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"Seems a fair number of people have marked us already." Luke had barely stepped through the gate into Celestial proper before he felt them, hidden gazes on every side.
All of them aimed at the freshmen. Most of them aimed at him. The way one watches prey.
"I did tell you. The competition inside Celestial runs past anything you'd imagine." Elise nodded along, feeling the same eyes sweep past from cover. "Especially you. Exam first of the whole cohort, with a small mountain of credits in hand."
Though after the Dark Purgatory, after standing across from an Eight-Star extra-domain beast in the flesh, Elise honestly couldn't rate these gazes as anything at all. If these people truly meant to bring Luke trouble, her main consideration was whether to fetch a small stool and watch.
Being flattened by Luke: unpleasant. Watching Luke flatten other people: delightful.
The moment Moira's briefing had ended, nearly every freshman's personal terminal chimed with Celestial's synced notice. Trial points converted to credits, plus the credit award tied to exam ranking.
And of everyone, the credits Luke held ran highest by far, which made him the fattest prize in every watching eye. On top of that sat a whole bundle of rewards, for taking first in the exam and first in the trial both.
Plainly, however badly the Renegades had mangled the trial, Tobias and the rest had ruled it without hesitation: first place belonged to Luke. Not that he had time to open any of it now. Later. Slowly.
"No. I don't think that's the main reason." Elise's theory covered a piece of it, but Luke judged it nowhere near enough to explain the current scene, in which he had somehow become the target of every arrow on the field.
Because it wasn't only the seniors lurking in the dark. By now, half the freshmen were staring at him strangely too.
"I have to ask. Is it strictly necessary for all of you to bunch around me?" Luke rubbed his forehead, tone gone helpless.
Around him now stood not just Elise and Lyra, but Iris, Serena, and the Valley's own sister-flowers, Violet and Viola. Line them up and you had the makings of a premium-tier girl group.
Never mind everyone else. Even Luke found the scene faintly absurd. An arrangement like this, and NOT sneaking a look would feel like doing himself an injustice.
Elise and Lyra were one thing. Those two had come up the road with him from the start. But Serena, Iris, and the two dragon-maidens were what, exactly?
"Er." A ripple of awkwardness crossed several faces at once.
"I'm not familiar with the others." Serena recovered first, and her reason arrived with all her usual brevity, blunt as a hammer.
True to form!
Luke's mouth pulled sideways. And the strange part was, weighing it against everything the girl had ever shown, he felt no dissonance whatsoever.
"You remember the suggestion I raised during the trial assessment?" Violet offered next. "If the chance comes, Viola and I would both like to trade notes with you on crafting dragon-family cards. Often."
That was, of course, only her stated reason. The Dark Purgatory and the Renegades made poor plaza conversation. But what Luke had done, the dragon sisters had no intention of forgetting.
"Ssss! So you're THAT kind of Luke!" Elise seized the moment with relish. "Go on, enjoy it in secret. Surrounded by beauties on every side."
Beside her, Lyra covered her face, beyond words. How had she never noticed that her own best friend loved stoking fires this much?
"Girl. You're getting awfully bold." Luke's brow arched, and both hands came up in a pincer to seize Elise's little round face. Scar healed, pain thoroughly forgotten, this one.
"You absolute villain!" Face captured, Elise glared pure murder at him, which purchased her exactly nothing except a firmer grip.
The art style of these people does not match the venue at all. Iris had run entirely out of commentary. Should she be standing a few steps farther off? If bystanders decided she belonged to this madhouse, a lifetime's hard-won reputation died right here in the plaza.
---
"Ssss! This cohort's freshmen are this flashy?!"
"No, hold on. I came here hunting prey. Why am I being force-fed a serving of sweetness?"
"Good grief. That kid must walk around with an entire peach-blossom tree strapped to his back."
The seniors lurking in the shadows, each quietly marking targets, watched the byplay between Luke and the girls and were struck collectively silent.
This was not the script. Were these Celestial freshmen, or the singles-slaying squad?
And it wasn't only the seniors. The instructors who'd slipped into the dark soon after, meaning to take the measure of the year's saplings, went just as quiet.
They had come to check for promising seedlings. Before they'd managed two proper looks, they'd been fed a course of sweetness instead. Freshmen this flashy were, for every one of them, a first.
---
The enrollment paperwork had been settled in advance, which left the dormitory assignments, and even in a world of magic cards, university housing kept to the ancient law: men and women live apart.
Though Celestial ran relaxed about the rest of it. Live with whoever you pleased, in whatever numbers, so long as your strength didn't suffer for it.
The moment Luke split from the girls, the weight of gazes on him thinned dramatically, and he let out a low breath of appreciation. A different world entirely, and the nature of lechers hadn't shifted one inch.
Then he was forced to a stop. Or rather, the entire column was.
"Yo. Freshmen. Finally waited you out." At the front of the column, a group of seniors in matching uniforms barred the road, and through their eyes as they swept the new arrivals ran an unmistakable gleam of greed. Walking credits. Every last one of them.
"Those are Magus Society people? Wesley Brandt?" The other seniors watching from cover saw the uniforms and their faces shifted. A moment ago they'd been nursing designs on this same crowd of freshmen. Now they melted backward and away, quick, like people afraid of clearing the ground too slowly.
The Magus Society?
Luke's brow rose at the whispers running the edges of the road.
Along with the admission notice, every freshman had received dossiers on Celestial's organizations, a rough map of the life waiting for them. Celestial held no shortage of student-founded societies, and the Magus Society ranked first among all of them. In overall strength, it stood just one step beneath the official organs, the Student Council and the Discipline Committee. The quality inside ran remarkably high.
As for Wesley Brandt, if Luke's memory served, the man had taken first in the Eastern exam one year ago, then needed exactly that one year to climb into the Magus Society's third seat, his strength parked year-round inside Celestial's top twenty. Boundless prospects, as the saying went.
"Though by the look of things, this is not a welcome." No one with working eyes could read it any other way.
"What do you want?" A stir ran through the front of the column. Blocked on the open road for no stated reason, plenty of the freshmen were in no mood to be gracious about it.
"My target was never you little insects." Mockery flickered across Wesley's face.
"You!" Faces changed all down the line. They were Celestial's admitted freshmen. Stronger than the seniors, maybe not. But nobody's insects.
More than a few had already summoned their card spirits. One more insolent sentence without an explanation attached, and they would teach this man manners on the spot.