The door of the lift slid closed, shutting out the sound of the nervous chatter that filled the corridor behind.

Within the lift, the eight of them squeezed together in a pensive silence. People, either crew members or faculty they didn’t know, had stormed into the canteen, ushering them to get up, put away their trays, and get them on the move to Nexus 101, whatever it was that waited them there.

“Well, does anyone want to talk about it?” Kur eventually asked, as the lift got underway.

Nar felt Gad shrug at his side.

“What’s there to talk about,” she said. “They train elites and they grabbed us, who aren’t strangers to fighting. It’s clear what’s going to happen, and we don’t have any choice in it.”

Kur winced at her blunt words. “Still…”

“It’s okay, Kur,” Viy said, from behind Tuk. “You made the right choice. Let’s just see what happens for now.”

Kur pursed his lips but gave her words a half nod.

The lift dinged as they reached their floor, level 11, and they filtered out. Kur took them right in the new, but identical red brown dark metal corridor they found themselves in, and the voices of other apprentices reached them from somewhere further ahead.

“Still, death threats or not, it’s exciting, no?” Tuk asked, smiling bashfully, as if unsure if he should be feeling guilty for his enthusiasm.

“It is!” Cen said. “I can’t wait to meet the Master of Aura! There’s so much I want to ask her!”

Nar chuckled quietly at their excitement, the same that bubbled from within him, death threats or not. He was excited to finally be getting some answers, and the fact that there was a Master of Aura promised to maybe bring him good tidings regarding his choice to stick with his aura.

But he would have to wait and see.

Even without noticing it, they had loosely fallen into their usual formation pattern, with Gad leading them and Nar closing the party. The realization made him both frown and smile, and he shook his head. It would probably be a while before they let go of that particular habit.

Maybe when we feel safe here… Nar mused, looking around the hexagonal corridor.

After a few more turns and corridors, they reached a corridor where they could hear the sound of a large gathering, and Kur led them through an open door to reach their destination.

They stopped just inside, and took in the room before them.

“It’s easy to forget we’re flying inside an aethership,” Kur said eventually.

“Yeah,” Nar couldn’t help but agree.

“Crystal, how many are there?” Tuk asked.

Nar looked down the half-circle of rows and rows of sitting that slopped sharply towards some sort of podium at the bottom of the large room. The rows were already half filled with apprentices, and more were streaming in from below as well.

“It must fit at least a few hundred,” Kur said. “More than what we saw at the canteen. But less than the full thousand they recruited.”

“So there’s more canteens as well?” Mul asked.

“That, or we eat at different times…” Kur mused.

“Uhm, I think we should go,” Jul said. “There’s more people coming in behind us.”

“Oh, yes. Let’s go!” Kur said, leading them down a set of stairs.

Kur eventually reached a spot somewhere a little past the halfway point of the rows of sitting, but still with a good distance from the podium, from where, presumably, someone would be speaking to them.

Nar found himself sitting at the end of the party, with Jul seated at his side.

As he sat, another party of apprentices slid into the seats beside them, and Nar and Jul shared an awkward nod with a male lengos of striking neon blue irises. Then, the three of them did their best to pretend they weren’t sitting next to a stranger.

“What do you think they’ll talk about?” Tuk asked, from Jul’s other side, ever unable to go quiet for long periods of time.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Nar heard Kur replying. “But hopefully, the stuff we need to be able to survive on our own out here.”

Nar nodded in agreement. What had transpired in the O-Nex was not exactly what he had been dreaming as he Climbed. And recalling the encounter with the men that had come for them, and how they could’ve found themselves somewhere very different to the room they now sat in, made his stomach twist.

They had been lucky. Just like they had been lucky at least a few, critical, turning points in their Climb. And Nar was sick of luck.

I need power, he thought, clenching his fists underneath the short, half-table that covered their legs. And after all this talk of elite this and elite that, these people better deliver.

“Nar?” Jul asked, startling him.

Nar looked to the side and found the quam eyeing him with evident concern.

“Yes?” he asked back in confusion.

She smiled brightly. “It’ll be okay.”

Nar blinked at her, not sure of how to respond.

How does she do that? Nar wondered, not for the first time, watching her as Tuk got Jul’s attention by pointing down at something.

