His mana had crept up while he sat there. 41 out of 150 now. Still nowhere close to full, and it clearly wasn’t going to hurry up just because he had four more evaluations tomorrow.
"Fine. Points it is."
He pulled up his attributes.
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Attribute Upgrade
Current Rank: F
Current Body Adaptation: 100%
Maximum Attribute Limit at Current Rank: 30
Strength 8/30
Agility 17/30
Vitality 10/30
Intelligence 30/30
Spirit 30/30
Perception 11/30
Luck 5/30
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Spirit and Intelligence were maxed out already. No amount of points would move them until his Rank went up. He stared at that for a second, annoyed, then moved on. No point being mad at a wall.
Five attributes left with room to grow.
He thought about the fight. Agility was the reason he was still breathing — without it, that first charge would’ve caught him clean. But agility hadn’t been the whole problem tonight. He’d survived by running, not by being hard to predict.
Cain’s voice was still stuck in his head.
——You repeatedly retreated toward open ground before casting. You preferred attacking immediately after dodging. Every time Fang cornered you against a wall, you broke left.
"Can’t buy my way out of that one," he muttered.
Points could make his fire hotter. They couldn’t stop his own body from doing the same three things on reflex the second things got dangerous. If a smarter enemy would’ve read him in under a minute, then no upgrade in the world was going to fix that. Only actually breaking the habit would.
"Tomorrow’s problem," he said. "Tonight I fix what I can fix."
He picked Vitality first.
═══════════════
Vitality: 10
Current HP: 100/100
Maximum HP: 100
Upgrade Cost: 1 Point
[Upgrade]
═══════════════
He pressed it without waiting this time. No surprise left in it. Just the number climbing and a warm feeling settling in his chest.
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
[Vitality has increased.]
[Maximum HP has increased.]
[Maximum HP: 115.]
[Each point of Vitality grants +5 Maximum HP.]
He kept going. He’d taken a hit from Fang early on that sent him rolling across the sand, and he still didn’t actually know how much HP it had cost him. He hadn’t thought to check. That felt like its own mistake now — fighting half-blind to how much room he actually had.
Twenty. Twenty-five.
The soreness from the healer’s work that afternoon started creeping back in, the same ache he’d gotten from pushing Spirit too hard the first night. He slowed down and let it settle between upgrades instead of rushing it.
He stopped at twenty-eight.
No reason to hit the wall on purpose. He already knew what that warning message looked like.
Next, Perception.
═══════════════
Perception: 11
Upgrade Cost: 1 Point
[Upgrade]
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No HP counter attached to this one, nothing obvious to measure it by. He upgraded it twelve times anyway, up to twenty-three, and closed his eyes to see if anything felt different.
The wind against the shutters was louder than it had been a minute ago. Down the hall, two trainees were talking, and this time he could actually make out the words instead of just the murmur.
"Huh."
If Perception meant catching his own habits while they were happening instead of hearing about them secondhand from Cain, it was worth more right now than more raw speed.
He left Strength and Luck alone. Strength didn’t matter much yet for a mage who won by staying out of reach. Luck he had no way to measure, so he wasn’t going to guess with it tonight.
He closed the attribute page and pulled up his skills.
Water Manipulation and Earth Spike were still sitting at base rank, exactly where they’d been that morning. He’d barely used either one in the fight — a wave to the face, a few spikes that only slowed the beast down for a second. He selected Earth Spike.
Evolving cost points, not mana. He could climb without spending anything he didn’t have.
He pushed it up twice.
═══════════════
Skill Tree — Earth Spike: Earth Spike (F) → Stone Lance (E) → Bulwark Fang (D)
Any unlocked tier remains castable. Mana Cost scales with the tier selected.
═══════════════
He had no idea what Bulwark Fang actually did. No mana to test it tonight. But it existed now, sitting there ready, and that felt better than leaving it alone. He did the same to Water Manipulation, up to a tier called Tidal Wall, just as untested.
Points bought options. Not power, not really. Just more doors he hadn’t opened yet.
He let the windows close and sat there in the dark for a moment.
Perception wasn’t going to fix the left-break on its own. Vitality wasn’t going to stop him from getting hit in the first place. None of it actually solved what Cain had pointed out — that his body kept doing the same thing under pressure whether he wanted it to or not.
That took practice. Real practice. Points couldn’t shortcut it.
He thought about Rex. The guy who’d apparently spent three days sitting still in enemy territory without getting caught once. If anyone here knew something about not being predictable, it was him.
"Guess I know who I’m bothering tomorrow before or after evaluation, I guess." Rook said.
He blew out the candle and lay down, mana still climbing somewhere in the background, one point at a time, toward whatever tomorrow was going to throw at him.
He didn’t get much sleep after that.
He lay there running through the fight again — the crater in the wall, the claws that missed him by less than a foot.
’Cain called that average.’
He almost laughed.
His mana kept ticking upward in the corner of his vision, slow and steady, not caring whether he watched it or not. He checked it once more before closing his eyes — still under a hundred, still hours from full.
At some point he actually fell asleep.
It didn’t feel like it lasted long.
A fist hit his door hard enough to rattle the frame.
"Up," Seryn’s voice said through the wood. "Sunrise. You’ve got ten minutes."
Rook groaned into the pillow.
"Define sunrise."
"Now, Rook."
He dragged himself out of bed, splashed water on his face from the basin, and pulled his boots on while still half asleep. His mana sat somewhere in the low hundreds — better than last night, not full, and apparently that was going to have to be good enough.
By the time he reached the training grounds, the sky was still more grey than gold, and Cain was already standing there waiting, arms crossed, like he’d never left.
"You’re late," Cain said.
"It’s barely light out."
"You’re still late."
Rook exhaled and rolled his shoulders.
"Fine. What’s evaluation two?"
Cain didn’t answer right away. He simply turned and gestured toward a wide stretch of open ground behind him, where a dozen wooden posts had been driven into the dirt in no pattern Rook could immediately make sense of.
"Today isn’t about surviving," Cain said. "Today is about whether you can be found."