The existence of the manaborn as a distinct race not originating from a dungeon is plausible, however. I assert that the heritability of traits originating from mana corruption shows a clear path by which a group of humans could, over time, come to exhibit physical characteristics differing significantly from baseline humans. An additional piece of supporting evidence is that no substantiated reports of encountering manaborn within a dungeon exist.

  - Rufus Veres, Level 37 Verbose Historian,

  The inside of the bar wasn’t that different from the saloons in Sunland or East Bank, though it was smaller. It was mostly long tables big enough for eight or so people, and on the far side there were some partially enclosed booths that looked a bit more private. A large man was behind the bar, idly wiping it down with a rag. He was wearing a vest that revealed muscular arms, and his right shoulder looked like it had spikes of bone growing out of it – each one at least six inches long.

  In the middle of the room, two tables had been pushed together and Mason, Vale, Hassan, and Block sat along with all of the older orcs. As I entered, they were in the process of rearranging and dragging the tables back apart. The Delvers moved to one of them and Block gestured at me to join them. H’ruk and G’hala came in just after me and went to sit with their parents.

  “Get yourself something to drink,” Mason told me before I’d sat down.

  I turned and walked up to the bartender, trying not to stare at his corrupted shoulder as I did. It was hard, with the way the bone-white spikes grew out of it almost like a spiked pauldron, only with the spikes jutting through the skin. Below the spikes, an elaborate tattoo covered most of his upper arm.

  “Can I help you, recruit?” he asked pleasantly and I tore my eyes away from his shoulder to meet his blue-eyed gaze.

  “Can I just get a pitcher of water and a few glasses?”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  By the time I was back at the table, Raylan, Zaire, and the twins had arrived. We all gathered around the table with the senior Delvers while the orcs loudly toasted to something at theirs. Mason started to talk over the noise, then paused. He pulled out his privacy ward, fiddled with it, and activated it. Suddenly the boisterous chatter of the orcs faded into the background, as if they were on the far side of the bar.

  “Well kids, this is the end of the road for us as a group. The four of us will be heading out in the morning. We’ll be going to headquarters in LA and moving on to new assignments. Now’s your chance to ask for advice on the Academy, since three of us went through it ourselves.” He looked pointedly at Block who laughed.

  “I took a different route, came over from the Mercenary’s Guild just last year. Worked as a Guard before that, so I’ve never had the fancy Guild training y’all are going to get. Of course, considering how well I turned out, maybe y’all should skip the training too!”

  He winked at us and I smiled. It was hard not to like him, though I still owed him money. I wanted to ask Hassan about if I’d won the five eagles he’d promised for beating Raylan in the drills, but I had an even more important question first.

  “Why didn’t you tell us you’re the Black Razor?” I asked Mason intently, and the other recruits sat forward with interest.

  The tall Tier 4 sighed before responding.

  “If you make it far enough to earn a reputation, you’ll find it has its uses along with its drawbacks. Mine is mostly good for intimidation, which is ironic because I never had trouble intimidating anyone even before I got it.” He laughed, and we joined in somewhat nervously.

  “A reputation is like a sword, Azure. Every time you use it to get your way, to intimidate someone or open a door that’s closed to others – well, it dulls a little bit. Then you have to sharpen it by doing something new that adds to your legend, starts a new round of stories circulating.

  “Otherwise people start to think you’re resting on your laurels, going soft. It’s a cycle that gets a lot of ‘legends’ killed. Me, I prefer to keep mine nice and sharp in the scabbard until I need it. And I certainly don’t need it to intimidate a bunch of kids right out of the Tutorial!”

  He gave us a sharp-toothed grin and I laughed more naturally that time. I’d never thought of it that way, but what he was saying made sense. It sounded like a lot of work. I nodded slowly.

  “There are times when it’s useful to bare the blade just a couple of inches. I to Kiara that the three of you,” he gestured to Raylan, Zaire, and me, “should be entered into the advanced track here. Alex, Alyssa – you’re behind experience-wise, and I think it's better for you to start off in the standard track. You can always earn your way into the advanced group later.”

  The twins looked at each other in confusion, and I realized no one had mentioned anything to the others about the different tracks.

  “Um, what exactly does that mean?” Alex asked after a moment.

  “The Academy has to deal with two groups of students. You’ve got the Delvers-in-training, the ones like all of you that have signed up with the Guild. Then you’ve got a smaller group of rich bastards’ bastards, who are here to learn how to fight and to take advantage of our dungeon to Level up to Tier 1. Those kids come in with all sorts of advantages – better equipment, mods, and usually years of training with the best instructors.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “The rich always shove their way to the top,” Block chimed in.

  “Without those advantages, even the talented among the regular students can struggle to keep up. But experience is the best teacher, and Az, Raylan, and Zaire have more real life-and-death experience than any of those sheltered punks. The training isn’t that different between the tracks, it's just that each track will mostly compete and spar within the track to push each other to their limits.”

  “The tracks aren’t set in stone,” Hassan added. “The instructors are always watching and you can get moved up – or down – at any time depending on your performance.”

