Being a 2nd Order Adept felt different. Arlan woke up feeling the world had become clearer, sharper. The light in his room wasn't just light; he could see the tiny dust motes floating in precise paths. His body, once a heavy, aching thing, moved with a quiet power. The ghost-cap mushroom had changed him.
He checked his status.
Arlan Thorne
Cultivation:2nd Order, Rank 1
Primary Affinity:Space (Unstable)
Secondary Affinity:Shadow (2nd Order, Rank 1)
Mana:180/500
Umbral Mana:120/200
Physique:B-
Cohort:Arcanum
No longer at the bottom. He was now officially an Adept, one step into the real world of the Awakened.
His first class as a 2nd Order was Advanced Mana Control. It was held in a large, circular room with floating platforms. The instructor, a stern woman with water magic, was a 4th Order Commander. About thirty other 2nd Order students were there, mostly from the Ascendant Blade cohort—fighters, blasters, elementalists. Their auras were bright and aggressive. A few gave him curious looks. His fight with Lyra Solara was already academy gossip.
"Control is the bridge between power and precision," the instructor began. "Today, you will manifest your affinity and hold it in a stable, complex shape for ten minutes. The shape is a rotating tetrahedron."
The Ascendant Blade students grinned. This was easy for them. Fire users summoned flickering pyramids of flame. Earth users made rotating crystals of rock. A wind user had a spinning vortex of air.
Arlan focused. He needed to use his Space affinity without causing a tear or drawing too much attention. He raised his hand, concentrating on the space in front of his palm. He didn't try to cut or erase. He tried to fold.
The air in front of him shimmered. A faint, glass-like tetrahedron about the size of a grapefruit appeared, hovering. It wasn't made of light or fire. It was a folded piece of reality, bending the light around it, making it look like a heat haze in a perfect shape. Inside it, the air was utterly still—frozen.
He held it. It was draining, costing him a steady stream of mana, but he held it. The Space affinity felt slippery, like trying to grip a live fish, but his new 2nd Order control helped.
"Interesting," the instructor said, stopping by his platform. "A spatial fold manifesting as stasis. Not a standard application. But stable. Good."
He saw a few of the Ascendant Blade students staring, some with respect, some with clear jealousy. One in particular, a bulky guy with a fiery red aura—a 2nd Order, Rank 3 fire adept named Krag—scowled. Krag's own fire tetrahedron was roaring and impressive, but it flickered slightly at the edges.
After class, as Arlan was leaving, Krag stepped into his path, two of his friends flanking him. Their auras flared.
"Look who it is," Krag said, his voice a low rumble. "The cheat who got lucky with a mushroom. Think you're hot stuff now because you made a little glass pyramid?"
Arlan said nothing. He just looked at Krag, his face cold and blank.
"What, cat got your tongue? I'm talking to you, legacy." Krag poked a finger at Arlan's chest.
Arlan moved. He didn't step back. He simply tilted his torso an inch, letting the poke sail past. At the same time, he channeled a whisper of Umbral mana into his shadow at Krag's feet. The shadow twitched, just a tiny jerk.
Krag, off-balance from the missed poke and startled by the movement underfoot, stumbled forward a step. One of his friends, trying to catch him, bumped into the other. For a second, the three bullies were a tangle of limbs.
Arlan walked past them without a word, not even looking back. Behind him, he heard Krag's furious sputter and the snickers of other students who had seen the clumsy display.
It was a small thing. A shadow trick. But it was efficient. It made his point without a fight, without breaking rules, and it made Krag look like a fool.
His next stop was the Sanctum for his mandatory "post-breakthrough assessment." The Sanctum was a quiet, white building that hummed with peaceful energy. Head Proctor Vance was waiting for him in a simple room.
"Show me your core stability, Cadet Thorne," she said, her lake-colored eyes seeing right through him.
Arlan focused inward, allowing the spatial energy around his core to become visible to her senses. He didn't hide the instability, but he showed the new structure—the liquid mana vortex, the darker Umbral core orbiting it, and the cracked, but now partly contained, spatial power.
Vance's eyebrows rose. "A dual-core emergence. And you used the principles of a binding matrix to force the liquid transition? That is… incredibly dangerous. You could have shattered your soul."
"It worked," Arlan said simply.
"A pragmatic view. The instability is lower, but it is woven into your foundation now. Stabilizing it will be a lifelong task." She placed a hand over his chest. A warm, deep blue energy flowed into him, probing.
The Academy system—the Aegis Network. A separate from the Universal System. It monitors the campus, manages wards, assigns dorm resources, and tracks student progress for internal rankings. Vance linked Arlan's profile to it. It helped the school management monitor the students' unique condition and provide… tailored guidance."
A new prompt appeared in his vision, not from his shadow-protocol or the Universal System, but in academy blue and gold.
