Thud-thud, crunch. Thud, thud, crunch.

Each impact of my soles against the ground shakes my whole body, pounding in my eardrums, echoing in my skull like a drum that I can't silence.

Thud, thud, crunch, skrrt.

My foot slides over the loose gravel, breaking the pattern. I almost fall, but drag myself onward. Each of my breaths comes out in quick bursts, catching in my throat like frayed cloth. I continue running. I haven't got permission to stop.

Our physical education teacher, who turns out to be the man who refereed my fight, is merciless. He seems to take pleasure in driving each of us to exhaustion and beyond.

Thud-thud, crunch.

I try to keep a steady rhythm, to follow the unending chant of my boots pushing me forward in a relentless cadence, because each misstep is like an out-of-tune note that breaks the harmony. Harmony is efficiency, the only thing that keeps me on my feet.

The others' groans are a distant blur. I catch glimpses of them between each swing of my arm. Most of them are huffing and puffing, sprawled over the grass in the sparse shadow of the acacia trees, or wherever they collapsed like discarded rag dolls.

The instructor's voice barks at us to keep moving.

Us?

Yes, us; Han Linea and I, the only ones left running.

She glares at me as if I had killed her favorite puppy, wheezing and panting like a drowning horse.

What is her problem now? It isn't a competition.

Our trainer, her uncle, said so himself on the first day. He told us that our toughest rival, the competitor each one of us had to beat, was ourselves. And we had to do it in each of his daily training sessions. Or something like that. It's hard to remember under the grip of exhaustion. My thoughts are diving through dense molasses, searching for the surface to swim.

"Come on, Linea!" barks the instructor toward my companion in misery. "Are you going to let some country bumpkin beat you? Your progress is stagnating."

The girl glares at me with undisguised hatred, and redoubles her effort. It still isn't enough to catch me. I'm slowly increasing the distance between us, step by step.

Huh? Maybe it is a competition for her. I glance at the instructor, who watches me and his niece with a pleased smirk.

He may have a point. Two weeks ago, I couldn't keep up with the girl; now, I'm leaving her behind. But I don't think that it is her fault. I think it's because I still have a lot of margin to grow in my potential attributes. I broke through just before getting kicked out of Cherry-Blossom Valley. It seems like a lifetime ago, but just a few months have passed.

I know what that man is doing. He is trying to egg his niece on, frame me as an imaginary rival in her mind, to make her train harder. The Crow did the same to me and the other children when he taught us to pickpocket.

I don't want to play along. It will make it even harder to get into that girl's good graces. But what can I do?

Should I try to let her win? I slow down, only a tiny bit. My breath comes less ragged instantly.

"Minae! No slacking off!" The instructor's bark makes me flinch. I almost stumble over my own feet before I fall into the rhythm again.

Yeah. It's not as if that torturer would let me do anything else. He and Bae would make good friends.

My legs burn with every step. Each slap of my boots against the packed dirt sends a fresh pulse of fire up my calves. I swallow the ache and keep on.

Whooomp!

I flinch again, almost stumbling on my wobbly legs. What was that?

Something is different. The rhythm has changed as if the drum is missing half of its beats. I glance over my shoulder. Linea has fallen. I'm the last one still running.

Huh? That's new. For the first time, it's not Linea. No wonder she is frustrated.

I won't last much longer either. My legs are two heavy slabs of meat, almost unresponsive at this point, dragging me forward on pure inertia. The slightest hiccup will make me fall at this point. I can feel the sweat flowing down my arms and thighs like a river. My robe clings against my skin, rubbing and irritating me with each movement.

Some of the other students have enchanted their school robes to remain dry. I should try to find out how they did that, or try to replicate it with runes. Maybe Enea or Kenae will know.

I slip, the world shifts, gravity hitches.

Next thing I know, I'm lying between yellow tufts of grass, limbs flung wide as if the ground might swallow me. I can feel my heart pounding against my ribcage.

"Good, good! Great improvement!" praises the instructor. "Don't forget to circulate or you will get leg cramps and won't be able to keep up tomorrow."

I groan, but sit up, pulling my legs into a lotus pose. I inhale, pulling a thread of mana from my core, letting it flow through my exhausted muscles. I can almost feel them gasp. They drink the mana up like a starving dog, torn fabric knitting back together. With each wave, the pain dulls, until I can almost move again. My fluttering heart calms.

Then the gong sounds, pulling me out of my introspection, announcing the end of class way too soon.

"Good, good, get a shower, hop, hop!" The instructor still has a pleased smile deforming his ugly face. "We don't want your other professors to complain about how you stink again."

Well, not ugly. The man is handsome in a rough way with his sharp jawline and sculpted physique. I have heard some of my classmates fantasizing about him, even though he is way too old. He is a cultivator. He could be their grandfather. Idiotic girls!

