Christie felt healthier than ever. Such a change was due to many factors, but if she had to state one at this very moment, it was that seeing the rest of her peers invigorated her with the opposite of envy. She had arrived at this academy as a sickly socialite that couldn’t even break into a jog without puking. Perhaps that was due to her ‘innate’ condition, but it was a weakness that couldn’t be denied. But now, she stood taller and far firmer than the rest of her peers. She wasn’t just strong; she was the strongest.

  Physiologically speaking.

  This wasn’t a statement born out of pride, but factual truth. Due to her constant training – almost to a zealous degree – her body had grown robust, and when adding that to the fact that she was already quite massive by default, that made her into a megalithic woman. A part of her was hesitant of being this well-built as dresses would likely no longer look as well as they had once done, but another part of her overflowed with confidence knowing she had a lovely seamstress at her beck and call. But most importantly, she felt that she had finally grown to fit the uniform she was wearing.

  Maybe she didn’t want to be a soldier, but she couldn’t deny that she didn’t hate feeling like one. It filled her with an invigorating sense of glory that almost made her understand why some people might willingly chose to be soldiers instead of forced.

  “I can see that the numbers of this class have shifted a bit,” René Dago announced as he unbuttoned the first buttons of his dark coat. It was early autumn and it showed with the vernal heat that still lingered. “It seems some of us have left us for other electives, which is a shame, but we also have new faces. The military always needs more lapiloquists, so I value your choice.”

  Some of these new faces were those Christie was sure that hadn’t yet unlocked lapiloquia last year, meaning that now more than half of the class had awakened the discipline. This revelation partially ached her heart, for it meant her ladylove was in an even smaller group of those who had yet to access lapiloquia. But worrying about it – let alone suffering – would have been disrespectful to Agatha.

  It is not like my radiant girlfriend needs lapiloquia to shine brightly, Christie told herself, which in return made her smile. But that splinter of anxiety still remained. After all, unlike lithorica, no one was guaranteed to awaken lapiloquia.

  “So far, we have done what I would like to call dexterous training. I have taught you how to make complex movements with lapiloquia, focusing more on mastery than overall destruction. But this year we will change that mentality.” A massive Gate appeared behind him when he finished the sentence. “Now megalithic displacements will be the name of the game. I want you to give your all, bring yourselves to utter exhaustion, and displace as much stone as physically possible. Follow me.”

  The black-uniformed soldier disappeared into the spherical ripple of space, and with a bit of hesitation, the rest of the class followed suit. It wasn’t like the students feared the Gate command, but they still showed some deference towards it. And how not? Perhaps it wasn’t the dangerous Drill command that could literally attack their mind by proxy, but it could be even deadlier under the right circumstances.

  Crossing the gate brought them where the final exam from the last year had taken place a handful of months ago. The desolate battlefield was, of course, made a complete mess with upturned rocks every hundred steps.

  “Lapiloquists normally do not perform in battle,” René Dago stomped on the ground and the jagged terrain quaked violently, only to become a smooth plains a handful of seconds later. “There are many reasons for that. Not only that spent lapiloquists become sitting ducks after exhausting themselves, but they are also non-expendable.” The soldier spat the last word with the most pungent of venoms. “But that is not to say that they cannot perform in battle. If anything, reality is quite the contrary. The world’s best lapiloquists can reshape a whole battlefield in their lonesome if unimpeded. But you are not quite on that level yet, nor will you be for a couple of decades at minimum. So, for now, your task is to smooth out the whole battlefield. Start!” He announced the start of the task with one of his iconic claps.

  The whole class groaned at the task – homework or chore would have been more correct – they had at hand, but everyone started moving around without protesting. Christie wasn’t looking forward to it either, but a part of her welcomed the task with an enthusiastic smile. Performing lapiloquia wasn’t that different from performing exercise – heavy-duty exercise at that – and there kind of was virtue in that. She didn’t have many chances to go all out with lapiloquia, so being able to loosen the metaphorical tie infused her with enthusiasm.

  She was unfortunately forced to relocate due to the nature of the task, but she almost made the most out of her travel. Unlike her peers that used Speed Control Anchor, the redhead was forced to use other tactics. Her slide strategy was certainly the best one, but it was a bit unsightly and uncalled for in such an exercise, so instead Christie opted for a bit of skating.

  The tall lapiloquist allowed her sea of stone to flow free, but instead of creating massive waves of agate, she only let it cover the battlefield in a thin film. Then, with the help of the Friction command, she was able to slide across the barren wasteland at higher speeds than sprinting but with a fraction of the physical commitment.

  Perhaps she might be limited to the First Stratum, but she had an advantage over her Sixth Stratum ladylove. And that was that she could control the magnitude of her commands. Apparently when Agatha used Friction, it would only increase the friction of her sapphire to the maximum, which had the unfortunate side effect of making her lone agate preternaturally sticky.

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  Physics were quirky like that. You have an object that has too much friction? Then there was no difference between it being sticky or possessing too much friction. Agatha needed to use Control Friction to even be useful to use the command normally, and whilst that wasn’t much of an investment for her, her ladylove still didn’t have a sea of stone at her disposal to freely skate around. Just like ice skating, only than on top of stone and without worrying that the ice might crack underneath you.

