Mark realized something peculiar, as small as it may have been. For the first time in roughly seven years, he wasn't wearing any academy clothing. They had a uniform for every occasion because, of course, if one was an attendee, they had to ensure that everyone in the world knew at all times.
Donning a black hoodie that had gotten a little small after all the muscle he had put on and blue jeans that were so tight he was worried they'd crush his nuts into infertility, he stepped on the levitating platform.
It lifted him from the waiting area into the air above the twenty-fifth district, flying up to the nearest floating island with four interconnected buildings on it.
The grass was an unfamiliar, alien shade of green, and the surrounding growth was so colorful some would presume it had been painted to appear as such. Violet rose bushes, red trees, yellow cacti, and succulents in pretty much every color of the rainbow.
He spotted a blonde girl waving at him from one of the detachable floating balconies. On closer look, he realized it was his thirteen-year-old younger sister, Sarah. She turned around, fumbling something, and the platform flew back, attaching to their apartment.
Spotting her running back into the building, he prepared himself for the assault that was about to arrive. And, as expected, it wasn't long until she was rushing out of the building, jumping at him, and strangling him in a bear hug.
"What the—!?" She asked, removing herself from his body and knocking on his torso. "I always forget that I have a statue for a brother."
"Hahaha," Mark laughed as he pulled back his hood, revealing his ear-length wheat blonde hair and forest green eyes. "Let's go see Mom and Dad."
"Yeah!" She cheerfully obliged. "Mom is making dinner, and Dad will be home soon, probably in around, like, uh, an hour?"
Mark nodded, and soon, they rode the elevator up to their apartment.
While his dorm had been sufficient, even if he had to share it with three others, he always forgot how gigantic their apartment was. The first living room alone was enough to do some running in. In fact, there was a pretty straightforward route around the series of levitating couches in the middle.
He had to go through a part of the second living room and a short hallway to finally reach the kitchen, where he found his mother washing some dishes. She was a short, blonde woman that, at least outwardly, didn't look much older than Mark.
"Mark!" She greeted him. "Oh my gosh, you're back so soon! Wait—" She wiped her hands and rushed to hug him, kissing him on his cheek. "Sit down! We'll wait for your dad, and then we'll eat dinner, ok? Or do you want to have a bite first?" She asked him with a cheeky grin.
"Hahaha, thanks, Mom, but I'll wait."
He spent the next hour carelessly chatting with his mother and sister, who were poignantly avoiding the topic of his graduation and future.
Soon enough, slightly earlier than expected, actually, his father, an austere, brown-haired, tall man, was back home as well, and they were eating dinner. It was a hagel duck roasted over some qurum root.
His dad shared stories from work, while his mother retold some tales about his sister, which were, judging by her almost crying in protest, clearly shared against her permission.
This wasn't so bad. It was warm and cozy. He was just being stupid. Appreciating what he had was far better than weeping over unrealized dreams. With that thought, he pulled out the shiny certificate and placed it on the table. Everyone instantly turned silent.
Aeroon Arch Academy Graduation Certificate.
Year 7.
When presented like this, it almost looked like something to be proud of.
Mark Afronte, the twenty-one-year-old year seven Aeroon Arch Academy graduate. An impressive thing to add to his resume.
But the full course went on for ten years. Graduating meant that… you failed. Year seven was rather impressive. Only around six percent of all the candidates made it that far. A thought that did nothing to assuage his bitterness.
His father got up and knelt on one knee beside him, placing a firm hand on Mark's shoulder. "Son," he said. "You have everything to be proud of. I won't tell you about all the people you're ahead of, but I will remind you of one thing. We have made it damn far if we're thinking of crying with news like this."
That got a chuckle out of Mark, and he nodded slightly.
"No, I mean it," his father added. "Had someone told me ten years ago that I'd be sending both my kids to the academy and that my son would graduate in the seventh year, I would have pissed myself and passed out."
"Hahaha, stop," Mark said, laughing but clearly trying to stave tears away. It was only then that he realized what he'd just heard. "Wait, what!?"
His family shot him their best shit-eating grins as Sarah lifted her acceptance letter.
"What can I say?" She jokingly asked. "I guess I'll have to pull the ten for you, Mark."
"Oh my God," Mark said as he got up, rushing over to hug his sister.
"Hey, let go—" she prepared to push him away but held herself back, gently caressing his hair instead.
The rest of the evening was much merrier, and Mark eventually went to his room, feeling quite satisfied. He put his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and went inside. The door creaked slightly and swiftly revealed the room he had spent very little time in.
The size made him feel uncomfortable. It was bigger than the room in his dorm, and he had shared that one with… He swallowed the thought as he walked inside. There was a bathroom, its entrance slightly to the right of his emperor-sized bed.
After getting ready, he went to sleep. Or, at least, he tried to.
The tall ceiling looked like it was spinning above, and his heart beat unnaturally fast. No matter how many times he closed his eyes, he felt compelled to open them. He shifted from left to right and back repeatedly, unable to stop his mind from spinning.
