203 (II)

Academy [I]

But Shiv was no longer looking at the ceiling. Instead, he was looking at the rest of the training arena. There was a large section of the room cordoned off, wooden boards stacked high and packed tight. It did look strange in a sense. Like they were fused together, with barely any separation between the boards. Something made Shiv want to slam into it—to see how they might splinter if struck. He pushed the intrusive thought aside. They were hammered in place by a masterful hand, each nail driven in at the exact same point across each and every board. But even with that barricade set up, the rest of the room was still forty meters wide and twice again as long.

Nearby, there were eight-meter-wide circles painted on a padded mat, and if the Deathless recalled correctly, this was what people used to train their grappling. To be pushed down was to lose points. To be pinned or have one's joints twisted was to lose points. To be controlled was to continuously lose points. He'd heard Tran talk about facilities like this, but it was more than just a few grappling mats on the ground.

There were bars jutting out from the sides of the walls. Some of them had targets on them. Others had rings one could do acrobatics through, or perhaps even swing past for aerial practice. A training dummy lay propped against a wall. It was decked in rusted armor, but a trail of glistening enchantments spilled out from its torso in a winding spiral. It looked like the thing was sprouting wings, wings that splashed against the alloyed walls of this place.

Shiv guessed there used to be other things meant to assist warm-ups and training exercises here as well, but they were buried under a collapsed section of wall to the right.

Upon the leftmost walls was a large, detailed mural, a painting of a phoenix soaring high above the sky. Below, a vast campus unveiled itself to Shiv.

The exterior of Phoenix Academy was a grand ring. Colossal buildings that resembled more the battlements of a fortress encircled the rest of the grounds, and within them came a square. At the four edges of the square were towering spires, their tips mithril and glistening with magic. At least that was what he could tell from the depiction. And within the square were a mess of other buildings. Some of them were like interlocking U-shapes, all stacked together, with small patios between. Others were round buildings with clear, transparent tops.

There were even a few structures that hovered in the air above, floating like small fortresses. And then, at the very center of the campus, there seemed to be a large archway. The archway resembled the entrance leading into Gate Piety, and that's because it was the very same kind of entrance. His eyes widened as he realized there was a gate at the center of Phoenix Academy.

"Welcome," Merrielmel said, "to… Well, this is what the Academy looked like two hundred years ago. It's far grander now. The structures then were positively archaic, far more unattuned. With the present level of mana density, we have expanded the school grounds. We have incorporated a great deal more dimensional enhancements to every structure, and so our acceptance rate and training facilities have been greatly expanded as well."

Shiv stared at the Enchanter as he searched for something to say. "Sounds to me like you're trying to pitch me enrollment here."

The elf threw his head back and giggled. "Of course, I would recommend everyone spend a semester at Phoenix Academy. In fact, as many semesters as possible." He sighed blissfully. "I would do this until I perish or until time itself turns to dust. It is a wonderful place, and I wouldn't give it up for the world."

"And you didn't," Irons said. There was a slight growl in the man's voice. "You didn't, even after your mistake. Three hundred and twenty lives… Three hundred students."

Merrielmel coughed and then stammered. The Enchanter flinched away from Irons, but the captain was no longer dredging up old history. Instead, his interest fell somewhere else. "You knew we were coming."

"Yes, yes, I think I told you, but the liaison—I have a Neath liaison with Divination abilities—they sent me a notification. Now, you don't have one yet, but…"

Irons held up a hand. Merrielmel's words came to a messy stop. "Stop. What did they tell you to do?" Irons asked.

"Oh, I, eh, I am here to provide accommodations and services. And this—this is the perfect place for both."

Everyone, aside from Merrielmel, looked around.

"Here?" Adam asked. "You want us to just… sit around here?"

Merrielmel coughed. "Well, we do use this ground as a place for some of our experiments. I used the dummy there to test certain things, certain small-scale enchantments, but no, no, it's uh, we have the rest of the space for ourselves. Here, let me show you!" His hand rose, and he pointed at the wooden barricade sealing off half the room. "My workshop! Some of my special facilities! They're hidden on the other side. Would you like to see? Please, everyone, come and take a look. We will…" The Enchanter coughed, and his words failed him once more. He staggered off awkwardly, and Shiv cringed.

Yeah, it doesn't feel entirely right to call him a Hero, Shiv thought to himself. Hope he makes a pretty mean enchantment, because this guy feels like he's gonna crack under any kind of pressure at all.

