SMASH or PASS

Chapter 38: Chapter Thirty-Eight: Classes

Damn.

"He quit after this?"

"He quit because ’gangraped’ is just one of the many other things. The supply closet ambushes. Financial threats and so on." Cassius leaned back. "The alchemistry students are the worst. They know how to make things that look like cookies and aren’t. Never accept food from someone you haven’t vetted."

"That’s specific."

"I learned specificity at Ashenmere. Through experience." He reached into his bag and produced a folded paper.

Hand drawn and color coded.

It was a map.

Every building on the academy campus, every corridor, every blind spot marked. "I mapped the campus for escape routes. Red zones are high-traffic between class bells. Green zones are low-visibility areas. The courtyard behind the groundskeeper’s shed has a blind spot from every window."

I took the map. Studied it. It was thorough. One area was marked with a skull and crossbones and the annotation "ALCHEMY WING. DO NOT ENTER ALONE."

Lmao. I feel kind of bad but I’m also very curious. What the hell did those girls do to him?

"What happened in the alchemy wing?"

"The cookies happened." His face closed. "I don’t want to talk about it."

Dorian said, without looking up: "He ate a cookie. The cookie contained a mild aphrodisiac. He spent four hours in a broom closet waiting for the effects to wear off while three alchemy students waited outside."

"..."

To think it’s the same playbook the Baron’s second wife used on me... Tsk.

"I SAID I don’t want to talk about it."

"You never do. But the commoner should know." Dorian turned a page in his schedule. "Noel, look at the girl in row seven. The one with red hair. Her father is a Thornguard captain. So don’t flirt unless you want a background check. Row twelve has two merchant family daughters. They work as a pair. Row three, far left, is the daughter of the Covenant of Purity’s regional superintendent. Approaching her is inadvisable for reasons I shouldn’t need to explain."

Was he... helping me?

Maybe he wasn’t that big of an asshole.

That’s right, unlike most usual shitty cultivation novels, people aren’t black and white, not all of them are either kind-hearted saints or egotistical young masters.

I took the third seat. The three of us exchanged glances. The glances said everything. Welcome to the zoo. We’re the exhibit.

"Sit by the door. Always. Never be the last one out after a lecture. Never."

"Why?"

"Look at the front three rows."

I looked. Several women in the front three rows were looking back. One waved. Another was writing something in a notebook while glancing at us between sentences.

"The front three rows are the ones whose families told them to ’make connections with male students.’ The back rows are here for education. The front rows are here for us."

"You’ve already profiled the entire class?" I asked.

"I profiled them before orientation. My family’s intelligence service provided a dossier on every student in the incoming class." He closed his schedule. "You don’t have an intelligence service. You have a cloudy crystal and a recommendation letter. Good luck."

"Huh... wonder why are you telling me that."

"I just wanted you to know how insignificant you are."

"..."

Well... fuck you too.

I take everything I said about him back.

Egotistical young masters are worst!

◇◇◇

A female Professor entered.

"Welcome to Brannock Academy. I am Professor Lethia. I will be teaching you the Mana Theory."

Professor Lethia had large, round breasts that strained the buttons of her tight white blouse. Her thick hips and wide ass filled out her grey pencil skirt, the hem riding high on her thick thighs. She wore black stockings with a seam up the back. A severe, sharp face was framed by dark hair pulled into a tight bun. Red lips. Sharp, intelligent eyes behind thin-framed glasses. Every movement was efficient, drawing the eye to her exaggerated curves.

She looked at the room. Two hundred faces. Three male. Her eyes found us in the back row, held for exactly one second, and moved on.

"Your curriculum covers mana theory, practical application, combat fundamentals, alchemical basics, and history of the Covenant. Practical examinations quarterly. Failure in two consecutive practicals results in suspension." She let that land. "For those wondering: examination standards apply equally regardless of gender. We do not grade males on a curve. Despite what your sponsors may have told you."

Quiet laughter from the front rows.

