Professor Gyro sat her brown leather trench coat on her desk, revealing a blue dress shirt, black slacks, and brown shoes she wore underneath. She then approached the chalkboard. The dawn’s light from the surrounding windows gleamed off her prosthesis. Her left arm, right forearm, and right eye had been replaced with steam emitting contraptions of orichalcum. Brilliant emerald script roved across the devices and her unblemished skin with seemingly minds of their own. Her skin tone, features, and pixie-cut black hair indicated an Asian ancestry.

  While Last Stand had attempted to accommodate all that it meant to be human, the war had been long. None of the survivors identified with specific ancient nations of myth aside from a few eccentrics attempting to invoke specific legends. I personally didn’t care if my family was from America, Lemuria, Britain, Atlantis, Germany, or even France. The loremasters weren’t certain if any of those nations were real with portals disgorging misleading artifacts and literature. All we had were stories.

  Gyro underlined the words ‘Metaphysical Particles’ with a screech loud enough to gain everyone’s attention. “Welcome to this introductory class on enchanting, the foundation of all Crafting. Many of you are here because a new ability or circumstance called you to take up Crafting. While that’s great, none of the courses at this university are for true beginners. You will be expected to cover fundamental gaps on your own.”

  She underlined the words on the board again.

  “Enchanting deals with shaping metaphysical particles into the correct forms to produce the desired effects. For most Crafters, that’s all they need to know to memorize existing designs and implement them. Here at Aspiration, we expect all of you to innovate and create new solutions. Knowing ‘how’ to make a magic sword is insufficient. You need to understand ‘why’ it works if you wish to push the boundaries of what is known.

  “For that, we need to reexamine the fundamental building block of Crafting, because I guarantee that you misunderstand it. The term ‘metaphysical’ has become muddled in the modern era because it is a thing you can touch. Many confuse the varieties of MP as funny chemicals. This isn’t the case.”

  Gyro drew lines off the word ‘Metaphysical’ and wrote other words. “MP is time, space, being, knowing, cause, identity, and substance. In a purely empirical world, it would not be real. But in a purely empirical world, we would not be invaded by demons, fighting elementals, or banishing undead.

  “Too many Crafters fall into the trap of thinking reproducibility of effect means the process makes sense. You need to discard that rational part of your mind because this is magic and magic defines itself. That is why powerful languages are the means to produce effects not schematics. This has advantages and disadvantages as we see in…”

  The professor continued her lecture as students worked on the assigned lab activity. Today’s project was ‘Enchant Something!’ with a smiley face next to it. If I hadn’t read the book Gyro wrote on this topic, I would be too distracted by my new personal hero.

  Gyro didn’t have a crafting ability. Her power let her see from shadows. Rather than let herself be relegated to a scouting role or as merely a warrior with 360° vision, she threw herself into Crafting and became a legendary figure that mentored the Savior and calls him friend. If anyone could teach me how to continue climbing as a hero, it’s her.

  I scanned the table for materials to complete the lab. To my dismay, there was little available aside from lumps of iron and blocks of wood. Other students were drawing supplies from their bags or extradimensional storage items. In my habit for battle readiness, I left all my fragile monster parts in my room. I was not the only one to make this blunder. Many of my fellow new Crafters were begging their neighbors for assistance.

  One guy with a core Crafting ability emptied his pockets in a panic. He then arranged lint, paperclips, and a few coins into a runic symbol over a piece of cedar before flooding it with power. All the materials glowed a brilliant white before morphing into each other and taking a new shape. In seconds, the illumination faded and what was easily a tier 3 crossbow rested in the guy’s hands.

  How could I compete with that? I had to slay a variety of monsters, face mortal peril, and spend days of labor to Craft inferior gear. This must have been how the old swordmaster felt when I learned his secret technique in a day. After a moment, I steeled myself and searched for answers. The talents of others should not be lamented. They save humanity in their own way while I must find my own path.

  My eyes wandered and found Vanya scribbling High Elvish on her arrows with a vial of silver blood. She hunched a bit at my attention. “I’m going to upgrade after I learn how to enchant guns.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “What is wrong with the bow?”

  “Nothing.” She turned back to her work.

