"You all have your equipment, provisional clothing, and assigned rooms. The rest, you will discover on your own. That, too, is a test in a way."
Steve dropped the sentence with his usual floating smile.
Then he turned on his heel.
No further explanation. No map. No guide. He walked away into a side corridor without sparing a single glance behind him, cutting off every question already forming in the recruits' eyes.
A few seconds later, the pressure of his presence had faded.
Vanished just as he had appeared.
The other seven new recruits remained frozen, disoriented by the sudden abandonment. Some began whispering among themselves, looking for comfort in the group.
"Where are we supposed to go?"
"He mentioned assigned rooms, didn't he?"
"Did anyone understand how the ring works?"
Davin did not linger.
He turned his back on them and walked alone into the depths of the immense building.
Walk. Observe. Listen. Understand the ecosystem.
The Academy looked like nothing he could have imagined.
The corridors were monumental, built wide enough to let entire battalions of students move side by side. Beneath his boots, the pale stone continued to answer each step with faint embedded lights. The walls were not alive, but at regular intervals, dark panels displayed slowly shifting images: diagrams of carnivorous magical plants, silhouettes of creatures with impossible anatomies, stellar maps, and magic-circle schematics silently reconfiguring themselves.
At regular intervals, side arteries branched off toward distant zones, some as wide as the main avenues of Mehian.
Davin walked without a precise goal, letting the complex reveal its internal logic.
He emerged into a vast open space, similar to a barracks courtyard, where dozens of students trained without restraint. Summoning circles glowed on the paving stones. Shattered stone targets reformed themselves with a mineral grinding sound. Wooden mannequins floated at chest height, sometimes dodging attacks with mocking slowness.
Some students projected basic elemental spells — condensed fire spheres, whistling spikes of frost, arcs of pale electricity — at erratic targets. Others, isolated in their own bubbles, levitated heavy weights or meditated, sweat beading on their faces, fingers clenched over their knees.
A student in green tried to maintain three flames rotating around him.
The first went out.
The second burned a lock of his hair.
The third struck a nearby mannequin, which answered by launching a stone into his stomach.
He dropped to his knees with a strangled sound.
No one helped him.
Two students laughed.
A professor sitting on a bench farther away barely raised his eyes.
Pedagogy through physical humiliation. Effective. I almost miss quarterly meetings.
Farther on, the atmosphere changed.
A large circular arena, dug directly into the ground, hosted a clash between two students.
It was not a courteous academic duel.
It was organized domination.
Steel rang against steel. Gray sand had already drunk several trails of blood. Groans of pain sometimes drowned out the clash of blades. A sparse but attentive audience watched from the stone stands. No one moved. No one cried scandal.
Davin leaned against a column to watch the end.
Both fighters wore red clothing, with the same castle embroidered on the left side of their chests. No stars above it.
Same sector.
Same absence of visible rank.
And yet, the gap between them was obvious.
The first fought with a short spear. The second used a broad sword and a cracked shield. Both were injured, but the spearman breathed better. His footing was cleaner. His strikes forced the other back without ever giving him time to recover his rhythm.
The end came suddenly.
The spearman feinted toward the knee, reversed brutally upward, and pierced his opponent's guard. The point cut deep into the shield-bearer's shoulder. Blood sprayed in a dark arc.
The fight did not stop.
The wounded student tried to counterattack, but his fingers weakened around the grip. The victor deflected his sword, crushed his boot down onto the man's wrist, then placed the tip of his spear against his throat.
Not to slit it.
Just to remind him he could.
The loser gritted his teeth, spat an insult drowned in blood, then fumbled clumsily at his belt with his free hand. He pulled out a small bluish glass vial filled with a cloudy liquid that pulsed faintly.
He offered it.
The victor ripped it from his fingers, examined it in the light, then smiled with contempt.
"Next time, wager something worth my sweat."
The loser lowered his head.
Around them, the audience had already begun to disperse.
No professor intervened.
No rule stopped the fight at first blood.
They fought.
They lost.
They paid.
Or they crawled.
Perfect. Resources circulate through traumatic pedagogy.
Davin moved on.
The more he explored, the more the Academy's vastness asserted itself.
He passed along an independent building whose heavy bronze doors, wide open, revealed shelves stretching as far as the eye could see. A colossal library. Dozens of students wandered through it, arms loaded with thick manuscripts or scrolls of parchment. Luminous spheres floated between the shelves, following certain students like disciplined fireflies.
He stopped for a second before the doors.
Thousands of books.
Maybe tens of thousands.
Everything he did not know had to be somewhere inside.
And he could not read a single title.
Magnificent. Die, transmigrate, awaken an abnormal mana gate, enter an ancient Academy… only to be defeated by the alphabet.
