11. The Three Archetypes
Monday, April 11, 2349. 7:37 a.m. Day of the Noah Awakened Academy’s Orientation Day…
Aoife looked out through the car’s tinted window, observing the passing scenery.
They were cutting through the middle road of the Square of Hope. A busy intersection. Because, apparently, the usual was blocked because of an accident.
Then the car slowed down. There was heavy traffic ahead.
Worried, Aoife looked at her watch. Good. They’re not late and still have some time to spare.
Looking back out of her window to the tall metal buildings of glass, she thought it was dull. For her, the square looked prettier at night.
But her mouth watered a bit when she smelled the street food the vendors were cooking on their stalls, the wind blowing the smell away every time someone with a hoverboard sped through them.
Aoife’s never tried riding a hoverboard before. Maybe one day she will.
All of a sudden, she heard the very easily identifiable news music chiming through the air.
“Hm?” She looked up as a gigantic holo billboard on the side of a building shifted from advertisement to morning news.
The anchor was talking to someone. An Awakened wearing what looked like black monk robes with golden trimmings. She knew the person was an Awakened because of his silver eyes.
“Araldas Theron. A Mexurian,” said Fia.
“A Mexurian?” replied Aoife, stealing a glance at Fia in surprise. Mexurians, the order of warrior Catholic priests, are one of the 12 Guardians of the Godframes. They are the Guardians of Godframe Ares. “He must be very strong.”
“Yes. He was one of the winners of the year-end tournament a couple of months ago – the Four Champions Tournament. He was a third year but he competed in the fourth year category and actually won it. Even if by barely,” said Fia.
Aoife has become particularly interested in the FCT when she learned she had a soul core. It’s an Awakened tournament for all five Awakened Academies across the League that happens annually every February, before the end of the school year.
She also found that the Manners family is a regular sponsor of the event.
“Seriously? I didn’t know you could compete upwards.”
“Yep. I mean. The idea of the FCT is to test how much students have improved. That’s why it happens every end of the school year. And if a student wants to see how they’d do against someone much stronger than them? Why should we stop them? The system also keeps the higher years on their toes.”
Shifting her gaze back to Araldas at the holo board, Aoife nodded. “Well, I suppose that makes sense. Especially for a Mexurian like him. They’re a cut above the rest.”
Any members of the Guardians are strong. But something didn’t make sense for Aofie. “Still, by the end of the school year, a fourth year should already be around level 40, and have already broken through Class II. For him to be around their level, that’s some insane progress. Is Araldas a Legacy?” Aoife asked.
Fia didn’t answer immediately, only narrowing her eyes, as if carefully considering the words she’s about to say.
Aoife hated it when she does that. Maybe because it works and she’s being played like a fiddle as she still waited in anticipation.
Fia finally answered. “He is. But he didn’t Class Up. He was still level 29 when he competed. A Class I. And he actually almost lost every fight. Then in the finals, he fought against a level 41 Class II–– and won. He’s a genius. A prodigy.”
While Aoife didn’t know much about the wider Awakened world. She’s still someone from a Bloodline family, so she was at least familiar with some of the concepts.
But she’s still not familiar with how much the power gap between levels and rankings really are. Is it really that big of a deal to win as a late-Class I against a mid-Class II? “Is the gap really that big?” Aoife asked.
Fia took out her phone.
And Aoife scooted closer to her. “What are you doing?”
“Showing you a chart,” replied Fia as she showed her the chart on her phone.
Level
Cumulative Force
Shield
Class I
1*
10
100
2
20
200
…
…
…
29
290
2900
30
300
3000
Class II
31*
400 (+100)
4000 (+1000)
32
410
4100
33
420
4200
34
430
4300
35
440
4400
36
450
4500
37
460
4600
38
470
4700
39
480
4800
40
490
4900
41
500
5000
42
510
5100
43
520
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5200
44
530
5300
45
540
5400
46
550
5500
47
560
5600
48
570
5700
49
580
5800
50
590
5900
Class III (Aspect Awakening)
51*
890 (+300)
8900 (+3000)
“See that? There’s a huge power difference between a 29 and a 41. Here. Check this out. A Level 29 has a base cumulative Force of 290, and a Shield of 2,900. Meanwhile, a Class II Level 41 has 500 and 5,000, putting the Class I at a major disadvantage.”
