The ivory towers of Aethelgard were not merely monuments to power; they were high-pressure crucibles designed to boil away the impurities of the soul. While the spectacular, high-stakes drills of the first few days had captured the headlines of the academy's internal broadsheets, the reality of the ensuing week was a relentless, crushing march of standardized education.
To the Oros Empire, a prodigy was an asset that needed to be balanced. It was not enough to be an SS-Rank telekinetic or an S-Rank Saint-Healer; one had to be a functioning cog in the imperial machine. This meant that for every hour spent in the exhilarating glow of a mana-rift, Squad One spent three hours in the dim, climate-controlled silence of the remedial lecture halls.
Alaric moved through this grind with a terrifying, rhythmic precision. While the other students of the Apex Tier looked progressively more haggard—eyes bloodshot from late-night cramming sessions on Gate Law and Extra-Planar Jurisdiction—Alaric appeared as though he were on a leisurely vacation.
His daily schedule was a masterpiece of efficiency.
06:00: Physical conditioning in the high-gravity chambers.
08:00: Advanced Mana-Circuit Ethics (a course designed to ensure students didn't accidentally vaporize civilians).
10:00: Imperial History and the Genealogy of the Great Houses.
13:00: Monster Anatomy and Weakness Mapping.
15:00: Tactical Lab.
Alaric sat in the back of the History lecture, his silver hair catching the midday light through the narrow lancet windows. He didn't use a quill; three different fountain pens danced across his parchment in a telekinetic ballet, transcribing the professor's lecture, cross-referencing it with a textbook on The Age of Ruin, and sketching a map of the Northern borderlands simultaneously.
He noticed Caspian three rows ahead. The boy's head was propped up by a fist, his other hand idly tracing a deep, jagged scar on the wooden desk with a letter opener. Caspian wasn't taking notes. He looked like a man listening to a story he knew was a lie. When the professor spoke of the "Heroic Defense of the Black Wall," Caspian's jaw would tighten, a pulse jumping in his temple.
Observation, Alaric noted, his eyes never leaving his moving pens. Subject Caspian displays symptoms of 'Chronic Anachronism.' He reacts to historical events with the visceral grief of a direct witness, despite the events occurring eighty years prior to his birth. Hypothesis: His family's oral tradition is more intensive than imperial records suggest, or he is suffering from a specific psychological displacement.
At 13:00, the atmosphere shifted as they moved to the damp, subterranean levels for Monster Anatomy. The room was filled with the pungent, metallic scent of preservative fluids. On each table sat a specimen of a Rank-D Shadow Imp, pinned and splayed for study.
"The Imp is a creature of shadow and spite," the instructor, a wizened woman with a missing eye, droned. "It does not have a heart. It has a mana-nucleus located three centimeters below the sternum. If you miss, it will regenerate. Lady Seraphina, since your 'Divine Clarity' trait allows you to see mana-flows, please demonstrate the extraction."
Seraphina stood at the table. To anyone else, she was a poised, beautiful representative of the Church. But to Alaric, who could feel the frantic vibration of the air around her, she was a woman standing on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
She reached for the surgical lancet. Her hand didn't just shake; it spasmed. She stared at the small, leathery creature as if it were a Great Demon of the Seventh Circle. In her mind, the room was no longer a lab. She was back in the final days, standing in the blood-slicked courtyard of the Cathedral, watching these "minor" pests swarm over the bodies of her sisters.
The Imp's preserved jaw hung open in a silent scream. To Seraphina, it was the herald of the end.
"Seraphina," Alaric said.
His voice wasn't loud, but it possessed a specific, resonant quality that seemed to cut through the fog of her panic. He had moved from his table to stand a respectful four feet away from her.
"I... I can't," she whispered, the lancet clattering to the stone floor.
The rest of the class turned to stare. Ignis let out a quiet, disparaging snort from across the room. Caspian half-rose from his seat, his eyes darting between Alaric and the trembling priestess, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of a sword he wasn't allowed to carry in class.
"You can't, or you won't?" Alaric asked.
His tone was not unkind, but it was devoid of the soft pity she expected. It was the tone of a master strategist evaluating a faulty piece of equipment.
