It seemed that Christa Abilene, daughter of a Coven minister, and her brother Luke were still holding a grudge about Reiko leaving the High Nobles group to hang out with the children of Commoners. Or maybe because Wolfe had beat up Luke in public on the first day he arrived.
The rest of the cliques had become much less noticeable as the first days of school ended, but that one really kept to themselves, unwilling to interact with those of lesser social standing at all.
That was fine with everyone else. They were all strong but completely insufferable in personality. Even if they had the grades to get into a higher position, the other Witches of the senior classes would prefer not to be associated with the High Nobles.
“Is it true that all Demons are evil, Professor? Christa’s Goblin was a huge pain the first few weeks until she tamed it.” One of the girls from Christa’s social group asked.
“While it’s true that their personalities are problematic, I can’t say that they’re all evil. Even the Goblin here isn’t truly evil. He just has poor impulse control.” Professor Miranda explained.
“Then why do they have a reputation for breaking free and attacking their Witches?” The girl continued.
“They are more intelligent than most creatures and naturally dominant. So, when they are summoned as Familiars, they always want to be the one in charge, and they resent being ordered around.”
The Witch thought about that for a while. “So if I ordered Wolfe to do things he didn’t want to do, he might attack me?”
“No, my witches would get upset if I gave you a spanking, so I would sit you down and give you a lecture on propriety. I’m not your Familiar to order around. But if you think of the Familiar Bond as an employment contract, with the Witch as the employer, it’s much easier to understand the limits of what an intelligent Familiar will find acceptable and what they simply won’t do without being forced.” Wolfe tried to explain.
Not that he had ever been forced by the Familiar bond even before he officially took control of it. But the class didn’t need to know that.
After that, the class quickly devolved into a discussion on Familiar care and treatment, with the day’s original lesson plan totally forgotten.
The academy seemed to assume that most students understood the concept, so they only held one lesson a week in Familiar Care and Bonding, but going by today’s questions, it seemed to Wolfe that there was a lot of ground left to cover.
After class and a quick meal in the cafeteria, the group gathered at the training hall to work on elements they hadn’t practiced much. Today was Earth Magic, and Wolfe took the time to explain to Stephanie how all of the spell circles worked and what the runes meant while the Witches took turns casting and asking each other questions until they could all cast the basic attack spell.
Stephanie caught on quickly, and before they were finished, she had managed to condense a few small stones into Wolfe’s hand.
In the next few weeks, heading up to midterms, that quickly became their routine. Classes all day, with Wolfe spending his mornings in the gym or on the sparring field, evenings in the training hall, and meditation all night to improve the Witches’ auras, as well as Wolfe’s own power.
By the time the week of midterms arrived, Stephanie could cast armour and attack spells with Earth and Water Elements very well and was a natural with witch magic, including some basic Hexes and Charms, but she seemed to be blocked from the other elements, while the four Witches had mastered all of the spells needed to graduate from the First Year with full marks.
Reiko and Mary were still a bit low on their aura density, and Reiko struggled a lot with the Water Element, but Cassie and Ella were ahead of anyone in their peer group and still advancing faster than anyone.
It was a major cause of jealousy within the small group of Class A witches, and Wolfe could tell that even Reiko and Mary were envious of the pair, despite the fact that they spent every night practicing with them and knew that they weren’t holding back any secret technique or knowledge.
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Wolfe had also been working hard, and with the input of the three others to feed mana into so he could work on his mana focus, he had made incredible progress. He could feel that he was coming up on a major turning point, and he only needed one final push to get past the mark and complete the first step so that he could start on a second focus.
Ella and Stephanie had gained some inspiration on the various ways to activate enhancement charms on others and had gone for a late-night training session that night. That meant leaving Wolfe and Cassie alone in the room, and Wolfe had every intention of taking advantage of the situation.
By the time Cassie passed out that night, Wolfe had fed her so much mana through the rumoured [Alternative Meditation Technique] that the crest on her stomach was actually glowing with dim black light and her whole body was trembling.
