Brendan was now looking like he was regretting several life choices. “I-I don’t think this is very appropriate.” He stammered.

“Nonsense,” Elune’s cold smile didn't waver. “This is a practical learning experience. You’ve never had your aura invaded before, have you?”

Brendan cautiously shook his head.

“Well, now you’ll know what it's like.” Elune folded her arms behind her back, her shroud beginning to manifest. Splotches of brown with white speckles, like clumps of fur, started to appear in between her and Brendan. “Please, do your best to resist.”

The balls turned into long streaks, heading straight for Brendan. He let out an undignified yelp before bringing his own shroud into play. A lattice of gray circles linked by lines of dark brown formed a wall in between him and the teacher's incoming shroud. It did absolutely nothing. Elune’s shroud ripped through his like it was a wall of cardboard in front of a cannonball. It was instantly obliterated with no noticeable effect on the attack. After Brendan’s shield was destroyed, Elune stopped her own shroud.

“What just occurred is what I’m referring to when I talk about invasion. My shroud has forced its way into Mr.Calston’s. There are several practical reasons to attempt this. First of all, it limits the area within which Mr.Calston can manifest his shroud since I now hold that space. Secondly, he will find it much harder to use his aura in general while I am invading it. Every manifestation he makes will cost him more than before.”

Brendan was beginning to look increasingly uncomfortable, sweating, and red-faced.

“On,” ELune seemed to notice his state. “It also causes serious discomfort. Many relate it to having someone continuously yell in your ear or pinch your arm repeatedly. Just a constant grating annoyance.”

Brendan let out a low whine, like a kettle letting off steam.

“The first time can be rather intense. Next, we move on to occupation.” Elune looked on unflinchingly as Brendan paled. “This is the infusion equivalent of invasion. Occupation involves forcing your shroud into another’s body and is considerably more difficult. If you succeed, you have essentially brought your opponent down to the same level as an unshrouded. More devastating even, as being occupied induces excruciating pain.”

Brendan opened his mouth, possibly to object, but he never got that far. Elune’s shroud streaked forward, brown lines left in its wake before it hit him in the chest. Every muscle in Brendan’s body visibly tensed up, his limbs bending weirdly, mouth hanging open. Caeden was reminded immediately of what had happened to him at the Dromar residence. Commandant Havenhelm had put him on the ground, whole body in so much pain he couldn’t even scream. He had been occupied, and he hadn’t even known it.

After a brief few moments, Elune released her shroud entirely, the brown streaks vanishing into nothing. Brendan immediately collapsed, breathing like he had run a hundred miles nonstop, gasping desperately for air and clutching weekly at his chest.

“As you can see, in many cases, occupation will immediately incapacitate an opponent. You will spend a large portion of this year and the next learning how to use invasion and occupation defensively and offensively.” Elune continued on.

“That was abuse!” Brendan spat, finally recovering his breath enough to speak. “You just attack me for no reason! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

Elune turned to stare at him. “You think that was abuse? Do you have any idea where you are? This is the Central Academy. My job is to prepare every one of you to join the military forces of the Central Authority, where you may fight and die. Do you think your enemies will stop if you cry abuse? Do you think they will stop because you are in pain? They will slaughter you without a second thought and be happy you were so easily killed. Part of the training every student here experiences is being invaded and occupied over and over again until you can function past the pain. Until you are so familiar with it that it doesn’t even phase you. So that when a raider from the Fire King is bearing down on you, ready to cut your head off, grinding your shroud under their own, you can maybe, just maybe, survive.”

She was glaring down at him, completely nonplussed. “If you can’t even handle this much, you will be the first to die. Understood?”

Damn. Caeden thought. He could understand where Brendan was coming from. He had essentially been subjected to torture as a part of a classroom demonstration. But, Elune wasn’t wrong either. They were supposed to become soldiers, and no one was going to be nice to them in a fight. Saying something was unfair or against the rules was an empty threat to a guy trying to rip your throat out before you can do the same to him.