"Furthermore, this academy does not endorse, facilitate, or tolerate the interference of external family interests in academic affairs. Your parents’ alliances, ambitions, and breeding agendas are not the academy’s concern. You are here to learn." She opened a textbook. "Chapter one. Mana as a resource."

The system fired on every woman in the room. All at once. Two hundred prompts.

[Common, 8 SP. Common, 9 SP. Uncommon, 22 SP. Common, 7 SP. Uncommon, 25 SP. Rare, 68 SP. Common, 6 SP.]

And on. And on. Two hundred entries. A wall of data dumped into my awareness in the time it took Professor Lethia to open her textbook.

I closed my eyes. Breathed. Pushed the prompts down. It was harder than the market, harder than the guild hall, harder than any crowd I’d been in. Two hundred targets in an enclosed space. The system was screaming like an alarm in a room full of smoke.

The prompts shrank. Slowly. Reluctantly. They settled into a background hum. Always present. Never silent.

I opened my eyes. Professor Lethia was writing on the board. I took notes. Two columns.

Left: what she said.

Right: what Pixia whispered.

Left: "Mana capacity is fixed at birth and determined by genetic and alchemical factors."

Right: "Partially true. Capacity can expand through sustained compression training. The academy doesn’t teach this because the results are marginal for most people and the process takes years."

Left: "Mana output is measured in standard units called Aldrens, named after Professor Aldric Morne."

Right: "Named after the man who would disagree with how the academy uses his name. Ironic."

Left: "The practical applications of mana theory will be covered in combat fundamentals."

Right: "Where they’ll teach you to throw wide beams and call it ’projection.’ Ignore that class. You’re a ’needle’ not a ’hammer’."

By the end of the first lecture, the right column was twice the left. Two versions of the same education. The official one and the ’real’ one.

◇◇◇

Second class. Combat Fundamentals. Different room. Smaller. A practice hall with padded floors and weapon racks along the walls. The professor was a woman in her thirties.

"I’m Instructor Vance. This is Combat Fundamentals. You will learn basic mana projection, physical conditioning, defensive techniques, and situational assessment." She paced the front of the room. "This is not Mana Theory. I don’t care about your textbook scores. I care about whether you can hit a target and avoid being hit. Everything else is academic."

’Woah’

Instructor Vance looked like she’d been carved out of a block of pure muscle. She wore simple training leggings that clung to powerful, corded thighs that looked like they could crush a skull. A tight black sports top contained the heavy swell of her breasts, the fabric stretched taut. The scars on her forearms were pale and thick against tanned skin. She had a brutally square jaw, short cropped blonde hair, and eyes like flint chips. When she paced, you could see the thick muscles of her shoulders and back moving under her top. She had a small waist that flared into wide, heavy-set hips. The outline of her panties was faintly visible under the snug leggings.

She looked at the three males in the back row. "Gentlemen. Combat Fundamentals does not adjust for gender. You will be partnered with female students. You will be expected to project at them and they will project at you. If you have concerns about physical contact with female classmates, address them now."

Dorian: "No concerns."

Cassius: "None."

Me: "Fine."

"Good." She turned to the class. "Today is introductory. No practical work. We begin with theory: the four principles of mana-based combat. Projection, shielding, augmentation, and disruption. Over the next six months, you will learn the basics of each. By year’s end, you should be capable of surviving a one-on-one encounter with an opponent of equal or slightly greater rank."

She wrote on the board. "Projection: directing mana outward against a target. The most common combat application. Think of it as throwing a punch, except the punch is made of energy and travels at the speed of thought."

Pixia, from my collar: "The speed of thought is about 120 meters per second for neural signals. Mana projection is faster. She’s underselling it."

"Shielding: directing mana inward to create a defensive barrier. Less intuitive than projection. Most students struggle with this initially because defense requires you to resist the natural outward flow of mana."

Pixia: "The academy teaches shielding as ’push mana outward and then hold it in place.’ Your needle technique is already better suited to shielding than the standard model because compression IS shielding. You’re ahead of the class on defense without knowing it."

"Augmentation: channeling mana through your physical body to enhance speed, strength, or endurance. The domain of close-quarters combatants. Expensive in mana cost. Effective in results."

