Chapter 74: A public hearing?
By Thursday afternoon, the rumor mill at Lornfell Academy was operating at maximum capacity.
Because Arthur, Emily, Felix, and Chloe had been seen leaving the academy gates near sundown with heavy gear and an overnight pass, the student body had completely run away with the narrative.
Arthur sat at his usual table in the corner of the massive dining hall, calmly cutting into a piece of roasted chicken.
"This one is my favorite," Emily laughed, scrolling through the academy’s localized digital forum on her scroll. "Someone in the second-year logistics class posted that we’re running an illegal gambling ring in the lower sector, and Felix is our kneecap-breaker."
Felix let out a long, exhausted sigh, rubbing his temples. "I literally just bought a new shield. I don’t even like gambling."
"Let them talk," Arthur said, taking a bite of his food. "If the other students think we’re running a racket, they’ll leave us alone."
Chloe sat quietly next to Arthur, staring down at her soup, choosing to ignore the rumor that claimed she was Arthur’s personal secretary handling all of his ’private administrative needs.’
Before Emily could find another ridiculous post to read, Leon Braveheart and his party walked up to their table.
There was no hostility. Leon smiled, setting his tray down at the adjacent table, while Alicia, Elara, and Cedric stood beside him.
"You guys have been pretty busy this last month," Leon noted, his tone friendly but undeniably curious. "You keep disappearing off-campus. Did you find a secret training spot out in the woods?"
Alicia chimed in, her posture straight and her green eyes assessing Arthur’s squad.
"I heard you even managed to get an overnight pass for some field observation," Alicia said. "Getting Professor Moon to sponsor a weekday excursion is notoriously difficult. She usually rejects first-year requests outright."
"We just take our field observations very seriously," Arthur replied smoothly, leaning back in his chair. "The curriculum encourages practical application."
Alicia didn’t look convinced, but before she could press the issue, the sharp blast of a magical whistle cut through the cafeteria chatter.
"Lunch is over!" Instructor Morwenna’s voice carried across the hall. "First-years. Report to the Tactical Simulation Center immediately. We are running heavy-target drills."
The Tactical Simulation Center was a massive, underground facility built entirely from reinforced steel and polished obsidian. The floor was laid out in a wide, glowing hexagonal magi-tech grid. Dozens of high-end mana projectors lined the vaulted ceiling.
The entire first-year cohort stood behind a thick barrier of reinforced mana-glass, watching Morwenna pace in the center of the grid. She held a sleek, black digital control tablet in her hand.
"Dungeon diving isn’t just about killing goblin fodder," Morwenna projected, her voice amplified by the room’s acoustics. "Eventually, you will encounter a heavy-class monster. A target with thick armor, massive kinetic force, and a high health pool. Today, you won’t be sparring against each other. You will be having simulated training."
She tapped a few commands into her tablet.
The hexagonal grid on the floor flared with a blinding blue light. The mana projectors on the ceiling hummed violently, rapidly weaving lines of hard-light and solidified earth mana together.
In seconds, a massive, ten-foot-tall Armored Mountain Troll materialized in the center of the room. It let out a deafening, synthetic roar, brandishing a massive stone club.
"Make no mistake," Morwenna warned, sweeping her red eyes over the cadets. "Even though this is a simulation, it is highly programmed on all the tactics, speed, and kinetic output of a real Troll. If it hits you, it will not pass through you. It will break your ribs. Do not take it lightly."
Morwenna stepped out of the grid and behind the glass barrier.
"Squad Seven. You’re up first," Morwenna ordered.
A generic team of four first-year students stepped onto the grid. They looked incredibly nervous. The moment the buzzer sounded, the Troll didn’t wait. It charged.
"Shield up!" the vanguard yelled, bracing a standard iron shield.
The Troll swung its club. The impact was brutal. The sound of heavy stone smashing into metal echoed like a car crash. The vanguard’s shield was violently swatted aside, and the cadet was thrown fifteen feet across the room, hitting the simulated barrier wall hard.
"Vanguard is down!" a mage panicked, hastily firing a weak fireball that barely scorched the Troll’s thick stone armor.
The Troll ignored the mage, lunging straight for the backline. It raised its foot and simulated a devastating stomp directly onto the squad’s healer.
The room flashed red.
Simulation Failed.
"Pathetic," Morwenna barked, tapping her tablet to reset the construct. "Your spacing was garbage, and your vanguard took a direct kinetic hit from a monster triple his weight class. Medical, get him out of here."
Two medics dragged the groaning vanguard off the grid. The rest of the first-years swallowed hard. The simulation was absolutely merciless.
"Braveheart’s squad. You’re up," Morwenna ordered.
Leon, Alicia, Cedric, and Elara stepped onto the grid.
