Chapter 75: Down in the trenches

The weekend dragged. With nothing to do until Abby sat down with the Red Dragon clerk on Monday, Rain killed the hours however he could. He hit the heavy bags in the dorms gym until his knuckles went raw under the wraps, ran the perimeter track twice a day, and answered Peter’s texts with short replies that said more or less the same thing every time.

**Peter:** Anything?

**Rain:** Not yet. Monday.

**Peter:** What if she says no

**Rain:** Then she says no. Go to sleep.

He checked his phone more than he wanted to admit. Abby’s last message sat at the top of the thread from Friday night, a thumbs-up and nothing after it.

Monday morning, he was out on the track before the dorm lights came on. A hundred push-ups on the wet grass, a hundred sit-ups, a hundred squats, then five kilometers around the outer loop while the sky went from black to grey. The notification came up as he slowed to a walk on the last stretch.

[Daily Quest: Complete!]

[Rewards Applied: +1 Strength, +1 Endurance]

He sat down on the bottom step of the bleachers, still breathing hard, and pulled up his status panel.

[STAT PANEL]

Name: Rain

Level: 12

XP: 786 / 1,100

HP: 160 / 160

Mana: 20 / 20

[Attributes]

Strength: 35

Agility: 20

Endurance: 33

Intelligence: 25

[Available Gear]

Hardened Ridgeback Plate Vambrace: +3 Defense (Forearm Contact Only)

Bonewretch-Bone Reinforced Blade: +4 Physical Damage (Melee, Scaling with Strength)

[Bound Skills]

Flash Step: Zero Drag (Rank SSS): Slot 1

[Empty]: Slot 2

Synthesis Credits: 327

’Thirty-five,’ Rain thought. ’Good. Shame nobody at this school grades on that.’

He showered, pulled on his black hoodie, grabbed his notebook, and headed for morning classes.

---

By ten, he was in the third row of the Monster Anatomy hall.

Miss Ebony stood at the front beside a glass case holding a preserved monster core, a fist-sized lump the color of old bruises. A diagram rotated in the air above her desk, showing the core’s layers peeled back one at a time.

"A core is not a battery," she said. "It feeds the body around it. The more damage a creature takes, the harder the core works to keep it standing. Which is why a wounded monster is often more dangerous than a fresh one, and why a hunter who thinks the fight is over because the blood is out is usually the one who gets carried home."

A few people laughed. Rain wrote it down.

He thought about the flooded basin, about the Husk Regent getting hit and hit and still coming. At the time he’d thought it was just too big to fall. Watching the diagram turn, he could see the reason laid out in layers. He underlined the line twice.

The bell went at the end of the hour. Chairs scraped, notebooks closed, and Ebony picked up her case and left through the side door.

Instructor Delacroix came in through the main doors before half the room was on its feet. She had on her ivory-white blazer, her dark hair was pulled back tight, and her gold-rimmed badge sat on her lapel. She set a slim silver tablet on the podium and tapped it twice.

"Sit down, please."

People sat. Somebody near the back dropped a pen and left it.

"Mid-month CP standings were processed this morning," Delacroix said. "You can view your own breakdown on your terminals or your phones. Go ahead."

Fifty phones and terminals came out at once. The room went quiet, then it got loud in small pockets: a groan from the left side, somebody laughing in a way that had nothing funny in it, a girl in the second row saying "No, no, no" under her breath and scrolling as if the number might change.

Rain left his phone in his pocket for the moment and watched Delacroix. She was gripping the edges of the podium.

"When I introduced Class Points," she said, "I told you this class could reach a five-hundred average by the end of the month. Five hundred unlocks the pooled reward. Stipends against your tuition. Priority placement during guild scouting." She tapped the tablet, and a projection lit up behind her. "This is where we are."

Three bars stood on the display. Class A sat at the top with 260. Class B was next at 210. Class C’s bar barely cleared the bottom third of the chart, at 150.

"Halfway through the month," Delacroix said. "One hundred and fifty. The historical average for a Class C homeroom is three hundred and forty. At this pace you will finish under it. Not under my target. Under the floor that every Class C before you managed to reach without trying."

"Does the floor come with a bonus too?" Quinn said from the back without sitting up.

Delacroix’s eyes went to him. Her smile stayed on, but her jaw set underneath it. "Quinn, if you’d like to discuss my contract, my office hours are posted. Until then, you can look at your own number. I’ve seen it. It isn’t helping."

A couple of people snickered. Quinn shrugged and slid lower in his seat.

Delacroix turned back to the projection. "Here is what should worry you. None of these numbers include Field Results yet. Nobody has any. This week, the field work submission window opens." She tapped the tablet, and a gold bar appeared beside the others, empty. "Six hundred points out of your thousand. Verified core submissions, official gate clears, recognized field achievements. And Class A is full of students with guild contracts and families who have been sending them into rifts since they could walk. When this window opens, their average stops being two-sixty."

The room went quiet again.

"Submissions count from three places," Delacroix went on. "A registered guild. A registered hunting party. Or a school-sanctioned expedition."

"So we can do expeditions?" a boy near the front asked.

"School-sanctioned expeditions are restricted to second-years who have passed field certification." She let that hang for a second. "None of you have."

The boy sat back. Around him, people started talking at once.

"So how are we supposed to..."

