by Zeppy Cheng
Sarah approaches me. “You owe me one.” Her eyes are filled with contempt. “Can’t even face a lowly slime, can you?”
Evan, also covered in ice acid, puts his hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “All’s well that ends well.” He turns back to the boss room, which has become silent.
The eight main party members are discussing something. Mr. Tuffman is pointing in the direction of the four dead kobolds. Jesus stands before the boss monster’s corpse. From my Spirit Circle Id-Rep class, I can tell that the monster is at least a five-hundred-year mob. The kobolds are between one fifty and two hundred each.
Jesus sits down by the boss monster and begins the absorption process. Four other party members do the same for the four kobolds. Five rings rise out of the corpses of the five monsters our team defeated, and the five Adventurers chant the same mantra. The rings bestow themselves onto the Adventurers, rising from the fallen and falling onto the victors. With a snap, they are absorbed into their spirits. Each individual spirit manifests its image above the absorbing adventurer. Some are easily recognizable, but others are complex and hard to determine based on their manifestations.
Bismark walks over to us, holding the ring vacuum. He points to the dead slimes. “You killed them, ya?” His accent is clearly German.
We nod.
“It wasn’t much,” says Sarah.
Bismark nods with enthusiasm and turns the vacuum on. With a sweeping motion he collects the seven rings from the seven dead slimes. We porters collect the little geodes the monsters dropped. Then we head into the boss room to collect the loot. It isn’t much — it’s a D-class dungeon, after all — but it’s probably worth a pretty penny. By the time we’re finished, my backpack is almost full from all the low-level items we collected.
Mary directs us back into formation. She walks up to a rather large crystal floating where the boss monster sat before we arrived. With a regular hardware store hammer, she smashes it.
The world shimmers and bam, we’re back in the alleyway where we started. The portal is gone. Without even blinking, Mary takes out a paper planner and a pen. “Apprentices. Count your loot.”
It’s been half a minute since we left the dungeon and it’s already time for business. We are a for-profit company, after all. The six of us drop our packs to the ground and begin counting, under the Mary’s supervision. I assume this is standard procedure — I haven’t taken PPM, so I don’t know for sure — but it makes sense to immediately catalog the item haul to prevent cheating and stealing.
After we count out our items, we put them back into the packs and head for the Association building. We go to the treasury and deposit our items in the guild account, and then we are free for the rest of the day. We will get paid for our work at the next pay period. Food and living expenses will be deducted, of course.
Four hours, the clock on the common room wall tells me. The whole adventure took four hours.
And so life continues at Ixtham Academy.
7 School for Preps
I finish my first semester at Ixtham without anything unordinary for an apprentice Adventurer. Every week or so I head off to the dungeons with my guild. I do research with Dr. Barrimore, who, despite several papers that should have revolutionized the field of Spirit Circles, remains stuck publishing in a backwards, tiny journal that nobody reads. Somehow he manages to collect enough funding to continue at least his basic research. As I learn more about the field, I begin to understand how revolutionary his ideas are. They just go against the grain of accepted dogma.
It’s as if a scientist tried telling the world DNA is a triple-helix, not a double one. Without any clout to back him up, the only things people see when they read his papers are his mistakes. He doesn’t make many, but every single paper he writes has some sort of flaw that allows the mainstream to dismiss it. Even though the biggest one is no more than a nitpick, it has grounded Dr. Barrimore’s influence and career.
I also spend a lot of time at Half Moon, socializing. I’m half a decade away from drinking age, but the place just seems to calm me down.
As I work harder at my shooting skills, I begin to show results. Though I’m nowhere near the power level of Rey and Dres, I can at least land all my shots within the second ring of the target at standard shooting range.
And after Fall break, I find myself taking the Practical Field Experience course.
I stand in the middle of a group of about twenty students. Jane Bossman arrives five minutes before class starts. The classroom isn’t actually a room, but rather an entire floor down in the basement levels dedicated entirely to what appear to be obstacle courses. In one corner is a simulated jungle. In another is a crumbling castle. There are also simulated oceans, an icy cavern, and a volcano surrounded by a lava moat. The whole room must be at least ten football fields of space. I’m surprised a room this size could exist in the city of New York.
