Varen handled the points himself.
He walked to the front of the Tech Wing's main room after the calibration phase was done, and the way the room responded to his presence was the way rooms always responded to his — a slight settling, the ambient noise dropping a register, three hundred people's attention orienting without being explicitly directed.
"The trial rankings determine your initial point allocation," he said. "Points are the Academy's internal currency. Training facilities, resource access, technique purchases, material acquisition — all of it costs points. You earn more through cultivation progress, trial performance, faculty assessment, and contributions to the Academy's various ongoing projects." He paused. "Starting allocations are ranked. The difference between first and last is significant. The gap is intended to reflect the performance differential. It can be closed. It has been closed before by candidates who started at the bottom and ended somewhere very different."
He looked around the room.
"Point allocations are being distributed to your personal arrays now," he said. "Check your monitoring device."
Varek checked.
---
[ACADEMY POINT SYSTEM — INITIAL ALLOCATION]
[Trial Rank: 3rd Place]
[Initial Points: 15,000]
[For reference:]
[1st Place allocation: 25,000]
[2nd Place allocation: 20,000]
[300th Place allocation: 1,000]
[Points refresh rate: Variable, based on cultivation activity and faculty assessment.]
[Current Balance: 15,000]
---
He looked at 15,000.
He looked at 25,000 and thought about Calder Voss somewhere in the room checking his own device and seeing that number.
'Ten thousand points between first and third,' he thought. 'Ten thousand in an institution where facility access costs points. Training costs points. Material acquisition costs points.' He thought about the gap over time, the compound effect of starting with more and spending more and accumulating more because you had the resources to accumulate. 'That gap doesn't close passively. It closes actively or it doesn't close at all.'
He thought about what 15,000 bought and what he needed and what the priority order was.
The Trial of Soul was coming. He needed to understand what it required before he walked into it. Information was the first purchase. Resources for cultivation in the interim were the second. Everything else was tertiary until the trial was addressed.
He opened the facility network on his access chip and found the library.
Soul layer cultivation texts. Trial preparation documentation. Historical accounts of the Trial of Soul for candidates of various cultivation backgrounds.
He started building a list.
---
"How did you find the test last night?"
Varen's voice, close. He hadn't heard the vice principal approach, which was the same non-event as the last time.
He looked up from the access chip.
Around him, several candidates had gone still. The ones near enough to hear. He felt the quality of their attention — the specific alertness of people who had just heard a question that confirmed something they'd been uncertain about.
The room started going quiet in waves, the information propagating outward.
One candidate near the distribution stations made a noise that was partly a word and partly something that wasn't.
Another said "so it was—" and didn't finish.
Calder's face did something that was very controlled and very brief. Ren's visible eye went through its rapid calculation and arrived somewhere. Jorn looked at the ceiling for a moment.
Varek looked at Varen.
"Straightforward," he said. "Once the anchor point structure was identified."
Varen looked at him. "You identified it during the event."
"Yes."
"And closed the rupture by destabilizing all four anchors simultaneously."
"Yes."
"How," Varen said. The same question as Jorn in the recovery chamber. The practical question.
"I had help with three of the anchors," Varek said. "The fourth I addressed with Anomaly energy applied to the pressure conditions rather than the inscription structure directly."
He said it the way he said most things — plainly, at the temperature of fact.
The room was very quiet now.
Varen looked at him for a moment.
'He already knows,' Varek thought. 'The monitoring array caught everything last night. He knows about the Anomaly energy. He's asking me how to see if I'll tell the room.'
'I told the room because there's no benefit in concealing it from Varen specifically and there's a specific benefit in appearing willing to be direct about it.'
'The Anomaly contract is documented with the Veilstone's failure to read me. Anyone who cares enough to investigate will find it eventually.'
'Better to be the one who says it than the one who gets found out.'
Varen's expression didn't shift significantly. "Noted," he said, which was either the most informative or least informative response available and Varek couldn't determine which.
The vice principal looked around the room.
"The test," he said, to the room generally. "Yes. It was a test. Specifically — a test of collective response without the trial's competitive incentive structure. The Monster Hunt Trial measures individual performance against competitive stakes. Last night measured something else." He paused. "Whether you'd move toward a threat when there was nothing to gain from it except dealing with the threat."
The room processed that.
"Some of you ran," he said. Not accusatory. Factual. "Some of you fought. Some of you organized. The Academy records what people do when the framework disappears. That information is part of your file."
He looked at the room for another moment.
"Your points and technology are active. The Academy formally begins in two days. Use the time." He turned to leave. "The library opens in an hour."
He left.
The room returned to something that was trying to be normal and wasn't quite there yet. Three hundred people recalibrating what last night had meant while simultaneously looking at the point allocations on their personal arrays.
Varek looked back at his access chip and his list.
'Library in an hour,' he thought. 'That's enough time.'
He thought about what Fel had said. About enemies remembering things differently when there was no point system to justify them. He thought about the candidates who'd run last night and whether they were looking at him now.
He didn't look up to check.
It didn't change anything he was going to do.
He thought about 15,000 points and the Trial of Soul and the channels that were open and the work that was always there when you were ready to do it.
He pulled up the library catalog on the access chip.
Soul layer trial documentation. He found the relevant section and started reading.
The hour would pass whether he used it or not.
He used it.