Two weeks into the academy and Levi had developed a theory: the quality of a lesson was inversely proportional to how much the instructor enjoyed hearing themselves talk.
Mrs Innell was, by this measure, an excellent teacher.
She ran her myth education lessons the way a good conversation ran — she asked questions, listened to the answers with genuine attention, and built the information around what the class already knew rather than delivering it from above. The classroom on the third floor had become, over the course of two weeks, a room Levi was comfortable in. Seven desks, morning light through the east windows, the training fields visible below where the middle class was currently doing something punishing with weighted vests.
"Revision," Mrs Innell said, settling on the edge of her desk. "Two weeks of myth classification. Let's see what's actually stuck. Sylvia — B and A class."
Sylvia had her hand up before the question was finished. "Kitsune for B class — weakest myths in existence but dangerous precisely because people underestimate them. There are five types: petrification, freeze, burn, liquefy, and explosive." A brief pause, as if she was running the list in her head. "A class: Ogres and Gargoyles. Ogres for strength and heavy weapons, Gargoyles for flight and agility."
"Good. The part most people forget about Kitsune?"
"That B class doesn't mean harmless. It means touchable, if you're careful."
"Exactly." Mrs Innell looked at the rest of the class. "Don't let classification create complacency. A Kitsune petrification type touching your ankle in the middle of a fight is still the end of the fight." She moved on. "S and SS. Dwayne."
Dwayne looked up from the corner of his desk where he'd been resting his chin on his hand with the studied casualness of someone who was, in fact, paying attention. "S class: Chimeras and Golems. SS: Evogres — Ogres that evolved and picked up elemental magic in the process. Fire, earth, electricity." He paused. "The electricity ones are the worst."
He glanced at Levi as he said it. Levi said nothing, which was the correct response.
"Three types of Golem," Mrs Innell said. "Earth, Lava, Crystal — each with different resistances, each requiring a different approach. Don't assume that what works on an Earth Golem will work on a Crystal one. That assumption has ended careers." She turned to the window briefly, as if looking at something beyond the training fields. "SSS class. Vanessa."
Vanessa, who spoke rarely but consistently accurately, straightened slightly. "Hydra: six heads, toxic, regenerative — cut a head and it grows back in ten seconds. Multiple dragons by type: fire, ice, lightning. Suzaku: blazing bird, comparable threat level to the Hydra, fire-based. Elementals: four types, fire, water, earth, wind, no organic biology which makes them very difficult to kill."
"What's the key to killing a Golem or Elemental?"
"Destroy the core."
"And the key challenge?"
"Finding it."
"Correct." Mrs Innell was quiet for a moment, letting the weight of SSS class settle the way she always let information settle — briefly, without drama, then moving on. "Legendary class. Levi."
Levi had been expecting this. He'd read the classification texts twice — not because he needed revision but because he'd recognised names in them that he needed to see written down in the neutral language of a textbook rather than attached to his own memories. "Currently eight identified Legendary class myths," he said. "Hercules, Fenrir, Fujin, Takemikazuchi, Horus, Seth, Amaterasu, and Anubis."
Mrs Innell nodded. "Correct. And the current count is now seven." She said it with the matter-of-fact delivery she used for all factual information — neither softened nor highlighted. "A few weeks ago, Horus was eliminated in the Kingdom of Velvetia by an Elite MK. Jane Baron."
The room had a particular quality of silence for a moment. Not dramatic — just the brief pause of seven people absorbing a fact. Levi heard his mother's name in the voice of a teacher and felt it move through him the way cold water moves when you're not expecting it — complete, immediate, reaching everywhere at once.
He kept his face still. He was getting better at this.
Kevin, two seats to his left, had turned to look at him. The look lasted about two seconds and contained more understanding than most people managed in a full conversation. Then Kevin looked back at Mrs Innell, and didn't say anything, which was exactly right.
"Jane Baron was Levi's mother," Mrs Innell said, quietly, to the class. Not an announcement — just an acknowledgment, delivered with the careful respect of someone who had thought about how to do this before the lesson. "I mention it because it's relevant to our subject and because Levi deserves to have it said properly rather than discovered incidentally." She looked at Levi directly. "She was one of the finest MKs this world has produced. The fact that she took Horus with her when she fell is not a consolation — it's a testament."
