Mal opened his eyes to find himself completely alone.

  He looked around in a circle. He was in a forest, trees the color of silver in every direction. The leaves shimmered with a gold sheen, and Mal had to blink from the light reflecting off them.

  Right. it was called the Steel Forest for a reason. Somehow, it hadn’t quite registered with him that they were called steel trees because they were, well, steel.

  “My memory of the details has slipped by quite a bit, hasn’t it?” he muttered.

  No matter. He’d make do. The broad strokes remained in his head solidly.

  He walked over to one of the trees and knocked on the “bark.” It had exactly the same cold and hard feeling that he associated with metal. The texture was smooth and polished, as if it had been forged and sanded by a master blacksmith.

  Mal took a sniff. Mana. Not as much as there was in Exodi, but enough to be noticeable. Unlike Exodi, there was a noticable “tinge” to the smell. It reminded Mal of blood and iron, a sickly metallic scent.

  He ran his hand down the trunk of the steel tree. What was it that had created this strange plant? He knew the answer, of course. Like all things, it was the result of aligned mana in the air. This place, for whatever reason, had enough aligned mana that it seeped into the plants and changed their biology.

  Or perhaps it had been the other way around. The plants had simply been like this, and as a result, there was now an abundance of metal-aligned mana floating around in the air.

  This was one of the great debates among aligned mana scholars: Which came first, the material or the immaterial?

  Mal didn’t know. He didn’t particularly care.

  What he was more interested in was the natural aligned mana all around him.

  If he wanted a chance at surviving this, he would need every advantage he could get.

  He pulled out his mortar and the sharp rock he’d found earlier on the academy grounds, then shaved off a few grains of metal into his mortar. It was undeniably risky to create a potion like this without any prior testing or recipe. But he wasn’t planning anything complicated.

  There would only be two ingredients in this potion: an elder root to act as the catalyst and fuel for the potion, and the metal shavings of the steel tree to infuse metal-aligned mana into the potion. In theory, he would then be able to drink this potion, and it would harden his body and give him the strength and hardness of metal.

  He finished scraping off the metal and pulled out the elder root from his satchel. He used his stone to grind the elder root into a near-liquid pulp.

  After that was done, he frowned sharply. He needed a medium that would allow the two different ingredients to interact and dissolve.

  He shut his eyes and listened closely.

  A stream, not too far. He walked off in the direction of the sound, and it got louder and louder.

  A running stream. It looked clean enough, the water fresh and clear.

  He leaned down and took a handful with his empty hand. He poured that handful into the mortar and ground up the mixture. He repeated this a few times until it was essentially a thick white sludge. At the same time, he channeled unaligned mana into the mixture from his core, stabilizing the thing.

  All he could smell was iron.

  With the amount he made, he estimated that it would last thirty minutes, maybe an hour. With his improvisation, he wasn’t entirely sure—he wasn’t an expert.

  If he needed to top himself back up, he’d be able to do so and make another batch of the potion.

  He tipped the mortar back into his mouth. The taste of earth and stone flooded his tongue, and he resisted the urge to gag. He tipped it back farther so the whole thing would flow into his mouth.

  Mal stumbled backward, the urge to vomit overwhelming. In the future, he had consumed enough potions to the point where his sense of taste was pretty much dead. At this point, however, the most disgusting thing he’d ever drunk was probably scorched milk.

  Eternus above, I really hope those metal shards don’t give me iron poisoning.

  He dry-heaved for several minutes before the sensation finally went away.

  He held up his hand and flipped it from back to front. His body looked the same. But something definitely felt different.

  Mal punched his arm, and a small ring came from the limb.

  That’s promising.

  The next step would be a weapon of some sort.

  Luckily, there was no shortage of potentially lethal tools. He spotted a long cylindrical stick out of the corner of his eye. He walked over to it and picked it up, then twirled it around in his hands.

  He swung the branch down and noted its heaviness. As a club, it would be absolutely devastating. He wished he could sharpen the tip and turn it into something a bit more lethal, but—

  Wait, there was nothing saying he couldn’t do that.

  He picked up a rock and scraped away at the metal. Metal dust came off in small amounts.

  After a few minutes, Mal put the rock back into his satchel and held the stick with both hands. He focused his breath—then lunged forward.

  The metal stick went gracefully through the air until Mal tripped over his own feet and nearly fell to the ground. He barely managed to catch himself and looked left and right to see if anybody had seen him.

  He let out a sigh. What he wouldn’t give for the ability to cast Void Orbs quicker. That would make things so much easier.

