For 40 advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/AutumnXd
With two Immortal Realm heavyweights leading the way, the trip back from the east-south border took almost no time at all, and Luke's group returned to Celestial's trial plaza. As for the eliminated students, none of them knew a thing had happened.
By the trial's normal rules, a good six hours remained before the assessment ended, which neatly swallowed every hour the group had spent inside the Dark Purgatory.
"Finally back." Standing on familiar ground again, the three girls let out a long breath apiece. The Purgatory had given them a thorough tour of the word "thrilling," and not one of them wanted the second ticket.
Luke, for his part, spared the Purgatory itself little thought. What he cared about were the materials pulled off the Abyss Devourer and the Predators, which he still hadn't managed to inspect, Tobias's arrival having landed right on top of the harvest.
Not the moment for it now, either. It could wait.
"Ashwood girl. Dawnford girl. The rest falls to you two." Tobias left the instruction and departed ahead of everyone, Silas still hanging from his fist, making straight for Celestial. He had not forgotten what Luke's group told him: the Renegades kept moles inside his academy.
Until that mole was dug out into the light, there would be no peace in him.
"Understood, Head." Moira and Selene traded a glance and nodded together. They knew exactly what he intended.
Drake left a few words with Viola, then followed on Tobias's heels. With the Renegades involved, Dragon's Valley was never going to sit this one out.
"This trial produced more than its share of unexpected turns. But the Head has spoken, so you can all await the follow-up with easy hearts," Selene said once the two Immortals were gone.
The group nodded. On this point, at least, they trusted Celestial to handle its own.
Only then did Moira raise a hand and open the space-gate, and the students eliminated inside the trial came through one after another.
"It's... over?" Lyra, Serena, Violet, every returning freshman wore the same flicker of surprise. That felt considerably faster than advertised.
Then the crowd's attention found the woman standing beside Moira, and a stir ran through the plaza in waves.
The looks were one thing. The identity was the thing.
"Is that Lady Dawnford?"
"Ssss! Barely enrolled and we're already seeing the Lady herself!"
"Why would she appear here? Don't tell me she's taking a student from OUR cohort? I've heard that since she became an instructor, she has never once taken a student!"
"Ssss! If that's true, do I have a shot?!"
Selene's appearance had every freshman lit up at once, and not only the Eastern ones. Even students from beyond the region had heard the stories of the Eastern Governor's only student.
Listening to the chatter around him, Luke's brow climbed, surprise flickering through his eyes.
He'd gathered from the girls that his senior sister's popularity ran healthy. He simply hadn't guessed that this bargain of a senior sister was popular to THIS degree.
Selene caught the surprise on his face, and a small, private smugness bloomed. Her little junior brother might be a complete monster, but she wasn't exactly nothing herself, thank you. The teacher hadn't taken her in on a whim.
"All right!" Moira clapped her hands, and every eye came to her. "This cohort's trial assessment has concluded. I trust you're all holding a respectable sum of points."
She stopped short mid-breath, and her gaze flicked to Luke before she could help it. So did Selene's.
Under the original design, even a student eliminated in the first round kept a guaranteed floor of one hundred points. The universal baseline of enrollment.
But thanks to Luke, a healthy crowd of freshmen had lost their trial seeds outright, and with the seeds went the floor. Wiped to nothing. Zero, in the truest sense of the word.
Moira shook her head slowly. The seedless students in the crowd wore the faces of people crying without tears.
"In addition, the Academy grants bonus points according to your exam rankings." She pressed on. "After formal enrollment, the points in your hands will convert proportionally into credits."
Thank every heaven the enrollment score had been designed on two legs, exam and trial both. Otherwise she'd be processing the first zero-point enrollees since Celestial's founding.
The robbed students took what small comfort the words offered. At least the zero wouldn't follow them through the front gate.
What followed was mostly procedure, but everyone listened hard anyway. Nobody wanted to be the one who missed the sentence that mattered.
"Celestial runs on the credit system. The more credits you hold, the higher you rank." One point in particular caught every ear. "Which means that even as brand-new freshmen, the moment your credits reach the standard and you pass the promotion assessment, your ranking inside Celestial rises with them."
"The higher the rank, the richer the resources. Including certain dimensional planes belonging to Celestial alone, which can only be entered by spending the required credits."
"The resources inside those planes run deep. Provided your luck isn't tragic, one trip in, and you may well come out a full stair higher than you went."
More than a few freshmen started breathing faster, Elise not excepted. For rookies at their stage, growing stronger sat first on every list, always.
Some were already dreaming in full color: enrollment, ascension, sweeping all before them.
Watching it, a distinctly odd expression crossed Moira's face. These rookies were still far too young.
Of every road to credits Celestial offered, the trial assessment was the easiest mass harvest by a wide margin. Earning credits after enrollment was another world entirely.
And every year, no small number of upperclassmen watched the incoming freshmen's credit balances the way hawks watch fat rabbits. A freshman who simply kept what they held had already earned the right to brag.
---
"The trial assessment's ended?"
"Looks like it. Which means a fresh batch of walking point donations has arrived, no?"
"Tsk tsk. As their seniors, we're practically obligated to teach them a lesson. The Card Master's world is a cruel, cruel place."
Inside Celestial, upperclassman after upperclassman was already stirring. Short of taking a life, the Academy did not forbid its students fighting one another.
The design ran close kin to raising gu, poison against poison in one jar. But no one could deny what it did: it lit a fire under every student in the building, and it made them grow fast.