章 15: Party Time

"Heck Yeah!! Third place!" Clay immediately began celebrating.

"It really is third place..." Amber was a bit stunned.

"Wait, more importantly than that since when was our party named 'Clay's Battalion'?" Jack grabbed onto a different point.

Clay was too busy jumping around in excitement to pay attention to anything else and Amber seemed to be in shock, so it fell to Iris to explain this conundrum. She stopped eating everything in sight just long enough to let out a sentence.

"He named it that as soon as it was officially a party." Iris grunted.

Jack sighed deeply before replying.

"That's such a bad name..."

"What are you talking about? It's simple and accurate! It's the perfect name! Look at these other stupid names our classmates are using!" Clay interrupted gesturing back to the ranking page. "Look at this, Party #1 'The Light of Dawn', Party #2 'Unbridled Darkness'."

Jack looked over the list briefly. It was true, the majority of the party names were absolutely terrible. Apparently the Academy gave a nearly unlimited amount of freedom towards naming.

"Looking at this list is physically painful. Please close it and let me eat in peace." Iris grimaced and looked away.

"I second that." Jack agreed.

"Okay." Clay assented and closed his ID bracelet's display. "Anyway, let's get this party started!"

Clay struck a triumphant pose with a fist in the air. He held it for several seconds before he began to feel awkward. The rest of the party stared at him blankly.

"That's brings up a good point. What does one do with a party anyway?" Jack asked. "I've never seen one before."

"Can you eat it?" Iris added with a straight face.

"You ... you party?" Clay began "You know, you eat some snacks and drink some drinks and... party."

Reaching this point the party realized that their 'party' was a rather unclear concept. Jack had no real idea what to do with a party as he had never really attended one. Iris likewise was unclear on the concept. Clay and Amber's knowledge of parties was mainly as Clay had stated, a group gathered had drinks and food and hung out, chatting or doing various other things.

Rust's knowledge and experience with parties was slightly different as she was a member of the Vermillion family. The parties of the Grand Families were big events planned well in advance of the actual event. They were essentially shows of power and wealth as well as staging grounds for negotiations between the families. They were exceedingly formal events.

"So, ... what exactly do we want to do then? I don't really know how to 'party'." Jack confided.

"Well we have food, so we could just snack and discuss plans some more." Rust supplied.

Everyone was left scratching their heads for a minute considering the matter. They got into some of the snacks and drinks as they did so. Remembering something suddenly Jack spoke up.

"Oh yeah, I forgot in all the excitement of getting third, we didn't read any of the notes sent by the teachers. Maybe one of them explains exactly how we got first place?" Jack reminded.

"Ah, that's true." Clay pulled up his messages while speaking, "Yep, we've got messages from all our class teachers. I'll read 'em out."

Most of the messages were brief congratulations and urgings to keep up the good work that rang somewhat hollow to the 'party of failures'. Most of their teachers had lost all hope in these delinquent students who had 'wasted their talent'. As such it was very unexpected that they did so well; even so their didn't have high expectations for their futures. Their teachers were aware that they achieved third place solely on the merits of killing a half Magic Beast and returning first. They still felt that these students who tried to go against convention wouldn't be able to make it very far.

The only message of any consequence was from Mrs. Mint, Jack's teacher. It detailed how their battle with the bear had been reported back to the Academy by Commander Matthias. That explained how they'd achieved the rank they had. She also encouraged them to keep working hard to live up to their potential. The last thing she'd written was that the water sample Jack gave her seemed to be perfectly ordinary but she was still studying it a bit longer.

Reading these half-hearted messages from their teachers pushed the already uncertain mood even further away from the intended festive atmosphere. They sat for a few moments in silence before the mood was broken by the sound of Iris crunching on some chips. Pushing aside the grim mood that had drifted in the party changed gear and started to discuss some lighter topics. The conversation wandered up and down and eventually drifted to the topic of future goals.

