Pasadin didn't give the room time to settle, as murmurs about high-rank demons died, he shifted his stance. His shoulders hunched forward and his head lowered, as if his entire body was placed under a great weight.
I could see something profound in his gaze. He spoke with such intense vigour that I couldn't help but be embroiled in his words.
'What made a man like him make such a soulful expression? What had he seen that I had not?'
"Currently, demon sealing operations are increasing across all fronts, because it's the most efficient use of our resources."
Pasadin's gaze moved across the rows of cadets with deliberate precision.
"Every high-ranking demon we successfully seal frees up personnel for active deployment. It's one of the few ways Command can pull elite Awakened away from containment duties and redeploy them where the fighting is heaviest."
Several cadets shifted uncomfortably.
'Containment duties. Since humanity doesn't have the power to easily kill Demons, they've resorted to sealing them. Without the [Hero] gift, this may be the only way they can deal with Demons.'
Yet the way Pasadin had phrased it seemed odd.
'Was containing Demons truly consuming that much manpower from the Human Coalition?'
"Sealing techniques will constitute a major component of your tactical training," Pasadin frowned and turned back to the board.
"However, and this is critical for mission success and survival, if you encounter low-ranked entities and possess the capability for immediate termination, you eliminate them. Overwhelming force. Total eradication. Do not default to sealing protocols when decisive action will resolve the threat permanently."
He turned his attention toward the front rows, where several cadets leaned forward, fully engaged.
"Cadets who focus exclusively on physical conditioning while neglecting magical development will find themselves forced to seal weaker demons simply because they lack the tools for clean kills. This approach reduces field effectiveness. It makes your tactical responses predictable to experienced hostiles. Most critically, it transforms you into a liability for any unit you're assigned to."
"Master versatile techniques that complement your natural capabilities, because demonic entities will not engage according to your preferred parameters or wait for you to deploy your strongest abilities."
He lowered his hand, and the projection began to fade, dissolving like smoke.
Pasadin took in the faces of the Cadets that looked considerably more serious than they had an hour earlier.
"Questions, cadets?"
A hand shot up immediately.
It was Sylus Dale, the blue-haired cadet with wire-rimmed spectacles.
Pasadin nodded toward him. "Speak, Cadet."
Sylus stood quickly, his voice carrying eager relief at finally having something concrete to anchor his understanding. "Sir, regarding the tactical map you displayed. The dark zones beyond our eastern perimeter. What do those zones represent?"
Pasadin's eyebrow lifted slightly, as if mildly surprised someone had looked beyond the obvious threat indicators to consider actual geographical intelligence.
"That's proper analytical thinking, Cadet. The information also falls under strategic intelligence you'll receive during advanced courses."
He tilted his head slightly, as if visualising continental maps rather than projecting them for the class.
"Coalition territory extends eastward to the perimeter of the Great Chitai Desert. The desert region transitions into the Cistane Plateau formations, which currently serve as our primary defensive barrier. All terrain beyond the plateau's eastern slopes falls outside human-controlled territory."
A few cadets exchanged confused glances.
"Of course, this information is heavily obscured. But the terrain beyond the plateau descent consists of vast wilderness zones. Poorly mapped regions. Climate conditions are extremely hostile, geographical features are unstable, and the ecosystem supports very little that human forces would consider strategically valuable."
He paused, and in that silence, I sensed him weighing how much classified information to reveal to first-year cadets.
"Though there isn't a public name for them. Military cartographers designate these regions as the Badlands."
The designation hung in the air.
Something cold and familiar settled in my stomach as I heard the name.
'Badlands.'
The word triggered fragmented memories I couldn't properly place. Rugged and wild landscapes with turbulent horizons and sceneries that looked like someone had torn pieces from different worlds and forced them together. It was a terrain that followed no physical laws.
I had been there before.
'The majority of the mid and late game Advent story took place in the different regions of the Badlands.'
My brows furrowed, and I grit my teeth.
'Unfortunately, I didn't pay much attention to the regions we visited while playing. I could maybe recall a scene or two: The twisted forests where one could get lost like a maze, or the colourless zone, a long stretching field which was drained of everything and reduced most colours to grey ash.'
Pasadin's gaze cooled as he let out a chuckle.
"This intelligence is classified above your current clearance level. Though your interest is appreciated, Cadet, I would recommend you save your curiosity."
Sylus sat down with considerably less enthusiasm than he'd shown when standing.
Pasadin finally placed both hands on the lectern in a gesture that formally concluded the briefing session.
"Today's introduction is complete. Next session will commence practical instruction in basic containment protocols and tactical applications"
He dismissed the formation with a crisp gesture, then turned and walked toward the exit without ceremony.
