It had been exactly eight days since we woke up in this world. Eight days of starvation, slime-farming, and sewer-crawling.
We spent the last two of those days moving between safe houses—a generous term for "damp basements" and "rat-infested attics"—while the city of Lastlight turned itself inside out looking for the source of the "Red Ego." The white-robed Silencers were everywhere, tearing apart the lower districts, kicking down doors, and dragging people away for "audits."
In the quiet moments between dodging patrols, we had kept the engine running. I had wanted to force the breakthrough to Solid Blue—desperate for the extra mana capacity and safety it would bring—but the Paladin had refused.
'It is not time,' Ronan had lectured while I sweated through a plank hold in a dusty cellar. 'A rushed foundation cracks under weight, Murphy. We build wide before we build high. You stay at Light Blue until the walls of your Core are hard enough to hold an ocean.'
So we were stuck at the peak of Light Blue. Which was cutting it fine, because according to Ronan, a Light Blue Core was the absolute floor for entry. Anything less, and the wards at the gate would just bounce you back onto the pavement.
We had lucked out on the timing, at least. Ronan's memory of the ancient academic calendar had been spot on. If we had arrived in the city a week later, we would have missed the annual intake entirely. The only other way in was a "Special Consideration" application, a process that involved bribing three different magistrates and paying a fee so exorbitant we didn't even bother doing the math. We had one shot, and it was today.
Eventually, the sun rose on the one day the Church couldn't touch us: The Day of Ascension. Enrollment Day.
The Azure Spire Academy was less a school and more a statement of absolute, crushing dominance. The outer walls were fifty feet high, constructed from seamless white marble that seemed to glow with its own internal light. The gates themselves were three storeys tall, wrought from dark, star-metal iron that hummed with active warding runes, creating a shimmering heat-haze in the air. Beyond them, the Spire itself pierced the smog of the lower city, a monolith of blue crystal and white stone that looked down on the world like a god judging an ant hill.
A line of hopefuls stretched down the street, winding around the block. Or rather, two lines.
On the left was the Legacy Line. It was short, moving briskly, and smelled of lavender and expensive polish. Young nobles in silk doublets embroidered with the crests of Gryphons, Hydras, and Lions chatted idly about their summer villas. They didn't even look at the clerks; they walked through the gates with a wave of a signet ring, the wards parting for them like obedient servants.
On the right was the Merit Line. It was long, slow, and smelled of desperation.
I looked around at the competition. It was a biology textbook come to life. There were burly Dwarves braiding runes into their beards, lanky Elves checking the fletching on their arrows, and a group of obsidian-skinned Lithos who looked like walking statues. I even spotted a few Beastkin—a nervous-looking girl with fox ears and a massive Minotaur who was taking up two spots in the queue.
'Not a lot of kids here,' I noted. 'Everyone looks at least sixteen. Some of these guys look forty.'
'Sixteen is the age of majority for education,' Ronan explained. 'Basic schooling ends then. If you have a Core, you come here. If you don't, you go to the fields or the workshops. And since there is no upper age limit for the pursuit of power, you get the late bloomers too. Look there.'
He directed my gaze back to the Legacy Line. Flanking a bored-looking teenage noble was a massive, scarred warrior in grey plate mail. The man looked old enough to be the kid's father, and mean enough to chew rocks.
'That man is enrolling as a first-year?' I asked, sceptical.
'A "Retainer Student",' Ronan clarified. 'Technically, he is a student. In reality, he is a bodyguard. The Noble Houses pay the tuition for grizzled veterans to enrol alongside their children. They sit in class, take the tests, and ensure that if a duel breaks out, the Young Master doesn't get a scratch. It's a legal loophole to keep armed guards on campus.'
'Great,' I muttered. 'So not only do the rich kids get a fast pass, they bring their own private security detail.'
We trudged forward in the Merit Line. It took three agonising hours to reach the front. The clerk at the desk was a skeletal man with spectacles thick enough to start a forest fire. He sat behind a high podium, looking down at us like we were a particularly boring species of insect.