Thankfully, Force and Shield were some of the stuff Aoife was somewhat familiar of.
Force, as the name dictates, is the number that affects both the Basic Attack and the spell damage of an Awakened.
Shield and Force are activated only when the Awakened activates their Aura.
The Shield is invisible protective aether that coats the body. When an Awakened is wounded – except when their heart is stabbed – they immediately heal as long as they have enough Shield.
Every level. An Awakened’s Force increases by 10, and their Shield by 100. Except during breakthrough levels like Level 31. That’s when an Awakened classes up to II and their force increases by 100, and their Shield by 1000.
Then, it goes back to 10 Force and 100 Shield again per level. Until another power boost at Level 51, when an Awakened classes up to III; or when they level up to 81 and classes up to for IV; or when they level up to 100 and classes up to V.
But that’s all she knew.
She doesn’t know what would happen if an Awakened levels up beyond 100 and becomes a Sovereign.
“That doesn’t seem like a very big difference, though?”
“It is,” Fia said.
“How so?”
“Let’s say that even if a level 41 uses a weak spell with a spell power of 2, calculated as spell-power times force–– that would still deal 1,000 damage. That’s a third of a level 29’s Shield. And usually, level 41s would also already have Class II offensive spells with a 5 spell power. That’s 2,500 damage against a Shield,” replied Fia as she cleared the chart to open the Note application, writing a bunch of maths which the Note app immediately calculated. “Let’s use aether bomb as an example.”
(Spell Damage = Force x Spell Power)
Aether Bomb (Level 41) = 2,500 Spell Damage = 500 FR x 5 SP
Level 29 Shield = 2,900
2900 - 2,500 = 400 SH remaining.
Aoife blinked. “Right… I’m gonna pretend I understand what I’m seeing.”
“It’s basic algebra!”
“I hate algebra!”
Fia sighed. “Basically. Just two offensive spells from a level 41 would destroy Araldas’ Shield,” Fia explained as she pocketed her phone.
Aoife paled. “How did he do it?”
Fia tipped her chin to the holo-board. “Perhaps it’s best to listen to the man himself.”
Aoife followed her eyes.
Araldas was grinning from ear to ear, answering the anchor’s questions.
- …But! I’m not sure if I’ll win this year’s tournament again!
- Why is that?
- Oh! Actually, the reason I joined the fourth year category was because of the third year winner. I likely would have lost against him.
- Joran Voss? Heir to the Voss Company?
- That’s the guy!
- Are you saying Joran could have won the fourth year category too?
- He’s a monster, for sure. But no. Let’s JUST say he counters my spell build.
- I’m confused… But I’m assuming you won’t let me pry about Joran’s build.
- Of course! That would be rude!
- I understand. But for those who haven’t watched the tournament, can you briefly explain how you won? After all, there’s a big power gap between a Level 29 and a Level 41.
- Awakened duels isn’t all about Force and Shields. Spell builds plays a huge part too. You know about the three build archetypes, right? Melee, Sustain, and Kiter? Melees beats Sustains, Sustains beats Kiters, and Kiters beats Melees?
- Indeed. But you’re a Sentinel. A melee-based Awakened. Normally, one would think you’re naturally disadvantaged against Evokers, who are range-based.
- Bingo! But! My build is a combination of two archetypes. A Melee Kiter.
- That means?
- Melees have the lowest mobility among the three, right? But I have some cool movement spells to compensate for that! While the cost is a lower offensive power, these movement spells lets me chase after Kiters. And I still have enough offensive power to break a Sustain’s Shield.
