Chapter 5: Academy [ 1]
Two days was not enough time to fix D potential.
Lucus had understood this intellectually from the moment he'd read the status screen.
Potential, the system's ceiling assessment was not something you improved through forty-eight hours of meditation and jogging.
It was a structural quality, a measure of how well one's mana veins, Origin Seed, and physical frame were suited to cultivation. It was, in the language of his world-building document,
«the upper boundary of the vessel.»
What two days could do was improve the contents of the vessel.
He spent both days in the training district's public courtyard a free-use space near the guild hall where students and low-rank awakeners practiced.
He arrived at first light and stayed until the light failed. He did what Lucas Martin's body apparently already knew how to do in the most basic sense—mana circulation exercises, the kind taught to pre-academy students across the Empire—and pushed them further than the basic curriculum required.
The mana pool didn't grow noticeably. That took time measured in months, not days. But the circulation smoothed.
The wind affinity he'd been given felt more responsive by the end of the second day—still minor, still demanding, but he could call it faster and hold it longer.
And his body, which had spent two days of sustained physical training without significant rest, reminded him on the morning of the ceremony that it was seventeen years old and had apparently not been treated particularly well by its previous occupant.
Everything ached.
He dressed in Lucas Martin's best clothes—which were decent, for a third son of a minor house—and joined the stream of students moving toward the Grand Bridge that connected the city to Nexus Island.
The bridge was wide enough for twelve people abreast and surfaced in mana-conductive white stone that caught the early morning light and threw it back in soft blue-white angles.
Students moved across it in clusters—some in groups, already forming the early social bonds that would shape their academy years, some alone, shoulders set with the particular tension of people pretending they were fine.
The island ahead was visible as a mass of academic architecture: the main hall's tower with its signature dual-element weather vane rotating in the morning breeze, the dormitory towers behind it, and the training grounds' high walls further back.
Lucus walked alone, which was appropriate for Lucas Martin and also convenient for the ongoing practice of being inconspicuous.
He spotted Ethan about thirty meters ahead, also alone, moving with that same quiet focused quality.
He spotted a group of three students he recognized from his novel—second-year characters who didn't matter much—and several faces he didn't recognize at all, which was informative.
There were always people in a world beyond what the narrative acknowledged.
And then, cutting through the crowd with the particular assurance of someone who had never found crowds difficult: Aiden Stromfang.
Lucus had written Aiden as the classic rival archetype—the son of a prestigious swordsman family, naturally gifted, initially arrogant, eventually becoming one of Ethan's closest companions after a turning point in Arc Two.
He was supposed to be the obstacle that made Ethan better, the stone that sharpened the blade.
In person, Aiden was tall for seventeen, built with the upright posture of someone who had been in formal training since childhood, with amber eyes and the particular set of the jaw that Lucus recognized as his own character note: 'pride that has never had reason to question itself.'
His hair was dark auburn, and he wore the academy-enrollment clothes of a senior house—not ostentatious, but the quality was visible in the tailoring.
He walked past Lucus without seeing him. Because extras weren't in his sightline.
Lucus noted it without resentment. It was useful, actually. Invisible was safe.
He crossed the bridge and entered the academy.
The opening ceremony took place in the Grand Hall—a vast space with ceilings that reached high enough that the upper reaches were in permanent soft shadow, lit by a hundred floating mana-crystal lights that the academy artificers reset each morning.
The seating was arranged by assessed ranking: the front sections for the higher-potential students, the middle for the bulk of the class, the rear for— Lucas Martin's assigned seat was in the seventh row from the back.
Lucus sat in it, looked at the view of the stage through two hundred and thirty intermediate heads, and thought: 'right. This is appropriate.'
To be Continued...