"I want to open a shop like my parents, to sell plants and things." Amber daydreamed. "I've always loved working with plants I guess."

"I want to be recorded in my family history as one of our heroes, among the greatest members of our family. So I gotta perform some impressive military feat." Clay declared while sipping some soda.

"I don't really have any grand ambitions. I just want to research runes." Jack commented.

"I just want to explore the outside for as long as possible." Rust's wishes were simple.

Iris was the only one to not comment on this topic, continuing to munch on things quietly. At this point they'd been chatting for nearly an hour and still being somewhat unfamiliar with each other they were running out of things to talk about. Sitting in silence would simply be too awkward to bear. Going back to the only thing he was familiar with Jack spoke up.

"Everyone should have enough condensed essence to engrave at least one rune now, right?"

"Yeah, I have enough to push to Rank-2." Clay answered.

"Yes." Amber responded.

Rust and Iris merely nodded. Condensed essence was the result of cultivation and a substance purely used for cultivation. One took the essence present naturally in the world around them and absorbed, purified, and compressed it. It would then be stored in the dantian until it was needed. The process of engraving runes into ones flesh used up one's condensed essence. As such when one engraved the runes necessary to reach the next rank one would have to start re-cultivating from empty. Of course the effects of engraving runes was worth the effort. When one engraved a rune into their flesh the condensed essence of the world was made their own, into a part of their body strengthening them. Ranking up also increased the amount of condensed essence one could store giving access to more complex runes the higher they cultivated.

After one had engraved a rune, to activate and use it one absorbed the essence from the world around them. Only in grave emergency when one simply couldn't absorb essence from the world fast enough would one use their condensed essence 'burning their cultivation' quite literally using up weeks of effort in seconds.

Hearing their responses Jack continued.

"We've got a week left until the final exam and the rewards this time are simply too nice to ignore, even for us. I suggest we all try to reach Rank-2 before then. Since we are all more or less ready for our second rune I would also like to suggest that we collectively engrave our second runes today, as a party. It's something we'll be doing going forward as well, as a party." Jack explained.

'I'm sure you're all aware but at higher ranks the runes are increasingly complex. While we don't doubt you're ability to engrave those complex runes, drawing them is a specialized art. Not even mentioning the runes that need to be engraved on our backs, drawing the guides around your own arms and legs is difficult enough. It's best if you get used to Jack and myself painting them on for you.' Rust supported Jack's statement. Jack nodded in agreement to her words.

Meanwhile thinking of the eventual need for someone else to paint across the whole of their back everyone's expressions became a little odd. It was an obvious matter, it really is impossible to draw on one's own back, not even mentioning the incredible complexity of the runes required at that stage. Jack quickly supplemented Rust's previous statement in an attempt to assuage some of the awkwardness.

"Of course since both Rust and myself are moving towards being rune masters I can paint Clay's guides and Rust can paint Iris' and Amber's." Jack explained.

Hearing this their expressions eased. They were able to avoid potentially uncomfortable situations with this arrangement. The atmosphere lightened up a bit before Iris made an voiced an observation.

"Jack can help Clay, Rust can help Amber and I, but whose going to help Jack and Rust?" Iris asked wearing a faint smirk.

With this question voiced it was Jack and Rust's expressions that became somewhat complicated. Seeing this Clay and Amber both wore amused grins. Feeling a sudden need to explain Jack quickly replied.

"Bot Rust and myself are aspiring rune masters, we can paint the guides on ourselves even at awkward angles."

"Bad angles, maybe but your backs aren't just a problem of angle." Clay needled them a little further wearing a wide grin.

'Isn't the answer then obvious? Yes Jack will need to paint the guides across my back, and I across his.' Rust declared without flinching. 'This is the obvious and sole solution. The reason to have two rune masters is so that they can assist each other. No one else can truly be trusted to flawlessly paint the increasingly complex guides.'

With that declaration there was obviously nothing else to discuss on this matter. All that was left was to move on to engraving their second runes.