285 Student Progress

Gary went shopping with aplomb.

"I want that house!" he picked a spacious bungalow close to the Academy.

"I want that horse!"

"I want that necklace! It should fit Siti…"

Of course, Gary wouldn't be so irresponsible as to ignore the actual reason why he had sudden unlimited shopping funds, and he wasn't crazy enough to spend Mindy's money until she was broke. Just a few million Lir for the sake of a better future with Siti… most of it had to be spent properly, on the things they would need for their trip to the Wildlands and the investigation of the spatial anomaly.

For example, the minute Tang Yin heard that they had funding, he started scribbling a long list of lab equipment he wanted. This included at least ten blue mana crystals bought directly from the Academy's Emergency Stores, each of which came at the escalated cost of 200,000 lir. Adding in the rest of the equipment brought Tang Yin's bill up to nearly five million lir.

Gary also brought in Juni and Siti. The two members of Club Sacred Sigil immediately set about buying magical equipment from their Club, starting with rune-scriving kits, inscription kits, plenty of empty magic scrolls and blank jade plates, and a whole kilogram of mana dust for each of them.

"Who else is coming?" Siti asked Gary.

"Everyone." Gary shrugged. "Including Tang Yin, that's nine of us in total."

So they went out and got nine sets of Tier 5 Runic Armor directly from Juni's Eldest Senior Brother in Club Sacred Sigil. This was light leather armor made from the hide of an Iron-Hoof Ox. Apparently the beast had been bigger than Gary's new house, so there had been plenty of leather for that Eldest Senior Brother to practice his craft on. They bought Tier 3 fireball wands and mana shield projectors for each of the nine of them, three Tier 4 Staves of Fire Wind, three Tier 4 Staves of Lightning Bolt, three Tier 4 Staves of Glacial Spike, and even tried to auction for a single Tier 7 Scroll of Inferno, but quit when they realized that the competing bidders were all teachers that they really didn't want to offend.

The wands cost about 10,000 lir each, and the staves were ten times that. The mana shields were priced at 20,000 lir apiece, and Tier 5 armor cost a grand total of 2,700,000 for the nine sets.

Within half a day, Gary's shopping bill ran up to 12,870,000 lir, and he was only just getting started. The wands and the staves were just for clearing out lower level Wilds, sort of everyday-use weaponry. For stronger Wilds, they needed Tier 5 and above firepower.

That sort of firepower wasn't easily bought by students, however. The auction where they tried to bid for the Tier 7 scroll was practically their best bet already. As far as the Academy shopkeepers were concerned, Tier 4 staves were the limit for students.

"Is it really a problem?" Loh asked.

"I think so." Gary sighed theatrically. "What we have is fine for pest control, but if we go up against the serious Spectres, we're going to need bigger guns."

"Then why not just get bigger guns?" Loh asked, directly.

Gary's eyes suddenly popped wide open. "You're right! You're so right! What was I thinking, trying to buy high Tier weapons in school supply shops?!"

This directly led them to the shipyards where Gary spent another four million lir on a Strike Frigate.

The Strike Frigate was a commercial Ecclesia Heavy Industries airship designed for skirmisher tactics; hit-and-run jobs. It had one big gun and one very big engine, and little space for anything else. Dash in, blast away at maximum effective range, and then run for your life; that was the style of the Strike Frigate. It wasn't much for long-range voyages, and had little space for crew or cargo, but it was a favorite of small escort groups and anti-bandit rescue teams.

"We'll make you a one-time offer." The dock foreman told Charlie over Gary's comm crystal. Charlie was handling the purchase over the comms since Gary was likely not going to be able to buy something of that level. Gary himself just stood there and held the comms crystal for them to talk. "For an additional 500,000 lir, we'll upgrade the cannon to a ThunderBlast 600. That's a runic cannon rated at Tier 5.6!

"Make that 400,000 and you've got a deal." Charlie offered.

But the foreman shook his head. "No discount. Sorry."

"We should get it. I don't think Mindy would mind." Gary voiced out.

"Fine. Let's get the upgrade." Charlie concluded.

Thus the airship plus the upgrade added another four million lir to the shopping bill.