```
[Aegis Network - Welcome, Cadet Thorne.]
[Access Level: Gamma (Anomaly-Track)]
[Current Internal Rank: 347th out of 420 Adepts.]
[Recommended: Utilize Foundry Credit (100 awarded) for core-stabilizing materials.]
[Next Mandatory Check-in: 7 days.]
```
So, the academy had its own bossy computer. Good to know.
"Your internal rank is low because it factors in total mana capacity, control scores, and combat potential. You have unique abilities, but your raw power is still behind," Vance explained. "I suggest you visit the Foundry. And perhaps take a mission to earn merit points. Standing still is not an option here."
He left the Sanctum and headed straight for the Foundry. Jax was already there, her mechanical arms deep in the guts of a large device that looked like a printer crossed with an altar.
"Arlan! You broke through! I felt the mana ripple last night. Congrats!" Her goggles zoomed in on him. "Your energy signature is… wow. Spiky and smooth at the same time. Never seen that."
"I need to earn merit points. Fast," Arlan said, ignoring the comment on his signature.
"Perfect timing! The Runic Compiler prototype is ready for its first field test. The academy mission board has a perfect job. Look." She swiped a screen, pulling up a listing.
Mission: Ward Maintenance - Old Observatory.
Rank:C (Adept-Level)
Requirement:Runic knowledge or advanced technical skills.
Description:The mana-ward stones around the abandoned hilltop observatory have degraded. Re-inscribe the basic stability runes on twelve stones.
Reward:300 Merit Points, 50 Foundry Credits.
Danger:Low. Possible minor spirit accumulations.
"It's boring, but it pays well because no one wants to do it," Jax said. "It's all basic 'Kin' and 'Barrier' runes. With the Compiler, we can do it in an hour instead of a day. We split the points and credits."
Arlan looked at the device. The Runic Compiler was a sleek black box with a crystal lens. You fed it a rune pattern and intent, and it used concentrated mana to inscribe it perfectly onto a surface at high speed. It was a cheat code for rune-smiths.
"Let's do it," he said.
They gathered their gear and took an academy transport skiff to the edge of the campus grounds, where an old stone observatory sat on a wooded hill. The place felt quiet and forgotten. The twelve ward stones were placed in a circle around the building, each one mossy and worn, the runes on them faded to near invisibility.
Jax set up the Compiler. Arlan's job was to clean the stones and hold a targeting mana-beam steady while the Compiler did the inscribing. It was simple, peaceful work. The only sounds were the hum of the machine, the wind in the trees, and Jax's occasional muttering about mana-flow rates.
On the seventh stone, as Arlan was wiping away moss, he felt a chill. Not a physical cold, but a drop in ambient mana. He activated his Umbral Sight.
Around the clearing, he saw them. Faint, wispy shapes in shades of blue and grey—spirit accumulations. They were barely conscious, drawn to the mana of the stones. They were harmless, more like echoes than ghosts. They watched with empty curiosity.
One, a slightly stronger spirit that looked like a faded image of an old man in an astronomer's robe, drifted closer to Jax. It reached a translucent hand toward the glowing Compiler.
Jax, focused on her screen, didn't see it.
Without thinking, Arlan shifted his hand. He didn't have a spell to banish spirits. But he had Space. He focused on the space between the spirit's hand and the Compiler. He didn't freeze it solid. He just made it… thicker. Like suddenly filling it with clear, heavy jelly.
The spirit's hand slowed to a crawl, pushing against the thickened space with a look of confused frustration on its faint face.
Jax looked up, followed Arlan's gaze, and yelped. "Ah! Spirit! Don't touch the optics!" She fumbled for a charm at her belt—a simple ward of light.
The spirit, startled by her shout and the sudden resistance, pulled back and drifted away, merging with the others.
"Thanks," Jax said, breathing out. "That was weird. It looked… stuck."
"Must have been weak," Arlan said, releasing the spatial effect.
They finished the last five stones without incident. As the final rune glowed to life, the entire circle hummed, and a dome of faint light shimmered over the observatory before fading. The mission was complete.
The points and credits appeared in their academy accounts instantly.
Walking back to the skiff, Jax grinned. "That was the easiest three hundred points I've ever made. We should be a team. You're at least quiet, you don't complain."
Arlan gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. It was a partnership.
That evening, back in his dorm, he looked at his resources. 150 merit points. 50 foundry credits. And a new, solid feeling of being a 2nd Order Adept.
He was no longer just surviving. He was building. The Silent Accord was a distant threat. The idiots in class were minor obstacles. For now, his path was clear: get stronger, get smarter, and stack up every advantage he could.
The cold focus inside him was absolute. He had a long way to go. But for the first time, the top of the mountain didn't seem completely out of reach.