The trial started at six in the morning.
Not because six in the morning was a meaningful time. But because the dungeon's gate system ran on the academy's mana-infrastructure cycle, which peaked at dawn, and the gate technology required the peak cycle for stable multi-entry operation. So six in the morning. Every year. All hundred and forty of them, bleary-eyed and armored, standing in the courtyard in the November dark.
I had been awake since four-thirty.
