Chapter 158: Fairness is For Allies

Sen’s battle mirrored Nara, although the specifics of his fighting style was different. While Nara was evasive, Sen was sturdy and powerful. He wielded his heavy staff with inconceivable lightness and practiced form, smashing the skulls of his opponents in a single crushing blow. Sen had more immediate damage than Nara in his special attacks, and Weight Manipulation plus Sen’s massive strength proved effective at flinging away troublesome students.

Like Nara, Sen abused the fragility of iron rankers, reaching for as many instant-kills as possible. If the students did not learn from Nara’s battle to avoid near-dodges, they were punished for it again with Sen’s Staff of Duality.

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Ability: [Staff of Duality]

Essence: Balance

Awakening Stone: Staff

Conjuration (weapon, affliction, dispel)

Cost: High mana

Cooldown: None

Effect (Iron): Conjure [Searing Cold, the [Staff of Duality]]. [Searing Cold] can generate either a blade of condensed flame or a shell of cold on the weapon, costing low mana-per-second for either effect. The blade of condensed flame inflicts additional heat damage. The shell of cold inflicts additional cold damage. This is a heavy weapon.

Effect (Bronze): When enhanced with condensed flame, special attacks additionally dispel a stacking boon from the target. When enhanced with the cold shell, special attacks inflict an instance of [Deep Cold].

* [Deep Cold] (affliction, unholy, ice, stacking): Suffer cold damage-over-time. Penalty to the [Speed] and [Recovery] attributes. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.

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He used the searing edge of flame of his weapon, suddenly extending the staff into a glaive to catch a student in the head. Even without the blade, Sen’s crushing staff and superhuman strength to the fragile human skull was a lethal and gory combination.

Adelina shook her head, sighing, “Some lessons just need to be learned twice.”

“More like beat into them. Physically,” John commiserated. John of course, was against corporal punishment.

“Whatever stops them from dying from that mistake later.”

John would never be satisfied with the realities of adventuring on Erras. It was a difference in culture he could not adapt to, like Nara had. When asked, she said, “Why worry about something I cannot change?”

John, world-hopping detective, father of two, could not think the same. He worried about the students, but also understood they were here willingly, especially the scholarship students.

Nara felt a little bad for the students as they were pummeled into crunchy pastes by a Sen that broke blood but not sweat; their team had fought two bronze rank essence users when they were iron rank: Graff and Siyu. Both were untrained essence users, and they didn’t have the skill to deal lethal blows past essence user’s defenses. Sen could recognize a wide breadth of abilities by sight alone thanks to the hours he spent perusing the Magic Society’s records while young and also seeing them in mirage chamber battles, both at the Academy and at his own home, saturated with essence users of many different powers.

His significant resilience thanks to his aura, his Physical Zeal racial (Power also increased toughness), his conjured armor and its conferring resistances, the additional damage resistance from Wrath’s Respite, the effects of Karmic Warrior, his deflections, and his various recovery-over-time effects meant that even if Sen suffered a hit, it was not lethal, and if it was not lethal, he’d quickly recover. Sen was an absolute pain in the ass to fight, an unrelenting bruiser of resilience, skill, power, and speed, and the students hadn’t had to face someone like him yet, who mastered all the foundations of his archetype and added more.

Both Graff and Siyu had relied on their intrinsically higher strength and reflexes. Graff had brutal, crushing attacks that Nara would have died from if not for John’s healing and shields. Sen knew well enough how to protect his head and vitals. Siyu didn’t have as high of a strength but made up for it in number of allies. If it wasn’t for Ranshi, there would have been a disaster.

Especially iron rank, a well trained bronze ranker was so much more dangerous.

*****

The rest of the academy dispersed back to their regular classes.

The combined teams moved to a small auditorium. There was a stage area at the bottom, where techniques and rituals were demonstrated. Similar but smaller demonstration areas were between rows, where students copied rituals or performed moves themselves.

Adelina stood at the front, her voice magically projected with magic.

“Now you’ve all done very poorly,” Adelina said, “but that is what I expected for all of you. I set you all up for failure.”

“That’s unfair, vice-headmaster!”

“You know what I say about fairness, Chiara.”

“Fairness exists for allies, not enemies,” she said as if repeating an adage.

“Can you really say, that when you saw you had to fight a bronze ranker eight versus one, that you all didn’t have the unfair advantage?” Adelina gazed at Francis and his team, “How about that? The Adventure Society recommended standard is 3 to 5.”

“…We thought we’d win for sure.”

“Do not fall into patterns in battle,” Adelina said, “your enemy needs to only act on it once. You let Miss Nara here act on your pattern twice.”

Adelina’s aura pressured her students, just in a way to let the feel the weight of their mistakes, but not enough to scare or overwhelm them. Nara was in awe of her delicacy, using aura to emphasize points in learning.

“Your generous ‘patron of learning’ has offered any awakening stones of your choice, including five star, to all of you.”

“You did?” Eufemia asked.

