"Erik's Battlemasters," Erik said, dodging Caeden's sword with a Stitch-assisted jump. It was late afternoon, and the whole group was in an IP room at the Core Seat, doing live combat practice. They had just finished up their invasion training.
"No, too violent, and it has your name in it again." Caeden was using a practice sword and his bronze body, using only a portion of Physical Enhancement's full power. He and Erik were sparring back and forth across half the room while Lily and Cat used the other half.
It had been a whole month and a half since the ranking day battle royale against Ander. A peaceful, normal month and a half. Everyone had gone to their classes, learning and training without any major incidents. Ander seemed to steer well clear of the group, and other Sun Seats followed his lead. They had thoroughly dominated every ranking day since then, only encountering a few people who were on their level. Lily was now ranked 2nd in the entire school, with Caeden in 9th, Erik in 10th, and Cat was 20th.
Just because this time had been peaceful didn't mean nothing happened. All of them had grown much stronger, with all of them adding more mnemonics to their repertoire. Everyone had continued to grow their Invasion Pressure steadily, with gains that put them closer and closer to the minimum requirement for graduation, ten months away.
Erik, Caeden, and Lily worked to form Ki and train in martial arts. Erik didn't have the same advantages that Caeden and Lily did when it came to Ki Creation, so he had been unsuccessful thus far. In contrast, his unarmed martial arts skills had soared, placing him leagues above the other two. His naturally high reaction speed, flexibility, and combat sense had led him to take to martial arts as a whole with a level of skill that was frightening to watch.
In contrast, Cat had spent much of her time developing more varieties of specters. At this point, she had one for any situation. Adding so many new mnemonics and developing new specters from scratch, refining their design to consume less IP, and training to command a large force of diverse specters had taken up much of her time. She was employing them now to try and pin Lily down, with little effect. Cat’s specters were generally pretty fragile, being primarily non-physical constructs. Lily could blast through them with barely a pause.
Caeden had also created a large stockpile of generic infused weapons. Each had a Crystal Integrity of over 500. He had also mass-infused copies of the ivory bamboo and ironwood shirts he had made for their group. They officially had the stockpile necessary to supply a decently large group. Lily also agreed that their strength was proven enough to attract people to them, especially those that might be looking for protection from the powerful families.
Even more than that, just because things had been peaceful for them didn't mean they were for the Academy at large. Just a week after the battle royale, every Seat had announced the formation of their own faction in the school, each led by a prominent family member. The Bronze Seat now had its Metal Knights. Their leader was from the Mercuria family. His Mercury shroud was powerful and deadly.
The faction from the Entropy Seat had named themselves the Twilight Guard. They were led by three siblings of the Nutrimens family. All of them had the Bounty shroud the family was known for, but also a powerful splinter each. So far, they were the least active faction, mostly keeping to themselves unless provoked.
Of course, Ander was leading the Sun Seat faction, called Solar Radiance. By far the most openly hostile and combative group, they would pick fights with anyone and everyone, but especially the Twilight Guard. No one unaffiliated wanted to go near the Sun Seat for fear they would be singled out. Duels were a daily occurrence in that section of campus. That Combativeness had led the Solar Radiance to grow much faster than the other factions, with people joining simply to avoid combat.
The last group coming from the Core Seat was unique in that a non-family student led them. In fact, their leader was another dual-shrouded like Caeden, the only other one in the Academy this cycle. His faction was the Ether Soldiers. Even stranger, to join the faction, you had to sign a contract to serve the military for one hundred years, rather than the mandatory five the Central Authority required. It was definitely the oddest group of the four.
All the groups had been making moves, causing many unaffiliated students, mostly continentals and non-family islanders, a lot of problems. This harassment had increased over time, especially in the last week as the factions truly settled in. This, along with the stockpile of weapons and the increased notoriety their group had garnered, led Lily to believe it was time for them to finally form their own group. Which all led around Erik, still trying to come up with a name. They had yet to find one they all agreed on.