As Merrielmel got to the other end of the room, he pressed his face against the wooden boards, and Helix sighed. The orc clasped his hands behind his back and shook his head.

"Insul, I have doubts about our strategy." The orc said it aloud, and Shiv watched Merrielmel's posture flinch as if he'd just been whipped.

"Yeah, well, you're not the only one," Shiv replied. "But we need to be out of the way for a while. And if this place can serve as a safehouse…"

A laugh came from Mortar. The large orc looked around. "Might not be safe for long. How far underground are we, elf? And where's all this mana coming from?"

Merrielmel held up a finger, instructing the orc to wait.

"Oh, that's a tiny finger. I think I could fit his whole arm in my mouth. And I don't think I'd even taste anything when biting down."

"Easy, Mortar," Shiv said. "You're not eating him. Yet."

Just then, Merrielmel knocked on one of the wooden boards twice. And with a sudden burst of motion, he drove his fist into it. The wooden board cracked, but then it spun. And as it shifted positions, something within clicked. The entire barricade began to turn. And as it did, a spill of Dimensionality washed through the air.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was at this point that Shiv realized just how much was being hidden here. Adam gasped as a veritable flood of magical power passed over them. Shiv's Shapeless Tides rattled like plate armor enduring a hail of arrows. Before him, the room went from the ragged remains of a training pen to a set of stairs. They ran high and up, and as the group continued on, they kept going and going. When everyone passed the barricade, the wood made a cracking noise as they snapped back into place and sealed the route behind.

As he got to the top of the stairs, the space before him loomed. This wasn't just another room; it was the size of a small block. A vast, open field greeted him, but the ground beneath his feet was made from reinforced stone. And ahead, there were raised walls shaped from said stone separating several sections across two kilometers of space. It resembled a maze, but it was a maze made in the heart of an arena.

The outer walls of this arena rose high and resembled the edges of a smooth bowl. Above, a translucent shell glowed a faint purple, bathing everything below in a near-bioluminescent glow that made Shiv miss the Abyss.

"How the hells did you manage to hide this under the administration's nose?" Irons breathed.

"Oh, it's really quite simple," Merrielmel chirped happily. "You see, when the arena smashed into the dorms, chaos unfolded. A good section of the central arena was detached from the other structures. It was an infrastructural flaw from the beginning. I've mentioned this several times, but ultimately, no one bothered to listen. So it detached, it fell through the ground, and it was embedded with this small wing of the entire arena. While the rest was being moved away, it was uncovered by me and Concelhaunt. And so, well, we decided to request some aid, because there was no way we could move it on our own. However, we could disguise it…"

"Through a series of mana explosions," Irons continued, with additional heat in his voice. "That's what it was. It wasn't the rest of the mana core power in the Coliseum coming apart at the end of the crisis. That was you."

"Technically, that was, oh, well, yes. But no one was hurt. We made sure of that. It was professionally done! And most importantly, we needed this. It was essential for our work. Irons, you have to understand. After the Core Collapse, I…"

"After the Core Collapse, you should have been gone." The Captain was furious now. His voice didn't get any deeper. He didn't clench his jaw. He didn't even glare any harder. But you could feel the scorn radiating from the man.

"I… I…" Merrielmel retreated from Irons. "Well, the rest of you, there are sections of this place. Please, go up. Seek a place for you to set up. It's not exactly perfect for a residence, but it is well-hidden. Very well-hidden, in fact. We are currently masked entirely, after all. Ah, we're hidden by the gate, of course."

And now Adam made a gagging noise. "Wait, you… We're underneath Gate Infernius?"

"Infernius?" Shiv asked, confused.

"The Category 10 Gate you saw earlier in the painting," Adam snapped. "The one at the center of the academy! Merrielmel, you had the remains of the central arena moved under Gate Infernius?"

"It was quite the undertaking," the elf said, "but it was ultimately the most effective thing we could do. After all, it will take an inquisitive eye to detect a separation of different mana signatures, and with the sheer amount of mana radiating from Infernius, it's very hard to tell. Truly."

"And should anyone find anything, you'll simply shut off all the mana flowing through here," Adam finished. "It's… This place is also siphoning mana from the gate, isn't it?"

"Well." Merrielmel folded his hands behind his back and looked aside, as if shy about what he was doing. "Not truly. Somewhat. It's going to my experiments anyway, and my experiments benefit the school. Dramatically. Why, just last week, we had another breakthrough."

"What's this?" Tequila cried aloud. He stood over a tall stack of crates and leaned down.

