Hugo backed up with his hands in the air, “Woah, woah. Mihai, you don’t want to do this.”

Mihai stalked forward, his fists raised. “Yes, yes I do.”

“I don’t want to fight.”

“I do,” Mihai said with a manic grin. Hugo could see that his wide eyes were bloodshot. He was obviously on something.

Glancing around, Hugo saw several other students looking their way. They were on top of the library roof, which gave them plenty of room. But Mihai had been yelling, so more than a dozen students were paying attention now. None of them were moving to interfere though.

Hugo put his hand forward, as if he could stop the third year student. There wasn’t a chance he could win in a physical fight. Even ignoring the fact that Mihai was probably around rank twenty four, Mihai was obviously the stronger of the two. Each of his forearms was as thick as Hugo’s thigh.

“Wait, wait, wait. You don’t even know me. I’m a nice guy. You don’t want to fight me,” Hugo said while steadily backing up.

It didn’t look like Mihai was even listening to him. The third year put on a burst of speed and raced towards Hugo. His roundhouse punch was quick, but Hugo had been expecting it. Putting all of his dexterity to use, Hugo ducked under the punch. He almost countered with a punch to his ribs, but at the last moment turned it into a shove. He didn’t want to seem like the aggressor here.

“Stop!” Hugo yelled. He didn’t expect it to work, but he at least wanted to establish that he didn’t want this fight.

Now that things were getting physical, the crowd got involved. A girl screamed, and a few boys yelled about a fight. Instead of someone breaking it up like he expected, the crowd just formed a circle with the two fighters in the center.

Hugo almost sighed. The third year might be tough and strong, but he was obviously high. And certainly not a barrier mage, there was no way his stumbling gait was boosted with dexterity. This wasn’t going to be a real fight. Hugo could dance circles around him and would certainly win as long as he didn’t get hit.

Mihai didn’t agree with his assessment though, and charged back at Hugo as soon as he had regained his balance. Hugo placed a barrier at his feet and danced back a few steps. Predictably, the older student lost his footing immediately and crashed to the ground.

Hugo sighed and summoned a large shield a few feet in front of his hand. Then he layered a second shield over the top of that one. He walked toward Mihai with the intent of using the shields to keep him on the ground. He didn’t want to grapple with a man that looked stronger than a great ape.

Just then, Mihai rolled over and pointed his hand at Hugo. A flash of blue flew out. Both shields shattered instantly.

Swearing, Hugo danced out of the way. That was a mana dart. Assuming Mihai was practiced at it, that dart could kill Hugo. This was serious. This was no longer a fight with a drunken student, Mihai was trying to kill him.

Immediately, Hugo summoned two more shields, glad for the technique Marius had given him. He circled around Mihai to get out of his line of sight. The crowd was yelling now, no longer expecting an entertaining fight. They were shouting at Mihai to stop, or running in panic. No one stepped in to save Hugo though.

Mihai rolled to his feet, a hand pointed at Hugo. Not knowing what to do now, Hugo continued to circle, slowly backing up. Before he could get far, Mihai shot again. This time it only shattered one of the two shields.

There wasn’t time to feel relieved that his shield held. While Hugo was defending against the mana dart, he missed the potion bottle shattering at his feet. A cloud of white vapor quickly billowed up. He jumped back, but it was too late. The potion took effect.

Hugo fell to the ground, limp.

A scream sounded and more of the crowd ran. Hugo could hear it all, but he couldn’t move at all. A face appeared in his vision and he heard Mihai laugh.

“No one ever takes the alchemist seriously,” Mihai said. He immediately kicked Hugo in the ribs, breaking a few and sending him tumbling. Hugo’s eyes were still open, but all he could see now was the ground. He heard screams and running. His ears strained and he thought he could hear someone walking closer. It sounded like they were alone on the rooftop now.

Another kick to the ribs flipped him again. Mihai leaned over and stared him in the face. “Damn hedgie lover,” he said and stomped down on Hugo’s arm.

Although Hugo was completely incapacitated, he could still feel everything. He wished he could scream out in pain. He was sure that his arm was broken now. His ribs were broken, his arm was broken, and he couldn’t even shed a tear.

Through the pain, Hugo was trying to think of a solution. His life was genuinely in danger here. He couldn't move his body, but did the same apply to his mana? A tentative pull showed that he could move his mana.

Hugo was face up, and could see Mihai standing there in the corner of his vision. Hugo made a shield, quickly following it up with another one, layered on top of it. This time, Mihai’s kicks were deflected and the shields held.

Mihai roared in frustration and punched the shields, again and again. This slowly wore them down, until they finally shattered. Hugo knew it was coming, and made two more right after, closer to his body and smaller so that he could preserve his mana. If he could hold him off for long enough, maybe the effects of this potion would wear off.

As Mihai drew his hand back to punch again, Hugo created a large shield very close to Mihai’s arm with his body as the anchor. It meant that he didn’t have the leverage to get a good punch going. The enraged boy tried backing up, but the shield just followed him.

