9
Jin Stimpleton listened attentively as Fergus ranted about the guy whose mana was low.
Milo. That was his name.
But Fergus didn’t call him Milo.
He called him normie.
The whole thing made Jin confused.
Jin knew he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. He’d grown up with a lot of muscle, so no one had ever tried bullying him. The last time someone had said a bad word to Jin’s face, they’d lost their face.
And then Jin had gotten into a lot of trouble. If it wasn’t for Fergus and his father’s connections, Jin would probably be sitting in a cell right now somewhere in the Black Zone where all criminals who know magic are kept.
It was rumored that you couldn’t do any magic at all there.
While Jin knew he could get by on his muscle alone, he wasn’t too keen on finding out just how far being a normie would take him.
Which was another reason he didn’t understand Fergus and his hate for this Milo guy.
Jin himself couldn’t do much with the lightning he had, and he was rated a 4. Which was pretty good. Everyone agreed it was good.
He was supposed to be an electromancer. A lightning mage.
It sounded fancy, and there were a lot of things a talented mage could do with lightning. Shooting bolts of lightning was the obvious one. A good strong bolt could melt flesh.
At the very least, it would shock an opponent long enough to smash their head with a good mace.
Jin’s mace was good.
It was very good.
Also, he’d seen one girl form a barrier around herself which repelled metallic objects. That was pretty slick, he thought. It’d be a handy thing to know.
He’d asked her about it, and she’d told him everything she knew about how to cast it. And he’d tried. But he couldn’t grasp how to make the mana form the shield.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried hard enough. It was more that he was blocked by the fact that he couldn’t imagine it. That’s how he knew he wasn’t as smart as he would like to be.
The main thing was, she’d only been rated a 2.
Which was fairly low. Low enough that Fergus hadn’t wanted to be friends with her or even consider letting her onto his team for the dungeon trials. Even if she could be helpful, he still judged her by the number 2.
Yet, Jin thought she clearly had more talent than him, so shouldn’t she get more respect? Even the teachers called what she did a trick, like it was just a cheap gimmick.
But Jin had been too impressed to reduce it to that.
Magic was hard. He had to understand mana and how it flowed. He could summon lightning-aspected mana into his palm. Could even make it extend into his mace, which was great.
It felt awesome to hit things with it.
But he couldn’t manipulate mana as well as a girl rated 2.
In one of his more lucid moments, Jin wondered if the mages had it wrong.
The way he looked at it, there wasn’t much difference between magic and muscle.
As a large guy, he exercised a lot to build more and more muscle across his frame. But the body still had limits. Just like the limits a mage could face as they grew older and couldn’t improve themselves any more.
Jin, for example, would never go beyond 4. Not now. He was too old and had long hit his peak.
Measuring his physical muscle was an easier process than measuring mana. And it was simple to compare himself with Fergus and know that he had more muscle than the smaller man.
Jin’s strength made it easy for him to pick up things. And hit things.
And resist impacts.
But there were countless better fighters he knew who were smaller than him. They could do more damage with a sword or dagger than he could with his mace. They had more agility, and sometimes that counted more than sheer strength.
While he knew he could overpower his opponents, they might prove slippery for him to catch. Or they’d have more martial techniques which could be just as devastating when they were close.
Jin once sparred with a kid almost half his size who’d hit him in the throat with the edge of his hand.
That had dropped him straight away. If the kid had hit a little harder, the damage could have been worse, too.
So, an abundance of muscle didn’t mean he could automatically win a fight.
And if that was the case, how could he measure who was the strongest fighter just by looking at someone?
Maybe, he thought, the ratings weren’t good for much other than measuring how much mana a mage could lift, so to speak. He was comfortable with that.
Fergus didn’t want to hear that sort of thing, though. So he didn’t want to say it out loud.
In the world, 3’s were the most common mages. 3 and 4.
Anything above a 6 was great. Above an 8? Amazing.
Fergus was a 6.