"I came across something I thought sounded nice." Lily spoke up from across the room while jamming an ice dagger into the gaps of a spectral soldier's armor. With a twist of the blade, she sent an ice spike shooting through the dagger, eviscerating and dissipating the phantasm.
"Oh, what's that?" Caeden's interest was piqued. Lily rarely offered up name ideas. She seemed as uninvested in the process as him.
"It was a saying from an old, dead language of the ten thousand empires. Aequalitas Inter Diversitas. It means "equality among diversity," which seems appropriate for what we're trying to build. Plus, we can shorten it to AID, which also fits."
"There are other languages?" Caeden asked. He looked at Erik. "Did you know that?"
Erik shook his head.
"Yeah, there are other languages. Did you think all the nations of the Starry Sea spoke Central Common?" Lily giggled.
"Is that what we're speaking? No one ever told me there were other languages. They didn't even cover that in General Education." Caeden was more bewildered than embarrassed. It made sense when Lily mentioned it, but he had never even heard of other languages. Shaking his head, Caeden focused on the pertinent information of Lily's statement. "I like the sound of that, but I think it has problems."
"Like what? It fits perfectly." Lily frowned.
"In a vacuum, sure." Caeden nodded. "But we're at the state-sponsored military Academy. I don't think having the name of our new faction be in the language of another country will make the school very happy with us. Worst case, they think we're literally trying to form an insurrection."
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"I-" Lily started to speak, then stopped. She looked peeved. "Why didn't I think of that? Yeah, I don't think the Academy at large would take that well. Dang it! I really liked that name." She scowled.
"I wouldn't worry about it too much. I'm not sure how important the name is." Caeden shrugged. He was much more concerned with getting their organization up and running than having a kick-ass name. The one thing none of them actively discussed, but had been riding in Caeden's mind this whole month and a half, was the final reason they were making this group. Ander.
They had two weeks before Ander could come after Lily again. They were lucky in so far as he seemed bent on personally taking Lily back. He hadn't sent anyone after her this whole time. But Caeden had no illusions about his intentions. There was something deeply wrong with Ander's mind, and much of that wrongness seemed wrapped up with Lily. He would be coming after her the second he could. Now that he was head of Solar Radiance, he could make their lives very, very difficult. They needed a group of their own to combat his influence.
So Caeden didn't care much about the name; he just wanted to get it running. There had been legitimate reasons not to form a group until now. They had lacked supplies and influence. With both those problems solved, he was itching to get moving on it. The whole thing was starting to burrow into the back of his mind, right alongside healing his uncle. Having the solution to a problem and sitting on it because it wasn't the right time bothered him on a fundamental level.
"I don't know if this is too simple…" Erik trailed off.
"What? I swear if it has your name in it again-" Caeden's exasperation bled into his tone. Erik hadn't offered a single name without somehow adding his own to it.
"What? No, man. None of those were actually serious answers." Erik scoffed, "I just kept doing that to fuck with you."
Caeden's eye twitched.
"No, I was thinking. What about Forged? Or I guess, 'The Forged.' I think it fits." Erik looked to everyone else in the IP room even as he dodged another sword stroke from Caeden by a hair's breadth.
Caeden actually paused. He stopped attacking and just stood there, stunned. "No. Fuck you, no!"
"That's actually really good." Lily looked contemplative. Cat, who hadn't offered up an opinion, also nodded.
"No! We are not using one of Erik's names after all his bullshit. I've had to listen to him listing stupid names at me for a month. He does not get the satisfaction of naming our group." Caeden put his foot down. He was doubly mad because he actually liked it and wished he had come up with the name. It fit their whole idea, taking the leftovers who the Academy left hanging, training and outfitting them with appropriate armor. They were metaphorically forging them.
"Aww, did I make you upset? Was my idea too good for you?" Erik sidled up, using an exaggerated childish voice. "Woah!" He jumped back as Caeden took a swing at him.
