Nil plopped down to the grass and breathed out heavily. “You’re more intense than I imagined, Asha.”

She let out a cackle. “I needed to be tough on you if there was any chance for this team to win.”

“Why exactly did you decide to forgo participating?” Nova asked as she sat down as well.

Even though Asha had said that she would withdraw from the championship if she lost the match, the truth was she had no intention of competing in the first place, a fact she had revealed after the others began to question why she was helping her adversaries.

She scratched her head with an unsure expression. “To be honest, I don’t see the point. I don’t need the prize, and I’d feel bad about mopping the floor with the competition.”

“I can’t really argue with that last part…” Nil said, smiling awkwardly.

Nova raised an eyebrow. “Wait, do you know what the reward is going to be?”

“Yeah,” Asha said, cocking her head. “You guys don’t?”

Kai shook his head energetically. “Tell us, please!”

She chuckled. “Sure, why not. It’s quite simple, really: Unique classes for all the members of the winning team.”

Kai suddenly jumped to his feet, his eyes sparkling with excitement. “We need to win,” he said.

Ray was stretching his arms, sore after so much exercise. “I think we have a pretty good chance now. It’s insane how much we’ve improved in so little time.”

“Don’t get overconfident,” Asha said. “Even if you exclude me, there’s some strong contenders out there.” She smiled and leaned back. “Well, as long as you keep all I’ve taught you in mind, you should be fine. Since the first round starts tomorrow, this will be our last session.”

Taking on a more serious expression, she leaned forward. “Remember, when you’re fighting in a group, communication and coordination are just as important as isolated ability. Five people are no better than one if they hinder each other instead of making up for their individual weaknesses.”

Nil and the others nodded. It wasn’t the first time they had heard the speech.

Asha got up, yawning. “Now, I’m going to go take a nap.”

“Thanks for helping us out,” Nil said.

She glanced over at them and grinned. “It’s no problem. I hope things go well for all of you; you seem like decent folk.”

With that, she used her own catalyst to open a portal and left, leaving Nil and their team to ponder over their strategy by themselves. Max took over as the main speaker, sharing the information he had gathered about some of their possible opponents.

“I think the most dangerous team for us is Aldo’s,” he said. “All his stats are above average. C in strength, B in agility, D in everything else, supposedly. Not only that, but his team is made up of especially powerful candidates. The only one here who could maybe compete with any of them in a straight fight is Nil.”

“Wasn’t Aldo that other guy who was with us in the Tutorial?” Nova asked. “He sucks.”

Max nodded. “Yes, that’s him. It’s a good thing we didn’t get into a fight back then.”

“You sure have been doing your research, Max,” Ray said. “Between that and training, how do you manage to get proper rest?”

Max sighed, looking down. “I may have lost a few hours of sleep recently,” he admitted. “However, I’m not as useful in a fight as all of you; I’m just trying to pull my weight.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Nil told him. “Your magic is plenty useful.”

Max brushed off Nil’s comment and kept going on about all the teams he had investigated. Together, they came up with possible tactics they could use against most of them, until they realized it must have already been nighttime outside—the pocket dimensions were slightly confusing, since it always seemed to be high noon. The team agreed to meet up early in the morning to get ready for the first round, and they headed to their respective rooms.

The following day, Nil was woken up by the gentle rays of the sun coming in through their window, and they sat up as they rubbed their eyes. They’d had that dream again, the one with the winged beings invading a planet, and the human woman failing to stop them. It had become recurrent ever since their arrival at the Academy. Nil tried to push it into a corner of their mind, but each time it became increasingly harder to ignore.

Between the worryingly vivid dreams, and what they had been told through the system before being saved, it was easy to realize something was going on. What exactly, Nil didn’t know. They didn’t know how they were related to it either, but they had no way to investigate it. The only directive they had received was to get stronger.

The issue should fix itself as you level up.

The voice that had saved them had said that. Nil decided they would focus on graduating to reach level 1. Maybe they would learn more once that happened.

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They quickly threw one of the dingy sets of clothes provided to them by the Academy and walked to the ground floor of the dorms, where they had agreed to meet with the others. Ray and Max were already waiting by the time Nil arrived, while Kai and Nova were nowhere to be seen. They both tended to oversleep, especially Kai.

Nil waved at the two and settled down on one of the benches that were set up near the entrance.

“You know, Ray,” Nil said, smiling, “when I met you, I didn’t take you for an early riser.”

Ray chuckled. “I try to maintain a carefree persona outwardly,” he said. “That way, less responsibility gets thrown on me, and I have more time to relax.”

“Doesn’t that just make you lazy?” Max commented, narrowing his eyes at him.

Ray raised his arms with a laugh. “You caught me!”

Finally, Nova arrived, casually greeting the group.

“Maybe we should go wake up Kai directly,” Max said. “I don’t want to spend an hour waiting for him again.”

