Chương 450: Chapter 433 - A Stranger in Venettia

Several days in the airship had given way to a long journey through a complex underground network, tunnel after tunnel for what felt like forever. Virgilia had moved through it all without hesitation, every turn chosen without pause. Alonso had followed in silence, both a blur through the narrow corridors, until, finally… the scenery changed. Raw stone gave way to worked panelling, the lighting warmer and more refined, and then... windows.

Tall and narrow, framed in dark metal, daylight bleeding through the glass in long golden shafts that suggested late afternoon. Virgilia stopped and turned, that particular smile already in place. She sent him a pulse. Alonso frowned as it landed... then frowned harder as he actually processed it. Structure, vocabulary, grammar, tonal registers. A dictionary. And it seemed quite similar to Italian, even if not quite. He looked up at her, genuinely thrown.

She held his gaze with a smile, clearly enjoying every moment of it, and before he could even form a question sent a second pulse." Welcome to Venettia, Mister Ardighieri." He almost laughed. Based on Venice? Really? Well... he should have probably seen it coming based on the surname. His gaze swept the interior briefly, taking in the aesthetics, which gave off a distinctly noble air somewhere in the Early Renaissance, before he turned to find Virgilia already moving toward the door."

Avoid looking like a foreigner. Keep to yourself, and follow me casually." And then, without waiting for an answer, she opened it. The light hit him like a curtain pulled back on a painting he had no frame of reference for. Venettia spread before him along a web of dark canals, its buildings rising in dense rows of terracotta and pale stone, their facades carved from foundation to roofline in figures and flowing geometric patterns.

Every archway, every balcony railing, every window frame carried the same extraordinary attention... as though no surface had ever been considered truly finished. EM current ran quiet and subtle through the stonework, making the carvings shift almost imperceptibly in the light, like the city itself was breathing. Gondolas moved through the waterways below, longer and broader than anything from Earth, their canopies draped in deep reds and gold.

Above the rooflines, larger vessels drifted without sound, hulls etched with glowing conductive lines that pulsed slowly and threw soft light across the facades below. Between the buildings, holograms bloomed at intervals, some carrying flowing script, others pure art, shifting arrangements of light and geometry that moved with the quiet patience of something built purely to be watched. The streets alongside the canals were full of people in the kind of dress that belonged to an older world...

layered fabrics, deep colours, structured doublets and long cloaks that moved with a weight and richness that spoke of craft rather than convenience. Feathered caps, embroidered collars, gloves of fine leather in burgundy and black. The kind of fashion that took itself seriously and expected the same in return. Alonso walked, trying to look casual about it, but couldn't help stealing glances here and there as he took the magnificent sights in. It really looked like a sort of sci-fi meets Renaissance Venice...

and he was honestly astonished by how packed it was. He had formed the impression that this world's population didn't quite match its size, but that was clearly a very biased assumption based on the handful of border villages and towns he had seen. This… this was a truly massive, central city, even from the little he could tell so far.

Tall buildings rose around him that felt like Renaissance-era versions of modern skyscrapers, their stone faces carved all the way up, balconies stacked above balconies as far as the eye could go. Easily more than ten thousand people in a single frame, moving in every direction and at every level. Some flew overhead with casual ease. Others drifted slowly above the canal traffic, trailing faint wisps of smoke from long pipes and slim cigarettes, perfectly unhurried.

And on one of the descending stone stairways nearby, steps that magnetised smoothly to meet each person's foot as they came down, a figure in a deep green cloak descended with extraordinary composure... holding, with complete seriousness, what was very much a fluffy pink cat. As for the power levels, even if he could not possibly check them all, they ran considerably higher than anything he had seen in Riviera... with almost everyone above 20%, as if that was simply the standard for living here.

Alonso felt like a country bumpkin right now, in all seriousness, even if he didn't let that show in the precise steadiness of his every stride as he followed Virgilia through the crowds, both masking their presences as they went, moving like shadows most wouldn't think to notice. It took several minutes before Virgilia stopped, her gaze lifting toward the grand structure before them. Alonso followed it upward... and kept going.

The building rose above the surrounding cityscape like something that had decided the rest of Venettia's architecture was a good start but hadn't quite committed. A broad stone facade of pale cream and deep grey stretched across an entire canal-front block, its surface carved in continuous relief from the ground to the very top, figures and scenes layered in extraordinary depth.

Tall arched windows ran in perfect symmetry across every floor, each one framed by columns of dark stone etched with fine geometric patterns that caught the afternoon light and held it. Wide stone steps led up from the canal-level street to a set of entrance doors that could have comfortably accommodated a small army walking in side by side, their surfaces panelled in dark wood and inlaid with conductive copper tracery that pulsed with a faint, steady glow.

Above the doors, carved deep into a broad lintel of pale stone in lettering that meant business, the name of the institution presented itself with the particular confidence of something that had never needed to advertise. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. L'Accademia de l'Arte Letale And beneath it, in smaller but no less precise script, a line that read like a founding principle rather than a subtitle.

"L'arte più alta no lassa tela." Alonso observed it with a mix of mild amusement and genuine amazement. The fact that such a grand, central structure was literally called what translated as "The Academy of the Lethal Art" said a lot about this world... and yet, thinking about it more carefully, it made complete sense. Here, killing was the path to power and combat defined your standing in society. For it to be embraced as an art form felt uncannily fitting."

By the way,"Virgilia sent, that particular amusement of hers threading through every word," your esteemed 'father' is the Rettore of this Academy." She glanced back at him with a grin." Let's get the family reunion sorted, shall we." Alonso nodded, and followed her in. The interior hit him with a wave of noise and colour that he hadn't quite expected after the composed grandeur of the facade.