  “When you put it like that, I’m not entirely sure if it’s a good thing or not,” Raylan said and Hassan looked at him in surprise.

  “I thought you wanted to improve?” the Archer asked.

  “Of course I do, I’m just not sure I want to deal with a bunch of entitled assholes in the process,” Raylan shot back.

  “Kid, you’ve got to learn how to deal with entitled assholes eventually. Consider it another part of your training. You want to be the best, train with the best. You’ll find that most of the entitled assholes in this world are about it. Sure, you’ll get a few here who are just doing the minimum since they know they won’t get kicked out. But I’d say more than half of them will come in wanting to show off how they’re better than everyone else. Putting in their places takes real skill. Use it to drive you.”

  “How come they get to come here without joining the Guild?” Alyssa asked in an offended tone. I was curious about the reasons as well.

  “Money and politics kid, money and politics.” Mason answered in a resigned tone. “Running this place is expensive, for one thing. The Guild makes it back from some of you eventually, but not everyone will be a success – or live long enough to qualify as one. Those kids’ parents are paying a shitload of eagles to send their kids here, and that keeps this place running at only a minor loss.

  “As far as the politics, well, stable Tier 0 dungeons are as rare as friendly warp cats. This is the only one in the entire region that’s Tier 0. It’s a perfect, semi-controlled environment for Leveling to Tier 1. There’s no way the rich families would let the government hand exclusive control of it to the DG. Part of the agreement that lets us run this school requires us to keep it open to select non-Delvers.”

  “If it’s so good, why doesn’t the government use it for the Army?” I asked.

  Mason chuckled. “Two reasons – one, dungeons are great training for more dungeons. The Army usually fights out in the open, in large groups. You can’t practice that very well inside a dungeon limited to a single Squad. And secondly, the Army is just too big – no stable dungeon can handle the number of people they train. Even here, you’ll only make a few dungeon runs, maybe a half-dozen across the entire year of schooling. It needs time to absorb enough mana to regenerate every time it's cleared.”

  The conversation took a few different turns after that, but it stayed mostly light hearted. I was sad that the older Delvers would be leaving us, of course. It seemed like I’d known them far longer than two weeks, with how intense that time had been. But, I was also excited to be staying in one place for longer than a couple nights, to be able to train every day, and to get the chance to go back into a dungeon – properly prepared this time – and get some more Levels.

  When I finally asked Hassan about the prize for winning the training, he thought about it for a minute before deciding that we hadn't had enough matches to truly decide a winner.

  “I was thinking we’d get more training time in,” he admitted. “Az was ahead though, so three eagles to her and two to Raylan seems fair.”

  I tried to give him a partial payment, but he suggested I’d be better off hanging onto the money now and paying him later. I still wasn’t sure if he was trying to squeeze a bit more out of me, but Mason confirmed it would be a good idea to have spending money at the Academy.

  I was starting to get a bit tired when a question I’d wanted to ask for a while popped back into my mind.

  “Mason, why’d you believe I was going to make it out of the Tutorial? Why’d you stay in Sunland to wait for me? Some kind of secret Skill tell you that I was going to survive?"

  The big man laughed. “Not at all, Az, nothing like that. When we arrived in each town, I’d just ask the Guard captain who the troublemakers in the group were. The ones who to train and get in scraps. Most towns have one or two, and I figured they’d be the best fit for the Guild. I’m sure you aren’t surprised to hear that in Sunland the captain immediately thought of you when I asked.”

  “Hey, I didn’t cause much trouble!” I definitely did not pout at his answer. “That was really it?”

  It seemed so… unexciting when he said it like that. Not that I thought that Mason believed I was secretly going to be a hero like in the stories, but still.

  Mason shrugged. “Maybe there’s some intuition there too, but don’t read too much into it. There wasn’t anything to lose by staying an extra day, and the accommodations at the inn in Sunland are a big step up from the barracks in East Bank. I’d say it turned out well though. If we hadn’t been delayed for a day then no one would have spotted that dungeon before it merged. And if you hadn’t made it, and we’d only had Raylan, Zaire, and Elin – well, I wouldn’t have let them go in with just the three of them. You had the confidence and experience from surviving the Advanced Tutorial.”

  I felt a sense of pride at that, but my feeling turned contemplative a moment later.

  “If I hadn’t joined, do you think Elin would still have run off?”

  “That’s impossible to say, kid. That girl has issues. It’s entirely possible the Guild is better off without her, so don’t worry about that.”

  The group broke up shortly afterwards, agreeing to meet up over breakfast before the older Delvers left. That night, I took the first shower of my life, wanting to get clean before crawling into my new bed. The water was just a bit warm, which I wasn’t expecting, and it felt great to soap up and scrub off, washing the grime of the road down the drain.

  Afterwards, I lay in my bed in the room – – feeling surreal. It was hard to process the fact that I’d made it to the Academy, that I had this spacious room all to myself in a building with indoor bathrooms and I missed the kids fiercely, wishing I could share my good fortune with all of them. It was too quiet here by myself, and a few tears trickled down my clean cheeks as I lay awake for a while before sleep finally claimed me.