Some judge a nation by how many Legends it possesses under its banner. Others by how vast its territories are. A few even use esoteric means, writing theorems to guess at mana variabilities. But I reject all those metrics in exchange for just one: How much does a nation give a shit about its own children?

And how much effort does it spend trying to make those children proper Pathbearers? How competent are its academies, sects, cults, whatever you want to call them—halls of learning and training meant to fashion the young and innocent into tomorrow's geniuses and killers. Because the amount of resources one devotes to a child indicates how much investment they're willing to put in for their nation to grow stronger, how many experiences they're willing to feed their undeveloped so that they can emerge as Adepts when their rivals are but Initiates.

Sure, Legends can live for a long, long time. Heroes with the right skills can make it centuries, even cross the thousand-year threshold in rarer cases. Except they're pretty rare. Most of us have a date with death coming sooner rather than later. Doesn't matter if it's natural or not; it's coming. You feel it on your neck. The System will spit plagues at us, invasions, and at some point, if you're not the best of the best, a mistake will follow, and you'll be cut down. So, you gotta be replaced. We all gotta be replaced. And the children that follow after? All we can hope for is that they're a little better.

And that's what these academies are for. They're that whetstone, sharpening the ever-growing blade of every nation.

Of all the academies on Integrated Earth, I think my greatest appreciation goes to Phoenix Academy, if only for their militaristic rigor and willingness to indulge in a live-fire type campus. For you see, Phoenix Academy believes in experiencing conflict to condition its students to it. Doesn't matter if you're a Martial or a non-Martial; you have to experience conflict.

Which is why the entire campus is built around a grand gate, a primal gate at that. You want to describe the buildings there? They're more like fortress walls. There are children manning the turrets, children watching from on high, children tasked with maintaining the defensive positions of their dormitories.

Now, most of the Primal Dimensionals have been neutered a bit by the time they come to raid by the wards put up on the inside, but still, they do come and play.

The unprepared get their walls breached all the time. When they do, they're penalized. Damages to your dorms must be repaired by your own hand, or a major tithe is required. Get one of yours kidnapped? Doesn't matter. They still need to be in class on time, so the rest of you are going to get them back, or you're going to fail together.

And that's just another thing: you're graded together as well there. You can say a lot about the Yellowstone Republic, but you can say this for certain: they treat warring seriously, the same way they treat child-rearing properly.

Give your young a taste of the blood. It's coming, so they'd best be ready when the steel falls.

-Legend-Swordlord Hank Nakamura

203 (I) Academy [I]

As soon as Merrielmel led them out of the room, Shiv noticed a few floating objects hovering in the air, and he wasn't the only one. "D-don't mind those," Merrielmel stuttered.

The floating fragments gave off pulses of violet mana. The pulses slowly dissipated, but they caressed Shiv, folded around him. Rather than sinking into his body, they formed a protective layer, turning near-invisible as they stabilized. However, Shiv could still feel the mana gliding against him, and it greeted his Shapeless Tides like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.

"Don't mind that either," Merrielmel explained. "It's simply to ensure that even a Diviner can't tell that we're here, and there are a great many Observers outside! A great many. Divination—it's a very specific kind of magic. One of the few that can peer into this place regardless of all its—uh, well, I can't call it nature, they're more so unnatural protections. Yes. Yes!"

Hero-Enchanter Merrielmel was a particularly eccentric elf from dress alone. He had a pointed cap that was a bit too large and too tall for his head. His robes were a mess of tassels, and each of them had a mess of badges hanging along their lengths. They all resembled a chain of large buttons, and as he moved, they clattered together.

Underneath his robes, Shiv had caught sight of leather armor. Studs of metal glinted from the armor, and they radiated with magic as well, dimensional magic. Furthermore, there were all the gems, jewels, and rings the Enchanter was wearing. All of them were suffused with magic, and it came together in a messy mélange of colors. Some of them clashed hard, mana fields bounding off one another, creating bursts and sparks in the air. Every few seconds, it seemed like fireworks were going off around Merrielmel.

And then there was his face. Merrielmel was utterly hairless. He had no eyebrows, no chin hair, no hair along what little of his scalp that Shiv could see. He was bare, and his skin was smoother than a baby's bottom.