***

Now in a Strike Frigate registered to Deutero Company's Charlie Meadows, Gary, Tang Yin, and the rest of the gang followed a Deutero convoy headed for Fal'Herim. Charlie's arrangements had it so that they were actually running escort duty for this convoy, but thankfully, they arrived at Fal'Herim without incident.

"We're going to need to refuel." Gary observed. "Someone call Charlie. We'll buy fuel from Deutero."

There were no more mana crystals on sale, and even mana-dust soaked in high conductivity solutions were starting to cost thrice as much as it used to. A full tank cost them two thousand Lir.

From there, they headed straight for Kara-Goth following the road the Iron Legion built in the desert. Halfway to Kara-Goth, they were overtaken by six flights of Type-A Fighters headed south for their 'quality testing'.

"I thought we were fast!" Gary protested. "How did they overtake us so easily?"

Jamie, at the helm, cleared her throat. "We could speed up, but that would drain the power even faster. How much money do you want Mindy to pay for our fuel?"

Gary subsided with a sigh.

As if to comfort him, they also overtook a fleet of airships headed south. "Are those…?"

"Airships from the Dragon Empire." Loh observed. "Didn't Mindy mention something about a Song Chen guy bringing his family from there? Those are probably them."

"That's a lot of ships for one family." Gary noted, counting.

"Fifty Sky Galleons." Isabelle was already done counting. "It says a lot about the size and wealth of the Song Clan."

"I'm seeing kids our age and younger. Did the entire clan come over?" Tamera gaped. "Is this a total clan migration?"

"Who knows?" Loh shook his head. "I rather doubt it, though."

Anyway, the Song Clan was headed south-east, not directly south. It was plain to see that they were going directly to Song Chen's territory.

"Well, we could just stop by and ask… oh, hang on." Isabella suddenly paused and took out a comms crystal. "Hello? Yes, Senior Sister. No, we're fine, we're crossing the Endless Desert, and we're almost at the Wildlands now. Thank you for your concern. Yes, I'll call you when we reach safely. Bye."

Gary wasn't the only one blinking at her.

Isabella saw them all gaping and grimaced. "That… my Senior Sister wanted to check on me and make sure I was okay."

"Huh. That's… odd…" Gary mused.

"What's so odd about it? My Senior Brother wants us to keep him in the loop too. He's especially concerned about the performance of our armor in battle." Juni shrugged.

Gary frowned. "Does that mean both Club Faith and Club Sacred Sigil are keeping tabs on us? What did we do to draw the attention of the Church of Light?"

"Calm down. A couple of friends want to know that we're all right. What's wrong with that?" Juni asked.

"No, I actually think there's more to it." Gary said, frowning. "I just have this feeling. It's a gut feeling."

"I think what you're feeling is hunger." Tamera snorted.

Siti wordlessly offered him a sandwich.

Gary examined it. "Sardine? Where did you get this?"

"I made it, just now." Siti explained. "Anyone else want lunch?"

Six hands were raised and lunch immediately commenced.

***

Meanwhile, Remian was thrilled to make an earth-shaking discovery in the Alchemist Guild Headquarters Library.

There was a book entitled 'Ancient Formations', and it had pictures of the formations people discovered in ancient ruins all over the map!

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Remian turned the pages, searching almost feverishly for the one he most earnestly needed to study.

There! It was there! The book had it! Page after page of clear, detailed pictures! Remian almost let out a whoop of exultation right there in the library.

"Oh? You look excited. Care to share?" A kindly teacher in the Formations section stopped by.

"Teacher! Can you help me figure this out?" Remian instantly leapt at the opportunity with both hands, both feet and his whole heart.

"This…? Mmm. Well, I'm not an expert in this field, but I can tell you that this symbol here? This is a stabilizer for something. I'm not sure what." The teacher said. "Also, these five symbols seem to be newer than the others. If I had to guess, I'd say those were the control runes."

"Control runes?" Remian blinked.

"That means, by changing those five runes, the general result of the formation's effect is changed."

Remian understood easily enough. Assuming that he'd come in through a Teleportation Array, those runes were likely the ones that determined where he'd go if he used it to leave.

"You might want to check with a few other teachers. They'd know more." The teacher said, and voiced out a string of names.

Remian hung on to those names for dear life, jotted them down on three separate notes, kept them all safely in different places, then made a fourth copy and started looking for those teachers one by one for consultation purposes…