Pixia: "Augmentation will drain your reserves in seconds. Skip it. For you, augmentation is suicide. Your body runs out of mana before the augmentation does anything useful."

"Disruption: interfering with an opponent’s mana flow through targeted interference techniques. Advanced. We won’t cover this until semester two."

Pixia: "Disruption is where your needle technique becomes lethal. A precise mana thread aimed at an opponent’s channeling pathway can interrupt their projection mid-cast. Nobody teaches this at the beginner level because nobody has precise enough control. You will."

The lecture continued for forty minutes. No practical demonstrations. Just theory. I took two-column notes the entire time.

After class, a woman approached me in the hallway. Different from the ones who’d handed me notes during Mana Theory. This one was... muscular, with the build of someone who’d trained in physical combat before entering the academy.

"You’re Noel? The low-mana student?"

"That’s me."

"I’m Thalia. I’m in the advanced practical track. Combat specialist."

Thalia was a... an interesting woman, built solid from the ground up. She wore a sleeveless black tank top that showed off biceps that could crack walnuts. The shirt struggled against the weight of her breasts, large and round, the fabric pulled tight across their deep curve. Her legs, visible below her shorts, were thick pillars of hard muscle dusted with fine blonde hairs. Her face was broad and handsome, with sharp dark eyes that didn’t blink. The black shorts she wore were so short the bottom curve of her heavy backside was visible when she turned. She smelled like sweat and clean linen. When she spoke, her throat worked, the muscles in her neck flexing.

She looked me up and down with professional assessment. "Your mana output is terrible."

"Everyone keeps telling me."

"But your written score is top 3%. Which means you understand theory even if you can’t apply it conventionally." She held out an embossed card. "I’m offering tutoring. Practical combat application. Evenings. My dormitory. Room 14."

"That’s generous."

"It’s self-interested. Tutoring a male student looks good on my academy record. And..." She paused. Her assessment shifted from professional to personal. "You have interesting body."

"Interesting how?"

Her eyes fixed on my...

’Is she looking at my dick?’

’She is, isn’t she...’

"P-Precise. The way you hold your pen. Your fingers are steady. Precise hands are useful in combat." She turned and walked away. Her stride was confident. She’d planned this.

Pixia: "She’s Uncommon tier. 28 SP. She also just examined your dick and butt around twenty times in the last five minutes. The two evaluations happened in the same glance. Multitasking."

◇◇◇

Third class. History of the Covenant.

"I’m Professor Valen. Your history teacher."

Professor Valen was in her twenties, the kind of severe beauty that tightened a man’s throat. She wore a high-necked black dress that did nothing to hide the heavy, mature curve of her hips or the generous swell of her bosom. The fabric was expensive and unforgiving, outlining the dip of her waist and the full flare of her rear as she wrote on the chalkboard. Her hair was dark, pulled back so tightly it stretched the skin of her forehead, emphasizing her sharp cheekbones and haughty mouth. She had stern, unforgiving red eyes that missed nothing. When she reached for a book on a high shelf, the dress rode up, exposing thick, pale thighs in sheer black stockings.

She made it clear in the first five minutes that her class was not a social venue.

"This is a lecture hall, not a friend group. If I see notes being passed, I will confiscate them, read them aloud, and assign the sender a three-thousand word essay on the topic of their choosing. I have done this seventeen times in my career. The results are always educational."

Nobody passed notes in History of the Covenant.

The lecture covered the pre-Convergence era. The world before the species shift. Human civilization, dominant, unaware of the changes coming. Pixia’s corrections were minimal here because the pre-Convergence history was relatively accurate. The propaganda started at the Convergence itself.

"The pre-Convergence population of Solvraeth was estimated at four million. Predominantly human. The gender ratio was approximately 1:1. The world’s power structures were organized around military strength, territorial control, and resource extraction." Professor Valen spoke with the measured precision of someone who’d delivered this lecture a hundred times and still found the material important. "Tomorrow, we will discuss what happened next."

Pixia, from my collar: "What happened next is the interesting part. And the part they get wrong."

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