"My cousin’s in a party, maybe..."

"Would a Class A kid even take a class C along?"

"Can you just register a party yourself?"

Delacroix raised her hand until it quieted down. "You can register a party. Getting anything worth running without a sponsor is another matter. If you know someone in a registered guild or party who will take you, now would be the time to ask them."

She tapped the tablet again, and the gold bar disappeared.

"One more thing. Practical. Two hundred points. Instructor Tenski’s class covers sixty of those, and since that class is still on Stance, most of you are sitting near zero there." She glanced across the rows. "Coach-verified hours on an academy varsity roster also count toward Practical. If you’re on a team, make sure your coach submits your hours before Friday."

Rain’s head came up.

’Marsh.’

"That’s all," Delacroix said, picking up her tablet. "Fix these numbers."

---

Rain sat on a stone bench outside the East Annex and finally opened the student portal on his phone.

Cadet Profile: Rain

Total CP: 72

Practical: 8

Academic Theory: 64

Verified Field Results: 0

He read it twice.

’Seventy-two.’

The eight wasn’t a surprise. Tenski had kept them on Stance for three weeks, and Rain had been stuck there along with everyone else. The sixty-four was worse, because that one was his fault. He’d missed study blocks chasing rifts and money, and every one of those empty hours was sitting right there in the number.

’Miss Ebony said it on day one. Neglect the coursework and they move you down, whatever you’re doing on the side.’

He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

’If I end up under a hundred and fifty two months running, they open a review. Somebody starts asking where I go after class, why my schedule has holes in it. Soon they’d be asking how an F-rank keeps walking out of rifts.’ He thought about Flash Step. ’I can’t have anybody looking that close.’

He opened his messages.

**Rain:** We need regular study sessions. Theory. Tonight, library, seven?

**Peter:** wait are you serious

**Rain:** Very.

**Peter:** ok yeah. what brought this on

**Rain:** Checked my CP.

**Peter:** oh

**Peter:** yeah I checked mine too. I’ll bring my anatomy notes

**Peter:** did abby say anything yet

**Rain:** Not yet. Seven.

---

The practice field behind the East Annex was empty in the early afternoon. Rain found a patch of dirt near the old equipment sheds, set his bag down against the retaining wall, and dropped into his stance.

Feet shoulder-width apart, knees soft, hands up by his chin. It was the same position he’d held every class for three weeks.

He thought about what Abby had said on the train: he loaded his shoulders, and his hips stayed dead.

He shifted his weight, and this time, instead of pushing up through his chest, he turned his right hip in a couple of inches and let the movement start from his heel.

Something moved.

It was small. A warm thread pulled loose from somewhere under his sternum and slid downward, a few inches toward his belly, then spread out and faded before it got anywhere near his arm.

Rain stood very still.

He reset, breathed out, and ran it again. Heel, hip, then the rest. The warmth came a little faster this time and went a little further, down past his ribs, before it scattered.

’That’s new.’

He ran it ten more times. Most of the attempts gave him nothing at all. Twice, the thread came loose and dropped. It never reached his arm, but it moved, and in three weeks of holding Stance in Tenski’s class, nothing had moved once.

He grinned at the dirt.

’She was right. I’ve been doing it backwards the whole time.’

---

Powerball practice ran from three to five. The arena smelled of floor polish and sweat, and the iron core hit the boundary walls with a thud that echoed up into the rafters.

"Rain! Right wing!" Coach Marsh shouted from the sideline.

Rain jogged into position. When the core went live, Miller came across to cut him off. Rain dropped his weight, turned off his hip the way he’d been drilling all afternoon, slipped the check by half a step, and sent a long pass across the floor to Eren, who caught it in stride.

Marsh blew the whistle. "That’s it! That’s the transition I want!" He scribbled on his clipboard, then pointed the pen at Rain. "And you’re on my hours list this week. I’m sending them in Thursday."

"Thanks, Coach."

"Don’t thank me. Do it again."

Rain did it again.

---

He met Peter in the library at seven. They spent two hours at a corner table with Peter’s Monster Anatomy notes spread between them. Peter quizzed him on core layers until Rain could draw the diagram from memory, and Rain explained Ebony’s line about wounded monsters until Peter stopped looking confused and started looking a little sick.

"You’ve seen that," Peter said quietly. "A thing that kept coming."

"Once."

Peter looked at him for a second, then went back to his notes.

It was past nine when Rain walked back toward the C-dorms. The path was lit in orange patches by the lamps, and the air had turned cold enough that he pulled his hands into the pocket of his hoodie.

He took out his phone and opened the portal one more time.

Practical: 8, with Marsh’s hours still to come and Tenski’s evaluation somewhere ahead, now that his Stance had finally started to move. Theory: 64, with Peter and two hours a night to push it up.

Field: 0.

Six hundred points of ceiling, and every first-year in his homeroom was going to spend this week begging for a way in.

He checked his messages. Still nothing from Abby.

If her meeting went the right way, a registered independent party would be running a B-rank gate under its own license. That meant a payout big enough to make a real dent in Peter’s debt. It meant XP inside a rift that would make the Husk Regent look small. And it meant an official clear landing on the biggest track on the board, in the same week the rest of Class C was trying to beg a spot off anyone with a guild badge.

Rain put the phone away.

He smirked.

’Let’s see what the board says then.’