"I think some of them are ready to start weighted training." I hear him mutter just before I'm out of sight. "I need to press them harder."

Well, shit! Somehow, I have an inkling that he is talking about me.

Steam curls against the mosaic of tiles, clinging to my skin. I linger by the far wall, pretending to be lost by the hiss of water, hiding the few runes I haven't gotten rid of yet.

These semi-public showers are an annoying surprise. Until now, I have always waited for everyone to finish showering and to leave before washing myself, pretending to be shy about my body. But that won't work forever. Sooner or later, someone will stay and see what I'm hiding.

So, I decided to let my body runes fade and not renew any of them. Shared showers make it risky to ink anything on my skin. Everybody knows that Master Wen's disciple uses body runes. They would give me away in an instant.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Maybe that is part of his test to teach me how to rely on myself and adapt to my environment. Who knows how an immortal thinks? A month, a year, what may seem like an eternity to me, might be an instant to him; the mission he gave me, a prank, someone to keep me occupied, to have a free afternoon.

Sometimes I feel observed, not in a hostile way, but observed. Are they hiding somewhere, laughing about my struggles?

I tilt my head, letting the water drip down my neck.

I don't think so. It seems out of character. Maybe it's just Bae. Or I'm imagining things, getting paranoid.

A shiver travels down my spine before the water can wash it away. I feel naked without my runes, vulnerable.

"You didn't have them not that long ago," I admonish myself.

I need to remember that they are just another tool. Tools are there to help you, not to make your life dependent on them. If I need to, I can get them back in half a bell. Or even less if I train my drawing speed and precision.

A muffled sob breaks through the steady plip, plip, plip of drops impacting the tiles. Voices bleed in from the distant stalls. I catch my name, well, the name everyone knows me by, followed by a low consoling murmur of friends.

"Always pushing her too hard."

"Thinks she's better than us, the bitch."

"We should teach her a lesson!"

The words slip under my skin, hotter than the shower's spray. I slip deeper into the steam's shadow. I should get out of here before they find out I'm here and accuse me of spying. This situation is getting out of control.

"She must be on a scout or a courier path." I recognize the voice of Kong Ina, my third roommate. "All they are good for is running. Don't worry, Linea, you'll beat her easily once the spars start and they let us use weapons and techniques."

"I'm not worried!" scoffs Linea, a bit too fast. Her sobs have stopped. "As if some country bumpkin could rival me."

"Yeah!" comments another girl whose voice I don't recognize. "She must be juiced up on cheap pills, ruining her foundation. My dad says those who do that may seem strong for their stage, but they will never reach far."

"Exactly!"

"Yeah!"

"She is a cheater!"

"Aren't you her roommate, Ina?" asks Linea.

"Yeah!"

"Good. I need you to become that bastard's friend, to learn all her secrets," hisses Linea. "I won't be humiliated like that again!"

I roll my eyes and step out of the shower before they can notice me. Seriously? All this drama because she couldn't keep up with me in her uncle's marathon? I shake my head, getting dressed in my second set of school robes.

Yeah. I think Linea is a dead end to get into the Han estate. I need to come up with something new.

"So, what is your opinion about it, Minae?"

Enea hits me with her elbow. My head jerks up.

Still pondering my problems, I barely realized when instructor Mo asked me a question. She must have noticed that I'm distracted.

Somebody snickers behind me.

Shit! What did she ask about?

"I believe," I tilt my head, trying to feign that I'm thinking about it.

"Strategies to choose techniques," whispers Enea under her breath.

Huh? What does she think I know about that? I try to remember what Bae told me about it.

"I think it doesn't matter at our stage," I blurt out.

The answer hangs in the air for a beat too long, the kind of pause that swells before it bursts. At my side, Enea winces.

Someone behind me snickers, then another. I hear sharp little exhalations through snotty noses. Laughter breaks out.

"Did you hear that?"

"It doesn't matter, she said."

"What a fool!"

Chairs creak as people lean toward each other, trading wide-eyed looks. The whispered mockery swells like a tide. Someone slaps his hands onto the desk, wheezing; others cover their mouths, hiding their grins.

But instructor Mo isn't laughing. She looks at them, frowning, then at me, tilting her head as if intrigued.

"Please, if you haven't anything useful to say, keep silent!" sneers a boy. My head jerks around. I catch him looking at Han Linea as if searching for approval, but she ignores him. So he looks back at me and raises his voice. "Don't poison the air with the sound of your ignorance."

Instructor Mo's frown grows deeper. "I suppose you have a different opinion, Meng Ono. Care to explain?"

