There was no way for him to square the reality with what had just happened.

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's like you were using Will. But you weren't?"

  He couldn't feel it. He knew how using Will felt and this was not it.

  "It felt like I was focusing on numbers or something. I was in a flow state and ... I guess that's what you saw."

  She got a little closer. "You didn't imbue yourself with any will?"

  He made a show of patting himself down. He shook his head.

  Mila crossed her arms. "How long has this been going on for?"

  "Honestly I don't know what's going on. She's been mentioning things that she probably thinks I should know. Aluis? Dascairn?"

  Mila nodded. "I think we should do some testing. I really think that we should fight but that spear..."

  The spear was something else. He could feel it... she wanted to be used and the call was strong. If only he just...

  Suddenly there was a hand on his arm, and the spear was being put back into its carrying case and he wasn't touching it.

  His focus returned and he was staring at Mila. She had both of her hands on his face. "Come back to us hero. Something is going on with you. Let's go to the medica."

  He shook his body violently. "No, I... I need that back."

  She placed the spear behind herself. For one brief second, she looked like she was going to hit him with and he shrunk back.

  "You are going to the medica."

  "No. They're going to ask too many questions. I can't handle it."

  Mila inhaled deeply. "Fine. But you're not touching this thing until we're done. Do you understand what I'm telling you or am I going to have to shake you until the rental boy falls out."

  "I'm not hiding any rental boys in my toga; I'll have you know."

  "There's a fat chance that that's true because I know that I can see one right now."

  You looked around opening his toga and seeing if somehow, he'd missed a small person hiding in there. Of course that wasn't something in there. He shifted his toga around off his tunic and only then did he realize she might have meant him.

  He gave her a flat stare. "You've got to be kidding me."

  "Did it work?"

  The moment flashed back and he could recall vividly being under the influence of someone else's magic and not liking it. That was how he had done this whole thing that he might as well just smash the thing himself. It made him angry that destroying the spear would create more questions than it otherwise would have.

  That didn't seem right. Things were things even if they had been a bespoke creation of adding a succubus spirit to his spear. It made the spear worse, in many ways and better in perhaps one.

  "You're doing it again."

  "Sorry let me just... I need to tap into my Soul Magic and see what just happened. Is that alright?"

  She nodded and then sat down next to him. She looked concerned, which made sense, but he didn't know how to resolve that for her. He was taking respect that he thought he could take while she was doing whatever she did. Mila was still an important part of their group, but he didn't know if he thought of what they were doing as equivalent.

  She had done a lot for him, but he had given her both will and soul magic. Those things were priceless individually, and together it was rare and would set a person up for life. He knew it, she knew it and he was trying to get to a point where he might be able to transfer Spirit magic to her. He couldn't do it because he couldn't tell her how to advance it to the second level. Without another demon around he wasn't sure if that was even possible. Usually, skills advanced.

  The more you used them and the higher level you were the more you needed to work on that skill.

  And he tried everything he could think of to get it to the next level. The skill didn't tell him what to do. Soul Magic made him understand it more than he used it. He wasn't immediately the best at it, but he did have a firm grasp on his capabilities. Well magic was well qualified and how people would advance in it. He had just skipped a lot of the skill growth portion because he spent a lot of time stuck in those visions.

  He'd been through so many times that he could nearly write his own way out of the school and just applied directly and come in as a specialist. He wanted the prestige of graduating now that this had been offered to him but that was only part of it. If you could just get government listen to his father and give him what he needed it. Then he would consider this enough of a fair trade. He loved his parents, but what government had done to them by denying them. There's a lot of land had really stung.

  His father had moved closer to the Capitol and then inside of the central business district under the understanding that he was going to be given a plot of land. One that he could farm but they hadn't been going well, and it had been a time. Just resolving the issue. I'd taken his father more than two years, and they had fully settled into the city life while they waited for it. It was these kinds of things that really aren't around the Empire. They could make things so much better now that they were in charge, but it seemed like that was never their priority.