While he was distracted, Hugo made a dozen thin mithril caltrops near his motionless body. They were small and thin enough that they were almost invisible. He stopped making new ones when he had about a fourth of his mana left.

It took longer than expected, but Mihai was able to get rid of the shield in front of his arm. He had run into a wall on the roof top to get the power needed to shatter the blue barrier. Then he stalked back towards Hugo. He could hear him before he arrived, fury evident in the way he stomped forward and breathed heavily.

Then he stepped on one of the tiny spines of the caltrops. Mihai screamed as he hopped back on one foot. The upperclassman stepped on one more before he realized what was going on and walked around to the other side of Hugo.

“Mihai!” someone new yelled.

Hugo didn’t have a good angle, but he could see Mihai’s head whip up. Just as his head turned around, a fist came out of nowhere and hit him squarely on the jaw. The impact was so strong that it knocked Mihai off his feet and out of Hugo’s field of vision. That was a brutal hit.

“Knock it off, Mihai,” the new person said.

Hugo remembered an unfortunate fact. Mihai was an alchemist, which meant that his main trait was resilience. That hit wouldn’t be enough to keep Mihai down.

Sure enough, Mihai attacked the new person again. By now, the formations mage had given himself a full set of armor. Instead of punching him again, he grabbed Mihai this time. He drew the out of control student in a bear hug.

“Shh, shh, calm down,” he said. Hugo realized that he actually knew this new guy in the armor. It was Rasmus Jr. He had watched an azad tournament with him in the finals. It was last year, but also in the future. Hugo’s head hurt.

Mihai bucked and squirmed, but he was no match for Rasmus Jr’s strength. The formation mage’s strength was his main stat after all. A minute or two later Mihai stopped struggling.

“This is the fourth time, man. They are going to kick you out of school if they find out,” Rasmus Jr. said. “They should have already kicked you out after the last time. Your father had to pull a lot of strings to get you this chance.”

The conversation seemed to pull Mihai out of the rage he was in. He turned to Rasmus Jr. and said, “Yeah. Yes. I can’t get kicked out. We can’t let anyone know.”

“We got Mark here, he can go heal the guy, and maybe we can convince him not to tell, alright? But before I let go, you gotta promise to be calm, alright?” Rasmus Jr said.

“I’m calm. I’m calm. I will be good,” Mihai said.

Slowly, the armored arms let him go, and Mihai stepped away. He looked at Hugo laying on the floor and grimaced. He took several steps back.

A third person stepped up to Hugo and knelt at his waist. He pulled his arm straight and healing energy slowly flowed into Hugo. This must have been Mark. As he worked on him Mark said, “Damn Mihai, you did a number on this guy. It’s going to take a lot to fix him. What did he do?”

Hugo wanted to yell that he didn’t do anything, but he was still paralyzed.

“That damn bastard. He... He... I guess he just set me off,” Mihai said, obviously confused.

“Have you been working on that bootleg Ravim again?” Mark said.

Mihai was quiet for a bit before he admitted, “Yeah.”

“Stop it. Right now. That’s all I am asking for. I am pulling your butt out of the fire here,” the life mage said, “Just throw away everything you have been working on and never try to make that shit again.”

“Alright, you got it. Just heal him up,” Mihai said.

It took him about five minutes, but Mark eventually healed Hugo fully. The last thing to go was the paralysis and Hugo was relieved to finally be able to move. He slowly sat up. He knew he was fully healed, his stat sheet showed a full health pool, but he still felt some lingering pain. He looked around the rooftop, and no one was near. Everyone else had run off.

“Hey man, we healed you all up. We good?” Mihai said.

Hugo stared at Mihai. He had some time to think about what he would say while he was being healed. He said, “Two things. First off, you tell everyone how great of a guy I am. My name is Hugo in case you forgot.”

“Right right. Of course. Hugo is a great guy,” Mihai said while nodding.

“And the second thing, I want a few healing potions. I know they are expensive, but you can make them as a fourth year. I know you can.”

Mihal seemed like he wanted to protest, but Rasmus Jr put his hand on his shoulder.

“Alright, fine. Two high quality healing potions.” Mihai said and held out his hand.

“Three potions,” Hugo said. He held out his hand to shake.

Mihai grit his teeth and shook Hugo’s hand, “Three.”

Directly afterward, Hugo left the party. It was mostly dead by now anyway. Half the party had run when the fight broke out. Walking back to his dorm room was tougher than expected. Now that he finally felt out of danger, his adrenaline crashed. He felt weak and a wave of emotions washed over him. Tears ran down his face, and he wiped them off.

Hugo clenched his fists and unclenched them. On the one hand, he was actually proud of himself. He had fought off a fourth year student with only his magic. Entirely immobilized, Hugo still had control of the fight. It was honestly impressive. On the other hand, he was immobilized and got beaten up. It was a blow to his pride.