"Application fee," he droned, not looking up from his ledger. "Fifty Gold Crowns. Non-refundable. Next."
I froze. Fifty gold.
The crowd behind me murmured. A grizzled mercenary two spots back cursed loudly and walked away, his dreams dead on the spot. Fifty gold was a fortune. It was a life-changing amount of money for a commoner—enough to buy a farm or a small shop. Here, it was just the cover charge.
I reached for my belt. The heavy pouch, filled with the profits from our slime-farming empire and the sale of the pristine cores, felt suddenly very light. We had earned that gold in blood, sweat, and sewer muck. It was our armour money. Our food money.
'Do it,' Ronan urged gently. 'Money is a shield, Murphy. But the Academy is a fortress. Trade the shield for the fortress.'
I looked back at the city. Somewhere out there, Pontiff Valentine was hunting. I could almost feel the phantom itch of his gaze sweeping the streets.
I unhooked the pouch and dropped it on the desk.
THUD.
The skeletal clerk paused. The sound of heavy gold hitting wood got his attention. He opened the pouch, counted the coins with agonising slowness, checking for shaved edges or counterfeits, and then swept them into a lockbox beneath the desk. He didn't smile. He didn't welcome me. He just stamped a piece of parchment with a heavy, red thud.
"Candidate 404," he announced, handing me the slip. "Batch 4. Hall C. Your time starts the moment your ass hits the chair."
I took the slip. I was broke again. But I was inside.
The interior of the Academy was a logistical marvel designed to process ambition on an industrial scale. We weren't funnelled into a single room; the main corridor branched off into a dozen massive lecture halls, each swallowing streams of candidates like a whale feeding on krill. It was a revolving door of dreams and failures—one group trudging out looking pale and defeated, while the next group marched in looking hopeful.
'Efficient,' Ronan noted. 'They process the written portion in mass waves to cull the herd quickly. The Resonance Crystal is a singular artifact, so the power test has to be done one by one. But for this? They just need warm bodies in seats.'
We were directed into Hall C. It was a cavernous masterpiece of architectural intimidation. The ceiling was a mosaic of glass depicting the First Emperor ascending to godhood, and the walls were lined with the statues of past Headmasters, all staring down in judgment. Hundreds of solitary desks were spaced precisely five feet apart. The air rippled with a Silence Ward—a heavy magical blanket that muffled the scratching of quills and the shuffling of feet, making the room feel like it was underwater.
I found desk 404 and sat down.
The moment I settled, a rune etched into the wood of the desk flared to life. It was a countdown timer, the glowing sands of a magical hourglass trickling away in real-time. Beside it lay a sheaf of parchment and a quill that glowed with a faint, punitive red light.
'Anti-cheat quill,' Ronan noted with professional interest. 'Detects external mana manipulation. If you try to cast a spell on the paper, it burns the page. If you speak, it stops writing. Clever.'
I looked at the top of the sheaf. The first line simply read: Candidate Name.
'Right,' I thought, dipping the quill. 'Yesterday at the Guild, I was Jack O'Neill. Today... let's go with Michael Knight. Has a dashing, lone-crusader ring to it.'
I lowered the nib to the paper.
'Stop,' Ronan ordered, his voice hard.
'What? It's a classic alias. A guy with a talking car? You'd love it.'
'Yeah, it's an awesome name, but that's not the point. It's the parchment.' Ronan's tone wasn't his usual nagging; it was heavy. 'This isn't a Guild ledger where you can scrawl a lie and walk away. This is an Arcanum Enrollment Form. The ink is laced with binding agents. It links the paper to your signature to prevent students from having others take their tests.'
'So?'
'So if you sign a false name that doesn't resonate with your identity, the link fails. The paper burns. And we are expelled for fraud before we write a single word.'
I froze, the quill hovering millimetres from the page. 'Okay. So... just Murphy? That's what I really am.'
'No,' Ronan said. 'If we are to survive in this shark tank, we cannot be "Just Murphy". A commoner with no surname is prey. We need a lineage. We need weight.'