The class was very still.
Levi looked at his desk. He breathed. He looked back up.
"Thank you, Mrs Innell," he said.
She held his gaze for a moment — the particular look of an adult who has said what needed saying and is now letting the person have the space to carry it — and moved on.
"Seven Legendary class myths remaining," she said, back in the register of the lesson. "Organised into five threat codes. Code Yellow — lowest threat level for a Legend, which should give you an idea of what the scale looks like. Hercules: extreme physical power, effectively a tank with intelligence and combat experience. Fenrir: a wolf whose claws can cut through ultimatium. Code Orange: Fujin, the wind god. Capable of generating hurricanes, typhoons, sustained vortex systems. He brought Velvetia's walls down and cleared the Gate Portal centres."
Levi wrote this down. The pen moved across the page and he let it, because writing was something to do with his hands.
"Code Red: Takemikazuchi. Also called Raijin, though we haven't observed him use lightning abilities in the field. What we have observed: he can conjure and launch hundreds of blades simultaneously, and his close-range sword technique has no recorded counter. Code Purple: Seth and Amaterasu." Mrs Innell's voice changed slightly here — not softer, but more deliberate, the register of someone conveying something they want to be remembered accurately. "Seth is the god of chaos. His presence produces cascading instability in any environment — structural, social, tactical. He was the sole cause of the fall of Atlantia. One myth, one kingdom. Amaterasu is the goddess of the sun. The Kingdom of Zorra fell to her alone. Cities have burned to the ground and kept burning." She paused. "These two are not to be engaged. They are to be evacuated from. If you find yourself in proximity to either of them, your objective is to survive long enough to be somewhere else."
The class absorbed this. Outside, the weighted-vest training on the field below had been replaced by something involving obstacle courses and shouting.
"And the last," Mrs Innell said. "Code Black."
The room changed slightly.
"Anubis. The god of death." She said it without inflection. "He has no recorded combat technique because he has never needed one. His presence generates a mortality field — proximity to him is itself lethal, the effect scaling with distance and duration. He has destroyed two major kingdoms in less than a month. Casualty records from those events are incomplete because there was no one left to make them."
Nobody spoke.
The bell rang. It sounded louder than usual.
✦ ✦ ✦
Instructor Gavin ran his simulation room the way a certain kind of experienced person runs things — with the compressed efficiency of someone who had long since stopped believing in wasted words and had strong opinions about students who thought potential was the same as competence.
He was not, Levi had concluded over two weeks, a bad instructor. He knew his subject thoroughly, demonstrated with precision, and corrected errors immediately and specifically. The problem was the layer of commentary that ran underneath all of it — a persistent subtext of calculated expectation, a worldview in which the gap between what students were and what the world required of them was interesting primarily as a problem of human limitation rather than a challenge to be solved.
Today's lesson was demonstration — show what you'd learned, receive critique.
"Kevin," Gavin said, without preamble. "Efficient method for A-class myths. Gargoyles and Ogres. Talk and then show."
Kevin had the expression of someone who was accustomed to being selected first and had developed a response that was neither enthusiasm nor resentment — just the straightforward competence of someone who knew they could do the thing and was going to do the thing. "Decapitation or core impalement are the most efficient methods. Less energy expenditure, reliable results." He paused. "I use a different method."
"Show me," said Gavin.
The simulation produced an Ogre. Kevin waited for it to commit to its attack — a heavy downward swing with a weapon that could have doubled as a small building — and stepped inside the arc, driving an earth-enhanced fist upward through the follow-through. The Ogre's head ceased to be structurally coherent.
"Crushing," Gavin said. "More energy-intensive than slashing. Less reliable against varied targets." He made a note. "Effective for your build and your ability. Acceptable."
"Acceptable," Kevin repeated, in a tone that suggested he found this characterisation tolerable.
"Nice going, Kevin," Sylvia said.
"Of course. How do you think I got into the top class?"
"I assumed bribery."
