Chapter 373 - 28: The School Goes Quiet

Chapter 373: Chapter 28: The School Goes Quiet

Rylan sat down on the grass in the east courtyard with the other twenty B-Rank students and waited for Instructor Hale.

It was Day Four. The sun was out. The grass felt warm under his legs. Everyone had already crossed their legs and half-closed their eyes, ready for another morning lecture and demonstration of soul integration. Rylan could feel his tortoise soul sitting heavy and calm in the middle of his chest. It always felt like that now. He liked it. It was steady. Reliable.

But Hale was late.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. Students started glancing at each other.

A girl near the front opened one eye and whispered, "Where is he? He’s never late."

"Maybe he’s sick," a boy said.

"Instructors don’t get sick."

"Everyone gets sick."

"Not Martial Masters."

"How are you so sure, maybe its a Martial Master level Virus that got him sick."

Everybody just ignored the dumb boy.

After fifteen minutes, a different instructor walked across the courtyard. She looked tired. Her hair was tied back in a messy knot, and she carried a datapad under one arm. She stopped in front of the group and seemed a little surprised by how many of them were still waiting.

"I’m Instructor Pell," she said. "Instructor Hale has been called away. I’ll cover today."

"Called away where?" the girl asked.

"I don’t know."

"For how long?"

"I don’t know that either." Pell rubbed her eyes. "Let’s just start. Breathe in through the nose. Slowly."

She ran the session in a hurry. Hale always walked between the rows, checking posture, tapping someone’s shoulder, correcting a small mistake. Pell just stood in one spot and checked her datapad every couple of minutes. When the hour was up she said, "That’s all," and left without another word.

Rylan watched her go and frowned.

That’s weird.

The next morning, nobody came at all.

The students sat in the courtyard for twenty minutes. Someone laughed nervously and stood up. Then another one did. By the half-hour mark the courtyard was empty except for Rylan, who stayed on the grass a little longer, trying to feel his soul settle by himself.

It didn’t work very well. He gave up and went to find something to eat.

On the way to the cafeteria, Rylan took out his terminal and looked at his messages.

He had sent Ash three of them in the last three days.

Day two.

Hale gave us a whole lecture on breathing. Wish you were here to be bored with me.

Day three.

Did you eat?

Day four.

Hale’s gone. Nobody knows where. Something weird is happening in this school.

There were no replies. He hadn’t really expected any. Ash had told him straight out that he’d be busy for a month, and Rylan had said fine. He understood. He just hadn’t known it would feel like this.

The truth was, it was quiet without him. It had only been four days, but Rylan kept noticing small things. He kept looking at the doorway of the cafeteria. He kept starting to turn and say something, then remembering there was no one there. Ash was the one who laughed at his stupid jokes. Ash was the one who made him feel like being a B-Rank wasn’t a big deal.

He got his tray and went to their usual table by the east window. Out of habit he put his bag on the seat across from him to save it.

Then he stopped and looked at it.

"Right," he said quietly.

He moved the bag to the floor and sat down alone.

The cafeteria was louder than usual. It took him a minute to understand why. It wasn’t that there were more people. It was that almost nobody was working. Half the tables near the windows were full of students who should have been in class.

The instructors who usually sat in the back drinking tea and grading homework were gone. Only a handful were left, and all of them looked tired.

And everyone was talking about it.

"It’s probably the trial exam," a boy at the next table said. He sounded very sure of himself. "They’re building a harder one for the new students. That’s why they’re all gone. They’re setting it up."

"For all of them? Every instructor?" the girl across from him asked.

"It’s a big exam."

"That’s stupid. They’d never pull everyone for an exam."

"Okay, then what’s your idea?"

"My cousin works in the logistics office," a third student cut in. He leaned forward and dropped his voice. "He says they’re terraforming a moon."

The whole table went quiet.

"A moon?"

"A moon. The Assessment battle is going to be held on it. That’s why they need so many instructors. It takes Martial Masters to reshape a whole moon."

"That’s insane. Why would they do that?"

"Because it’s the Genesis Apex Assessment. They want it big."

