Another day passed, and the day to enter the wilds with Savish grew a day closer. Vera said that three days would be necessary to finish, and she would use every minute of those three days to make sure her students were in tiptop condition.

  After the incident yesterday morning, they continued their parkour training for another few hours. Everything else was coming along smoothly, but practical movement skills were the one skillset that they had neglected so far, aside from ability training.

  Arden led the trio across the rooftops for half the remaining time, to general success. Sya led the other half of the time, to the same degree of success. Notably though, there were no acts of spontaneous vigilantism unlike with Arden’s, but she also slipped only twice to Arden’s four.

  Vera assured them that falling only six times between the two of them was better than expected and applauded. More so than their success, Vera thought their willingness and general attitude incredible.

  Arden wasn't the only one having a jolly old time moving from rooftop to rooftop.

  As Vera watched her friends improve by the day, she felt reaffirmed in her belief that her method was far superior to her family's.

  When she was younger, she woke up everyday worried that it could be her last thanks to her family's spartanesque training methods.

  Currently, Arden and Sya were throwing everything into their training, not because they were under the threat of death, but because they wanted to. They woke up ready to train even if it meant getting only the smallest bit stronger.

  Vera knew her efforts were successful.

  Her friends had good habits and good foundations. It was quickly coming to the point where she would no longer be their teacher.

  She would still have far more skill than Arden and Vera would have for the foreseeable future, but the teacher dynamic would come to an end before the field assessment.

  Their foundations were sturdy now. Vera had done her job and shown Arden and Sya how to survive. They had the basics down. Now, it was up to them to hone the skills to the peak.

  By the time the field assessment rolled around, Vera wouldn't be their teacher. She would be their peer. A teammate.

  They wouldn't stop training together, but what they trained would be more than just exercise. They would still do them together, but other facets would be worked on as well. Team tactics, Celestial research, the works.

  Vera watched from below the balancing poles as Arden and Sya maintained their balance. This was their third odd pose they struck this morning, but throughout all of them, neither of them had fallen.

  She smacked each of their beams, sending vibrations up to her soon-to-graduate students. They wobbled briefly, but they managed to stay upright.

  “A few days ago,” she began. “Sya joked about lying to move on from this exercise. I quickly showed her that lying would only get her killed later on.”

  Vera smiled.

  “Now, if you get killed, it won't be for your lack of balance.”

  Arden and Sya smiled back and jumped off their poles.

  A few hours ago, Vera told them that their stamina had increased to satisfactory enough levels that they should be able to pass the field assessment. Now, it seemed like the same was being done with balance.

  “It feels completely fine now,” Arden observed. “How the hell did we live like that before?”

  Sya realigned her posture to how it was nearly ten days ago. Now, that felt uncomfortable and wrong. She quickly fixed herself to be more in line with what she was taught over the past week.

  “Bear in mind,” Vera said. “Everything we were doing in the mornings was all about righting wrongs and getting the basics down. You've achieved that. Stamina, balance, and maneuverability. These will keep you alive more than any number of Satellites or god-like powers.”

  Arden looked away, feigning the keenest interest in the ceiling known to man, being the one with the most Satellites and having god-like power.

  “You know how to move. That much is now clear. Yesterday was a good start for putting it into practice, even if we ran into some trouble.”

  “Trouble is right,” Arden groaned. “I didn't think I'd have to spend several hours filling out paperwork with Staz and that Mober guy.”

  “You should have thought of that before you attacked a group of mundanes,” Sya said.

  “To be fair, they attacked me first,” Arden countered. “I followed the statute. I just didn't think it would cut into our training as much as it did.”

  He shook his head with a sigh that told the girls how little he cared for the procedure.

  “Why was there so much paperwork? It was cut and dry! Thugs attacked me and a mundane, I stopped them without lethal force, end of story.”

  “So what's next?” Sya asked.

  “Now,” Vera began. “We prepare. Learning a multitude of weapons isn't going to happen overnight. It'll probably take weeks to learn all of them. Instead, we'll focus on what we have already, and prepare for the expedition into the wilds.”

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  “So?”

  “We need weapons. Real ones. Mundane ones won't get us far against real red-tiers. We’ll need some Satellites. Armor and weapons, but mostly weapons. Armor can typically be forged with the corpses of Celestials, so we can get those after our day with Savish."

  “And weapons?” Arden asked.

  Vera gave him a disapproving look and put her hands on her hips.

  “Don’t you have a surplus of star cores that you don't need, thanks to your unique evolution process? We’ll use some of them to forge some Satellites."

  *****

  “So this is the place huh?” Arden said.

  The three of them stood in front of one of the many storefronts introduced by the reconstruction of the slums. This one was unique. For one, it wasn’t in the middle of the urban center, but instead in the suburbs. Secondly, this barely looked like a shop at all. It just looked like a typical two story house. The only thing that denoted it as a forge was the plaque hanging from the awning of the roof with an anvil and hammer. That, and the extension with a smoke stack coming from the top of the domed roof.