"Why you—"
"Sylvia," Gavin said. "Since you're so engaged. Golems. Method and demonstration."
Sylvia stood. "Core destruction. The core is the animating element — remove it and the myth ceases to function regardless of how much of the body is intact." She watched the Golem simulation materialise — taller than the Ogre, slower, denser — and waited for its first strike. When it came she was already inside it, a fiery fist driving through the chest cavity to the core with the focused precision of someone who had done this correctly enough times that it had become architecture rather than effort.
The Golem stopped.
"High energy expenditure," Gavin said. "I'd recommend acquiring a weapon capable of focused penetration — reduces the cost, increases the reliability at range." He looked at the class. "When you're facing SSS class or above, you're not fighting alone. You're fighting in squadrons. This is not a preference — it is a requirement. A Hydra has six heads. Each regenerates in ten seconds. The mathematics of solo combat against a Hydra are straightforward and not in your favour." He moved through the remaining SSS class myths with the brisk authority of someone delivering operational intelligence rather than theory — dragons disabled by grounding before decapitation, Elementals requiring core location under combat conditions, Suzaku vulnerable to water-based abilities but sufficiently fast that the application of this knowledge was the real challenge.
Then he paused.
"Legendary class," he said. The slight shift in his register was interesting — not fear, Levi thought, but the particular quality of respect that comes from having thought about something very carefully for a long time. "Hercules and Fenrir are Code Yellow. I want you to understand what that means. Code Yellow for a Legend is not manageable. It is survivable, under specific conditions, with multiple high-rank MKs working in coordination. These are not enemies. They are events. You plan around them the way you plan around weather."
"Fujin is Code Orange. Seth and Amaterasu are Code Purple." He said those names the way people say the names of things they have categorised precisely because precision makes them feel less uncontrollable. "If you are in proximity to either of them — individually, let alone together — your objective is not engagement. Your objective is to not be there. This is not cowardice. This is operational intelligence. There is no tactical scenario in which an MK of any rank benefits from direct confrontation with a Code Purple legend."
He moved on to Takemikazuchi. He moved on to Code Black.
And this was where Levi's pen stopped moving.
Not because Gavin said anything new — the information was substantially the same as Mrs Innell's, delivered with more military brevity. It was the conclusion that Gavin drew from the information, emerging gradually through the lesson in small increments until it was too large to ignore: that certain things could not be defeated, that certain power gaps could not be closed, that the correct response to Code Purple and above was removal of self from proximity and acceptance of the fact.
Levi set his pen down.
"Sir," he said.
Gavin looked at him.
"You've spent the last twenty minutes telling us which legends are defeatable under specific conditions and which ones aren't. I understand the distinction and I understand why the information is useful." Levi kept his voice even. "What I don't understand is why the lesson ends there. We're in a military academy. We're going to be MKs. The job involves fighting things that are trying to kill everyone. Telling us to run from Code Purple and Code Black is operationally accurate right now — none of us are ready for that. But sitting here, two weeks into our training, the message I'm taking from this lesson is that certain things are simply beyond the ceiling of what any human can do. And I don't think that's true."
The room was quiet. Outside, something on the training field below made a sound like a large impact.
Gavin looked at him for a moment. "You think it's not true," he said. Not hostile — genuinely considering the position. "Convince me."
"I can't. Not yet." Levi met his gaze. "That's the point. The ceiling isn't fixed — it's just where we are right now. Melissa is legendary class herself. She's taken down Legends. The ceiling moves if you push it hard enough and in the right direction. What I'm saying is that a lesson that ends at 'run away from Anubis' should also include what it would theoretically require to not have to run. Otherwise you're not teaching us to become better — you're teaching us to accept the map as it is."
Gavin was quiet for a moment that had more texture to it than his usual pauses. "You're talking about Anubis," he said. "The god of death. Whose presence is itself lethal. You're saying there's a path to defeating that."
"I'm saying I intend to find out if there is."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," said Levi. "But it's a better place to start than assuming there isn't."
