278 Welters.

Another month passed by us with ease, as the midterms drew closer, as did the chance for internships. I wasn't interested in them of course. Working under a magical podiatrist to hedge my bets on a non- existent future career here wasn't even remotely on my list. If I had a feet fetish maybe, but I'm not Quentin.

Tarantino not Coldwater, though with how much of a mat he is, allowing people to walk all over him, I wouldn't be surprised if Coldwater had a feet fetish too.

In the meantime, I had my monster clone chart out the world of Tortus and found the locations of all the labyrinths and had begun preparing armaments to clear them.

But that was for later.

Today we were required to meet with mentors and play Welters.

Of course, I wasn't going to do either if I could handle it, but Eliot insisted I play on their team in the Welters championship.

Yes. It's a tournament arc, ladies and gentlemen. The staple of any magic high school shonen series.

Even this one.

A problem I couldn't just deny him flat out.

But that doesn't mean I have to play fair.

Until I get his ass on the throne and get myself a crown, I can't break off our 'friendship', not to mention I actually enjoyed his company. He was a good friend, the first I have had since Anakin and Ahsoka.

So, while I refused to play, just for him I made a new spell model. A very powerful, very adaptable spell that can wipe out the whole board in one go.

Welters had an exploit built into it.

The central square of the game and this world's version of Quidditch's Golden Snitch.

What was Welters, you ask?

It was chess for magicians. Kinda.

Welters was a game invented to prevent deaths in magical duels. A means of conflict resolution. Like the Olympics, just magic.

It was made up of wooden squares with different circumstances written on them, coded into them even.

In a turn based game, each of the two teams had to cast a dodecahedron globe at a square and depending on where it landed, they could capture a square by casting any spell that followed the circumstances written onto it.

And while the opposing team was casting, every turn you had the opportunity to transmute the wooden squares into other material, or switching their places with other squares to foil the opponents casting.

It was a true contest of skill.

You won not just by how well you could cast but also how well you could adjust your spell to different circumstances on the fly.

There was one exception to this rule however.

At the center of the five by five grid however was one unalterable metal square.

Every match, it was displayed a new and fresh set of either exceeding complex circumstances or a rare and exotic spell in a dead language. All encryoted under cipher of course, because it wasn't already nearly impossible to capture it anyway.

If captured, that one square would flip all remaining untapped squares and sometimes, literally turn the game around.

Of course, this hardly happened because unlike catching the golden snitch for 150 points, this was actually hard to do and could result in death if cast wrong, something most people were afraid to risk, knowing that it was nearly impossible to cast it.

Not with the shitty benefits package associated with this.

It wasn't a very popular sport after all.

The viewership was more akin to little league baseball but it had it's fans, however few and deluded they may be that this was a worthwhile game.

Now, the rules and game were different in every iteration, books or show. But since this world was a mix of both, so was the game.

I liked it well enough as casting practice, sure, but there were better ways to avoid magical duels that don't involve a magical dick measuring contest.

Then again, maybe I am being highly critical of something that the writer came up with on short notice.

Eh, I'll cut him some slack.

Back to the point however, there was another important event happening here, today.

Quentin's dad was sick with a magical cancer. Yes. You heard me right.

There was magical cancer. It even came in different flavours, some tasted by our very own protagonists. There was brain cancer that Quentin's dad had. Then there was spine cancer that Penny got after trying to break into the library's secure containment zone in a place literally called The Poison World without protective equipment.

There was even a puppy called Cancer Puppy, the unofficial mascot of the Physical Kid's Cottage, a 150 year old dog enchanted with a life suspension spell to keep it young and cute. Except, the spell was botched and didn't protect it from diseases just age.

Hence the name.

I plan to treat both of them. Of course, the puppy for free and Quentin's dad?

We will have to wait and see.

Pull him out at his most desperate moment.

If I succeed, I'll have another contract and maybe his undying gratitude. I wouldn't count on the second part though.

He's a weasel, Curly Q.

But a contract will suffice for now.

The more contracts I can milk the better. Don't blame me. Blame the stupid amount of co-operative spells in this place that require three, even four people to cast for any decent effect.

For example, a weather spell required to fake Persephone's return to the overworld requires two people, so does the Voltaic Transfer and the Dimensional Fish Hook used to steal warded property by reeling it in across dimensions.

A lot of good spells require co-op play.

Even sex sometimes.

Yeah, magic is weird around here.

So I need people who I can call up to cast those spells, no questions asked.

Which is why I am here. Sitting in the bleachers watching a Welters game, cheering to support my friends. To secure another contract.

I smiled proudly as I watched Eliot cast the globe onto the board and it rolled to dead center.

I checked the circumstances and boy were they horrible. A solar eclipse on the night of a blood moon.

Damn. Good thing I gave them a spell that works anytime, anywhere regardless of the circumstances as long as there's a strong light source.

Without this, they would have had to rely on Quentin pulling the black hole spell he did in the show and that gpt dangerously close to disaster.

Eliot looked up at me and I gave him a thumbs up. He nodded, and gestured at Quentin to do it.

Why Quentin?

