Bond Master

Lilac and Coal Dust (2)

Vesper pointed her focus wand toward a narrow, obscured opening in a massive perimeter of dark green hedgerows.

"That's the quadrant we're looking for," she said, leading the way through the gap.

"The academy refers to it as the Scholar’s Labyrinth. There are dozens of small, isolated gazebos with private tables tucked away inside the foliage where students can do their independent study without distraction. Honestly, the second I manage to hoard a few more merit credits from these practical simulations, I am totally going to the supply room to purchase one of those official academy laptops or a digital text tablet.

It will make life so much easier than constantly handwriting these endless lecture notes all day long. I don't think I’ve been forced to use a physical ink pen this much since I was in elementary school, but the senior mages on the academic teaching staff are all ancient, and they firmly believe that traditional handwritten Tomes are the only true way to pass down knowledge. Just book after book of sloppy, handwritten script."

Ren let out a genuine, self-deprecating laugh as they navigated the twisting turns of the hedge maze. "Actually, to me, the mere idea of owning a laptop sounds absolutely wonderful, but the reality is that I wouldn't even know how to type or turn the mechanism on. I came straight from the rural mining towns, Vesper. My family could barely afford to keep fresh oil in our lamps, let alone purchase a personal computer, so I never even laid eyes on one before injection day. I know most of the wealthy kids who grew up in the inner capital districts use them all the time for their studies, but for us commoner rookies, it's a completely foreign technology."

Vesper paused for a second, a soft, apologetic smile appearing on her face as she looked over at him. "Right... I'm sorry, Ren. I completely forgot that you grew up out in the frontier sectors. My family ran a small commercial clothing shop in the heart of the city, so we absolutely needed computers for every single aspect of the business. Taking customer orders, tracking fabric inventory, managing the automated looms. I tend to forget how massive the technology gap is outside the walls."

Ren shrugged his shoulders, his expression completely unbothered as they continued through the maze. That stark disparity was just one of the many harsh, well-known downsides to living in a rural mining town within the Golden Dragon Nation. The central government's massive infrastructure spending and technological improvements almost never made it out to the border districts, except for the high-priority railroad expansions that were strictly necessary to transport the raw coal and precious metals away from the foundries and into the capital factories.

The twin industrial mines where his parents worked were recognized as a core strategic asset of the entire nation. One side of the fault line was a massive, subterranean coal seam that directly fueled the capital's massive power plants; the other side extended deep into a jagged mountain ridge, holding a staggering wealth of precious alchemical metals and raw energy crystals.

It was everything a growing, modern nation could possibly need to fuel its economy and defend its borders, but the property belonged entirely to the state apparatus and the elite oligarchs. Virtually none of that staggering wealth ever made its way back down to the common workers who spent their lives choking in the dark shafts actually doing the dangerous mining.

Vesper brought their walk to a halt, stepping into a small, beautifully crafted wooden gazebo tucked away inside a deep, private alcove of the hedge maze. The moment they stepped across the threshold and sat down at the heavy stone table, a faint ripple of green magic thrummed through the bushes, and the enchanted hedgerows began to slowly grow and shift around the perimeter of the small building, completely blocking the entrance from the view of passing students and granting them total privacy for their studies.

Ren drew a deep, centering breath, sliding into the wooden bench across from her and letting out a long, relaxed sigh. "This place is absolutely wonderful, Vesper. And it smells incredible out here." His mind briefly drifted back to the suffocating black soot of his hometown and the foul, rotting sulfur stench of the swamp grid they had survived that morning.

"Yeah, lilacs are my absolute favorite flower to begin with, so it's incredibly difficult to beat this sector for a study spot," Vesper agreed with a bright, warm smile. She carefully unbuckled her leather satchel, setting her dense mana manuals and rune charts across the smooth stone table.

Ren reached into his own backpack, pulling out his current customized study guide. The heavy, canvas-bound book was titled A Practitioner's Overview of Common Regional Monsters, and the cover was stamped with the official gold crest of the academy. This was the highly detailed manual that all elite student groups who were granted permission to go out on wilderness expeditions were required to memorize cover to cover before ever leaving the gates. Sergeant Rita Corvina had explicitly demanded that Ren master the contents of the guide within his first week, even though she currently had absolutely zero intention of allowing his freshman squad to leave the safety of the academy grounds anytime soon.

What the sharp soldier truly wanted him to extract from the texts was a profound understanding of the varying traits, biological habits, and inherent elemental weaknesses of the wilderness monsters so that he could intelligently formulate a long-term plan for his own power growth. Once he had fully mastered the basic tracking logic and understood how to properly balance Grim's nutritional intake inside the Beast Vault, Ren assumed Corvina would finally make good on her personal military promise—to lead him into the secure reservation pens and help him track down a second, highly durable monster cub to try and add to his growing collection, a heavy, fortress-class beast that could stand firmly on the frontlines while Grim struck from the shadows.