Ms. Bossman surveys the students before her with a grim expression. “I expect at least a quarter of you to drop out of this class.” Her voice is iron hard. She unsheaths her sword and plants it in the gravel in front of her, movie-style. “I will not give quarter. If you fail, you will be kicked out of the academy. I have every discretion when it comes to deciding your fate. And so you must work. This class is designed to weed out the soft from the strong.” Her deep blue eyes drill into the class. “Your spirit will not protect you here. I don’t care if you are a Dragon or a Polar Bear. Everyone goes through the same thing here.”
The whole class seems stunned. I was warned about Ms. Bossman’s drill-sergeant teaching method, but seeing it up close is intimidating. I shrink back in myself and try not to be noticed.
Ms. Bossman lifts up her chin. “I will give you ten minutes to find a group of five. You will stay with this group for the rest of the semester.” She points to one of the testing areas. “These areas you see here are portals that lead to full-dive environments, some the size of an entire city. Your final exam will be surviving a week in one of them. Until then, I will drill so much survival and combat knowledge into your brain that you will be leaking hardtack out of your ears.” She crosses her arms.
I take this to mean that she wants us to gather into groups now.
No one says anything. But everyone splits off.
I spot Esla in the corner of the crowd and gravitate towards her. “Hey,” I say as I approach her. “You’re a junior, aren’t you?”
Esla nods, a sheepish grin on her face. “Yeah.”
“Why are you here in a phase one class?”
Esla shrugs. “I just put this class off for a while. You know, since everyone said it would be so hard.” She claps my shoulder. “Don’t worry, though. I’m not stupid or weak. I just happen to be somewhat of a… careful person.”
I nod. Though Esla’s self-description is suspect, knowing what I know about her, I continue unfazed. “So, do you want to join my group?”
“Of course,” says Esla. “You and me together. No one can stop us.”
“My spirit is an Anima,” I deadpan.
Esla shrugs, saying nothing.
A group of three students approach us. “You two know each other?” asks the apparent leader. He is tall, blonde, with a dark complexion — he might be Filipino. He extends his hand, a healthy smile on his face.
Esla shakes it without hesitation. “Hey! I’m Esla. This here is Markus.” She slaps me on the back.
I bob my head, almost a bow but not quite. “Hello.”
The tall blonde guy grins even bigger. “My name is Corbin.” He points to a red-haired girl who has a bit of stock to her. “This is Koen.” He points to a short, muscled student with a thick goatee. “This is Mattys.”
“Hiya, nice to meet you.” Mattys extends his rather meaty hand.
I shake his solid grip.
“Now that you have all chosen your groups,” Jane Bossman’s voice carries over the collected students, “tell each other about your spirit. You have five minutes. After that you will face your first challenge.�
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Corbin nods, taking charge of our group. “My spirit is Steel. Specifically, Martensite.” He holds up his hand and a steel rod appears in his palm. He wraps his fingers around it. “I can change this weapon to any form.” He flicks the rod and it turns into a scimitar, long and curved. “At the moment it takes a lot of effort to assume a new form, so I only have three that I cycle through.” He flips the sword around and it dissipates back into psion energy.
There is an uncomfortable silence. Then Esla steps up. “My spirit is a Typhoon.” She claps her hands together and a wind picks up, tussling the clothes and hair of everyone in the class.
“I said talk about your powers.” Ms. Bossman’s eyes fill with fire. “Not give us all wind chill.”
“Oops.” Esla smiles sheepishly.
“Ha! That’s quite the power!” Mattys slaps his hands together and bends over, planting his palms on the ground. A layer of ice shoots out, creating a thin, slippery road. Mattys then stands up and surfs the road, moving much faster than any human is capable of running.
