After giving me the blood vials and the little suppression case she'd made for them, Tias announced that she had work to do and promptly shooed me out of her office.
Not before handing me enough paperwork to make the word *shooed* feel generous.
By the time I finished, I had documents confirming my transfer into a dorm inside the Combat Tower, my placement in Vanguard, and—because apparently my life wasn't complicated enough—my official registration as Grand Professor Tias's newest apprentice.
Her *only* apprentice at Valthrune, if the last conversation was anything to go by.
Wonderful.
Just before I begrudgingly abandoned the softest chair known to mankind, Tias mentioned that my new uniform would be delivered tomorrow.
Then the door closed behind me.
I stayed there for a moment, shoulders sagging against the wood while the quiet hallway stretched out on either side.
"Ahhh..."
The breath left me all at once.
God, I was tired.
For the first time since the assessment ended, there was enough room in my head to actually process what had happened.
I did it.
A tired smile crept across my face.
I had made Vanguard.
Not through the conventional route, admittedly. If we were being completely honest, the faculty had explicitly decided I *hadn't* made Vanguard.
But details.
I pushed away from the door and started down the hallway. Sunset had already begun bleeding through the windows by the time I finished the paperwork, which I kept tucked beneath one arm while the other stayed pressed carefully against my ribs.
I was still wearing the combat uniform from the trial. The fabric was torn, stiff with dried blood, and dirty enough that I didn't particularly want to know what some of the stains were. Tias's suppression case sat tucked into an inner pocket, blessedly quiet enough that I could almost forget what was inside it.
Going all the way back just to change sounded miserable. My new room was already waiting for me, and my Vanguard uniform would arrive tomorrow anyway.
Everyone else could survive the smell for one evening.
I had something more important to think about.
My brows tightened.
The next stage of the plan was underway, which meant celebrating could wait.
There were things I needed to check before tomorrow—people I hadn't looked at closely enough the first time, people I was about to walk into a classroom with.
Unfortunately, there was only one reliable way to get those answers.
My smile disappeared.
Soul Diver.
My steps slowed.
"...Fuck."
I had been so busy using Bloodrend over the last few days that it was surprisingly easy to forget something rather important.
Bloodrend wasn't originally mine.
Not really.
It belonged to Bloody.
I'd borrowed it through whatever bizarre connection tied the seven of us together, and somewhere between awakening it, nearly getting murdered with it, and having it crawl far enough into my head that I was starting to crave blood without summoning it—
Well.
It had started feeling like mine.
Too much, actually.
Technically, it was mine now too.
Bloodrend had become so closely tangled with my identity that sometimes even I forgot that **Soul Diver** was my actual Origin Spell.
Probably because using Soul Diver fucking hurt.
A chill crawled down my spine.
I stopped walking.
My hand tightened around the paperwork.
Nope.
Even thinking about it was enough.
I could still remember the first time.
Not *remember* it in the ordinary sense, either.
Soul Diver didn't just show me memories. It dropped me inside them.
There was no comfortable distance between myself and whatever incarnation I entered. I couldn't sit safely behind their eyes and watch events play out.
For however long the memory lasted, I became them. Their thoughts crowded mine, and their fear, grief, and pain arrived with all the force of something happening to me in the present.
Especially the pain.
My stomach tightened.
There were layers inside those lives—memories buried beneath memories, some deeper than others—and forcing my way through them meant feeling every barrier as though it belonged to me.
I could still remember injuries I'd never received, deaths I hadn't died, and feelings for people I'd never met.
Because for those few moments, I had.
My skin prickled.
"Yeah. No."
I started walking again.
Faster this time.
Apparently fear was an excellent cure for exhaustion.
I still needed to find the dorm administration before someone decided my paperwork had magically filed itself, and wandering around the Combat Tower having an existential crisis probably wasn't going to help.
Thankfully, most of the student body here was out doing their own thing so the normally crowded hallways were unusually barren.
Besides, I didn't exactly have a choice.
I was about to enter Vanguard.
The Hero would be there, along with several people who kept appearing across the others' timelines, and what I knew about them was scattered across seven different versions of my life.
My earlier dives had been broad. First I had gone looking for how the world ended, then for anything that could help me understand the God Tree and Carlos. Names and places had surfaced along the way, but this time I couldn't afford to fish through entire lives and hope the right memory found me.
I needed to lock onto something specific.
If I wanted to know what I was walking into, I needed Soul Diver.
I grimaced.
What can you do when you've got a world to save?
A laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
"Hah."
Bloody turned toward me and began walking backward, white hair swaying as he studied my face.
"What are you laughing about, maggot?"
Before I could answer, Knight's voice cut in from behind him.
"Where do you think you're going, fiend?"
Apparently the two of them had been arguing while I was busy contemplating my inevitable suffering. Sleazy was off by a window minding his own business, and Lazy had disappeared somewhere to nap.
