when Zuko passed all the gates, he came to a secluded place and then once again changed his appearance to an average-looking boy from his village about whom he had enough data.
The town was many times more advanced than the rest of the world that Zuko knew of. The town's technology, transportation, security, and every aspect of it was futuristic. But unlike the people of the other continents, the entire human population here was divided into different groups, with each having their own status in the town or entire continent. Inside the town, Zuko learned that there were many groups and they were assigned for different jobs, some for technical work, for maintenance, research, and many for battle purposes. The elites lived in the capital whereas the towns were the elite's working place. Each town was under a commander who would run all the affairs of that town. Meanwhile, all the towns had different statuses in the continent and every town worked hard to maintain their resources. The continent was divided among several families and the towns were the properties of these grand ruling families. The town that Zuko infiltrated was the property of a sect called WildFire, which was led by one of the grand existence renowned as Wildfire.
Zuko had been in the town for some time and he came to know that it was not possible for him to enter the capital by any means until he was invited by one of the military academies in the capital. If Zuko chose any other field, he might never see the capital if he was not lucky enough.
In the next ten days, the Wildfire academy was about to recruit disciples and Zuko had planned to take part in that assessment to become one of the disciples. In the coming days, Zuko continued his training of all three arts- Fire, Disguise, and Illusion.
There were many queues that were lined up before a grand palace type building. All the participants were entering the gates one by one. Before their entering, their identities were asked and then the participant would enter the palace.
When Zuko entered, he was led by one of the disciples of the Wildfire academy into a room that was meant for the assessment of the participants. The room conducted many tests that focused on the physical, mental, and other abilities of the candidates.
After fifteen minutes when Zuko came out of the room he was fully immersed in sweat and was painting loudly. Upon his exit, the room notified the invigilator. " congratulation! You passed the test but with the least grades, D." The man informed Zuke and then passed him an ID card that had his name. He was now called Jace. When the assessment was done all passed participants were taken by a large floating ship to the North of the town. As they went further North to the town a grand protective layer was protruding into the sky. It was both protecting and hiding the academy.
When the ship passed the layer of protection another grand town came into being. In fact, the academy was better looking compared to the town. As it was the headquarter and as well as the training ground of the town, even the royal family lived here so to say academy was the real town.
In the town, Zuko was given his own room and other facilities. The academy took great care for its disciples, it had separated students on the basis of their performance, and as they progressed they were given even better resources.
All the disciples were given the freedom to choose from the disciplines provided by the academy. their currency was the points granted by the system of the academy. As Zuko passed with the minimum points, he had very little to spend on the resources provided by the academy. Students could earn points through different means like they could go doing missions or help their mentors and there were other ways too like win the points in different tests and competitions.
Right now, Zuko only had 175 points at hand, he did not do any shopping that day but pondered over how to move forward according to his plan.
Zuko woke up early in the morning and joined the research discipline. In the afternoon, Zuko went to the library where he found books that he had no online access. All the data in the library was the one that one could get access to only by points. And the weird thing was that their prices were sky-high. After inquiring about the books from the librarian, Zuko found that these books were of immense importance to the students only if they could get the right book. In short, not all of the books had important knowledge but some had. Also, it was a way to accumulate back some points from the students because the points were not infinite. It was after all the currency of the academy.
The next day Zuko started attending his classes, in the afternoon he came to the library to borrow few sets of books that he had planned to borrow and then would study and practice martial arts that he had in the night. He continued to follow this routine for two and a half months when came the most inciting event of the year 'Inter-Academy fighting competition. It was famous for only two reasons, one that the winner was later taken to the capital for the continental fighting and secondly the winner was given the best resources and a lot of points. When Zuko came to know about this competition, he to was excited and had put in great efforts into his training.
With Zuko's good memory and abilities, he made quite a place for himself in the department of research. Even his mentor needed his help in certain situations and hence he would award Zuko with enough points that he could use to buy as many books from the library as he wished.
After working on the simulation for a week, finally, Zuko succeded in grasping the mystery behind the phenomena of the strange weapon. It was a spear that was a weapon of mass destruction and one could control certain elements with it in the surrounding. It was one of the many designs that he had grasped from the books that he had been studying like a mad man all day and night. Their basic use was to enhance the arts cultivated by the user of the weapon. There were quite a few such weapons available in the market but their prices were so high that Zuko Zuko cold breath when saw the tags on them. But unlike him, almost all the students of the academy were eyeing the weapons the day the came to know of their existence and had been saving points for who knew how long. And on the other hand, Zuko was self tailoring one for himself. Zuko now understood the mechanism of the weapon but the only problem that he faced right now was that he was missing some core parts of the weapon and the rarest of them was the elemental core for gathering the required element from the surrounding.
Zuko had only two more weeks for the Inter-Academy Competition and he had completed the weapon by 75%. Now he was thinking about how to get his hands on the other parts. He still had some options at hand as he could dig the core from any of the weapons in the academy but the only issue was that they were not pure enough. Secondly, he could ask his mentor for it, until one day when he was studying a book on the elemental cores from the ancient times, he found that anything that has gathered enough elemental energy can be used like so. The book showed two weapons that had their cores to be a crystal and a metal ball. When Zuko digested the information from the book a sudden realization came to him that he too had one such crystal on him that he got from the Hanging garden. It was that crystal that had helped him kill Naina in the temple. He just now came to know that it was an illusory elemental core with this one of his problems vanished into thin air. What he required now were some important alloys and other ingredients to strengthen his spear.
"Jace, I will be in the capital for some time, so you better take good care of this place and keep working hard. I am there for a workshop and will attend some important seminars. Also, my main objective about the visit is to further deepen my knowledge about the weapon refinement."
"Mentor, can I accompany you as-"
"I am sorry Jace but there are only a few invitations and no one will ever miss this chance, not even me." apologized the professor.
"It's ok." Smiled back Zuko "But can I then use the refiner in your absence."
"Of course you can if you need anything else you can use it as you wish." With these words, the professor left the lab.
For the last one week, Zuko stayed in the lab all day and would leave only in the night. He was truly frustrated as he could not make a sphere strong enough to withstand the elemental energy from the crystal of illusion until he mistakenly took the simple sword that he used back in the Hanging garden to slay Naina and checked the properties, he was shocked that the sword was incredibly strong and was highly compatible with the illusion crystal. This discovery lit an idea in his mind and soon he checked the properties of the jewelry that he picked from Naina to his amazement they too had their own special properties. Before Zuko was worried about how to get these metals but now he was thinking about creating a weapon that could also support his fire art and like this he had stayed in that lab all day.
One day before the competition, Zuko finally completely refined the weapon of his choice. It was a double-sided spear. One end had the shape of a dagger and the other end was extremely sharp, exactly in the center of the spear was embodied a purple crystal and near to both ends, Zuko placed two high-quality fire cores that he had been saving a lot of points for. Finally, when the weapon was ready, Zuko looked at it, like one looked at their loved one's.
Zuko from the day when he planned about participating in the competition had been practicing the ranged weapons, especially spear. Now when he had a spear, he was not worried about when to practice the weapon. This is how Zuko was, always prepared, and calculated.