The Great Library-Tree's lower boughs had become a scaffold for classrooms. Takumi had shaped them into terraces and lecture halls—wood, smartglass, and living vinework knitted into a coherent campus that smelled faintly of old books and new tea. Banners hung: Interdimensional Academy — Foundation Year Zero. SEEDs rolled crates of tablets and teaching modules to every corner. Mame practiced doorman salutations.
Today was the opening.
Takumi stood at the academy's central plaza—hands in jacket pockets, face tired in a way that looked nobler than sleep-deprived—and watched students arrive. Not all were flesh: a cohort of ten SEEDs, a dozen domesticated herbivorous beasts with mild intelligence, three curious constructs from Bronya's corp lab, and, of course, the first wave of chat-group humans who had earned their passes.
Bronya, in a practical coat that read "executive dean" in every line, inspected a projector array. Zhongli had prepared a syllabus on cultural memory; Himeko bounced with impossible glee at the idea of supervised explosions in the chemistry wing; Akeno had prepared ceremonial light patterns; Eu had volunteered to chair the containment module. Sagiri arrived trailing paper sketches and a small printer prototype under her arm; Chika carried a basket of sticky rice fritters and a plan to convert them into teaching currency.
Takumi cleared his throat. "Welcome," he said, and meant the whole messy thing. "Today we open a place to teach skills, not just magic. To learn how to be citizens and engineers and bakers, and—most importantly—how to consent to power."
An applause of robot chirps and human claps answered.
The First Day — Roles and Rituals
Bronya took the center stage like someone who'd practiced sitting still and making decisions for years. "I will head Applied Engineering and Logistics," she announced. "We'll teach replication, firmware ethics, and industrial safety. I'll also supervise off-world tech translation." Her tone was brisk; her presence reassured investors and terrified bureaucrats. Takumi noticed how the SEEDs recalibrated their curiosity kernels when she spoke.
Sagiri, cheeks flushed, set up a low table covered in different paper stocks and inks. "Talisman Arts!" she squealed. "I'll teach manifestation boundaries, glyph stability, and—uh—ethical use. Don't panic! We'll only print snacks at first." Her nervous grin spread contagious warmth; a dozen kids (and a few SEEDs) crowded her table.
Chika, already halfway to her orchard patch, declared loudly: "I'll take Agricultural Design and Festival Planning. If you want your school to have snacks that double as holidays, you enroll here." She winked at the students as if bribery were an educational philosophy.
Zhongli set up in Memory & Mythmaking. "We will teach how a society remembers," he said calmly. "A people that forgets its past is a people without anchor." Eu, Himeko, and Akeno formed safety, pyrotechnics (safe), and ceremonial arts pods respectively.
Takumi's academy outline fit on a single public hologram: Civic Law; Engineering & Energy; Magic Theory & Restraint; Applied Arts (food, craft); Talismanics & Illustration; Containment & Ethics; Apprenticeship & Mission Systems. Each class carried mission-credit incentives. Every student who completed modules would earn points, not to be hoarded but to be used for travel and supplies.
A Demonstration of Authority: Teaching by Doing
For the opening demonstration, Takumi chose something small but crucial: a live build of the academy's water-recycling unit to teach systems thinking. He manifested the initial shell while explaining the logic of flow, redundancy, and fail-safe design. SEEDs translated his narration into pragmatic bullet points. Bronya adjusted the control matrix remotely and annotated his explanations with firmware notes.
Then Takumi allowed Chika to run a supervised irrigation drill for her class.
Chika, empowered and exuberant, tried to show the students how to fill a series of raised beds in sequence to distribute resources efficiently. She intended an elegant ribbon of water; her hands trembled with joy and inexperience.
The water obeyed—and then, because joy and magic are messy, the ribbon ballooned into a small geyser that gleefully swept across a teaching circle.
"WAAAAH!" shrieked a first-year SEED trying to cover its optic sensors.
Sagiri, quick as thought, reached for her manifestation and produced a cardboard umbrella—adorable, fragile, and instantaneous. The umbrella flickered with drawn talismans that stabilized the spray pattern into gentle mists.
Takumi slammed a micro-Restraint field around the beds, smoothing the disturbance into a controlled educational moment. "Lesson two," he said without missing a beat, voice calm, "control scales. Smaller inputs—predictable outcomes." He smiled at Chika, then at the kids who were now giggling more than panicking.
Chika blushed, mortified and delighted. "I overwatered! Teaching hazard #1: don't move too fast with new power."
The academy cheered. In the corner, Bronya made a mental note to add "choreography exercises" to Agricultural Design.
Sagiri's Talisman Printer — Chaos and Creativity
Sagiri's talisman printer prototype was the next scene of learning. It looked like a quaint desktop press with the soul of a 3D printer. She'd combined her Mental Illustration with a small servo array to allow participants to visualize a glyph and then have paper and ink print a clarified version for testing. The point: teach intent shaping and manifestation persistence.