  As much as Christie would have loved to say that she skated around with the dexterity and grace worthy of the ballroom, she stoically kept her two feet on the ground and was very conscious of not falling on her bottom.

  “I guess I could also practice skating a bit more,” the redhead mused to herself once she had separated enough from the class and killed her inertia with bracelets of agate brandishing the Control command.

  Unlike other lithorists, she couldn’t use Shape and Summon in tandem to give form to her agates before they were summoned, but she didn’t need to either. Those two commands, quite literally, didn’t exist for Christina Valasela. She simply willed her agates into existence and then into a shape. And whilst her Grow ‘command’ – she still called it that even if it was plain lapiloquia – didn’t have much finesse on the resulting shape, she expected that this was how the gauntlets of the Shining Knight’s armor would look like.

  “Oh! I could bring Agatha too! A skating date sounds very romantical. And the nice part is that we can do it year-round, no need to wait for winter!” Christie trembled about her genius mind for a moment before she recalled that she was supposed to be doing some exercises.

  Unfortunately for her, the Recall command did exist for her, and if anything, she used it far more than most people.

  Just like René Dago had done a couple of minutes ago, Christie unbuttoned her coat as she expected to get roasted with the current sun and all the exercising. But she didn’t stop for one button and instead removed her whole coat. This would have been an issue once upon a time, but since she started binding her chest, she was more comfortable moving around without the fear of getting hurt by the movements of her own body.

  At first, she started doing so with bandages, but Agatha nearly fainted upon hearing that and she quickly put together an elastic corset that only covered the breast area and could easily be tightened. Christie had tried corsets before, but the problem with those were that they limited mobility too much for a soldier. Her ladylove’s solution was the best of both outcomes: comfort and mobility.

  The redhead cracked her neck and stretched her body, putting a special emphasis on her shoulders. The gesture strained the fabric of her blouse, but the advantage of having a seamstress for a girlfriend was that she always had the right clothing size, so nothing tore from the seams.

  Which might have happened before once or twice...

  Feeling like she had stretched enough, Christie took a deep breath and stomped on the ground. Such gestures weren’t needed in lithorica, but they had a use in lapiloquia to focus and create a mental image on the terrain you wanted to affect. And they might or might not look cool. That was a non-negligible factor.

  The moment her foot came into contact with the ground, she felt the strength instantly drain from her body. She became dizzy for a second, but ultimately, she hardened her resolve and was able to maintain her posture.

  The terrain around her trembled in a megalithic manner. This wasn’t just a handful of hundreds of kilograms of stone being moved around, but hundreds upon hundreds of rocks being shifted. Because she had focused on range over control, the result didn’t end up being perfectly smooth terrain like the one René Dago had produced, but as she gazed at her surroundings, Christie couldn’t help but feel pride.

  Maybe she was simply flattening terrain which wasn’t that irregular to begin with, but seeing all the stone in a hundred-meter radius obeying her will filled her with strength. Enough to forget her exhaustion.

  “Hehe...” She giggled in an un-ladylike manner between pants. This kind of vigorous exertion couldn’t be appreciated by common court etiquette, it needed the vulgarity of a soldier.

  She had known for a while that the terrain obeyed her very will, but seeing such a broad display just filled her with awe and encouraged to shine even brighter, at the cost of sounding like she wanted to steal her ladylove’s radiance. Which she didn’t.

  But what truly motivated her was knowing that this mastery wouldn’t fall flat but would instead continue to grow. This wasn’t the discipline of lithorica, there wouldn’t be a wall that would ultimately delimitate the end of her growth. No, this was lapiloquia and she would continue to develop for many decades to come.

  “I can now see the path of the perfect lapiloquist,” she whispered to herself, a promise of sorts. “I can do more. So much more.”

  “You definitely can.” A voice suddenly said from the heavens and Christie turned her neck upwards to see Teacher Dago flying above her. She blushed at being heard. “Your mastery over lapiloquia is relatively lackluster, but this range and amount of volume displaced is certainly prodigious. Good job, Christina. You will certainly be able to change the tide of battle when the time comes.”

  “I prefer if I was never brought to war,” the redhead added from the ground.

  “You and everyone. You and everyone,” the black-uniformed soldier said with visible sorrow. “Whatever happens, I certainly know I would not like to be in your sights if battle does come.” The man chuckled in his typical yet horrible sense of humor before he flew away.

  Christie continued to perfect her flattening technique for the rest of the class, with Teacher Dago flying here and there from time to time. The constant exercising left her dead tired and drenched to the point she would have killed someone for a glass of water.

  When the whole class reunited for the end of the session, she was furious upon seeing how most of her fellow lapiloquists weren’t nearing dehydration, even if she didn’t let her emotions show. After all, how come she had trained herself this hard yet the others simply rested on their laurels? Christie didn’t consider herself an irascible person, but such developments did strike a certain fiber that made her at least a bit enraged.

  She could only trust that this would be reflected in their scores, even if those didn’t matter too much. Not to the academy, and certainly not to herself. Perhaps once upon a time she would have craved high scores – and whilst she certainly wouldn’t allow them to drop – but that was no longer the case. Her only loyalty was to her ladylove and nobody else. The only reason she was pushing herself this hard was for the same reason from the very beginning.

  For the beautiful dream of the day when her agates no longer hurt her or anyone else.

  I still want that skating date, though.

  Dreams, if anything, were malleable.

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