Then again, it’s not like we chose to be here. The CA told all of us we were going to be soldiers whether we wanted to or not. Based on what Elune said, that's the equivalent of telling thousands of young adults, “We’re going to torture you repeatedly, and you’re going to like it.” just to throw them into a fight they didn’t ask to be in. And that's just fucked. Caeden shook his head. There was nothing he could do about it anyway, as Elune had just proven. His options were to step in line or die. Plus, he had his uncle to worry about. Complaining that the situation was fucked wouldn’t get him anywhere. He just had to knuckle down and make the most of it.

“Now, let's continue.” Caeden refocused as Elune continued class. “Our last topic before I open this up for questions is the most nebulous of all the metrics the CA uses to categorize shrouds. Control is a measure of how well one can manipulate their shroud. This can be difficult to quantify in a meaningful way because of the near limitless nature of a shroud. There is so much that can be done that learning to do it all is something that can take centuries. More than that, over the last few centuries, many have considered the merits of specialization, which has led to the development of separate factions focused on excelling in a single aspect of shroud control.”

“In modern times, control is considered the greatest factor in combat potential, above shroud type or invasion pressure. Historically, the person with the greater degree of control is more likely to win, even if they have a lower IP or are at a tactical disadvantage.” She looked around the room, meeting the eyes of every student. “Now, does anyone have questions?”

Many hands were raised. Caeden didn’t bother, figuring the ones he wanted to ask would be covered in a later class. He was also interested to hear what other people were wondering about and whether or not it lined up with his own understanding. So he just watched as Elune picked a student to answer.

“Can you explain more about how invasion pressure is related to how much shroud we have? I’m not sure I follow.” The selected student looked mildly embarrassed.

“Yes,” Elune smiled lightly, “I can understand your confusion. The exact mechanism for how IP relates to shroud capacity, which is the technical term for what you are referring to, is not well understood. We know that whenever we measure an increase in IP, the shrouded will also notice an increase in capacity. Beyond that, it’s much less certain.”

“The problem with using this as a metric is how different shrouds can be. For example, most modifier shrouds last much longer with less capacity when compared to an object shroud because using a modifier shroud generally costs less. But when comparing two modifiers against one another, they can vary wildly. Some of that is down to control, as better control can increase efficiency, but some of that difference seems to be almost arbitrary. After all, how can you compare a shroud that turns things to dust against one that makes things sticky? There's no good point of comparison.”

Elune raised her hands as if to say, ‘what can you do?’ while looking over the class. “That’s why we advise you to never assess a shroud based purely on its IP. It's a useful metric but not the end-all-be-all that some people like to believe it is. Using a shroud creatively and efficiently is just as important as having a high IP when it comes to winning a fight.”

The student who asked the question nodded, looking much more confident. “Thank you, that helped a lot.”

Caeden had a sneaking suspicion that that particular student had a rather low IP and was worried they were going to be the weakest one in their class.

“I also want to point out that your current IP is essentially meaningless.” Elune added, “No one in this entire cycle entered school with an IP higher than 1,000. Increasing your invasion pressure when it’s that low is easy. No one should be concerned with their IP until they reach at least 10,000. Anything less than that is essentially immaterial with proper control and technique.”

This time, Caeden did raise his hand. Unfortunately, the one who was called on was one of the group around Brendan. “Are you trying to say that anyone with an IP lower than 10,000 can beat anyone else with an IP under that limit?” She sounded deeply skeptical.

Elune nodded. “Essentially, yes. In a combat situation, properly applying your shroud matters so much more than raw power that anyone within 10,000 IP of you will have a decent chance of beating you if they have good control and solid skills.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Well, then why don’t we have an example. Brendan, would you like to participate?” Elune looked amused.

“That’s not a good example!” He immediately protested. “Your IP is way higher than mine!”

“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting you fight me.” ELune shook her head. “I would have you go up against the highest control tier in this class, which I believe is…” She looked around, “Erik.”

Erik looked around like he was expecting her to mean someone else. “Oh, you’re talking about me?”

She nodded. “I believe this would be a good demonstration. Brendan has the highest IP in class, and Your control is the best by a good margin. Come on down.”

Erik shrugged and hopped to his feet. “Sure, sounds like fun.”

“Be careful.” Lily cautioned.

“I’m always careful.” Erik winked before jumping down the stairs. He slipped on one and turned the fall into a cartwheel that took him down the rest of the steps. “See, careful.”

