With only a few weeks left until the duel with Gerhard, I decided that it was time for me to start pulling out all of the stops. That Saturday, after completing a shift at the Charm and Fable, I decided that it was time to check over my bank balance, metaphorically speaking.

Back in White Sands, I'd been a wanderer, with too little coin for it to be worth it, and mostly had stuck to smaller villages and hamlets that didn't have or possess banking institutions.

I hadn't bothered visiting a single bank since I'd arrived in the city, since when I'd arrived, I'd had no credit and no money, and not long after that, I'd been outed as a runaway member of the Dreki family. My family was the most powerful banking institution in the world, and there was no way that they would ever allow another bank to work with me.

Which meant that checking my bank balance actually just involved pulling out the drawer of my wardrobe that I had been stashing my proceeds in, and counting through the coin, as well as looking at what I kept in the pouches I carried around.

There was more than I had expected. Though I'd lost quite a bit when purchasing the eight-phase moonstone, and the handful of components that I'd purchased for spellcraft throughout the year, I had otherwise been fairly frugal, eating most of my meals at school, only wearing my school uniform, and putting everything else away for now.

But with my timeline starting to grow tighter, it was time for me to spend everything that I had left, to buy whatever power I could manage for the fight.

Thanks to all of the shifts I'd worked at the Charm and Fable, as well as the hydra components that we'd sold off, I had just over seven thousand silver in my drawer, an amount that was simultaneously massive and nothing at all.

On one hand, a decent meal cost between ten and thirty silver, so seven thousand was enough to feed me for a long time. On the other – and also setting aside the fact that no banking institution would touch me – if I were to try and do something like take out a loan for a condominium in the city, I'd need nearly ten times the amount, just as a down payment.

In terms of magic, though, there was a good bit of low-hanging fruit that I would be able to pluck in order to make myself more powerful in short order, using what I had, in addition to what the school had provided.

Naturally, there was creating an Etherius locker. I had the materials for one now, and I could fit my staff and wand comfortably inside, as well as all of the papers that had all of my curses and spells inscribed onto them. It was on my list for sure, a must-do before the duel.

Then there was the rite of unbroken mind. I was able to resist the natural dragonfear that Gerhard exuded through my own application of my bloodline, but if I had a naturally formed shield around my mind that I could fuel with my own ether, that would allow me to save a bit of dragonfire. Given how little I had, even after the applications of my ether manipulation techniques to expand it, saving even a minute amount of power was worth it.

I checked over the component list in my grimoire. Sorting out the salt, sage, and iron was easy. The two hundred silver of jeweler's lenses was going to be expensive, as would the five hundred silver coins sacrificed, but doable.

I could buy the oudh wood incense at cost, thanks to my work at the Charm and Fable, so it would probably cost me about two hundred and fifty silver, rather than the three hundred I'd originally estimated.

Thanks to Salem, I had the tail feathers of a wereraven, and I could provide the dragon blood myself, and he would also be able to serve as the true psychic for placing components, which left me with the horns of a humanoid demon. When I'd started the semester, that had seemed completely unreasonable for me to obtain, especially since I'd need to cut them off before managing to banish the demon back to the hell it had come from.

Now, though?

Well, I wouldn't know what sort of demon it was, so it might be slightly more dangerous than the hydra, where I'd been able to attune my energy barrier perfectly, but it wouldn't be that much riskier. I had the hunter's crest, I could visit a soldier's hall and get a transport to the wall to hunt demons.

I put that in the maybe category, and moved onto the next avenue of power, which was the naiad's kiss ritual. That was an immediate no. Though there was a pond of naiads in Shadesilk Forest, it wasn't anything that could even be remotely usable against Gerhard.

Then there was the flyte imbuement ritual. Thanks to professor Toadweather, I had the pixie dust, and acquiring the hyssop leaves for faith, and the freesia flower for trust would be easy enough. It was the one carat ether crystal that would be the difficult part.

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The cost of crystals of any sort went up incredibly quickly with the size – one carat was far more expensive than even three quarters of a carat. I couldn't imagine how expensive the Erudite's staff had been, but for a one carat, even purchasing at cost, it would cost me roughly three thousand silver.

Two other potential factors to consider with the flyte imbuement ritual was the fact that the better the material, the better the spell could operate, and the fact that Gerhard could potentially try to catch it on fire. I could absorb the flame, but it was worth thinking about.

The giant's mortar and pestle would be completely fireproof, made of stone, but it would also be absurdly expensive. There was no way it would work.