  Her method was intriguing. I didn’t know you could enchant with your own blood. That must be a more advanced topic covered in later courses. I grabbed a couple pieces of iron and rolled one into a ball. The other piece I twisted into a rod and extruded between my fingers to make a quick blade. Vanya briefly paused her own project to watch my ironworking technique before shaking her head and focusing back on her scribing.

  Once the ball was smooth, I crunched it in my palm until the folding created enough heat to make the metal glow. I dropped the ingot on a piece of wood to burn charcoal and create enough carbon to work into the metal. After massaging the materials together and reforming the now steel ball, I let it rest to cool down.

  I bit my finger and drew a basic durability rune onto my makeshift blade. To my great surprise, it worked. I then dipped the blade into my blood and etched blood infused light runes onto my steel ball. When I was done, the sphere began to glow like a torch. I smiled in satisfaction at my accomplishment.

  Vanya burst into laughter. “If you can enchant with your own blood, then you’re less human than I am.”

  “But…” I was puzzled. “You’re doing the same thing.”

  She shook the vial at me. “Elven blood is a great catalyst and suspends monster materials well. I certainly don’t have enough residual MP to power basic enchantments. That’s insane. Most low tier monster blood isn’t that useful. You have to be magically equivalent to a mid tier monster.”

  I nodded. “I am more than their match in battle.”

  “They should fit you for a white uniform like mine.”

  Her comment did not bother me. I shrugged and watched the room, absorbing everyone’s methods and techniques as they worked. Many heroes clung to the notion of being human while performing such deeds as holding their breath all day to fight sea serpents. In terms of traditional biology, we really weren’t human, which was good. Humans were weak, stupid, and going extinct. While defending humanity from the forces arrayed against it was the highest calling, being human wasn’t.

  Professor Gyro stopped by our table to examine my sphere and Vanya’s arrow. “Excellent runework, and this addresses your lack of a light source. Many Crafters forget to cover the basics and put all their resources into their next magnum opus.” She raised the arrow. “This is a wonderful direct use for High Elvish. An arrow that goes intangible until it lethally bypasses a vital organ is exactly the kind of complicated effect that neatly fits into the three dimensional script.”

  She handed us each the other’s item.

  “Though in class, you will learn more by working with each other than on your own. Crafting is a cooperative profession. Not only does your team help you gather materials, but you can trade talents with your fellow Crafters to make devices neither of you could do on your own. Now, how would you improve each other’s item?”

  Vanya responded first. “If this was a loop with a clasp, it would more easily fit on her armor or pack without requiring a hand.”

  It seemed obvious when she said it. I needed to reciprocate with equally useful advice. “The fletching is off and there is a slight bend in the shaft, but that would be irrelevant for any targets within a kilometer. Since this doesn’t need to have penetrating power, I would replace the swamp lurker teeth with poisoned obsidian. Many creature’s heartbeats would shatter the head and pump the glass particles into their brain, assuming you hit the heart.”

  Gyro smiled at us. “I’ll leave you two to it.” The Professor continued to the next table and advised that pair.

  Vanya had a thoughtful expression. “How do you poison obsidian?”

  “Ah well, I like to…” The two of us exchanged knowledge and expertise for the rest of class. Vanya had more traditional Crafting education than I did while I knew how to make do with less. As we continued chatting and demonstrating techniques, Vanya grew more relaxed around me. I wished I understood what I said or done to make her wary of me. I very clearly told her I didn’t have a problem with Elves. Did I say it wrong?

  People were normally so reassured by my presence.

  After class, I patrolled the halls for hidden monsters while replaying the conversation in my head. One of the waste receptacles then grew teeth and lunged at me. I caught the maw on my vambrace before wincing. The mimic bit through my armor and injected its venom.

  Sharp pain leached up my arm and slowed my heart. With a roar, I slammed the creature against a wall, breaking its grip, and then slashed it repeatedly with my glaive. The mimic was not mighty enough to move under my assault, but that wasn’t the contest now.

  Most of my attention was focused inward. Aura poured from my shade and wrapped itself around the poisons. Mimics copied a variety of heavy metals to slow their prey after a bite. It was possible to force out the material with will alone, but a hero needed to know the mechanism the metal attacked the body with and turn it off until the poison filtered out. Unfortunately, no two mimics had the same poisons because no two mimics had copied the same objects.