This was all Oskar’s fault. If he hadn’t sent him to Mihai as a way for him to get in touch with hedge mages, none of this would have happened. He stood in front of his dorm room door and tried to calm himself down. He didn’t want to just let out all of his frustrations on Oskar, then he would be no better than Mihai.

He walked in and saw that Oskar was still up. He must have gotten there just before him, the lights were still on, but he had changed into sleepwear.

“Oh hey, Hugo, glad to see you. Did you see the fight?”

“Shut up,” Hugo said, his fury leaking into his voice. “Just shut up. Maybe we can talk in the morning.”

...

The next day, Hugo was calmed down. He was still angry with Oskar, but now he felt like he could rationally discuss it.

“Hey Oskar?”

“Yeah man?”

“I was in that fight last night. You sent me to go talk to Mihai about hedge mages? Well hedge mages killed his mom, so he didn’t like me asking about them. Mihai threw a potion at me to paralyze me and broke my ribs and arm.”

Oskar stopped moving, shock written across his face. Eventually he said, “Shit, man. I’m so sorry. I knew he had something to do with them, I just didn’t know what. I guess I didn’t hear the whole story.”

“I got the shit beaten out of me, bones broken and everything, because of you, Oskar,” Hugo said, his voice steady.

“Really?”

“Yeah, he had a friend heal me afterwards, but I still had to go through the pain of feeling my bones broken.”

“Oh man, I am so sorry. I had no idea he would do that,” Oskar said, true remorse in his voice.

“That’s exactly the problem. You sent me in there with no idea of what you were getting me into,” Hugo said, “But you can make it up to me. Sometime in the next few months, get me a meeting with some hedge mages. I have a big job for them.”

“But I don’t know any.”

“Well then, develop some connections. It’s the least you can do.”

Oskar nodded, “You are right. It’s the least I can do. I will figure something out.”

Hugo should have done that in the first place. He knew from last go around that Oskar was able to get ahold of hedge mages later in the year. Hugo had just been impatient, wanting to get ahead of the game with saving the city. But as last night had shown, he needed to be patient.

Over the next few days, he threw himself into focusing on less important things. He practiced his barrier and formation domains, he attended all his classes, even the boring ones.

One thing that helped him get through the drudgery of the same lessons he had gone through last year was his project in History class. He had been surprised to learn that there was more to that class than he had suspected at first.

Now that he knew enough about the historical events and the etiquette Sage Ioana was teaching, he realized that neither was the point of the class.

During his previous life, he was doing all that he could to memorize facts and etiquette that the nobles and upper class people had long since learned at home. This time, he wasn’t struggling along with the other lower class students.

Without the stress of learning new things, he was finally able to understand that history class was a game. What tipped him of was that his classmates were constantly switching seats. It never seemed clear to him why they did that in this class and none of the others. The mystery made him investigate further. Eventually he pieced together rules to the game and now they determined the winners and the losers.

The first unwritten rule was to not let the lower class students even know you were playing. The rest of the rules were vague, but amounted to verbal sparring and veiled insults. Every day the students with an innate grasp of the etiquette would attack each other. The winners for the day would move to better seats, and the losers would fall back. There were teams and alliances that were formed and broken every week. It was cutthroat and cruel.

At first, Hugo thought that it was just a group of horrid students playing a mean game. He didn’t want to play along at first. Then one day, he saw that Sage Ioana was playing too. She would often throw in a small comment or two, and those students verbally stung would move a seat back. She smiled afterwards.

It took Hugo a few days to realize that she wasn’t just a cruel teacher. Then it clicked in his head. This was probably their practice in politicking. Many of the mages graduating from this academy would go on to lead noble houses and run corporations. The history lessons and etiquette exercises were just the framework used to teach them how to play the game of politics.

Hugo decided to play too.

This was one of the many ways that the nobles and rich played the game of life. If he wanted to get ahead he had to join in. He didn’t like how cruel the game was, but he did like winning.

The first several times he tried to play along, he was ignored. But when he corrected the etiquette of one of the lead chairs, his classmates noticed. It didn’t take long for him to be targeted and sent to the back of the room.

At first he was frustrated with the loss, and then he decided he didn't want to be like them anyway. He formulated a plan to play their game, but not the way they wanted. He didn’t come from nobility (as far as he knew, he figured if Cristian had been noble, someone would have found him by now.) Therefore, he couldn’t hope to play on the level of the students that would one day rule the city. But he could still play the game in a way that would help him in the future.

“Excellent form, Alice. If you had two more arms, I am sure you would be mistaken for a nox,” Hugo said with a genuine smile.

He decided to be unfailingly nice. He formed alliances with the sole purpose of complimenting and pushing forward others. He hoped that it would help him out when he graduated and was looking for a job.

It wasn’t the right way to play the game. Several of his classmates had pointed that out after class, but he kept the positivity up. It was weirdly fun to play the game wrong. He was being nice, and still making nobles frustrated. He wanted to see if the culture of the class could be bent, guided towards a nicer one. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't. He didn’t care. It was still fun.