Free Web NovelChapter 65: Someone Back
We stayed at the hot spring for a longer time.
It was cozy.
I stayed in the water longer than strictly necessary.
Nobody was leaving immediately. The climb had been enough that even the S+ students had decided that the summit was a reasonable place to exist for a while,
Hiratsuka had not told anyone to move, and the view from four hundred meters of elevation above the volcanic terrain with the lava in distance.
Riel was lying on a flat section of rock near the edge of the spring with his arms spread out and his eyes closed, which was either meditation or unconsciousness and from the outside looked identical.
Caelum had produced a small notebook from somewhere and was writing in it with his legs still in the water, the notebook balanced on his knee.
Girls were in different springs.
Twelve guilds. Capital observers. Three days.
Caelum finished whatever he was writing and looked up.
"You are thinking," Caelum said, without opening her eyes.
"I am always thinking."
"You are doing it loudly."
"That is not possible."
"Through the bond it is," she said. "It has a texture. Quiet thinking and active thinking feel different." he paused. "Right now it feels like someone is arranging furniture very quickly."
I looked at him,.
"That is an accurate description," I said.
"I know." he opened one eye. "Team formation."
"Yes."
"I asked you."
"Yes."
"You said yes."
"I said I had no prior commitment," I said.
He closed his eyes again.
"It is close enough," he said.
He looked at me across the spring with the smug expression he wore when he was about to say something he had been thinking about for longer than the immediate moment.
"The forty-two meters," he said.
"Can you stop self-glazing ?."
"It was not reliable before today," he said.
"The forty-meter range was the consistent boundary. I have been trying to push past it for three months and it kept collapsing." He looked at the notebook. "Today I did my aura farming."
Huh!
He looked at me.
"The stress on the mana channels from the heat forced a different kind of output regulation," I said.
"You were not managing the technique the same way you manage it in a controlled environment. The external pressure changed how you were distributing the load."
Caelum was quiet for a moment.
"I had not analyzed it that way," he said.
He is more annoying than Reinhardt.
"Hiratsuka said it was a foundation problem," I said.
"Not a technique problem. The foundation you built the spatial work on was designed for controlled environments. Today was not controlled."
He looked at the notebook again.
"I need to rebuild the foundation," he said.
"That is what she has been telling you for nine days,"
"Yes," he said. "I am aware of the irony."
Just please shut up.
***
Riel sat up.
With energy.
He looked at the spring,
"Teams," he said.
"Yes," I said. Why does everyone have to discuss something?
"Caelum asked you."
"He did."
"I want to be on the team that fights whatever is going to be the hardest," he said. This was not a tactical statement. It was a statement of personal preference delivered with complete sincerity.
"I do not care which team that is. I just want the fight to be worth having."
I looked at him.
"That is not how team formation works," I said.
"I know," he said. "I am telling you my criterion regardless. For informational purposes."
"Noted,"
He looked at the spring.
"Can I get in?"
"You have been lying next to it for twenty minutes," Caelum said.
"I was processing," he got into the water.
***
(Girl’s spring)
(Aria’s pov)
Sylvaine had not moved from the position she had chosen when she arrived.
She sat at the spring with a stillness,
She was different from anyone in the class.
She was watching the volcanic terrain.
Not the people around the spring. ]
I watched her watch it for a moment.
"There is something in the volcanic activity that is not natural," she said, without looking at me.
I had not said anything.
"The heat distribution is wrong," she said.
"Volcanic terrain has a gradient hotter toward the active zones, cooler toward the inactive. This terrain’s gradient is uniform."
"The mana density in the water is consistent with what the system generates, not with what a geological formation produces."
I had not looked at the spring that way.
"She built this," I said.
"Or found it and modified it," Sylvaine said.
"The distinction matters technically but not practically." She looked at me.
"Hiratsuka brought us somewhere that produces specific training conditions. The heat stress. The terrain variability. The steam vents at altitude require real-time technique adaptation." She tilted her head slightly.
"She has used this location before. Multiple times. For the same purpose."
"She said she had been here before," I said.
"Yes," Sylvaine said. "She did not say how many times."