I sighed.
"Nothing. I was just thinking about how much work we still have to do."
Bloody crossed his arms.
"What is the point of worrying? If something must be done, then do it."
I gave a tired snicker.
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one fighting flesh golems."
"I could kill a hundred of those beasts with a single blood slash. Do not doubt my martial prowess, maggot."
"Yeah, yeah."
I waved him off.
Bloody's teeth clenched. He lunged at me on instinct, passed straight through my body, and vanished halfway through the floor.
I couldn't help laughing.
By the time he resurfaced and finished his verbal bombardment, I had reached dorm administration.
Thankfully, there was no secret test waiting for me there. The staff had already been briefed about my transfer, so after checking the paperwork they handed me the key to my new room and a fresh identification badge marked **Vanguard**.
---
"Geez, I forgot how high you have to climb for the Vanguard classes..."
I stared up the stairwell and immediately regretted it.
The stairs spiraled so far above me that the upper landings disappeared behind the curve of the tower.
My ribs gave a painful throb.
"Wonderful."
The woman at administration had been kind enough to give me directions to my new room.
She had neglected to mention that reaching it apparently required a pilgrimage.
I tucked my new identification card into my pocket and started climbing.
Combat had always been organized differently from Studies. We separated ourselves mostly by subject and year; Combat cared more about what kind of Pathfinder a student was preparing to become.
That didn't make Sentinel, Scout, and Ranger a ladder. Getting into Combat was already a success. The assessment helped decide where a student's Origin Spell, ordinary magic, instincts, and preferred way of contributing would be most useful.
The tower just happened to make every difference feel dramatic.
The first section I passed belonged to Sentinel.
A pair of heavy doors stood open along the landing, and somewhere inside came the steady crash of metal against metal. Through the doorway, several students braced behind enormous training shields while another group hammered them with blunt weapons.
One girl slid nearly half a meter backward. Her instructor barked something, and she immediately reset her footing and drove forward again.
That told me more than a lecture probably could.
Sentinels were the people expected to hold when everyone else needed somewhere safe to stand. They guarded expedition bases, settlements, and the Pathfinders beside them, turning whatever magic they had into something that could keep danger from getting past.
Bloody scoffed beside me.
"Cowards."
I glanced over.
"Because they use shields?"
"Because they expect to be struck."
"You let a flesh monster punch me through a wall."
"You survived."
"That is not a defense."
He shrugged.
I kept climbing.
The broad reinforced chambers gradually gave way to longer corridors and open spaces broken up by movement courses.
Scout territory.
One of them came flying around a corner before I had even properly entered the section. I barely moved aside in time as the student vaulted the last few steps, caught the railing with one hand, and swung cleanly onto the landing below.
I leaned over the banister.
"Show-off."
Knight appeared beside me and watched the landing.
"His technique was excellent."
"Whose side are you on?"
"The side of proper technique."
"Traitor."
Scouts were sent ahead of everyone else. Speed helped, obviously, but the role was really about information—tracking, reconnaissance, concealment, and knowing how to move through dangerous territory without picking a fight with everything that breathed.
A fast Origin Spell could push someone toward Scout, but so could a student who simply knew how to use ordinary magic in clever ways.
If an expedition wanted to know what waited beyond the next ridge, a Scout usually found out first.
I would've declined.
By the time I reached the Ranger section, my legs had joined my ribs in open rebellion.
"Why," I breathed, gripping the railing, "does a magical academy need this many stairs?"
Sleazy floated lazily past my shoulder.
"For exercise?"
"I'll exercise when my skeleton stops hurting."
"You're making excellent progress."
"You haven't touched a stair."
He smiled.
"That does make encouragement easier."
I considered pushing him before remembering exactly how useless that would be.
The Ranger floors changed around me. Stone gave way to rich wood, the corridors widened, and evening light poured through tall windows. In one open room, students crowded around an enormous map table while an instructor moved markers across mountains, forests, and territory I didn't recognize. Farther down, expedition gear occupied what would've been ordinary classrooms anywhere else.
Scouts went out to learn what was there.
Rangers were expected to stay once humanity decided a place was worth keeping.
Sometimes that meant weeks away from Valthrune. Sometimes months. They learned how to hunt, navigate, survive, maintain supplies, and turn reclaimed territory into a foothold that could actually support people.
Eventually, Scouts would push outward from that new position. Vanguard would deal with whatever was too dangerous for the others to clear. Rangers would settle in behind them, and Sentinels would make sure the whole thing wasn't lost the moment something ugly came back.
Humanity expanded one miserable piece at a time.
I glanced through another doorway.
Someone had an entire animal carcass spread across a table.
I immediately looked away.
"Ranger seems fun."
Bloody peered inside.
"I agree."
"Of course you do."
The stairs kept going long after they had any reasonable right to.