Intimate moments with the Witches were far too few for his tastes, thanks to the ever-present meddling of Stephanie, who viewed all such interactions as a betrayal of the balance between Familiars. After all, she was in the body of a cat, not a freshman Academy Witch, and it was partly his fault. No matter how good the head scritches were, they weren’t equivalent to what he wanted to do with Cassie and Ella. At least not in her mind.
As Cassie slipped into sleep, Wolfe felt the Mana Focus coalesce, becoming a solid orb inside his body and filling him with an intense surge of power, refining his muscles and bones as a second Focus, the size of a grain of rice, formed inside his body.
That was how the first one had started out, but he could much more easily work with this one, and the initial stages of opening it to mana flow and stretching it to the point that it was somewhat usable only took a few hours, finishing just as Ella and Stephanie returned from their training session near midnight.
Stephanie was clearly unhappy when she realized what he had been up to during her absence. There was no way she could miss it with the sense of smell that a cat had, but the goofy smile on Cassie’s face as she slept was a dead giveaway to anyone who happened to see it.
The progress on purifying his Bloodline had stopped after the initial few weeks of rapid growth, with the last major increase coming after he Bonded with Stephanie, but Wolfe’s body had taken some time to adjust. If he wanted to improve it further, he would need to either find a new technique for increasing his Magi bloodline or spend intimate time with more Witches, preferably mixed-blooded ones, as the Magi Bloodline was the only part he was able to absorb.
That wasn’t really an option, so Wolfe had somewhat resigned himself to having his Bloodline stay as it was for the moment. Or at least the Magi side of it since the Demonic side was still slowly advancing, a percent or two every week, with a point’s worth of gain just that evening.
It wasn’t a visible change, at least not yet, but his whole body radiated energy, and his ability to absorb mana as he meditated was continuously growing, as was his power with the Unholy Element.
The few Unholy Spells he knew were mostly sensory spells or Unholy Fire, but they were second nature to him now, activating with a mere thought, and when using [Detect Hidden], he could see through even the finest of disguise spells.
Even with that level of proficiency, some areas of the school remained impenetrable to his enhanced senses, which only made him more interested in what lay behind the enchantments. Unfortunately, there was no time for that. These days every waking moment was taken up with some activity.
With so much power available, and his improved recovery rate, Wolfe kept [Detect Hidden] Active all the time, but he reduced the effect so that it wasn’t enough to confuse him or completely hide important things like furniture or school uniforms.
The completion of the first Mana Focus was a much bigger change than a small increase in his bloodline, and now that he was working on the second one, the first Mana Focus was giving off a thin film of pure power around his body. It was not quite like a Witch’s Aura, which was a manifestation of their gathered power. It was a residual effect of his body drawing mana to itself faster than it could be absorbed due to the size of the second Mana Focus and the fact that the first was complete and full.
It took some time to learn to control his collection speed and suppress it so that he didn’t alarm others or draw attention from every Familiar he passed, but the completion of the core had a few distinct advantages.
Advantages other than always having a Familiar to pet and play with since they were all single-mindedly devoted to hanging around him and his excess mana until their witches ordered them to stop.
Now he no longer needed to focus on pushing energy into Cassie and Ella, the crest on their bodies stayed full as long as they were in contact with him. The marks also changed a little when the Focus was completed. The small circle in the center had changed into a balance symbol, divided with a curved line, and the amount of power it could store had increased.
He could also pass them large amounts of power from across the academy without issue, as long as it was from the completed core and not the second one that he was building.
That had allowed them to excel in Alchemy class since they could use his power instead of channelling it on their own in the crowded lab, where dozens of other Witches were interfering with the smooth flow of energy in the surrounding area.
They had advanced so far that Professor Ashcroft had even promised to allow them to come in on their weekly break day to learn advanced potions, but not until after the midterm exams.
It would be nice if they could have more time to work on advanced potions, as well as Hexes, but all four witches were doing fairly well with basic physical enhancement charms and created a small chain of amulets that would let them cast all the most important ones whenever they needed them.
All the most important Charms, in the mind of the Witches, only meant three enchantments. One for speed, one for stamina, and one for physical strength, but that was enough to put them on par with the lower-level monsters and physically overcome any renegade humans that they might come across in the wilderness, according to the older students.