  Thankfully, there were only a dozen metals in this wound, letting me manipulate osmotic forces to leech the corruption from my organs and force it out of the open wound. By the time I did that, my glaive had stolen enough vital essence from the mimic for my armor to repair itself.

  I paused my assault and let the creature reform. When it took the shape of a drone, I stabbed through its CPU and twisted the blade. Once the ‘drone’ turned off, I quickly harvested it for scraps. Mimics didn't normally have physical minds, so when they copied one, they over relied on it, letting you win them by destroying it. Eventually, the main body realized what was happening and shifted into a ball. The removed pieces didn’t get the command and didn’t change.

  A much smaller mimic cringed away from me and sought escape. I batted it away from drains and cracks in the wall as I loomed over it. “Worry not, prey. I will make this quick for you,” I lied.

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  I smashed the remaining ball into a smear of purple viscera with my boot. The creature screamed and screamed as I ground it away to nothing.

  “Ahhh.” Acts of heroism were so rewarding. I gathered my mimicked drone parts and whistled a happy tune as I continued on my way.

  Where is everyone? The Crafting tower was oddly quiet in the middle of the day. I grew concerned that I was missing some critical communal Crafting activity that I was too new to understand. After some questing, I discovered a cafeteria with most of the Crafters munching on food from automated dispensers.

  Ohhhh. Many of them only recently received a shade and needed to eat as much as Riena. Since nothing about my physiology prevented me from eating more, I entered the line and grabbed a roasted triceratops’s leg with a tall mug of frost-spirit infused mead.

  I then spotted Riena at a round table and sat across from her. “This isn’t the Commander’s tower.”

  Riena waved hello and finished chewing her roll before replying. “The cafeteria was closer than our dorm. The other towers do not have one… I’m having trouble finding my way around. For example, I can’t seem to find a gym.”

  “There are plenty of gymnasiums. What do you mean?” I bit into my meat and savored the smokey flavor.

  “I meant gyms for weight training. I can’t find any of them.”

  I drowned the meat in crisp refreshing mead. A deep frost chilled my stomach even as digesting the meat woke a fire in my veins. The sensation couldn’t distract me from the oddness of Riena’s words. “What is weight training?”

  Riena glanced at my well proportioned arms and back to my face before blinking. “It’s when you lift increasingly heavy objects to build your strength. Surely you’ve done that.”

  “I think I saw unpowered soldiers doing something similar before I was ten. It didn’t seem very productive. They would train for years and could barely triple their strength.”

  Our conversation was interrupted by a question, “Do you mind if I sit here?”

  I waved Vanya down. “Not at all! Riena, this is Vanya Morningdew. Vanya meet Riena Hartgrove. She is my Commander.”

  Riena shook Vanya’s hand with a pale expression. At Vanya’s slight frown, she said, “Sorry to ask this, but do you happen to have a sibling around 8 years old?”

  Vanya sat down. “I do.”

  “How is she?”

  She sighed. “Very quiet, but happy. Do you think she is someone you know?”

  Riena suppressed a hopeful smile. “Probably not, but you looked a lot like a sister I had. Sorry for my reaction.”

  “It’s one of the better ones I’ve received. What conversation did I interrupt?”

  I thumbed toward Riena. “She was inquiring about strength training facilities.”

  Vanya stirred her pudding. “I’ve tried that. It’s not an efficient use of time.”

  “How do you get stronger then?” Riena asked.

  I wetted my throat with another sip mead and said, “You grow your shade by increasing your existential presence. That can be accomplished by slaying monsters, bringing loot back to Last Stand, and completing quests. Heroes used to be obsessed with ‘farming XP’ to increase their power, but that is a defunct term now that we can accurately measure shade percentages. The paths to power are much broader than old standbys, but generally you need to perform deeds to see gains.”

  “Fascinating.” Riena tipped back a glass of water that shattered in her hand. “Shit! Sorry, this keeps happening recently.”

  Vanya helped pick the shards of glass out of her lap while I chuckled. “Oh the woes of a new shade!”

  Riena frowned. “I’ve barely hit 3%. It can’t be doing that much.”

  “You’re about nine times stronger than you were.”

  “What!? No. If that was true, I would be breaking more things.”