'I don't have a lineage, Ronan. I have a gas station receipt and a trauma disorder.'
'You have mine,' Ronan stated. 'Write it. Murphy Sunstrider.'
I almost dropped the quill. 'Sunstrider? Are you insane? That sounds like the most pompous, "kick-me-I'm-a-noble" name imaginable. If I write that, people will check the records!'
'Let them check,' Ronan said, a dark satisfaction in his voice. 'The House of Sunstrider has been dormant for decades, presumed dead. But the bloodline is recorded in the deepest Imperial Archives. And since I am in your soul... a soul tapping or magical verification will hold. It should show that you are the heir.'
'You want me to steal your identity?'
'I am giving it to you,' Ronan corrected gently. 'One day, that name will open doors that gold cannot. It will allow us to claim rights and protections you cannot even imagine yet. It is the only legacy I have left to give. Take it.'
I hesitated. It felt dangerous. It felt like painting a bullseye on my back in neon paint. But I felt the sincerity radiating from him—a strange, sad pride. He was trusting me with his history.
I sighed, and in my jagged, commoner scrawl, I wrote: Murphy Sunstrider.
The ink flashed gold for a second, humming as it bound to the parchment, then settled into a permanent, drying black. It accepted the lie that wasn't a lie.
'There,' Ronan whispered. 'Now, flip the page.'
The exam began. I flipped over the first page.
Question 1: Explain the metaphysical relationship between the Aetherial Resonance of the Third Age and the collapse of the Ley-Line structure during the Siege of Aethelgard.
I stared at the words. I knew what they meant individually—mostly—but together? They were word salad. It was academic gibberish designed to filter out anyone who hadn't had a private tutor since birth.
'Okay,' I projected. 'What?'
'Simple,' Ronan scoffed. 'It's a trick question. The Ley-Lines didn't collapse; they were inverted. Write this: The premise is flawed. The siege utilized a polarity inversion...'
I dipped the quill and started writing. Or trying to.
The premise is flawed. The seige yewtilaized...
'Stop!' Ronan shouted in my head. 'What are you doing? That is not how you spell "utilised"!'
'I don't know how to spell "utilised"!' I shot back, the quill scratching violently against the expensive parchment. 'I dropped out of school to run a gas station in the desert, remember?! I know how to spell "Unleaded" and "Restroom." This wasn't on the curriculum!'
'U-T-I-L-I-S-E-D,' Ronan spelt out, his voice pained.
I scribbled it down. We moved to the next word. And the next. It was agonising. Ronan had to dictate every single letter of every single complex magical term.
E-t-h-e-r-e-a-l... No, A-E-T-H-E-R...
Ten minutes passed. I had answered half of one question. I looked at the massive hourglass at the front of the room. The sand was running out fast.
'We're not going to make it,' I panicked, my hand cramping. 'I can't write fast enough, and your "dictation" is too slow. We're going to fail because I can't spell "Metaphysical".'
'Go to the bathroom,' Ronan commanded instantly.
'What?'
'The latrines. Now. Leave the paper.'
I raised my hand. A proctor in severe grey robes glided over, looking annoyed. "Emergency," I whispered, clutching my stomach. "Nervous stomach."
The proctor rolled his eyes but gestured to the side door. "Two minutes."
I sprinted to the latrines. The moment the door to the stall clicked shut, Ronan took over the strategy.
'Cast me,' he ordered. 'Thirty per cent.'
I didn't argue. I pushed the mana into the Art. The air shimmered, and the Ronan-Clone materialised in the cramped stall. Because the Art duplicates the current state of the user, he appeared wearing the same grey cloak I was wearing, the hood already pulled up.
He didn't need a briefing. He knew exactly what to do.
"Sit tight," the Ronan-Clone said aloud, his voice calm and authoritative. "I'll handle the academics."
He opened the stall door and walked out. I sat down on the toilet lid, officially a fugitive hiding in a bathroom while my imaginary friend took my SATs.
Ronan strode back into the Great Hall, confident in his stride. He sat at desk 404. He picked up the quill.
