CHAPTER 37: Placement
The notice board drew a crowd.
Students gathered around it in clusters — some silent, some murmuring, some pushing slightly to get a better view. The results had been posted early in the morning, before most of the academy had fully woken up.
Class assignments.
Based on the written examination.
Lucius approached from the far end of the corridor.
Unhurried.
The crowd parted slightly as he neared — not out of respect exactly, but out of the particular awareness that followed certain people without them asking for it.
He stopped.
His eyes moved across the board.
Three classes.
S. A. B.
Names listed beneath each.
He found his own without searching long.
---
S-Class.
Lucius van Venus.
---
He stared at it for a moment.
Then moved on.
No reaction.
No satisfaction.
Just confirmation.
A presence arrived beside him — quiet but deliberate.
Hans Keller.
He leaned forward slightly, scanning the board with focused eyes. His glasses caught the pale morning light as they moved down the list.
Then —
He stopped.
His own name.
"…S-Class."
He said it quietly. Almost to himself.
Then turned to Lucius with an expression caught somewhere between disbelief and something he was clearly trying to contain.
"I'm in the same class as you."
Lucius glanced at him briefly.
"I can see that."
"No — I mean—" Hans adjusted his glasses carefully. "I'm a commoner. S-Class placement doesn't happen often for people like me. The written score must have been higher than I expected."
A pause.
He steadied himself.
"…I won't waste it."
Lucius said nothing.
But he noted it.
Not the surprise — the recovery. The way Hans had processed the information, found his footing, and committed to it in less than three seconds.
That kind of mind was useful.
"Good," Lucius said simply.
---
A third presence arrived.
Jax Rowan.
He moved through the remaining crowd with his usual ease — hands in his pockets, expression unhurried, like someone who had decided in advance not to let the moment cost him anything.
He reached the board and scanned it quickly.
His eyes found his name.
---
B-Class.
Jax Rowan.
---
Silence.
Not long. Not dramatic.
But present.
Jax stared at it for exactly three seconds.
Then exhaled through his nose — short, quiet, controlled.
"B-Class."
He said it the way someone commits a number to memory before a fight.
Hans opened his mouth slightly. "Jax—"
"Don't."
Not sharp. Not wounded.
Just — settled.
Jax turned from the board. The easy looseness that usually lived around his eyes had pulled back, replaced by something quieter and more permanent underneath.
He looked at Lucius first. Then Hans.
"S-Class. Both of you."
A beat.
Lucius met his gaze steadily.
"The written examination tested theory," he said. "Your strength doesn't live on paper."
Jax was quiet for a moment.
Then — a faint grin. The kind that carried weight behind it rather than deflecting it.
"Yeah."
He turned.
"I'll close the gap."
No performance in it. No humor wrapped around it as armor.
Just a statement. Plain and certain.
Lucius watched him walk away.
That kind of drive doesn't break easily, he thought.
Good.
---
S-Class met for the first time that afternoon.
The classroom was smaller than Lucius had expected. Intentionally so. Twelve students. Two long rows of desks facing a single raised platform at the front. Narrow windows let in clean, angled light that fell across the stone floor in sharp lines.
No excess. No ceremony.
Just a space built for people expected to use it seriously.
Lucius took a seat near the back left. Far enough from the immediate social currents that formed whenever new people entered a room together. Close enough to observe everything.
Hans sat two seats to his right, already cataloguing the room with quiet, methodical attention.
Lucius did the same.
Elphen Quinn — third place on the examination rankings. Quiet. Watchful. The kind of person who gathered information without appearing to try.
Julian Garcia — second place. Relaxed in posture, precise in attention. He carried the particular ease of someone who had never had to fight for space in a room and had long since stopped thinking about it.
Seraphina Thornvale sat near the front.
First place.
Her posture was straight, her expression composed. She had the settled quality of someone who had long made peace with being watched — not performing composure, simply living inside it naturally.
She turned slightly as the room filled.
Her eyes found Lucius.
A brief moment — something passed through her expression that she controlled almost immediately.
Almost.
Lucius looked away first.
Not coldly. Not deliberately.
Simply — without interest.
Which, he was aware, was its own kind of answer.
Then —
Arianna Brett entered.
She moved with the confidence of someone who had never once questioned whether a room belonged to her. Blue hair. Precise posture. Eyes that swept the space immediately, assessing.
They landed on Lucius.
She stopped — only for a fraction of a second. Barely visible.
Then continued to her seat.
Lucius didn't look at her.
Not when she entered. Not when she sat. Not when he felt her gaze return to him a moment later, sharp and measuring.
He had nothing to say to Arianna Brett.
Not here.
Not in front of people.
The torn contract. The words she had chosen. The way she had looked at him — from head to toe — and decided out loud that he was nothing.
He remembered all of it.
And he intended to make her remember it too.
Just not today.
Today — he had other things to observe.
---
The instructor arrived without announcement.
Medium height. Sharp eyes set in a calm face. A man somewhere in his late thirties who moved with the quiet efficiency of someone who had long since stopped wasting motion. His uniform was neat but not ceremonial. No decoration that didn't serve a purpose.