Carpets were expensive, and pouring even more into the improve quality spell to make it better would mean I was spending more on this than I wanted to. Wool could be a bit fire resistant, but it wasn't any more so than a decent hardwood like walnut.

I would be able to purchase a decent quality walnut wood broom fairly cheap, then if I dropped a hundred or so silver into the spell, along with dragonfire, I should be able to make it an excellent quality.

It would also make the spell even more expensive, though, which was a definite downside.

That said, flying would be an advantage that I could press against Gerhard, since while he could jump, he'd have to spend the time and effort to partially transform if he wanted to fly, and that would give me time to bring spells down on his head.

I sighed. It was worth it.The only other options I had left were the nuggets of teleportation alloy, and ether crystals for spellglyphs.

There was also the lesser planar contract spell, but that was too expensive. It was amazing for contracting people for tasks that would take hours or days, rather than the brief time a single summon would last. But a duel didn't exactly take that long, so there was no sense in paying massive amounts for a single extra summon, when I could put the money into a spellglyph.

I'd have to buy five nuggets of the metal, since my ether pool wasn't large enough to throw around arcane passage spells like they were nothing, not yet. Thanks to all of my ether manipulation practice, I had been able to expand and restore my ether pool enough to use that several times in combat, while also keeping up the other needed spellcasting.

Ideally, I'd only use four in the fight, and have the last left over to use with arcane passage, but if it let me win, I'd burn it. Thanks to work, that should cost me about six hundred and fifty silver.

Given that the ether crystal dust to create a single spellglyph ran me around two hundred silver, if I bought the alloy and made the flyte ritual, then I would have enough left over to make sixteen additional glyphs, bringing my total for the duel to a hundred and ninety six, give or take. If I were to buy the alloy, use the flyte imbuement, and undergo the rite of the unbroken mind, then I'd have eleven more spells, bringing me to a hundred and ninety one.

When I put it that way, it seemed rather obvious that undergoing the rite of the unbroken mind was the superior choice. Even if I lost the duel, the power would stick around, and it might help me suppress some of the dragonfear from my mother or older members of the family. It would also help in the duel, as I'd already considered, saving some of my own fire for use in other things.

I stretched, popping my back, then left my room and knocked on Salem's door. A moment later, he opened it, face phasing through the silver mist obscuring his room.

"Wha'sup?" he asked, tilting his head. I pulled my student ID card from my pocket and tapped the seal.

"Given that we're now able to go hunting at the wall, and because I've been saving, I was wondering if you wanted to go hunting demons with me tomorrow? I have the day off work, and we still need a humanoid demon's horns. I could pin it, while you break them off, then you could do the same for me with spells."

Salem's face brightened, and he nodded.

"Aye, sounds like a' plan. I've got the money for the components too."

"Oh, here, let me get them, then you can pay me back nine hundred, since I purchase things at cost through the Charm and Fable."

Salem's nose wrinkled, and he shuddered.

"I still dinnae like tha' place, it's weird. But tha' sounds good ta' me. Just lemme know when you're going to get them."

"I'm heading out that way now, since I'm buying the materials to imbue the flight spell and purchasing ether crystal for spellglyphs," I said. "I can pick it up, if you'd like."

Salem nodded and slipped into his room. I waited for a moment, then his hand emerged from the mist, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me in.

"Dinnae just wait aroun' for me," he muttered, walking over to a small iron lockbox with silver runes inscribed on its surface. He waved a hand and it popped open, the spells disengaging, where he started counting gold coins.

I took the moment to take in Salem's room. Much like mine, it had expanded to add a ritual space, but it was of a different sort – this seemed to have bones, cards, and a crackling fireplace, a good match for the oracular magic that he was honing. There was the silver cage, of course, but that was to be expected. The only other weird thing was that Salem didn't have a drink cart in the same way I did, but there was a magical scent coming from the bathroom, which smelled of a dozen different shampoos, soaps, conditioners, and dyes.

Salem tossed two platinum and fifty gold coins into a bag and handed it over to me, so I tied it to my belt and pulled my attention away from the smells of his room, giving him a sheepish grin.

"I'll drop them off before dinner."

"Sounds good. See ya' soon," he agreed.

I swung by work, changing things out in the till and writing a note to explain, since nobody seemed to be around at the moment, then headed out to a carpenter's shop, where I was able to purchase a walnut broom. I dropped the materials off with Salem, then got to work on my ritual magic.

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