Chapter 365 - 20: Supervisor Marsh 2

Chapter 365: Chapter 20: Supervisor Marsh 2

Marsh’s eyes narrowed a fraction.

The boy had not dropped. He had not even taken a half-step back. Under a carefully measured thousandth of Marsh’s aura—enough to force most Rank 9 students to one knee—Ash Apeiron had simply stood there, breathing evenly, eyes slightly unfocused as if he were listening to something only he could hear.

Interesting.

Marsh withdrew the rest of the pressure at once. The test was over. He had seen what he needed to see. The soul was far stronger than the file suggested, and the body was already holding up far better than any E-Rank had a right to. There was no point continuing.

"Hm," Marsh said out loud, before he could stop himself. Then he looked directly at Ash and spoke in a calm, matter-of-fact tone.

"I was testing you just now. A small pressure, nothing more. We prefer to make sure we are giving the right resources to the right students."

Ash let his breath out slowly. His heart was still doing a little jog, and he told it firmly to calm down.

So that was a test.

He kept his face carefully neutral while his mind raced. What exactly was this man? He went through what he knew from the handbook and from the novels he had read.

A man who was basically a mountain that could crush a city sounded like a Martial Master. And since the weight had felt so settled and solid, maybe a peak Martial Master. But that was only a guess. He had nothing solid to check it against.

Still, the fact that Marsh had openly admitted the test made things simpler.

"I understand, sir," Ash said, keeping his voice polite and steady. "Thank you for checking."

Then another thought hit him.

Wait. This guy runs the energy office. He’s basically the school’s accountant.

A man who could level a city was handling the school’s energy supply. Which meant everyone above him was stronger.

Ash knew it, of course. He had just never thought about it properly before. Most of the teachers at Azure Cloud were Martial Masters. The ordinary instructors who handed out homework and graded forms were in the same realm as Marsh, or close to it. And a handful of senior instructors—the ones students only saw at major ceremonies—were Martial Grandmasters. A Grandmaster could destroy a whole country without breaking a sweat. They moved at speeds that made the speed of sound look slow, fast enough to fly around the entire planet in a few minutes if they wanted to.

That explained a lot. It explained why the academy had watched a student drain an entire dormitory and responded by calmly rerouting some power and sending one man with a datapad. To the people running this place, a hungry first-year was not a crisis. It was a small, interesting surprise.

It also meant Ash was still tiny. He had just built the best technique he had ever heard of, and he was still very, very small.

He waited for that realization to bother him.

It didn’t.

Something warm and stubborn lit up in his chest instead.

Good. More to climb.

"May I see your student ID card?" Marsh said.

Ash dug it out of his pocket and handed it over. He had carried the card for four years and had never looked at it properly. With his spiritual sense he could feel the thin silver array inside it—a tiny loop humming quietly in answer to the stitching on Marsh’s robe.

Marsh turned the card over once. "This morning’s matter has been noted."

"I’m sorry, sir?" Ash said, keeping his voice polite. "I don’t know what you mean. I was asleep."

Marsh gave him a flat, patient look. It was the look of a man who had spent thirty years listening to students lie and did not mind, exactly, but was not going to be fooled either.

"Mr. Apeiron. The roof tiles on this building were pulled into a spiral."

"...Ah," said Ash.

"Quite."

There was a short silence. Ash realized he was smiling. He had expected to feel scared and exposed. Instead he mostly felt relieved. Nobody seemed angry, and the worst part was already over.

"The Council is aware," Marsh continued. "Your name has been kept out of the bulletin, and it will stay out for as long as that remains useful. I would ask for your discretion in return." He tapped the card lightly against his fingers. "The western block was never built to feed a cultivator with your appetite. The reroute this morning was a stopgap. It cannot be repeated every day, and it should not have to be. I have been asked to arrange something better."

He pulled a slim silver rod from his sleeve, touched it to the datapad, and pressed the edge of Ash’s card against the screen.

The card lit up. Fine violet lines spread across its surface from the silver stripe, brightened for a moment, and then settled into a steady, soft glow. Ash felt something click into place inside the card’s array. A new channel had opened—a thin, strong one that did not connect to the dormitory grid at all. It ran straight down toward the main reservoir under the administrative tower.