Maybe that’s why Fergus didn’t like Milo, Jin thought with a scratch of his jaw.
Fergus was so far above Milo, that the guy should treat Fergus like a god. But instead, Milo just plodded around as though no one else existed. He didn’t even look at them.
Mostly looked at the floor.
Which was how he’d bumped into Fergus on his first day.
Fergus might’ve let it go. He wasn’t always so petty.
But Milo’s apology had been casual. So casual! For a guy with no magic to be that casual to Fergus was something which had surprised even Jin.
It was like Milo didn’t care at all.
Which would make sense, Jin allowed. If he had a practically null rating, he’d probably give up on everything, too.
Still.
Fergus had kind of overreacted. He’d taken Milo’s quietness as an insult.
And couldn’t let it go.
“I told my father about it, you know. He was just as outraged. He told me to stay away from him, of course. And I don’t go looking for him. But he just keeps showing up, doesn’t he? Don’t you think he’s following us around?”
Jin shrugged. He didn’t think they saw Milo that often at all.
How could they? The guy spent all his time in the lower levels as a simple cleaner.
It’s just that Fergus kept talking about him, so maybe it felt like he was always present.
“I don’t know,” Jin said.
“Well, whatever it is, he’s always skulking about with that broom of his.”
Jin shuddered. Ket had made Milo sweep the lower levels.
The first thing all students were told was to stay away from the lower levels. They were dangerous.
Yet, she sent him down there with a broom.
And he went.
Either he had truly lost the will to live or, Jin admitted privately to himself, the guy had balls of steel hard enough to be compared to dwarven bronze.
“Must be a shitty thing,” Jin said slowly. “To have no mana like that.”
“Normies,” Fergus hissed with a dark scowl.
“They’re a blight. Could you imagine the kind of ratings we’d all have if it weren’t for them?
My father says mages should only marry mages of the same ratings so they can strengthen their potential to have children with higher ratings.
The woman should at least be the same. She should never be less! ”
Jin grunted at that. “My mom wasn’t rated. My dad was a four,” he said.
“And what if your mom was a four, too? Maybe you’d be a six like me.”
Jin doubted that was how it worked, but he nodded anyway.
He owed Fergus and his family a debt he didn’t think he could pay back. Not just for keeping him out of the Black Zone. But the Paddstone family had sponsored his own over many generations.
Now, the Stimpletons were growing their influence in the financial world and it was, his father stressed constantly, thanks to the Paddstones.
When he’d become friends with Fergus, that friendship wasn’t one of equals. Both of them knew it.
Jin would always be little more than a bodyguard to Fergus.
And that was fine.
There was no shame in it.
“I don’t know about that,” he said at last. “Maybe my sister might’ve gotten higher, though.”
“See?” Fergus grasped at the straw. “I sometimes think that normies should be sent to the Black Zone.”
And off he went.
Ranting about locking them up and putting them in camps.
The whole idea was ludicrous. Even the coldest members of the Mage Court had never said such things. In fact, they actively discouraged such ideas.
Calmly, Jin sat back in the comfortable couch and tried not to sigh.
His eyes roamed the wide open space of the Common Room.
Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to get to know the other people in the room as well as he knew Fergus. Did they also hide such views? Were they secretly dreaming of oppressing people who had no magic?
People like Jin’s mom.
He loved his mom.
If anyone tried putting her in a camp, he’d not stand for it. Not even for Fergus.
But he nodded along as the other young man outlined his theories again.
“All we need is someone with the guts to do something,” Fergus growled. “It’s not like we don’t have the power to change everything for the better. The Court could do it if it wanted to. My father says they have the power to do almost anything if they wanted. And…”
He lowered his voice to a near whisper, leaning close to Jin.
Eyes glittering darkly.
“I know how they’d do it.”
Jin hadn’t heard this one. “How?”
Fergus grinned. Then flicked his eyes around to be sure no one was listening.
“They’d use the core. The one they keep in the Vault...”