He set a single folder on the desk.
Looked up.
Scanned the room once — not slowly, not quickly. Just enough.
"My name is Aldric Voss," he said. "Primary instructor for theoretical and applied Talent studies."
His voice carried without effort.
"I don't repeat information I've already covered. I don't give warnings twice. If you miss something — find it yourself."
A pause.
"That said — ask genuine questions and I'll answer them properly. I'm not here to make this difficult. The subject does that on its own."
He opened the folder.
"We begin now."
---
"Talents," Voss said, writing the single word on the board behind him. "Most of you believe you understand them. You understand the surface."
He turned back to face the room.
"There are two fundamental classifications. Fixed and Irregular."
He let that land.
"Fixed Talents arrive with predetermined skills attached. The Talent awakens — the skills come with it. Defined. Structured. Consistent." His eyes moved across the room. "They tend toward support and control roles. Reliable output. Predictable ceiling. Exceptions exist — but they are exceptions."
"Irregular Talents are different. No preset skills. No defined path."
He picked up a piece of chalk and drew a single circle on the board.
"Consider this — a Talent built around fire. A Fixed version might give you Fireball. One skill. Consistent cost, consistent output, consistent result."
He drew a line extending outward from the circle. Then another. Then another.
"An Irregular Talent built around fire gives you — fire. Nothing more. No instruction. No preset application."
He set the chalk down.
"But someone who genuinely understands that Talent can derive from it anything fire can conceptually become. A spear. A barrier. A current of heat so concentrated and fine that it cuts rather than burns."
A beat.
"The ceiling is higher. The floor is lower. An Irregular Talent user who never develops their understanding of their own ability will remain weaker than their Fixed counterparts for their entire lives. The potential means nothing without comprehension."
A hand went up near the front.
"What determines which type you awaken?"
"Unknown," Voss said simply. "Bloodline influences it. Personal circumstances may influence it. Beyond that — no confirmed answer exists."
Another hand.
"What about the level system? The number attached to the Talent panel — what does it actually measure?"
Voss paused.
"That," he said, "is the most studied and least understood question in Talent research."*
He turned slightly.
"What we can confirm — killing monsters increases your stats in direct proportion to the monster's strength and rank. That is consistent and documented."
"What the level itself represents — what causes it to change, what it is actually measuring — remains an open question. One of the oldest in the field."
He looked at the room evenly.
"If any of you determine the answer — I'd genuinely like to know."
A quiet ripple through the room. Something between unease and curiosity.
Lucius said nothing.
He already knew something the room didn't.
His level moved. His system responded to things that had no equivalent in anything the books described. Whatever the level measured — it wasn't decorative.
He filed that thought away and kept listening.
---
The lesson ran for another hour.
By the end, Lucius had confirmed several things.
Voss was precise and honest — more useful than brilliance without discipline. He didn't perform authority. He simply had it.
Elphen Quinn asked exactly the right questions — the kind that revealed deep instinctive understanding dressed in casual phrasing. Someone worth watching.
Julian Garcia said almost nothing during the entire lesson. But his attention never broke once.
And Arianna Brett had looked at Lucius exactly four times.
Each time, he had not looked back.
---
After class the corridor outside filled slowly with departing students.
Hans fell into step beside Lucius without asking.
"Irregular," he said quietly. "That's what you are."
Not quite a question.
Lucius glanced at him.
"What makes you say that?"
"Fixed Talents are documented. If yours was Fixed — especially at your level — people would already know exactly what it does." Hans pushed his glasses up.
"Nobody does. And you didn't correct Voss once during the entire lesson. Which means either you already knew everything he covered — or you were paying attention to something he didn't say.""Nobody does. And you didn't correct Voss once during the entire lesson. Which means either you already knew everything he covered — or you were paying attention to something he didn't say."
Lucius was quiet for a moment.
Then —
"You're observant."
"Itrytobe," Hans said.
They walked in silence.
Then Lucius spoke.
"Keep what you think you know to yourself."
Hans nodded once.
"Of course."
---
That evening Lucius walked the east corridor of the academy's outer wall alone.
He had been retracing routes — corridors he had passed through without fully examining, sections of the academy that saw less traffic, less attention.
He stopped.
A mark on the stone wall.
Small. Deliberate. Carved recently — the edges were still clean, no dust gathered in the grooves yet.
He crouched slightly and studied it.
A symbol he didn't recognize from anything in the library. Not a noble crest. Not an academy marking. Not decorative.
Intentional.
Placed here — in a low-traffic corridor, at a height that wouldn't draw the eye unless you were already looking for something.
Lucius straightened slowly.
He didn't touch it.
Leave it in place, hethought. Watch what comes to it.
He memorized the symbol precisely — every line, every angle — then continued walking at the same unhurried pace.
Someone had been inside the academy walls.
Someone who didn't want to be noticed.
His expression didn't change.
But behind his eyes, something had sharpened considerably.
"…So it begins."
He kept walking.
Patient.
Watching.
Waiting.
---
To Be Continued…..