The entrance hall opened into a vast atrium that climbed several floors above them, each level ringed by open walkways looking down onto the floor below, the whole space alive with movement. Students everywhere, dozens of conversations running at once. What caught his eye first was the uniform.

Every student wore a variation of the same base... dark fitted trousers and a structured jacket of deep charcoal, close cut and precise, but from there each one diverged. A single cape draped from one shoulder only, never both, its colour the immediate marker of whatever rank or discipline the wearer belonged to. Most wore grey, a solid and common shade that dominated the crowd. A fair number carried blue, cooler and sharper, standing with a slightly different ease than the grey.

A smaller cluster moved in green, fewer still in red, and here and there, cutting through the crowd like punctuation, the occasional deep purple that drew the eye without trying to. On the opposite shoulder from the cape, a metallic pad caught the light as they moved, its finish matching the cape's colour, shaped with enough asymmetric angles to look like it belonged to the fashion as much as any function.

It gave the whole crowd a strangely beautiful patchwork quality, like a painting that hadn't decided on a single palette. Alonso felt a faint, almost nostalgic pull of something familiar... the noise, the movement, the loose clusters of youngsters deep in conversation while going absolutely nowhere in particular. It had the unmistakable rhythm of the university life he knew so well from Earth. Now, well...

whatever the 'assassin school' version of it was, give or take the fact that roughly half the students here carried a killing intent they hadn't quite managed to fully conceal, sitting just below the surface of their casual postures. Not hostile, or directed at anyone in particular... just present, like they wore it to sharpen themselves, like sheathed blades. The SP values were also ridiculously high, the lowest sitting at 35% and the highest matching his own at 48%.

Though he had a hunch most of those weren't values particularly earned... more likely spoiled noble kids with families wealthy enough to buy their orbs, which arguably made even those at 48% considerably weaker than old Gregor at 45%. He avoided looking around too openly, relying instead on his sensory perception and peripheral vision, while outwardly maintaining a cold, hardened gaze as he walked calmly behind Virgilia."

Some heads up on your old man," Virgilia sent him several pulses without breaking her stride as she leapt toward some floating boards that arranged themselves like stairs beneath her." Vittorio Ardighieri, current Rettore of the Academy, former Shadow Reaper of The Black Mantle. A man of... remarkable appetites, shall we say, and even more remarkable standards for acknowledging the results of them. Countless bastards scattered across the world, not one of them worth his attention unless they return a Grandmaster...

which only two so far have managed.

"A brief pause that carried its own particular amusement." You would be playing the role of the third." Alonso frowned inwardly, unfamiliar with the term, when Houston's voice came through quietly." According to the database Pablo sent us, Grandmaster is what you would call in your own words: the perfect fighter. The realm just below Domain/Sovereign level in this world." Alonso nodded inwardly. That was quite the standard to claim.

He would dare say that except for himself, who had recently surpassed it, none of the other Climbers were anywhere close to being a Grandmaster... not even Ayu or Leonie. He also found it an excellent cover story.

It would explain both how someone of his ability had appeared out of nowhere, and provide a solid enough ancestry... as long as the mask did its job." Which it will,"Houston commented." I analysed that mask more carefully over the last few days and I will admit that whoever designed it has to be a peak Fifth Pillar State genius at the very minimum. I won't throw you the full breakdown, just know... it works."

They kept moving through the grand corridors, and Alonso found himself drawn toward the sound of lectures drifting from the open doorways as they passed.

"... at a certain stage of progression, every individual converges to a singular fatal point: the brain's core. Every other form of damage, given the appropriate means, can be healed, and that..."

"... even if high-State Pillar practitioners can survive with nothing but their brain intact, that does not make destroying their body a pointless exercise. Each of their States is built upon pathways that use the bio-reserves of their physical structure as..."

"... and this brings me to a point I find myself repeating every semester. Clean cuts are not inherently superior strikes with bladed weapons. That assumption holds only in the specific case where…"

"… I would recommend the application of Will-based techniques such as Echo Whiplash to dramatically expand the area of destruction, or the considered use of blunt force that..." Alonso was genuinely surprised by some of the content he caught. The comprehension on display, of the Pillar, pathways, energy flow, muscle memory, layering intent, and countless other variables, approached from entirely different angles, made it abundantly clear this institution was not a joke.

Even he was picking up new things, particularly around Fifth State mechanics, and how Fusion practitioners magnetised their own severed body parts allowing them to quickly recover from clean cuts... a refined and superior version of what the Seven-tailed had done, now being laid out in academic terms in a corridor he was casually passing through on his way to meet a fake father. All in all... this was serious. The standards of this world were high.

Even from his standing as a Sovereign in terms of combat understanding, he could now see, in what was possibly one of the main hubs of knowledge on this massive planet, how the strong were built. It was truly impressive. Like that, his mind absorbing what it found relevant and passing the rest quietly to Houston, they kept moving until the corridors grew noticeably quieter and considerably more refined in their presentation.

The stonework grew finer, the lighting warmer, a rich burgundy carpet running the full length of the passage. Portraits of former Rettori lined both sides, large and serious compositions in dark oils, each one beneath a small carved plaque bearing nothing but a name and two dates. Between them, relief panels depicted what Alonso assumed were important moments from the Academy's history... duels frozen at their decisive instant, the craftsmanship the kind that made you slow your pace without meaning to.

At the far end, a single door of dark wood sat framed by two columns of pale carved stone, a name cut deep into the lintel above it. Vittorio Ardighieri Rettore de l'Accademia de l'Arte Letale