They operated exactly like the elite prodigies they were. The buzzer sounded, and the Troll charged, the ground shaking beneath its simulated weight.
"Hold!" Cedric roared, stepping to the absolute front and bracing his colossal steel tower shield.
The Troll swung its stone club. Cedric grunted, his boots digging deep into the grid, but his monstrous Strength stat met the brute force head-on. He halted the construct’s momentum entirely.
"Flanking!" Alicia called out. She moved with textbook, flawless elegance. Her broadsword flared with sharp wind mana as she slid past the Troll’s guard, delivering two perfectly precise strikes to the back of its knees, severing the simulated hamstrings.
As the Troll stumbled, Elara stood at a safe distance, gracefully drawing her silver bow. She fired an ice arrow that struck the Troll’s club arm, freezing the limb solid and locking it in place.
"Now!" Alicia shouted.
Leon vaulted off Cedric’s braced shield. Mid-air, his broadsword erupted with a blinding, brilliant golden light.
"Holy Slash!" Leon shouted, bringing the blade down in a devastating vertical arc.
The holy magic cleaved the frozen Troll cleanly in half. The construct flickered, glitched, and dissolved back into harmless blue mana particles.
The first-year class erupted into applause. It was a flashy, heroic, and overwhelmingly powerful display of raw talent.
"Textbook execution," Morwenna nodded approvingly, logging the result on her tablet. "Good use of elemental affinities."
She tapped her screen, and the projectors hummed again. A third Armored Mountain Troll materialized, roaring just as loudly as the first.
"Vance. Your squad is up," Morwenna called out.
The applause died down. The students watched intently as Arthur, Emily, Felix, and Chloe walked onto the grid.
Arthur stepped to the rear, drawing his twin high-carbon steel daggers. He gave a single nod.
The buzzer blared. The Troll charged.
As the Troll brought its club down, Felix angled his B-Rank Aegis Bulwark at a precise forty-five-degree slant.
Clang.
The slanted shield deflected the heavy blow downward. Felix stepped smoothly to the side. The Troll’s club smashed uselessly into the hard-light floor, throwing the massive beast entirely off balance and exposing its flank.
"Haste," Chloe murmured quietly from the backline. A swift, highly concentrated pulse of golden mana hit Emily.
Emily blurred forward. She slipped directly under the Troll’s guard and drove her Titan Knuckles upward, striking the completely unarmored joint beneath its armpit.
Crack.
The simulated joint shattered. The Troll’s arm went entirely limp.
Arthur instantly activated Shadow Step.
He vanished into thin air, instantly teleporting fifteen yards and materializing out of the Troll’s own shadow directly onto its broad back. With his triple-digit Dexterity, his arms became an absolute blur. He drove his twin steel daggers deep into the narrow gaps of the thick stone plating at the base of the Troll’s neck, violently severing the connection to its central mana core.
Arthur kicked off the construct’s shoulders, backflipping and landing smoothly on the grid just as the monster collapsed.
The Troll froze, shuddered, and dissolved into blue particles.
The entire fight took exactly six seconds.
The class remained completely silent, processing what had just happened. It wasn’t heroic or flashy. It was clinical. They operated like an industrial machine, executing a target with surgical efficiency and clocking out without breaking a sweat.
Behind the glass barrier, Leon and Alicia watched in genuine awe.
"Zero wasted movement," Alicia murmured to Leon, her green eyes tracking Arthur as he sheathed his daggers. "They deflected the kinetic force instead of absorbing it. And that spatial teleport... he closed the gap instantly."
Morwenna looked at her tablet, a sharp, satisfied smirk crossing her dark lips.
"Efficient, Vance," Morwenna stated loud enough for the class to hear. "That is how you farm a heavy target. Class dismissed."
An hour later, Arthur, Emily, and Felix walked into the lobby of the first-year dormitories. The adrenaline from the simulation had worn off, replaced by the comfortable exhaustion of a hard training session.
"Arthur Vance."
The dorm warden called out from the heavy mahogany reception desk. She held up a sealed red envelope.
Arthur walked over and took it.
"A courier from the city dropped this off for you twenty minutes ago," the warden noted, adjusting her spectacles. "Marked urgent."
Arthur broke the heavy wax seal—bearing the unmistakable stamp of the Guild Association—and unfolded the crisp parchment.
He read the few lines of text, his dark eyes narrowing slightly.
"What is it?" Emily asked, cracking her knuckles.
Arthur looked up, a cold, predatory smile forming on his face.
"Darius Holt didn’t take the inspector raid very well," Arthur stated, folding the parchment and tucking it into his coat. "Red Boar just invoked the right of Formal Guild Arbitration."
Felix frowned. "Arbitration? A public hearing?"
"Yes," Arthur said smoothly. "The paperwork phase is over. Tomorrow, we go to the Guild Association."