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  "Do you want to spar or do you just want to talk about this because I came down here to get some exercise in. We care about you. I might not be your girlfriend, but we are a team. We are a family."

  "There's no way that you could get me with that family bit."

  "Oh really? Why aren't you telling me about how you wanted to fix your father's problems and that's why you need somebody on the inside in government? Because I think that we might be able to fix your father's problems expeditiously."

  That sounded amazing. It also sounded like she was going to come in and ask for something and he was skeptical. People didn't say these kinds of things unless they had something to follow through with.

  “It would be nice. I want them to not have to worry, but it’s not my place. He could have moved anywhere else.”

  “You’re not responsible for them. They’re your parents. They’re supposed to take care of you. This isn’t supposed to be controversial.”

  “When government treats them like… well you know.”

  “I don’t think we’ve talked about this before in particular.” She sat down cross legged next to him. “If you don’t mind, we can stretch if we’re not going to spar.”

  “Sure. Let’s stretch. So, you know what happens when you’ve done your twenty years and they are supposed to give you a plot of land, right? The legion takes and then it’s supposed to give?”

  She nodded. “I’m familiar. My father served and did the ten years. They had me while he was in.”

  “I was the same. Mine married during his first tour and we followed him around. I don’t remember much of camp life, but it was something I grew up doing. Everything we had was hand sewn from the patches of the clothing that the legion cast off. Mom was always good at using that stuff to help us get by. Dad always had to deal with bridges and such. He knows his way around a big empire project. That at least kept us from moving around a ton.”

  “It’s the little things.” Mila folded fully forward and he followed along.

  He felt it everywhere. She pulled him apart verbally as they moved through some Fiddler forsaken routine that was all her own.

  “This feels amazing. Do you do this everyday?”

  “Most days. Getting Athletics was a boon though.”

  Ludere wasn’t a naturally stretchy person, so his ability to transfer his athleticism into something actionable in this domain all came as a surprise. “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ve been helping you out, Ludo. I don’t know if you have the stretch required for this next thing. Or Maybe I’m just hoping that your tunic won’t split.”

  “I’m not in danger of that but note taken. I had… are these the ones? No… they’re not. I had a problem with one where I had my mother alter the crotch just because I’d grown so much. I had those fixed while we were out. I still say that we should just train naked and then dip into the river, but no one is willing to do that.”

  Mila laughed. “Again, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t but look at your contemporaries. Or rather look at everyone that isn’t one of us. They’re either not here, not training hard and in the case of the ones that are, it’s clear that they are the exception. They’ve always had everything handed to them so why should they start fixing their own problems now.”

  It was true, so far as he could guess. Those that took up time in the duels, the ones that really applied themselves were monsters. He knew which ones that he would not want to fight, but there were so few that could go toe to toe with a demon and survive. Even with a little bit of training, they could at least survive more than a few minutes. If he started systematically going through and swapping skills with more than just Cire and Mila, then word would get out and that was not what he wanted to do.

  “Are you thinking about swaps after all of this?”

  He nodded.

  “I think that we need to talk about trust and keeping the circle small at first. Only Ludos. You already picked two on the outside and.. I guess I trust them. But we can’t just give anyone the keys to the arena.”

  Ludere looked around. No one was close enough to overhear unless they had some sense-based power and then hopefully they would think that they were talking about something else. They were both on the same page about giving the lower class more opportunities but there was always the risk of his big secret getting out. Or at least one of his big secrets.

  “I hear you. I haven’t really thought about that. Have you?”

  “I know a few people that I trust with my life, but you don’t know. The more strangers we bring in the harder it is to hide. The harder it is to hide… The faster we just become another tool for them.”

  She didn’t need to say who. They both knew. It was written all over her face. The chances of both getting good positions within government or military were not high. It was better chances that one of them got something good and the other got a lower ranking but still important job. Their investigation into how the demons had made their way onto the school grounds had dried up and they were doing their best to figure out what the Grammarians knew.

  Knowledge was power, but the right secret could destroy any power.