I’d known that Shinara’s GDF Headquarters was enormous; I’d known that it was the largest building in the entire city, among the largest in the world. Yet, I had never expected this. There is approximately zero way that it should be possible to fit what I see before me in the building. In fact, Prof had said that the hub was ten stories combined, and, looking up, it’s easily twenty stories to the ceiling. To put things simply, this should not be possible.
Before me are a number of buildings — like, proper-sized buildings — contained within the GDF Headquarters. They aren’t massive by any means, but they are respectable. The buildings are laid out in a simple U shape, all facing the elevators; each one seems to be serving a different purpose, a small café, a general goods store, and even one labeled Inscriptions. In fact, I see several of what appear to be small shops revolving around magical services. In the center of the U is a plaza with a large fountain and well-maintained grass and trees along the paths to the buildings.
Now, if it was just the U of main buildings, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Well, it would still be amazing, but not literally impossible. No, around the buildings are more things than I can even see from my vantage point. Paths lead into grassy fields with training dummies and targets set up, and others lead off to buildings outside of the main plaza.
In essence, I feel like I’ve just stepped out of a corporate elevator and ended up on a college campus in the sky. It’s crazy, and the craziest part of all is that the walls around the campus all seem to be made entirely of glass, aside from the occasional support column. This allows sunlight to filter through into the space in a large enough quantity that, when combined with the bright lights and blue coloring of the ceiling above, it feels as if I’m outside. There’s even a gentle breeze that just has to be the result of some kind of inscription.
Weirdly enough, there seems to be a balcony wrapping the entire campus accessible via small glass doors. I have no idea who would want to be that high up on a balcony; the wind must be crazy out there. However, even as I watch, I see a sentinel in full assault state regalia enter the hub through one of the small doors. He’s too far away to see clearly, but he seems perfectly casual, even as he flashes with red light to reveal a standard, if a bit ostentatiously dressed, teenaged boy that wanders off down one of the paths.
The red sentinel isn’t alone. The entire hub is filled with people who move between buildings, talk with each other, and generally act like all of this is perfectly normal. Oddly, I notice that almost everyone seems quite young, likely in their late teens or early twenties. Many even display overt magic, switching into and out of assault states and messing around with various blatantly magical abilities. Here and there, I catch a glimpse of strange, often fluffy, creatures moving around people. More familiars like Celeste. Most familiars, however, appear to be staying hidden.
Only a few adults, like Prof, are visible to me, which seems odd. Sentinels have existed for dozens of years now, so what gives? Do we just not age or something? Am I going to look seventeen forever? I really hope not. The thought of being thirty-five and still looking like a teenager will be the source of at least one existential crisis later, I’m sure.
Existential questions aside, my initial impression of the hub feels the most accurate. This place feels like a college campus built entirely in the sky. The glass windows allow us a perfect view of the rest of Shinara far, far, below, giving me the feel that this place had been built atop the cloud from my soul-bonding dream.
Looking around in amazement, I finally find myself looking up at a grinning Prof, my nerves entirely forgotten. Instead, my heart is filled with a sense of childlike wonder. “How?” I breathe, “How is this even possible? This is like an eco-dome, but there isn’t nearly enough room for all this… I don’t understand.”
Prof’s grin only widens at my question. “I do love seeing new sentinels’ first reactions to this place. We’ve learned a bit about magic since our first contact with the Centurions. One of the most useful things we’ve learned is spatial magic. Bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. If you walk out on the balconies, you’ll find that the space between the different doors is smaller on the outside than it is on the inside. We use spatial magic in a number of places across the building. Including the personal quarters of the different sentinels if you decide to go that route.”
“That reminds me,” I start. “Why even have balconies? With how windy it is this far up, someone could fall.” I ask, feeling much more open to speak. People who made something this beautiful couldn’t be all bad, right?
“Falling is kind of the point,” Prof explains patiently. “A good many higher-rank sentinels learn to fly, and more still can fly on their familiars. Your mentor, Audrey, is one such example. She tends to just fly up and down from here under her own power rather than take the elevator like we did.”
Prof pats me gently on the shoulder. “Not to worry, in a few years’ time, this kind of thing will seem normal to you. Come, let’s do intake, and then we can take a quick tour.”
image [https://i.imgur.com/7K6DY8V.png]
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Over the next few hours, Prof and I spend a lot of time in the administrative building, where I fill out and sign a ton of paperwork. Also, I share the contents of my entire Status screen. Apparently, they take down all of my rank and sub-rank progress every single month so they can both help place me on a team and then know what threats my team can handle.
One thing that felt amazing to sign was the contract detailing my salary and sign-on bonus, both of which are higher than I can even imagine. Just for joining the GDF, I am getting more money than I feel I could spend in a lifetime. It’s no wonder so many sentinels start businesses and the like. It’s simply absurd!
