The school year was broken up into three semesters. Fall, Spring, and Summer. Three weeks separated Spring from Summer and Summer from Fall, but there were four weeks between Fall and Spring, because the capital was blessed with mild weather. The end of the year rarely had bad weather, but just in case, there was an extra week for travel.

Another week was lost to holidays, one week lost to unexpected problems where the school would have to close without warning, due to weather or whatnot, and one week in the middle of the semester as a break for the students to take time off. This left ten weeks for actual school, and one week for final exams per semester. If the number of snow days exceeded the five allotted, then that would result in the semester being extended into the three or four week break between.

If less than the allotted five days were used, this would typically be used up just before finals to allow the students to have a break. For most students the school year started with the beginning of the fall semester and ended with the conclusion of the spring semester. Summer semester then wasn't normally part of your typical student's year.

Usually the school would hold make-up courses for those students that failed a particular class, lest they be held back a year. This was expensive, because it typically required hiring new teachers to work for the summer just for a handful of screw ups. Most professors refused to work the summer months, and they had the seniority to demand such preferential treatment.

The rest of the summer semester was typically filled by advanced courses. Mages wishing to use the school's facilities for special experiments or who wanted training in advanced thaumaturgical techniques. These were negotiated on a case by case basis and normally wouldn't even occupy the entire semester. Symposiums and whatnot were held at the academy during the summer as well, so you would also get more foreign visitors during this time.

Due to the fact that most nobles would go home for the summer,  many commoners who wanted their children to learn at the school would pay large sums to have their children attend at this time. It avoided harassment from nobles as well as had the added benefit of a smaller class size. This meant that those students who came to learn magic during the summer, while having to pay more, usually got a higher quality experience.

By far the most common students during the summer months were aura adepts. It was during this time that students participated in advanced courses that involved actual subjugation events. While it was not unheard of for conjurors to sign up for school sponsored subjugation missions, by far the vast majority were aura adepts, simply because conjurors were far more likely to be in an administration role when they graduated from the royal academy, where as physical adepts would often become knights, guards, or mercenaries for hire. The need to prove oneself was high, and while one could just head down to the local 'Adventurers Guild' and look for local quest requests, the school sponsored subjugations were well funded, well supplied, and more importantly, much more visible.

If you wanted to be noticed as a talented warrior, then you would, at the very least, sign up for one or more expeditions. On the upside, the students didn't have to pay to join. However, the cost for them to go on the expedition was tracked and the school was reimbursed before the student got any reward. Furthermore, 'participation' was a major factor. Often students who were well connected would do next to nothing and still get a nice cut, whereas commoners who might wind up risking life and limb get nothing but a wink and a thumbs up.

Ryan didn't care about making a profit. He cared about the opportunity to field test his training program.

Right after the last finals were finished, Ryan turned Aldelmo into a pin cushion. It didn't improve his mana flow as fast as Ryan’s had, but they did start seeing results in the first week. While Ryan managed to simply power through by virtue of superior soul strength, Aldelmo needed help. So Ryan came up with the bright idea to have Aldelmo burn as much mana as possible out of his system while at the same time undergoing extensive physical training and reduced liquid intake.

Ryan's theory was, since Aldelmo was also a water mage, dehydration would be the most effective way to stress his system to encourage him to be desperate for more mana and thus draw in energy through his chakra points. Ryan started as low on Aldelmo's body as possible to open his mana channels in hopes that the energy flowing past where his aura core should be would make it more likely he could manifest said aura core. Surprisingly, this turned out to be the case in only five days.

Of course Aldelmo was delirious at that point and hovering somewhere between life and death, but that was just the kick in the pants that his physical core needed to begin functioning.

After that, it was a strict diet of protein and nutrients while working Aldelmo to the breaking point. At least he got to stay hydrated while he lifted weights that shredded his muscles. He ran until his legs started to spasm as he collapsed with painful tremors. This was then followed up with using his physical core to heal the damage. Healing potions, unfortunately, worked too well and in fact undid any gains from such a workout. One had to heal slowly and only with a physical mana core turned towards self-repair to make this technique work.

All this gave Ryan even greater insight into how internal mana flow worked and discovered the correct way to improve one's mana capacity. Apparently completely draining your mana, recovering it through meditation, and then chugging a mana potion right before you fill up completely caused a form of core expansion. It felt like your brain was going to explode from the most painful migraine you could imagine, but when you finally recovered after a good night's sleep, you would find your mana capacity expanded just a little bit more.

Aldelmo was not suffering alone.

Ryan was hell bent on improving his own capacity at the same time. He was just better at enduring the agonizing pain that one had to go through. Unlike Aldelmo, he seemed to quickly reach the limit of self-improvement. His method of extreme exercise and self-healing had also reached a wall. For this reason, after two and a half weeks, Ryan was eager to begin the first trial run of phase three.

Ryan's studies of the internal working of mana flow always made him think it was less like a cardiovascular system and more like a lymphatic. One way, sluggish, and way... WAY... too slow. In order to speed up the transference of mana internally, you needed the mana to flow in a loop, but the human body was only designed to let mana move in one direction, towards your mana core.

However, with TWO mana cores, it might be possible to take advantage of the alternating pull to create circulation. The problem being humans only had what could be considered veins and no arteries. At least they weren't born with them. Ryan's plan was to make arteries.

Specifically, mana channeling tattoos.

By using finely powdered mana stones and tattoo ink, Ryan had figured out a medium that would allow one to make a permanent magic circle. Normally a mana circle needs to be a circle because the outer ring is what keeps the mana inside. Otherwise the circle would collapse. However, a mage naturally contains mana within his own body without a magic circle. One doesn't need a mana containment channel when you are manifesting your magic directly from your own body. When Ryan learned this little factoid was when his mana tattoo plan started to take shape

Ryan's idea wasn't to make a mana circuit for a specific spell, but instead tattoo the 'control' circuits of a mana circle directly onto the human body, linking the various chakra points with a network that was inside a human's skin. Not only would this allow improved mana flow, making it easier to absorb more mana, but also would serve as additional mana 'pools'. Areas that could be made into mana storage 'loops'. You would have to concentrate, but with a little prep time, or with a large mana potion, you could safely "overcharge' your mana capacity, without the agonizing pain that came with chugging mana potions.

Aldelmo was quite upset that he had to go for over a week of agony before they figured out that it's better to have the mana tattoos BEFORE one starts to try and increase their mana capacity by overcharging, but hey.... details. Fine tuning like this is the purpose of experimentation. Besides, Ryan couldn't tattoo his own back, so Aldelmo took a small amount of satisfaction in being able to stab Ryan with a needle... over... and over... and over...

But, by the end of week three, what a result.

Ryan was already physically close to perfection, but Aldelmo went from a slightly lumpy bookworm to six-pack abs in an obscenely short period of time. He looked like he had been pumping iron for six months straight. While he had not achieved Greek Adonis levels of physique, he still looked like he could hold his own in a bar room brawl. As for the tattoos, at first he hated the idea, but with the additional mana flow and improved mana capacity to "cushion" his system, he quickly became a convert. Soon both he and Ryan had black tats over their chest, back, arms, legs, and the back of their necks as they slowly added on additional channels. An unintended side effect was when they pushed their mana capacity to maximum the tattoos would glow.

This was a small price to pay for feeling like a 'god' of magic.

Of course, what needed to happen next was to test the results. Fortunately, about the time that they had finished the last of the tattoos, the summer semester monster subjugation season was about to begin.