From outside, the building looked like a tall pagoda, each floor with its own slanted roof built in the traditional style. Above its entrance, a large signboard identified it as the Initiate Profession Hall in big, bold lettering.

After meeting up with Kiyoshi after class, Kira had walked with him to the Profession Hall, barely a word spoken between them. She wasn't one to make small talk and it seemed that Kiyoshi was the same.

Once inside, Kira paused for a few moments, taking in the grandeur. There was no doubt in her mind that the various secondary professions were the primary source of the Academy's substantial wealth. She hadn't taken any time to visit other weapon cultivation academies but she was fairly certain that none of their secondary profession buildings could come close to the scale of this Initiate Profession Hall alone.

The ground floor entrance opened into a large hall supported by four grand pillars around which lifelike carvings of dragons reached for the Heavens, talons outstretched and maws yawning wide.

The hall was divided into three large sections, as shown by the differences in colour of the jade-tiled floor. At the far end of the hall were three identical, long counters sporting products made by students and the various materials required for each of the base professions. Behind the counters were three broad staircases that led to the floors above. While Kira was curious about the goods on offer, she had business to attend to first. Kiyoshi had already gone off on his own to the Alchemy division’s table.

The hall was rather full with all the first-years who were registering for their profession classes. As Kira walked towards the counter above which was a large sign of a pen and an inkwell, she was surprised to find that there wasn’t even a queue. Behind the counter was a girl with curly brown hair that beamed at Kira as she approached.

“Welcome to the Inscriptor Division of the Profession Hall. How can I help you?”

“Greetings, senior sister. I’d like to become an Inscriptor.”

“Glad to hear it. Fortunately for you, Inscriptors are the least popular profession right now so you won’t have to wait long. Even though our work is so important…”

The girl mumbled the last part under her breath as she looked beneath the counter but Kira heard every word. The girl popped back out with a small scroll and a simple, dull-grey circular badge with an insignia of a quill pen crossed with a brush pen. After opening the blank scroll, she spoke.

“Your name and age please?”

“Suzuki Kira, twelve.”

“Alright…”

She gestured a few times, her fingers tapping the open scroll in what, to Kira’s eye, was seemingly random places. When she was done, she furled the scroll which had begun to glow and tapped it against the grey badge. The badge wobbled slightly as the scroll shattered into fragments of light that were swallowed up by the badge. Kira's eyes widened.

“These badges are our division's special design and which are used by all the profession divisions across the Academy. It holds your personal details as well as being proof of your profession rank and will upgrade as your pass ranking exams…”

She said with pride before suddenly looking flustered.

“Oh wait, I forgot. There’s a registration fee. It’s only twenty prestige points. Can you pass me your entry tile, please?”

Kira kept her expression pleasant as she handed over her number ninety-nine tile, keeping her disapproval hidden. Teacher Kurokawa hadn't mentioned a registration fee but she somehow had enough points left. She doubted that some of her classmates were as fortunate.

“Oh! You’re a referred student.”

She exclaimed when she noticed the golden sheen of the number on the face of Kira's tile. Her exclamation drew the attention of her fellow Inscriptors behind the counter, causing them to glance over curiously. The girl attending to Kira waved them off defensively with one hand while holding Kira’s tile above a differently-coloured area of the counter with the other. The tile glowed for a moment before returning to normal. The girl then slid Kira’s badge over to her and returned her tile.

“There we go, you’re officially a Rank F Inscriptor now. Please follow the stairs behind me to the first floor. The main teaching hall is the first room on the right. You can’t miss it. Introductory classes are starting soon. Good luck and enjoy!”

Kira bowed her thanks after receiving her belongings and followed the girl's directions. She easily found the correct door but decided to explore the floor a bit. Apart from the clearly-marked Teaching Hall which appeared to take up the vast majority of the space, the only other points of interest were the stairs leading up to the next floor and a number of smaller rooms, presumably used for individual practice. One thing that she found interesting was that the floor area was smaller than she anticipated with no doors leading to other divisions.

‘So this building really is divided up evenly between the three professions.’

Having judged the distances, Kira was still surprised at the size of the first floor Teaching Hall. That was to say, if her entire year’s students decided to become Inscriptors, they would all fit in comfortably. However, that wasn’t the case, quite the opposite, in fact.

Kira glanced around the room. Of the one hundred and thirty-odd students in her year, excluding the ones who’d already been expelled, there were only fifteen of them in the spacious hall. Of the fifteen, Kira only recognised one other person from her class, a short girl with high orange twintails that was currently surrounded by a group of boys. Kira was moved to approach and heard them talking.

“Hey guys, I wonder what this little street rat is doing here.”

“Yeah, why is she here? Shouldn’t she be desperate enough for money to go learn Alchemy like her fellow street rats?”