It felt... right. The balance of the feather, the texture of the parchment. This was a weapon he knew how to wield.
He flipped past the Runic Syntax section—modern gibberish he had no patience for—and went straight to the subjects that mattered: Imperial History, Theology, and Military Strategy.
He read the next question.
Question 4: Discuss the benevolent unification of the Savage Tribes by the First Emperor.
Ronan scoffed audibly. The quill flared red for a second, warning him.
'Benevolent?' he seethed internally. 'They burned the Great Library. They slaughtered the envoys under a flag of truce. This isn't history; it's propaganda.'
He dipped the quill. He didn't just answer; he attacked. His hand flew across the parchment, his penmanship elegant and sharp. He wrote footnotes. He cited treaties that the history books had conveniently "forgotten." He corrected the grammar of the question itself.
He moved to Military Strategy. He dismantled the scenario on "Siege Breakers," outlining a counter-strategy that would have crushed the hypothetical attackers in three days using half the resources. He answered the questions in Ancient Elvish just to show off.
He was arrogant, precise, and absolutely blistering.
He finished with five minutes to spare. He stood up, handed the parchment to a stunned proctor, and muttered, "Bathroom. Again." The Proctor sighed and waved him off. The Ronan-Clone strode out of the hall and straight back into the latrines. The stall door clicked shut. "Done?" I asked from the toilet seat.
"Let's just say I corrected the record," Ronan said with a smirk. "Dispel."
POP.
The clone vanished. The mana rushed back into me. I gasped as my Core refilled to 100%.
'Okay,' I thought. 'We're full. But for the next test, we need insurance.'
'Two clones,' I projected. 'Batteries. They stay here. They meditate.'
Two Ronan-Clones appeared, squeezing into the tight space. They instantly sat down, entering the trance.
I walked out of the bathroom, leaving two copies of myself sitting on the toilet, and headed back to the Great Hall just as the bell rang.
We waited in the courtyard for an hour while the scribes tallied the scores. It was agonising. Half the candidates were sent home in tears before the second phase even began.
"Candidate 404," the Herald called out, squinting at a scroll. " Murphy Sunstrider Passed."
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. "Yes! We nailed it."
"Barely," the Herald added dryly, looking at his ledger. "You scraped by on the merits of your Strategy score. However... your History essay was flagged for 'A Seditious Tone'."
'Seditious Tone?' I asked Ronan as we shuffled toward the Crystal Chamber. 'What did you write?'
'I merely stated the facts,' Ronan replied sniffily. 'If they cannot handle the historical truth about the Third Age atrocities, that is their failing, not mine.'
'Great. We barely scraped by because you couldn't help being a history nerd. Now we have to impress them.'
We entered the Chamber. It was a domed room dominated by a massive, floating crystal spire that hummed with energy. It looked like a giant thermometer made of diamond, inscribed with measurement runes that glowed softly in the dim light.
'The Resonance Crystal,' Ronan murmured, recognising the device. 'Ancient tech. This test hasn't changed in a thousand years.'
'How does it work?'
'Simple hydraulics,' Ronan explained. 'You pour mana in. The light rises. It measures two things: Flow Rate—how much mana you can output—and Pressure—how dense that mana is.'
"Candidate 396. Jonas Miller."
We watched as a commoner kid stepped up. He was sweating, wiping his hands on his tunic. He placed both hands on the crystal, gritting his teeth.
The crystal glowed a faint, watery green at the base. Jonas pushed harder, shaking with effort. The light crept up an inch, wavered, and then stalled.
"Fail," the Proctor intoned. "Next."
"But I gave it everything!" Jonas cried as he was dragged away by the guards.
'He lacks pressure,' Ronan diagnosed. 'His Core is a bucket. He's pouring it out, but the nozzle is too wide. No force.'
He paused, watching the dejected boy leave. 'It's a classic symptom of poor cultivation. Commoners aren't taught the breathing techniques passed down in the Noble Houses—how to roll the mana and fold it in on itself to increase the density. Without that compression, his energy is just loose water. It splashes where it should strike.'