He continued.
He passed closed amphitheaters from which sharp detonations escaped. Through a half-open door, he glimpsed an instructor in dark red clothing making a large sword whirl through the air. The blade followed the movements of her fingers without ever touching her hand, drawing precise circles above a class silent with concentration.
A little farther on, a low-roofed complex exhaled heavy smells of roasted meat, warm bread, and complex spices. Giant refectories. The movement in and out was constant, animated by laughter, raised voices, arguments, and the clinking of cutlery.
Then he reached the edge of the outer grounds.
Vast stretches of packed earth were reserved for hand-to-hand combat. Other zones, paved with blackened slabs, seemed designed to endure large-scale destructive spells. Far away, immense cages of black iron housed magical beasts for training, fed by off-white-clad students who handled them with strange devotion.
One of them stroked the snout of a six-legged scaled creature.
The beast sneezed.
A burst of green sparks shot from its nostrils.
The student stepped back just fast enough not to lose his eyebrows.
The bestiary. An entire sector dedicated to turning the bad idea of approaching a monster into a professional skill.
Davin recorded every variable.
The Academy was not a school.
It was a militarized city-state, enclosed behind its own walls, partially independent from Mehian. A city within the city, with its own laws, castes, markets, and thousands of moving gears.
It was in the heart of that anthill that he noticed the servant caste.
A student in red clothing crossed his path with confident steps, followed closely by another, visibly younger, dressed in the neutral gray of the recruits. The gray carried a crushing pile of tomes and a heavy leather bag over his shoulder. His posture was bent, his eyes fixed on the floor.
When the red stopped to speak with a peer, the carrier froze instantly.
Motionless.
Available.
Erased.
Like furniture that breathed.
Davin slowed his pace.
This is not camaraderie. This is pure submission.
A few meters farther, the scene repeated itself.
A student draped in azure blue strolled by, escorted by two grays. One of them laboriously pushed a magical cart overloaded with trunks. The dominant student in blue walked with his head held high, speaking arrogantly, completely ignoring the effort of his human beasts of burden.
The carriers kept a sickly respectful distance.
Not too close.
Not too far.
Just enough to remain useful without becoming visible.
The Aethelgard system. The strong rule, the weak carry luggage. Probably in exchange for protection, points, or a few crumbs of resources. Pitiful, but logical.
Davin had no moral judgment to offer.
On Earth or here, human mechanics remained the same.
They had simply removed the tie, the HR badge, and the varnish of hypocrisy.
He carefully stored the information in a corner of his mind.
Around another artery, his gaze caught a silhouette that broke the pattern.
A student barely twenty years old walked alone.
He wore clothing of absolute black, woven from a material that seemed to absorb the light of the floating spheres. It was the first time Davin had seen that color. On the left side of his chest, the castle was embroidered in dark gray thread. A single star stood above it.
No servant.
No friends.
Not even another student walking nearby.
Ahead of him, other students moved aside almost instinctively, lowering their eyes or abruptly changing conversation, like people avoiding a contagious disease.
Are they afraid of him?
His aura was difficult to read.
Not exactly heavy.
Not weak either.
Just… wrong.
Toxic.
As if his mana were parasitized by an energy that had nothing to do with the dense purity of the building.
The stranger in black passed by without slowing, eyes fixed straight ahead.
But for a fraction of a second, Davin felt a cold prickling at the back of his neck.
A silent attention.
Oppressive.
The boy had scanned him, judged him, and classified him without even turning his head.
Then he disappeared at the end of the corridor.
Davin remained still for a second.
Occult. Very probably.
Curiosity appeared immediately.
Bad sign.
In this world, curiosity toward what made others flee looked very much like a rope already tied.
He resumed walking.
As he continued, he became aware of another dynamic.
More subtle.
Eyes weighed on him.
Not the entire crowd. Most students did not care about a new recruit in gray. But here and there, from alcoves, railings, or courtyard entrances, gazes lingered on his passage.
A moment too long.
No open hostility.
No simple curiosity.
A surgical evaluation.
The stare of predators estimating the value of fresh prey released into the enclosure.
He even saw two other recruits from that morning crossing a corridor with the look of lost rabbits. They attracted the exact same discreet, almost hungry attention from experienced students.
Hunting season is open, and we are the game.
He took a slight detour to avoid a group of four red-clad students watching him with unhealthy interest.
I need to stay under the radar until I understand who eats whom in this damn food chain.
His half-gate as an Initial Adept had made him a king in a village.
It had opened the Academy gates without making him pay the tax.
But here, at Aethelgard?
It was the bottom of the pit.
Dust under the boots of veterans.
After a long walk, he eventually found a strategic information point.