Gavin looked at him for another moment. Something moved in his expression — not concession exactly, but the particular quality of an experienced person genuinely recalibrating. "You talk bigger than your rank, Baron," he said. "But big talk from people with actual ability occasionally turns out to be prediction rather than delusion." He turned back to the class. "Visit the simulation chambers this week. Practice what we've covered. I'll see you Thursday."
The bell rang.
Sylvia exhaled.
✦ ✦ ✦
They were three steps into the corridor when Sylvia appeared at Levi's shoulder.
"That was either very brave or very stupid," she said, "and I genuinely cannot tell which."
"Both, probably," said Levi.
"He could have thrown you out of the class."
"He didn't."
"He might have been thinking about it." She fell into step beside him. "Did you mean what you said? About Anubis?"
"Yes."
Sylvia was quiet for a few steps. "That's terrifying."
"The alternative is worse."
She looked at him sideways. "You said I could defeat Amaterasu."
"If you evolved and accessed the full potential of your intermediate phase. Yes." He said it matter-of-factly, as if this were a logistical statement rather than an extraordinary one. "Your hybrid ability has a theoretical ceiling that nobody's fully mapped yet. Fire and enhancement together, at mastery level, with the right access — the energy output would be enormous. Amaterasu is a solar deity. Fire is her domain. But every fire has a source and every source can be overwhelmed by something generating more of the same thing."
Sylvia stared at him. "You've thought about this."
"I've thought about a lot of things."
"And Priscilla? Seth?"
He considered this for a moment. They were passing the simulation room corridor — behind the doors, he could hear the faint sounds of a class working through something. "Priscilla's telekinesis looks simple from the outside," he said. "It's not. The level of focus required to do what she does casually — moving specific objects at range, independent control of multiple targets simultaneously — that's not just a magic ability, that's a mind that processes spatial information at a fundamentally different rate. Seth destabilises environments. He works through chaos. Against someone who can impose precise order on physical space regardless of what's happening in it—" He paused. "It's a theory. But it's a theory with reasoning."
"You've known Priscilla for two weeks," Sylvia said.
"I've been paying attention for two weeks," said Levi. "That's usually enough."
Sylvia was quiet again. The corridor opened into the main atrium, where the magic training room was visible through the far doors. "I'm going to tell my mom about this conversation," she said finally.
"What did I say that's worth telling Melissa?"
"Nothing specific. I just think she'd want to know that you're already thinking this way." She glanced at him. "I mean that in a good way. I think."
✦ ✦ ✦
Instructor Ryan ran magic training from the far end of the training room, in a space that had been cleared of equipment and set up for theoretical work — desks arranged in a loose circle rather than rows, which immediately communicated something different about how he taught.
He was younger than Gavin, quieter, with the particular quality of attentiveness that Levi associated with people who were interested in the subject rather than the performance of authority. He watched his students the way scientists watched experiments — patient, observant, building conclusions from what he actually saw rather than from what he expected.
"Foundation, intermediate, mastery," he said, once everyone was settled. "Vanessa — walk me through the phases."
Vanessa spoke carefully, as she always did — as if she were weighing each word before committing to it. "Foundation phase is where the ability is discovered and its basic applications are established. Intermediate is where the ability is built on — new possibilities are found, new forms are developed, the ceiling of the foundation phase is exceeded. Mastery is—" she paused briefly, "—theoretically the full expression of the ability. Very few people in history have achieved it."
"Correct on all counts." Ryan looked around the circle. "What Vanessa has described accurately is the structure. What most people get wrong is the directionality. They think mastery means doing the foundation things perfectly. It doesn't. Mastery means discovering what the ability actually is — which is often significantly different from what it appeared to be in the foundation phase." He let this sit for a moment. "James. The inner realm."
James, who was characteristically economical with words, said: "A domain within oneself. A representation of one's personality and ability. Accessing it allows for a deeper development of one's magic than is possible through external training alone."
"Accurate summary." Ryan looked at the group. "The inner realm is not metaphor. It is a real space — your space, built from the material of who you are and what your ability is. No two are the same. And accessing it is not a technique that can be taught, which is one of the more frustrating realities of this particular subject. What I can tell you is that people who have accessed their inner realms consistently report that they found it during a moment of extreme clarity rather than extreme effort. The door opens from the inside." He paused. "Has anyone here found it yet?"