Nova cocked her head. “Huh? Have you guys not seen him? I checked on his room before coming down, and it was empty.”

Nil got up and raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Maybe he’s training or something?” Ray said.

Max stroked his beard. “I don’t know… Maybe we should search for him, just in case. We won’t find him if he’s inside his pocket dimension, but he could simply be in the cafeteria”

The group set out and looked everywhere, but Kai was nowhere to be found. The hour of the first match drew closer, until no more time could be spared searching.

“Where the hell did that guy go?” Nova said, scowling.

Max sighed. “Let’s just go. Maybe he’ll be there waiting for us.”

They rushed to the training grounds, where the championship matches would take place. A list was already hanging from the wall, announcing the matchups.

“We’re up against Aldo and his team first,” Nil said.

Nova rubbed her forehead, frustrated. “Why did Kai have to disappear now, of all times?”

Ray checked out the list. “Ours is the second match, too. We’ll be in trouble if he doesn’t show up soon.”

Nova cursed under her breath, but there was nothing the group could do but wait. The first fight started, and Nil took the time to glance at it occasionally, but it was a group of weaklings against another. Examining some of the people around the room with Insight, the truth was that most were far below the level they expected.

It made sense, in hindsight; all of them had just arrived less than a month ago, and most were content with being able to graduate. Nil’s perception had been warped both by the other members of their team and by their fight against Asha.

To be honest, their team’s strength was impressive. All of them had high enough stats to graduate from the beginning, and those had only gotten higher after three weeks of practice. There were others in that same situation, but a majority of the newcomers were barely scraping by.

Eventually, the match kind of fizzled out unceremoniously, with one of the teams winning by attrition more so than prowess. The arbiter, the same woman who imparted the battle-focused lessons, called out for the next teams in line to step up, with Kai’s location still unknown.

Nil and their group walked into the space designated for battle at the same time as Aldo and his henchmen. He set his eyes on Nil and gave them a sinister grin. Scanning the other components of the team, Nil noticed they were all former criminals: A loan shark, a con artist, and even a… politician? That last one was a bit of an odd addition, but Insight provided no more details. All of them had good stats, but Aldo was truly the standout of the team.

“Where is the fifth member of your team?” the arbiter asked Nil’s side.

“We don’t know. It’ll be just the four of us today,” Max said, as the team’s appointed representative. They had all unanimously agreed he was the best fit for the job. Well, all except for Max himself, of course.

While the arbiter was busy discussing the issue with Max, Aldo addressed Nil, his smile still making them uncomfortable.

“So you really are alive!” he said. “I thought for sure you were dead.” He cackled maniacally. “Did your new friend abandon you, or what?”

“How do you—”

Suddenly, Insight started calling out in protest. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Aldo’s smile widened. It was all coming from him.

Nil unsheathed their sword in a fluid motion and pointed it at him.

“What did you do, you bastard?”

Aldo laughed. “Oh, have I been caught?”

Nil took one step closer. If their suspicions were correct…

“I’m going to kill you if you don’t tell me what you did to Kai right now.”

Aldo continued to howl with laughter like a madman.

Nil tightened the grip on their sword until their knuckles turned white.

[You have sensed a disturbance in the peace.]

At that moment, the arbiter suddenly announced the beginning of the fight.

[The special effect of ‘Peacemonger’ has been activated.]

[Unlimited mana fills your body.]

Nil exploded forward with a rush of mana and stopped Aldo’s blade with their bare hands as he tried to attack them. They tossed the sword to the floor, snapping it in half, and punched Aldo in the face, causing him to fly and crash against the wall within half a second.

In quick succession, they cut down the remaining four with fluid strokes of their blade accompanied by mana-powered dashes. In almost perfect synchrony, all of them fell to the ground as Nil sheathed their blade. Then, they walked over to Aldo’s slumped figure and grabbed him by the hair, waking him up with a slap.

“Where is Kai?” they asked with a voice full of contempt.

Wordlessly, perhaps unable to form a coherent sentence, Aldo weakly reached into one of his pockets and produced a catalyst. Nil snatched it from his hand and poured an unnecessary amount of mana into it, opening a large portal.

They walked in and saw Kai lying on the grass, bruised and moaning in pain. Without effort, Nil enhanced their arms with mana and carried him out before closing the portal and throwing the catalyst back at Aldo’s face. For good measure, they spat on him as well.

As they put Kai down gently, a wave of dizziness hit them. The spike of power quickly drained out of their body, leaving them struggling to stay up.

[The special effect of ‘Peacemonger’ has ended.]

Ray, Nova and Max were looking at Nil as if they had seen a ghost. A deathly silence reigned, despite the large audience. The arbiter seemed frightened as she announced the victory of their team.

In the following days, no one else dared to challenge Nil.

And thus, anticlimactically, they won the championship by default.