Chapter 1159: New life

By late morning, the Imperial Academy had begun to change shape.

The buildings were the same, the avenues unchanged, yet the temporary order of the Examination Period was already breaking apart. Students crossed the central grounds carrying newly issued Academy cards while luggage followed behind them by hand, spell, servant, or some increasingly unreliable combination of the three. Above the major junctions, projected notice boards had replaced examination schedules with permanent residential assignments and directions toward the Academy Blocks.

Some had apparently decided that three days was far too generous.

Two young men were already dragging trunks toward the western carriage station, their argument about the Martial Courts surviving every set of steps between them and the next carriage.

"They cannot seriously expect us to walk that every morning."

"You joined the Martial Arts Block."

"For swordsmanship. There was nothing in the registration packet about pilgrimage."

One of the trunks struck the curb hard enough to interrupt him. His companion kept walking.

Behind them, a girl in a fitted green coat had encountered no such difficulties. She moved through the crowd without touching a single piece of luggage while three attendants followed in practiced formation, carrying enough between them to suggest that her household had interpreted student residence generously.

Elsewhere, urgency had failed to take hold at all.

Students occupied the benches outside the cultivation facilities with breakfast parcels in their laps, permanent cards passing from hand to hand while rankings were compared for what was certainly no longer the first time that morning. Others had already disappeared into training halls and seemed perfectly willing to leave their temporary rooms untouched until the Academy threatened to empty them personally.

One argument had reached the important matter of thirty-third place.

The student responsible for it had apparently promised top thirty the previous evening and was now explaining, at unnecessary length, that three positions were statistically negligible. His friend listened until the defense finally wandered toward the obvious counterattack.

"And what did you place?"

"I placed thirty-third."

"You told me yesterday you’d be inside the top thirty."

"I was three places away. And, did you not rank lower than me, anyway? Why are you saying as if my grade was bad?"

"I was twenty-ninth."

"Puahahahaha. Smoked by the skin of my teeth, but still smoked."

Their voices vanished beneath another group passing in the opposite direction.

A dark-haired girl among them carried her evaluation sheet as though it had personally wronged her. Sixty-two in the Oral Examination had survived several attempts by her companions to describe it as a passing score.

"That isn’t the point," she insisted, flattening a crease from the paper with her thumb. "Magister Selenne would ask one question, then another question about the answer, and then somehow the third question made the first answer wrong."

The young man beside her adjusted a travel case higher against his shoulder. He had evidently heard several versions of this already. "You did pass."

She turned her head.

He reconsidered the value of continuing.

Another student further back had found a different examination to resent. His complaint about the Rotunda lasted until one of the girls walking with him finally pointed out that determining whether he should behave as himself or the identity written on his card had, in fact, been the examination.

He stared at her for a beat.

"Yes," he admitted. "I understand that now."

The laughter carried across the avenue.

Around them, the newly issued cards remained almost constantly in motion.

They contained considerably more than residential addresses. Primary Block assignment sat near the top, followed by initial standing, registration instructions, remedial requirements where applicable, and each student’s current Academy Credits.

That final number had begun attracting almost as much attention as the rankings.

Academy Credits were personally registered. A household could send weapons, tutors, cultivation resources, attendants, and enough luggage to occupy half a corridor, but it could not simply purchase Credits and transfer them onto a student’s record.

Those came from the Academy.

Examinations. Approved assignments. Competitions. Research contributions. Later, sanctioned missions and other recognized achievements.

And Credits determined access.

Ordinary lectures and basic student facilities did not drain them merely for use. The distinction appeared once a student wanted something better.

Higher-density cultivation chambers required Credits. So did portions of the specialist training facilities. Certain restricted libraries, workshops, recovery resources, research spaces, and advanced materials demanded either Credits, faculty authorization, or both.

Near one notice board, a student announced that he had received one hundred and eighty from his Weaponship distinction.

That attracted attention immediately.

"From one examination?" someone asked, leaning far enough over another student’s shoulder to see the card.

"Highest bracket."

The student beside him quietly checked his own total again.

His expression tightened.

A few paces away, someone else had begun calculating cultivation-room costs on the back of his registration leaflet. His companion contributed little beyond occasionally pointing out that the numbers remained unpleasant no matter how they were rearranged.

Wealth had not become irrelevant inside the Academy.

Far from it.

Private tutors had already done their work. Superior equipment had entered through the gates with its owners. So had inherited Cultivation Arts, years of specialized preparation, political connections, and the habits of students raised from childhood with institutions like this one waiting for them.

Credits simply placed another hierarchy over the existing one.

Unlike birth, that hierarchy could move.

For some students, the importance of that had already become obvious.

For others, Credits remained little more than another number printed beneath their ranking.

That would change.

The Imperial Academy gave its freshmen comfortable access to what they needed.

Much of what they eventually wanted would have to be earned.

