Chapter 107: Patience Has A Deadline

The lecture hall was built like an argument nobody had won.

Rows curving downward toward a central floor. Stone tiers. High windows. Everything arranged so that thirty-six people could look at one person, and that one person could look at all thirty-six without turning their head.

I sat in the third row.

Not the front.

Not the back.

The back had seemed suspicious.

Penelope sat beside me, which meant escape was now theoretical.

Roland dropped into the seat on my other side with far too much enthusiasm for a man who had lost an argument about eggs less than an hour ago.

"First class," he said.

"Yes."

"Excited?"

"No."

"You could pretend."

"I could."

I did not.

Around us, thirty-six people were doing the thing students do before a class they know nothing about. Guessing.

"Do we even know who’s teaching this?"

"Nobody said."

"They were supposed to introduce the professors at orientation."

"They were."

"Then the Hermit happened."

That ended the conversation, because there was nothing to add to it. An entire year of first-years had been dropped into an illusion before a single professor had been named. Whatever schedule Zenith had planned that day, the Mirage Hermit had walked straight through it.

So none of us knew any of them.

I found that mildly reassuring.

Strangers had lower expectations.

The door opened.

A woman walked in without announcing herself, which somehow made everyone quieter than a proper entrance would have. Red hair pulled back. Plain instructor’s coat. She set nothing on the desk. Carried no notes. Simply stopped at the center of the floor and looked up at us.

"My name is Selene," she said. "You were supposed to learn that yesterday."

A few students glanced at each other.

"You didn’t, because someone decided your first lesson should happen before your first introduction." Her tone didn’t change. "I’m told that was educational."

Roland made a small choking sound beside me.

"I teach core theory and core cultivation to first-years. For most of you, that means I will be the most irritating person in your life for the next several months."

Cedric raised a hand immediately.

Selene ignored it.

"Cores," she said.

The room settled.

"Every one of you has one. Every one of you has had one since you were ten." A pause. "And almost none of you have done anything meaningful with it."

Several students shifted.

"Before we discuss why, we’re going to make sure everyone in this room is using the same words. Some of you were taught by tutors. Some of you were taught by family. Some of you were taught by whoever happened to be nearby." Her eyes moved across the tiers. "Those are not the same education."

She raised one hand.

Mana gathered around her fingers. Not much. Just enough to see.

"Your core sits inside you. It holds mana and it decides how much you can hold. That is all it does. Everything else you do with magic depends on it, but the core itself is a container, not a weapon."

The light in her hand shifted, splitting into a small column of marks.

"Cores are ranked. F at the bottom. Then E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, and SSS at the top. Each rank holds significantly more than the one below it. Not slightly more. Significantly."

Someone near the front was writing this down.

"Each rank is also divided into three steps. Black is the lowest. Grey is the middle. White is the highest." She let the marks rotate slowly. "So a core at E-Black has just entered E rank. A core at E-White is at the top of E rank and close to becoming D-Black. Moving from White to the next rank’s Black is the hardest step. Most people take years."

She closed her hand and the light vanished.

"If someone tells you their core is D-Grey, you now know exactly what they mean. If they refuse to tell you, you also know what that means."

A few quiet laughs.

"Potential is different, and people confuse the two constantly." She held up two fingers. "Your core is where you are. Your potential is how far you can go and how fast you get there. Potential is fixed at Awakening. It does not improve. It does not decline. Someone with A potential and ten years of discipline will pass someone with S potential and none."

Her gaze moved across the room again, and I had the distinct impression she was looking at specific people without appearing to.

"That last sentence is going to matter to some of you more than you currently believe."

Cedric’s hand was still up.

Selene finally acknowledged it.

"Yes."

"Why couldn’t we train our cores before now? Is it because we’re not strong enough?"

"No."

"Is it because it’s dangerous?"

"Closer."

She lowered her hand.

"Your core forms at Awakening. Age ten. That part happens on its own. What does not happen on its own is the rest of you."

She began walking.

"Mana does not simply sit inside your core. It moves. Through channels. Through your body. Every time you circulate it, you push something through a structure that has to survive being used."

She stopped.

"At ten, that structure is not finished."

Somebody near the front made a sound like they’d just understood something unpleasant.

"Push mana through an unfinished body and it does not grow faster. It tears." Selene’s voice didn’t change at all. "Not visibly. Not immediately. You will not collapse. You will not bleed. You will simply damage something that cannot be repaired, and you will not find out until years later, when your core stops rising and never starts again."

Silence.

Real silence.

The kind that came from thirty-six people simultaneously recalculating their childhoods.

"How much damage?" someone asked.

"Permanent."

"How permanent?"

Selene looked toward the speaker.