And then there were his teeth. Shiv only caught a glint of them, but he knew most of them weren't real. He knew that because they didn't register when Shiv briefly bounced his mana hydra off Merrielmel's body. Accidentally, of course. Considering Shiv couldn't tell what type of mana they radiated, he guessed they were Geomancy implants. But for the life of him, the Deathless couldn't guess why someone would have a set of Geomantically charged teeth.

Merrielmel stumbled and limped along ahead of them. And while they walked, Shiv surveyed the surroundings. His surroundings. When Adam said that this place crashed into a dormitory, he wasn't understating anything. The restroom in this wing of the Coliseum was surprisingly intact. But behind, an entire section of the building had collapsed inward, utterly smashed to pieces by a brutal impact. Light spilled through cracks lining the sides of the structure ahead. Shiv saw that light radiating from the surface of Gateways or when someone was doing something extreme with an Unattuned Skill. Then, from the ceiling rained flakes of darkness. It passed through without ever brushing matter, and Adam hissed. "Shit. That's… that's from Harlock!"

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The darkness splattered down on them. Shiv held his breath, but Merrielmel didn't seem too worried. And neither did the Educator. Her tome kept them hidden from the other Ascendants, so long as no one could physically see them. And the Master-Enchanter's strange, cube-shaped flying contraptions continued projecting their anti-Divination fields. Shiv counted twelve of those contraptions, and they always remained equidistant from each other.

"They mask our presence," Merrielmel began. "So you don't need to worry, so long as we are not directly exposed. But, but, well, the Ascendants, their divinity, they have specific abilities in specific places—domains. Harlock has a great amount of control, but Harlock—this is utterly blasphemous to say. I'm very sorry, Irons. I'm very sorry. I don't, I didn't, never wanted you to see me like this. I never wanted you to think so lowly of me."

Irons ignored Merrielmel while the Enchanter stuttered on. But then came a bursting crackle of static in the air, and Harlock's darkness vanished from the world entirely. A second later, Can Hu let out a mechanical groan and stumbled as if something had struck it. Shiv paused mid-step.

"You alright?" Shiv asked.

Can Hu hesitated. It reached out and used the Deathless's shoulder to steady himself. "I am fine, but there has been a massive signal-based attack directed across the city."

"Signal-based? From who? The Ascendants?"

"No, I don't think so." Can Hu's optics flickered, and for a moment they almost winked out. A burst of ones and zeros exploded out from it, and Merrielmel let out a surprised chirp. The orcs had stopped as well, as had the other prisoners. Adam was beside Shiv, and Can Hu was between them. A building sense of worry grew inside Shiv.

But after a moment's struggle, Can Hu managed the first step and then another, and they were moving once more.

"What the hells was that?" Shiv asked.

"A signal-based attack," Can Hu repeated. It briefly stammered, and a loud squeak came from inside its chassis. It was still somewhat damaged from the escape, and its legs were little more than sparking stilts. Despite this, it insisted on walking using its own power, not having Kura and Five hold it up anymore.

"I think it was one of the prisoners," Can Hu said, "an automaton like me. They might have broken free from the quarantine and unleashed the attack to overwhelm the guard. If they inflict enough harm on the machine lifeforms in the capital, it will disrupt things and cause even more chaos. I suspect it was their strategy to slip through in the confusion. They have stopped now. I assume they are dead, as the cessation of the signal was too abrupt. Or perhaps they teleported. I cannot be sure."

Shiv's worry was transmuted into a heavy weight. He saw Adam looking down at the ground, unable to face him. There were consequences for everything they did, and this was one of them. They'd successfully managed to collapse the mana core of the prison, but their escape was accompanied by many others, and now others might pay for that with their lives.

Valor had told him something about consequence. There was no way to avoid it. No matter what you intended, there was always a cost in the end.

Irons noticed the quietude developing between Shiv and Adam, but he said nothing. Not to them, anyway. "Where are you taking us?" Irons said.