A large circular reception hall, where several main corridors met. An immense light-oak counter occupied an entire section of wall. Behind it, employees handled student requests with visible indifference, dealing with paperwork without raising their eyes longer than necessary.
Davin approached the first free window.
The man waiting there wore immaculate off-white clothing, marked on the chest with Aethelgard's stylized castle, topped by a single star embroidered in golden thread. Short brown hair, smooth face, eyes dead inside: he displayed the profound boredom of someone waiting for the end of his shift since before his shift had begun.
"Good morning. I've just arrived. I need answers."
The clerk almost stifled a yawn.
"A rare and exotic request. Go ahead. We are theoretically here for that."
Davin placed his forearms on the counter.
"How are the sectors structured? How does one join them? And what exactly is the chain of command here?"
The clerk finally looked at him.
One second.
Then his eyes dropped to the starless crest sewn onto Davin's gray clothing.
"Freshly admitted Initial Adept. Very well. Do you want the decorative brochure version or the useful one?"
"Useful."
"Good choice. The brochures lie badly."
He tapped his desk twice, as if mentally starting an administrative mechanism.
"Seven main sectors govern academic life at Aethelgard. Elemental magic wears green. Armament magic, for warrior-mages, wears red. The bestiary wears off-white. The occult, black. Diverse magic, dark gray. Alchemy, lavender violet."
He paused.
Then added, with a touch of dry irony:
"And above all of them, the azure sector. True Mages. The elite, the monsters, the blessed heirs, the unbearable prodigies, and everyone you should avoid looking at too long if you like your teeth."
Davin remained impassive.
"To join a sector?"
"You must convince the sector head or one of their representatives. They assess your potential, compatibility, usefulness, and sometimes your ability not to die during the interview. Until then, you keep your recruit gray."
He briefly pointed at Davin's clothing.
"The castle without a star means the Academy recognizes you as an Adept. Better than nothing. But not by much."
"And those without the castle?"
"Ordinary recruits or semi-Adepts. They can succeed. Some succeed very well. But they start lower and are treated accordingly."
Almost restful honesty.
Davin briefly lowered his eyes to his own crest, then to the clerk's star.
A star above the castle. Steve has two. Academic grade? Authority? Actual rank? Too early to conclude. The fabric speaks, but I don't know the language yet.
"And above the sector heads?" he asked.
The clerk sighed.
Not genuine annoyance.
More the fatigue of a man who had recited this answer too many times to people who then forgot to survive.
"The official hierarchy is strict. At the top, the director. You will probably never meet him, and that is for the best. Beneath him, the vice-director, who manages the domain day to day. Then the council of company masters. They are the higher authorities who arbitrate resources, quotas, conflicts, and major directions."
He raised one finger.
"Below them come the sector heads. Steve, for example, is the head of the elemental magic sector. They manage admissions, classes, quotas, professors, and students affiliated with their color."
"And the professors?"
"Variable. Some are ascending Mages who teach in exchange for resources and status. Others are monsters under contract with the Academy. Those teach few classes, choose their students, and generally do not answer stupid questions."
"Define stupid."
The clerk stared at him.
"Any question asked by someone weaker than them at the wrong time."
Davin slowly nodded.
Solid definition. Probably applicable to the entire continent.
"And students massacre each other at the bottom of the hierarchy."
The clerk gave a half-smile.
A shadow of mockery passed through his eyes.
"Not exactly. Students negotiate, work, serve, betray, gamble, fight, go into debt, affiliate, progress, or get crushed. Massacre is only one of the options."
"Very reassuring."
"It isn't written on any brochure, but it is the most useful sentence I will give you today: quickly find out what you are worth to someone stronger than you. Otherwise, someone will find out in your place."
Davin engraved the sentence into his mind.
The clerk continued, lower:
"There is a caste among students. Kings and dogs. Official clans, informal circles, protected students, carriers, debts. But you will discover that very quickly. Usually through pain."
"Last question," Davin said. "Is this Academy politically independent?"
This time, the man looked at him a little more attentively.
A hint of interest passed behind his boredom.
"Less stupid question. Independent on paper. Founded by House Mehiana in agreement with the royal family of Alderion. Second most powerful institution in the kingdom after the highest royal and magical authorities. The Countess's children study here. Heirs of minor clans too. Sons of enriched merchants. Useful bastards. Poor people who survived the bridge."
He tapped the counter.
"Aethelgard is neutral. Officially."
"And unofficially?"
"Unofficially, neutrality is a white robe. Very pretty. Very easy to stain."
Davin could not stop a very slight smile.
The clerk continued:
"Do not offend a lineage without reason. Do not mistake an insult for a war if you cannot afford to finish it. And never believe a student duel is only a student duel. Someone is always watching."