I’d only spent a small part of my life living in the slums around Shinara before Dad had gotten his teaching job, but it was enough to teach me about what this kind of money means. For so long, Dad had worried about losing his job and what that would mean for us. We would lose the apartment, and I’d lose my school as well as the chance to compete in more obscure sports, like archery, at all. Now, that’s no longer a worry, just like that. All I had to do was sign up to fight the Volcora. I hope I’ll consider myself overpaid by the time I get started.
Most of my time is interspersed with random lectures from Prof on what I should and should not do while out in the field. Basically, his initial statements to me in the elevator prove true. The guy is driven to make sure that I, and everyone else, come back from every mission alive, which is frankly quite reassuring. The Volcora have always been this dark and nebulous threat, so getting advice from someone who actually knows what’s going on is extremely valuable.
After filling out my paperwork, which was more of a formality as I’m legally required to be here already, Prof takes me on a quick tour of the hub. Most of the buildings and areas are fairly mundane: stores, restaurants, training fields, classrooms, and so on. There are a number of notable exceptions, though.
The store I’d seen earlier, Inscriptions, apparently handles magical inscriptions on objects or in certain locations. They can improve or create magical weapons, expand rooms with spatial magic, and a variety of other things. Apparently run by a few enterprising inscribers, they handle everything from inscriptions for GDF Headquarters itself and custom orders for sentinels. Sadly, they only take credits as payment, which Prof had explained to me on the way to our final stop on the tour.
“So, credits are a bit of an interesting idea. Basically, they are a currency for sentinels to purchase things that are magic-related. They are the only way to buy things from the magic-related shops in the hub,” Prof explains, gesturing to the large boxy building on one side of the U. We stand before the building as Prof lectures, just beside the large gurgling fountain in the center of the plaza.
The inscriptions shop itself is heavily inscribed, with runic markings that bend my mind just to look at them. It stands out in contrast to the other buildings in the U that all have a very nice, almost Victorian, architectural style to them. Rather than follow any kind of style, the inscriptions shop just looks like a massive concrete box that an expert inscriber had been working on for years. I don’t see a single surface, including the door, that isn’t covered in glowing inscriptions of various colors.
I look over the shop curiously, considering Prof’s words. “Why credits? Why not just use yen?”
“You’ve had inscription training, so the answer should make sense to you. Tell me, can you use an inscribed item someone else made?” Prof asks.
I shake my head, “Only really simple stuff. Although you can use complicated things in a more impersonal way, that’s outside of what I’ve learned so far. Other than that, you can only use things you make. You have to establish enough ownership of a magic item before it will work for you, with the creation itself serving as the trial.”
“And that is the reason we use credits,” Prof says with a smile. “Magic items are almost… alive. They will only work when they feel someone has properly earned them. The stronger the item, the more earning you have to do. Normally, to gain ownership over an item you didn’t make, you would have to undergo trials until you cross some threshold and the magic starts working for you.”
I tilt my head; I’d known all that, of course, but having it explained in that way is odd. I had known that other people could gain ownership of an item, but it’s a strange and nebulous subject, not something generally covered by my classes.
“We use credits almost like a cheat to gain ownership immediately,” Prof continues. “As it turns out, you can use a magic item immediately after acquiring it. You just have to have done enough to earn it beforehand. For sentinels, fighting the Volcora acts as a kind of proving ground to earn better equipment. Whenever you complete a mission as a sentinel, we will gauge its difficulty and grant you an accordant number of credits. You can then spend those earned credits on carefully priced items that will then have been earned as soon as you buy them. Make sense?”
I give a soft laugh of amazement, “I’ll be honest, that doesn’t feel like it should work.”
You can’t cheat magic; it’s just how magic works. All magic has to be earned, and doing that earning is extremely difficult. Inscribers earn their own items during the difficulty in the act of creation, but earning an item someone else made is supposed to be fairly impractical. I suppose that this system could work, but I also feel like it’s operating around some nuances that I haven’t explored much of yet.
“We have a lot of things like this,” Prof explains. “But we will be going over it in orientation tomorrow and more in your training in the coming weeks and months. Sentinels need to be the best of the best. Trust me, we’ll be cramming as much information and training into you as possible. That’s what it takes to fight Volcora and come out alive consistently.”
I offer a weak smile, “Thank you,” I say, but my voice comes out flat.
The sheer unreality of my last few days has been weighing down on me these past few hours. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that I, a high school student with a mild talent for archery, am apparently a sentinel now. I need to train to fight, to kill. To be the first line of defense for mankind as a whole.
Prof places a gentle hand on my shoulder, “You’re welcome, Serena. Now, I’ve been talking your ear off for a while now, and it’s starting to get late. You should probably start making your way home.”
I look up at the large man with graying hair and give a much more honest smile. “Thank you again, Prof, genuinely. I feel more comfortable knowing that someone cares so much for making sure I stay safe.”
Prof nods, his expression turning just a touch sad. “Go be with your family. I’ll see you tomorrow for orientation.”