At the junction where the western route divided from the roads leading north, the flow split again. Trunks rolled toward the residences. Attendants negotiated carriage space. Students stopped beneath projected maps and argued over routes they had been shown twice during orientation.

Near the road leading back toward Block 7-A, Elara stood with Selphine and Marian and watched a levitating travel chest ram its owner’s ankles for the third time.

The owner stopped.

The chest stopped.

He pointed a warning finger at it.

The chest hovered innocently.

Marian watched the negotiation with considerable interest. "Do you think it understands him?"

"No," Selphine said, checking the card in her hand. "But I hope it hits him again."

Elara’s attention remained on the path.

Lucavion had disappeared down it several minutes earlier.

Her lips still felt annoyingly aware of one cold fingertip.

She pushed the thought aside.

Marian had not.

The moment Lucavion vanished beyond the next junction, she turned around so quickly that the hem of her skirt twisted around one ankle.

Elara saw the question coming.

"No."

"I haven’t asked anything."

"You were about to."

Marian freed her skirt with the toe of one shoe. "I was going to ask whether touching someone’s mouth is considered an accepted method of refusing a question."

Selphine glanced up from her card. "I suspect the Academy has no official policy."

"It should."

Elara started walking toward the residence.

The other two followed.

Marian lasted perhaps six steps before beginning again, this time through several increasingly creative observations concerning Lucavion’s apparent understanding of personal boundaries. Most of them did not require answers, and Elara supplied none. Selphine occasionally corrected the more dramatic claims while scrolling through an administrative notice, which only encouraged Marian to refine them.

By the time they reached the paved path outside Block 7-A, the subject had somehow become whether Elara should have bitten him.

"I considered it," Elara said.

Marian stopped walking.

Selphine lowered her card.

Elara continued another two steps before realizing neither had followed.

She looked back.

Marian’s expression brightened considerably. "Wait. You actually considered it?"

"For, like, half a second."

"That counts."

"It absolutely does not."

"It totally does."

"Can both of you stop—" Selphine resumed walking beside her, shaking her head. "It counts a little."

Elara looked at her.

Selphine’s face remained perfectly composed.

Traitor.

They had barely reached the residence courtyard when a soft pulse of mana ran through the cards in their hands.

Conversations around them broke apart.

Across the courtyard, several students stopped midway through loading luggage onto a carriage. A boy near the entrance nearly walked into his attendant while staring down at the light spreading across his card.

Marian’s attention vanished from Elara immediately. "They’re active."

Pale script flowed across the dark surface in Elara’s hand.

The temporary examination registration disappeared.

Her permanent record replaced it.

PRIMARY BLOCK — MAGICIANS’ BLOCK

Below came her residential confirmation, first-week registration instructions, introductory lectures, facility access, and several notices concerning Block orientation.

Beside her, Marian had already started reading hers aloud before Selphine reminded her that they were standing close enough to read their own.

That achieved very little. Marian simply shifted to comparing schedules instead.

"Tuesday morning. Structural Foundations."

Selphine moved her card closer. "Same."

"And Thursday—ah. No, yours is different."

"You took advanced elemental classification."

"I regret being ambitious."

A familiar voice joined them from the courtyard steps. "That seems premature."

Aurelian descended while looking at his own card, a travel bag hanging from one shoulder. Marian immediately demanded his Thursday schedule. What followed became a brief exchange of cards, accusations of unfair timetables, and Aurelian’s entirely unhelpful suggestion that perhaps the Academy expected them to study.

Elara let their voices move around her while she continued down her own schedule.

The temporary examination timetable was gone.

That was the first thing she noticed.

The shared waiting halls had disappeared, and the examinations no longer sent every freshman through the same building regardless of discipline, while even the convenient dining intervals created by half their cohort being released from the same evaluation had given way to a schedule shaped by individual Blocks. Her days now belonged entirely to the Magicians’ Block.

Lectures. Formation study. practical sessions. Block-specific facilities.

Lucavion’s would form around the Martial Arts Block.

She slowed.

Selphine noticed. "Something wrong?"

Elara turned the card slightly. "No."

It was true.

They had known their Block assignments from the beginning.

The Examination Period had simply disguised what those assignments meant.

For more than a week, Academy procedure had repeatedly placed everyone in the same corridors and waiting rooms. Lucavion had appeared at examinations he had no business performing well in, at meals, around the residence routes, and often wherever a situation was becoming irritating enough to attract him.

Even their theory lessons had grown around that temporary rhythm.

Now the Academy was separating them according to what they had actually come here to study.

Marian and Aurelian had moved on to comparing residence routes. Selphine joined them long enough to point out that Aurelian was reading one of the map markers backward.

He denied it.

The card rotated in his hand.

Marian laughed.

Elara looked past them toward the western road.

Lucavion was long gone.

The question beneath the tree remained exactly where he had left it.

Her thumb passed once across the edge of her Academy card before she followed the others toward Block 7-A.

From now on, seeing him would require intention.

The Academy had stopped arranging the crossings for them.