"Remember this: wielding Aura is like having an extra limb suddenly grow from your body." George's raspy but laid-back voice carried over the field.
"That's why when you first awaken Aura, it'll sure as hell be a mess."
Xian tightened his grip around the sack and tried to make sense of what George meant. Still, he couldn't believe he was going through obstacle-course training again. The familiarity bothered him more than he wanted to admit. Different world, different uniform, different instructor, yet somehow he had ended up hauling weight through obstacles while someone shouted at him again.
The 'Threshold Course,' as George called it, was meant to help awaken the 'seed' of Aura within them. It was a moving gauntlet of stress spread across the field: low crawl tunnels of packed earth, balance beams no wider than a foot, weighted rope climbs, uneven stone paths that forced them to watch every step, and sudden sprint sections that ended in sand pits meant to kill momentum. Every station broke their rhythm. If they got used to one motion, the next punished it.
Worse, the assistants changed the course as they went. A student who handled the sack too easily received more weight, while someone who relied too much on speed was sent toward tighter footing or a harder climb.
"So quit thinkin' strength's all you need. Your arms, legs, breathing, balance, all of it's gotta keep working even when your mind screams to stop!"
Xian forced himself past another marker post. Among the many students, he was one of the few still standing, but he also carried the heaviest load of them all. It was hard to feel proud when his reward for doing better than everyone else was simply more suffering.
"And that's why I'm making the lot of ya use the whole damn body! I wanna see whether your arms, legs, lungs, ears, and that tiny brain of yours can keep working together even when you're tired."
"Soon as one part starts lagging, the rest follows. So we work it until that stops happening, and then…" George's laughter rang across the field. "…we make it worse!"
To Xian, those four words seemed to sum up the man's entire teaching style.
Xian lost track of the lecture once George moved on to recovery, bodily strain, and how tiring out one part of the body could drag the rest down with it. Which, he supposed, meant he was proving George's point. His ears still worked, but the only things he could hear were his heartbeat and the voice in his head telling him to rest. George's chatter had long since faded into white noise.
There was something about circulation and whatnot, then keeping control under pressure. Even the classic line about understanding whatever he meant once they awakened. But at the moment, Xian was more concerned with keeping the fucking sack from dragging him face-first into the dirt.
Meanwhile, Adrian, Castreyja, and Fahna had long since fallen and been taken out of the field, lumped with the other tired students. Rank, bloodline, and whatever prestige came with being a Rose Holder meant very little once everyone was equally covered in sweat and dirt.
It took several more miserable minutes before Xian finally joined them.
The moment one of George's assistants waved him off, Xian lowered the sack onto the dirt and nearly followed it down. His legs shook beneath him, his shoulders burned, and every breath scraped against his throat.
Around the field, the students who had already been removed from the course were scattered wherever they could find space. Some sat with their backs against the barriers, and others had simply dropped onto the grass. A few of the more prideful nobles remained standing despite looking one bad breeze away from collapsing.
George waited until the last remaining students had been pulled from their stations before clapping his hands together.
"That's it! Pack it up. Get used to this kinda thing, kids. If most of ya can barely walk straight afterward, then you're doin' the right training."
Wails of despair welled up among the students. Xian almost wondered whether exhaustion had finally made him mishear George. There was no way he had just said they were going to do this every time they met.
"Don't sound too damn cheery. We're stopping early because that's enough for today."
George gestured toward his assistants, several of whom had been recording results throughout the exercise.
"Now you lot know what fails in your bodies once you start using everything you've got. Some lose their balance, some lose their breathing, and some stop paying attention once they're tired." Xian knew it far too well. After all, he could literally see his own stats.
"Remember those limits. Next time, your goal is to make it a little farther before that happens." George grinned as the students already having doubts about their own course got even more unsettled.
"And don't get any bright ideas about doing this till you drop every night. Training's when you strain the body. Rest's when the damn thing catches up." He rolled one shoulder before pointing toward the academy buildings.
'Right, there's no way I'd do this every night.' Xian thought to himself.
"Eat properly. Drink. Sleep. If yer still wrecked tomorrow, credit deductions are what you're getting. Next time we do this, some of ya get more weight; others get harder stations." A collective groan passed through the exhausted students.
George laughed, as if those sounds were something he'd never get tired of. "That's the spirit!"
"Your body is the first thing Aura's gonna ask something of. If you don't know when it's failing, ya won't know when Aura starts pushin' it too far either." That part, Xian actually remembered.
The game had treated Aura as another resource bar. George was describing something that would have to be carried, coordinated, and controlled through every exhausted piece of the body currently screaming at him.
