To say the gym exercise was torture was an understatement. It was hell in all forms despite the fact that coach Harvey had reduced the number of laps from two to one. The null armor just accumulated so much weight that by the halfway point, half the class had already collapsed from exhaustion, choosing to instead lie on the floor and let the earth bear their weight till the exercise ended. Even the metal awakeneds who had been taking things leisurely before were now sweating profusely as they dragged themselves to the finish line by sheer force of will.

Aodhán practically crawled behind them, hastily channeling willpower through his pathways just to remain standing. When he finally got to the finish line—Ascendants knew how many hours later—Aodhán collapsed to the floor and simply prayed for death. He wasn’t the only one, as gasps, groans, and cries echoed all through the gymnasium.

While Aodhán wheezed and coughed as he tried to catch his breath, Coach Harvey and Miss Greene rushed around, pulling collapsed students out of their armors, and when they finally pulled his armor off him, Aodhán almost cried in relief even as someone cursed Coach Harvey from the back.

Daruk collapsed beside him a few minutes later and gasped. “Where’s the Ascendant of death when you need him?”

Aodhán tried to laugh, but it came out as a wheeze that led to a coughing fit. When it finally subsided, Aodhán called out to Coach Harvey. “What have we done to deserve such evil? If you’re trying to kill us slowly, you are definitely succeeding.”

Cries of agreement echoed from the rest of the class, and Coach Harvey grinned from where he was pulling an unconscious Derek from his null armor. “I’m not trying to kill you, although I very much intend to push you all to the edge of death so you can break free from the bondage of your bodies and begin to surpass them.”

“All I hear is torture, torture, death, kill, break, and death. Just kill us and be done with it.” Lilith cried out from where she’d collapsed on the floor, unable to lift herself up anymore.

Coach Harvey chuckled. “I assure you, Miss Bloodmoon, that these exercises are for your own good.”

“So you say, but that’s what every villain says too.” Alesh groaned from where he lay sprawled on the floor.

Coach Harvey chuckled again, and they all just kept venting out their frustrations and crying out in pain until they finally regained the strength to stand up, after which they made their way to the bathroom and eventually the cafeteria. Thankfully, they had no classes today, so they spent more than necessary in the cafeteria, just talking, resting, and discussing the Forge matches that would be starting in the next few hours.

Another hour passed, and by the time they left the cafeteria, Aodhán’s sight had been partly restored. Despite the fact that he didn’t really need both eyes to see, his perception was weird with just one eye, and he constantly felt like he was missing out on the things happening on the right side of his vision even though Daruk and Andrew assured him that the only interesting thing to have happened all day was Meredith and her friends eyeing him like hungry sharks at the scent of blood.

Aodhán was tempted to tell them about his rendezvous with Meredith, and after a lot of contemplation, he finally did. But despite his many warnings to keep their reactions subtle, Andrew and Daruk had sharply turned their gazes in Meredith’s direction before turning back to look at him in shock, disbelief, and excitement.

“I thought you didn’t like her?” Andrew asked, and Aodhán groaned. “I don’t…like her. I just... we are just having fun. We’re not going to fall in love or anything.”

“What if she falls in love with you?” Daruk asked teasingly as he gently tapped his jug and turned the water within it to ice.

Aodhán scowled, truly considering the prospect before responding. “Then she’ll have made a grave mistake. What I have with her is different from what I had with Lupin, and I don’t want it to become more than that. I’m perfectly content with the way it is at the moment.”

Andrew snorted and threw a chunk of meat at him. “Here I am, a guy who wants to give them flowers and treat them right, yet they go for you two whores. I can’t believe it.”

“I’m not a whore.” Aodhán corrected with a grin. “I’ve literally only had sex with one person which makes me better than Daruk who’s cold exterior seems to be doing the most when it comes to pulling the heartstrings of women.”

Daruk just grinned and crossed his arms. “Perhaps, if you both pay me, I can give you a lesson on how to woo women.”

“I don’t need the class.” Aodhán laughed and pointed at Andrew. “You, on the other hand, need to pay for the premium package.”