- I see. But you are disadvantaged against pure Melees.
- Yes. Pure Melees have more offensive spells. If I fought a pure Melee, I likely would have lost, because I have no ranged spells. And my movement spells will be redundant because I use those to run away or close the distance against someone trying to keep their distance.
- I see… And it so happened that the other Melees fought in a different bracket than you.
- Yep! For Class Is and IIs, Sentinels are usually Melees, and Evokers are either Kiters or Sustains. And we both know Evokers outnumber Sentinels 100 to 1. So, it’s easy to predict how the tournament bracket would look like, since organizers will try to ensure it’s balanced.
- And for the last tournament, that would be 4 Sentinels and 16 Evokers, divided into 5 brackets. Because of that you avoided unfavourable match-ups. Was this part of your strategy, Araldas?
- You could say that! Hahaha!
- Well! We’re out of time. Thank you again for joining us this morning! Any other comments you would like to make before we end here?
Araldas looked at the camera. “It’ll be an interesting tournament at the end of the school year, everyone! I hope you guys watch and cheer on us! And oh! If any new students are watching this, Welcome to Noah Academy!”
The anchor nodded. “Oh, that’s right. Today’s the Orientation Day for freshmen. But second years to fourth years are beginning classes next week.”
With that, the news holoboard flashed back to advertisement.
I’m not sure if I understood a lot of what he said. Eh, I’m a Natural. They’ll teach us all about that later, Aoife thought, before she suddenly jumped on her seat, her reverie broken when a car honked behind them.
Mister Jacob, their butler, was startled himself. He was fixed at the interview too. “Didn’t realize the traffic cleared up,” he told himself with a light chuckle.
When they were back on the road, Fia addressed him. “Mister Jacob. You do a lot of shady work for that cunt, so you must be in the know. Who do you think is the strongest Awakened in our generation? Joran or Araldas?”
Mister Jacob answered without a halt. “Neither, Miss Fia. There are people born with such great gifts, that they are concealed from the masses, so that those with ill wills do not steal those gifts from them and society.”
Fia raised a brow. “…What?” She then nudged Aoife, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I’ll never understand why Athurans talk that way.”
Mister Jacob laughed. “Pardon me, Miss Fia. I’m talking about Primes.”
Aoife opened her mouth in wonder. She’d heard about Primes.
Apparently, Primes level up so much faster. If an Awakened, may they be a Natural or a Legacy, is level 1 at the age of 15, a Prime would already be in the level 30s.
And if an Awakened is at the level 30s at 18 years old, a Prime would already be in the level 50s – or Class IIIs.
Class IIIs are on a totally different level because they unlock their Elemental Aspect. There are over 400,000 Awakened in the world, and there are only about 3,500 Class IIIs.
The most common Awakened are Class I and IIs, with even Legacies struggling to class up to III. But all known Primes are all Class IIIs.
They really are so lucky!
Fia bit her nail. “Are you saying there’s a Prime in our generation?”
Mister Jacob smiled. “Yes. Multiples of them, actually. Have you two ever heard of the Hummingbird Unit?”
Fia nodded. “They sound familiar.”
“They’re all Primes. A special combat unit even within SPECTRA itself. Once in every decade or so, SPECTRA creates a unit composed of Primes. Those that they have trained in secret.”
“Yeah. Like the Black Spear Unit, right?” said Fia.
Mister Jacob nodded. “You could say the Hummingbird Unit is your generation’s Black Spear Unit.”
Fia raised a brow. “Why do you have to say Unit twice?”
Mister Jacob laughed. “Well, it’s to differentiate the Unit from its team leader. SPECTRA Units are based on the team leader’s code name.”
“I see…,” Fia said with a hum–– contemplating. “Wait. Didn’t one of them die during an expedition last year?”