Simple. Magic comes from pain. Well not pain. It comes from catalyzing the dull, ambient magic and pain is just one potent and common catalyst.

More pain equals bigger magic, up to a certain point of course or else every magician would be a masochistic god.

And the person in the most pain right now, was Quentin.

Hence the role fell to him.

He had to create a light source strong enough to power the spell.

Under the guise of co-op magic, they began to cast a spell, with Quentin at the center.

Eliot flung out his hands, chanting a mantra as a shimmering veil flew out across the perimeter of the board while Margo clenched her fists into a hammer and pulled on the mirror dimension, forming a spectral crystal above the central square, floating in place. Then slowly it began to burth new crystals, all floating out over the rest of the board randomly as they pleased, or rather as the circumstances dictated.

Then, Quentin stepped forward, forming a prayer pose and clapped twisting his fingers to face up and down, with his left and right hand respectively then he pulled them apart and at first there was nothing. But then as he slowly moved his hands further apart, sparks began to fly between them, like a firecraker, a small ball of sparks grew into a roaring flame, then condensing into a ball of writhing plasma as the temperature in the stadium rose steadily like a hot summers day and light flooded evey corner of the room from the miniaturized sun in his palms.

Finally, Alice stepped up, forming a circle with her finger to guide the light to the central crystal. She was chosen specifically for this task because she was a phosphoromancer, her discipline being the bending of light.

As soon as the light hit the crystal int he center it jetted out, reflecting and refacting across the board, pinging off of the multitude of mirror crystals till it formed a laser net, burbing the enture board away with a massive laser beam, cascading out in the shap of a cone.

By the end of it, the board was ash, the air in the room was ionized and the audience was gobsmacked into silence.

I huffed.

That just won't do!

So I clapped, seeding a wave of applause that shook the stadium as people cheered and whistled, some even threw popcorn. For some reason.

Weirdos.

I reached into my own bag of extra butter, extra cheesy popcorn to find it empty.

The culprit was obvious.

"Yue..."

"Un?" She acted all innocent but the cheese on her fingers was a dead giveaway.

"Leave some for me will you?" I pinched her cheeks and she made a cute 'awawawa!' noise, pouting.

"Atsuko's spectral refraction in conjunction with the mirror world's ability to send spells haywire. Nicely done." A voice came from behind us, "But if a single step was mistaken.... we'd all have been air fried alive." Cane the accompanying criticism from the only person in the room besides us that knew anything about the mirror world.

"Hey Charlie. Nice to see you here. Last I heard you tried to commit suicide. Again. And then became a NEET." I shot back.

"No thanks to you and the shock collar you put on me." He snapped.

I had created a morality spell for him at Alice's request a couple of weeks back because he kept killing cats for fun everytime he went out.

And well, I'm weak to big boobs. What can I say.

I certainly wasn't using this as an opportunity to treat Charlie like a lab rat for my new soul spells.

No. Nope.

Not at all.

"Well if you didn't slay so much puss, I wouldn't need to. So really it's ypur fault." I shrugged, when I spotted someone out of the corner of my eye, wiping blood out of her nose.

Found her!

I smiled.

"As much I would love to continue our little chat, there's someone I'd like to catch." I waved him off, getting up to meet my target.

"Sonia Kikuno, huh? I like her paper on reversing time bridge alterations." Charlie commented.

I raised an eyebrow.

"What? I'm on house arrest. I haven't got anything better to do all day than to correct papers and work on my magic." He replied.

"I see. And did you find anything wrong with hers?"

"I can tell you. For a price." He smiled like a used car salesman.

I frowned, more out of weirdness than anything.

It's not everyday someone uses my own line on me.

I chuckled.

"Nah. No need." I said to a surprised Charlie and walked off, Yue in tow to find Sonia Kikuno.

Sonia Kikuno.

A former Brakebills student and the pioneer of Horomancy, the magic of time manipulation. She is due to die anytime now from cinnabar exposure. It was causing her brain to get dislodged from her sense of time.

Something her son, Daniel worried about. And that worry manifested in him inventing interdimensional travel in this world. Well for a non-traveler at least.

The Stoppard Cube. A dimension hopping device that was the magical equivalent of the portal gun, albeit a bit primitive.

But then again, it was prototype so I can't judge him too harshly.

What was important was that he had a portal gun equivalent and I can't allow it to interfere with my plans. So I am going to nip the problem in the bud. By curing his mom before he is forced to invent it.

Once he makes that, he will have the chance to become one of the smartest people in this multiverse and eventually, maybe even further.

An infinite Daniel. A god.

That is no bueno for me. I can't have an army drunk and depressed Daniel Kikunos stumbling around busting my schemes across time and space.

If there's even a one percent chance he will do it ... Then I have to take it as an absolute certainty.

Chasing after Sonia, I found her by the cooler, pressing a wet handkerchief over her forehead, her eyes dazed and tired.

Bingo.

I walked over and reached out to her.

"Mrs. Kikuno. A word, please....."

___________________

The extra chapter for 800 powerstones as promised!

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See ya later!

Regular chapter tomorrow cuz I'm tired.