"There is a man who works in the eastern supply district. He was tested at B potential. He is thirty-four years old and his core has been C rank for eleven years. It will be C rank when he dies." A pause. "He started at eleven. He was ambitious. He is now very good at inventory."

Nobody laughed.

Which was, I suspected, the point.

I found myself sitting slightly straighter, which was unusual, and mildly irritating.

Because I remembered.

***

Two years into training with him, somewhere between a book about bones and a run I hadn’t wanted to do, I had asked Master Valerian how to make my core grow faster.

He had put down whatever he was reading.

That should have been my first warning.

"Faster," he repeated.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Because I had a countdown sitting in a status window nobody else could see, and it did not care how young my body was.

I hadn’t said that.

"Efficiency," I’d said instead.

Valerian had looked at me for a long moment with those calm brown eyes that always seemed to be measuring something other than the thing I’d actually said.

"Only the academy can properly teach you about your core."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the answer you’re getting."

I had complained. At length. With supporting arguments.

He had let me finish, which was somehow worse than interrupting.

Then he’d said:

"You heal people."

"Yes."

"When a bone breaks and sets wrong, what do you do?"

"Break it again. Set it properly."

"And if it healed wrong ten years ago?"

I hadn’t answered.

Because the answer was that you didn’t. Not really. You worked around it. You managed it. You told the patient what they could no longer do.

Valerian had gone back to his book.

"Your body is currently setting," he’d said. "Don’t break it to save a year."

At the time I had considered this needlessly dramatic.

At the time I had also been thirteen and extremely confident.

***

"...Which brings us to where you actually are."

Selene’s voice pulled me back.

She had produced a measuring array from somewhere, a thin ring of light hovering above her palm, rotating slowly.

"Most of you are between E-Grey and E-White."

A ripple of reaction moved through the room.

Not surprise. Confirmation.

"That is correct. That is expected. That is, in fact, the entire point. Five years of not touching your core is not five years wasted. It is five years spent building something that can survive being used."

She looked up toward the tiers.

"There are exactly five students in this year who have already reached D-Black."

Every head in the room turned.

Some toward the front.

Most, unfortunately, toward the third row.

"Yes," Selene said. "Your class leaders."

Roland leaned toward me.

"That’s you."

"I’m aware."

"That’s actually you."

"Still aware."

I kept my expression neutral and my eyes forward, which required more effort than it should have.

D-Black.

One rank above nearly everyone else in the building.

Five ranks below where I needed to be, in four years and five months, according to a countdown only I could see.

[Your arithmetic is correct.]

’I didn’t ask.’

[You were about to.]

I had, in fact, been about to.

Selene continued as though thirty-six people hadn’t just spent several seconds staring at five specific students.

"Do not mistake that for a permanent advantage. They reached D-Black through five years of doing exactly what you did. Physical work. Attribute practice. Patience. The gap between you and them is not talent. It is time and consistency, and both of those are things you now have access to."

That was generous of her.

It was also, technically, untrue in my case, since a significant portion of my foundation had come from being dragged around a war zone by a man who thought sleep was optional.

But I appreciated the sentiment.

"Beginning this week," Selene said, "you will start structured core cultivation. Supervised. Measured. Slowly."

Cedric’s hand went up again.

"How slowly?"

"Slowly enough that you will hate it."

"How slowly is that?"

"Slower."

Somewhere behind me, Mira made the smallest sound of amusement, which from Mira was equivalent to applause.

Selene dismissed the array with a flick of her fingers.

"One more thing."

The room refocused.

"Every year, some of you will decide the pace is too cautious. That your situation is special. That the rules were written for people less capable than yourselves."

She let that sit.

"Those students are why we start with the man in the supply district."

Nobody moved.

"Class dismissed."

Chairs scraped. Conversation restarted immediately, louder than before, thirty-six people discovering they all had opinions about channel damage.

I remained seated slightly longer than necessary.

Penelope noticed, because Penelope always noticed.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"That was not a nothing face."

"It was a thinking face."

"Those are worse."

She wasn’t wrong.

Four years, five months.

D to SS.

While being told, in considerable and well-evidenced detail, that the single fastest way to permanently ruin my chances was to try to go faster.

Wonderful.

’System.’

[Yes.]

’You knew this already.’

[Yes.]

’You never mentioned it.’

[You never reached fifteen before.]

Which was, irritatingly, a valid defense.

I stood, tucked Dream Haven under my arm, and followed thirty-five people out of the lecture hall, into a corridor already full of students from four other classes discovering the same thing at slightly different volumes.

Somewhere ahead, Cedric was loudly explaining channel damage to someone who had been sitting in the same room the entire time.

Patience, apparently, was going to be the curriculum.

I had spent eons being patient.

Unfortunately, none of those eons had come with a deadline.