Mister Jacob seriously nodded. “Operative 37. He was 14 when he died.”
Both Fia and Aoife raised their voice at the same time. “14?!”
Mister Jacob sighed. “Yes. It’s not really that uncommon for Primes to die young.”
Aoife paled. “That’s… horrible.”
“It is, Miss Aoife. Due to their unique characteristics, they are exposed to dangers earlier than the rest of the Awakened. There’s a reason we only hear of a few Primes who reach their fullest potential, and why none of the Sovereigns were Primes–– except for Muriel, of course.”
“But… why would they still choose to risk their lives? I mean, they become very strong at some point, right? So, why not just stop and live an easier life? People do that a lot, right?”
Mister Jacob did not respond for a while, only driving the car in silence. “It’s the only life they know.”
***
Finally, they reached their destination. A… park?
Whatever. Aoife checked her watch and heaved a sigh of relief. 8:52 a.m. “Cool, we’re not late,” she said before looking at Fia. “But are you sure this is the right place? This more looks like a park to me. Not an airport?”
“Well, it is a park. Due to limited spaces, the League has no dedicated spaces for small airports, so we put them wherever we can put them,” said Fia. “Anyway, we just have to keep following the western path and that would lead us to the Academy’s mini-airport.”
“Weird,” Aoife said.
“You guys will be using it often too in the future, so the Academy thought that it would be better to have it surrounded by nature–– distinct from industrial ports.”
Aoife smirked. “Cool. But I’m not sure I needed that info on industrial ports or something.”
Fia widened her eyes at Aoife. “Why, you!”
Aoife tugged at Fia, excited to explore for a while. “Whatever you say! Let’s go!”
They strolled toward the park and headed to the path leading to the west.
“So, what build are you hoping to go for?” Fia asked.
“Actually. I was going to ask you about that. Can you explain what spell builds are again?” Aoife replied. “Araldas didn’t really go into too much of a detail.”
Fia sighed. “Well, he had limited air time. But… Melee, Kiter, and Sustain. These are the three build archetypes that depends on your spell choices.”
“Right…”
“Builds are similar to rock-paper-scissor in a way. Kiters beats Melees, Melees beats Sustains, Sustains beats Kiters.”
“How?”
“Kiters have low offensive power, with high mobility. So, they can slowly whittle down a Melee. The idea behind a Kiter is hitting the enemy from afar while avoiding getting hit.”
“What about Melees?”
“They have high offensive power, but have low mobility. So, even with their offensive power, they still have a hard time dueling a Kiter. But Melees are good against Sustains.”
“Not sure I follow. But, how is that? You’re a Sustain, right?”
“Sustains have low offensive power, with low mobility. But we do have multiple spells to regenerate our Shield. So, against Kiters, who also have low offensive power, we just whittle them down until they lose. But against Melees, our Shield regeneration cannot keep up with their high offensive power.”
“I think I follow.”
“But these archetypes are most noticeable on a duel between two Awakened with around the same or a similar skill level. For example, a common Melee archetype could still defeat a common Kiter archetype, given the Kiter is less experienced in combat. The three archetypes is just but a rough estimate created by some battle-hungry Awakened in the past–– to conceptualize spell builds.”
“I see. So, that’s what you mean by rock, paper, scissor,” said Aoife, pretending she truly understood.
“Yeah.”
Aoife took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air as she listened to the chirping birds around them. “It’s pretty here, isn’t it?”
“You weren’t listening, were you?” Fia said, rolling her eyes.
“I meeeean. We’re going to an Academy, anyway! I’ll figure it out!”
“You're the one who asked! But... I suppose it’s best for you to experience it yourself. The body can be a better teacher than the mind,” said Fia as she looked around. “But yeah. I guess it’s always a nice stroll here. It’s even prettier at night. You’ll see. There will be like a bunch of yellow orbs floating between these winding paths, and there are fireflies too.”