"I've seen them," she hissed, her eyes finally snapping to his. "I've seen what they do when they aren't pinned to a table. You don't know. You don't understand how it feels to watch the light fail."
Alaric stepped closer, his violet eyes locking onto hers. He used a sliver of his telekinesis to dampen the sound around them, creating a momentary vacuum of privacy.
"You're right. I don't know," Alaric said, his voice a cold, hard anchor. "But I do know that you are currently failing a D-Rank practical in a room full of people who are looking for a reason to doubt the Church. If you collapse here, over a dead construct, how do you expect to survive when the rift actually opens?"
"You think this is about a grade?" Seraphina's fear was rapidly being eclipsed by a white-hot flash of indignation.
"I think you are letting a memory—or a nightmare—dictate your reality," Alaric replied. "You are a Saint-Healer. You are the woman the Empire expects to mend the world. If you can't cut into a Shadow Imp in a controlled lab, then you aren't a hero. You're a liability. And I don't lead liabilities."
The insult was a precision strike. It bypassed her fear and slammed directly into the pride of a woman who had, in another life, held the line against the darkness until her very soul cracked. Seraphina's breathing slowed. Her eyes narrowed, the blue of her pupils turning a freezing, crystalline white.
"You don't lead me, Alaric Thorne," she said, her voice dropping into a lethal, quiet register.
She didn't pick up the lancet. Instead, she raised her bare hand over the specimen. A needle-thin spike of pure, condensed holy light erupted from her fingertip. It didn't just extract the nucleus; it cauterized the wound with such surgical precision that the rest of the specimen remained untouched.
The instructor gasped. Even Caspian looked stunned. That level of mana-compression was usually reserved for High Inquisitors.
Seraphina turned back to Alaric, her face a mask of cold, focused defiance. The "shell-shocked" girl was gone, replaced by a survivor who realized that her enemy wasn't the monster on the table—it was the man standing in front of her.
"I'm watching you," she said, her voice audible only to him. "Every step you take. Every 'kind' word you say. I will be there when the mask slips, Alaric. And when it does, I won't be the one shaking."
Alaric didn't flinch. In fact, he felt a surge of genuine intellectual satisfaction. He had successfully shifted her psychological state from "paralyzing fear" to "active hostility." While hostility was a challenge, it was a productive emotion. It meant she would train. It meant she would stay sharp.
"I certainly hope so, Seraphina," Alaric replied with a small, polite nod. "The view is much better when you're standing up."
He walked back to his table, his silver hair shimmering under the mana-lamps. As he sat down, he pulled his notebook toward him and made a new entry.
Subject Seraphina: Trauma-response successfully converted into competitive antagonism. Combat efficiency expected to rise by 60%. Social cohesion remains at 0%, but functional utility is restored.
The rest of the week passed in a similar fashion. Alaric played the role of the perfect student, the perfect leader, and the perfect antagonist. He corrected Caspian's footwork in the gym with a smile that made the boy want to scream. He offered Leo tips on shield-bracing that were so effective the boy started following Alaric around like a loyal hound, much to Caspian's vocal disgust.
By Friday evening, the "Vanguard of Ruin" was the talk of the Apex Wing. They were the most efficient squad in the history of the freshman class, yet they were also the most fractured. They didn't eat together. They didn't speak in the hallways.
As the bells rang to signal the start of the first Weekend Leave, Alaric stood on his balcony, watching the carriages arrive to take the noble students back to their estates. He saw Caspian and Seraphina sharing a carriage—an odd pairing, given their disparate backgrounds.
They are meeting, Alaric mused, his violet eyes glowing faintly in the twilight. They are going into the city to discuss the 'problem' that is Alaric Thorne.
He turned back to his room, his suitcase already hovering by the door. He wasn't going home to his father's duchy. He had already sent a polite letter declining the invitation, citing "academic rigors."
"Unit 4," Alaric said to the mechanical golem by the door. "Prepare my civilian cloak. I think it's time I saw what the 'Heroes' do when they think the 'Villain' isn't watching."
He stepped out into the corridor, his mind already calculating the most likely locations for a secret meeting of traumatized prodigies. He didn't feel hurt by their exclusion. He felt invigorated.
If they won't tell me what I've done to deserve their hate, Alaric thought, then I'll just have to listen in on the conversation.