Nara shrugged, “I can convert looted awakening stones.”

“To any rarity? Are you serious?”

“Rarity is a construct. It doesn’t make a stone good or bad, just more specific. I’ve got an awesome looting power, I might as well make use of it to make a bunch of kids happy, yeah?”

Eufemia thought about it for a moment, then nodded in agreement.

“As far as magic powers go, that’s a wonderful way to use it.”

It was one of her rare, genuine compliments.

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Adelina sat with the kids, consulting and overseeing their choices. Nara wrote out a list of all those she could convert to.

“Awakening Stone of Creation?”

“It’s a new stone we came across,” Aliyah said, assisting Nara and Adelina. “It tends towards awakening abilities with boons, dispels, conjurations, and transcendent damage. The sample size is, to my great chagrin, very limited.”

She had asked around after the trial for anyone else that used one, and had a few samples beyond just Nara’s, John’s, Eufemia’s, and her own ability that they had awakened from the stone. She compiled them for the Magic Society, and handed in the examples the gathered. It was a sample size in the low twenties, but it was enough to draw some cursory conclusions.

“That’s interesting,” Adelina said. “That’s where Eufemia’s armor conjuration ability came from?”

Eufemia nodded.

“And Nara’s familiar?”

“Yup.”

Adelina drummed her fingers on the table. Five star stones meant unknown abilities, with the simultaneous advantage and disadvantage of less information.

The students looked up at her with pleading eyes.

“It’s a brand new stone! The rarest of the rare!” Chiara said excitedly. “How can we not?”

“We are adventurers,” a student proclaimed.

“It’s all random anyway,” another said softly, earning a sharp glance from Adelina. Awakening stones were random with significant direction. It wouldn’t do to dismiss it.

Adelina rubbed between her brow, thinking.

“Against my better judgement as your vice-headmaster and educator,” Adelina said, “I’ll allow it.”

The students cheered.

“Line up! Be polite! And thank Miss Nara for the gift despite your pathetic losses!”

The students hurriedly formed up, evidently practiced.

Adelina sighed as Nara handed over a stone one-by-one, even demonstrating the conversion with her Traveler’s Bounty ability.

“After all, what is the point of adventuring if you can’t have some fun with it.” Adelina said, her expression warm as she relaxed.

“Mother, there’s plenty of other points. Like protecting the populace?”

“Hush, son. That’s not the point today.”

Not every student chose an Awakening Stone of Creation, although excitement had been high. The Awakening Stone of Time was another very popular choice, with the Awakening Stone of Dimension in third place, and an Awakening Stone of Rebirth in fourth.

A few did choose lesser rarity stones, such as Sovereign, which was a popular stone known for awakening famous auras; Eufemia and Encio shared that similarity.

*****

The team stayed in Saggia, helping the Academy students. They weren’t qualified instructors, but students rarely had the chance to fight bronze rankers from Sanshi (and not their usual locally hired adventurers), where the adventurer education was different.

They fought in the mirage chamber often. The students devised strategies to take them down, and did they succeed. However, Adelina’s criticism was never that the students weren’t capable of taking down higher rankers, but that they relied on knowledge to create strategies when in reality knowledge of abilities was unlikely. And that, they had gotten overconfident in their abilities and needed to readjust to the paradigm where higher rankers were faster, stronger, and tougher; they needed to account for their own error.

Sen’s own overarching plans rarely involved direct counters to abilities, although John’s Magic Camera allowed for some on-the-fly adaptation for a tactical edge.

Nara found herself learning a lot too. Mostly strategy, and some stuff she had internalized but was never explicitly told. Amara and the others had done a fine job drilling the important basics into her, and she found herself recalling them as she learned from those within the academy.

Compared to the Sanshi Academy, the De Luca Academy offered a more comprehensive education. It, however, lacked the low magic quality that made Sanshi ideal for new adventurers. Iron rankers here were escorted by higher rankers, lest a stray silver rank monster show up and kill all of them. The Sanshi Adventure Academy, conversely, featured independence in both education and action.

“Nicely done,” Nara told Francis after another mirage chamber match. “You all got me that time.”

“We did,” Francis said bitterly, “But you took four of us down before you went down! If this wasn’t a mirage chamber battle, that’s four of us dead.”

“The afflictions did get me in the end,” Nara assured. Francis had reached the self-deprecation stage of his personal growth and rivalry with Nara, whereas before he had been sorely deprecating of her and overconfident.

“You have some cleansing but not enough,” Francis said. “It’s the strategy with the least risk against you.”

He stared at her, unhappy, “Why do you fight like the afflictions don’t matter?”

“What do you mean, it’s a mirage chamber? They don’t.”

“Headmaster Adelina would berate you for that.” Francis said. “You need to treat it like it’s real. Or else there’s no point.”

Nara leaned in, causing Francis to step back.

“Want to know a secret?”

“…What?” he said warily.