"I hate you so much right now." Caeden shook his head. After all the annoying crap Erik had put him through…
"So I guess that means everyone agrees it's a good name?" Cat looked around. Everyone nodded, even Caeden, though he looked like he wanted to punch someone. Specifically Erik.
"Well, I'm glad we figured that out. So, resident geniuses, how do we get started?" Cat looked between Lily and Caeden. "Starting an entire organization can't be that easy."
Lily laughed. "Yeah, it's not. Luckily, this is more of a club than a business. As for how we start, that's easy."
"You made plans." Caeden smiled. He should have guessed.
"Oh, weeks ago." Lily waved her hand dismissively. "It's really simple with all the work we've already put in. I figured out that most of the students who haven't figured out how the school works, the continentals and non-family islanders that take whatever classes the school hands them, all get funneled into the same dinner period. The vast majority eat at the same time. All we have to do is go to the cafeteria and announce we're forming a faction of our own that will give out free infused gear as a perk for joining." Lily clapped her hands. "Easy as that. We would probably get people joining just because it's us saying it, honestly."
Caeden's smile grew wider as he shook his head. "Simple and effective. You're absolutely right."
It was a perfect plan. They basically had irresistible bait to draw the unaffiliated in. By this point, everyone would have noticed how much of a difference infused gear made on ranking days. Those without would be desperate to get their hands on some, no matter what it was. For them to give it away as a sign-on bonus would have people joining in droves. Plus, as embarrassing as it was to admit, Caeden had to acknowledge that their group had become rather infamous.
The school's rumor mill was alive and prolifically active. After their second ranking day, people walking by them on campus would stare and whisper. The proceeding weeks had caused that behavior to multiply. The fact that their group alone had three of the top ten ranked students in it was newsworthy to their fellow students. That they refused to join one of the Seats only increased their notoriety. Each of them had developed their own reputation over the past few weeks, especially Caeden.
People seemed to single him out for some reason, even though Lily was higher ranked. Some of that might be down to how much more visually impressive his fighting style was. Lily tended to flood a fight with fog, walk in, then the fight ended. It wasn't much to watch. In contrast, Caeden would turn into a gigantic golden man, had a transforming weapon the likes of which no one had ever seen, and surrounded himself with spinning blades of red energy. It all added up to an imposing image, and his reputation matched.
All of this led back around to the fact that many would join them just to be in the same faction as the most infamous group on campus. "You know…" An Idea struck him.
"What?"
"I think we can do one better."
"Elaborate," Lily rolled her hand impatiently, waiting for him to continue.
"Well, if we do as you said, we only get people from the Core Seat, right? We can't exactly go into the other Seats. How did you want to get those students on board?" Caeden asked.
Lily shrugged. "I figured we could work on that after consolidating whatever we got out of the Core Seat."
"We could, but then our initial group would always be from the Core Seat. This is supposed to be a group outside of the Seats." Caeden pointed out.
"Yeah, but how would we fix that/ You said it yourself; it's not easy for us to access the students in the other Seats in large groups." Lily shot back. She was curious where he was going with this.
"True, we can't." Caeden grinned, "But what about this? We go to the cafeteria, announce our new faction, just like you said. But, we also say that all students are welcome, no matter their Seat and that we'll be officially accepting takers and passing out gear on one of the physical conditioning fields later the next day. Then we just let people do the telling for us. The people we want from Core Seat share their classes with the same groups from the other Seats, right? They'll spread the word without us having to do anything. Then, the group we form will be a mixture of all Seats from the start." He looked around, "What do you think?"
"Hell yeah! Let's do it!" Erik announced his opinion enthusiastically.
"Sounds good to me." Cat shrugged. "I don't really care how we do it."
"It solves a few problems and smooths everything out." Lily nodded. "Hell yeah. Let's do it." She smiled, mimicking Erik, but with much less yelling. "Tomorrow?"
Caeden nodded. "As soon as possible. We'll have a lot of work to do."