"Candidate 398. GarethThompson."
The room went quiet as a noble stepped up. He was wearing pristine white-and-gold training leathers. He didn't look nervous; he looked bored. He placed a single finger on the glass.
PING.
The light shot up instantly, turning a rich, deep Blue. It hit the halfway mark and held steady. The room gasped.
"Pass," the Proctor said. "House Aurelius."
'See?' Ronan said. 'Efficiency. Control. High density.'
He paused, his mental tone shifting to one of mild disdain. 'Though... notice how the light wavers slightly at the peak? It pulses. That is the symptom of levelling solely by consuming Cores, rather than the slow, grinding path of gathering ambient Mana. It is powerful, yes, but it is store-bought strength. He didn't forge that power; his father bought it for him.'
"Next! Candidate 400. Thorgan Iron-Hearth."
A stocky dwarf with a braided beard that reached his belt buckle stumped up to the platform. He spat on his hands, rubbed them together, and slapped them onto the crystal like he was trying to move a boulder.
His Core was a solid, earthy Green. The light rose steadily, without flickering, stopping right in the middle of the acceptable range.
"Pass," the Proctor grunted. "House Stone-Hollow."
'Sturdy base,' Ronan commented approvingly. 'No flash, but that mana is compacted like bedrock. He'll make a fine earth-mage or artificer.'
"Candidate 401. Rika."
A twitchy Beastkin girl with lupine ears and nervous energy radiating off her in waves stepped up. She jabbed her fingers at the crystal. The light spiked violently into high Green, dropped almost to nothing, then flared again.
"Pass," the Proctor said, sounding annoyed by the light show. "Barely. Work on your focus, girl. House Vermillion."
'Raw, untempered instinct,' Ronan diagnosed. 'High potential flow rate, terrible pressure control. She needs discipline before she hurts herself.'
Then, the room went quiet.
"Candidate 402. Lady Vespera Winter-Moon."
A high elf walked toward the platform. She was stunning in an almost aggressive way—hair the colour of spun moonlight that fell to her waist, eyes like chipped ice, and an expression of utter, aristocratic boredom. She wore the silk of a high-ranking noble house, but she didn't carry herself with the lazy arrogance of that noble. She moved with the lethal grace of a stalking cat.
She didn't slam her hands on the crystal or poke it with a finger. She placed both palms flat against the surface with deliberate, delicate precision.
At first, nothing happened. The light glowed a soft, unassuming Green. The commoners started to whisper. Had a high elf failed to cultivate properly?
Then, her eyes narrowed slightly.
There was no sound, no shaking. Just a sudden, terrifying compression of light. The Green didn't rise; it condensed, turning a brilliant, intense emerald that seemed to shrink into a dense ball of power before rocketing upward.
It blew past the Blue line. It kept climbing, turning a deeper, richer sapphire until it kissed the very bottom edge of the Red zone before stabilizing perfectly.
The room didn't gasp this time. They stared in dead silence.
The elf removed her hands, the light dying instantly. She looked at the Proctor, her expression unchanged.
"Pass," the Proctor whispered, his voice cracking. "House Aurelius... with distinction."
She turned and walked away, the crowd parting like the Red Sea before her.
'Now that,' Ronan breathed, his mental voice filled with rare, genuine awe, 'is a true genius. That wasn't store-bought power, Murphy. That was absolute, agonising control. She didn't just pour her mana in; she pressurised it inside her own channels before releasing it. I haven't seen a technique like that in a long time. She is a once-in-a-generation talent.'
'And us?' I asked, checking my own Core. 'We're Light Blue. Seems like we've got the engine of a Ferrari but the gas tank of a moped. Can we hit that Blue line?'
'On our own? No,' Ronan admitted bluntly. 'Our Core is dense, but it's small. Keep in mind, these candidates have been preparing for this day for years. We have been at it for a week. Don't worry, if we use the battery clones, we'll hit Green easily, but we won't impress anyone. Ideally, impressing them would help our chances quite a bit.