  Vanya chimed in. “Your aura helps you subconsciously reinforce anything you don’t want to break. At the very early stages, your aura is very weak and can’t cover an entire cup, so you reinforced the tips, but not the whole structure.”

  “You still need to master a delicate touch at this stage,” I said. “That way you don’t need to relearn control at higher percentages. Your strength will grow exponentially. Shades specialize in different areas depending on the person, but roughly, you square your percentage and that’s how many times stronger you are. Emphasis on ‘roughly’ because at a certain point your original strength stops mattering.”

  “Well, that will take some adjustment to get used to.” Riena finished picking out the glass and padding herself as dry as possible. “I’m curious, roughly how strong are you?”

  “More than a thousand times unpowered people,” I said casually. My next bite of food went through the bone. Since I was in polite company, I carefully spat the fragments into a napkin rather than loudly chewing them. I’d been told the crunching bothers people.

  Vanya snorted. “Absolute, a woman only surpassed by the Savior, is only twice as strong. Mari is acting like she doesn’t have the strongest shade in the school, and one of the best among humanity as a whole.”

  My next bite was mainly bone, but I didn’t notice. “Shades aren’t everything. If the professors had 2nd abilities, most of them would beat me.”

  “Do you really think you could take Burn Bright and Ironclad?”

  “At the same time!? Certainly not.” Why would she ask such a thing?

  Riena mumbled, “Maze fought our whole class and won.”

  I finished my meat and nursed my mead. “He is tough. You have to realize you're in an illusion and sunder reality with your aura, which would normally exhaust you too much to be attempted.”

  “What happens if you actually sunder reality and not an illusion?”

  “You pass out. No one’s been successful, but theoretically, you either create a portal or explode in atomic fire: two bad outcomes. Manipulating reality with aura needs to be subtle, and it's most efficient when used to make the world handle your ability or enhancements from your shade.”

  Before Riena could ask further questions, a bell chimed in the cafeteria to let the Crafters know their next classes were soon. Vanya and I bid Riena farewell and joined a pack of students heading for the catacombs.

  On Mondays, all the first year Crafters had a seminar to go over the other roles that rotated location based on the planned demonstration for that day. Today’s class was below the catacombs and in the warren of portals. The purple stone here shimmered with tiny crystals that glowed from the ambient MP. The portal density and constant light made dungeon creation rare in this level, but pathways had a tendency to move. Whenever no one was looking, the architecture would shift and potentially reveal a hidden portal disgorging monsters.

  We ended our trek in a large dome of a room covered in a rainbow of crystals. At the center of the room was a massive portal. If I eyeballed the Rayleigh scattering around the edges of it correctly, then this one was… a much higher tier than I had seen before.

  More prepared students around me pulled out highly specialized equipment and scanned it. One boy squeaked in horror, “Tier 10!”

  That was a ridiculous conclusion to make. The abyssal gate, the calamity this school was built to contain and the one that led to the orc’s homeworld, was only tier 8. Unless the university intentionally kept its existence secret, I would know about a tier 10 portal.

  Professor Gyro whistled through her fingers like a train and gathered our attention. Next to her towered the two-and-a-half-meter tall Professor Ironclad. The broad muscular woman was nearly bursting from her chain shirt. Studs poked through black leather on her thighs, indicating brigandine, with plates of metal shielding her shins and knees. Worn leather boots scraped over the stone as she approached us. The two bladed shields she was famous for were collapsed into bucklers on each forearm. Blue runes covered most of her skin and terminated at her blonde hair that ran down her back in a thick braid.

  Gyro addressed the class, “While Crafters mainly act as a force multiplier and support in their teams, in a pinch, they can fill any other role with the right gear. We round out teams and give them the dynamic options they need to tackle the myriad of challenges within dungeons and portals. For that, I’ve invited Professor Ironclad to speak to you on what it means to be a Guardian. Thank you for accepting, Professor.”

  Ironclad nodded. When she spoke, it was slow and methodical, as though each word was chosen with great care before she let it break her silence. “A Guardian’s first job is to protect their team. Guardians then tend to specialize in slaying monsters or controlling the battlefield. This is a bad habit. A competent Guardian will do both.”

  She approached the portal.

  “Inside is a scenario we use to train Guardians. You will take this exercise as a class and know the burden Guardian’s bear.”

