Deep in the black wood, hidden from the eyes of the mortal factions was a city of wires and magic. An ornate construction that not only equalled the glories of the old Agartha but surpassed them. Filled with tall crystalline towers and castles made of enchanted stone.

For a man with little talent in magic they might think they’d wanted into a fairyland, an abode for the strange and fae.

A land of flying men, flying cars, talking animals and thinking machines.

For the cultivators of the world this sight would just be recognized as that of your average mid-rank sect.

Silent Glen Academy possessed a main campus that was roughly two thousand, three hundred and fifty-two square miles in length.

Roughly the size of a small country or large duchy in the secular world.

Much more crowded than in the secular world, the space was filled with sorcerers and mages of all shapes sizes, and ages. All of them going about their days. All of them, in their own roundabout way, continuing in their pursuit of power.

Here, protected by the thickly enchanted walls, that were in turn fiercely defended by a leveller elite guard and a force of high-grade enchanted golems, this was one place where need not fear gathering, for fear of inviting calamity.

The Silent Glenn School of Sorcery was all but a city in name. Both open and closed in their approach to things, whether willing or unwilling they eventually became the second most advanced, third largest, and fourth wealthiest of all their peers.

Looking around at the glitz and bright lights of the campus, and the aura of vitality that hung in the air, it might have seemed laughable to call such a great sect poor. However the truth was, that rearing a sorcerer, rearing a leveller, was as expensive as developing and building your average super weapon.

After all, if it were cheap and easy to do, why would people be so ecstatic to see their children get into the sects and schools?

Recruitment by a sect or school was both an assurance that one would be heavily invested in.

Naturally such investments had to be paid back, thus a student was expected to return to lend time, labor and eventually their name to the sect as they were reared up and climbed to glory.

I was bummed to find that I’d seemed to have overestimated how well I’d done in testing. Barely managing to pass as an outer-student. Which in the terms of sects and schools, and the higher education in general, was akin to being somewhere between a wait-listed student who could eventually get into school if there was space, and being a probationary student who was in danger of failing out.

From what the archive could gather, I would be given the least regard and the least investment. I would also be just a single step above being one of the school’s servants and slaves. Made to do the menial jobs that they wouldn’t want to give to their real students, whose time was better spent in cultivation or study.

Still on the bright side at the very least I’d gotten into the my first choice pick for schools. And I didn’t think it would be “too” hard to get to a proper student status. Probably...