"Yes! Venerable Mo, let me instruct the idiot!" He puffs his chest up like a peacock. "Choosing the right techniques is of vital importance, as explained by my uncle, Meng Lan, a fellow instructor of this academy and head of the technique pavilion." He glances at Linea again before looking at me with a sneer and continuing. "This girl is clearly demonstrating her ignorance. Meng Lan's treatise explains that there are techniques that are clearly better for you depending on your affinity. Someone with a fire affinity should choose fire-based techniques, and you need to make up a plan early on, because synergy between your techniques is as important as the techniques themselves to be a competent fighter. This girl is clearly ignorant!"

Interesting. But does the boy need to insult me? I feel a surge of heat rising in my chest.

"You are missing the point," I reply. The indignation seems to lend me courage to ignore the stares.

"What?" asks the boy, blinking. "Don't you think you have wasted enough of our time with your ignorance? Keep silent when your betters speak!"

Seriously? What is wrong with him?

"Meng Ono, if you insult one of your classmates in a debate again, I'll deduct ten of your contribution points," interjects instructor Mo.

"Debate?" The boy blinks, then his mind seems to catch up with the warning, and he gulps.

Instructor Mo isn't even looking at him anymore. She walks over toward me and sits on the corner of my desk. "Care to explain what you mean, Minae?" she asks with a smile.

"Humm, yeah," I say, feeling slightly intimidated by her presence. I think I know how I can weasel myself out of this. "Synergy between techniques, your affinity, or the technique's quality is only important once you have reached a stage when you can't advance any longer. For us, it doesn't matter that much, we will all have to choose new ones again anyway once our next rank up washes our current techniques away."

The laughter and snickers have fallen silent. I look toward the boy, hesitating for a moment, then I decide to try to find a way to dig back at him.

"Unless you think you'll never reach the mana-condensation stage, then it's important to choose a combination of techniques that works."

"What? You dare?" The boy seems about to erupt into more insults, but then looks at instructor Mo, and his mouth snaps shut.

Instructor Mo stands up and strolls toward the front of the class with her back toward us.

"Your fellow student Minae makes an interesting point. Five contribution points for her for thinking with her head and not just parroting back whatever someone else said without understanding it."

"But," says the boy, before falling silent again, glaring at me.

What did I do to him?

"It indeed isn't necessary to choose the perfect combination of techniques while you are still advancing. There is even an argument to make that, at lower ranks, it is even better to choose poor techniques that are ill-suited for you." The instructor turns toward us, taking in the stunned crowd. "Surprised? The reason is easy to understand. Poor techniques put a greater strain on your meridians, which stimulates them and reinforces them over time." She takes a seat herself. "But, of course, you can only do that if you have others to protect you while you grow. If you need to be able to defend yourself or your opportunity to keep improving yourself depends on some idiotic ranking, you need something to help you with that."

This information is new to me. I wonder why Bae never explained something like that. She must have thought that it wasn't that important. Or that I wasn't some protected scion.

The class has grown even more silent. Everybody stares at instructor Mo. Is she calling the system they use here at the school ridiculous?

"So what techniques should you choose?" asks instructor Mo. Nobody answers. She tsks. "Well, easy, as Minae said. At your stage, grab whatever you find useful for you at the moment and don't worry too much. All of you should have the potential to rank up at least one or two more stages. You can start worrying about affinity, synergy, and whatever, once you reach that point. Trying out different techniques on each rank is a way of getting to know yourself and finding out what suits you before it becomes permanent."

"With all due respect, instructor Moe," says the boy who tried to portray me as an idiot earlier. "Your advice can't be right. My uncle is a renowned scholar at the Golden Core stage. He clearly states that synergy is important from the beginning. You must be wrong!"

I see a dangerous glint in instructor Mo's eyes.

"Oh. Really? You think that the opinion of some random Golden Core expert from some backwater clan, stuck at that stage, is more accurate than the one of someone like me who has almost reached the Dao-Seeking stage?"

The silence has grown so thick that you would hear a pin drop. I feel the pressure from the instructor's presence rising, reminding us that she might look kind and harmless, but is probably the most dangerous cultivator in the city.

"Of course not, instructor," stutters the boy. "I beg for your forgiveness, I misspoke."

The instructor harumphs.

"Minus five contribution points for you," she says.

"But," complains the boy.

Someone lacks preservation instincts.

"Take it as a lesson," interrupts the instructor. "You may feel sheltered here, where the school's rules forbid the instructors to cause their students permanent harm. But in the real world outside, you won't last long with an attitude like that."

The boy gulps, glaring at me for some reason as if it was my fault he got scolded. I roll my eyes. The instructor lets the silence linger for a while, then looks up at us.

"I heard you have permission to start delving into dungeons next week. Tomorrow we will discuss what kind of situations you might encounter and how your current team would best handle them." The gong sounds announcing the end of class. "Ah, and remember to register your team if you haven't done it yet, or you will be delving with whoever else is left, whether you like them or not."

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