-
The transition from the enclosed briefing room to the vast cylindrical space made me briefly dizzy. Kai materialised at my shoulder as all filed out of the bunker's entrance towards the hub.
Kai glanced at his wrist where his identification band was already displaying updated information.
"Next lecture begins in twenty minutes. Magical theory and practical mana application."
I followed his gaze to the projection hovering above his band, displaying text in the Academy's standard military formatting:
-
ARCANE INSTRUCTION DIVISION
MAGICAL THEORY: FUNDAMENTALS
LOCATION: AETHER TOWER, LEVEL 1
STATUS: ATTENDANCE MANDATORY
REPORTING TIME: 20 MINUTES REMAINING
-
Cadets dispersed across the campus in different directions: some heading toward the mess halls for whatever breakfast rations remained available, others moved back toward the dormitory blocks.
Kai and I joined the stream of cadets heading toward the Tower.
The Aether Tower looked exactly like its name suggested. A tall tower that stretched in a thin, long line towards the sky. At its base, broad entrance portals opened onto what appeared to be a reception area.
Several cadets were already approaching the entrance checkpoint. A few had already passed through the security barriers and disappeared into whatever lay beyond.
We reached the entrance portals and stepped across the threshold together.
The moment my boot left the stone of the exterior pathway and made contact with whatever surface existed beyond the entrance barrier, my stomach performed a violent contortion that left me gasping for air.
I felt a sharp, stabbing headache flash behind my eyes like someone had driven an ice pick through my temples, and then the sensation of weight and stability seemed to slip from beneath my feet. My body went into immediate panic mode as it desperately searched for a floor that was no longer there.
'Am I falling?'
My feet found absolutely nothing beneath them. My arms began flailing wildly as I tried to grab onto something that might provide stability or orientation in three-dimensional space.
For an embarrassing stretch of seconds that felt like minutes, I was simply suspended in open air, kicking uselessly at nothing while my jacket hem floated upward around me like I had been plunged underwater and was slowly sinking toward the bottom of some impossibly deep pool.
Kai reacted much faster than I did. He spun himself in place with practised efficiency, pulled his knees up toward his chest in a controlled movement, and managed to orient his body in a way that allowed him to stop the worst of the uncontrolled tumbling.
He wasn't graceful about it, but he wasn't helpless either, and he definitely wasn't panicking the way I was.
I watched Kai navigate the weightlessness through a blur of disorientation while fighting down a powerful wave of nausea that was rising in my throat like bile. My eyes naturally darted around,
But the tower's interior wasn't designed like a conventional building at all. Below us stretched nothing, a literal void that seemed to devour light itself, similar to the impenetrable darkness I'd glimpsed in those bottomless pools back at the Blackwell Bunker.
The emptiness beneath us was like an open mouth, so deep and black that staring into it made my vision blur and my stomach clench with primitive vertigo.
'How far down does it go?' I wondered, forcing myself to look away from the abyss. The darkness below felt alive somehow, patient and hungry, waiting for someone to lose control and fall into its depths.
Fortunately, it seemed that no matter how much one flailed about, it was simply impossible to sink any further.
Above us, the shaft continued upward just as impossibly far, ringed with landing platforms that grew smaller and dimmer until they disappeared into shadows that the Tower's magical illumination couldn't penetrate.
It was a vertical world, suspended on nothing. A sense of awe dawned on me, but I quickly brushed it off.
'This is not the time to be terrified.' I shook my head and looked around.
I could also see the other cadets that had entered earlier flailing through the air with varying degrees of success and personal dignity. Their military boots kicked at nothing, and their arms spun as people tried to steer like they were swimming through invisible water.
Some of the quicker-thinking cadets had managed to hook themselves toward the nearest landing platform and were clinging to safety.
'This is deliberate, it has to be,' I realised, forcing my breathing to slow down and trying to think through the panic that was making everything worse. 'They didn't just throw us down here for fun. This is testing something specific.'
The instinct to fight against the weightlessness was making my situation worse with every panicked movement.
Kai's eyes met mine across the space between our floating bodies. He didn't speak, or rather, he couldn't. I was quick to realise that the acoustic properties of the tower muffled sound completely, but his expression was clear enough to read as he reached for a landing platform just inches above us.
'That's one way to answer it. We could all just try floating from one platform to the other. But the chances that we'd make it up are small.'
I raised my hand in protest.
'There has to be another way.'
I was an object floating freely in space. Without something to direct me, there's no way to move. The simplest principles indicate that there must be a force that impacts my body.
Then my thoughts coalesced, and the picture of the pen rolling in my hand flashed from memory.
