Chương 44: “Bark to Class (4)”

Training Building Four was empty and dark, save for the low light of a few magic stones lighting the area, mounted along the walls. Cassia sat cross-legged at the center of the platform, eyes closed, hands resting on her knees. Her breathing was slow, and each exhale timed with the faint pulse of aura cycling through her body. Even after accepting a teaching position, she was still secondly a knight. It was already well into the evening.

She had told Celestia to come back tonight, and if that girl didn't snub her, then she was due any moment now. There were a few things Cassia wanted to address. The first was Celestia's entry into the Tower. Every student who enrolled in the combat elective had been inside the Tower at least once by now, and most of them had come back with the injuries to prove it. The second was the fight with Beatrice Hill. A mage with a bloodline trait, surrendering before throwing a single offensive spell.

That entire exchange still felt wrong with her. She intended to ask about both, to try and straighten up Celestia, out of respect for Duke Reingarde if nothing else.

'Or am I just jumping to conclusions again?' It was a fair question. When she had been in the Tower with her clan, this had been one of her weaknesses. She read situations quickly, acted on instinct, and was right often enough. But she'd get a hounding from her clan leader multiple times, telling her to stop acting so impulsively. If she had to evaluate herself honestly, she would say that she was a reckless person. Her appointment at the academy had come out of an agreement between her clan and Archmage Elena.

The details had been worked out: Clan Ouroboros would provide an experienced Tower climber as an instructor, and in return, they would receive Archmage Elena's help with healing on major injuries. One of the problems, though, was that there was no set curriculum. That much had been made apparent from the beginning. The academy's administration had no real framework for Tower-related instruction, which made sense, considering no one had established what the standards should be.

So, the combat elective was left largely to the professors to teach as they saw fit. And the truth of it was that professors could only do so much. The Tower was a fickle thing. Cassia could teach them many things like aura basics, combat training, and who to look out for. But once a student stepped through the Tower's entrance, it was a free-for-all on most floors. At the very least, their true purpose here was babysitting.

Guiding a few hundred late-teens in the right direction, general support with the basics, and then hoping for the best. Cassia exhaled, letting a stream of aura flow in her body. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound of footsteps coming from the far of the building broke her concentration. Cassia opened her eye. The figure that walked through the doors of Training Building Four did not look like someone coming to a sparring session. Celestia von Reingarde had changed her look since this afternoon.

Gone was the academy's standard combat uniform. In its place, she wore a full dress-armor set; the fitted dark material clung to her frame, accented with reinforced plating along the arms and torso, but the cut and tailoring were unmistakably fashionable. It looked like something a noble would commission for a portrait.

'Celestia von Reingarde,' Cassia thought, watching her approaching.

'Even now you still hold onto that vanity of yours.' Celestia stopped at the edge of the platform and looked up at Cassia. The girl seemed to already know why she had been called here. That was right, Cassia had not been satisfied with Celestia. The other students, as lackluster as most of them were, at least carried something with them. A determination, however small, to be better. They came to class bruised and broken from the Tower and still showed that resolve required of a climber.

However, Celestia had shown none of that. But for some reason, looking at Celestia's eyes right now, Cassia saw something different. There was a sharpness there that hadn't been present this afternoon. A focus. A hunger, even, sitting behind those crimson eyes in a way that was very unlike the half-lidded boredom Celestia had displayed earlier.

'Hmm?' Cassia uncrossed her legs and rose to her feet.

'Did something happen in such a short span of time?' She stretched her arms, and used aura to pull a wooden sword towards her.

'Fine. I'll play along.'

"Attack when you're ready." *"What dost thou live for? What is thy noble purpose in this world?" Sir Ozy's words sat in her head as Celestia stared at the wall of her dormitory room. In her previous life, the answer had been spite. She had grown a company to spite at her parents. She had turned their indifference into fuel, grinding through business school and boardrooms and networking galas to become someone they couldn't ignore.

She had smiled at every suitor her parents would have approved of, and gave hope when she entertained every connection they would have killed for. When her parents had finally come crawling back, her mother holding her hand and saying she always knew her daughter would do something remarkable. She had lived to get back at them. To get back at the world that only lived through money, and discarded people when they couldn't offer anything. But here, in this world, spite wasn't enough to keep her alive.

She had grounded herself into something simpler. Survival, no matter the stakes, no matter what it cost, she would survive. That was the rule she had set for herself the moment the System had threatened to erase her existence. That was why she had killed those men. Even the third prisoner, the debt-slave who had done nothing wrong. That dark thrill, that brief and shameful rush of power when the spear had gone in…

Her own moral compass, already weakened by knowing what the future held, had offered no resistance when Celestia's personality bled through. This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

'Was there a need to do that?' She didn't have an answer. She had told herself it was necessary. And now, she wasn't sure anymore. Celestia closed her eyes. The genuinity she had longed for, she had only just begun to understand what it meant to create something real. For the first time, it hadn't been about proving anything to anyone. And then she had died before she could see finally see all of her accomplishments come to fruition.

Here, in this life, the only moments she had truly felt alive were times when she took a risk. The stakes were her body and her life. And it enthralled her. The moments where a single mistake meant death… she had felt more during that time in the Tower than in twenty-six years of her old life. She pulled up her Status Window. Story Relevance: 27/100 Story Relevance. Her existence, reduced to a number. She stared at it and thought about something she wasn't ready to put into words yet. She dismissed the window.

There were things to do tonight. Cassia Flamesy, the woman the Tower had given the title of"The Mage Killer," was not someone who liked talking through words. Whatever the professor wanted to discuss, it was likely going to be settled on the platform. She stood from the bed. Martha had kept spare sets of her dress-armor in the dormitory room, and Celestia changed into it now. She also retrieved her spear and hung it on her back. Sir Ozy was still in his carrier, having fallen back asleep after his speech.

