Divine Milking System

Chapter 462: 462 | Congratulations, You’re a Squad Now

Lecture Hall 3B filled at three o’clock. Fifty Obsidian first-years, minus one, and everybody knew which one. Charles’s seat in the second row stayed empty, and the guild kids who’d orbited him sat one chair further apart than usual, as if the space needed a buffer.

Vale came in nine minutes late wearing designer sunglasses indoors and carrying a coffee cup that said WORLD’S OKAYEST HUNTER. He set the cup on the podium, surveyed the room, and let the silence run long enough that three separate people shifted in their seats.

"Alright, future disappointments." He pulled off the sunglasses and hooked them in his collar, one eye ice blue, one storm grey. "House standings. Sapphire’s up four hundred and eleven. We’re second. Ruby’s climbing because their coordination scores went up eight percent while ours went down two, which is impressive, because ours went down while one of our squads was inside a dimension that doesn’t appear on FGRA maps."

He pulled up the leaderboard. Numbers scrolled. Somebody in the front row swore under their breath.

"Winter evaluations are in five weeks. Everything you’ve built this semester either holds or it doesn’t. That’s the whole announcement." He took a drink of coffee. "Additionally, the academy’s counseling office has extended hours through the end of the month. Nobody’s going to check who walks in. I’d suggest a few of you use it, and I’d suggest the ones who think they don’t need it are exactly the ones I’m talking to."

Coming from anyone else it would have been a form letter. Coming from Vale, who had watched us walk into that gate and then eaten a burger about it, the words carried a different weight. He’d actually seen us. Knew what we’d come back with.

He talked mana channel corruption for thirty minutes after that. Actual instruction. Actual diagrams. The tissue degradation patterns that show up in hunters who take repeated Void exposure and pretend they’re fine. He put examples on the board. I took notes for once, mostly because I had four scars across my chest with corruption residue baked into the tissue and Peterson had told me the ridges were permanent. The diagrams matched what I’d been feeling all week, that low-level burn that didn’t go away with rest or healing potions.

At three fifty-five the room started packing up. Bags zipped. Chairs scraped. The usual noise of people preparing to leave.

"Everyone out," Vale said. He drained the coffee cup and turned it upside down over the podium to prove his commitment. "Except the Midnight Foxes. And Davenport, Tanaka, and Mendoza."

The room stopped moving.

Fifty first-years processed that guest list at the same time. The temperature in the lecture hall did something unpleasant. Blair’s head came up from the second row, red hair catching the overhead light. Hikaru, three seats behind her, went from unreadable to a different flavor of unreadable, the kind where her shoulders came back half an inch. Javier, in the back with his notebook, looked up like a man who’d heard his own name in a hospital waiting room.

"Sir," said a guild kid near the door, "is this."

"Out," Vale said, pleasant as brunch.

They filed out. Some of them slowly, the way people do when they want to catch a syllable on the way through the door. Belle waited until the last one cleared the threshold and then dropped into a chair with the resignation of a woman who’d already worked out the answer and hated it.

Eight of us left in a room built for fifty.

Vale raised a finger and pointed at the space between our group and Blair’s, drawing a line through thin air.

"Those," he said, pointing at us, "are a squad. That," he pointed at Blair, "is a squad. Both of you just lost a gate."

Misato came down the aisle fast and stopped beside Blair, close enough their shoulders almost touched. She didn’t fold her arms. She just stood there, weight on her front foot, radiating every ounce of someone who broke kneecaps as a hobby. Naomi picked the seat two down from mine, hands in her lap. Jordan dragged himself up from his slump and dropped into the row behind us, making a small noise like he’d just realized his homework was alive. Belle kept drumming her nails against the desk, tap tap tap, then stopped. Javier came down four rows and hovered at the edge of our cluster like a man unsure which side of the room was legally his problem, hugging his notebook to his chest.

Hikaru took two rows and stopped at the aisle. She didn’t sit. She stood, spine straight, red eyes locked forward, favoring her left side the way she had all week when she thought nobody was watching.

Blair took the front. Six feet from Vale, arms crossed, jaw at that specific angle that had probably buried a few careers. "If this is about the after-action report," she said, "my father’s counsel has already."

"It isn’t." Vale leaned back against the podium and crossed one ankle over the other, casual as morning coffee. "Squad Three has five slots. Squad Three currently has three people in it. Leone’s dead. Pope’s family withdrew him this morning. They used the phrase permanent psychological injury eleven times in a two-page letter."

Blair’s face didn’t move. Her hands did. Her fingers dug into her own forearm, right over the burn, hard enough that it had to hurt.

"Dante’s gone?" Javier’s voice cracked in the middle of it. "He didn’t. Nobody told me he."

"Nobody told anyone. That’s how families like his handle things." Vale looked at Blair, and for once there was nothing playful sitting behind his mismatched eyes. "Which means you’re captain of a three-person squad. Regulations require five for gate authorization. You cannot bid, you cannot deploy, and you cannot score in the winter evaluation."

"Then assign me two first-years." Blair’s voice came out flat and hard. "There are unassigned students in Amber. There are transfers."

"There are." Vale smiled, and I felt every hair on my arms stand up. "I’m not doing that."

Misato’s head turned. Belle’s nails stopped.

"You’re merging us," Belle said.

"Eight people. One unit." Vale pushed off the podium. "Congratulations. You’re all one squad now."

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