The professor waved them away. "Class dismissed. Get outta here before I make y'all clean this equipment up."
That was enough to make several students recover remarkably quickly. Xian remained seated for another few seconds.
Early dismissal or not, he had a feeling George's afternoon classes were going to become one of the few things that could make him miss controlling Adrian from behind a screen.
***
"Tsk."
Xian rolled his shoulder and neck, feeling the strain left behind by constantly moving while carrying weighted sacks. The texture hadn't helped either. Whatever had been stuffed inside them felt less like ordinary weights and more like uneven lumps of rough stone digging into him with every step.
'I knew I wouldn't like the physical class.'
His potential in Magic remained painfully average, but after experiencing what George considered normal training for Aura students, changing subjects suddenly sounded tempting regardless.
At least then he could be with Carmillia too.
Unfortunately, it was far too late for someone already as busy as him to casually change Paths.
Xian shoved the thought to the back of his mind and focused on where he was going. Right now, he was heading toward the Mana Path's dome, where Carmillia and the mage students were still in their afternoon class.
'I wonder who their professor is?'
He had frequented that place plenty of times while playing as a mage student, yet the game had never bothered telling him who actually taught the class.
For something he had sunk so many hours into, Rozenfall was beginning to feel increasingly fragmented compared to its counterpart in reality. The game showed him what mattered to the player, but reality made it so everything else mattered and actually had to be done.
Since George had dismissed them early, the academy hallways were still mostly empty. Xian walked at an unusually leisurely pace, taking smaller strides while his legs recovered from the afternoon's abuse.
Without the usual streams of students moving between classes, the corridor looked almost like a still painting.
Then another set of footsteps echoed behind him. Xian noticed them almost immediately.
Whoever was behind him wasn't particularly subtle. Their steps remained audible instead of slowing or disappearing, almost as though they wanted Xian to know he was being followed.
There was also the uncanny feeling that whoever followed him was staring directly at his back.
"You are Sir Xian, right?"
Xian glanced back.
A boy wearing the brown uniform with red lining of the Common Class stood several paces away. He looked young even by their standards, and from the way his shoulders had stiffened, approaching Xian had apparently taken some effort.
'Someone from the Common Class?' Xian immediately became suspicious, wondering why someone from the Common Class would approach him.
After taking First Seat, making a public mess with Castreyja that morning, and then having Fahna suddenly begin pulling him toward academy politics, it seemed the factions around Rozenfall were finally beginning to move.
Or perhaps the scenarios he remembered were simply finding different ways to happen now that Adrian was no longer occupying the position Xian had stolen.
But if events were going to rearrange themselves around him anyway, did that mean his path was predetermined regardless?
Xian doubted it.
Otherwise, the entities' promise and the objective they had given him would amount to one enormous hoax.
'Well, it's not like gods can't lie.'
"Please hear me out!" The boy's plea broke through his thoughts, so Xian turned fully toward him.
"…What's a commoner's business with me?" The student visibly flinched. Xian had his reasons for saying it that way and didn't particularly care what reaction it earned him.
For several seconds, the boy seemed to reconsider everything that had brought him there.
"I know what happened earlier. With Castreyja."
There it was.
"And I know you serve Lady Montagne." His gaze briefly dropped before returning to Xian. "Some of us didn't even think approaching you was worth it."
'Some of you?'
"But people are talking about you, Sir Xian." The boy forced himself to continue.
"You're a commoner, but you took First Seat in the Royal Class. And now there are rumors that some of the noble faculty and families are already questioning whether someone in your position should be allowed to keep it."
Xian's eyes narrowed slightly. The rumors had indeed spread quickly enough to reach even the Butler's Hall. Yesterday, he had gone there, but the others had barely acknowledged him, treating him like some different breed of dog that had wandered among strays.
"They're also saying the Headmaster favors you. That he's the reason nobody can simply push you out."
That one was considerably more interesting. Astor had certainly shown an unusual amount of interest in him, but how much of that had escaped into student gossip was another question entirely.
"Whether those rumors are true or not…" The boy hesitated. "Doesn't what's happening prove there's something wrong?"
Xian kept silent, staring as though there were only empty space in front of him.
"You beat all of them fairly, but people still talk like the seat belongs to someone else just because of where you came from." Still, the student's voice seemed to gain a little confidence.
"We're not asking you to turn against Lady Montagne. We're not even asking you to join us right now. Just hear what me and the others who think alike have to say." The student patted his chest as if to signal that he had finished saying his piece.
But Xian's steady and indifferent gaze made his confidence immediately begin evaporating again.
'Seriously? This was who they sent?'