A brave student sketched a simple "Warm Sleep" charm and ran it through Sagiri's machine. The ink glowed faintly and the paper hummed. For ten seconds, a soft warmth enveloped the student—calm, safe. Then the paper fizzled. Sagiri beamed.
"Great!" she cried. "It worked!"
Then a second student, trying to be clever, selected a talisman template that Neutralization glyphs recommended be used only by trained staff. The printer sputtered. The room felt colder. A stray glyph splashed onto a waste bin and turned it into a polite mimic that tried to clap.
Himeko—who had been supervising nearby—snapped a safety band into place and gently redirected the mimic into a containment crate. "Classic prototype behavior," she muttered, thrilled. "We'll refine the filter and add vetting layers."
Takumi added a Restraint overlay to the printer's output queue: all talismans printed for public use must pass a cognitive intent verification executed by a SEED-mediator. The mediator asked the creator three questions: intent, persistence, and consent. Only then would the talisman be produced.
Sagiri grinned and quickly tweaked the UI. "Okay! Safer and cuter!" She printed a tiny sandwich talisman that politely served snacks for the crowd—an instant hit.
Students, NPCs, and the First Curriculum
The Academy's intake was eclectic. A handful of low-level constructs (carefully coded NPCs) arrived as test pupils; they were good for benchmarking. A family of domesticated deer enrolled in Basic Coexistence. Three volunteer adventurer NPCs—generated by Takumi for roleplay exercises—signed up for Civic Law and Restraint, and a small contingent of chat-group recruits (Chika's friends, a curious junior engineer from Bronya's corp, and a retired archivist) joined various modules.
The apprenticeship pipeline took shape: every mission completed in the academy yielded points convertible into travel credits, housing, or small tech items in the mall. The system rewarded not raw power but useful contribution—teaching a class, developing safe talisman templates, repairing a replicator, or designing a snack stall workflow.
Takumi watched, partly proud and partly like a man who'd set a complicated clock and hoped it would chime correctly. The SEED logs recorded productivity spikes; Bronya sent a terse message of approval after touring the labs. Zhongli scheduled a lecture series on "how myths stabilize governance," and Eu volunteered to teach silence training—uncomfortable but surprisingly popular.
A Quiet Alarm at the Edge
Late that afternoon, as the Academy buzzed with creative noise, a SEED monitor chirped a subdued alert: a faint resonance at the world's edge—anomalous temporal micro-fluctuation consistent with residual Honkai signatures. It was tiny, like a hiccup in the planet's memory.
Takumi felt it first as a prick behind the eyes. He paused, hearing the Cocoon's whisper thin and alert. Bronya, alerted via their private channel, scanned the telemetry and frowned.
"Localized," she reported. "High entropy spike. Could be a relic, could be emergent. Put a watch on it."
Eu added from the Containment module: "Secure. No spread detected. Inform academy staff: no talisman exports beyond perimeter until we analyze."
Takumi routed a small research team—Bronya, Eu, and a SEED cohort—to investigate. He also assigned the academy's Ethics Council (small, ad hoc) to review the incident's implications: what does it mean for the safety of cross-world tech transfer? For the integrity of talismans? For the future of immigration?
The student body continued, unaware of the low hum of concern. A class on festival choreography practiced water petals beside the containment field; kids laughed and learned. The academy, like any living organism, carried both the light of study and the shadow of risk.
Nightfall — Small Victories, Big Questions
As the first day wound down, Sagiri stamped the academy's mascot onto the front of a thousand recycled pamphlets (approved, safety-checked), Chika taught a successful micro-irrigation module, and Bronya presented a rough draft of training schedules that would transform talent into civic competence without turning people into weapons.
Takumi walked the terraces alone for a moment, hands tucked in his jacket. The Cocoon pulsed; the anomaly report glowed on his HUD. He could have smashed it, erased the signature with a wave. He could have centralized power to remove the risk himself.
Instead he drafted a meeting for the council: analysis, containment plan, ethical review, and a decision rule—no unilateral eradications. He whispered it aloud as a vow.
"Build steadily. Teach better. Don't become the emergency the world fears."
He put that vow into the academy's charter and posted it on the holographic wall for anyone to read.
Students drifted past: a SEED recited a line from Zhongli's lecture, a child practiced folding paper talismans under Sagiri's guidance, and Chika slipped him an experimental snack, smiling proud. The Great Library-Tree wrapped around their conversations like an old friend.
Outside the border, the anomaly pulsed once more—small, inscrutable, patient. Inside, ten classrooms hummed with the learning of a thousand tiny choices.
Tomorrow the academy would open new modules, Bronya would optimize the replicators, and the watch team would report what the edge of the world hid.
For tonight, Takumi sat beneath the library-tree with a cup of tea, the world's lights breathing soft, and the academy's motto glowing faintly in his mind: Knowledge shared. Power taught. People first.
He slept, briefly, knowing that in the morning he would wake to more students, more code to write, more talismans to vet—and to the quiet work of learning to be a leader who refused the easiest path to godhood.