Aoife imagined what that would look like as they passed by big trees, sniffing at the fresh scent of air from a lake nearby. “You should write a book or something, but that sounds pretty.”
“Oh, shut up. But I suppose it’s a different kind of pretty here during the day too,” Fia nodded to herself, reaching out to those literal rays of sun that pierced through the leaves of the trees lining their path, creating that calm backdrop with the distant lake in the horizon.
Finally, they were close. Hue, that was a long walk! Aoife thought, seeing people scattered about from afar.
Many of them stood around a big circular pad of white, enough to land at least five dropships. “That must be the landing pad,” said Aoife.
Some stood and admired the adjacent lake, chatting with each other.
There were probably around… uh, roughly 300 of them in total.
"Woah. That's... lots of people," said Aoife, noticing most of them were around her age. “Do you think they’re students too, Fia?” She couldn’t tell. They haven’t been issued their uniforms yet.
But she guessed they must have. There were students accompanied by adults, and she even noticed some accompanied by people not much older than them with silver eyes. They must be Awakened escorts, like Fia to Aoife.
“Pretty sure they are," said Fia. "God. This actually reminds me of my first orientation. Like seriously, you guys are so lucky."
"Yeah? How so?"
"We weren't allowed escorts. Mr. Jacobs just dropped me off and fucked off. So, it was a clusterfuck. We were confused as fuck too. But, I guess you'll understand why freshmen assemble here before going to the Academy.”
“I mean. Yeah. I'm honestly still confused. Like what are we even waiting here for?”
Fia winked at her. “Dropships, obviously,” she said before looking around. “I wonder where those guys are, though.”
“Mark and Bear?”
“Yeah. They said they’ll meet up with us, right? I trust them to take care of you.”
"Jesus, Fia. Can you like... NOT?"
"What?"
"Stop being weird," said Aoife with a sigh. And as if in the queue, her phone beeped.
Fia asked, "Who's that?"
"Apparently, they’re running late,” she said as she squinted at Mark’s text. “They ended up… exploring too much of the downtown last night. Got into a scuffle and ended up in–– prison…?!”
Fia raised a brow. “Prison? Who said that?”
“Mark.”
Fia laughed, earning a few looks from some other people before she lowered her voice. “Juvenile detention, probably. Makes me wonder what the hell they did. But. THAT, is a good way to find themselves in the good graces of the professors,” said Fia with a definitely not-so-obvious sarcasm. "Faculty are so uptight about decorum and public appearances."
“Those guys…,” Aoife sighed before her attention was drawn toward rushed footsteps and a panicky voice behind them.
When she looked over, a boy with a long black hair panted as he gasped for air.
“Sorry! Hello?” said the student as he combed back his hair to swipe the sweat off his forehead, revealing his confused expression. Gosh, he looked so lost.
Fia, for no reason, suspiciously glared at the boy. “Can we help you?”
Aoife nudged at Fia, mouthing ‘STOP IT’. She knew her friend was just looking out for her, but she needed to stop being so high on alert all the time!
Thankfully, the boy seemed unaware of Fia’s glare as he almost dropped his phone when he took it out in a hurry from his pocket. “No, no, no, no,” he told himself. “Where is it? Address, address. This should be the right place.”
Aoife laughed when she saw his screen. That’s a lot of spam emails and she could relate. “Why don’t you–– breathe for a bit? Don’t worry, you’re in the right place, I think! Because I’m new here too! See?” she said and showed him her own screen indicating her admission to the Academy.
The boy squinted at her screen before heaving a sigh of relief. “Thank God…”
“Oh. You should also click that ‘Verified Emails’ button. You’re in ‘General’ so even your spam emails are showing,” Aoife said, wondering how even after humanity’s advancement in technology, they still haven’t managed to find a way to filter out spam emails.
“Let’s check… Oh… You’re right! There! See? I found it!” the boy cheered. His admission indicated his name – Lucas Hale.