Lily covered her face. “He’s going to fucking die.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Caeden said, looking between Erik and his opponent. Brendan was standing aggressively, flexing his hands, practically chomping at the bit. Erik was relaxed, hands tucked into the sash of his robe, looking slightly bored. Caeden knew first hand that Erik’s lackadaisical attitude did not translate to a lack of skill. “Remember that story we told you?”

“Oh,” Lily sat up straighter, “I forgot you guys did that.”

“Exactly, “ Caeden nodded, “Erik acts like a doof. Hell, he is a doof. But he’s also extremely good at avoiding danger.”

“Another shrouded is not the same as a few hopped-up revolutionaries.”

“I know.”

They both watched as Elune walked over to the wall and pressed her hand against a section, which caused A transparent wall to come up around the area in front of the seats, separating Erik, Brendan, and her from the rest of the students.

“Sorry about this, continental.” Brendan cracked his knuckles. “Blame the teacher.”

“Ehh, I’m not that worried.” Erik shrugged. “I’m pretty good at not dying.”

“Alright, both of you. Here’s how this is going to work.” Elune walked up between them. “The goal is to subdue the opponent, either physically or by exhausting their shroud. Anything is allowed, but I will interrupt any fatal attacks. This is just a demonstration on the first day of school. Understood?”

They both nodded.

“Excellent. Begin.”

Instantly, Brendan’s shroud formed a sheet in front of him. Small bits of gravel formed inside the shroud before ejecting at high speed straight toward Erik. Before they could cover even half the distance, strands of white began stitching them to each other, completely throwing off their trajectory. However, there were so many coming so fast, Erik couldn’t stop all of them.

So he bent over backward at a ninety-degree angle, allowing the bits he couldn’t stop to sail harmlessly overhead. Erik then turned that into a backward roll to dodge the torso-sized boulder that slammed down where he had been standing. Still gripped in Brendan’s shroud, the large rock began to lift up until Erik stitched it to the floor.

Brendan scowled, throwing his hand out in a broad gesture, as four spikes made out of stone, each over a foot long, manifested along with the ark of his hand. He flicked his finger and one shot at Erik, much faster than the gravel. He tried to stop it by stitching it to the floor, but it ripped his shroud apart, so Erik stitched himself to the far side of the room, long lines of white forming the weave and pulling him rapidly to the side.

Brendan followed that motion, shooting two more spikes right into Erik’s path as he was inexorably pulled toward the wall he had stitched himself to. Erik canceled his shroud, avoiding the two, but Brendan had already fired his last spike right at Erik’s chest.

Erik’s entire hand turned white, looking like a bundle of yarn in the shape of a hand. His shroud extended outward, stitching his hand to the side of the spike. Instead of slamming into his chest, pointy end first, the flat side was pulled into his palm.

“Arrgh,” Roaring inarticulately, Brendan lifted his hands over his head, gathering a mass of shroud easily bigger than his entire body, a boulder growing inside it. Before he could finish, Erik’s shroud shot forward, heading straight for Brendan’s body. He was forced to split his focus, creating a shield in front of him to block the assault.

This proved difficult, as Erik's shroud continually slipped around the side of his own, white lines skittering across the grey and brown mass, searching for weaknesses as it went. After only a few seconds of this, Brendan’s attention on his massive boulder slipped, and he threw what he had at Erik before his shroud was invaded. The person-sized rock flew across the room, but it wasn’t as fast as the spikes or gravel had been, so Erik just side-stepped it, continuing his invasion.

Brendan’s face was stuck in a snarl as he expanded the area his shield covered to include the entire space in front of him, spanning from the floor to seven feet in the air and two feet to either side of him. It ended up being his undoing. The rapid expansion spread his attention to thin, and the small strings of white found holes in the wall of grey and brown just big enough to slip through.

Brendan noticed his mistake and attempted to form a second shield, then a third, but it seemed that Erik had tuned in to Brendan’s defense, and those desperate shields were subverted almost as soon as they were made. In seconds, the strings of white that made up Erik’s Stitch were at Brendan's body. Not even bothering to go for an occupation, Erik stitched Brendan’s robe to itself in such a way that he fell to the floor in a ball, unable to move his limbs or untangle himself.

“I win!” Erik shouted, thrusting his hands in the air. “Do I get a prize?”