As he is skating across the room, throwing at least a foot of ice road ahead of him, he holds his fingers out in a surfer dude symbol. He rides the ice back towards us and stops in a puff of little white spots. “My spirit is Ice. Specifically, Ice-Friction. It’s kind of complicated but I can move things fast by changing their coefficient of friction using my spirit.” He winks at Esla.
Esla mutters and rolls her eyes.
Koen, the red-haired girl, snaps her fingers. Within five seconds we are standing in a cage made of tall, green bamboo. It happened so fast I’m not even sure how it got there. She nods, appearing pleased, and then snaps her fingers again. The bamboo retracts into the ground, as if it had never been there. She grins.
“As you can see,” says Corbin, “her spirit is Bamboo.”
There is another awkward pause. I wait for it.
“What can you do?” Corbin asks me.
I shrug. “My spirit is, well, Blue Anima.”
Corbin tilts his head. “And?”
I point to where Jane Bossman is standing. “She’s going to itch her nose in about five seconds.”
Corbin stares at me, appearing perplexed. Then he looks over at Jane Bossman. At that moment, she itches her nose.
“So you see the future.” Corbin takes it in stride.
“Not necessarily. I’m just really sensitive to fluctuations in space-time.”
“And that’s a fluctuation in space-time,” says Corbin.
There’s a lot more to it than that — I learned a lot about my power from Dr. Barrimore’s research — but it’s more like how they handled their technicalities. I refrain from discussing how consciousness and space-time interact and shrug instead.
“Well,” says Corbin. “I suppose we can use that.” He pauses. “Occasionally.”
“All right,” says Ms. Bossman. “Your time is up. For your first lesson, you’ll be learning how to navigate our first terrain type, a forest. This is basic stuff. About twenty-five percent of dungeons are some kind of forest-based environment.”
Ms. Bossman proceeds to give us instructions on how to navigate forest terrain. About an hour later, at the end of class, my head is stuffed full of information about forests. Foraging, bushwhacking, climbing trees. Tomorrow is our first field test.
After work, club, and visiting the Half Moon, I go to sleep at three in preparation for waking at seven.
After Portal Theory I, Monster Taxonomy, and Equipment Movement, it is finally time for my first field exam. I arrive about five minutes before Ms. Bossman. The rest of my group, including Esla, all arrive just before class starts.
Esla holds up her hand. “High five?”
I give her a high-five reluctantly. I don’t understand what she is so fired up about.
Esla tilts her head. “What’s wrong? You don’t look too excited.”
Mattys puts his hands on his hips. “Yeah, man. Esla here is all ready to go and here you are, bringing the mood down.” His eyes glimmer with cheer.
Corbin sighs. “We can’t have you bringing us down. I know today is probably going to be easy, but if you’re not up for it you may as well drop out now.”
A clink of armor sounds behind me. I turn around, and there’s Jane Bossman standing with her arms crossed over her steel breastplate. “Who said it was going to be easy?” Ms. Bossman taps one finger on the arm of her other hand. “If that’s the attitude you have, you won’t be getting anywhere in this class.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Corbin bows. “I apologize.” His attitude turns quick.
Ms. Bossman seems to be placated. The corners of her lips turn up. “Good. Since you seem so eager to go, you can go first.” She raises her voice and faces the whole class. “Your first mission is to clear the simulated arboreal dungeon in under an hour. There will not be any monsters in this class, but neither will there be support if you get stuck or lost. The time limit is strict. Break it and you will get an F for this assignment.” She turns to my group. “Door three.” She points to a small patch of forest in the center of the gigantic field. “We will be sending two teams per class period. One hour each.” She nods at my group, her lips tightly pursed.
“All right, then,” says Corbin. “Let’s go.”
“Yeah!” Esla pumps her fist. “We can do this!”
Mattys nods, and then shrugs, an amused expression on his face.
Koen turns away and starts walking towards the patch of forest. I follow with the rest of the group. The atmosphere among them stays jovial. I am at its edges and keep feeling like I’m not accepted. But that’s usual for me. I’m not going to cry about it.
Our group reaches the artificial portal in the center of the forest block. From what I have learned in Portal Theory so far, this portal is the man-made equivalent of an F-class portal. The yellow color and specific triangular markings give it away.
