My leg hurt like hell when I came to. The adrenaline of the fight had long gone, so I felt the brunt of the pain. I had been the only one to break, not the greatest phrase to use, the no-maiming rule as I had clearly maimed my own leg. My skin also felt slightly raw from using my legacy as my body still wasn’t fully adapted to it yet, and using it so many times in a short period of time made this fact actually noticeable to me.

Highlights from the fight, clearly shot from a drone, were being replayed on a flat-screen television on the wall in view of my bed. The only person who fully acknowledged its presence was Alex, posing for the camera, though Oliver saw it and rolled his eyes, concentrating back on his fight. He was obviously used to Alex’s showmanship.

We had apparently won the fight, as I was the only person on my team to lose enough aura to be knocked out (metaphorically and literally).

There was a machine attached to my leg, which seemed to be glowing lightning blue with flecks of red, as it seemed to be drawing my aura towards the injury. It felt a bit like pins and needles as it worked through, the pain lessening over time as I felt the remnants of the fight fix in my leg, in the correct places as a nurse must have realigned it right. My ankle stopped swelling and settled down until my leg no longer hurt.

“Um… I think I’m alright now; can I go?” I asked the nearest person of authority I could see.

A guy with long blond hair turned to me and looked at my now healed ankle, “You’re free to go. Your ankle has healed nicely, and you will be alright to go to lessons tomorrow.”

“Thanks for the hel–”

“Where you can learn to kick without spraining your ankle.” The man said with a tone of annoyance, "You're lucky you seem to heal faster than most, you know?”

“Um, yeah, thanks.” I shuffled awkwardly out of the room, giving the doctor a thumbs up as he glared at me like a misbehaving child.

***

When I arrived at our room it was already pretty dark, and I realised that I didn’t have a key on me to get into the room. I didn’t want to wake anyone up, as they probably were already asleep by that time and I could have picked the lock but there wasn’t anything on me to do that, so I just sat in front of the door until I could decide on what to do as I was slightly embarrassed.

Five minutes passed as I contemplated knocking on the door and maybe waking my team when I heard someone walking down the hall towards me: Cassie. The Legends, it turned out, were only a few rooms away from ours.

“Forgot your key?” she asked. I looked up from my hard contemplation and nodded. “Let me guess, you don’t want to wake your team up but also don’t want to sleep outside, and you don’t want to go to reception and admit you lost your key on the first day?” her voice full of mirth voiced out my dilemma, seemingly amused by my plight.

“Yeah, but also, I don’t know if it's open this late, and I don’t know where it is, plus it's probably far. It would just be easier to knock and deal with it in the morning.” I rambled to try to explain my thought process.

“You do a good kick, though,” she changed the topic to distract me from making the situation even more complicated, “enough to send me flying back even after I removed your local gravity. Annoyingly, that meant your team was able to beat us. I must admit it was impressive for someone to use my power against me, but don’t expect to be able to do that again any time soon.” She looked to the ground by my feet, slightly mumbling, “Also, sorry about what happened in the cafeteria.”

“Eh, don’t worry about it,” I said absentmindedly.

“It’s just that, I get slightly competitive with things like that,” She continued trying to explain herself, “and I slightly struggled with the dungeon thing. You seemed to find it annoyingly easy, which might have been why I reacted that way.”

There was a pause as she saw I was still stuck overthinking about the door situation and rolled her eyes.

“Anyway, I’ll choose for you.”

She knocked on the door before I realised I should react and walked off back to her own room. Alex answered almost immediately, and different pieces of machines floated around him. His eyes were glowing slightly which was seemingly the only light source in the room.

“Yo, didn’t you have a key?” he said after realising it was me, “Matt and Oliver are sleeping, so keep the noise down, but did you see the fight?” he took out his phone and started playing a recording of the fight before I had a chance of saying I hadn't, “Your kick was so cool! The way you used your gauntlet recoil to propel yourself, ingenious,” his eyes flashed with excitement as he replayed that part multiple times, “and the finishing move Cassie used on you must have hurt; it left a crater in the ground.” he seemed to notice the time on the edge of the screen, “Anyway…it is quite late so you should probably get to bed, our first lesson tomorrow is weapon training. Night.” He said this almost completely hypocritically as he immediately returned to what he was working on, whatever that work was.

I went to my bed and practically fell on it, blacking out as my head touched the pillow. It had been a long day.

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

***

When Alex woke up the team to go to breakfast, he seemed to have no consequences for his all-nighter which was annoying as I was groggy from sleeping and had a dead leg from it hanging off the side of the bed.

“Wake up! You need to have breakfast,” Edward yelled at me inside my head. “You missed dinner yesterday, so you’ll collapse during training if you don’t.” he continued to lectured me "You haven’t been a speedster for long, but you will soon learn that you have its drawbacks as well as its perks.”

As Edward suggested, I slumped out of bed unenthusiastically to get food with the team.

