Akari strode out of the locker room and joined the waiting crowd. Combat Arts 120 took place in a domed chamber, big enough to park two airships side by side. Four regulation dueling rings filled the space below, with various catwalks for spectators. Each circle had a band of sigils around it, just like the arenas in Last Haven.
Unlike her other teachers, Grandmaster Raizen had given them no books or syllabus. Instead, he'd sent them each a single note:
"Arena Block One. 7:30 on Irinday morning. Wear your combat uniform."
The class didn't officially start until eight, and she heard more than a few grumbles from her fellow students. Fortunately, Akari had been waking up early all summer. They'd started this habit back in Creta, and Elend had encouraged it here, claiming it would pay off once school started.
More students poured in until all forty-seven were there—a full quarter of the first-year class. Kalden walked out of the men's locker room, but the sea of students stood between them—all laughing and joking amongst themselves. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and he gave her a nod. Akari nodded back, but she didn't move closer.
Was that petty of her? Maybe. If she were more mature, she might go on being friendly in whatever bullshit professional relationship he wanted. On the other hand ... well, screw him. She wouldn't follow Kalden around like a lost kitten, waiting patiently for him to get his shit together. She'd do her own thing for now. He could find her when he was done moping around.
A door opened at the far end of the chamber, and all heads turned to face it.
It wasn't Grandmaster Raizen. Instead, two Artisans stepped inside. A young Shokenese man with a shaved head, and an Espirian woman with her brown hair in a ponytail. They both wore combat uniforms, but while Akari and her peers all wore the crimson and gold colors of Koreldon University, those two wore solid black.
"Good morning," the woman said in a cheerful voice.
The reply was about what you'd expect from a group of college students at 7:30 in the morning.
"Yeah," the man said as he approached the class. "We'll work on that. First of all, I'm Sen Goto." He gestured to the woman on his left. "And this is Camila Warder. We're Grandmaster Raizen's teaching assistants. He'll step through those doors at eight o’clock on the dot. Our job is to make sure you don't piss him off when he gets here."
"Raizen is former military," Camila spoke up. "He knows you're in a civilian program, but he'll still hold you to high standards. So first thing's first—let's form a line, alphabetical order by last name. You've got two minutes."
The group scrambled into motion. Akari took her usual spot at the end while everyone else struggled to find their place somewhere in the middle. She doubted the order actually mattered that much. It was probably just to get them used to following orders. Although it also separated people from their friends, so that was a treat.
"Feet apart," Camila said as she stepped down the line. "Shoulders back. Head high. Eyes forward."
This continued for the next five minutes until both Artisans had declared them sufficiently good at standing. Some people tried to ask questions about the class itself, but they remained tight-lipped about that.
"Never look at your phones during instruction," Sen told them. "Speak loud and clear. Louder than you think you need to. No mumbling under your breath, and definitely no whispering to your friends."
Akari normally considered herself a rebel, but she could get on board with these rules. She grinned to imagine someone coming into Elegan High and telling the Golds they weren't allowed to whisper.
"Raizen won't yell at you or punish you when you break the rules. He'll tell you to leave. Don't make excuses when he does. Leave the class, then come back tomorrow and do better. Find me or Camila if you're honestly confused."
More advice followed, then Raizen stepped into the room at exactly eight o'clock.
"Good morning," he said in a thick, Shokenese accent.
"Good morning, Grandmaster!" they shouted back in unison. And yes, Sen and Camila had made them practice this simple phrase more than a dozen times.
Raizen nodded as if this were a perfectly normal way for a group of civilian teenagers to greet him. The Grandmaster was far more muscular than Elend, not to mention several inches taller. His black hair was pulled into a Blade Artist's knot, and a thin black beard framed his narrow face. He wore solid black like his students, but his clothing resembled a more traditional Mana Artist's robe.
"My name is Grandmaster Raizen." His voice came out loud and clear despite his accent. "I graduated from the Ivory Blade Sect in 835. After that, I spent twenty years in the South Shoken Special Operations Forces. I later returned to my sect as an elder, and I came to Espiria in 868.”