'The principle should be the same whether the object is a pen or my own body,'
A human body in weightlessness was just a larger, more complex object waiting to be guided through space using the same basic techniques.
All I needed to do was provide direction and intention to guide my movement through the modified environment.
I stopped trying to kick my way to stability and relaxed my body.
Instead, I pictured a thread or connection extending from my centre of mass, not wrapped around a small object this time but tethered directly to my body's core. A line of force extends toward the landing platform above us, creating gentle, consistent pressure in that direction.
Like leaning into a steady wind that was pushing me exactly where I wanted to go.
I focused on that mental image and pushed the intention outward, trying to make it real by recalling the sensation of spinning the pen.
Something in the tower's magical environment responded to my efforts.
Not dramatically but with just a small, subtle shift in momentum, a change in direction that grew more confident and controlled as I adjusted the angle and intensity of my mental focus.
A few seconds later, my movement became something closer to controlled gliding, as if I were flying in a lucid dream.
Kai watched my progress with obvious interest and immediately picked up on my answer.
He let go of the platform and channelled his mana just like me. The two of us shared a keen glance and slowly looked upwards.
Together, we angled ourselves upwards and started rising to the top.
Around us, other first-year cadets were beginning to solve the puzzle the moment they saw us.
By the time Kai and I reached the first floor, the entire section of first-year cadets had generally figured out the basic mechanics, and dozens of uniformed figures drifted upward.
I reached the doorway marked for our assigned level and slipped through the access portal.
My stomach twisted violently as my boots made sudden, jarring contact with solid flooring, and my legs wobbled as I dropped to my knees.
"Eugh." Kai retched and quickly got his bearings.
I pushed myself off the floor and walked forward.
The tower's classroom itself was arranged in conventional military fashion, chairs were arranged in precise rows, and a presentation board was positioned at the front of the room for instructional purposes.
One cadet was already seated and waiting when we arrived.
A blonde male cadet with green eyes that I didn't recognise from our demonology briefing earlier. At least, not among the ones that I had particularly noticed during the session.
He sat alone near the front of the classroom with his hands folded neatly on the desk surface, his posture composed and relaxed in a way that seemed unusual for someone who should have been just as nauseated and disoriented as the rest of us after navigating the tower.
But before I could spend more time trying to place him in my memory or figure out why he seemed completely unaffected, the rest of our training group began filtering into the classroom behind us.
They stumbled through the doorway and pulled the chairs against the floor, trying to find a seat and regain their composure.
Before the noise and confused movement could settle into anything resembling a normal classroom atmosphere, I noticed a circular opening in the ceiling.
'Was that always there?'
A human figure descended through the opening, drifting downward with deliberate control, completely inverted with his head angled toward us.
He wore dark sunglasses indoors and a black leather jacket over his instructor uniform, his hair floating upward in defiant waves. His hands rested casually behind his head as if lounging in a hammock while suspended in mid-air.
There was an absurdity to him that I couldn't help but point out.
'He's not just floating.' I saw the movement of his hair. 'It's like he's falling, but there's no end to it.'
The man began to clap slowly, the sound crisp and deliberate in the bright, echoing acoustics of the classroom space.
"Outstanding performance, cadets," his voice carried warmth and genuine amusement that contrasted sharply with the formal, military atmosphere we had just experienced during Pasadin's tactical briefing.
"Most of you managed to complete the Tower's navigation without throwing up on your uniforms. That definitely represents significant improvement compared to previous training cycles."
A few cadets straightened in their chairs, looking pleased with themselves. Others looked like they might actually vomit purely out of spite or delayed reaction to the gravitational stress.
The floating instructor's smile widened in obvious appreciation of the mixed reactions his comment had provoked.
"Congratulations on solving the tower's navigation challenge, by the way. If you cannot learn to steer yourselves effectively through a modified gravitational field, you have absolutely no business attempting to steer magical energy through your body during combat, where mistakes have lethal consequences."
He rotated lazily in mid-air with a slow, perfectly controlled movement that brought him right-side up, then continued drifting downward until his boots made contact with the classroom floor with all the impact and sound of a feather landing on still water.
The professor's gaze swept across the room before settling on me with unmistakable focus. "Of course, half of you only figured out the solution because you watched our friend here demonstrate the technique first. Observational learning is valuable, but mimicry without understanding will get you killed when the stakes are high."
He spread his arms in a gesture that seemed to encompass the entire room, as if he were introducing the opening act of some kind of stage play.
"Lt. Alexander Wright," he announced with obvious satisfaction and a theatrical salute.
"Welcome to the most important portion of your military education. Magical theory and practical mana application "