"You know we're busy women, Liesel."

"True..."

"So, we'll see if we have time." Though it is true that a post-class crafting timeslot has just opened up.

Hopefully it won't fill up immediately with further commissions, then. 

It's kind of a niche item.

Lu could craft more weapons for people instead (once they've drawn more publicity), though those are a lot less involved. 

That sounds more likely to scale.

And to have more interested parties. 

Yeah.

Might combine well with their other plans...

Good point.

Graduating seniors will want to take the better weapons with them, but she can possibly create some that are less useful in the graduation hall but more useful in the school to keep with their non-enclave... And Lu can try to pass on as much of her artificing knowledge to Jialin as possible. 

Worth the effort.

It will be. 

Quick kiss!

And on to breakfast.

Food here she comes! 

Best not keep it waiting.

That'd be tragic.

Then it's not allowed.

Not at all. 

The semester flows on. Their new program gets its legs under it tentatively - mostly as the mal attacks start spreading to the rest of the school and not just El and Lu, giving others an incentive to actually play along. Recruitment among seniors and juniors is terrible, though, which is probably good for Jialin being left in power but bad for having experienced, powerful students to help the others. Those who want to join most are usually the ones who need rescuing the most. 

They're able to get a semblance of a working system by the time finals roll around, though. 

Well, they'll be getting into more intensive combat training now. Maybe they can adapt some of that to a training program, or something.

Though they need to survive the finals first. (The school definitely seems to be trying to kill them with this exam schedule. Seriously, why are they creating stupidly overcomplicated looped artifacts in shop - the school didn't give them much of a choice there, the other options were worse. And their final essays are all insane, requiring way too much interdisciplinary work for this busy a schedule. Their seminar in what's basically just translating the Golden Sutras and related works at least doesn't actually have a distinct final - the school just clearly expects them to finish.)

Yeah, they were going to do that translation anyway, so it barely counts. As for the artifice- maybe the school thinks they've been doing too much commission work.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing it'd pull. 

Still, they're free once they're done with this stupid thing.