Corbin steps up to it, pulls out his steel rod, and forms it into a spear. “Let’s go.” The portal swallows him with a soap-bubble like effect. A ripple passes through it and disappears.
Esla shrugs, her eyes glittering. “Now or never.” And she steps through, followed by Mattys, cracking his knuckles, and Koen, with a tilt of her head.
I am alone in front of the shimmering gateway to the forest realm. I count my blessings, take a few deep breaths, and pass into the world of the green.
8 Field Exam
After fifteen minutes of hard hiking, I am barely managing to keep up with the group. We whack through dense underbrush, ford rapids, and climb steep hills that seem to never end. The trail, at times, is barely visible — on purpose, it seems. Every time we get lost, all we have to do is remember the tricks we learned in class and we’re back on track. Direction of moss, animal prints, deer trails, and all that. Through my Anima vision, I can tell the whole place is, in fact, very well kept. All the obstacles have been placed, painstakingly, by examiners.
Still, it is tough going. I keep pace, but it’s wearing me down. I am glad we must finish in less than an hour. I don’t think I’d be able to handle anything longer.
Ahead of me, Esla glances at her watch. “It’s been sixteen minutes. At this rate I think we’ll make it.”
“Not if what’s up ahead has anything to say about it.” Corbin, in the front of the group, has stopped.
We gather around him, staring into the maw of a ravine that stretches as far as the eye can see on both sides. It is at least twenty meters wide with no visible bridge.
Corbin leans on his steel spirit tool. “How are we going to get across this?”
“Did we learn anything about ravine crossing?” I ask.
Esla tilts her head and shrugs. “Not that I can remember.”
“I think this is a test.” Koen’s face is deadly serious. “Bossman wants us to get across this ravine using a combination of our powers.”
This is the first time I’ve really heard her speak. Her tone is less burly than I expected from her app
earance. She sounds like a high school girl. I don’t know what I was expecting from her, but it wasn’t this. Maybe I should stop judging people based on their appearance.
Koen points to an outcropping of rock on the other side of the ravine. “Do you think we can make it across if we attach, like, a rope to that?”
Esla shrugs. “We don’t have anyone with a power who can reach it. If we had someone who could throw a lasso or fly, that would work.”
Koen looks like she wants to say something, but doesn’t.
“Hrm.” Mattys rubs his hands together and cracks his neck. “I might be able to do something about this.”
Corbin nods, his arms crossed. “Let’s see it.”
“Hwa!” Mattys plants his hands on the edge of the ravine. A sheet of ice shoots out, spreading across the open air. The sound of crunching snow and tinkling icicles bounces around. A freezing chill rises from the ground and forms crystal snowflakes that meander back down towards the soil beneath us.
In front of us is a bridge made of ice. But before we can begin to cross, it cracks. Within seconds, it crumbles. The ice bridge falls apart and collapses into the ravine in less time than it took to make.
“Well,” says Koen, “that didn’t work.”
Mattys shrugs. “I guess my Ice spirit isn’t exactly suited for this. It’s all about movement, after all.”
“Let me try.” Koen seems to make a decision. “My bamboo probably won’t make it across, but it would be strong enough if it did.” She places her hands against the soil at the ravine’s edge.
Bamboo coils along the ravine on our side. Reaching out, it flows towards the opposite cliff face in a mess of growing, tangled leaves. The bamboo sags less than a third of the way across. Clearly it won’t make it.
“How about you try twisting the bamboo pieces, like rope?” I suggest as the bamboo reaches its breaking point.
“Hm.” Koen’s expression changes to one of thoughtfulness. “You mean like this?”
The bamboo coils around itself and instead of reaching out straight, it forms a suspension-bridge-like structure that grows forward at a quickening pace. Just as the bamboo is about to snap, it reaches the other edge. The tips of the grown bamboo spear the wall and wrap around the rocky outcropping. Puffs of dirt and rock explode from where the bamboo pierces the granite.