Sharp

“The professors hate me,” the draconian muttered as she approached us. I am sure I was the only one who heard it. She was studying us and was not impressed. She was quite impressive as a large female draconian. Draconions claimed they were descended from dragons and had racial traits of might, as well as fire. They often had scales and could breathe fire. That was before their essences. She dwarfed us and was obviously very physically built. There weren’t many draconions in the academy.

“Gather around, please, my name is Jaha.” her voice was a bit gravelly. “I am the senior Leadership student assigned to your group. I was assigned because you don’t have a defender and that is my area.”

That was a relief to know.

She looked us over again. “We will be practising outside of class time and getting some basic group formations in place. We have two practice sessions in the mirage chamber before we enter the astral space. What is always the first objective?”

“Don’t die,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, “but it is more than that. It is that nobody dies. This is not an individual objective but a group objective. We look out for each other and help each other. Communication is one of the major keys to this. If you are struggling to keep up or with something, you need to communicate so we can help. Who are the slowest people here on the obstacle course?”

Akemi and Melor looked at each other, “Probably me,” Akemi said. “I am only fast in water.”

“Then you are the pacesetter,” Jaha said. “That is our group pace limit, and there will be limits on how far from the group you go. If you get caught on your own against a bronze-rank monster, you will die. Some of those monsters are fast.” She looked at me, “I believe you are the scout?”

I nodded.

“You will only be scouting close. This astral space has a bronze-rank mana density but an extremely high mana saturation, which means monsters and other manifestations appear a lot. And I mean a lot. Monsters are everywhere. Leaving the group is a death sentence for Iron rankers like you. More than one student has died because they got greedy and saw an essence they went to collect on their own and died to a monster. Yes, there are essences, awakening stones, and quintessence manifesting as well. Arguments over such things have also killed people, so we need to have that agreed beforehand.”

“How do other groups deal with that?” I asked.

“It varies,” Jaha said. “Some have a keep what you find policy, others pool it together for distribution later, and there are variations on those. Don’t forget the academy takes a twenty percent cut as it is their major funding source. I suggest that everything gets pooled and distributed later for this run. You can do different rules next semester when I am not in charge. This has the least arguments in the astral space.”

I am not sure that applies to my Reaping Magic skill. Nobody knows I have it, and they are my creations, not found items.

“Now,” continued Jaha, “I pointed out the dangers of going on your own, but if you stick as a group and close to me, we should be fine. I can handle almost any bronze-level monster in the space. It will get a bit iffy when there are several together, but follow my instructions, and we will be fine. The Astral space itself is huge. It is about 60km across and 100km long. The quirk of this astral space is the entry portal will send you to one of six portals in the space, at random. The portal destination changes at a rate between one to fifteen hours. If it changes between us transitioning and we are not all a group, you turn around and come straight back out. The exit portal will always work, and we all exit and then go again. Does everybody understand that?”

Everybody nodded.

“Astral space has a bronze-level density, but that does not mean the magic is the same throughout the space. It varies from low to high, and we may enter a high area.”

“Wouldn’t a high bronze area spawn silver-rank monsters on occasion?” Saskia asked.

“Yes,” Jaha replied. “However, the gold-rank staff members regularly sweep the astral space to eliminate silver-rank threats and make it safer for us. I say safer, not safe. We may encounter a silver-rank monster, and if that is the case, you follow my directions, and we exit as fast as possible.”

Everybody nodded.

“The six portal points are well documented, and everybody will be issued with a map. The portals are between ten and thirty kilometres apart. Ideally, we will enter one portal, traverse to the next nearest portal, and exit. That is the objective of this exercise. This will take between four to eight hours, depending on the portal and what we encounter. This is a long time for you, who have only spent an hour in the mirage chamber, with only two or three encounters. We will be having 4-6 encounters an hour for 4-8 hours.”

“And if things don’t go ideally?” I asked.

“Good question,” Jaha said. “Shit will happen. I will be the one to decide if we continue or if we retreat. If we end up at the outlier portal, we will sweep a circuit and exit the same portal. That would be the best-case portal, except it is the one in the highest bronze-level area. If we end up there, I may decide to exit, and we will try again another day. That will depend on how our practice runs go in the mirage chambers.”

“What do we need to do to prepare?” I asked.

“We will go through that in detail as we will be training two hours a day on top of the class time and the mirage chambers. The most important thing for the mages is mana potions. If you run out of mana, you are stuffed. Everybody should have two health potions, more if you can afford it. Get the best equipment you can afford. Other than that, it is skills and training.”

Jaha seemed confident and competent. I was glad she was with us. We were in for a very busy two weeks.

Jaha had the Earth, Iron, and Shield essences, which gave the Fortress confluence. She literally had a fortress we could hide in briefly if things went really bad. She could only use it once a day, so we had to be careful with it. We did practice an emergency signal, and we had ten seconds to get to her and hide in her fortress. The fortress would stand against most silver-rank threats, and health and mana regeneration was increased while in it. She actually used the skill one day so we could experience it. The others thought it was comforting she had it. I didn’t say, but I was worried that her level of confidence in us was not high.

Our first exercise in the mirage chamber gave us a sample of what the astral space was like. We started high on a cliff, looking over a forested valley.

“The next portal is across the valley, and down, so Theo leads, always in sight.” The Kais ran off amongst the rocks. I sniffed the wind and headed after them, but not too fast. We encountered a rock lizard first, and Jaha kept it focused on her and her massive iron shield. Nassor went to one side with Akemi and Melor, and I went to the other with Saskia, and we whittled it down. The hammer part of Nassor’s Halberg was the most effective. Melor was frustrated as his needles did nothing. Saskia’s fire and water was an effective combination.