By the time another landing finally appeared above me, I was beginning to suspect Vanguard's first test was simply surviving the climb.
Then I saw the name carved into the wall.
**VANGUARD.**
My steps slowed.
There it was.
Vanguard was the exception to everything below it.
There wasn't a particular kind of Origin Spell that earned you a place there. On paper, Vanguard was reserved for the students Valthrune considered exceptional enough to lead expeditions and confront the Corrupted that other Pathfinders couldn't handle.
In practice, exceptional talent had a suspicious habit of being born into very expensive houses.
Private instructors, family techniques, mana facilities, Pathfinder relatives—money couldn't guarantee a Vanguard seat, but it could make sure a talented child arrived at the assessment years ahead of everyone else.
Then there were the genuine monsters who would've made it no matter what name they carried.
Either way, these were the students expected to take a Scout's information, walk into the worst part of it, and clear a path for everybody behind them. Eventually they would command expeditions of their own and make decisions days away from anyone who could overrule them.
Vanguard didn't just train strong students.
It trained the people Valthrune expected to push humanity's border forward.
No pressure.
I climbed the final steps.
Then stopped.
"...What the fuck?"
The difference wasn't subtle.
The wooden floor I'd been walking across disappeared beneath a deep red carpet that stretched down the entire corridor.
Not a runner.
Not some decorative strip.
The entire damn floor was carpeted.
I stepped onto it cautiously.
My boot actually sank into it.
"Oh, you've got to be kidding me."
Sleazy floated past.
"What?"
I pointed downward.
"They get carpet?"
He looked at the floor.
Then back at me.
"Yes?"
"Sentinel and Scout get stone, Ranger gets wood, and these bastards get *this*?"
The Vanguard floor looked less like part of a military academy and more like the private wing of some wealthy estate.
Paintings covered the walls, each surrounded by polished dark wood and elaborate frames. Most depicted expeditions beyond the Light—mountain ranges, ruined cities, strange forests illuminated beneath unfamiliar skies. Others showed old Valthrune graduates standing beside creatures large enough that I sincerely hoped the artist had exaggerated.
Warm enchanted lamps floated near the ceiling, their light reflecting softly against the polished walls.
I kept walking.
Then a maid passed me.
She bowed.
"Good evening."
"...Evening."
I watched her continue down the corridor carrying a stack of folded linens.
A few doors farther down, another worker was replacing flowers in a vase.
Fresh flowers, because apparently ordinary luxury hadn't been enough.
I turned slowly toward Knight.
"Do Vanguard students have servants?"
"Staff."
"That's a servant wearing an academy uniform."
"She is employed by Valthrune."
"She is carrying somebody's laundry."
Knight's mouth twitched.
I pointed accusingly down the corridor.
"There are people downstairs training behind shields while someone up here is arranging flowers."
Sleazy drifted between us.
"Success has benefits."
"I haven't succeeded at anything!"
"Technically, neither did you in the assessment."
I glared at him.
"Thank you for remembering."
"My pleasure."
The farther I walked, the more ridiculous it became.
The dormitory doors were polished wood instead of the plain reinforced ones below, with faint mana carvings visible if I looked closely. Brass plates marked names and room numbers, and little sitting areas appeared every so often so Vanguard students could apparently relax without suffering the indignity of walking all the way back to their rooms.
Even the air smelled better.
I stopped.
Sniffed.
"Is that lavender?"
Knight looked around.
"Possibly."
"Why does Vanguard smell nice?"
Bloody frowned.
"I dislike it."
"Finally, something we agree on."
A worker polishing one of the tables glanced toward me.
I smiled awkwardly.
He went back to work.
I continued down the hallway.
The whole tower made more sense now. Combat didn't treat the other cohorts as failures; each one had a job in the same expansion beyond the Light. Vanguard simply received the most resources because Valthrune expected its students to take the front when the worst threats appeared.
That explained the preferential treatment.
It did not explain why the carpet needed to be this soft.
I checked the room number on my paperwork, looked down the corridor, then checked it again in case exhaustion had somehow changed the answer.
My room was nearly at the other end.
I closed my eyes.
"Of course."
Knight glanced at me.
"What?"
"Nothing."
I started walking again.
The Vanguard badge on my new identification card bumped softly against my leg with every step.
A few hours ago, most of the Combat faculty had decided I didn't belong here.
Now I had the badge, a dorm, a new uniform coming tomorrow, and a Grand Professor's name attached to mine.
I glanced around at the paintings, the red carpet, and the academy workers quietly maintaining a floor filled with students who were expected to become some of humanity's best.
Then I looked down at myself: ripped uniform, ruined hair, and probably still some dried flesh monster stuck to my pants.
I hadn't even earned the damn seat.
A smile tugged at my mouth.
"Yeah."
Bloody looked over.
"What?"
I shoved my hands into my pockets and continued toward my room.
"I'm definitely going to piss somebody off."