The Grand Auditorium of Zenith Academy was a coliseum of floating stone and glass, large enough to house an army. Today, it housed the thousand survivors of the First Year class.
The air tasted different than it had two months ago. Back then, during the orientation, the room had smelled of fear. It was the scent of prey animals waiting to see which one of them would be eaten first.
Now, the air smelled like ozone, cheap cologne, and arrogance.
The survivors of the First Practical weren’t prey anymore. They were predators in training. They sat in their cliques, their mana signatures flaring with ostentatious brightness, posturing for position in the new hierarchy.
Vane sat near the back, in the shadows of a massive marble pillar. He leaned back in his chair, balancing on the rear legs, his eyes scanning the room with a lazy, calculated indifference.
The center of gravity in the room wasn’t the front row where the Princes and Dukes sat. It was the cluster of seats right next to him.
To his left, Valerica Sol sat like a statue carved from obsidian. She was reading a heavy leather-bound book, but the air around her hummed with a low, constant pressure. [Authority: Celestial Heart]. She was an anchor. A point of infinite density wrapped in a school uniform.
To his right, Isole Sylvaris was shuffling a deck of tarot cards. The cards moved with a fluid, unnatural grace, guided by tiny unseen spirits that drifted around her fingers. Her mismatched eyes, one green and one red, seemed to look at things that weren’t there. [Authority: Samsara]. The cycle of life and death, held in the hands of a girl who looked like a librarian.
And sitting directly behind him, with her boots propped up on the back of his chair, was the new variable.
Ashe Razar was carving a piece of wood with a combat knife. She wasn’t trying to be quiet. Scritch. Scritch. The sound cut through the murmurs of the students nearby.
"You are making a mess," Vane said softly without turning around.
"I am making art," Ashe replied, her voice a low rasp. "It is a little wooden rat. I am going to stab it later."
"Charming."
The lights in the auditorium dimmed. The massive dais at the front of the room lit up.
The chatter died instantly.
A figure walked onto the stage. It wasn’t Headmistress Evangeline. It wasn’t Instructor Rowan.
It was a man who looked like he had walked straight out of a furnace. He wore deep crimson robes that seemed to smoke at the edges. His beard wasn’t hair; it was actual, flickering fire that danced in the draft of the room.
Professor Ignis. The Head of the Red Tower. A Rank 7 Master.
He walked to the podium. He didn’t tap the microphone. He just exhaled.
A wave of heat rolled over the audience, dry and blistering. It sucked the moisture out of the air and silenced the thousand students instantly.
"You survived the Ruins," Ignis said. His voice sounded like a roaring bonfire. "You proved you can scavenge. You proved you can hide. You proved you can stab someone in the back for fifty points."
He leaned forward, the flames of his beard licking the obsidian podium.
"But scavenging is for rats. And hiding is for cowards."
He raised a hand. The holographic projector above him flared to life. It displayed a map. But it wasn’t the sprawling city of the Clockwork Ruins.
It was a cross-section of the earth. A vertical nightmare.
Sector 9: The Hollows.
The map showed a massive, subterranean facility dug deep into the crust of the planet. It was a tiered dungeon, ten massive floors stacked on top of each other, connected by ancient elevators, maintenance shafts, and treacherous drops.
"Your Second Practical Evaluation begins in four weeks," Ignis announced.
The room rippled with whispers. Four weeks. That was close.
"The First Practical was a solo evaluation," Ignis continued. "We wanted to see if you were strong enough to stand alone. Most of you weren’t. You survived by luck or by clinging to someone stronger."
His eyes, burning coals in deep sockets, swept over the room.
"That ends now. Zenith Academy produces Officers. And Officers do not fight alone. They command. They coordinate. They conquer."
The map zoomed in on the bottom floor of the facility. A glowing red pulse beat in the center of the tenth level.
"The objective is simple," Ignis said. "This is a Dungeon Dive. You start at the surface. The objective is the Core Room on Floor 10. To open the gate to the next floor, you must secure a Key. Keys are held by Guardian Constructs hidden on each level."
He paused, a cruel smile touching his lips.
"However, there are only half as many Keys as there are squads."
