Bond Master

The Iron Phalanx (2)

A collective murmur of shock and dark amusement rippled through the first-year student ranks as Corvina stepped forward, holding open a heavy velvet bag filled with smooth, identical brass tokens. One by one, the first-year students marched past her, reaching into the dark fabric to draw a single coin stamped with a numeral. The second the metal touched their palms, the students began scurrying across the packed earth, shouting out numbers and clustering together into separate circles based on the specific group lines they had blindly pulled.

The fact that the team composition was completely randomized, offering absolutely zero administrative guarantees of a decent, balanced squad grouping, immediately began giving Ren a massive, pounding headache. He watched the process unfold through the lens of his foundry background; back in the Soot stone District, a foreman would never assemble a structural repair crew by drawing names out of a bucket.

You needed a balanced ratio of heavy riveters, furnace tenders, and precise pipe-fitters to keep a blast furnace from suffering a catastrophic pressure blowout. But as he observed the older second and third-year students in the neighboring groups, he realized they weren't panicking at all. They were already kneeling in the dirt, drawing rough tactical maps with sticks, and aggressively hammering out contingency plans based on whatever tools they had been dealt.

That was the exact philosophical point of Sergeant Corvina's lesson. When an emergency border siren wails through an industrial sector or a pack of rogue magical beasts breaches a civilian defensive wall, whoever is physically closest to the disaster area must answer the call immediately. You do not get the luxury of picking and choosing a perfect vanguard shield, a swift long-range tracker, a dedicated healer, and a row of devastating mages; you simply fight with the bodies you have standing beside you in the mud, and there is no extra time to figure out a perfect synergy.

Ren walked over to the marker post designated for Team Five, and his jaw dropped slightly as his squad members began to materialize out of the crowd. Stepping out of the ranks first was Vesper, the intense, silver-blue-eyed lightning mage who had ridden on the transport train with him. Her thick dark curls were bouncing as she marched over, her jaw set in a familiar expression of stubborn determination. But it was the remaining seven members of Team Five that caused Ren's fingers to twitch against his gauntlets.

Standing behind Vesper were seven massive, exceptionally broad-shouldered first-year student boys. Every single one of them was a towering physical brawler, their thick chests packed with dense muscle mass that strained the fabric of their gold-trimmed uniforms. Clasped in their heavy, calloused hands were massive, iron-rimmed vanguard tower shields that dropped all the way from their shoulders to their shins, accompanied by brutal martial weapons—either heavy, solid iron war-hammers or long, stout piercing spears designed to halt a charging beast in its tracks.

"Oh, come on! You have got to be completely kidding me!" an offensive fire mage from Team Four groaned loudly down the line, throwing his hands up in absolute, comical exasperation as he watched Ren’s squad form. "How in the world did Team Five manage to blindly draw literally every single heavy defensive vanguard recruit in the entire first-year student intake block? That's an absolute statistical joke!"

An earth caster standing near the central ring nodded his head in gloomy, resentful agreement. His own group, Team Three, had drawn five frail, low-stamina mages and three light skirmishers armed with nothing but short steel swords and hunting daggers. If they had been assigned to an aggressive, fast-moving offense, their high-damage composition wouldn't be terrible, but they were an odd-numbered defense team—forced to protect a static, vulnerable flag in the middle of a zone without a single heavy warrior capable of absorbing a direct elemental spell hit head-on.

Meanwhile, the flag carrier for Team Two, an arrogant second-year legacy student from the wealthy inner districts, let out a loud, mocking laugh, pointing his focus wand toward his own squad formation. His luck had yielded eight first-year casting girls who specialized in utility magic, leaving a grand total of only two female recruits in the entire intake block who weren't on his team—

Vesper in Team Five, and a light martial warrior assigned to Team Six. But because the smooth brass tokens had been drawn completely blind from the depths of a velvet bag, if there was any intentional proctor manipulation or hidden trickery going on behind the scenes, it was completely impossible for the students to detect.

"It looks to me like today's tactical game will be a fascinating one," Instructor Kenneth noted from the center platform, his booming voice cutting through the laughter as the second proctor began unrolling a massive leather mat on the dirt, its surface covered in intricate, glowing purple transportation runes.

"Sometimes the pure, unyielding luck of the draw forces a commander to completely abandon the standard playbook and learn to improvise on the fly. While Team Five commands an insurmountable, terrifying wall of heavy iron tower shields, they possess absolutely zero tactical mobility, and they command only a single active spellcaster.

It is absolutely not impossible for an offensive squad to completely overtake their perimeter and capture their flag; you simply have to get exceptionally creative with your elemental trajectories and flank entries."

Ren pulled the heavy silk flag securely around his shoulders, tying the thick golden cords off into a tight, military knot across his chest before stepping directly into the center of the circle formed by his seven towering shield-warriors and Vesper.

"Alright, listen to me closely," Ren said, his voice dropping into the low, direct cadence he had learned from his father and the foundry overseers. He kept his tone calm and businesslike, immediately commanding the attention of the large boys around him.

"We have exactly two minutes to establish our basic defensive framework before the proctors activate that transport mat and drop us into our coordinates. The mages on the offensive teams are going to be gunning for our position the exact second the match begins, mostly because I'm the only first-year student team leader on the entire field, and they assume I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Let's lay all our cards out on the table right now. What specific active skills do you guys actually command, and what are your baseline limits?"

Vesper stepped forward first, sweeping her thick dark curls back from her face with a swift, practiced movement and expertly tying them into a tight ponytail. Her silver-blue eyes flashed with a sharp, competitive intensity as she leaned against her polished wooden focus wand. "The absolute joys of being the sole battery for a mountain of iron," she noted with a rueful, sharp smirk. "As far as my active casting registry goes, I can manifest a standard array of high-velocity [Magic Missiles] for single-target damage, or I can channel a low-density [Chilling Fog]. What about the frontline?"

The largest of the seven shield-bearers, a broad-jawed commoner boy named Roger who looked like he had spent his entire childhood wrestling cattle on a frontier farm, stepped forward. He lowered his heavy tower shield, letting the iron-rimmed base thud solidly into the dirt as he wiped his brow.

"We are all standard common-tier heavy defenders, leader. Every single one of the seven of us managed to initialize the exact same two baseline skills from the recruitment day injection: [s***h] for close-quarters physical counterstrikes, and [Guard] for structural defense. The instructors told us during the orientation lectures that this happens every single winter semester because [Guard] is the most biologically common skill archetype for heavy, high-density physiques, and [s***h] is the easiest basic martial form to teach a rookie before classes begin."

Ren nodded his head thoughtfully, his mind rapidly processing the tactical utility of seven identical shields. "Alright, let's break down the actual mechanics of the form. What exactly does your [Guard] skill look like when you initialize it at your current stamina level? I'm not asking about how the legendary Overlord-grade generals use it in the capital war broadcasts to protect an entire city block; I need to know your real-world, localized limits right now."