Free Web NovelChapter 258: Chapter 258
The lecture moved fast.
Professor Audrey pulled up a map of the outer defense lines, a color-coded, sprawling display of years of frontline data compressed into a single grid, and got straight into it without preamble.
Zaeryn sat up and paid attention. He was sitting in a senior class he had no business being in, which meant he had zero room to coast.
Ingrid, apparently, disagreed with that assessment.
She had been quiet for all of three minutes before her hand found his knee under the desk. She wasn’t doing anything with it yet, it just rested there, warm and intentional, carrying the specific energy of someone who knew exactly what they were doing and was thoroughly enjoying it.
As pleasant as the warmth was, it was bound to get problematic, so Zaeryn smoothly moved her hand away. She put it right back. He shot her a look; she gave him a slow, innocent blink and turned back to face the front, the corner of her mouth lifting just a fraction.
Genevieve, on his other side, said nothing. She kept her head tilted toward the display, following the lecture with what looked like genuine interest, her hand comfortably threaded through his arm, relaxed and still.
Zaeryn turned his attention back to the podium and kept it there.
The lesson focused on the brutal reality of how the Vorthaks adapted. Every tactic that worked against them worked once, maybe twice. By the third engagement, the exact technique that had wiped out an entire swarm the previous time barely slowed the next wave down.
The enemy simply absorbed the frequency, adjusted their biology, and moved past it.
"So," Professor Audrey said, setting her slate on the podium. "What does a Warlady do?" Her question lacked context, save for the glowing war-map behind her, which was, presumably, the entire point.
A student near the front called out, "She changes her approach."
"She changes her approach," Audrey confirmed. "Every engagement. Every wave. She can never settle into a rhythm, because the moment she does, she has already lost the next fight." She paused, letting the structural weight of the problem land. "Now. What is the problem with that?" ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
The room fell dead silent.
Zaeryn already knew where this was going. He’d heard it before, not in a classroom, but poolside, from Kayla. She had been talking to Mireille, completely ignoring him, and he was also trying to ignore her but he could still hear her and words.
She had described the frontlines like a place that leaves a permanent scar on a soul.
"We put down a swarm using standard energy patterns, and the next wave already had resistance to that frequency."
He had filed it away at the time without thinking much of it. Now, with the data laid out in front of him, the full shape of the paradox became clear.
"Either way they win, right?" Zaeryn said aloud.
A few heads turned. Audrey’s sharp gaze locked onto him.
He shrugged casually. "Change too much, you burn out. Don’t change enough, they’ve already figured you out. There’s no version where the rhythm works in your favor."
Audrey studied him for a long, calculating beat.
"That’s correct, Zaery," she said, her tone smooth. "That is precisely the problem." She turned back to the room. "Which means the real question is not simply how to fight them. It is how to stay effective against an enemy that learns from you, without burning yourself out in the process."
"Show-off," Genevieve murmured against his shoulder, her voice just loud enough for his ears.
"How am I a show-off?"
"Because you didn’t even open the course data-packet and you’re already answering senior-level prompts," she whispered with a smirk.
Ingrid nipped his earlobe playfully, her warm breath ghosting over his skin.
"Look at you, solving frontline logistics in your first week," she whispered.
"Just practicing my observation skills," Zaeryn muttered back, pointedly ignoring her foot as it pressed firmly against his inner thigh.
Audrey waited for the room to settle before continuing. "Consider the mechanism. Every single engagement, a Warlady must fluctuate her output to counter their adaptation. But constantly forcing a baseline core to violently fluctuate introduces massive physiological strain. When a soldier repeatedly spikes her internal resonance matrix to match a shifting enemy, what is the immediate biological tax?"
"She tires out faster," a cadet two rows down called out.
"Exactly." Audrey pulled up several documented frontline cases, walking through each one methodically. The class caught fire, students eagerly debating the data, pushing back on each other, and arguing over which variables carried the most weight.
Zaeryn followed the flow without much difficulty, though he didn’t contribute further. A few times, the discussion veered into foundational theory he had never studied, and he felt the gap open beneath him. He let it pass. There was no point reaching for context he simply didn’t have.
Instead, his curiosity shifted to Leia. What was she doing right now?
He looked over and realized she hadn’t said a single word the entire lecture. She didn’t look lost, though. She looked like someone sitting through a technical explanation of a trauma she had already lived through, waiting, patiently, for the words to catch up to the experience.
The final bell chimed, and Audrey set her slate down.
"Alright, time’s up. I want you in pairs," she announced, pulling up the roster. "Meira, you’re with Shira. Genevieve, since you’re auditing, you’re with Ingrid."
Genevieve and Ingrid exchanged a quick, pleased look, clearly happy with the arrangement.
Audrey continued cycling through the roster. Zaeryn waited patiently, completely fine with the idea of being paired up with whichever high-tier beauty the professor threw his way. Who knew? Maybe it would be the start of a great new bond.
But as the names kept dropping and the available choices dwindled, his excitement curdled. A grim realization hit him as he looked around the room: everyone had a partner except him and one specific person.
"No way," he muttered under his breath. He really wasn’t in the mood to deal with her blatant dislike today.
Realizing the inevitable, Ingrid and Genevieve chuckled lightly at his situation.
"And finally," Audrey said, her calm eyes finding his with that same knowing glint. "Zaeryn Noctis. You’re with Leia."
Any fleeting appreciation he might have had for the matchup vanished.
Reminding himself that he shouldn’t even be subjected to this, Zaeryn opened his mouth. "Professor, I’m not even enrolled...."
"Absolutely not," Leia cut in, her voice flat, deliberate, and carrying clean to the back of the hall. She was already on her feet, her face severe and thoroughly intimidating. "I want a different partner. I am not spending the rest of the term carrying a male through senior-level research."
Audrey didn’t even look up from her console. "The pairings are final, Zaeryn and Leia. Figure it out."
"But I’m not even from this class," Zaeryn tried again.
"Moving on." Audrey swiped her slate with an air of finality. "Your project has nothing to do with what we covered today. I want each pair to research a confirmed Vorthak breach. The planet has held its defenses against the swarms for generations, but there are a handful of recorded instances where the lines failed and they broke through. I want to know why. Pick one breach, pull every available record on it, and build a complete account, what failed, why it failed, and what was missed, and by whom."
She paused, letting the weight of the assignment settle over the room. "The archives are old and scattered. Some records are incomplete; others contradict each other outright. This will not be a quick exercise. You have until the end of the term."
She gathered her things and walked toward the exit. The doors hissed shut behind her, leaving the lecture hall in dead silence.
Zaeryn looked over at Leia. She was still standing, both hands pressed flat against her desk.
She turned, leveled one final, venomous glare directly at him, and then her friend muttered something to her as they turned and left him behind.
