The mission board was exactly where Orath had said it would be.
East corridor, third panel from the entrance, mounted between a notice about upcoming mana theory assessments and a lost property listing for someone's left boot. It was a wide board covered with small slotted cards, each printed with a mission category, difficulty rating, and a brief description.
Kael stood in front of it the next morning and read through the available options.
The team marked most of the missions with color indicators.
Green for low difficulty.
Yellow for moderate.
Red for high.
The cards accessible to a Provisional Field Operative were green and yellow only, indicated by a small rank stamp in the lower corner of each card.
Mira stood beside him with her notebook already open.
"Herb collection," she read aloud from the first card. "Outer forest boundary, two-hour estimate, and low danger rating."
"No," Kael said.
"Boundary survey," she read from the next. "East perimeter walk, and documentation of any unusual activity."
"What counts as unusual?" Kael asked.
"It does not specify," she said.
"Then no," he said.
Mira turned a page.
"Dungeon entry level sweep," she read. "First floor clearance, verification of monster population density after the recent Shadow Fragment incident."
Kael looked at that one.
The Shadow Fragment incident was his incident, the first-floor sweep was a direct follow-up to something that had happened because of him, and he felt a certain uncomfortable logic in being the one to go back and check what they had left behind.
Also, it was the only yellow-rated card on the board, making it the most interesting option by a considerable margin.
Kael took the card, and Mira wrote something down.
"Faculty co-signature required," she said.
"I know," he said, and he walked to Hale's office.
Hale read the card, and then he looked at Kael.
"You chose the dungeon sweep," he said.
"Yes," Kael said.
"Not the herb collection."
"No."
"Not the boundary survey."
"No."
Hale looked at the card again for a moment, and then he signed it.
"I will accompany you as supervising faculty," he said. "That is a requirement for first missions regardless of rank. We're going early tomorrow morning. Bring a standard field kit. Mira Solen's current rank is not yet clear for dungeon entry."
"Understood," Kael said.
He found Mira in the corridor and told her, and she wrote it down.
"I want a full debrief in return," she said.
"Obviously," Kael said.
That afternoon, Darius found him near the east courtyard.
Not with the energy of someone building toward a confrontation, he was walking past and stopped, the way a person stops when they have already decided what they are going to say and are simply waiting for the right moment.
"Mission board," Darius said.
"Yes," Kael said.
"First floor dungeon sweep," Darius said.
Kael looked at him.
"How do you know which card I took?" he asked.
"I check the board every morning," Darius said. "The dungeon sweep card was there yesterday and gone today, and you were the only Provisional Field Operative who would choose it over the herb collection."
That was an accurate assessment.
"Yes," Kael said.
Darius was quiet for a moment.
"The first floor was structurally unstable after the Shadow Fragment event," he said. "The academy survey team flagged three areas of concern before they pulled back from the site."
"I know," Kael said.
"Hale is supervising," Darius said.
"Yes," Kael said.
Darius looked across the courtyard for a moment.
"I want to come," he said.
Kael stared at him.
Darius met the look with the direct, even steadiness that seemed to be his natural way of occupying space in any room he entered.
"My field rank is Senior Field Operative," he said. "I do not need a co-signature, and I can join any yellow-rated mission as an independent participant with faculty acknowledgement."
"Why?" Kael asked.
"Because I want to observe a controlled field environment," Darius said.
Kael looked at him.
"That is not the real reason," he said.
A pause.
"No," Darius said. "It is not," and he looked at the courtyard again.
"The duel, The ceiling, and The library. I have reviewed every incident in order; the pattern is not random, and something is operating around you in a consistent and repeating way, and I cannot identify what it is from a distance."
He looked back at Kael.
"I want to see it directly," he said.
Kael considered this.
Bringing Darius into a field environment was either a good decision or a complicated one. Probably both simultaneously. He was the most technically capable combat student in the first year cohort, had already demonstrated he could process unusual situations without immediately trying to turn them into leverage, and had not in the week since their conversation on the garden bench done anything to interfere with whatever Kael was building.
That counted for something.
"Talk to Hale," Kael said.
Darius nodded once and walked away without further comment.
That evening, Hale confirmed the request had been made and approved.
"He has a senior field rating," Hale said. "And he may be useful."
Kael did not ask what was useful in reference to.
He went back to his dormitory and packed his field kit.
Standard contents: one small lamp, a water container, a basic first aid supply, a short utility blade he had never actually used for anything, and the academy field log he was required to keep for the mission record.
He looked at the utility blade for a moment, put it back, closed the kit, and looked at his panel.
[ Luck: SSS ]
[ Field Rank: Provisional Field Operative ]
Tomorrow, he was going back into the dungeon for the first time since the Shadow Fragment event.
With his professor, who suspected him of being something older than the classification system.
With his rival, who had decided observation was more useful than opposition, into an area flagged for structural instability, on a mission officially rated yellow.
He went to sleep and slept extremely well, which was either a good sign or a sign that his luck had already decided how tomorrow was going to go and wasn't concerned with informing him of the details.