"Candidate 404. Murphy Sunstrider."
The name dropped into the room like a stone in a pond. To most of the students, it was just a pretentious collection of syllables. But in the shadowed alcove at the rear of the hall, a figure who had been dozing against a pillar suddenly snapped awake.
I caught the movement out of the corner of my eye. A man with a cane, who had slept through the High Elf's entire performance, was now leaning forward, his knuckles white as he gripped the cane. He wasn't indifferent like the others. He was staring at me with a sudden, terrifying intensity.
I pushed the weirdness aside and stepped up to the platform. The murmurs started. I was the guy in the grey cloak who barely passed the written exam.
I could feel the nobles snickering as I placed both hands on the cold surface of the crystal.
'Okay,' I thought. 'Let's see what we can do.'
I let my natural mana flow from my right hand into the crystal. It was smooth, thanks to Ronan's training, but it wasn't powerful. The light at the base of the crystal flickered to life. It rose slowly—painfully slowly—about halfway towards the Green zone, and then it stalled there.
Luckily, I had an idea. What if I opened a small portal on the other side? If I pulled the mana back out with my left hand, circled it through the Inventory, and pushed it back in with my right... could I create a loop?
It was a risky theory. While the Inventory allowed me to store physical objects, mana was different. It wasn't tangible. I couldn't "store" raw energy like a sack of grain or stack it like gold coins. If I tried to just hold it in the void, it would dissipate into the nothingness. But... I could move it as long as it was one continuous flow. The Inventory acted as a tunnel, not a bucket. If I opened an intake portal on my left palm and an output portal on my right, I could theoretically create a frictionless circuit. The mana wouldn't sit in the inventory; it would just pass through, picking up speed like water in a gravity assist, before slamming back into the crystal with compounded velocity.
I was working on the mental geometry of the idea when the snickers turned into laughter.
"Is that it?" a noble voice called out. "Go home, peasant!"
I didn't move my hands. I kept my head down, focusing. It was working, the flow was starting to loop, I just had to—
The Proctor yawned, reaching for his stamp to mark me as a failure.
I was about to tell Ronan not to dispel the clones. I could do this without the help. I had the loop.
But I was too slow. Ronan, sensing the failure, triggered the signal.
Back in the bathroom stall, the two clones that were meditating POP-ed.
The effect was cataclysmic.
A deluge of mana came rushing back home at the speed of thought. But my body was already full. The pressure in my Core skyrocketed instantly. It felt like someone had hooked a fire hose up to my soul and turned the valve to maximum.
I had nowhere to put the energy. The only open valve was my hand on the crystal.
WHAM.
The mana slammed into the crystal. But I had already set up the loop. The surge hit the intake, rushed through the crystal, was sucked out by my left hand, and then slammed back into the crystal with my right hand, compounding the force.
There was no ramp-up. The light inside the spire didn't climb; it teleported.
The Green light vanished. The Blue light vanished. It shot past the Legacy mark. It kept going. It turned Red—the colour of Elite output.
The hum of the crystal turned into a high-pitched scream. The floorboards beneath my feet began to smoke.
My mind went blank. I didn't know how to stop it. In hindsight, I should have just broken the loop, but for some reason, I could only stare at the crystal as it vibrated, the feedback loop growing exponentially stronger with every millisecond. It was mesmerising.
"What in the..." the Proctor gasped, dropping his stamp.
The light hit the top of the spire. It had nowhere else to go. The crystal began to vibrate violently, cracks appearing on the surface.
I gritted my teeth, holding on as the torrent of stolen and looped mana poured out of me.
"CEASE!" the Proctor screamed, shielding his eyes. "CANDIDATE, CEASE!"
The Proctor's shout snapped me out of it. I cut the connection.
The light died instantly. The room plunged back into gloom, save for the smoking runes on the floor and the hairline fracture running down the centre of the million-gold-crown artefact.
Silence. Absolute, deafening silence.
I took a step back, shaking out my hands.
'Well,' Ronan whispered in my head, sounding equal parts horrified and impressed. 'I think we impressed them.'