I thought about that.
"The team she puts you on," Sylvaine said, "will not be random. Nothing she does is random. The pairs in the secondary arena were not random. The volcano was not random."
"I know,"
She looked at me.
"She is going to separate everyone," she said.
I did not respond immediately.
"Different teams teach different things," Sylvaine said.
"It’s your redemption arc I guess," She paused.
"She is not going to put you on the same team."
I looked at the spring.
The mana luminescence moved in slow patterns beneath the surface, consistent and even, exactly as Sylvaine had described.
"That is a reasonable assessment," I said.
"I know,"
****
(Kael’s Pov)
The descent was easier than the ascent by a significant margin, which was the universal truth of descents everywhere and had never once stopped people from dreading them anyway.
Hiratsuka took us back down via the same spatial formation one moment summit, next moment courtyard, no texture, no transition.
She deposited twelve people back into the courtyard with the efficiency of someone returning items to their proper storage location.
The courtyard felt cold. Even though it was normal room temperature.
After the volcano the cold was immediate and my body took time to recalibrate.
"Class is finished," Hiratsuka said.
"Eat. Sleep. The team announcement comes in two days now, not three. Administration moved it up."
She looked at us.
"The hot spring helped," she said. "Your recovery baselines are higher than they were this morning. Use the time productively."
She walked away.
***
Dinner that evening was louder than any previous evening.
Not from the S+ table specifically all over the academy building.
The announcement had been up for a full day now and the initial shock of it had metabolized into something more active.
The corridors had the energy of a place that had been given a direction and was now moving in it, fast,
I ate and while listening to the building.
Lina was beside me with her cup and her thoughts and the occasional observation from Sylph that she did not always share out loud.
Caelum was at the end of the table explaining something to the person beside him with the enthusiasm of someone who had found a willing audience, which was Caelum all needed to become extremely comprehensive about any topic that interested him.
Aria was not on table
I noticed the absence without looking for it.
"She went to the secondary training arena," Lina said.
"After the volcano."
"She has been there since we got back," she said. "Sylph passed it on the way here."
I thought about our duel.
"Leave her to it," I said.
"I was not planning to interrupt," Lina said. frёeωebɳovel.com
After dinner I went to the secondary arena anyway.
Not to interrupt. To train.
The gap between my techniques was still there.
Hiratsuka had identified it on day one and had been showing it to me through Sylvaine ever since, and the volcano had not fixed it.
If anything the volcano had made it more visible, the pressure and terrain change exposing exactly where the integration broke down.
The secondary arena at this hour was empty except for Aria, who was running
The room was cold asf.
She looked up when I came in, acknowledged my presence with a nod, and went back to what she was doing.
I went to the opposite corner and started working through the integration.
Not individual techniques. The transitions between them.
The half-second gap between Aether Step and close-range work. The moment the body expected to settle and the technique wanted to fail.
First I jogged for half an hour.
Then practiced magic spells for twenty times, thirty, each time targeting the exact point of failure, each time trying to build the muscle memory that would close the gap before the gap became a cost.
By the fortieth repetition the gap had not closed.
But it had changed. I can feel it.
Progress, Small and Real.
I stopped when the second bell rang.
Aria was still going.
I walked past her on the way out.
"Your Ice Domain," I asked
"Going Good for now,"
"Let’s have a proper fight, next time"
She did not respond. She was already into the next repetition.
***
Back in my room I sat at the desk and opened the diary.
Two days until team formation.
Outside the window the academy was still awake, the corridors not yet quiet, the building’s collective anticipation pressing outward into the night.
Two days.
I was looking forward to it.
The system flickered.
[Host.]
[The team formation announcement has been moved again.]
[Not two days.]
[Tomorrow morning.]
[Also.]
[The second-year student’s captain has submitted a formal challenge to the S+ class specifically.]
[By Your name. You are cooked.]
I looked at the notification.
[The higher beings would like you to know they did not arrange this.]
[They are simply very pleased that it happened.]
I closed the notification.
Tomorrow, I thought.
I was going to sleep.
And then...
"Hubby I’m back,"