Merrielmel paused and let out a pitched cry of terror as the orc ripped the top off a crate and reached in. "No, don't!"

The orc pulled out a large bag of glistening blue powder. It radiated with Biomancy mana, and Helix sneered. "Oh, good. Dathoro. I see that you're also a connoisseur of fine drugs, Enchanter."

Merrielmel gestured at the orc in outrage and hissed. From under his tasseled robes, there came a few screaming darts. They were the same objects that unleashed pulsing waves of Divination mana, and they collapsed around Tequila's hands, snatching the bag out of his grasp. The orc let out a brief grunt of surprise before Merrielmel teleported through the air. He snatched the bag from his own construct and chucked it back in the crate.

"Do not touch my things! Do not, do not, do not!" Merrielmel's voice rose in octave and anger, and soon he was jabbing a finger into the orc's chest. The terribly anxious man was gone, replaced by an enraged Pathbearer. Still, Merrielmel didn't seem too dangerous, but with the contraptions he had, Shiv suspected the man was not short on ugly surprises.

Shiv noticed Tequila's finger twitching, and he let out a growl of frustration as he moved as well. "Tequila, no!" Shiv said. But the orc turned, and then he saw the look on Shiv's face. It wasn't a look of rage or threat. It was simply a pleading look. Shiv was tired. Merrielmel was clearly unbalanced.

And by this point, from what Shiv could tell, Merrielmel was also at least a part-time drug mover, if not a drug grower. Still might not be enough reason for an orc to kill him, but he definitely wasn't clean. Especially not with all the other ugly history evident between Merrielmel and Irons.

"Oh, gods," Adam said, pinching his nose. "Was this happening the entire time?"

"A question I share, Young Lord Arrow," Irons growled.

Tequila let out a low moan of frustration as he stepped back from Merrielmel. "That's right, you!" he shouted in faux outrage.

Shiv immediately seized the elf by two tassels and began pulling him away from Tequila. "Merrielmel," Shiv said under his breath. His voice was cold, but he needed to make a few things known. "Listen. Listen really, really carefully. I'm not threatening you right now. I'm just letting you know that the only reason those orcs are not flaying your skin off to make new shoes or pants for themselves is because I'm here. I'm their Insul. Additionally, the only reason I haven't just left or smashed this place is because we need each other, and I need your help."

He pulled out the two halves of his broken mask. "You're going to fix this, you and whoever else you're working with. I need that done as soon as possible, and I need you to show me whatever Outside-shifting item you're trying to build. We need to get this done and finished as soon as possible so we can get out of each other's hair."

The Deathless's grip tightened, and he pulled Merrielmel in closer. "Because I don't think we're going to like spending time with each other. Again, this isn't a threat. I'm just guessing from how I feel right now. You seem like a nervous man, Hero-Enchanter. I'm not a nervous man. I try to be decent, but sometimes, when the situation really, really pushes me here, I get kind of violent. Don't let me get violent."

Merrielmel stuttered for a few moments before he quickly nodded. "Of course, but wait, let me see that." He reached out and snatched the two pieces from Shiv's hand. Immediately, he placed them together, and he narrowed his eyes. "This? This is a Heroic-Tier piece. Perfect semblance. Very, very remarkable. Wait, did someone build this for you? No, no, it's too, too convenient. I haven't seen a Perfect Semblance enchantment naturally created in the past, I don't know, 100 years? 120? Perhaps. That's hard to tell. Need to wait for Concelhaunt to get here, get here. And then—"

"Get here and what?" a loud, booming voice sounded. And from the direction of said voice, a stout-looking man approached, but not an ordinary person. Instead, it appeared to be a goblin piloting what looked to be the chassis of an automaton. Hissing steam sprayed out from its sides, and the chrome-colored machinery of the chassis sang with every step. It resembled a skeleton wrapped in interlocking rings, and on its hip swayed a large hammer, while there was an anvil magnetized to its back.

"So these are our volunteers? Holy fuck!" Hero-Smith Concelhaunt cried aloud. "Irons, what the fuck are you doing here?"

"Being disappointed," Irons muttered coolly. "Him, I understand. You. Why?"

"Ah." Concelhaunt swallowed. "Well. Uh. Oh, shit, Adam! You're here too."

The Gate Lord just folded his arms. "Hero-Professor. Funny meeting you here. How's your daughter? Does she know about this?"

"Yeah. Funny." Concelhaunt sighed. "Fuck. Uh. Merri. Show me that there, uh, mask thing. Say we need to fix that first, right? So, uh, let's do that first."

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