He went into the toilet. Staring at his reflection, he felt it appeared foreign. The firm, well-trained young man with fire in his eyes was nowhere to be seen, leaving a despondent, disheveled failure in his stead. No matter how many times he washed his face, he couldn't rinse off the shame. So he went back to bed.
He felt pain behind his eyes, and finally, he could no longer hold them back. Tears rushed down his face, and he whimpered.
'Ah, shit. I guess I'll just cry it out and go to sleep,' was what he thought, but it wasn't meant to be.
The cracks spread, and all the emotions he had been forcing back came flooding out. His crying soon turned to sobs, and it wasn't long until his mother knocked on the door.
"Mark!? Mark, is that you? Are you okay!?"
"G—g—go—go awa—away m—Mom," he barely managed to eke out.
"What's going on?" Mark's father said from the other side.
His mother whispered something in turn, and his dad yelled. "No, I'm going in!"
The door opened.
"Mark!" His father yelled as he rushed forward. "Is everything alright?"
"J—just clo—close the—the—door, please," he said, pulling the blankets over his head to hide.
His father wasn't having it, though, and moments later, the blankets were off, revealing the blubbering mass of misery that was Mark, the failure.
"Come here," his father said, lifting him up. "It's okay."
Mark was extremely muscular, but now, with his curled-up shoulders and bent back, he appeared smaller than he had for a long, long time. "I'm—I'm a failure, da—Dad," he said.
"Don't give me that—"
"No, I—I am. I was so—so close to passing, I fucked up. I fucked it—it all up. Everything. N—now my friends—They're gone. All of them. I'm—I'm—I'm not going to see them again, Dad. I'm a—a failure. They're just—just stra—strangers to m—me now."
There wasn't much left to say. He supposed that even his parents felt it was undeniable. Sat on his left and right, his mother and father held him until he finally calmed down.
"You've worked hard for the last ten years," his father said. "Honestly, way more than I think any child should. Take a break. A year off, just make some new friends and have some fun, alright? It will all be waiting for you when you come back."
Of course. He was no longer at the forefront of his generation, either way. It was shameful that he'd feel such relief at the opportunity to slack off, but he couldn't say no to his parents' kindness.
"O—okay. Tha—thank you, Mom, Dad. I love you."
***
John sat out on the small balcony, sipping his thirteenth cup of tea and smoking the pipe he practically never extinguished. He was a greasy-looking man with a thick beard and long black hair.
For quite a while already, he hadn't moved his eyes off the neighboring building. Specifically, he hadn't stopped looking at the second-floor apartment where his target resided.
Target: Freddy Stern.
Twenty-one years old.
Freshly ascended arch.
Resident of the 19th district.
Unemployed.
No family members known to be alive.
Mission: Hospitalize the target and retrieve all vestiges and remnants in his apartment without making direct contact.
'Easy enough,' he thought back when he accepted the mission.
The stage was set.
The moment that kid left his building, John would use a subtle long-range spell to shift the ground beneath his target's feet and then break his leg, arm, or something when he fell. It would be a little weird that an able-bodied twenty-one-year-old randomly tripped in broad daylight and broke a limb over nothing, but it wasn't anything unusual enough that it'd warrant suspicion.
There were a few problems, though.
First, this was a mission by an anonymous client. Now, John was willing to do some nasty shit, but he rarely accepted requests without knowing who it was from. Too risky. But with the amount of money this client was offering? In the form of advance payment, at that? Shit, he'd suck dick for this much, and he wasn't even sure whether he was joking when he thought that.
The second problem was the nature of the mission. This wasn't some high-level target, and someone that could offer that much money should be able to waltz in and take care of some no-name like this themselves. There was a risk that this involved another high-profile party. But, as they said, no risk, no reward, so that wasn't a dealbreaker.
Now, the third issue was the one that was screwing John the hardest. It had been over a week since this kid last left the building. The only reason he could even confidently say the young man was still in there was because of the netherecho.
Wisps, depending on the thickness of the physical object they made contact with, could either bounce off or slip through to the other side. For most apartments here, the same way they had wisps fluttering in, they had wisps fluttering out. That wasn't the case with this kid's apartment. Meaning? He was in there and scouring the netherecho.
And fuck was this stupid bastard's sleep schedule messed up. John was used to stakeouts, but this was just absurd. There was a possibility that the kid knew he was being hunted. This meant that John had to keep an eye out constantly, getting even less sleep than his target.
At some point, he had to swap to tea instead of coffee since he was drinking so much he nearly shit his pants.
'When is this fucker going to—?' His thoughts were interrupted when he spotted something in the corner of his vision.
A carriage was driving down the streets—not just any carriage, but a floating one, entirely black, with shaded windows and all that.
That was a rare sight even in the twenty-fifth district. And here, it was something that made his stomach drop, especially as the carriage slowed down and parked right in front of his target's building.
A pale-skinned woman stepped out. She wore a watermelon pink pillbox hat over her cerulean blue pompadour and donned an extravagant golden dress as she walked into the building, followed by three bodyguards in suits.
