The mana-lift that connected Argentum City to the floating island of Zenith did not move like a machine. It moved with the smooth, arrogant inevitability of a raindrop falling upward.
Vane stood near the glass wall of the transport cabin. He watched the city of Argentum shrink until the white marble buildings looked like spilled salt on a tablecloth. The clouds rushed past, wet and grey, before breaking apart to reveal the destination.
Zenith Imperial Academy.
It was not a school. It was a geography lesson in humility.
The island was a continent of rock torn from the earth by ancient magic. Waterfalls cascaded off the jagged edges, turning into mist long before they hit the ocean miles below. Spires of white gold pierced the sky, connected by bridges of solid light. Dragons circled the highest peaks like pigeons looking for a statue to defile.
Vane gripped the railing. His knuckles were white.
'Frog in a well,' he thought. 'Mother was right. I thought I was a King because I had a dry roof. This place has weather control.'
The lift docked with a soft chime that sounded expensive. The doors slid open.
Vane stepped out onto the concourse. The air here was thin and cold, but rich with mana. It tasted like ozone and mint. He adjusted the collar of his new uniform. It was stiff, scratchy, and cost more than the tavern he used to own.
He followed the stream of students toward the Grand Auditorium. There were about a thousand of them, the elite harvest of the continent.
Vane tapped his temple, scanning the crowd as he walked.
[Target Analysis]
Name: Jace of House Kael
Rank: 2 (Adept)
Danger: Low
[Target Analysis]
Name: Lyra Redfield
Rank: 2 (Adept)
Danger: Low
Rank 2. Rank 2. Rank 2.
Vane relaxed slightly. The majority of the student body were Adepts. In Oakhaven, a Rank 2 was a gang leader. Here, they were the baseline. As a Rank 3 Elite, Vane was technically stronger than ninety percent of the people walking around him.
'I am not a minnow,' Vane realized. 'I am a barracuda in a tank of goldfish.'
But he knew the sharks were waiting.
The destination was the Grand Auditorium. It was a coliseum of floating stone and glass, large enough to house a small army.
Vane entered through the massive archway. The noise hit him first. A thousand conversations bouncing off acoustically perfect walls. Then the mana hit him. The ambient energy radiating from the student body was enough to make the air shimmer.
There were no assigned seats.
It was a subtle test. The seating arrangement was a map of the social hierarchy.
The front rows were already claimed by the golden children. Vane stopped in the shadow of a pillar near the back, observing. He needed to know who the apex predators were.
In the center of the front row sat a boy with white hair. He was isolated by a circle of empty chairs. Frost creeped up the legs of the furniture around him, turning the wood brittle.
He was not reading. He was correcting. With a quill seemingly made of condensed frost, he was aggressively crossing out entire paragraphs of a thick leather-bound tome. Vane squinted. The title read 'Advanced Mana Dynamics'.
The boy scribbled 'Redundant' in the margins and turned the page with a snap that sounded like a breaking bone.
'He thinks he knows better than the textbook,' Vane noted. He focused his gaze.
[Target Analysis]
Name: Isaac Glacium
Rank: 3 (Elite)
Danger: High
Authority: Pale Eternity (SSS)
Vane felt his breath hitch.
SSS-Rank.
In the slums, Authorities were myths. In the capital, they were rare. But an SSS-Rank Authority? That was a power capable of rewriting the laws of physics on a conceptual level. And this boy was just using it to act bored.
To the right of Isaac sat a girl who did not just reflect the auditorium lights; she seemed to be the source of them.
She was striking in a way that felt expensive. Her hair was a waist-length cascade of liquid gold that shimmered even in the shadow of the balcony. Her skin possessed a faint, warm luminescence, like sunlight hitting white marble, and she sat with the rigid, perfect posture of someone who had balanced a crown on her head since birth.
She was surrounded by a phalanx of admirers holding gifts, but none dared to get within arm's reach.
One boy, the son of a wealthy Count, was kneeling. He held up a bouquet of crystal lilies with trembling hands.
