Orion and El go up to lunch, where Aadhya, Liu, and Ibrahim have saved seats and food for them. They discuss the grogler and the patching of the wall. Aadhya says the patch won’t last through the first-tier gears engaging before graduation and that they need a better repair; Ibrahim suggests they make an announcement, so everyone can raise the mana together. Liu counters that they can’t let the seniors find out at all or they will probably open the wall themselves, so the mals can feast on the younger, less experienced students and sate themselves before graduation. They come up with an idea to use El’s phase-control spell to infuse carbon into the iron wall and turn it into steel. It’s an ambitious plan, but it’s the only one that seems as though it would have a chance of working. El suggests that Orion can use his enclave’s power-sharing to provide the mana. Orion explains that his power-sharer has a block on it—he can put mana in, but he can’t pull it out. Ibrahim is horrified; El is furious.

They decide to ask Chloe to remove the block on Orion’s power-sharer. She asks why they don’t just put in a maintenance request to repair the wall.