The Hero-Enchanter giggled. "Oh, just downstairs. This is going to be grand! Grand!" When Irons didn't respond with any kind of mirth, the man stopped giggling. "I, you have to understand, not all of Aenerial Coliseum was destroyed upon impact. This wing… This wing was particularly protected because the center of the arena cushioned it. Several parts collapsed around this wing, and it effectively protected some of the infrastructure as well. That's how I managed to repair the pipes so easily. That's how I managed to reconnect them with a few underground..."

Merrielmel kept looking over his shoulder and licking his lips. Irons never stopped glaring at the man. Shiv understood how it would be unnerving, but Merrielmel was naturally anxious anyway, it seemed. "Yes, well, we'll just be heading down. There is, I managed to create a special section downstairs. Another place that was spared from the destruction."

As they followed Merrielmel, he ducked under a door that was half caved in. A mess of rebar and other debris cluttered the room they had to squeeze through. The orcs groaned, and the ground splashed like a puddle as Solzimort slithered in behind them. It was at this point that Shiv realized Merrielmel hadn't noticed the Hydra at all.

To Solzimort's credit, he was applying a great deal of stealth, doing his best to make no noise. Shiv made eye contact with the tip of Solzimort's nose and simply shook his head. He wouldn't reveal the Hydra if the Hydra didn't want to be revealed. It would be another ace up their sleeves in case this went south. Getting real tired of being paranoid of everyone too, Shiv thought.

As they shimmied under more debris, they crossed through the room and found themselves walking down a set of stairs. The stairs kept going. One floor, two, then ten, and so on. It was pitch black by the end. Pitch black except for one faint glow flashing against the walls from far below. By the time they hit the very bottom of this place and could go no further, mainly due to the ground ending as a mess of rubble instead of an extended set of steps, Shiv saw a symbol of a set of crossed swords glowing over a set of doors. They seemed to be made from reinforced titanium.

"The hells are you hiding in there?" Shiv asked.

"I can't believe this," Irons mumbled. His stoic demeanor slipped slightly, and Shiv read the sheer disbelief coming from his narrowed eyes. "You managed to secure a training room too? How?"

"Oh yes, I was surprised as well," Merrielmel said without looking behind. He placed a hand on the door, and just then it gave a rattling noise before it hissed and snapped open. "Yes, yes, yes, okay. I still left enough power inside. I didn't need to, I didn't need to lever it open this time. That's good, so good."

The insides of the following room were dark, but even so, Shiv could tell how wide it was. Merrielmel's words echoed, and the air didn't stink so much down here. There wasn't that much dust, either. There was a cleanness to it that told him this place was well-ventilated, well-used, and a rush of wind made him all but certain his guess was true.

As their party filtered in, Merrielmel held up a finger, and then there came a lance of lightning from the tip of his hand. Shiv narrowed his eyes and realized the Enchanter was an Aeromancer, but he wasn't a particularly powerful one. There was no static around him, and the bolt he sent was feeble at best. However, as it struck something on the ceiling, a rush of crackling energy traveled through the rest of the chamber. A second thereafter, everything lit up.

Lights flared ablaze, and it was like standing beneath several suns. Shiv winced and turned away. Adam fared even worse. The Gate Lord snarled, and his frustration was evident as he mumbled a string of curses.

"Oh, I do so love vision damage," Helix commented bitterly. "There's nothing I like more than regenerating my lenses. It is a comforting activity that excites me to no end."

"Sorry, sorry," Merrielmel muttered. Two more bolts left his finger, and both struck the same point. The first made the room even brighter, and soon Shiv couldn't see anything but blinding light, even through his eyelids. The next, however, brought everything to a twilight level of dimness, and as the spots left his vision, he realized that the light wasn't natural.

Orbs of Pyromantic energy glistened above, but it was more than that. Every time he stared at them, they stabbed at his Awareness. They sizzled upon his vision despite his Tides, and Shiv realized those lights weren't even normal magical lights. They seemed to be things that affected one's perception directly, however that worked.

"I had to add in some of my own constructs for this place," Merrielmel said, gesturing upward. "It's meant to be a safety measure as well. A means of blinding someone if they were trying to, uh, eh, steal something from here. They—they can also detonate." The Enchanter shrugged. Then he shrugged once more. Awkwardly, he stopped, blinked, and turned away.

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