Nar had never quite understood how Jul always seemed to know what was going through his mind. Was it a yet to unlock skill, attribute or just a talent of hers? He didn't know, and he had never asked. In fact, now that he thought about it, he knew precious little about the others’ paths, other than the few crucial skills that they used. Like Gad’s tanking skills, or Tuk’s [Rapid Fire]. Perhaps now was a good time for them all to sit down and better understand each other’s statuses and skills, if they were to continue fighting onwards into Labyrinth together.

And speaking of…

Nar willed his UI visible, and as expected, his notifications icon was flashing.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Maybe now’s a good time to have a look.

He opened his notifications tab and frowned as he found three new notifications waiting for him, instead of just the one he had been expecting to let him know of his gains.

Tsurmirel: Probational Apprenticeship Contract, he read the first one. And then, Conclusion of the Climb… That’s got to be my gains. But what’s this then?

The third and last notification’s subject line was just a mix of garbled symbols of which he understood none. They were neither letters, nor numbers, nor the so-called punctuation marks he had come to understand.

He peered down the rows of apprentices, and seeing how there were still apprentices walking in and nobody had shown yet to stand at the podium below, he decided to satisfy his curiosity and check out his third notification.

A broken gray window appeared before him. Bits and pieces of it were missing, leaving holes through which he could see the room through. And the message was filled with more rows of those unknown symbols.

What the…

However, as he scanned through the incomprehensible mess, he finally reached something recognizable at the bottom of the window, as broken as it was.

EARN Y… PATH. RE… YOUR… ICE… EMBER, TH… NOT… EWAR…

Earn your path. Remember your… Choice? Remember, this is not a reward.

A shiver ran down his spine.

This was the Crystal’s warning when Nar had accepted his class change, at the end of the Ceremony of Final Atonement.

Do you accept this burden? Nar recalled the question.

He sighed and leaned back against the chair.

Too late for regrets now, he told himself.

Plus, thinking back to that moment, he couldn’t hide his desire for the feeling of raw power that had coursed through his entire being… He hungered for those two skills he had unleashed at the end, to obliterate the Raid Boss and the untold number of enemies before him.

It had been power. Real power. The sort he had left in search of. The sort that had allowed him to save his party with when it all seemed lost. And the sort of power that would one day help him return for his dad.

I don’t regret it, Nar told the broken window. I will earn my path and I stick by my choice! You’ll see! Still…

A message from the Holy Crystal Itself? And one so broken as to be missing pieces and filled with garbage symbols? What was up with that?

“Good morning, everyone!” a voice called.

Nar hurriedly closed his notifications and looked down to find a tall, wispy man standing atop the podium with his hands behind his back.

His gains and Tsurmirel contract would have to wait for later, though he was burning to know what he had gotten from that Ceremony.

It better be good…

And with that, he turned his attention to the man standing below.

The man sported a pale, orange skin color, and he only had one, very large eye with a red iris, and with very large ears to match it. So large in fact they almost reached down to his shoulders.

Damn, that must be some hearing, Nar thought.

The man smiled beatifically up at them all, his single bushy eyebrow being the same dark brown as his sleek, shiny and wet looking hair.

“What’s up with his hair?” Tuk whispered, in a hushed awed tone.

“That’s what you care about?” Mul asked in a similar hush, from beside him. “Not those massive ears? The one eye?”

“I mean… That’s just him, no?” the ring tosser said, shrugging.

“Uh… I guess?” the brawler said, stunned with Tuk’s reply.

“Alright, everyone, let’s settle down. We have a lot to cover today and not a lot of time to do it in.”

The man’s voice was clear, and loud enough for Nar to listen to comfortably, with him neither having to strain to listen to him nor shying away from too much volume. He figured that everyone in the room could probably hear the man just as well as he did.

“You can all call me Professor Thim, as my full last name is often too hard to pronounce even by people born and raised in the O-Nex, let alone Ex-Climbers,” he said, with a grin. “Now, this room we find ourselves in is called an auditorium, and it’s where you will find yourselves to have important theoretical lectures or assignment briefs. It is also where we will have our two Nexus 101 sessions this week, the first of them being this one. 101 just means that this is basic knowledge that you will be receiving. An introduction of sorts, let’s call it, to start building on your understanding of the Nexus and serve as a foundation to the more advanced topics you will be able to elect to take later on.”