Right after breakfast was our first lesson: weapons training. Now, what you might be thinking is, ‘how can weapons training be tiring? It’s just stand and shoot. Your arm might ache a bit, but that is all.’ Well, Telum has a different style when it comes to weapons training. One where they test your endurance, dexterity, and how you use a combination of your Legacy and weapon in situations mimicked by AI. Mechanism apparently developed the system as he thought the previous training was lacking and digitised it to specialise for certain Mythic types and preferred weapons to ensure the best quality training. The best quality training hurts, though… a lot.

The training is also designed to help the Mythics who only unlocked their Legacy recently, aiding the body in adapting to the power and channelling it more effectively. At the moment, I still get some electric charring when I use mine.

It wasn’t as bad as it could have been, as I did become more stable when using my Legacy. Though it still needed practice, something which the A.I. did not let me forget. It always waited until I was off balance or distracted to attack. Edward helped warn me of some surprise attacks but wouldn’t allow me to use his time manipulation as I had apparently become too reliant on it, saying he’d allow me to when I could use my own power properly.

Alex helped me use Red Thunder more effectively, analysing it with his power, and found a new mode I had been unaware of: ‘finger guns’, which were more precise than my punch shots at the cost of some power.

The team training was mostly disorganised as I didn’t really know how to lead; I had barely seen anyone on my team fight except Mathew, even with the battle yesterday. We were taken down by the A.I. in under seven minutes, which was impressive considering the utter chaos that was my tactic. Everyone was aching after the first lesson despite us only being an hour and a half into the first actual day. Fun.

The next lesson was Shade identification studies. We took our seats in the lecture theatre, which everyone was thankful for as it meant we could sit down. The teacher stood at the front with a grin, his olive brown eyes not matching as darting between the faces of the students with a slight look of melancholy. He had a longish face, messy brown hair and wore an old looking silver amulet with a red ruby in the middle, though he looked young he gave the feeling of an old, tired academic.

“Welcome to Shade identification studies, my name is Dr Jacq and I’ll be teaching you. I hope you enjoyed the last few days, especially those of you that partook in that unofficial fight as that was thoroughly entertaining. Typically, before lessons start, we only have the entrance exam for entertainment, which you have me to thank for.”

He took in the glares like applause. Waiting a second to saver the moment before he continued with his reasoning.

“I believe that all students should experience coming face to face with a shade before they fully commit to becoming a fully fledged Mythic, plus it’s a fun team building exercise and I'm sure you all had fun. It also gives us information on how you deal with unexpected experiences, as in the field you will have things go wrong and have to work things out for yourself so it's tradition to not warn new students to keep the tests authentic. Which obviously has the added benefit of making the process funny as most don’t expect it and every year someone wets themselves when they wake up to a Beowolf drooling over them; this year wasn’t an exception.”

With that statement, everyone looked around curiously at each other, which made Edward laugh.

“Well, do you know who he's referring to?”

“Of course I do.”

“Who?”

“I’m not going to say because it's more annoying for you that way.”

I sighed before shifting my attention back to Dr Jacq, who had somehow acquired annotated stills from the test.

“This, I’m sure you’re aware, is a Shade. Specifically, this is a grey bone Beowolf, chosen as it is the weakest form of the Beowolf.” He pointed to its armour that in the still was about to be hit by a student's hammer, “It is called this due to its fledgling armour that has not fully developed yet, and while I admit I am cruel, Washington at least made me only use this level of Shade in the exam as they are relatively easy to damage for novices. But believe me, there are worse out there.”

He put up a separate image of a Beowolf. This one had more clearly defined armour that was whiter than the grey bone, which stood more in contrast to its black flesh, “This is a Beta level, which has stronger armour and better intellect.” A third Beowolf appeared, and this one had weird growths and more interlocking bone plates. “Alpha level is when Shades get more interesting. Notice the weird bumps on its neck? Those are poison glands, at this level Shades develop adaptations that you have to look out for as they are inconsistent even in the same species. I have seen one Alpha Nope out in the wild that had radioactive breath. You should see what that does to regular flesh!”

He then put up two more Beowolfs, although this time they were illustrations rather than actual images, “The next levels are spawn levels as they can create the lower levels and have more complex armour, you can tell them apart through how much black flesh is visible, the more complete the armour, the worse time you’ll have.”

He then sighed before continuing, “I hate that I have to say this but Shade levels are a measure of how difficult a Shade is in comparison between members of its own species, don’t underestimate them. The difficulty of taking down each type of Shade varies from the different types as a spawn Beowolf isn’t as dangerous as Beta Nope if dealt with quickly enough. Also, watch out for specialized ones as they have specific methods of being defeated and, if not dealt with correctly, can become worse.”

He then grinned, “Also if you are one of those entrepreneur types, some of the higher Shades don’t even dissolve completely when you kill them, sometimes leaving some of their armour or poison which weapon and medical companies pay big money for to research. I think that's the basics, see you soon, for personal training.” He concluded his grin going slightly too wide.