Political neutrality does not exist. Not in a world where power dictates the law.
The clerk leaned forward slightly, as if about to share a secret of no value.
"A free tip for newcomers. If you want mana crystals to survive, check the quest boards. Merchant escorts, magical beast hunts, ore gathering in hostile zones, herb collection, component recovery. Energy cores, hides, bones, and certain essence vials sell for good prices. It is the only way not to end up as a luggage carrier."
"Essence vials?"
"Stabilized extracts from magical beasts or plants. Highly demanded by alchemy and armament. Frequently stolen too. Never leave a vial visible in your room unless you want to test the quality of your lock."
"Noted. Thank you."
"You're welcome. Next."
Davin walked away.
Steve is a sector head. So not just a smiling instructor with too much free time. He concealed the full extent of his aura during the test. Never underestimate those who smile too easily here.
On the way to the dormitories, he came across an immense corkboard installed at a crossroads. Dozens of parchments were pinned to it with daggers. Some displayed detailed sketches of beasts — wolves with multiple tails, scaled bears, horned chimeras, birds with toothed beaks. Others listed dense descriptions, several colored seals, and reward amounts.
He stopped.
He did not understand a single word of the texts.
His brain crashed against the symbols.
But his analyst's mind still worked with numbers.
He spotted the rewards written at the bottom of the pages. The more monstrous the drawing, the longer the payment symbols became.
I am surrounded by financial opportunities, and I am incapable of reading a damn contract.
He stared at a parchment showing a creature with six eyes and three rows of fangs.
Learning this world's alphabet is now an absolute priority. Even before learning how to kill properly. Which, here, seems to be a common subject.
He resumed walking.
His residential wing was a long corridor of cold stone pierced by dozens of massive identical doors. He found his own thanks to the number engraved on his ring, then pressed the black metal against the rune on the lock.
A magical click echoed.
He entered.
It was tiny.
A monastic bed pushed against the wall, a small heavy wooden desk, a stiff chair, and a bare shelf. A narrow vertical window overlooked one of the training courtyards below. No visible washroom; those were probably shared at the end of the corridor.
Spartan.
Cold.
Enough.
He locked the door behind him.
When he looked up, one detail immediately caught his attention.
Embedded in the center of the stone ceiling, a diamond-shaped mana crystal emitted a milky light. More than the light, it was the pressure it generated that filled the small room.
Not enough to crush.
Enough to weigh on the lungs.
Enough to remind him that even a recruit's room was a cultivation machine.
A personal meditation crystal. Standard issue. Rather generous.
Intrigued, Davin raised his hand and stretched to brush its surface.
Ten centimeters from the stone, a violent discharge tore a grimace of pain from him.
A dry, sharp burn, like the impact of a white-hot iron rod. He withdrew his arm with a quick reflex, gritting his teeth.
[BEEP. ALERT: pure mana concentration beyond host tolerance threshold.Immediate physical contact strongly discouraged.Detected risk: superficial to moderate tissue damage.]
Davin massaged his numb fingers.
The burn faded quickly, but the warning was clear.
The mana is too dense for my body. I'm not supposed to touch it, just sit beneath it and absorb what it radiates.
The logic of the Academy imposed itself even within the dormitory walls.
The crystal was an energy source.
But also a measuring standard.
The day he could grasp it with his bare hand without his flesh being seared, he would know he had crossed a true threshold.
He sat cross-legged on the hard floorboards, directly beneath the glowing diamond.
He closed his eyes.
Slowed his breathing.
The sensation came almost instantly.
The energy flowing from the ceiling was infinitely purer and heavier than what he had absorbed in the village inn. He had to make almost no effort of concentration for his internal flow to align with the crystal's pulses.
His half-gate reacted.
It did not open further all at once.
It drank.
Slowly.
Greedily.
Like dry earth finally receiving dense rain.
The efficiency was absurd compared to the outside.
After a few minutes, Davin voluntarily cut the flow and opened his eyes.
Not too fast.
Not too far.
He had already attracted enough attention.
The plan is simple. Tomorrow: integration, general classes, scouting the library. Find a method to learn how to read. Scan as much as possible with the AI. Understand the sectors. Identify a profitable quest. Avoid kings, dogs, and people who smile like Steve.
He let himself fall onto the narrow mattress, crossing his hands behind his head.
Through the window, the light of the two suns declined, drowning the sky over Mehian in shades of blood and copper. In the distance, a spell exploded in a training yard with a dull rumble. Someone screamed. Someone laughed.
Aethelgard was still breathing.
Even at night, the Academy did not truly sleep.
Davin closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, the serious things begin.