A few nervous glances passed through the crowd.
"If you try to use your class abilities, the glyphs will recognize it and fire back. This climb is about raw capability—your body, your will. Nothing else."
He held up a tir.
"Top climbers get credit. Top ten tis will be posted publicly but that won't be until the next ten weeks. If you fall, you start over."
He gave a devilish grin.
"Climb."
Students instantly charged forward. The first batch leapt for handholds and so succeeded while others missed completely.
Victor paced himself and approached with calculation. He eyed the sequence of glowing glyphs and disappearing stones then leapt.
His fingers gripped a solid outcrop. Instantly, a glyph near his left foot sparked and a gust of wind blew sideways, trying to knock him off.
Victor gritted his teeth and swung to the next hold.
Around him, students scread and cursed as the wall rejected their efforts. One girl got flung halfway down by a water jet. Another boy triggered a kinetic glyph and got launched several feet off the wall before being caught by the safety spell near the bottom.
Victor pressed on.
He felt his muscles ache from the added weight. Sweat slicked his brow as he climbed higher. Handholds began shifting beneath his fingers, forcing him to readjust mid-motion. The entire wall began to pulse slowly like it had a heartbeat.
Ten ters up.
Twenty...
A platform erged—but the mont he touched it, it vanished.
It was like a reflex test. Fortunately, he hadn't rested all his weight on it yet so he swiftly grabbed another stone fragnt and hauled himself up just as the glyph beside it let out a warm throb.
It didn't trigger.
He grinned. "So they're reactive, not random."
He moved faster now and began tracing the patterns. Blue glyphs pulsed in rhythm, but red ones were chaotic—unpredictable. He avoided those entirely.
Thirty ters.
The climb was brutal.
His arms had began trembling at this point.
Victor grunted as he launched himself to a narrow ledge, barely holding on. From the corner of his eye, he saw Rylan already halfway up another route, moving swiftly.
Behind him was the mage from yesterday, grimacing but still climbing.
Victor smiled faintly.
Then his hand slipped.
He caught himself with his other hand, but a kinetic glyph had activated beneath his elbow. The pressure slamd into him from beneath.
He used the force.
Letting it fling him upward, he rotated mid-air and grabbed a glowing handhold with both hands while absorbing the impact in his shoulders.
Fifty ters.
He was close.
Victor paused briefly on a protruding platform as his heart heart hamred. The weight gear was crushing him now. His forearms scread. Every breath was a chore.
Then the stone beneath him cracked.
"Of course," he muttered.
The platform vanished and he began dropping.
Victor swiftly spun in mid air and landed on a ledge two ters below.
He kicked off from it and lunged upwards.
Soon, he crossed the sixty ters mark.
He could see the top.
He didn't stop.
The final stretch had no glyphs—just sheer, rough wall and ropes.
A test of endurance alone. He pulled, pulled, pulled—until his hand grasped the final ledge.
He grunted, swung his leg up and threw himself over the edge.
He collapsed on the summit while panting and grinning.
Others were still climbing. A few had already made it up—
Victor sat there, looking down at the brutal climb below and felt a surge of satisfaction.
He made it without using any Qi to strengthen himself.
"Day two, cleared..."
Victor had no doubt that in the coming months, he'd see results from such training.
...
...
After the brutal morning rock climb that left his muscles aching and clothes soaked in sweat, Victor barely had ti to catch his breath before he had to rush toward his next lecture.
The Academy's schedule was relentless, and every class was tid to the minute.
His first lecture of the day was titled "Foundation of Martial Postures and Formations", held in Hall B-3, a stone-walled do chamber lined with mana-inscribed diagrams and ancient weapon displays.
The instructor was a weathered old warrior nad Master Enshar. His face was marked with claw scars and his voice like gravel. He didn't speak much—just moved.
When he did speak, it was often sothing like, "No form, no flow. No flow, no life."
Master Enshar demonstrated the fundantal stances used by renowned warrior clans, from low sweeping anchor stances to fluid transitional footwork. Victor followed with focused gaze. Though the lecture was theoretically basic, the physical strain was significant, especially since they were forced to hold each position under the weight gear.
His second lecture, "Weapon Specialization Theory", was more academic. The instructor, Instructor Veleth, was a slim, hawk-eyed woman with a venomous tongue.
She broke down the differences in energy expenditure, recovery ti, and muscle fatigue depending on weapon types, and explained the difference between slashing techniques versus piercing styles for mana channeling warriors.
Victor took notes quickly, catching on to her complex explanations with his intuition. Her final assignnt was to design a theoretical sword style that best aligned with each student's known affinities and fighting rhythms. Victor already had ideas brewing, especially after everything he'd learned from Ascendant Realms.
Then ca the final lecture of the day.
"Practical Application: Warrior's Reflex".
This was held on a floating platform arena—hovering high in the air thanks to stabilized mana-cores. They were required to fight dummies that randomly activated movent spells or directional blasts, reacting to threat zones in under half a second.
Victor did his best to perform well. He shifted into low defensive postures and moved like a shadow. Every ti the dummies activated, he displayed a sharp footwork, cutting the angle before they could reposition. He even managed a clean ten-hit combo that disabled one of the dummies entirely.
Unbeknownst to anyone, his cloaked cara was carefully hidden behind one of the outer pillars and layered with a thin veil of qi—
---
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