"There." Marsh handed the card back. "That card will now open Training Room Seven, in the western annex behind the training field. It is a private room with enough floor space for a full technique, and an array line of its own, fed directly from the main reservoir and completely separate from the dormitory supply. You can cultivate there as much as you want without disturbing anyone."

The card felt slightly warm in Ash’s palm.

"It is yours through the settling week. After that, a booking schedule will apply, as with any other student, though I expect arrangements will be made after that depending on your performance during the trials.

The array’s supply input is monitored but not interfered with. I have set the ceiling on your line at a level I judged suitable for your..." He paused, clearly choosing his word with care. "Capacity."

"Thank you, sir," Ash said, and he meant it. "That’s really generous."

"It is practical. I would rather lose a room than a dormitory." Marsh closed the datapad and tucked it under his arm. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Elder Corwin sends his regards. He is looking forward to next month."

Ash blinked. "Elder Corwin?"

"You will meet him." That was the closest thing to a smile Marsh had shown all morning, and it was a very small one. "Good day, Mr. Apeiron."

He nodded—about two degrees—turned around, and walked off down the corridor.

Ash watched him go. Not with his eyes. He let his spiritual sense follow the man instead.

It was strange. Marsh made almost no sound when he walked. His boots did not scuff the floor. The air hardly moved around him. Students standing in their doorways straightened a little as he passed, nodded without quite looking at him, and let out small breaths once he was gone.

At the stairwell, Marsh turned the corner and started down. The weight of his presence grew smaller with every step, until it was only a single heavy point at the edge of Ash’s thirty-meter range, and then it was gone.

Ash stayed in the doorway, thinking.

Something was bothering him, and it took a full minute to figure out what. Marsh had never asked him a single question. Not about the pillar yesterday. Not about the drain this morning. Not about how a nobody E-Rank had suddenly turned into a walking vacuum. Ash had been braced for interrogation the entire time, and it never came. Marsh had simply fixed his card and left.

In every novel Ash had ever read, this was where things went wrong. Some elder would show up with a kind smile and a lot of questions. What happened at the pillar? What treasure did you find? Come with me, child, I will take you as my personal disciple. And the disciple would hand everything over, and the elder would walk off with the opportunity. There were whole series built around that exact betrayal. He had been waiting for the smile and the questions.

So why hadn’t Marsh asked?

He thought about it, leaning lightly on the doorframe, and the answer he came up with was a little humbling. He was still growing. He had a good soul and a rebuilt body, and he was nowhere near their level. To people like Marsh and Elder Corwin, he was a seed. You did not steal a seed. You waited and let it grow, and checked on it now and then.

Or they just don’t think I’m worth the trouble. Yet.

He decided that was fine. A small seed could grow quietly for a while, and he intended to make full use of the quiet.

"But they got one thing wrong, I am not a seed, I am the big bang." Ash said to himself.

Meanwhile, Marsh took the stairs slowly. He had learned years ago that moving at full speed in a dorm stairwell tended to break the stairwell.

He pulled out his personal comm and sent Elder Corwin a single line.

Confirmed. It’s him.

The reply came almost instantly.

Told you. You owe me that your special tea.

Marsh sighed and put the comm away.

He had gone in expecting an ant, and the ant had stood in front of a carefully squeezed-down thousandth of his aura and not flinched. A strong soul, then. A very strong one. But the boy’s body was still Rank 7 on paper, his energy was still a trickle compared to real power, and a thousandth of Marsh was a very small thing. Interesting, yes. Dangerous, no. Not yet.

A bigger ant than he had thought. Still an ant.

Next month, he thought, is going to be very interesting.

Back at his door, Ash looked down at the card in his hand. The violet glow was slowly fading into the ordinary white of the plastic.

He thought about the mountain. He thought about the people who stood above the mountain. He thought about how far away the top of the world still was, and how he could summon nine black holes any time he sat down and closed his eyes.

Then he thought about Training Room Seven. A private room, with its own dedicated array, pulling straight from the main reservoir, where nobody would complain about the noise or the pressure or the strange star-shaped diagrams that appeared in the air.

Ash grinned.

He slid the card into his pocket, grabbed his spatial pouch off the desk, and locked the door behind him.

He had a feeling he was going to like this room.