  On the other hand, that would also attract a great deal of attention.

  Maybe it was for the best that his spellcasting was limited.

  With all his gear prepped, it was time to go find the artifact.

  He looked around in a circle and frowned sharply. How exactly were the teachers expecting Mal and the other students to find the artifacts? If he had some sort of detection spell, he was sure it would be exceptionally simple.

  Mal looked over at one of the trees and scratched his head. That would be the most obvious method.

  Luckily, the trees were more similar to oaks than they were to pines. The biggest issue was that going through the leaves would’ve been extremely painful—if not for the fact that Mal’s skin was currently as hard as metal. The leaves scratched against his body but failed to cut and draw blood.

  He reached the top and poked his head up above the foliage.

  In the distance, he spotted the white flag. It was easily a twenty-minute walk away.

  That’s good, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. He turned in a slow circle until he came across pillars. A good twenty of them. Mal was willing to bet that each one of those pillars had an artifact. Maybe even multiple.

  He hopped down from the tree and made his way in the direction of the closest pillar. His footsteps crinkled against the hard metal leaves. In the distance, he could hear the chirping of birds.

  A flicker of movement.

  He wasn’t alone.

  And given that the creature had said hello, it probably wasn’t friendly. Razorsnake? No, those were footsteps. Tungstenbird? It wasn’t flying. It must have been an Ironwolf, then, looking for fresh prey.

  Mal tried to recall his education. Ironwolves weren’t too dangerous, right? Only Grade 3s. Nothing compared to a grade 2—or worse, a grade EX.

  He slowed his footsteps and leaned his head back. He shut his eyes, listening for sounds of movement.

  To his left.

  It was trying to get the ambush on him.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t know that Mal had long since seen and heard the creature.

  Mal’s arms tensed. He would need to move fast. Metal body or not, he didn’t want to risk getting seriously injured if he could avoid it. Plus, he still wasn’t entirely sure how long his brew would last.

  He took a long, slow breath. His heart began to beat faster and faster, despite his attempts at calming himself.

  Mal had been in infinitely more dangerous battles. He’d fought against three Heralds. In his time, he was known as the Endbringer, a threat to the stability of the entire world.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  So why was an Ironwolf, of all things, getting him excited?

  A small smile crept onto Mal’s face.

  Maybe, deep down, despite what he wanted to tell himself, perhaps there was a small part of him that did enjoy a good scrap.

  The creature pounced. Mal’s eyes snapped open.

  Puck was having a pretty terrible day.

  One of his students had nearly gotten himself killed, creating an “experimental” rune that nearly blew up half of the spell-crafting department. Another had been drinking random potions because the labels had been taken off, and she needed to test which was which. One of the examinees had gone and hit his head on the cobblestone a day before the exam. Cassandra worked overtime and had just barely managed to patch him up.

  And now, he was here, up at 6:30 in the morning, watching a bunch of kids run around like headless chickens while his much more competent professors acted like complete psychopaths about the entire thing.

  He glanced over at one of the many scrying orbs that Igna had set up. One of them depicted a teenager, face to the ground, blood pooling underneath him.

  “We’ll have to send a medical team for that one,” Igna yawned and covered her mouth with her hand. “Don’t want another death on record. The city council would throw another hissy fit.”

  Vigil sighed. “Thank the First Hero for that.”

  Puck blinked. A rare moment of sanity from one of his professors?

  “Ultimately, however, she shouldn’t have applied if she was unprepared for the possibility of such a thing happening.”

  Puck resisted the urge to scream. Why were they all so insane?

  “Headmaster,” Igna looked over at him. “Do you think you could teleport that boy out there? Best not to risk any permanent damage.”

  Oh, Eternus, don’t make me do anything, please.

  Vigil raised an eyebrow. “That is not the headmaster’s role, Igna, and you know it. To ask him to waste his magic on something as petty as this is the height of arrogance.”

  Igna puffed out her cheek like an angry child. “I know, but it’s so rare to see him use magic. I’ve only ever heard of him taking things seriously secondhand. Never in person. All he does is teach the first years the absolute basics, never anything truly interesting.”

  “It’s a sight to behold,” Vigil said. “I’ve only seen it once in person, and his sheer power was enough to knock me out.”

  The whole time those two had been having that conversation, Puck had been trying to keep as straight a face as possible.

  Because the truth was that everything Vigil was saying was complete and utter bullcrap.