  Vera looked at the number painted onto the curb and then to the slip of paper in her hand. The addresses matched.

  “This is it,” she said. “The residence of the Forjer family.”

  “The Forjer family?” Arden asked dryly. “A bit on the nose for a family of Satellite smiths.”

  “Techincally, only one of them is a smith,” Vera said. “The father, Loyid of the Forjer family.”

  Arden stared at the house for a moment

  “You know, when you said we were going to forge some Satellites, I thought that we were going to do it.”

  “Arden please. This is manual labor. With stuff like this, we pay other people to do it for us. It’s the human method.”

  “Manual labor, you say,” Sya said. “What is fighting, if not manual labor?”

  “Oh you know what I mean.”

  They walked up the stone pathway up to the front door, with Vera at the helm. She knocked on the door.

  “Coming!” they heard a voice from the other side.

  A few seconds later, the door swung open and a little girl with pink hair who looked to be just shy of ten years old stood in the doorway.

  “Huh,” Arden muttered. “I know Starborn tend to look young, but not to this extent.”

  Sya elbowed him in the side. Before Vera spoke to the child, she was joined by her mother, a tall woman with long, straight black hair. When she spoke, she spoke softly and sweetly to the trio of Starborn.

  “Hello there,” she smiled. “You must be the ones that Mr. Laurent called my husband about a few days ago.”

  “He called ahead?” Arden asked.

  “Of course. He said that there would be a few of you coming down one of these days. I’m Yoru. Come on in. My husband is finishing up a piece in the forge right now, so we can wait until he’s out.”

  Yoru led the fledgling Starborn inside.

  Arden and Sya both felt a nostalgic pain in their hearts as they looked around the house. The room adjacent to the entryway was the living room with a large TV playing cartoons. The little girl plopped herself down on the floor in front of it and started to draw.

  They were brought into the dining area and kitchen, where both the table and the countertops had a few crumbs left behind by the previous meals either eaten or prepared. Yoru gestured to the seats around the table for the Starborn to sit, which they did. When they sat, Yoru offered them freshly made rolls that she pulled out of her inventory where they were maintaining their heat.

  “That’s quite alright,” Vera said. “We ate before we came here.”

  “It is around that time, after all,” Yoru said, taking a seat.

  She placed the rolls on the table, letting the warmth and the smell tempt the Starborn into taking one. They didn’t, no matter how much they wanted to.

  Vera and Yoru made some small talk while Arden and Sya were trying and failing not to think about their old home. After half an hour, they heard the back door open. A few seconds later, a handsome man with blonde ruffled hair, a slim athletic build, and a drenched white tank top entered the room.

  His eyes lit up upon seeing his wife, and somewhat soured briefly after seeing the others.

  “The piece is done, Yoru,” he said.

  The man, Loyid, gave her a hug from behind. She didn’t seem to mind that he was covered in sweat from working in a hot sweltering forge. He gently rocked with her for a few seconds before acknowledging the group of Starborn watching the display of affection.

  “Give me a few minutes to relax, guys. I’ve been working on an orange-tier piece for a couple of days now.”

  “Take all the time you need,” Vera said. “A few minutes isn’t going to matter much when it comes to Satellite smithing. Not when each piece takes several days.”

  He nodded and gave her an appraising look.

  “You know your stuff.”

  “I’ve seen a lot,” she shrugged.

  “Then I guess that makes you the leader.”

  Loyid broke away from his blushing mess of a wife and walked over to the fridge and got himself a glass of cold water and slammed it all at once. He refilled it, and then poured it over his head.

  “Oh, that feels so much better,” he said.

  “What about the floor?” Arden asked. “Won’t your child slip?”

  “You don’t have to worry about her. The water didn’t even make it to the floor. My body is too hot.”

  “Yes it is,” Yoru purred.

  Loyid shook his head with a smile and returned to the table.

  “So you’re Starborn, aren’t you? Laurent told me you would be swinging by one of these days. He also told me to be careful around the guy named Arden.” He glanced at Arden, who was making a confused face. “That’s you, I take it.”

  “I don’t get why Laurent would say that though.”

  “Didn’t you call him an asshole when he drove us to our registration?” Sya asked.

  “No. I said he looked like an asshole.”

  “Oh god,” Loyid said. “Was he wearing that suit with the shades in the black car?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “We’ve all told him the same thing, but he refuses to change it. He says it's a form of method acting.”

  He chuckled to himself and stood up.

  “Come with me. We can talk business at the forge. I make it a point not to let clients get too comfortable with my family.”

  “That’s completely fair,” Arden said.

  Loyid led the three Starborn out of the kitchen and towards the back door. Right before they left the kitchen, Arden turned 180 degrees and picked up a roll that was on the table.

  He looked at everyone looking at him with different expressions. Some were exasperated, one was intrigued, and the last looked proud.

  He joined his group again as they headed towards the forge.