Celestia had wanted to ask him more, to press him on how he knew about her first life, about what he had meant. But the pug had simply yawned, curled into a ball, and refused to answer another word. She picked up the carrier and walked next door to Anna's room. The girl answered with her usual startled expression, and Celestia placed the carrier into her hands.

"Watch him for me. I'll be back later."

"Huh…? Celestia?" Anna looked down at the sleeping pug, then back up at Celestia, but Celestia had already turned and was walking down the hallway. The night air outside was cool. The path from the dormitory to Training Building Four was mostly empty at this hour, and her legs felt lighter today. The peaceful academy grounds was dark and quiet around her, the distant outline of the mage towers visible against the night sky. She kept thinking about Sir Ozy's question as she walked. A farmer, he had said.

A farmer who tended his land was no less noble than one who ruled kingdoms. He rose before the sun, toiled until it set, and guarded the soil that fed his people. Purpose made the noble, not title or blood. —'What dost thou live for?' Spite. Survival. The thrill of risk. The desire to build something genuine. Each answer felt partially true and partially incomplete. She mulled them over in her head as she walked, and none of them reached to a proper conclusion.

She reached Training Building Four and pushed open the doors. The interior was dim, lit only by a few magic stones along the walls. Cassia was already there, sitting on the floor at the center of the platform. Even now, still in front of the red-haired woman, she was still stuck in her thoughts.

"Attack when you're ready." Celestia moved and quickly closed the distance, driving the spear forward and aiming for Cassia's torso. The thrust was fast and carried the weight of her body behind it. However, Cassia's wooden sword came up. It was a simple movement, barely more than a tilt of the wrist, and the flat of the blade caught the spear's shaft just behind the blade.

Aura reinforced the wood as the spear was deflected to the side with a sharp crack, and Celestia's momentum carried her half a step past where she'd intended to stop. She reset and thrust again. Lower this time, targeting the ribs. Parried. Same motion, same ease. Again. High, toward the collarbone. Parried. Each thrust came faster than the last. Celestia cycled through everything Jade had drilled into her, adjusting her grip and her footing between each strike.

She aimed for the gaps, the openings that should have existed between Cassia's guard and her body. The spear tip snapped toward the hip, then the throat, then low toward the thigh. But the wooden sword was always there, arriving before the spear did, parrying her attack aside with the minimum effort required. Cassia's expression hadn't changed. If anything, she looked less interested than when they had started. Her single eye tracked the spear with a calm that made it clear she could do this all night.

'She's not even trying.' Celestia pulled the spear back and reset her stance. Her breathing was heavier now, but Cassia's was the same as when they started. Spearmanship had three basic core movements. Obstructing, parrying, and stabbing. These were the foundations that every spear user learned first, and for most, they were also the last. The weapon's length was its advantage and its limitation. At range, the spear controlled the space. Up close, it became awkward, slow to reposition and easy to get inside of.

That was why Jade had also taught her beyond the basics. At the office, Jade had worked with Celestia to develop transitions between each one, ways to chain an obstruction into a stab, or turn a failed parry into a close-range option. The spear was not only a ranged weapon if the wielder was willing to abandon its range. Celestia thrust again. The spear shot forward toward Cassia's torso again, slower than her previous attempts. Cassia's sword moved to parry, and this time, Celestia didn't pull back.

Instead of retreating after the deflection, she stepped forward. Deeper into Cassia's space, past the effective range of her own weapon. Celestia released the spear entirely, and in the same motion, her open left palm shot forward and struck Cassia square in the sternum. A jolt crossed Cassia's face and her eye widened a fraction. For the first time since the spar had started, the professor had been surprised. The moment lasted less than a second.

Cassia's leg came up because her body simply reacted, the reflexes of a titled Tower climber overriding whatever she actually wanted to do, and her boot slammed into Celestia and sent her flying backward. Celestia hit the platform several paces back, landing hard on her side. The stone scraped against the plating on her arm as she skidded across the surface, her spear clattering away from her hand. She slid for another half-pace before friction brought her to a stop. The air had been driven out of her lungs.

She lay on her side for a moment, chest locked, trying to force her lungs to work again. Cassia walked toward her. Her wooden sword loose on her hand, and she looked down at Celestia with an expression that was difficult to read.

"I might've pushed that a bit too—" From the ground, still on her side, Celestia swung her leg in a low arc aimed at Cassia's ankles. Her shin connected with Cassia's leg and stopped dead in its tracks. Pain shot up from the point of contact, racing from her ankle to her knee. It was the same sensation as kicking a stone pillar. Cassia's leg hadn't even budged a tiny bit. The woman's body was passively reinforced with aura so much that Celestia's sweep had accomplished nothing except hurting herself.

'This is the difference between a title holder and someone like me.' Celestia didn't say it was unfair. After all, there was no point in that. Cassia Flamesy had earned this strength through years of training, fighting, and then climbing the Tower. Celestia did not see this as a setback, she pushed herself up from the platform floor. Her side ached from the landing, her shin throbbed from the failed sweep, and her lungs still hadn't fully recovered from the kick.

She stood anyway, picking up her spear from where it had landed close to her. Cassia watched her. The professor's expression had changed again, the disappointment from earlier was gone. Celestia planted the butt of the spear against the floor and straightened her posture. She smiled. A world that rewarded effort. A world where the gap between her and someone like Cassia could be closed through training, through climbing, through surviving one floor after another. Ah, how nice it was.