  The time that Vigil was referring to was when they had both gotten blackout drunk and were cornered by a bunch of miscreants. Vigil had tried to cast some sort of spell. It just made a random flare, which scared the bandits away, and he forgot that he cast the spell and went unconscious. Somehow, in Vigil’s mind, this sequence of events became “Puck and he were cornered by four archdemons, and Puck had single-handedly sent them straight back to hell with a single word of power.”

  It had been like this for most of Puck’s life. He had almost no magical talent and a D-rank core, but the examiner who’d measured him when he was a boy accidentally registered Puck as an S-rank core. At first, Puck had thought himself fortunate. He planned to go to Exodi, coast through the classes, pick up a degree, then get an easy job as a court wizard in some small duchy in the middle of nowhere.

  It seemed like the plan was going to work. He arrived, the jobs were incredibly easy and mostly involved simply giving advice to the king.

  The next thing Puck knows, there’s a demonic incursion, and he survives mostly by running away. The people who found him thought that he’d single-handedly banished the demons back to hell, when in reality, they had just gone back on their own after he’d made up a lie to them about a traveling band of mage enforcers.

  Puck kept on trying to get a nice, cozy, comfortable job, but bad luck seemed to follow him like a plague. Each time, he would barely survive by the skin of his teeth, and each time, his reputation became more and more inflated.

  It was now to the point where he was the right hand of the king himself and his representative at Exodi.

  Thankfully, it seemed like Puck had managed to luck out this time. It was dangerous here, but nobody was actively trying to kill him, which was a nice change of pace.

  Sure, there was a wasteland full of creatures of unimaginable horror within viewing distance of his office at the top of Central Hall, but the last crossing had been nearly thirty years ago. And besides, while those wizards who tried to take the Eastern Wastes failed, they still wreaked havoc on all the magical beasts there. It would take time for them to recover.

  The biggest issue was making sure that he wouldn’t get caught and called out by his enamored professors and students who thought that he made the sun rise.

  He had an image in his head of Igna disassembling him with a grin after finding out he was a fake. Not exactly something he was eager to test.

  “What do you think of her?” Igna said.

  Puck jerked up and looked over at Igna. “Who?”

  Igna pointed over at one of the scrying orbs. In it, a young girl with long, straight yellow hair and bright blue eyes was facing up against a Razorsnake. The snake was easily seven times her size in length, towering over her like an executioner’s axe. Its red eyes glared spitefully at her, and its tongue flicked out as if tasting the way her flesh would feel on its tongue.

  He recognized those features.

  "Princess Savaly," he said. "Should we be worried? A Razorsnake is bordering Grade 2, it’s the strongest thing in that forest, by far.”

  Her eyes flashed, and three orbs of magic formed above her head. They shot out like crossbow bolts and crashed into the Razorsnake. The orbs rotated and shredded through the creature with a loud buzz.

  The Razorsnake's head dropped to the ground, more an unrecognizable sack of meat than anything else.

  Okay, Puck didn’t have to worry about her safety. Actually, he was more concerned for the safety of the magical beasts that lay between her and her objective.

  "The power of an S-rank core is truly something to behold," Vigil muttered. "It's a shame she's the second child. Not just because of her power, but because of her dedication and intelligence."

  "Yes, those were custom modifications to the spell." Igna touched the scrying orb and rewound it to the moment when the orbs appeared. She pointed to thin ethereal spikes at the ends of the orbs. "You see those? Very impressive, especially for someone who isn't even a first-year."

  Puck nodded sagely, frantically thinking of something to contribute.

  "The brightest flames burn out the fastest," he said, recalling some vague saying that a food stall vendor had told him once.

  Igna hummed thoughtfully. "Very true, Headmaster. The mental aspect is very important. We'll have to ensure that she doesn't burn out and that she's treated normally. Give her the chance to make friends, enjoy normal school activities. I can't imagine she had very many of those growing up in the palace."

  Vigil raised an eyebrow and looked over at Igna. "Since when do you care about things like the mental health of our students?"

  Igna snorted.

  "I don't," she said. "But I also recognize that an unstable princess in possession of enough power to blow up a city block is a terrible combination."

  For once, Igna had said something Puck could completely agree with. He already knew, thanks to his connections, that there were several people who backed Savaly for the throne over her older sister. What if Savaly, unstable and dangerous, chose a violent method to put herself on the throne? What if she cut off ties with her father?

  Puck's plans for retirement would very quickly go out the window, as he would be dragged into the inevitable battle that would result.

  Note to self, he thought. Make sure to check in on Savaly once in a blue moon.

