Eolande balanced her quill atop her upper lip and under her nose in disinterest as she listened to the teacher rant on and on about the fundamentals of enchanting magic.

Occasionally she would tune back in if he said something that she was unfamiliar with, but that was rare, so she mostly kept her attention in her head where her thoughts were keeping her entertained.

'Why am I not in the same class as Lone and Soph? This is boring... At least if I was with them I could watch Lone be arrogant...' Eolande sighed softly, causing a few of the boys in the class to blush.

After all, she was unimaginably charming even if she was actively masking her natural magical allure. She had already received a few love confessions from a handful of demis and a scary amount from members of the fae species.

Even some humans had approached her, but mostly with rude offers for her to become their live-in slave with the maximum amount of freedoms afforded to her back in their home countries.

Suddenly, a saddened look overtook the over-200,000-year-old girl's eyes. 'I was making so much progress, but Soph doesn't seem like she'll ever accept me now... I... I just want to receive Lone's love... I don't understand. Lone's willing if she is, and she's from a time where polygamy wasn't exactly uncommon for the nobility, hell, she was even a princess back on Earth...'

Eolande wanted to cry, but now was not the time for her to shed the loneliest tears of her life. 'I just need to hope that Lone succeeds with splitting Soph and Sophie... Maybe Soph can accept me when she gets used to sharing Lone with Sophie not only in spirit but also in body...'

Love was a troubling thing, of that, Eolande was certain.

"Student Breena, your chanting is off. Even if you gain enlightenment into how Crude Fireball works as a concept, with incorrect chanting, the spell would only fail in a best-case scenario, worse-case, the MP being used to cast it may explode in your body," Breena's fire magic professor claimed.

This got a few snide giggles from the other students who weren't having nearly as much trouble as she was with learning the incantations.

"S-Sorry..." Breena really didn't want the attention to shift onto her.

"Don't apologise, do better." The professor sighed and then rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I'll go over the chants again for you, so listen carefully, okay?"

Breena nodded, listened, tried reciting them back to him, but failed again.

"Ha-ah... I see this may take some time. Breena, I may change my mind in the future, but for now, your assignment for the following month is to memorize the 100-lines of ancient text needed to cast Crude Fireball, understood? Even if your wand will help you offset a good portion of the needed lines, it will still be in your best interest to have the entire script fully memorized," the professor claimed.

Breena's face was burning with shame. "I'll try my best, Professor," she weakly replied.

Breena had no idea that learning magic would be this hard. She assumed it would as natural to her as harnessing Darkness was, or as simply as handling daggers came to her, or perhaps as easy to understand as alchemy and poison-making.

Clearly, she had been wrong. Ideally, she would ask Lone for advice, but she could never find it within herself to bother her life-saviour over something so trivial, so instead, she had chosen to try her very best to patiently listen to the teachers and learn as best as she could from them.

Headmaster Erion looked at the reports on his desk which had been gathered by one of his familiars from many of the teachers, professors, and even some of the wealthier students.

"Haha, a week hasn't even passed yet but they're all causing a stir in their own ways. Well, Breena and Eolande are rather harmless and Swind is causing a bigger commotion than I had first imagined he would, but Lone and Soph... They certainly live up to their reputations." He grinned happily for a few seconds as he wondered how to handle the dozens of complaints and requests to have Lone and his entire group expelled from The Academy.

Before long, he came to a quick conclusion. "Alice, I have a task for you."

Immediately, the teleportation chamber at the side of the headmaster's office lit up. Headstudent Alice Fairwaye appeared and very humbly curtsied. "How can I be of assistance, Headmaster?"

Erion gestured to his papers. "These requests, reject each and every single one of them. The Wanderers are not to be interfered with by anyone other than myself. Should anyone choose to take actions into their own hands, then I do not stand responsible for how The Wanderers react. Everyone has already been warned by me, and, as you already know, I never give more than two opportunities to follow the rules."

"Yes, Headmaster Erion," Alice replied as she bowed her head then quickly moved to collect the documents in question.

Headmaster Erion simply watched her and smiled. Once she had teleported out of the Divine's office, thoughts of confusion littered her mind. 'Why is he showing favouritism to those people? Is it because the ninetails holds so much potential? He is already an SSS-ranker, so I can understand it somewhat... but even then, I have just as much Magic Power as he does even though I'm only a C-ranker. Doesn't that prove that even though he has way more affinities than I, that I am the superior pupil?'

Her mind wandered to Sophie. 'That girl... Having that many Mana Points at such a young age is impossible. Clearly, she's no child. I wonder how old she really is? Why did Erion take her under his tutelage as well? True, she is talented, but no more so than the most skilled of the professors... Is it because of her barriers? That is clearly an unknown world skill, racial skill, or unique skill. There's nothing special about that. Anyone born into the right family or lucky enough to gain the world's favour could have learned it. As for if she's a hero, so what? Heroes are hardly rare... I refuse to believe that she has genuinely started a revolution regarding enchanting magic. The current age is known as the Age of Stagnation for a reason.'