There was a short pause, then somebody laughed. "Okay, but where do I sign up for that?"

The table broke into arguing. Rylan listened for a minute and picked at his rice.

He didn’t believe the moon story. It sounded like something someone made up in a cafeteria. The exam story sounded a little better, but it still didn’t make sense. He had been at the academy for four years and had never once seen the instructors vanish for an exam. They stayed. They graded. They complained about it.

What he felt was something else. A small, cold feeling in the back of his mind. The kind he got when something was off and he couldn’t say exactly why.

Something’s wrong, he thought. I just don’t know what.

He finished his rice and told himself it was none of his business.

At the table behind him, a different conversation was going on.

Three first-years were sitting across from a senior in a black training uniform—a tall boy with a scar on his chin. His name was Joss, fifth year. The first-years had asked him for advice, and he’d been answering them patiently. He had been asked the same questions many times.

"I’ll be a Martial Master in four years," one of the first-years said. His name was Teo. He had clearly practiced saying it. "That’s the plan. I’ve already worked it out."

Joss smiled and put down his chopsticks.

"What’s your soul rank?"

"B."

"Good. That’s a solid start." Joss paused. "Can I tell you something? Nobody at this table is going to like it."

"Go ahead."

"Only a handful of each cohort ever reaches Martial Master. A handful. Out of hundreds of us. And you can’t graduate from Azure Cloud without getting there."

Teo laughed. "I thought everyone graduated."

"Everyone leaves," Joss said. "Most of us end up with a Martial Apprentice certificate and a decent job—mostly guarding portal sites or running supply lines. It’s honest work. But it’s not graduation. It’s just where you stop."

Nobody said anything. The girl next to Teo looked down at her hands.

"It’s not that they don’t try," Joss went on. His voice was gentle. "The jump from Apprentice to Master is huge. A Master can level a city. An Apprentice, even a good one, can level a few city blocks. Most people reach their limit and never cross over. I’m not telling you to give up. I’m telling you not to sleep on it."

"Have you made it?" Teo asked quietly.

"I’m a Martial Apprentice," Joss said. "Fifth year. Peak stage." He looked at the window. "I have until the end of next year to breakthrough."

The first-years stayed quiet for a long time after that.

Rylan had been listening to the whole thing without turning around. He looked down at his tray and thought about the number. A handful. Out of hundreds.

He was a B-Rank with a good, strong tortoise soul. In a year he’d probably be at the same stage as Joss if he worked hard. But a handful was a handful, and he didn’t know if he would be in it.

Then he thought about Ash.

Ash had been an E-Rank for exactly one day, and then something had happened that Rylan still didn’t fully understand. A vortex over the dorm. A face that changed overnight. A friend who locked himself in a room for a month and said he’d be fine.

If anyone from our year is going to be in that handful, Rylan thought, I know who it is.

He wasn’t jealous. He’d already decided that. But he was tired of sitting on the grass waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

"Okay," he said to himself. "No more waiting."

He pushed his tray away, stood up, and went outside.

He trained for three hours on the empty field, running forms and holding stances until his legs shook. He did it again the next day, and the day after that.

"Hey, Rylan."

It was the evening of Day Five. Rylan was sitting alone at his table again when a boy from his class came over and set down his tray. His name was Dara. He’d been in Rylan’s year since the beginning, and he always asked questions he already half-knew the answer to.

"Where’s your friend?" Dara asked. "The one with the face."

Rylan’s chopsticks stopped. "Ash?"

"Yeah. He was here on the first day, and everyone was looking at him. Now he’s gone. I haven’t seen him since." He tilted his head. "Is he okay?"

Rylan had been waiting for this question. He had practiced the answer.

"He’s sulking," he said. "About the E."

Dara raised an eyebrow. "He didn’t look sad."

"He’s good at hiding it."

"He looked happy."

"That’s how he hides it." Rylan took a bite of rice to keep his face busy. "He’s locked himself in his room. He says he needs time. I’m leaving him alone."

