Darius opened the last file.
"Okay, to the last. And you did it, kid. You have no one above you to order you around. Rank 1: Roy Nasser."
Darius scanned the room and started gathering the ten files, stacking them. "Now that the ranks are settled, remember the reality of this. Rank isn't just a number on a paper. It is the law. You listen to those above you. That includes requisitions, seats, and respect. If you want a better life, earn a better rank. If you want to keep yours, don't get comfortable."
He slammed the stack of files onto the desk. With a single, sharp gesture, the documents shimmered with a faint violet aura and vanished, reappearing instantly on the desks of their respective owners.
"In each file, you will find a breakdown of your current standing: strength, speed, endurance, mana capacity, and more. Below that is your training schedule for the next month. It is not a suggestion. It is a mandate."
The room went silent as the students opened their files.
Omar stared at a page filled with red ink. Him being from the 'special three' meant his training load was double the normal, focusing on endurance and strength drills that looked like torture.
Jax's eyes widened at a list of mandatory five-mile runs and weighted cardio sessions. The "lazy" diagnosis was being treated with iron and sweat.
Vivienne and Dorian found their plans were polar opposites, designed to force them into individual competence rather than their usual "shield and sword" dynamic.
Roy flipped to the end of his file. His plan didn't just include his own drills. It included a detailed oversight log for every other student in the room with a short explanation about each training plan.
Darius cleared his throat, drawing their eyes back to the front. "Normally, I would be here to personally break you. But I have been summoned by the government. An 'urgent matter' that requires my presence."
He teleported to Roy, placing a heavy hand on the boy's shoulder. "Since I'll be gone starting tomorrow morning, Rank 1 will take my place. His words are my words. His orders are my orders. You will answer every question he asks and follow every instruction he gives. Understood?"
"Understood!" they shouted in unison, though the tension in the room was thick enough to cut.
"Good. I'll oversee the first day to set the pace. To the platform. Now."
"The training ground," Darius said, gesturing to the sprawling expanse of reinforced concrete. "You've seen it once. Today, you'll actually understand its full potential."
The training grounds were massive, designed with a strange blend of brutality and luxury. To the right, weapon carriers stood like silent sentinels, stocked with everything from weighted wooden practice swords to high-caliber firearms and obsidian-edged spears. It was a candy store for killers. That was the same as last time, but now beside the weapon carriers on both sides, there was a row of different training machines, robots, and combat dummies going from Model-1 to the newest Model-9, able to take half a ton of explosives without a scratch.
In jarring contrast, closer to the door they came from, an array of plush chairs sat tucked under wide UV-resistant covers to shield spectators from the sun. Beside them sat a sleek, industrial-grade fridge stocked with chilled energy drinks and glass-bottled water.
Omar started toward the fridge, his hand halfway to the handle. A bolt of purple lightning hit his hand. Omar recoiled as if he'd touched a live wire, pulling his arm tight against his body.
"The drinks are for people who have earned the right to sweat," Darius said, his voice cold. "The chairs are for those who can stand on their own two feet after I'm done with them. Right now, you are none of those things."
Darius walked to the weapon racks. He didn't look back as he spoke. "Crest twins, separate. Opposite sides of the platform. If I see you within ten meters of each other, I'll consider it disobeying orders, and there will be a deserved punishment. Vivienne, you only block and parry. Dorian, you only attack."
"But—" Vivienne started.
"Move!" Darius barked, the sound like a gunshot.
The next four hours were a descent into specialized hell. Darius teleported and walked through the platform like a ghost of judgment, overseeing ten different versions of misery.
Jax wasn't allowed to use his gun or his invisibility. He was wearing a weighted vest that turned every step into a battle against gravity, running laps around the massive platform.
"Faster, Clay!" Darius shouted as he walked past. "If you stop, I'm letting Valeria use you for practice. There is too much you can do with a dummy after all."
In the center, Marie was facing an automated combat dummy that only responded to attacks. "You're waiting again, Quinn!" Darius appeared behind her, his presence suffocating. "It's a machine. It doesn't have a soul for you to pity. If you don't initiate the strike in the next three seconds, I'll set it to 'Lethal,' and you won't have time to think." Marie's eyes flared with a mix of fear and frustration. She lunged, finally leading with a thrust that was deflected by the dummy.
Darius didn't praise her. He simply moved to Elise. "Richter. You're taking hits you don't have to because you think your healing is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Deflect, block, and dodge. If you get cut, you aren't allowed to heal it until the sun goes down. Let's see how your 'risk-to-reward' calculus handles a scar."
The platform was a symphony of clashing wood and metal, heavy breathing, and the occasional crack of lightning. Valeria was pushed the hardest, forced to toggle between her sword forms without lightning, with lightning, and lightning bursts from her hands until her hands were shaking.
Beside Valeria, who was left completely alone, Roy was the only one Darius didn't scream at. Instead, Darius stood beside him as Roy practiced a series of precise shadow-steps that looked like short teleportation.
"Look at them, Nasser," Darius said quietly, his eyes tracking Omar, who was currently having a boxing match with a robot made of osmium as the main element. It was shorter than him but hit like a truck.
"Tomorrow, their lives are your responsibility. If they slack off, it's your failure. If they get hurt, it will be your responsibility."
Roy wiped sweat from his brow. "I'll keep them moving."
"You better do."
By late afternoon, the sun began to dip, casting long, jagged shadows across the decorated training grounds. The fridge remained closed. The chairs remained empty. The students were scattered across the concrete.
Marcus was gasping for air after all the projectiles he had to stop: arrows, bullets, and thrown weights.
Ren stared at his trembling hands after he had to transfer a single combat knife to twenty different things—rope, chain, rod, blade, hook—more than a hundred times, forcing his power to find links between metal and everything.
Darius walked to the center of the platform. He looked perfectly composed, not a single hair out of place.
"Dismissed," he said. "Get some rest. Tomorrow, the 'babysitter' is gone, and Roy will be the only thing standing between you and your own incompetence."
Hours later,
Roy sat in his room, the silence of the night feeling heavier than the day's training. He stared out the window, the ornate furniture of the academy dorms feeling like a cage. He felt a weird sensation, a sudden familiar feeling, and that familiarity wasn't from this life, followed by a low-frequency hum that made his teeth ache.
"Something's happening," he whispered. He then felt something he wished to forget about move. "And it is bad."
He didn't use the door. He stepped into the corner of the room, melting into the shadows and reappearing on the cold metal of the roof. To his surprise, he wasn't alone. The rest of the boys of Class A were already there, and to his right, on the roof of the girls' building, the other half of Class A was there, all staring at the weird phenomenon happening in front of them.
"What is that?" Marcus asked, pointing toward the horizon.
Ten kilometers away, the sky didn't just crack. It shattered. A massive dragon, woven from threads of violet and white lightning that looked familiar, descended from the clouds. It was so large it blotted out the stars, its roar reaching them seconds later as a physical shockwave that pushed them back.
Roy then saw someone floating at the border of the island, and it was none other than Anton. The shockwave only moved his white coat.
Roy took a second to focus on him. He saw him smiling and heard him talking to himself.
"These two really need to calm down. They're just giving me more work like this."
"Two?" Roy's thought was cut short.
The dragon dived like a spear of divine wrath, slamming into the sea. The resulting explosion of light turned the night into a terrifying artificial day for a second before going back to night, and the shockwave, from how strong it was, was visible coming at them with a tsunami right behind it.