  After she stepped into the portal, Gyro motioned for us to follow. “The other side is perfectly safe, for now. Hurry up!”

  I led the charge and walked into the portal. Inside, we were at the bottom of a deep slate canyon wide enough to illuminate six castle turrets running up the canyon walls. They were staggered and alternating between each side. Behind the last turret nearest to the portal stood Ironclad, next to ten levers.

  When Gyro followed the last of the students in, Ironclad nodded and continued her lesson. “The quest to complete this portal is very simple.” She pointed to the lever nearest to the tower. “Once you pull this lever, the portal will close after a fixed time. Yet, this lever can never be pulled.”

  Several students raised their hands or asked aloud why that was. Ironclad ignored them as she pointed to levers on the opposite end.

  “When these levers are pulled, the defenses turn on and a wave of tier 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 monsters will charge down the canyon. The 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th levers have never been pulled. Scouts have searched beyond this area and found that the world outside is a chaotic maelstrom. Leaving this canyon saps MP from your shade and gear. It is unconfirmed, but they believe the drain is caused by a Titan. This lever—” She pointed to the 10th. “—would call such a creature and humanity would fall.”

  She let the gravity of her words settle on the assembled heroes before shrugging.

  “Otherwise, it is a good place to train. The MP drain makes the monster parts shit, so don’t bother scavenging.” Ironclad gestured toward the towers. “If you hold off the monsters long enough, the defenses will kill them. If you fail, then monsters swarm out the portal. You have 10 minutes before I pull a lever.”

  The Crafters froze at her words. I wanted to leap into motion, but the monsters were not here yet. Without proper Crafting supplies or an associated ability, I grasped fruitlessly at what to do.

  A man with granite colored hair and two eyes that burnt like coals walked to the first turret while talking. “We’ll want to create walls extending from the towers. Leave a gap at the end. Unintelligent monsters will take the path of least resistance over the most expedient route. You may be tempted to create a layered fortress, but we don’t have the time, and I suspect those turrets have a limited range. We’ll want to use all of them.”

  He swiped a hand in front of him and constructed a trench. The rocks displaced glowed and formed a wall behind the trench covered in the most basic durability runes.

  “Well…” The man looked back at us. “Hurry. I can only make three of the walls in the time we have.”

  Needing no further encouragement, I leapt to the farthest tower and started to dig a trench with my fists and scoop loose slate into a pile. My aura flared around my feet to keep me adhered to the ground as I struck with enough force to send me flying backwards into the air.

  After a couple minutes of work, a woman broke my concentration to hand me a pickaxe. “Focus on breaking the rock. Others can move it for you.” Behind her, I saw teams of Crafters manipulating the rock I freed into walls. While most of the crafters were focused on wall construction, specialized students were affixing weapons to the walls or adding traps in the pathway around them.

  I accepted the tool made from yellow light and threw myself into the project.

  Granite-hair boy and I met in the middle. He saw the trail behind me and whistled. “That’s impressive work for raw muscle. The Bedrock brigade could use a lass like you.” He smacked his chest twice. “Lars Bedrock.” He then pointed a meaty finger in my direction in question.

  This close, Lars clearly took after his family of subterranean Guardians. The man was three times wider than me and a head taller. Much of that mass was muscle and bone, but not a small part was fat. His braided hair was woven with a variety of gemstones while his beard ran free and wild. He invoked the image of a cave bear and some part of me wanted to squeeze him. I refrained from the impulse and introduced myself.

  “Do you want to join me on the walls? I can give you rocks to throw.”

  I shook my head. “I know my place in the coming trial. It is at the tip of the spear, breaking the tide of monsters so that the waves may lap uselessly against our defenses.”

  He grimaced. “That is a good way to get surrounded and die. Save that for the stragglers that make it through our gauntlet.”

  “You know your business, former Guardian. Leave a former Vanguard to hers.”

  “Ahhhh, that explains it. Good luck out there. If you don’t make it, I’ll sing your song off-key.”

  With nothing else to do, I positioned myself in front of the fortress with my glaive out and waited for the tide. Ironclad shouted from the back. “Time's up! Brace for a tier 3 wave.”

  No one was watching the professor as she pulled the 4th lever.