He still gave it an honest try, mostly by completely giving up on rest and free time for several restarts, and the Filigree Sages seemed pleased by his work, but in the end he decided that he simply couldn’t justify the spent effort to himself. While the topic itself was extremely interesting—indeed, many researchers would have quite literally killed to be in his place, studying an otherwise unknown magical tradition—it was ultimately a distraction he, at the moment, didn’t need. And really, the actual mind magic instruction he was getting in exchange for his work was little different from what the River Navigators were offering. He did admittedly get to experience a slightly different style of mental combat from the one practiced by River Navigators and most other aranean webs, since the