Dara looked at him for a long moment. Rylan kept chewing and kept his eyes on his tray.

"It’s not just that," Dara said. He lowered his voice, a little embarrassed. "He promised me some of his anime. He’s got a huge collection, and he said he’d lend me a few when he had time. I went to his dorm yesterday to ask. Nobody answered. I couldn’t find him anywhere."

Rylan swallowed his rice.

That was the part that bothered him. The Ash he knew had never broken a promise about his shows. He would have sent the whole folder the same night, with notes on which episodes to skip and which ones were worth the wait. He would have been happy to do it. Now he was locked in a room and hadn’t even thought about it.

He really has changed, Rylan thought. He doesn’t care about any of that right now.

"I’ll tell him," he said. "When he’s out. He’ll give you the whole collection. He just can’t right now."

"Thanks." Dara looked a little relieved. "Poor guy. Tell him hi from me."

"I will."

Dara went back to his table. Rylan let out a slow breath.

He felt a little bad about lying. It wasn’t a big lie. But Ash had asked him to keep it quiet, and he’d said he would, and he was going to. He thought about what Ash would say if he could see him now.

He’d say I was terrible at it.

Rylan smiled to himself and went back to his rice.

In the Cosmic Energy Distribution Office, it was night on the sixth day, and the junior technician had stopped counting how many hours he’d been awake.

He had gotten better at the job in the last few days. That was the strange part. At first it had been three people’s work for one person, and he’d been drowning. Now he knew the rhythm of it. He knew when the lines needed balancing, when the alerts would come in, and how to answer ten of them at once without losing track. He was good at it. It was just the same thing, over and over, with nobody to share it with.

He had slept in two-hour blocks on the floor behind the console. He ate food that came in on a delivery drone from the cafeteria and didn’t taste any of it.

There was a notice on the door. He had read it so many times he could have recited it from memory.

SEALED ORDER, COUNCIL AUTHORITY

All personnel of Martial Master rank and above are to report to the designated assembly point at once. Remaining staff will maintain essential services. This matter is not to be discussed.

That was all it said. It had been posted at the end of Day One and had not been updated.

He looked at it again, the way he did every few hours.

The AI had been on his mind a lot lately. The science department had posted a progress update three days earlier, which he’d found while digging through the office messages. AI Phase 3 testing: delayed. Lead personnel recalled. So the AI team had been pulled out too. Whatever had called away Marsh and Corwin and Hale had also called away the people who were supposed to replace him. Now the replacement was not going to come.

"Great," he said to the empty room. "Just great."

He went back to the console.

The line for Training Room Seven was the only thing on the screen that was interesting. It had changed again. Over the last two days the draw had gone up and up. It was now at seventy percent of the ceiling Marsh had set, and it was still rising. Every few hours it jumped, and every time it jumped, it stayed high.

He checked the reservoir. Ninety-one percent. It was fine. It was big enough to carry that kind of draw for weeks.

But he didn’t like the trend. He took out his comm and wrote a short message to Marsh.

Training Room Seven: draw at 70% of ceiling, rising. Reservoir stable. Requesting instructions.

He sent it. The comm blinked once and showed a gray line.

Message undelivered. Recipient out of range.

He tried again. Same result. He tried Corwin. The same.

He put the comm down a little harder than he meant to.

"Nobody’s taking messages," he muttered. "Of course they aren’t."

He thought about it for a minute. There wasn’t much to decide. The ceiling was Marsh’s call, not his. The draw was still below it. The reservoir was fine. If the student in that room reached the ceiling, the line would just cap. That wasn’t a crisis. It was a number on a screen.

He logged it in the shift record: Training Room Seven, 70% and rising. Reservoir stable. Flag for Supervisor on return.

Then he leaned back in his chair and looked at the notice on the door one more time.

He was a Martial Master. He could level a city. He had spent his whole career being trusted with things that mattered. And now he was sitting in an empty office, moving numbers around, and he had no idea what was going on.

Whatever it was, it was big enough to take every strong person he knew.

He turned back to the screen. Down the hall, the lights hummed. He kept them on.