Chapter 6: Academy [2]
The dean of NEXUS Academy was a woman he'd named in his world-building document as Headmistress Verane Calloway: late fifties, former S-rank Mage who had retired from field work after losing two fingers on her left hand to a Demon Duke's attack twenty years prior.
She had grey hair worn in a severe coil and eyes that were pale green—the same color as the light mana she specialized in—and she spoke about the academy's history and mission with the clipped precision of someone who believed in saying things correctly rather than saying them warmly.
"You have been assessed," Calloway said. Her voice carried without evident effort, the passive acoustic amplification of someone whose mana control was fine enough to project without a device.
"You have been ranked. Class A through Class E—five cohorts, differentiated by potential and demonstrated ability at time of assessment. This ranking is not permanent. It is a starting point."
Lucus listened carefully. This speech was not in his novel. Ethan's opening ceremony scene had focused on impressions, on the crowd, on the first sightings of Selena and Rosilia and Aiden.
He'd written it from Ethan's perspective.
From the seventh row from the back, the perspective was considerably different.
"Class A students will receive specialized instruction from faculty ranked A-level and above," Calloway continued.
"Class B students will receive instruction from B and A ranked faculty. Classes C through E will rotate among the general instruction staff. All classes share combat training facilities and dungeon access under equal scheduling."
She paused. The hall was silent in the specific way large spaces full of teenagers go silent when authority addresses them directly.
"Achievement earns reclassification. Stagnation earns it as well. You are not locked into the rank you arrived with. However, neither is the rank meaningless. Understand what you are walking into, and understand that the academy's expectation is performance—not promise."
Then she stepped back, and the class announcements began.
Lucus had been dreading this part.
He'd written Lucas Martin as a Class C placement. But Taros Blackthorn had mentioned something—the secondary assessment for borderline students.
The entrance exam score had been minimum-qualifying, which was C-range. But he'd spent two days improving his circulation, improving his mana response time.
Would it matter?
The announcements went in alphabetical order by family name. When they reached M, Lucus straightened despite himself.
"Lucas Martin."
Pause. The reader a junior faculty member with a list looked up.
"Class B, Cohort Three."
The relief hit him before he processed it. Class B. Not Class C. Not the cohort where, in the original story, Lucas Martin would go and die in the dungeon trial without having left any particular mark.
Class B meant different faculty. Different students. A different set of events.
He had changed something. Small, but real.
He looked forward—the front sections where the Class A students were clustered—and found
Ethan's distinctive bronze hair without difficulty.
Next to him, a girl with silver-white hair worn long, pale in the way of someone who spent more time indoors than out, with the kind of quiet self-possession that came from certainty rather than arrogance: Selena Starborn. Mage path.
Light affinity, with a rare secondary tendency toward space that would develop later. In the novel, she was the female lead who would ultimately stand beside Ethan at the story's climax.
Beside Selena, a gap of one seat, and then: Rosilia Braveheart. Red-auburn hair. Posture that was aggressively upright in a way that communicated—he checked his own character notes in his head—'I will not be overlooked.'
She was Aura Core, Swordsman path, fire affinity. The second female lead. Fiercer, louder, more present in a room than Selena. Their contrast was part of the novel's dynamic.
He'd written them both. Watched them take shape on his screen over three years.
They were, sitting in the first two rows of the Grand Hall, completely real.
It made something in his chest ache in a way he couldn't quite name.
He turned away. Looked at the students around him in Class B—strangers, mostly, faces he didn't know. People who weren't in his story.
The world was larger than his novel. He kept having to remember that.
After the ceremony came what the academy schedule called "Initial Cohort Orientation"—a more prosaic gathering in smaller rooms, where Class B Cohort Three was shepherded into a mid-sized classroom by a third-year student serving as orientation guide.
Lucus took a seat near the middle of the room and did what he'd been doing since he arrived: watched.
Twenty-two students in Class B Cohort Three. He didn't know most of them. Typical spread: maybe a third from noble families, the rest from commoner or merchant backgrounds who had shown strong enough aptitude to earn a letter of recommendation.
Three Beastkin, one half-elf—not Elena, she'd been placed somewhere else—and the rest human.
But he noticed one person notice him.
A girl near the window. Roughly his age, with dark hair and an intense quality of attention—the kind of eyes that seemed to be performing some kind of rapid analysis of everything they looked at.
She had a long scar along her right forearm, partially hidden by her sleeve but visible when she shifted. When his gaze crossed hers, she looked away first, but not before he caught the assessment in her expression.
She was reading him the same way he was reading the room.
He didn't know who she was. She wasn't in his novel.
'Interesting', he thought, and made a note.
The orientation guide—a tall third-year named Voss with an A-rank badge on his lapel—walked them through the basics: dormitory assignments, dining hall schedule, training ground access hours, the infirmary location, the academy's emergency protocols.
Lucus already knew most of it from the world-building document. He listened for the gaps—the things that weren't in the document, the procedural details of real life that a novelist summarizes or skips.
There were a few. The emergency protocol, for instance, was more specific than he'd written: if a mana resonance anomaly was detected in any campus building specifically, a sudden spike in void-spectrum mana—students were expected to evacuate to the central courtyard, not the nearest exit.
Void-spectrum mana. Abyss energy.
The academy had a protocol for Abyss energy detected on campus. And the specificity of it—not "if there's an emergency" but "if void-spectrum mana is detected"—suggested that the protocol had been written in response to something specific.
Something that had already happened, or that was considered likely to happen.
In his novel, the Cult of the Abyss was active in Arc Two. Present in Arc One only as distant foreshadowing.
Lucus wrote in his notebook, keeping it below the desk: 'Academy has specific void-spectrum emergency protocol. Not generic. Written from experience or specific threat assessment. Cult of the Abyss may be more active at this stage than I wrote.'
He looked at the orientation guide, who was still talking about the dining hall schedule.
The wheels of the story were turning. And some of them, he was beginning to understand, had been turning before he arrived.
To be Continued...