Their banter continued for a few more minutes until they finally got up from the cafeteria and made their way to the arena. It wasn’t time for the match yet, but it was nice to arrive early this time and have a pick of the best seats. They sat with Ayisha, Scarlett, and Lupin, discussing the current happenings within the academy and their individual classes.

The arena filled up slowly, and Aodhán asked Ayisha. “So, will you be challenging anyone today?”

Ayisha scowled and directed a glare at Professor Alaric, who was seated on the opposite end of the arena, discussing merrily with some of the other professors and academy staff.

“It doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice in the matter.” She responded loud enough for the whole arena to hear, but if Professor Alaric did, he gave no reaction whatsoever.

“Ugh, he threatened you too?” Scarlett exclaimed. “I can’t believe the nerve of that man. Cavarash Kiromochi!”

“What does that mean?” Andrew asked, and Aodhán eyed Scarlett curiously, wondering if she was telling the truth this time or not.

Scarlett glared at Professor Alaric and snorted. “It means he’s not a sweet man at all.”

“That’s a lie.” Ankaz popped in from behind them and tapped Scarlett’s head lightly with a scolding expression. “It means Professor Alaric is an eldritch pile of shit. Mochi means Eldritch horror.”

Aodhán glared at Scarlett and shook his head. “I should have known you were lying about that too. You told me Mochi means sweet guy!”

“How do you know it’s not my brother who’s lying?” Scarlett replied with a careless wave of her hand. “Besides, Eldritch horrors can also be cute.”

Aodhán turned his gaze to Ankaz, who shook his head and said, “I swear on my love for runes that I speak the truth.”

Aodhán grinned and pointed a finger at Scarlett. “You are the liar. Fuck me if I ever believe a word that comes out of your mouth ever again.”

Their banter continued for the next hour while other students slowly trickled in, and the familiar holographic screen displaying the forge rankings list appeared in the sky. This time it was Professor Alaric who was anchoring the games, but for some reason he looked less than pleased with his task. When the forge matches finally began, Professor Alaric floated out of the professor’s booth and rose into the air with a scowl on his face. “Settle down, everyone.”

The arena quieted, and Professor Alaric continued. “We are gathered here today to watch first-year students fight like children. Seriously—” He turned his gaze to a section of the arena filled with third-year and fourth-year students. “I don’t know why you all bother to attend these burdensome events, because every time I do, I feel like I lose a couple brain cells.”

Raucous laughter echoed from the section and the staff booths; even some of the second years laughed, and Scarlett scowled. “Oh, the nerve of this man. First he threatens us to fight publicly and then mocks us in front of the entire academy.”

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Ayisha’s scowl deepened, and even Aodhán felt offended. He understood that the disparity in perception made their fights seem slow and childish compared to that of other years, but to mock them like this wasn’t necessary.

Professor Alaric turned his gaze back to the first-year section and continued. “Please note that I will not be saving anyone. If you can’t surrender on your own, then you might as well die and save us all the trouble.”

Aodhán sighed.

Usually, Professor Alaric was flippant and rude but never mean, so Aodhán assumed he was pretty frustrated by something. Professor Alaric spent the next few minutes listing out the forge rules, and when he was done, he gestured to the holographic screen to reveal the forge list.

Unsurprisingly, there was barely any change in the top five ranks. Cyrus was still 1st, Lilith was second, Alesh was third, Lysirel was fourth, and Grendar was fifth. It didn’t seem like any of them were ready or willing to change the status quo, but Aodhán knew it was only a matter of time. The bottom five had been fluctuating like crazy, and it was only a matter of time before they set their sights higher.

Yurin had done very well for himself and now stood at rank 16, a prestigious rank, as the top twenty was no joke. Andrew had also done well for himself and had pushed himself into the upper forties. He would have been higher, but his luck just wasn’t that great when it came to the forge matches.

Daruk was at the 22nd rank while Aodhán was at the 26th. If he won his match against Isis, he would ascend to the 23rd rank. His ascension through the ranks was nowhere near as fast as he had hoped, but Aodhán was quite content with his overall progress.