Akari had no idea what the Ivory Blade Sect was, but special forces sounded impressive. Normally, those programs didn't take anyone weaker than a Master.
Raizen continued pacing down the line. "Some of your Artegium classes will teach you the rules of dueling. Others will teach you ethics and mindset. When to fight, and when to avoid it. When to take action, and when to remain calm." He paused for dramatic effect. "I will teach you real combat. I will teach you to survive, and to use everything at your disposal."
The crowd might have started murmuring if the Artisans hadn't warned them against it.
"Battlegrounds are the most prestigious of all the Mana Arts competitions, and for good reason. This is no simple sport like manaball or dueling. These skills will translate to the real world. They will help you defend yourself in real battles. They will bring you victory in all aspects of life."
His voice sent chills down Akari's spine, and she stood even straighter than before.
Raizen extended a hand toward a computer terminal on the wall. A tiny Missile shot out from his finger and pressed some unseen button. A massive projector screen flicked on to their right, big enough to rival most movie theaters.
"These are your admission scores," Raizen told them as eight columns of text appeared on the screen.
An excited murmur broke out despite Sen and Camila's warning. Akari glanced at the number one spot and saw Zukan Kortez with a score of 395.
Talek's tits and teeth. 395 would have been good for a second-year student. Maybe even a third- year.
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Below Zukan sat Elise Moonfire with 371 points. Then someone named Tori Raizen with 366. Kalden sat in the number twelve spot with 336. Akari had already known his score, but she hadn't realized how high it compared to the others.
Top twelve with only three fingers? What could he do with two full hands and an aspect?
Finally, Akari found her own name at the bottom of the eighth column. With her pitiful 271 points, she was officially the lowest-ranked student in the entire class.
It's fine. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. You asked for this. You knew it'd be rough at first.
Besides, she'd be an Apprentice by Midwinter—maybe even by early Hexember if she pushed herself hard enough. She just had to hold out until then.
"You've spent all year thinking these scores matter," Raizen said. "The truth is, these numbers are utter dragon shit."
The class gave a nervous laugh at that.
"These numbers tell me about your shaping skill and raw power," Raizen continued. "But there's much more to battle than that. For example, Arturo Kazalla scored in the bottom five ..."
Akari glanced back to the right-most column. Sure enough, there sat Arturo, three spots above her, with a score of 285.
"But with the right preparation, he could easily beat our number one student, Zukan Kortez. Now, enough talk." Raizen turned and gestured to the four arenas below. "Sen and Camila will give you your generators. You'll fight when your name is called."
More than a dozen hands shot up down the line. No doubt the others had questions too, but they all looked as speechless as Akari felt.
Raizen looked amused, then he pointed to someone in the middle.
Akari looked over to see Elise Moonfire step forward. "What are the rules?" she asked in a crisp voice.
"Defeat your opponents before they defeat you."
"That's it?"
"Follow the laws of this state and country. Otherwise, this is not a game." With that, he spun around and made his way toward the crossroads between catwalks.
Oh, hell yes.
At first, Akari had worried that Raizen's background would make him an uptight stickler. But this sounded awesome.
Camila stepped toward the beginning of the line and opened a slick black case. Akari strained her head to look, but everyone else had the same idea, and forty more heads blocked her view.
Fortunately, Sen appeared with an identical case at her end of the line. He opened it to reveal several rows of circular black generators, small enough to clip to their belts. Akari grabbed one, and the Artisan moved on.
She rotated the object between her fingers and found a familiar microport on one side. Raizen called out a sequence of names, assigning each group to one of the four arenas below. Most names came from the first column, including Kalden and Elise Moonfire.
Perfect. If the order went by score, then she had time to prepare.
The students sprang into motion, following the stairs down to their respective rings. Others moved to watch, but Akari jogged the opposite way back toward the locker room. There, she retrieved her laptop, then returned to a corner of the main chamber. This would be close enough to hear Raizen call her name, but far enough away that no one would look over her shoulder.
The arenas below generated dream mana settings like the admissions test. This allowed the combatants to use lethal force with no risk of actual injuries.