We had just finished it when my ears picked up the sound of wings. A flock of iron-rank poison crows swooped in. “To the tree line,” Jaha ordered, and we dashed to the trees. Unfortunately, a Tree sprite was there, “Melor! Needles on the crows. Saskia, fire and light on the tree sprite.” was the order, and I sheltered Saskia with my shield from the crows. Ardisia manifested in a tree and got some with her thorns as well. And so it went on. We made it a quarter of the way to the next portal when our hour was up. The best thing was nobody died.

Everybody was pleased. We were all exhausted, and I was not sure how we would keep it up for four hours or more. Jaha seemed to have more confidence in us. She didn’t hold back on her after-action report about where we could improve, such as why I didn’t spot the Sprite.

The astral space consisted of a lake at the head of two valleys. A major stream went down one valley and a small stream down the other. Both were forested. The magic that manifested was a lot of plant, water, earth and animal types. There was some air near the top of the mountains and a few dark and underground-type manifestations in a cave system. We would not need to go into the caves as there were no portals there, and only second years and up were allowed.

The lake was also off-limits and reserved for second-year water specialists. At the other end of the astral space, which had a higher density and a lone portal, there was a swamp area with a lot of poison and decay-type manifestations.

Jaha was only early bronze, but she had been in the space for the last two and a bit years and knew most things. Her team would regularly look for the swamp portal.

I thought this was a problem. I felt rushed the whole time. Jaha was used to working with her team, and she thought she was slowing down for us, but it wasn’t enough.

“Jaha, I think we need to slow down more,” I said.

“We are already going pretty slow,” was the reply.

“But did we really have to rush off the ridge? The crows were only iron rank. We could have hunkered down under the shield and let Malor and my tether whittle them down, and Saskia and Akemi would have joined in. Then we could have spent some time recovering before hitting the sprite and the flying squirrels.”

“You are here to be stretched, and multiple fights happen. It is best to practice now. What do you others think?”

Everybody was flush with success. They either didn’t mind or thought it was OK.

“We can try slowing down a bit, but the object is to get to the other portal, and slower means more time in the astral space, and you don’t have Bronze rank endurance. Fatigue is also something to consider.”

I didn’t feel like I could say more now. We were successful beyond what anyone anticipated.

The next week was a disaster. The two mages were low on mana when a pack of bronze-rank earth wolves attacked us. They were the height of my chest, and while Jaha could counter their earth attacks with her earth essence, they were tough and resistant to fire, water and the poison I tried. Melor needles didn’t penetrate far enough, and he was the first to die. Akemi quickly followed, her water cloak doing nothing against the wolf’s bite. Jaha ordered the retreat to her fortress, but Nessor wasn’t going to make it. I knew it was his last life, so I didn’t retreat, but Quick Sharp dashed at the wolf and tore into it with my claws. I might have had it if I hadn’t been torn to shreds by another one, and Nassor soon joined me on the bench. We watched as Saskia’s teleport failed due to a lack of mana. She joined us, and Jaha used the override to stop the exercise.

“Thanks for trying, man,” Nassor said, looking incredibly defeated after hitting the five-death fail mark.

Everybody was looking defeated. I was feeling defeated. From the heights of success last week, we now have a full party wipe, and this is going to be real next week. Nobody felt ready.

Jaha sat up on her bench and looked at us. “That was not ideal,” she said in a massive understatement. “I will need to consult. It is better to back out than to go in unprepared.”

Shit. That is a repeat for all of us.

“Can I say something?”

Jaha nodded.

I continued, “I think I might be able to get us through the astral space.” There were a lot of disbelieving looks. “Hear me out. First of all, I think we are still going too fast for me. I know you have slowed down, Jaha, but I need more time. I had something in my storage space that could have given us the advantage against the wolves, but I had no time to set it up. I have a rope I could have used as snares, and even getting a couple of them off the ground would have meant you could have controlled the others, Jaha.”

“You don’t always have time,” she said.

“But we could have made time. We could have stopped after the … whatever those strange things were and then hid to regenerate mana while Kai scouted. We could have stopped and prepared, but we kept moving.”

“We can be attacked when stopped,” Jaha said.

“Yes, and that is when we need you in particular, Jaha, but we would have been rested and had full mana. My point is not to criticise what just happened. My point…” I stopped and took a breath, “My point is I have done this before. Not this astral space, but I have been trapped and underpowered, and I still got out with my life despite the odds.”

“When did you do that?” asked Jaha in a disbelieving tone.

“I was in Ironwood, with only two essences and four skills, when the undead took over the city. I got out alive when thousands didn’t. Slow and careful, slow and watchful were my key mantras.”

Everybody was paying attention now. Everybody had heard of the disaster of Ironwood.

“You never said,” Akemi said, then it clicked, “That's why you spent so much time at the Temple of Death. That's what you are seeing Healer Remore about.”

I just nodded. There was silence for a bit, and then I said, “If anyone wants to back out, that is fine. I can get us through if we slow right down. For the unexpected attacks, we need Jaha, but I can get us through. It will take three or four times as long, but we can do it. We are not like other teams. We lack a lot of their strengths. What we need to do is utilise our strengths, and I don’t just mean me. Saskia’s confluence essence is Mirage, but we haven't used it once.” I took a breath, “It is up to you guys and Jaha, of course, I want to try, and I think we can do it without violating rule one.”

They looked at each other. Then Jaha said, “We have a week of non-mirage training before we are scheduled to enter the astral space. Theo can take us through his plans, but it is not my neck on the line. This semester is about you making life-and-death decisions, and this is where you decide if the risk is worth your life. Training is at the normal time tomorrow if you think it is.”