The instant he spotted the woman, the pipe fell out of his hand, scattering ashes over the balcony floor, and he just barely stopped the tea from suffering the same fate. The odds of this being a coincidence were nonexistent.
'Well then,' he thought as he got up, scratching behind his ear and pulling the underwear out of his ass. 'I guess I'll be returning the advance payment.'
***
Freddy sat curled up in his blanket, holding Basics of Gathering and reading through it for the god-knew-what time.
'There is no need to rush.'
These words quickly became a prayer for Freddy, and every time he uttered them, the near-constant anxiety subsided just a bit. He repeated this phrase over and over, and eventually, he was fully convinced of the fact.
And now? It had been over a week since the last time he left the apartment. Besides going to the toilet, of course. And even that was due to the lack of convenient bottles and jars.
At first, he had deluded himself into believing he just had no reason to leave. Given that the last of the food he had had had been eaten two days ago, it was long past the time for him to admit that that was simply utter bullshit.
Well, technically, he indeed did not have any reasons to leave, apart from the ones that he ignored, of course, but it was only natural that he'd start finally looking for some.
Perhaps somewhere to socialize, maybe a place to properly gather, just possibly looking for ways to find employment now that he was an arch, maybe look for a trainer, or join some sort of discipleship or mercenary group and delve into passages. But no.
He had the thought to do it, many times even, but every time his mantra came in clutch.
'There is no need to rush.'
And rush, he wouldn't, he thought to himself as he opened the damn guide again. He'd read through it countless times already without even skipping the boring parts. Finally concluding that reading through it again was a waste of time, he closed it and placed it on the bed.
Then, he focused, and soon, he was inside his ethercosm. The star in the center shone just a bit brighter now, and it was accompanied by four blue specks orbiting it. He focused on one, and it appeared before him.
From up close, it looked like a spherical cage of runes, void of anything within. This was an ether shell, or rather, a stage zero ability core. And what ability did it hold?
Freddy left the netherecho and lifted his finger. With a bit of focus, water materialized right in front of his raised digit and squirted out, splashing on his fridge.
It was the Squirt spell.
Using it left him feeling somewhat empty and as if a cold breeze had blown over his heart and liver. The essence expenditure was a little harsh on that one since it materialized water. It wasn't long until the liquid on his fridge vanished; it didn't just evaporate; it was gone for good, reverting back into essence that simply disappeared.
His second ability was promptly displayed when he swung a hand down in a karate chop. Nothing noticeable happened outwardly. Or at all, really.
This was the Flowing Strike technique. It was an attack meant to add extra momentum to his swings by moving the water in his body. It preferred specific movements, which comprised the Flowing Rain martial arts style.
Next up was a move he didn't have the space to demonstrate. The Frog Leap movement technique. It utilized hydraulic pressure to force one's body into a leap.
And finally, the fourth shell.
Freddy lay down and relaxed. Soon enough, all the water in his body flowed much more smoothly, from the cellular level to how his blood circulated. He could only maintain this for a few seconds, and soon enough, that passed.
This was the Water Body tempering technique. It was meant to be a tempering technique, but in reality, it didn't temper shit. It did make Freddy feel damn good, though. For a few minutes after using it, he almost felt well-slept. This was how he imagined people who could afford to go to a spa or a massage felt.
While these abilities appeared to be really boring and weak, in reality, they were even more boring and even weaker than they appeared to be. Because that was it. He was out of essence for today, and until he recovered it, he wouldn't be using any of them again.
This would become less and less of a problem the stronger he became, naturally, but that wasn't going to happen any time soon in an environment as poor as this.
Gone were the days of the vestige slaughter, where he picked ripe ether fruits as he wished. Now, he was limited to a starvation diet of maybe five an hour, if lucky.
It would soon be time. He had to go buy some food. The 'fasting' he was doing was becoming less and less of a valid excuse by the minute. By now, he had already realized the problem. There, indeed, was no need to rush. Because nothing, and more importantly, nobody was here to get him going.
Work kept him too damn distracted to notice. Back then, when he spent his free days cooped up reading a book, he always had the excuse that he was exhausted from work and that he needed to study. Now, that was no longer the case.
Freddy simply had no reason to live.
So it was time to go find one, he told himself, but he couldn't quite gather the bravery to do so. He was scared. Creepy shit in the netherecho, random passage breaks, scummy bastards abusing their power to harm him. The world was a perilous place full of terrible things.
Rationally speaking, he knew that catastrophe wouldn't strike the literal moment he left the building, but he couldn't shake off the nasty paranoia he felt.
Suddenly, he heard a knocking coming from the door.
'Hmm?'
Who could need something from him this early in the morning?
'Oh crap,' Freddy thought. 'It's the landlord.'
That bastard probably came to see whether Freddy was alive. The tenant didn't mind keeping that piece of shit waiting as he took his sweet time putting on his clothes. More knocking came. It was a bit creepy, actually. It felt strange. It was too… polite?
Nobody he knew knocked like that. And he did not know enough people to write it off as just forgetting about someone. Freddy hurried just a bit, suddenly struck by a strange sense of anxiety.
Once he was dressed, he walked over to the door and opened it.