He was nervous, barely holding the pitch together, and had walked up to someone who had publicly fought a Common Class student only hours earlier.
If that little Reformist group genuinely believed Xian could be recruited, there should have been someone far more capable of doing it.
Someone with enough charisma and political experience. At minimum, someone who didn't look like he might bolt the moment Xian raised his voice.
Unless recruiting him wasn't actually the point.
'Ah.'
Xian smiled faintly. They were testing him. Whoever actually mattered among them had sent an unimpressive middleman to see what the common-born First Seat would do when approached.
Would he sympathize? Would he expose their little movement to the authorities? Would he remain nothing more than Montagne's servant, or was there some spark of ambition to escape his supposedly 'exploitative predicament'?
Xian could almost hear the rumors already if he showed even a shred of sympathy. And if he reacted badly, they had risked almost nothing.
'Not bad.'
"So? Why should I bother with you lot?"
Hearing those words seemed to stun the student for a moment.
"…I see." Whatever little hope the student had managed to build disappeared.
"So you too." His nervousness twisted into resentment.
"Does Sir Xian think that because he serves Lady Montagne, he's somehow above the rest of us now?"
'As I thought.'
This should have been one of the succeeding events belonging to Fahna's scenario.
At first, Xian had doubted whether taking First Seat had even activated anything connected to her route. After all, when he played as Adrian, this political sequence usually followed after the player surpassed Fahna during the entrance examination and caught her attention early.
But Xian wasn't Adrian.
Fahna couldn't approach him in the same casual way either, especially considering his position as Carmillia's butler.
The events weren't disappearing. They were simply changing shape around him.
'So these are those people.'
These were the little Reformist groups involved near the beginning of one of the game's larger political storylines. By themselves, they were hardly the terrifying part.
The problem came later, when frustration, radicalization, and desperation began driving some students toward increasingly dangerous sources of power. Eventually, some of them would find the Cults, and Xian had no intention of getting dragged through that storyline himself.
"Do you really think you're getting an answer to that question?"
The boy faltered. Xian, however, had already begun considering something else.
He wasn't aligned with Adrian and his little collection of future companions. But perhaps that was exactly why Xian had been looking at the situation incorrectly.
'I could just leave the main story to Adrian.'
The Cults.
The Reformists.
Whatever disasters were supposed to drag the protagonist across Rozenfall, Adrian could have them all.
Xian only needed to pay attention when those problems threatened the heroines and routes he actually intended to involve himself in.
Especially Fahna, whose route remained politically involved even throughout the post-academy arcs.
"…So in the end…" The student struggled to get the words out. "You're just like your master and her family, huh?"
His mouth eventually twisted into a nervous grin. Xian returned it without a shred of guilt, making the student take an involuntary step backward.
"That's right." Xian's grin widened.
"I'm not like you filthy lot." The insult landed exactly as intended.
The boy's face tightened, but he could only clench his fist. Xian found it amusing and thought that Carmillia would similarly toy with this man. They had sent someone to test him.
Then he should naturally return the favor. Something much more troublesome than an answer.
'You wanted people?'
Adrian Wylert was practically designed to hear some downtrodden student's grievances, take them seriously, start asking questions, and somehow drag everyone around him into solving the problem.
And once Adrian became interested, the others around him would inevitably follow.
Castreyja, Ruminaria, and even Kyrin.
Whoever else the protagonist managed to gather. Xian's eyes narrowed in amusement, briefly wondering how much of this Castreyja had already accounted for.
'Then have a time bomb.'
"I do have a recommendation for you." The student eyed Xian warily, confused.
"Can't return empty-handed now, can you?"
"…What do you mean? If you're not willing to listen to me, why should I listen to you?"
"Because you and your little Reformist group have something to gain. It's up to you whether you believe me."
"R-Reformists! How do you…?"
'Right. They weren't calling themselves that openly yet. Well, it's just another thing for this guy to worry about.'
Xian stepped forward and clasped the boy heavily by the shoulder. The student immediately stiffened. Xian leaned closer, lowering his voice enough that only the two of them could hear.
"Elite Class. Adrian Wylert."
"Tell him your sob story instead. Preferably when it's just the two of you."
Xian gave his shoulder another pat.
"Then tell him to spread the word among whoever he trusts. Make sure to ask for 'help'."
"W-What's some Elite snob got to do with…"
"Shh."
Xian smiled in a way that gave others shivers down their spines.
"Trust me. He's a much easier person to convince."
"Oh, and if you want this to work, don't tell them I sent you." Xian gave him one last pat.
"Good luck."
