lark was just the icing on the cake. She pondered more than once to use her newfound authority to behead him, but her good sense and all her personal advisors stopped her. Lark was one of his best retainers. He was sincere, didn’t skim on the taxes, never had sordid affairs that she was forced to cover up. Not to mention that under his guiding hand, Lustria County had been flourishing for over twenty years, without that the Marchioness and her mother before her had ever to move a finger. It was a well-oiled machine, and honest to boot! Replacing him would cause her much more trouble than executing him would prevent. Having her back against a wall, she decided that honesty was the best policy. Lark was a loving father, after all. Maybe he would understand her position and leave her alone if he knew the truth. After granting him the thirty-seventh audience in less that three months, she explained to Count Lark her family’s plight. "As you know, the higher you get the more trouble you incur into. A few weeks ago, my family experienced an attempted murder. Thanks to the safety measures we have surrounded ourselves with, it failed. But it didn’t pass without consequences. One of the assailants, managed to reach my daughter. Her magical protections took the brunt of the hit, reducing a deathblow to slightly more than a pinprick." "All is well that ends well." The Count commented. The Marchioness had to stop herself from slapping him to death, rubbing her forehead instead, trying to calm down. "I wish! Because of that pinprick my daughter has been cursed" "Cursed?" Count Lark’s monocle jumped out his orbit from the surprise. Usually he would scoff at such preposterous concept. In all his years of exploring magic curiosities from all over the world, he had encountered curses only in the bedtime stories he read at his children. But the Marchioness glare induced him to put his monocle back in place and let her continue. "Yes, cursed. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen it first-hand. When the healer tried to help her, preventing a scar, instead of disappearing, the wound became bigger. I tried everything, calling renowned master Potionists, healers, medicine women, shamans. Nothing worked. Now the only thing that keeps my ever-bleeding daughter alive is the constant consumption of potion and the help of my personal magician, Ainz. As you know he is considered a genius, maybe the best ever graduated from the Black Griffon academy. To make things worse, when the assailants understood they had no chance of escaping, they chose to blow themselves up, destroying all the evidence. There was no one to interrogate, nothing left to examine to understand what they had done!" "This is fantastic!" The Count thought. "This is terrible!" The Count actually said, keeping his best grieving face.