It was lunch time, Jason was eating at the canteen alone this time, because Caroline just had another certain urge to go hunt in the student hunting ground and she just took off without eating anything. Jason was not adverse to hunting, but he was not as enthusiastic as Caroline, so he decided to come to the canteen and have lunch while reading the scroll documenting the healing spells Jianmen chose for him.

“Internal Fortification” was his first healing spell and was like the bottom node of a skill tree. And with ample practice on animals in the academy hunting ground or lab for practicing healing spells and even sometimes himself, Jason was confident that he was at least able to stall the effect of poison in a victim, should he be unfortunate enough to encounter another one. This spell did not seem to work too well with Caroline’s healing spells when they tried on the same animal subject, mostly because their Xuanli seemed to have some minor conflict with each other. Whether it was “Flame of Vitality” or “Inner Fire of Three Suns”, Caroline’s Xuanli seemed to “melt away” the effect of Jason’s spell, and Jason’s Xuanli seemed to “waste” the effects of Caroline’s spells. They had the feeling that there was a way for their spells to synergize with each other, it was just that they didn’t know what it was yet.

“Hey! Is this seat taken?” a familiar female voice asked.

“Umm, no.” Jason answered without looking up, at least not until the one with the voice sat down in front of him.

When Jason looked up from his scroll, he saw that the girl who sat right in front of him was none other than Laura Jensen, the one he faced off against during his round of the student duel.

“Hi, can I help you?” Jason closed his scroll and asked.

“Yes and no. Depends.” Lauran Jensen chuckled and picked up a piece of meat from her plate: “For example, how about we re-introduce ourselves? I believe we got off on a horribly wrong foot back there.”

“Okay.” Jason laughed and put down his fork and held his fist in front of him: “My name is Jie Lin, you can call me Jason. I am a cultivator and I’m here as an audit student.”

“Cultivator? I may be too out of touch, so I haven’t heard of it. ” Laura Jensen scratched her jaw with a smile and said: “My name is Laura Jensen, from the Jensen family. I am a sorceress, and by sheer luck, am also blessed with great affinity to the power of lightning.”

“Nice to meet you Laura. ” Jason nodded: “Sorry for being a bit ignorant - I came from a civilian background so I haven’t heard of any prestigious magical families. May I know a thing or two about your family?”

“Hehe, it’s okay.” Laura Jensen took a bite of her meat: “It’s nothing to brag about - we’re just an old family with many branches and members in a bunch of different businesses. But our main expertise is arrays, contraptions and seals. What about you? You said you are a cultivator, and you possessed a kind of power I’ve never seen before.”

“Well, I am not at liberty to say who my teacher slash tutor slash master is. But I can tell you this, it’s just another kind of training. We practice martial arts, we meditate, we learn about our spells and arrays.” Jason answered with a smile on his face: “We call the source of our power Xuanli, not mana … mojo… or whatever you call them.”

“We just call it magical energy. ” Laura Jensen laughed out loud: “You civilians and your video games - those names are fine and well, just kinda childish.”

“Why us civilians? You don’t play video games?” 

“Well - I’m sure you can tell from the behavior of my younger brother that magical families are kind of condescending and not exactly the biggest admirer of civilian inventions.” Laura Jensen shook her head and said: “I apologize on his behalf, by the way. And I want to thank you and your friends for giving him and his shithead buddy a lesson.”

“Thank you.” Jason also laughed: “And it’s fine, I’ve been a teenager once as well.”

“So, how long have you been training?”

“If I estimate it fully, it’d be a little over a year.” Jason scratched his face and said: “What about you?”

“Just a little over a year?” Laura Jensen raised her voice unintentionally: “How? Why? How is that possible!?”

“Well - I have a really good teacher.” Jason chuckled and took a bite: “But to be honest, I don’t even know much about the fighting style of the magical world? Are they just like the duels we had?”

“Meh, sometimes.” Laura Jensen made a “kind of” hand gesture with her left hand, while she had a piece of melon on the fork in her right hand: “You know, there’s a ton of rules to duels already, not to mention student duels in the academy. But in real fights - bear in mind that even in these peaceful years there could still be many, things can just get much dirtier and nastier in a minute. I’ve been in a few of them, one particular son of a bitch almost broke my spine even when I spared him.”

“Yeesh, sounds nasty, what happened?”

“Some fight against a group of rogue vampires and lycans.” Laura Jensen shook her head: “They massacred a few civilian villages, even women and children. And I was accompanying my family on some field investigation, so we basically took law into our own hands and cornered them until the authorities came.”

“Wooh, nice!” Jason said, with a sense of approval and admiration: “So, you Jensens are like one of those heroic families from my childhood stories.”

“Well, thank you. But we’re not as heroic as you’d think. ” Laura Jensen sighed and hesitated for a while: “To be honest, most of us are still trying to live up to our good name and trying to outlive the bad reputation left by SOME members in our family tree.”

“Well, isn’t it the same case for everyone with a big family tree?” Jason went silent for a while, then chuckled: “I have an uncle, who sells drugs in San Jose. And he’s not even that good of a drug dealer. And he could never keep his books in check.”

Laura Jensen looked at Jason in the eye, and they laughed together.