These tiny generators would interact with the ring's sigils to forge equipment for each combatant. Back in Last Haven, students could change that equipment to their own preferences, as long as it fell within the rules.
Akari grinned as she remembered the Grandmaster's last words.
Games had rules. Real fights didn't.
She plugged the generator into her laptop and got to work. Her computer wouldn't have the right software, but that was an easy problem to solve. She'd find the product number written on the bottom, and ...
Akari frowned as she inspected the device more closely. There was no company logo or product number. Nothing but the microport and the belt clip.
Shit ... time for Plan B.
She used her laptop to navigate into the device's hard drive. This had a label of "Arteg01941." She tried entering that string into several search engines, but it was no use. "Arteg" was obviously short for Artegium. These were custom devices, probably built by students in the Sigilcraft program.
Plan C.
She opened the hard drive and navigated to the drafting folder. The files here had unfamiliar extensions, but that didn't stop her from dragging them into her code editor.
Random sequences of letters, numbers, and other symbols filled her screen. A duel ended a second later, and Raizen called the next two contestants forward.
Akari's heart raced faster as she glanced back at her monitor. Despite looking like total gibberish, the code was indented like Standard Object Notation. Could it be a cipher? She browsed through the other files, hoping to find the key sitting around. No such luck.
But if this were actually Standard Object Notation, then certain characters should be in predictable spots. For example, commas, brackets, and colons. Plus quotation marks around the keys and string values.
Sure enough, Akari found consistent characters in the spots she'd expected. From there, it was easy to find the booleans and numbers. Five minutes later, she had the entire cipher code written in a separate document.
Then the real work began.
~~~
Kalden watched from the catwalk as Akari started her first duel. They'd gone from highest to lowest in terms of shaping scores, and her opponent was a boy named Landon Windstrider.
Landon was—to no one's surprise—a Wind Artist. He'd been a manaball player in high school until he realized that Combat Artists were far bigger celebrities than athletes. He'd gotten a low score on the shaping exam, but Wind Artists always struggled with that test. Their Missiles were decent, but a wind Construct was about as sturdy as it sounded. And their Cloak techniques offered little besides mobility.
Still, A Wind Cloak was better than no Cloak at all. And the fact that Landon had made it this far proved his skill.
Poor Akari might be in for a rough fight.
The two contestants bowed to one another and took their places in the starting rings. Camila pressed a button to activate the dream sigils, and the padded floor vanished beneath them, revealing an ancient stone ruin. Water fell from the upper levels, flowing in a circular canal around them.
Landon looked the same as before. These generators didn't include any armor, so ...
Kalden paused as he turned to face Akari. She wore shiny black armor from head to heel. Two massive spikes stuck out from her helmet like horns, while smaller spikes protruded from the shoulder pads. Each one shone with fire mana, and a cloud of dark smoke formed around her.
The armor made her look like the villain from a Mana Arts movie, and that wasn't even the craziest part. She stood behind a heavy machine gun on a tripod stand. Not only would this be illegal in most duels, but it probably weighed over a hundred pounds and required a whole team to lift and maintain it.
Kalden knew little about firearms, but he’d heard of special, sigilcrafted bullets that could pierce an Apprentice's skin. Some bullets could even pierce Cloak techniques, but those were far too expensive to be practical.
In a real fight, at least. But this was dream mana, and money was no object.
"What the hell is that?" someone muttered to Kalden's left.
Kalden hid his grin behind his hand. "That's Akari being Akari." In fact, this might be the most Akari-like thing she'd ever done. Cheating on the admissions exam didn't count—that had mostly been Glim's doing. But this was all her.
The match started a heartbeat later. Landon activated his Wind Cloak and shot two Missiles into the stone floor. The blast hurled him upward, and he flew toward the ceiling.
But Akari had predicted this. Bullets erupted from her machine gun, shell casings flew around her, and her opponent soared straight into that metal storm.
Akari patted the machine gun affectionately as her opponent faded to white mist. The match timer had barely reached two full seconds before it announced her victory.