I woke up earlier than usual, and for the first time in weeks, I felt… whole. My muscles didn’t ache. My head wasn’t pounding. Moving was easy, and breathing was pleasant.Though I wasn’t exactly in a fighting mood, I was ready to take part in the tournament. And I knew exactly what I had to thank for that gift.Evening Sun.No wonder it required a special licence to use, even though it didn’t cause physical addiction. Against the backdrop of the general exhaustion among first-years, it was a weapon of mass restoration.Its effect was like a week’s holiday at sea, with warm, gentle sun and soothing waves. And although the leaves held nothing sinister, that was where the danger lay. One evening with that tea and all your fatigue vanished. A second — and it became hard to remember why you should push through the pain at all.The risk of psychological dependency far outweighed that of physical addiction.I could have told myself it was just this once. That I had a tournament today and needed to be in top form. But every temptation starts with just once.I don’t know whether I could’ve resisted if I had that tea sitting in my own locker. Hard to say for sure. But one thing was clear: drinking it daily would mean losing the ability to endure fatigue altogether. So it was a good thing the tea belonged to Novak, not me.The meat he’d fed me probably played a role too. Maybe that was what had restored my muscles. The tea had likely just wiped the fatigue from my nervous system, and against that background, it was hard to detect any extra effects.So. The tournament.Me, Dubois, Cinar, Mitchell, Arraio, Skoryk, Okoro… Among the names I recognised, there was a heavy tilt in favour of Point cultivators. Which was great! I had a formation sharpened specifically to counter them.There were hardly any Palm cultivators. Delgado was one, but I’d already beaten her, and the tournament bracket didn’t bring (...)