Jett froze, a hint of fear and surprise filling his expression.
"Is something wrong?"
He snapped back into form.
"No, sorry. Just tired, got in trouble with my Professor on my first day."
"Oh, that's rough. Are you on grading duty?" Niko Brunet replied.
Jett nodded in response.
He sat his satchel down and began unpacking his things. Checking his closet, it was preemptively filled with tailor-made academy uniforms.
An awkward silence hung in the air, only aerated by Jett busying himself.
"I'm guessing you might have seen my family name in the recent paper…" Niko said from behind the crouched Jett.
"Uh, yeah, I did. My condolences." Jett replied awkwardly, maintaining his focus on unpacking.
Niko sat down on his bed with a bouncy creak.
"It's… uh. Yeah, it's been rough. But please, don't worry about me, I'm good. Been feeling better recently."
"Of course, it's no problem," Jett reassured him with a straight face.
Though deep down, the feelings he had suppressed began to trickle in.
Guilt. Shame. Regret.
Fear. Remorse.
"Anyway," Niko changed the subject. "You're a new second year, right? Where'd you come from?"
This prompted Jett to explain the backstory of 'Jordi Reichel,' how he was sent to the kingdom's Southern Reach to gain combat experience and thus skipped his first year.
The whole time, Niko sat at attention with fascination, intrigued about the grandiose tales of battling beasts and troublesome hunts.
It just made the whole ordeal worse and worse.
Jett kept his composure. While exchanging backstories with Niko, it was obvious to him that the orphaned boy was kind, too kind.
He was someone easily swayed by others. His suspicions of potential persuasion appeared to be correct.
He suspected that there was something under the surface with Niko, but the young man—on the surface—appeared to be the last person to spy on Strata.
There was something more to him. It irked Jett's intuition.
But ultimately, he had nothing on him.
***
A week passed with little progress toward Jett's mission.
He still couldn't come up with a method that could accurately determine if someone was spying or not.
As such, he had been brainstorming a lot these days.
'How would they feed information out of here…'
Jett had his own information pipeline: every other day—in the dead of the night—he could pass a letter out of the school's closed gates, which would then go straight to Maros.
The spy had to have something similar. They weren't allowed to leave the campus. A staff member, such as the guards, would easily spot them on the night watch.
Of course, Jett had a special schedule that allowed him to bypass the nightwatch patrol, but the spy wouldn't have access to this.
'The weekly letters…'
That had to be it.
Every weekend, the students could write and receive letters from their families.
'Why didn't I think of this before?'
It was the obvious, most straightforward answer.
Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, or maybe just his tendency to overthink.
But at the very least, it was a start, which was much more than Jett had before.
Something blocked him from taking these leaps…
He knew exactly what it was: Jett was afraid of failure.
Not that he was afraid of making mistakes, mistakes were good for his growth.
It was that too many mistakes would lead to failure.
Failure wouldn't lead to his death, but Jett held it in such a regard.
Failure meant he would be barred from future missions; barred from future power.
He would be relegated back to survival. That wasn't what he wanted.
He was no longer content with just living and breathing. He wanted power on top of it.
Maybe then he would be free.
Free from Maros, free from fate, free from being used as nothing more than a tool.
But tools were sharp, and their users would sharpen them. This was part of Jett's sharpening.
But currently, Jett wasn't preoccupied with anything of real importance.
Professor Ruben had taken the class outside to use Universal Soul Techniques—without burning anything down.
The technique for today's homeroom class was the creation of Soul Flames.
Soul was a very versatile power source. Universal techniques were a result of that versatility.
While they weren't the most efficient, they were good for utility purposes. Light sources, setting things on fire, even ranged combat, basically anything and everything, as long as one had control and enough Soul to utilize it.
Due to being penalized, Jett now gave the required amounts of effort and attention in class, even if he wanted to use the time to sleep.
He spent a few days after school painstakingly grading school papers, which heavily ate into his mission.
Jett had no real reason to pay attention to class since he had already gone through a rigorous three-year education with Joanne.
But not techniques. Techniques were solely reserved for the Academy to teach, and as such, were one of the few subjects that Jett cared about.
Another was the real formalization of combat's intricacies. The Academy had some of the best combat instructors in the world. That was what he was most eager about.
Jett had a keen knack for combat, but it was all built on combat experience alone.
"Yikes. I thought you were stronger than this." an obnoxious woman's voice commented as he sat on the soft campus grass.
"Can I help you? Still?" Jett retorted, looking up at number four on his list, who continued to pursue him as much as possible.