Alice was frustrated and annoyed. 'I should be Headmaster Erion's disciple, not them. They aren't worthy... I'll have to show them by getting first place in the School Gathering Tourney. They'll be upset, but I'll have to double the training of the Sentinals. I need the best of the best on my team... Well, best-case scenario, The Wanderers see no point in joining the tourney or don't even qualify. Half of them know no magic, so maybe I'm over-worrying...'

A competitive fire was lit in the girl's heart. In her mind, the only person even close to being worthy of Headmaster Erion's personal teaching was her, and only her. She'd work to prove that fair and square. Otherwise, what would be the point? She had to utterly prove without a shred of a doubt that she was the only logical choice.

'I'm not gonna get much sleep for the next 6-months... Haven't the nobles been raving about a store that sells wondrous drinks that help fend of drowsiness? I think it was run by the ninetails... Oh well, if his products will help me beat him, then so be it. Forgive my shamelessness, Lone Immortus,' Alice concluded.

Much like with the lesson on healing magic earlier the same day, Lone and Soph were together as they sat through a class of pure theory for their enchanting magic lesson.

Lone didn't particularly mind no practical training when it came to enchanting magic. He had Eolande to teach him about actual enchanting skills, so learning more about the theory behind it was perfectly fine in his opinion.

Stretching after having just successfully made a steamforged cog that spun entirely on its own, Lone yawned.

Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Steamforging] has levelled up. It is now Intermediate Level 5.

"Well, that's one out of a million pieces," Lone muttered before he stored the self-spinning cog in his Dimensional Storage. Clearly, he had a large project in mind that he was slowly working towards completing.

Like usual, now that he had finished concentrating on his forging, he expending a lot of his mana by using Soul Rooting on many of the citizens passing by his emporium.

Congratulations! The host's soul skill [Soul Rooting] has levelled up. It is now Master Level 10. Congratulations! Due to the host's soul skill [Soul Rooting] having reached master level 10, it has evolved into the soul skill [Grand Soul Rooting].

"Fuck yes!" Lone loudly exclaimed surprising Frangila who was behind the counter minding her own business.

She almost dropped the coins that she was counting, but this wasn't the first time that her benefactor had shouted out in joy spontaneously, though it may have been the loudest yell of his in the girl's recent memory.

Lone immediately pulled up the skill's new information.

Soul Skill: Grand Soul Rooting

A very advanced form of Soul Rooting which passively fills in gaps in a damaged or incomplete soul.

Doubles the strength and stability of rooted souls when in the designated area (limited range of 30-meters-squared).

If the host pays 1.25 times the cost of the skill, they can root the desired soul to a body. The cost for unrooting is also multiplied by 1.25 times should the host wish to unroot a soul rooted to a body.

Cost: 50,000 MP or SP (100,000 MP or SP to reroot a previously rooted soul) Mastery: Beginner Level 1

'Passively fills in gaps?' Lone didn't want to get hopeful, but a big smile was trying its hardest to worm its way onto his face. 'Isn't that perfect? I can't restore what is gone of Rachel's soul, not right now anyway, maybe even never, but with this skill she should at least be able to maintain a normal life. Maybe with future rank-ups it can, like, simulate the rest of the soul or even repair it.'

'Of course, the cost went way up, but so did all of its effects. Well, no time like the present, huh?' With this in mind, Lone quickly said goodbye to Frangila and immediately entered The Glade.

Swind smiled a smile of despair as he watched the baby foxkin and the baby dragon slowly rise and fall as they slept soundly on Rachel's chest.

Soph had explained that she loved cute things and that they helped calm and relax her, so she was hoping that if the kids spent some time around Rachel then maybe it would help her have fewer panic attacks.

Swind held no faith in such a fanciful theory, but he still politely accepted and let the fuzzy, soft babies make themselves comfortable on Rachel.

Occasionally, Rachel's hand would rise to her chest and accidentally fall on Garadia's delicate feathers or Kyuubi's fluffy tail, but whenever that happened, Rachel just looked confused and lowered her hand again.

"Soooo..." Rachel's incoherent mumbles broke Swind's heart.

"Why... Why did you have to make me feel so strongly for you?" Swind asked softly as he raised the girl's hand that he was carefully holding to his cheek. "Why did you have to make me feel so much pain? If this is what love is like... then..." He stopped himself from finishing that sentence.

Swind tool a deep breath and closed his eyes as he held back his tears. "Sometimes I wish that I never felt this way... Sometimes I wish that Lone hadn't stopped me from consuming the world tree... Why... Why did you have to stupidly sacrifice yourself to the Emperor Slime? Why... Why do I love you so much?"

Swind had asked himself and Rachel these questions over and over again and not once had he reached an answer.

He was no saint. He had thought at times that perhaps it would have been better, more merciful, even, to end Rachel's life himself. Perhaps having her move on from this life and enter the next would allow him to get past this.

Perhaps it'd be easier to suffer in grief than in hopelessness and crippling worry. 'If only Lone hadn't offered me a torch in the darkness... I would have rather descended into madness than suffer like this every day... Than to see you suffer like this every day...'

At that moment, the door to the room opened. With confident strides, Lone walked up to Rachel's bedside with the biggest smile on his face that Swind had seen in months. "Why the long face, Buddy? I may have just found the path to properly fix Rachel. For now though, let's see if we can get her walking again, shall we?"