With that, the Common Class student hurriedly left, as if he didn't want to linger anywhere near Xian anymore.
'Well, I can't blame them. The Royals and Elites are treated disproportionately better than the Common Class.'
The difference was visible even in something as basic as where they lived.
The Royals had their own well-appointed dormitories and residential facilities, with those belonging to the Arbiter Course standing as the cream of the crop at the very top. The Elites occupied the middle ground below them, living in comfortable and well-maintained dormitories that still fell noticeably short of what the Royals enjoyed.
The Common Class, meanwhile, lived in comparatively modest academy dormitories and residential compounds, and none of those were unbearably dilapidated; in fact, they provided better accommodation than a normal commoner's house.
But comparison really was an evil thing. It killed whatever satisfaction people had with their lot the moment they saw someone else living better. And, as far as Xian was concerned, that whole delusion of equality only made things worse.
Give people a glimpse of privileges they didn't possess, and eventually some of them would convince themselves they had been robbed of something that should've belonged to them in the first place.
Then came the resentment. Better rooms. Better facilities. Better instructors. Better opportunities. Servants waiting on some students while others had to take care of everything themselves.
'Then they start wanting whatever everyone above them has.'
Xian had little sympathy for that much. To him, equality itself was already a convenient delusion. There would always be people born with more wealth, greater talent, stronger families, or simply better opportunities than everyone else.
Rozenfall certainly hadn't changed that.
'It doesn't help that even the top brass and faculty are no different.'
Back when Rozenfall was only a game, Xian might not have known which professor handled which period or even who taught most of Adrian's ordinary classes, but there was no shortage of professors he remembered once they became relevant to the storyline.
And even among them, there was an obvious hierarchy.
Those entrusted with the Royal departments, prestigious facilities, important research, and greater portions of academy funding naturally carried more influence than professors assigned to less prominent positions. The same academy might employ all of them, but they hardly enjoyed equal access or authority, nor did they regularly deal with students of equal standing.
The servant halls made that divide even easier to see.
Royals had the greatest access to academy servants on top of whatever retainers or attendants their own households had sent with them. Professors enjoyed similar institutional services, and even some wealthy Elites could afford enough assistance that they rarely needed to concern themselves with mundane work.
The Common Class naturally had no comparable privilege.
If anything, they were far more likely to be the ones taking on academy employment, filling whatever paid work Rozenfall offered whenever extra hands were needed.
Studying beside someone in one period, only to find yourself working somewhere they frequented later.
Xian could imagine how easily that would sour someone.
Especially when there were far more Common students than either of the divisions above them. With numbers like that, history was bound to produce the occasional group that became dissatisfied enough to stop accepting the arrangement altogether.
'And they still don't get it.'
As far as Xian could tell, Rozenfall had never truly been built to make everyone equal.
What it offered was a path upward.
Perform well enough, prove talented enough, become useful enough, and even someone born a commoner could climb into places normally occupied by people who had begun life with far greater advantages.
Xian himself was living proof of that, and perhaps that was precisely what made the system so convenient.
Rozenfall could advertise merit, allow the occasional exceptional commoner to rise, and point toward people like Xian whenever anyone accused the institution of favoring those already above them.
Yet the hierarchy itself didn't have to disappear. The Royals remained Royals, enjoying the academy's greatest privileges. The Elites remained comfortably between both worlds, possessing enough advantages to distinguish themselves from the Common Class while still looking upward at everything the Royals had.
And the Common Class remained beneath them both, staring upward at privileges most of them would probably never experience.
Whether that was hypocrisy or simply how the academy was meant to function hardly mattered to Xian.
'What a convenient system.'
Xian glanced toward the direction of the Mana dome again.
Carmillia's class should still have a while left before it ended. He had originally planned to wait somewhere nearby until she came out, but then he remembered something Aleandro had told him earlier.
'Right. I'm being summoned to the Headmaster's office.' Since George had let them out earlier than expected, he was going to use the remaining time to meet the Headmaster.
Xian could already guess at least one reason for the summons. The commotion with Castreyja that morning had hardly been subtle, and with rumors about his position spreading, Fahna approaching him, and now even some nameless group of commoners testing the waters around him, there were plenty of things the academy might want to question him about.
Rozenfall had eyes everywhere and an ear to the ground, after all.
Still, one thought made the prospect considerably less unpleasant.
'I miss Vica a little. I wonder what seduction technique she's going to surprise me with if we meet?'
Carmillia still had time left in class anyway. Rather than wait around the Mana dome, Xian turned away and headed toward the Headmaster's office ahead of schedule.
'Might as well see what punishment they have in mind.'