"You thought I would give up?" Sarah pestered.
Irina Yurov, Jett's number three, stood off to the side, carefully observing with a keen eye.
"I hoped so, yes."
"Well, I always keep my word."
Jett didn't know what to do other than ignore her.
To be fair, each word out of her mouth pacified Jett's suspicions about the spy.
'Or maybe that's what she wants, to be so open that she's hidden.'
"Many men have denied me, many better than you," she paced back and forth in melodramatic fashion. "Yet, they all fell before my very hand. You will be but one in a long line of victories."
"I'll tell you." Jett said.
"You will?" she said, dropping to the ground and scooting forward.
"For a fair price."
"Of course. What would you like to know?"
"You'll swear confidentiality?" Jett asked.
"My word is bond. I always keep my word."
"You'll swear?"
"I swear."
"Alright," Jett kept his voice down. "I want to know about any occurrences surrounding your friend Irina there, along with the third-year representative, Raphael Mathurin."
"Interesting. Very interesting. But, I'll need you to spill first." Sarah stated.
Jett huffed, afraid of making a big mistake and getting scammed. He decided to take his chances.
'Can't win a bet unless you put something on the table.'
Similar to Niko, Jett recounted the backstory of 'Jordi Reichel' while the conniving girl pried and prodded at him for more information with an unarticulable mastery.
Jett kept his cards close, only revealing the minimum to keep her engaged. He didn't use any particular details for fear of getting called out. While he was well-versed in his backstory, someone with more intimate experience could call him out on his bluffs.
And eventually, it worked.
"Alright, a deal's a deal," Sarah sighed before upholding her end of the bargain.
"For Irina, no one knows her better than I do. She's the most boring student I think you could possibly have an eye for." she joked, insinuating something deeper.
"Maybe I like her, maybe I don't. Rumors are good for business, right? Keep going."
Sarah chuckled. "Ah, I like part of you very much, you know your audience. Honestly, I don't know what to tell you. She's smart and funny, a bit dull at times. Good grades, low Acolyte stage, decent at combat, reserved, nothing else."
"Who does she send weekly letters to?" Jett asked.
Sarah gave an odd look at Jett, "Think she mentioned writing her family in Strata. She also writes her distant relatives in the Northern Ridge, but that's all I know."
'Right on the money…'
It nearly sounded too good to be true.
"And what of Raphael Mathurin? Anything crazy surrounding him?"
"Hmm. Widely popular, boys and girls. Ridiculously powerful, rumors put him around the high Acolyte, bordering Stalwart fresh out of the academy. Pretty obvious he'll get picked up by his older sister straight into the Swords as an officer."
Sarah sat in deep, contemplative thought, racking her mind for the latest scoop.
"Oh!" she exclaimed with a smack of the hands. "People have been seeing him around one of the combat instructors."
"Why would that be weird?" Jett pushed further.
"You know what, I like you, I'll put it on the house," Sarah conceded.
"The combat instructor this year is Alfonse Mathurin. He was disgraced from the family and traveled, going from kingdom to kingdom, before eventually being allowed back into Strata. He's a high Stalwart, old, and experienced, so they brought him on as an instructor."
'Alfonse Mathurin… he wasn't in the profiles that I studied.'
Something was very odd, about everything. It seemed like everywhere he looked, there was something hidden underneath.
"What does your intuition say about Raphael?"
"He gives me the creeps. No one can be that perfect."
'So I'm not alone on that.'
"Well, pleasure doing business with you." Jett said.
"Likewise, Jordi." Sarah replied, standing up and walking over to the aloof Irina.
Jett sat by himself in silence under the shade of a tree, staring blankly into the distance in thought as Sarah ran off.
However a few moments later, the wind carried something interesting.
"…was just asking me about you and who you write to on the weekends." he could makeout what Sarah said to her friend Irina.
'…Are you kidding me?'
He had been played for a fool. It minor mistake with the potential to grow and fester.
'Now that Irina knows I asked about her letters, if she's the spy she'll cut contact. It'll take me until next week to see the letters, she'll have sent a warning by then.'
"Mister Reichel." a dreadful voice called out to him.
As Jett snapped out of his daze, several other pairs of eyes focused on him.
Just stood up hurriedly.
"Yes, sir?"
"Why aren't you doing the Soul Flame technique?"
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir, I have a condition where…"
"No. Your condition is your insolence and your lustful pursuit of women. You will grade double that of last week."
…
'I'm going to burn this whole piece of shit school to the ground.'