He’d seen her in battle, and found her inexplicably imposing. She didn’t have the knife-edge smile that the red-haired celestine had, but found she could easily switch from casual and playful to almost inconspicuously deadly. He wondered if he would be that intimidating at bronze rank too.

“I have a way to cleanse everything later.”

“…That’s unfair. All that sacrifice and you’d get away alive?”

“What did miss Adelina say again?”

“Fairness is for allies, not enemies,” Fracis groaned. “If we really want to beat you, we have to use another tactic then.”

“Try not to plan my death in too much detail,” Nara said. “I’ll get suspicious.”

“I’ll pay you back for the humiliation of day one.”

“You’re the one who shit-talked first. Throw shit, get hit.”

Francis bit his lip and turned away, face burning with embarrassment at memories he’d rather died with his mirage body that day.

*****

“Encio. We should talk,” Adelina said, adopting a mother-who-is-displeased tone of voice.

“Alright.”

He followed her to her office within the academy. The interior was the same smooth marble, lacy with veins of black, gold, silver, and bronze. The interior of the academy was august and impressive—Sezan’s taste. He’d donated a large amount of money to redesign the academy. If his crest was going to be on it, it needed to be up to his standards.

“Grandmother always thinks this building is too much for a place of learning,” Encio mused. “But if grandfather has the money he may as well spend it to commission something beautiful.”

“I’m just glad it upkeeps and repairs itself,” Adelina said. “If anything can get broken in the first place. This material is harder than my father’s diamond rank jaw.” She rapped the bronzevein marble with her fist.

The opened the door to her office—a heavy, ornate wood door. This room rotated ownership between Luciana, Adelina, Valer, and the other members of the Aciano and De Luca families, whoever was the present headmaster. It didn’t matter and there was no fixed headmaster. Their stint as headmaster was usually years at a time, so the student’s educational style was not disjointed.

“Sit. Encio,” Adelina said.

He sat, nervousness creeping into his mind. His mother was upset.

“Encio. You haven’t told me anything specific. Father didn’t say anything, and all the sudden you were in Sanshi, with some young woman. Then, you’ve joined a team with an Arlang? And you ranked up to bronze in less than a year?”

“I was at iron rank for many years, mother.”

She narrowed her eyes at his backtalk. “That’s not the point. The point—whatever you have been doing has been dangerous.”

“No mother, it was never more than what we could handle. The stakes were never high. It was ordinary adventuring.”

“Ordinary adventuring? Ordinary adventuring is what you were doing before, sticking with some no-name group of iron rankers, completing unimpressive contracts.”

“Mother, that’s not like you. You don’t judge others by their backgrounds like that.”

“Why did you stop doing that?”

“Mother,” he said disapprovingly.

“Is it that outworlder? She’s piqued your interest and now you want to hang around her, going on adventures? When will you get bored of her like all those other adventurers? Then you’ll go back to whatever you were doing before, safe and sound.”

Her words stung a bit. Encio had, after all, wanted to join Nara because he was interested in her status as an Outworlder.

“Mother, I am not going to abandon my team. I am not going to get bored of my team.”

“Why not? You have before.”

“Mother. That is not something you’d tell your students, would you?”

She shook her head.

He held her shaking hands gently, bringing her in for a hug, “It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Nobody is completely safe. Life is unexpected mother, regardless of whether I chase danger.”

“I want you to be safe.”

“Mother,” Encio said gently, “Grandfather didn’t give me a Dimension Essence just to see me languish at iron rank. I am the most promising member of my generation.”

“You’ve got such a big head,” she chuckled, her anger born from worry subsiding.

“This head came from you, not father. He’s more proportionate.”

“I’m your mother. You can’t say that to me!”

“What do you mean?” Encio said innocently, “You don’t like to see me compliment father?”

Adelina pretended to deliberate. “His beauty is for me to appreciate, not you.”

Encio rolled his eyes as his mother’s sappiness.

“Why aren’t I a celestine then?”

Adelina chuckled, “Valer and I thought you’d be too beautiful then. You’d get into all different kinds of trouble.”

“Now that didn’t work out, did it?”

“No, it didn’t, but I think the havoc you would’ve caused would be even worse.”

She sat down beside her son on a plush couch, calmed.

“I’m sorry Encio, I said things I should not have.”

“It’s alright.”

“But. Encio,” she said, her voice pitched with more threat. “You should not be keeping such things from me.”

“…Do you really need to know exactly what I’m doing?”

He was already in his twenties. Even in Nara’s world, that was an age of independence. Doubly so here, where essence users started off early. But he knew his mother was fearful after Celina had died.

“I send my son to live with my father, and he drops him off in another country to join a team without my knowledge. I need to have a ‘chat’ with my father about how he’s handling his daughter’s son. So yes, Enciodes Aciano, I need to know what you are doing.”

“If you don’t try to stop me from doing it,” he protested.

“I’ll try to stop you from doing it if I think it’s going to get you killed.”

“Fine, you win. I’ll send letters.”

“You better. If you don’t, I’m going to find you and drag you back home myself.”