Seven heads, seven negatives.
"That's not unusual at this stage," Ryan said. "Don't force it. Force closes the door." He shifted. "Focus points. Levi — why are they the fundamental unit of spellcasting?"
Levi pulled his attention from where it had been, which was the ceiling. "Focus points are where intent and energy meet. You can have the energy and the intent separately — neither does anything. A focus point is where they become the same thing, which is when a spell happens. Without knowing your focus points, your ability is essentially a language you can speak but can't write."
Ryan looked at him for a slightly longer moment than the question required. "Good. That's a better answer than the textbook." He turned to the class. "External focus points are significantly harder to maintain than internal ones, and most people don't fully understand why. Sylvia's fiery fists — focus point is the hands. Internal. Clean, stable, precise. Levi's telestride—"
Levi became aware that he was about to be used as a teaching example.
"Telestride is external-focus movement," Ryan said. "To do it efficiently, you're not just targeting a destination — you're spreading your energy as a field around yourself, and the telestride happens within that field. The larger and more stable the field, the faster and more precise the movement. Most people who use movement abilities treat them as point-to-point actions. The more sophisticated approach is field-based, which is substantially faster because you're not recalculating the destination — you're already in contact with it." He looked at Levi. "Does that description match your experience of the ability?"
There was a pause.
"More or less," said Levi, carefully. "I don't think I was doing the field thing consciously. But when it works best, that's what it feels like."
"That's usually how it starts. The ability does it before you know you're doing it." Ryan made a note. "Worth developing consciously. The range improvement alone would be significant."
Levi wrote this down. Beside him, Sylvia leaned slightly toward him and murmured: "How does he know all of that about your telestride?"
"I was going to ask the same thing," Levi murmured back.
"He watches," Sylvia said. "He's been watching all of us since week one. I think he's building models."
Levi looked at Ryan, who was currently explaining the relationship between mental state and focus point stability to the rest of the class with the calm focus of someone who was not, at this moment, paying any particular attention to Levi. The key word being particular.
"Good to know," said Levi.
—
The stamina training at the end of the session was, as it always was, a sustained exercise in paying attention to the point where your ability started to cost more than it returned. Levi held his 2nd Form for forty minutes, running circuits of the training room with Kevin and Dwayne and Sylvia, the Flux burning steady and hot in his chest, the tattoo patterns lit across his skin. The others did their own variations — Kevin pushing stone slabs across the floor in controlled sequences, Dwayne cycling through size applications, Sylvia running both hybrid abilities at once in careful alternation. Priscilla sat cross-legged in the corner with her eyes closed, every small object in a three-metre radius orbiting her at different speeds, her face carrying the expression of someone doing something very difficult and very quietly.
James trained alone, slightly apart, as he always did. Whatever his ability did when he trained it, it wasn't visible from across the room. Just James, standing still, with an expression of focused interior effort that made Levi think of Ryan's description of the inner realm — not force, but clarity.
The bell rang. The Flux settled. Levi rolled out his shoulders and looked at his hands for a moment — the faint luminescence fading as the Form released, the warmth retreating back to wherever it lived when he wasn't using it.
He thought about what Ryan had said. Field-based rather than point-to-point. The ability doing it before you know you're doing it.
He thought about the final moment of the fight in the training ground — the Flux reaching for something at the edge of what he'd been using, the sense of a door that hadn't opened yet.
He picked up his bag. Sylvia was waiting at the door.
"Good day?" she asked.
Levi considered the question honestly. A classroom where his mother's death had been announced as a historical fact. An argument with an instructor about the ceiling of human potential. A magic theory class where he'd discovered he'd been doing his own ability wrong without knowing it.
"Educational," he said.
Sylvia made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "That's one word for it."
They went out into the corridor, and the academy continued around them — the noise of other classes, the distant rhythm of something being drilled in the lower training rooms, the afternoon light coming through the windows at the angle that meant the day was most of the way done.
Levi walked through it and thought about doors that opened from the inside.