The forge matches began the way they usually did, from the bottom, but because of Professor Alaric’s insulting words, the matches became a lot more visceral than usual. People actually fought right this time rather than running around the ring and lobbing attacks at each other in a desperate attempt to score a lucky hit. It was exciting, and Aodhán cheered when Temiya Haldren buried Derek in a block of concrete, effectively ending the match in less than a minute.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t still a ton of disappointing matches, and at one point, Professor Alaric even zoned out dramatically, refusing to call the next match, just because, according to him, he had lost a few too many brain cells for one day and was unwilling to continue until he regenerated them back.

Things changed for the better when they broke into the top 50 ranks. The duels got a lot more intense, and the benefits of higher spiritual cultivation became evident. Bloodline auras and abilities were unleashed with abandon, and as they climbed into the top forty, even seals came into play.

Before long, Professor Alaric called on Andrew and Lyra Davenport for their match, and when Andrew got up, they all wished him good luck; however, Aodhán couldn’t help but worry. Lyra was the Force Awakened he had almost killed during the tournament, but in the last few weeks, it seemed she had managed to push herself up to the top forty ranks.

Her control might be lacking, but from the way she walked into the ring, she’d obviously gotten some sort of upgrade during the break. That was the main reason why Aodhán was concerned. Lyra’s affinity was a terribly useful one, effective against both conceptual and elemental affinities, and Aodhán could just imagine how strong she would be if she had his or Cyrus’s control.

As Andrew and Lyra walked to the duel, Aodhán and the others began speculating on the outcome of the match and possible counters for Lyra’s and Andrew’s skills. Aodhán didn’t know Lyra’s skills, but he imagined she would be able to apply, drain, and upset the force/momentum behind a person’s attack, perhaps even absorb it and amplify herself with it. If she was particularly adept, Aodhán expected that she would be able to create constructs of force, redirect the kinetic energy within projectiles or even living beings, or create concentrated bursts of force and pressure that affected gravity in a localized area.

There were a ton of skills Aodhán expected her to have or imaginative ways in which he could have used the force affinity had he awakened it, but unfortunately, Lyra wasn’t him, and her control over her affinity was average at best. That didn’t mean she wasn’t a threat, but if he had to pick a winner, Aodhán would go with Andrew, mostly because he knew Andrew’s skills better and because from what he’d seen, Andrew had a lot more control over his affinity than she did, not to mention that Andrew had a bloodline and she didn’t.

Professor Alaric recited the rules once again, and after Andrew and Lyra both voiced their understanding, Professor Alaric waved a lazy hand and called out. “Begin!”

Andrew reacted first, releasing his verdant aura to engulf the entire ring whilst throwing out over a dozen black seeds onto the concrete. However, before the seeds even touched the ground, half of them were blown apart and scattered by a force blast that tore through Andrew’s aura like a knife and caused him to stagger.

Lyra attacked incessantly with dozens of force blasts, trying to either lock Andrew down or knock him out, but her control and precision were lacking, and she failed to hit her target multiple times. This continued long enough for Andrew to turn the arena in his favor.

Just as the first few vines erupted out of the ground, a force blast slammed into Andrew and almost knocked him out of the arena, if not for a bunch of black vines that hastily wound themselves around his feet and pulled him back into the ring. A force blast destroyed the vines an instant later, but more vines took their place, and before long, the ring was practically crawling with black vines, their serpentine bodies moving like predators towards Lyra.

Lyra reacted immediately. She raised both hands to the sky as if to claw at the heavens, and the next instant, a wave of intense pressure exploded from her, shattering the first wave of vines and cracking the concrete beneath her. The force pushed Andrew, who was still scrambling to his feet, back to the floor, and Aodhán winced when he saw Andrew’s head hit the floor with a sickening thud.

“She has grown stronger.” Scarlett muttered, and Aodhán nodded in agreement.

Daruk sighed and shook his head, saying, “He’s only going to get dumber after this.”