The professor, who Nar understood to be a type of teacher, turned around and waved at the wall that comprised the front of the room. The lights in the auditorium dimmed slightly, and a big screen of white filled up the entire wall.

Another, smaller rectangle of light appeared above the podium, and the professor rested his hands over it.

“The good captain told you all about our teaching practice of carrying out an intensive, pre-delve, training course on all our new apprentices, the Intensive Pre-Delve Training. What she didn't mention however, is that before that can properly get started, you will all be going through the Introduction Weeks.”

As he spoke, he moved his fingers across the light rectangle and Nar noticed that words appeared on the screen on the wall. It read “Intensive Pre-Delve Training” and “Introduction Weeks”.

“Introduction Weeks, or Intro Weeks for less of a mouthful, consist of two weeks where you all get settled in and go through two crucial learnings. One is physical and the other pertains to your aura,” Professor Thim explained. “And you will all learn both of these, as they are crucial for combat. Unless you are a caster, or party leader, in which case you will only be required to learn the aura one.”

He looked up at the room, scanning it from left to right.

“The two lectures of Nexus 101 that you will be taking this week, are part of your Intro Weeks. In these lectures, we will discuss very important knowledge that you must know and understand if you are to not only be successful delvers, but actually be able to survive in the Nexus… Oh, and don’t worry. All lectures are recorded, and you will be able to rewatch everything at your own time and leisure. Now, let’s start with perhaps the most burning question that every single B-Nexer I’ve ever met has carried out of the gate.”

He passed a hand over the rectangle and the words disappeared off the screen above his head. In its place, the professor started writing new words, and Nar’s breath caught in his throat as he understood what the professor was spelling.

Along the room, there were gasps, and everyone stared transfixed at the two words the man had written.

“The Original Sin,” the professor said. “The sin that constrained the original B-Nexers to their cubeplants, and condemned all of their descendants to an eternity of darkness ever since. A punishment that has been going on since Crystal knows how long, and will continue for just as long...”

“My Crystal… Do we finally get to know?” Tuk whispered.

Instead, the man’s expression soured, and Nar knew that something wasn’t right.

“Unfortunately, I cannot answer the question for you all,” the professor said, with what felt like genuine regret. “The truth of the matter is only known to the Holy Crystal Itself, and the very top of the Church of the Holy Crystal, meaning the Primarch and the twenty-four Underarchs below him. Nobody else knows why your kind suffer as harshly as they do. Nor how much longer this punishment will last.”

Chatter broke out along the rows, and voices quickly raised. Nar could only snort and shake his head in disbelief.

Of course… Why did I even expect anything at all?

Not that it mattered to or changed his plans. His focus was just his dad anyways. The other Clean could rot for all he cared.

“Please,” the professor asked them. “I know that this answer is not what you were looking for. I know it's not satisfying in the least either. It sucks, and I know it, and I’m sorry I cannot reveal it all to you and make it make sense.”

The professor looked genuinely upset, looking down at the screen with his hands behind his back and his head bowed.

“However, what I can assure you of is that you are in a fantastic place to start your journey in the Nexus and the Labyrinth, wherever it is that that journey might take you on. And I guarantee that the days of not having control over your fates are over,” he said. “Yes, you signed a contract with us, and that requires you to work extremely hard and face life threatening assessments, but at the end of the Intensive Pre-Delve Training period, at the point of no return, you will be able to decide for yourselves if this is the life you want, and if not, Tsurmirel will be there to help you get settled down in a life of your choosing. Things… Things will be better from here on out, I promise.”

Nar sighed in the silence that followed the professor’s words, and relaxed back on his seat. There was no point in being angry at the man. He was simply there to teach them. And whatever terms Tsurmirel imposed, Nar couldn’t really protest or find fault in any of them. They were, likely, spending large amounts of experience on training them all, and it was fair of them to want to see results, and to know that their experience was being well spent.

“I guess we can at least give them the benefit of the doubt,” Mul said.

Nar leaned forward to look at the brawler in surprise.

“I think… The same,” Kur said, frowning.

“What?” Mul asked, when faced with the party’s collective stare. “I’m not unreasonable, am I?”

Kur took a deep breath and looked back down at the professor. “No. I guess you’re not...”

The professor did something, and an image showed up on the screen, rows of squares forming up.

“Then. Let us begin in earnest.”