“Maybe someone mistook her hair for a fire and tried to refine ingredients with it.”

The group laughed loudly at this supposedly witty comment while the girl was turning her head side to side like a scared mouse, looking for a way to escape her predicament.

“Oh look, the rat wants to skitter away. Run away, little rat, Inscribing isn’t fit for the likes of you. You’ll only soil its noble name with your filthy commoner hands.”

“What is happening here?”

A stern feminine voice caused the boys to turn towards the source, their faces immediately turning apologetic. However, when they saw that it was a fellow first-year and not a senior student nor a teacher, they relaxed. Some of them even had scowls or sneers on their faces.

Kira, who was approaching from the other side, infuriated by the boys’ words yet calmly ready to separate their heads from their shoulders if they laid a hand on her classmate, also stopped and turned to look at the newcomer.

The voice belonged to a beautiful girl of average height with long, wavy indigo hair and a well-developing chest who was approaching from a nearby desk, her sky-blue eyes icy as she spoke clearly and calmly in an authoritative tone. Some of the boys’ faces dropped when they recognised who it was. One of them, presumably their leader, stepped towards her.

“Classmate Kousen, we were simply suggesting to this new classmate of ours-”

“My question wasn't directed at you, Classmate.”

The girl named Kousen interrupted him while continuing her steady pace and walking right past the boy who had spoken before stopping in front of the orange-haired girl and speaking to her in a gentle tone:

“What caused this? Are you unharmed?”

“I-I’m okay, really. You didn’t have to…”

The boys looked dumbstruck while their leader looked like he’d been slapped in the face, hard. His shock didn’t last for long before his face became red with rage as he whipped around.

“You must think you’re hot stuff just because you defeated that imbecile Akamatsu. I think it’s time these brothers and I taught you that you can’t disrespect us like that!”

“Teacher, this seems to be serious. Should we intervene?”

A husky voice asked, concerned.

“Not yet.”

Was the simple reply from an icy voice that would be very familiar to Kira and her class. It was a voice belonging to a person who had her reasons for letting the situation play out.

‘Times like these are when everlasting bonds first begin to form.’

She thought. The owner of the husky voice nodded and relaxed. Teacher Kurokawa's judgment might seem harsh to some but he knew first-hand that she only wanted the best for her students. Together, the two of them along with another senior student remained motionless as they watched events unfold.

Nanase stood protectively in front of the orange-haired girl she hadn’t known until today, her royal-blue sash wound loosely between her two hands. While she had the confidence in taking on multiple opponents at once, these weren’t some mental constructs she'd fought against during image training nor were they street thugs with no actual skill. They were fellow students of the Bladeworks Academy. The best she could hope for was to hold out until the teacher arrived to start class, or to rely on the hidden forces in the Academy she'd heard prevent unnecessary deaths.

‘Let’s try it this way then.’

“It seems that a conflict is unavoidable. Shall we have a wager then?”

The leader of the five boys hesitated. He wasn’t angry enough not to see the chance at potential gains. The rest of the group also stopped but didn’t lower their weapons which they'd withdrawn from their various Storage Crystals.

“Let’s hear it then, but it’s still up to me whether to accept.”

Nanase nodded. All according to plan so far, as long as he believed the power was still in his hands.

“I won’t ask for anything such as having you fight me one at a time. As long as the five of you can defeat me before the teacher arrives, you’ve won, and to defeat me, all you have to do is to force any part of my body from my knees upward to touch the ground. If the teacher arrives before then, I win.”

“Acceptable so far. And the stakes? Hurry up.”

As soon as the boys’ leader heard about the time limit, he began sweating. In reality, the class should have started two minutes ago, but his greed got the better of him.

“If I win, you will all kowtow to this girl while apologising and promising to leave her alone. If you win, you get half of my prestige points. We’re in the same morning class so you should be aware of my current balance.”

The leader’s eyes narrowed, his anger almost completely replaced by greed.

“Classmate Kousen, isn’t this too unfair? I mean, there may be five of us but we’re both aware that class has technically already started. The teacher is simply late and could be here at any moment. How about this, we don’t kowtow but we’ll leave the girl alone. If you lose, however, you have to give us three-quarters of your prestige points.”

The leader smiled. In his mind, his offer wasn’t too unreasonable and he believed he'd made a valid argument. If Nanase accepted, then when she lost, she would still have enough points left to stay in the Academy. If she didn’t accept, him and his crew would still beat the two of them up and bully them out of prestige points. It was a win-win for him. As he was congratulating himself on the brilliance of his plan, he didn’t notice Nanase tilt her head downwards with a smile on her face.

“Then I suppose I might as well bet all my prestige points.”