"For you, Princess," the boy stammered.
Anastasia did not look flattered. She looked weary. She turned her gaze toward him, revealing eyes of molten amber with a ring of brighter gold around the pupil, a solar eclipse trapped in an iris.
She wore white gloves that separated her skin from the world. She waved a hand, not to accept the gift, but to dismiss it.
The air around her rippled with a visible heat haze. The crystal lilies in the boy's grip turned grey, then brown, wilting instantly into dry husks before they could even touch her.
"Take them away," she said, her voice sounding like a silver bell. "I told you. Things die when they get too close to the sun."
The boy scrambled back, dropping the dead flowers. Anastasia sighed and adjusted the gold-thread embroidery on her cuffs, looking bored by her own lethality.
Vane analyzed her.
[Target Analysis]
Name: Anastasia Aurelia
Rank: 3 (Elite)
Danger: High
Authority: Blessed by Mana (SSS)
Two SSS-Ranks in the front row.
Vane adjusted his own cuffs. He was standing in the same room as the future rulers of the continent. Both of them were Rank 3 with SSS-Rank Authorities. They were the ceiling of the First Year.
Vane found a seat near the back, away from the noble posturing. He sat down.
'Not yet,' he told himself. 'A King does not fight for a chair. He waits until the throne is empty.'
The lights dimmed. The ceiling, which had been a fresco of clouds, shifted to display a live map of the galaxy.
The dais at the front of the room lit up.
A procession of figures walked onto the stage. They wore robes of deep crimson and gold. They did not walk with the strut of the students. They moved with the heavy, terrifying gravity of neutron stars.
The Faculty.
Vane felt a cold sweat break on his neck. He had thought Gareth was a monster. Gareth was a Rank 4 Sentinel. He was a sledgehammer.
But looking at the men and women on that stage, Vane realized Gareth was just a toy soldier.
He focused on a man with a beard made of actual, flickering fire who was lighting a pipe with his thumb.
[Target Analysis]
Name: Professor Ignis
Rank: 7 (Master)
Danger: Fatal
Authority: None
Rank 7.
Vane swallowed dryly. A Master. A being who had condensed their mana seven times. This man could probably boil the ocean if he had a bad day.
He looked at the woman next to him, a severe elf cleaning her glasses with a cloth that seemed to be made of shadow.
[Target Analysis]
Name: Professor Vyla
Rank: 6 (Expert)
Danger: Fatal
Authority: None
Rank 6. An Expert. Two full ranks above Gareth.
Vane sank lower in his seat.
In Oakhaven, Rank 3 made him a god. In the student body, Rank 3 made him an elite. But in the grand scheme of Zenith? Rank 3 was nothing. If any of these Professors looked at him too hard, they could crush him with pressure alone.
'The ceiling is high,' Vane thought, watching Professor Ignis casually conjure a chair out of solid diamond. 'It is so high I cannot even see it.'
He checked his status screen, just to ground himself.
[Status: Vane]
Rank: 3 (Elite)
Skill Library: 43
It looked small now. Forty-three pebbles against a mountain range.
He clenched his fist under the table.
'Good,' he thought. 'Let them be big. The bigger they are, the more I can steal.'
The room went silent. The air pressure dropped.
A woman walked to the center of the stage. She did not look like a warrior. She looked like a librarian who had just realized someone dog-eared a page. She wore a simple black dress.
Headmistress Evangeline.
She tapped the microphone. The sound echoed like a thunderclap, silencing a thousand heartbeats.
[Target Analysis]
Name: Evangeline
Rank: 9 (Transcendent)
Danger: [Error]
Authority: Heaven's Fall (SSS)
She smiled. It was not a nice smile.
"Welcome to Zenith," she said. Her voice was soft, but it carried to the back of the room without magic. "Look to your left. Look to your right."
The students obeyed.
"By the end of the year," Evangeline continued pleasantly, "one of you will be dead. One of you will be expelled. And the third will wish they were the first."
Vane leaned back in his seat.
Finally. Someone was speaking his language.