Andrew managed to push himself back to his feet and shield himself in a ball of black vines just before the second wave of pressure hit. The second wave destroyed the shield, but Andrew attacked with a dozen metallic vines that Aodhán recognized as the render vines.

Dodging, Lyra attacked the vines with concentrated explosions of force, but the vines were unrelenting. When one died, two took its place, and before long Lyra found herself dealing with over two dozen render vines whose bladed tips glistened with what was obviously poison. While Lyra battled the vines, Andrew planted more seeds, this time, a red plant that jutted out of the ground with sharp, blood-red crystals for thorns.

“It’s a bloody chrysalis!” Ankaz exclaimed, and when they asked what its significance was, he explained. “It’s a plant native to Calodan that leaks blood-red sap, which eventually hardens into a sort of crystal used in our birthing ceremonies.”

“Is it an awakened plant?” Aodhán asked, confused, as he was certain Andrew couldn’t create Awakened plants.

Ankaz hesitated before responding. “Not really, but there are ways to…or it’s better to say it has several awakened uses even though it’s considered a mundane plant.”

Aodhán nodded, understanding that the topic was a delicate one for Ankaz, before turning his gaze back to the ongoing match. In the few seconds in which they’d been distracted by Ankaz’s explanation, Andrew had activated {Forest of Thorns}, and the blood chrysalises had elongated, their vines wrapping around each other until they became a mass of bladed vines and crystals, coated in poison.

Lyra’s eyes widened as the mass of poison crystals and metallic vines surged toward her, their tips as sharp as spears, and Aodhán finally grinned. “Now, she’s in trouble.”

She staggered backwards, and when the wriggling mass descended sharply, she panicked, raised both hands to the sky, and screamed. “{Force barrier}.”

It was rare for people to call out their skill, as most people preferred to keep that information secret, but Aodhán understood Lyra’s desperation at the moment. In the face of the monster Andrew had created, even he might have called out a skill just to make sure.

A blue dome of force shimmered into existence around her, but it shattered the moment the mass of crystals, metals, and vines smashed into it. Lyra stumbled, dodging to the side as she let out a concentrated force blast just before the mass of vines attacked again. The blast tore a huge hole into the mass of vines, but it wasn’t enough to destroy the monster Andrew had created.

With a wave of his hands, Andrew caused the mass of wriggling vines to descend forcefully, and Aodhán saw the exact moment Lyra made a foolish decision. Aodhán wasn’t sure how Lyra could get herself out of this situation, but it definitely wasn’t by attempting to drain the force from something so large with her average control.

She raised a hand to the descending mass of vines, and although Aodhán had expected her to fail woefully, the mass of vines surprisingly slowed to a crawl. That amazing feat must have taken a lot out of her because she collapsed to one knee and missed the moment when a red chrysalis vine detached itself from the whole and attacked from the rear. It shot forward like a spear, its crystal tip gleaming crimson in the sunlight, and stabbed into her back.

Lyra managed to choke out a surrender before things got worse, and cheers erupted from the audience as Professor Alaric proclaimed Andrew the winner while Lyra was quickly attended to by a healer. Aodhán was impressed, honestly, and when Andrew returned to his seat, high from the adrenaline rush of the match, Aodhán congratulated him with a hug and thought to himself, “If Andrew was this powerful without a seal and the limitations of the arena, then how much stronger would he be in a forest, surrounded by the physical manifestation of his element?”

The forge matches continued after that, growing progressively violent and brutal as they ascended through the thirties and finally into the twenties. Ayisha lost her match against Harnoth Darkwater, to everyone’s annoyance, falling even lower on the forge rankings, while Cameron seemed to have been possessed as he easily cut through his opponent and ascended into the early thirties.

At this point, the weaker members of the forge list had been weeded out, and nearly everyone within the top thirty was deserving of their rank. Hence, when they got into the twenties, there were no more easy victories, and the battles became much more exciting.

After a particularly brutal match between Halima Sahiri, a dark-haired air awakened, and Gwendolyn Tideborn, Professor Alaric finally called out the next match. “Aodhán Ashoka-Brystion vs. Isis Anvindr.”