  Hopefully she still remembered him from her youth. He'd spent a few years working in the palace, advising the king. Strangely enough, most of what he had done was resolve the many family conflicts that would occur between the king and the rest of his family. It turns out that the ideas of "treating others as you want to be treated" and "basic human empathy" were extremely difficult concepts for members of the royal family to grasp.

  Savaly in particular had worried him. She'd had this strange way of looking at the world, as if nothing that was happening interested her. To her, a tool and a person were the same. Part of it was probably genetic, but part of it was due to the overwhelming pressure they put on that poor kid. As soon as it was found out that she had an S-rank core, she was treated more like an animal in the royal menagerie than a person.

  Puck had tried his best to break this perception, and he personally treated her like the little girl that she was. But it was hard to tell to what extent it worked, as she almost always kept that disinterested look on her face. There were a few times when he was interacting with her that he played the part of a fool, and it almost seemed like there was a sparkle in her eyes in those moments. But then some noble or servant would come along, and the look would disappear as quickly as it appeared.

  And then he'd been sent off to another post, and she slipped from his mind.

  Out of the corner of his eye, a young man caught his attention.

  He was holding a metal stick and facing off against an Ironwolf.

  It was hard to say what was attracting Puck to the student. But there was something about the way he stood there that reminded him vaguely of his time with the king. A certain sort of self-confidence and authority.

  He looked closer.

  He had enough experience with the scrying orb to know how to rotate the viewing angle. He touched the orb and maneuvered it so that he could see the boy's face.

  Calm. Completely calm. He wasn't faking it either, like Puck. Puck knew a fellow liar when he saw one. This guy was the real deal.

  "Who is he?" Puck pointed at the scrying orb. "The man with the stick."

  Igna looked at the orb and scoffed. "Him? Nobody."

  "You recognize him, then." Puck watched with a frown as the Ironwolf crept closer. "Is he an S-rank?"

  Igna turned and looked at him with an incredulous expression. "Him? Absolutely not! He's an F-rank!"

  That wasn't right. How would an F-rank have that kind of confidence?

  "What about his written exam scores?" Puck asked.

  "They were nothing impressive. Below average. The only reason he's here is because his father's political influence was just enough to get him a spot for the entrance exam.”

  Puck kept a straight face. He knew full well that Igna had been asked directly by the noble faction to place a handful of their students into the school. The way he knew this? The king had sent a letter telling him to stop her from doing that.

  Unfortunately, he didn't feel like getting his face melted by the very scary magic wizard woman, so he'd made the brave and heroic decision to do absolutely nothing.

  I'm so fired.

  He looked back at the young man. Puck had always had a thing for wildcards. Perhaps he sympathized with them. It was hard to tell, sometimes.

  He pushed the thought out of his mind. "And there's nothing else about him? No rare talents, no unusual skills?"

  "Not as far as I know." Igna shook her head. "Why are you so interested in him? What, does he have a connection with the royals?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  Igna frowned, clearly confused. Puck did his best to keep a straight face.

  Each of them had their own goals to push. Vigil had a number of friends from the academy who still kept in contact with him. They were the ones who had recommended Vigil, and the alumni faction of the board had more or less demanded that Puck accept Vigil as a professor. Not that Puck minded—Vigil was amiable, and Puck even considered him a friend.

  Igna, on the other hand, was a representative of the nobles. Puck supposed that this young man didn't have a particularly powerful family, otherwise Igna would've swallowed her pride and pushed for him to enter the academy.

  Puck, meanwhile, was, in theory, a representative of the king. But generally speaking, the king didn't actually require very many people to be admitted. The royal family had extraordinarily strong magic. No faction was going to deny any of the princes or princesses a chance to hone that talent.

  In practice, Puck basically had free rein to pick whoever he thought had potential.

  He had no way to judge potential, because he was an awful mage. So instead, he usually just picked more or less at random or whoever caught his eye.

  Puck looked closer at the young man on the screen.

  "I know this will sound absurd," he said. "But I think we're about to see something shocking."

  "Headmaster, there's usually at least two maulings every entrance exam. That’s not shocking.”

  "No, you don't understand." Puck turned his head and met Igna's eyes, his voice certain. "It won't be him who's mauled. It's going to be that Ironwolf."

  Igna furrowed her eyebrows. "Are you sure? I'm afraid I don't follow your logic, Professor."

  Puck looked back at the scrying orb.

  "I have an instinct about these things. Now pay close attention. I want you watching in case there's something I miss."

  Now then, young examinee, he thought. Show me what you're made of.