Machinist of Mana Chapter 97 Gratification

It was at least gratifying to see when Lucas began his resistance training. I'd had to go through mountains of it, but his first few days he was spent. I even got to reenact his little talk with me that first day I'd missed dinner.

“Are you going to be alright?” I asked him as he lay on his bed, seemingly unable to rise.

“Eventually, but everything hurts.”

“Yes, I'm quite familiar with it,” I pointed out.

“How did you get past this?”

“Same way you get past anything else, practice.”

“Ugh.”

“Sit up, I'll run you through a few exercises,” I offered.

“Not going to poke me with some terrible stick are you?”

“No.” I was at least pleased to hear that this seemed to be the standard method, not just something Sir Kendrick had cooked up for me.

From what I could gather Lucas and the other fourth year students were getting a similar, if less focused, regimen to what I'd gotten. There were of course some points of difference, one they weren't really expected to get too far with it, this was after all just an introduction for them. They also weren't spending nearly as much time in a day at working against outside magic. Nor did I get the feeling they'd be keeping up this training as I was, no, instead it just seemed another subject to teach the students and move on, like a single class and no more.

In the end they would lose out a lot on fighting against magic, but that might be intentional. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the government was keeping a lot of secrets from us, specializing their civilians in one direction that wouldn't be a threat to the military. No, in fact since we were largely expected to be rich boys and many of us weren't going to go to war with anything it made perfect sense. Teach us only the basics so that mages might be employed against us.

Surely there was training for the mages that was similar too. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if there were some gaping holes in the training Rowenna or any other number of wizards were getting, holes that would open them up should they ever rebel against the government. Briefly I wondered what those were, where they'd left chinks in the armor.

It almost bothered me, but then I realized that my government back on Earth would have done the same. There's no way they'd have let people with super powers run around with a full suite of training and no oversight. Heck, they'd probably have kept a very, very close eye on all of us too, looking for anything dangerous.

“You're staring off into space again,” Lucas pointed out.

“Hmm? Oh, right, as I was explaining you need to hold your mana and push it. The sensation is odd, but think of it almost like charging a magical device.”

“I never really do that,” he admitted.

“What? Really?”

“Yes, just doesn't come up often.”

I was flabbergasted, that was a primary way for us to make money and he just didn't do it? Maybe his parents were spoiling him, not making him get his own pocket money, but almost everyone here did it.

“Well that explains why you're having such a hard time with this. Don't you have an enchanted sword though? How do you charge that?”

“What? Oh, I almost never use the enchantment on it. Even then I've only had to charge it once or twice. And...”

“And?”

“And the servants at home do it while I'm there...”

“You're profoundly lazy, you know that?”

“Hey! I'm quite busy, and I get more than enough of that nonsense from my sister thank you.”

“If she's right, she's right.”

He halfheartedly punched at me, but seemed unwilling to rise. It brought to mind those first few days of training I'd gone through, and even if he wasn't going as hard at it as I had I understood that.

In time we got him to stretch a bit and even meander off to go bathe. I also learned that he hadn't followed my good example and kept snacks in his room. That was almost painful to learn, he'd seen me do it, and even knew well why I did it, but hadn't bothered to so much as grab some dried meat? Shameful, absolutely shameful.

Leaving him to his evening I too moved off, for I had work as well, always more work, always more to do.

When I got back to my room I looked at my mail, finding a surprise. There were always letters from friends, Rowenna, and various parts of my family. Letters were huge, like phone calls or texts, and so I spent time every day dealing with them, responding, and trying to be generally thoughtful. My parents however seldom sent me letters during the semester, today that changed.

There among my normal papers was a thick envelope from my parents, their seal and names there. Much of it was just them keeping me up to date. They'd been busy back home it seemed, and while mother hated the city it also seemed they'd be coming here before too long. Mother had also included huge packet of information about the burgeoning planes, seemed grandpa had been building a few more and people were interested. Those people had of course gone to my parents, rather than my grandfather, who'd tell them to shove off, or me, who'd do much the same, obviously knowing that they could put some pressure on me. Poor fools had underestimated my mother, and a brief look told me she'd buried them under a deluge of paperwork, the back-end of which I was now getting to see.

It all culminated with something that I'd not been expecting. I got the dates for when they'd be coming to the city, a couple weeks from now, and it seemed they'd be staying well through the next winter. It seemed she'd left out exactly why that was, but I'd find out when they got here, for there would be a reason, that much was clear.