The tension in the room spiked.
"If you don’t get a Key," Ignis said simply, "you don’t advance. If you don’t advance, you fail. And if you fail a Practical twice..."
He made a cutting motion across his throat. A trail of ash followed his hand.
"PvP is authorized," he added. "If another group has a Key and you want it, take it. Traps, ambushes, and theft are all valid tactical options."
Ignis straightened up. The heat in the room intensified.
"Here is the constraint. Solo deployments are banned. You must register as a Squad of Four."
A hand shot up in the front row. It was Elian, a noble from the Blue Tower coalition.
"Sir," Elian asked, standing up. "Are there restrictions on composition? Do we need a standard formation? Vanguard, Striker, Support, Controller?"
"No restrictions," Ignis said, shrugging. Sparks flew from his shoulders. "You want to run four Healers? Go ahead. You want four Fire Mages? Be my guest. I don’t care how you build your engine, as long as it runs."
Elian frowned. "But sir, isn’t that unfair? If the top rankers form a single squad, they will steamroll the competition. It creates an imbalance."
Ignis threw his head back and laughed. It was a loud, booming sound that echoed like an explosion.
"Unfair?" Ignis repeated, wiping a tear of magma from his eye. "Kid, look around you. Life is unfair. War is unfair. If you are smart enough to convince the three strongest people in the room to watch your back, that is not a bug. That is a skill. It is called networking."
He looked at the class, his expression hardening into molten slag.
"However," Ignis added, "Zenith is not discriminatory, but we are strict. Your squad will be graded on a curve based on your squad strength. If you form a ’Super Squad,’ the system expects you to clear the dungeon in record time. If you struggle, your grade will plummet. If a squad of Rank 1s manages to clear the first floor, they get an A. If a squad of Elites takes too long to kill a goblin, they get an F."
He turned off the projector.
"High risk, high reward. You have until noon to submit your rosters to the Registrar. Dismissed."
The room erupted into chaos.
It wasn’t the excited chaos of the first exam. It was panic. Students immediately turned to their neighbors, calculating value. Weak students looked for strong ones. Strong students looked for useful ones. Alliances were being formed and broken in seconds.
Vane didn’t move.
He didn’t turn around. He didn’t look for partners. He just sat there, staring at the blank space where the map of Sector 9 had been.
He felt the eyes of the class on him. He felt the hate from the Blue Tower nobles. He felt the curiosity of the neutrals.
They were all scrambling to find a rank 3 tank. They were begging the few support mages to join them. They were trying to build a house of cards that wouldn’t collapse under pressure.
Vane suppressed a smirk.
’Let them scramble,’ he thought.
He didn’t need to look for a squad. He was sitting in the middle of a nuclear arsenal.
He mentally tallied his roster.
Valerica Sol. The [Celestial Heart]. She controlled the fundamental force of gravity. In a subterranean environment, she could collapse tunnels or crush enemies into paste without lifting a finger. She was the Tank.
Isole Sylvaris. [Samsara]. Her spirits could scout through walls, drain the life from ambushes, and turn the dead into allies. In the dark, she was a nightmare. She was the Nuker.
Ashe Razar. The [Warlord]. A kinetic monster who rejected the concept of being stopped. She was the tip of the spear. The Vanguard.
And him.
Vane. The [Silver Fang]. The severance. The one who understood how to apply that power to break the things that couldn’t be broken. The Tactician.
Four Authority wielders. Four Elites.
According to Ignis’s logic, the grading curve for them would be brutal.
’Good,’ Vane thought, standing up. ’I don’t plan on being slow.’
"Squad of four," Ashe whispered from behind him, kicking his chair again. "Does that mean I have to actually listen to you for a whole month?"
"Only if you want to win," Vane said.
"I always want to win," Valerica said, closing her book. The sound was like a gavel striking a desk. "And I refuse to be grouped with anyone less than exceptional. The Sol name demands perfection."
"It sounds fun," Isole added, her eyes glinting behind her glasses.
Vane adjusted his collar. The panic in the room seemed distant, like noise from a television in another room.
"Let’s go to the Registrar," Vane said. "We have a war to declare."