Progress was slowing down.

  It was the end of the third day and I had about 10% finished. And that was only to create the seal. Then I had to get rid of all the excess without damaging the seal. It didn’t help that despite having to wake up at regular intervals, we were still losing about half a percent of the seal each night.

  The burning on our own seals had at least almost completely gone away, which was a help. Gesai had taken Pixie to where the others were staying and Kara had reluctantly gone with them. That left myself, Ether, Rix, and Fray in the chambers.

  Fray had finally gotten healed enough that she could move around, though I had to have her laying close to me so I could reference her seal while I tried to copy it. Ether spent most of the day looking over monster lists with Rix. There were a lot of Dungeons in the Cathedral Ward, even if we might not see the Dungeons, it was very likely that we’d see the monsters during the Adventurer Games.

  Our team had been sort of disqualified because of Rix’s level. The level cap for first years was seven, so we technically could have gone, but most of the other students were only level three and those four levels plus the extra stat points that she gained would have given Rix a huge unfair advantage over everyone else.

  The reason why we were only sort of disqualified was so that there wouldn’t be an automatic by for one of the other classes. But it also meant that even if we won, we weren’t allowed to go and we had to do everything with a five-man squad.

  So there was reasoning behind their studying even if it was the only thing they could really do besides sparring, which again, was heavily weighted in Rix’s favor.

  “We won’t be working tomorrow.” Klix didn’t bother pausing long after she made that declaration and headed for the elevator.

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  “Hey!” It took me a second to register what she’d said. “Wait!” It felt like the ground was pulsing as I stood up. “What do you mean we won’t be working tomorrow?”

  “What is hard to understand about that?” Klix didn’t bother to turn around. “I’ve got a city to run and thanks to the old fox I’m woefully behind on my own responsibilities.”

  That destroyed a lot of the arguments I’d started in my head. “At least let us go out and get some fresh air.” I looked over at Ether and Rix. “I know we’ve got some shopping that we need to do.”

  That got Klix to pause, but I did not like the evil grin on her face when she turned around.

  “Just the four of you?”

  I swallowed. “And maybe Justia and Aelin if Gesai isn’t using them?”

  “She’s only been taking her team and Kara.” Klix confirmed what I’d suspected.

  Teachers could set themselves in that role within a party and as long as they didn’t attack a monster, they were treated as a non-combatant. It was how teachers could walk around the dungeon with a group of students and not trigger the elite spawns because the party was overfilled.

  There was one open slot on the team, but Gesai and Justia had a history that wasn’t the best. Their great-uncle had wanted Justia’s life to be made as difficult as possible and had ordered Gesai to do a lot of nasty things over the years. Gesai was trying to make it up to her younger cousin and separating her from her girlfriend wasn’t a good way to do that.

  So I’d assumed the two had left behind and had probably been cooped up in a room all by themselves. Actually now that I thought about it, they probably weren’t quite as starved for the outside as we were.

  “You can’t go out without an escort.” Klix’s voice did nothing to silence the danger sirens in my head. “I know exactly which Scarlet I’ll send with you. She’s been pestering me nonstop since we got here so that’ll solve another one of my problems.”

  “Wa..!” Somehow the elevator door shut before I could finish the word.

  I slowly turned around. Ether’s milky skin was the palest that I’d ever seen it.

  “Ether…” I tried to think of the right words, but there wasn’t anything that could fix it.

  I crossed the floor and wrapped the shocked woman in a hug. “I’m sorry.”

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