While their leader was lost in his fantasies, the other four boys were shocked at her statement. What did losing all your points mean? Expulsion, that’s what! Was she really willing to risk expulsion for some girl she’d just met? This shock was so great that they had no time to react when their leader was suddenly flung at them.

The leader crashed into two of them while the other two came to their senses and attacked, one wielding a rapier, the other, a pair of shortswords. Both their pairs of pupils flashed gold as they readied their Skills when, suddenly, a flash of blue wrapped around their wrists and they were yanked forwards, their gathered Quintessence dissipating as they were pulled off-balance, disorientated. With a kick that would’ve made the boys’ noses bleed if they’d been looking, Nanase disarmed the rapier-user before sending him tumbling against the dual sword-user with deft control of her sash.

While she was busy with the two boys, the other three picked themselves up off the ground and circled around her, weapons drawn as they avoided their two tumbling comrades. They hadn’t known each other long but they’d already acknowledged the one boy as their leader after losing to him in the Initiates’ Duelling Arena the previous day. He gave them a simple plan, stall her.

Despite the initiative Nanase had before, she was now completely on the back foot. One of the boys was wielding a long spear and occasionally jabbed at her while the other, a twin dagger-user, dodged in and out of her range, narrowly avoiding her attempts to catch him with her sash. While Nanase had spent hours doing image training in her room, as well as occasionally sparring with the guards at her home, before joining the Academy, her actual combat experience was abysmal. Up until that point, she’d relied on the element of surprise and people underestimating both her and her ‘weapon’. In a drawn-out fight like this, against a group with some level of co-ordination, albeit poor, she was completely suppressed.

As far as options she could think of went, she couldn’t even try and manipulate the spear-user’s weapon for an extended time without leaving herself open to the dagger-user’s attacks. During this time, her previous assailants had recovered their footing, and moved up to join their allies in their harassing attacks.

Until then, Nanase had managed to avoid injury by dodging or diverting the spear attacks and by threatening to control the dagger-user, but with four people instead of two, it became impossible and she began to accrue a number of small cuts on her arms, face and legs. The threat of her diverting their attacks towards each other was enough to curb any attempts at serious harm. Nonetheless, her situation was dire and the teacher still hadn’t arrived yet.

Suddenly, the harassing attacks stopped and Nanase hesitated, expecting a trap, before turning around and realising that she’d fallen into it long ago. Their leader was rapidly approaching her but he looked different. His skin was a pale pink and glistened with sweat while his overall size had increased by about 25%. His muscles had become well-defined and bulged out against his uniform. The large sword in his hand carried a menacing aura as he swung it down towards Nanase.

‘That’s stage two Overdrive! Even if I grab him, I don’t think I have enough strength to control him at all.’

Nanase thought with fright. While she could deal with fast attackers to some extent, this kind of raw physical strength wasn’t something she could handle.

“Kneeeeel!”

The leader roared while swinging his sword down. Even though Nanase knew it was futile, she whipped her sash around his wrists and tried to divert his slash, even if a little. As she thought, his wrists wouldn’t budge. She squeezed her eyes shut, completely missing the blur that appeared before her.

Kira had been watching from the sidelines, admiring the indigo-haired girl’s technique but frowning as the situation developed.

‘It looks like she’s the same as them after all, a bit of skill but no experience, someone who’s lived a sheltered life, far from the battlefield. Otherwise, she would’ve known that to break an encirclement, you need to become part of it, turning their allies into unintended targets.’

While the indigo-haired girl was being harassed, Kira was watching the boys’ leader who seemed to be concentrating very hard. Once his body size increased, Kira’s instincts screamed a warning and she knew that she had to act. As the other girl valiantly tried to resist, Kira dashed in, releasing the Skill she’d prepared a few seconds earlier, her pupils flashing gold.

The pain never came.

Nanase opened her eyes in time to see a girl with a long, loose, black ponytail deflecting the powerful attack off to side, in a way that she had failed to, her katana bathed in a blaze of golden energy. The large sword crashed into the ground with astonishing force and was stuck, even its owner unable to pull it out as his skin and body size returned to normal. It was as if the sword hadn’t lost any of its momentum at all. The boys’ leader glared at the two of them but, before he could make another move, an icy chill stopped him in his tracks.

“That’s enough. Class is about to start. Take your seats. You can settle this matter in the Arena.”

“Yes, Teacher.”

The girl with the ponytail responded immediately before sitting at an undisturbed desk nearby. The other people involved were simply stunned.

‘When did the teacher enter? How long had she been there?’

However, when they saw the blond hair tied into a bun and the red-and-gold folding fan she tapped slowly and rhythmically against her folded arms, they immediately banished all thoughts unrelated to taking a seat. After all, wasn’t this the teacher with the power to expel someone before lessons had even begun, Teacher Kurokawa?