Nero woke up on his own, and realised that he woke up ahead of time. These days, after his assigned caretaker used the card to help him condense his sleep down to a single hour, he would usually sleep deeply until woken up. Today, for some odd reason, he woke up early.
Nero suppressed a soft smirk, and closed his eyes, maintaining a regular breathing pattern, as if he was still asleep. He used these precious few minutes to go through his thoughts and plans.
Contrary to what others thought, Nero was not ignorant of what was happening to him. In fact, he was the first person to notice, but he simply didn’t acknowledge it openly. He himself would not quit - he could not afford to quit or lose his nomination for the legion.
However, he also realised that he could not keep going on like this, for more than one reason. It was not that he could maintain such an unreasonable pace. That, biologically speaking, may be a factor, but it was not what made him decide to stop.
Instead, there were two primary reasons for such a decision. First, Nero was exceptionally used to contemplating and reflecting on his day and experiences. If not every day, then at least at every opportunity he got, Nero would pause and go through all his actions, and all the events he witnessed.
That reflection helped him grow, identify mistakes he made, notice things that he may have issued out in the moment, and so on. It had become something he was incredibly used to doing, and it played a very important role in keeping him from making mistakes. With this new routine, he just didn’t have the time to do that.
Of course, Nero would not begin to conspire to make his schedule somewhat more manageable simply for that. The second reason was that one of the additional classes he took was in card crafting, and he <i>finally</i> got some ideas about how he could create cards by altering his innate ability!
One of the heritages his moms family had was the ability to create unique cards based off of their own innate abilities. While he’d learned the trick of how to do it, he’d never experimented successfully before.
Well, recently he finally found a clue as to how he could do that, but for that he would need more free time. Without giving up himself, there was only one thing he could do, and that was to have Professor Isabella ease out his schedule herself.
He did not think he could fool her by pulling off some cheap tricks. Fortunately, he’d already noticed that his body could not keep up with the existing schedule. He just needed to continue with it until she was forced to change his schedule. He could, at most, slightly exaggerate the effects of what he was feeling.
It had taken a while, but he was certain that it would happen soon enough. That brought him to the next thing that required his attention. During the assembly, he noticed a few cadets on stage that required his attention.
Although he did not know the cadets name just yet, he noticed the familiarity. He was extremely certain that there was at least <i>one</i> person from the Dom family inside the academy, though how something like that could escape his and Gabriel’s notice was beyond him.
Of course, even if someone like that was there, it wasn’t like Nero could do anything to him. However, he had to raise his guard. Although the academy was famed for its safety, Nero did not believe that anything was foolproof.
He needed to find out more about that familiar cadet and do his research. One severe drawback of his intense schedule was the lack of time to build a network, but that was an issue that was fixing itself.
Slowly, word had begun to spread about the special classes Nero was taking. The best way to assess just how much faith the academy had in someone’s future was the amount of attention that the academy gave them.
The Valkan Legion was one thing, and whether someone entered the legion or not wasn’t something that just anyone could decide. But the position of Luminary Herald was something everyone coveted. If rumors of his additional training were to be believed, then he became a great contender for that spot!
Luminary Herald was a title awarded to the best performing, or most promising cadet to graduate the academy every year. Though not all who got that title ended up highly successful, it was true that receiving the title set up their military career for an upwards trajectory.
Barring any major mistake, or the much more likely event of death, all Luminary Herald’s ended up in very significant positions.
Whether it was because of his early performances, or the kind of attention he was getting lately, everyone kind of just acknowledged that he was the most likely contender for that position. Of course, it was too soon to be focusing on these things for now, but people couldn’t help thinking about it.
Thus, many wanted to befriend him. Since they were unable to access him directly, then his friends in the Enlil battalion started to attract attention. Given a little time, Nero could use them to slowly expand his social circle.
"Wake up, there’s been a change to your schedule," said a voice as it began to bang outside Nero’s door.
Nero jumped outside of his bed and quickly opened the door to the sight of an unfamiliar drill instructor.
"Nero Grant, you’ve been paired with a senior group for a joint drill. Get changed," the instructor said, not explaining why his schedule had been changed.
Nero found it unusual, but he did not question the man and instead ran to shower and get changed. Within just a few minutes, he was back at the front door, changed and ready to follow the man.
Since the man just led the way without saying anything else, Nero could only follow. His guard was, naturally, raised to the extreme. Yet the situation did not take a dire or drastic turn. Instead, he quickly found himself in front of a drill ground with a group of unfamiliar second year seniors.
"Alright, now that he’s here, we can begin the briefing," said the lead instructor, who seemed to be waiting for Nero’s arrival. "The new cadet will serve as the hostage. He will neither resist, fight, or help you in any way throughout the drill. It will be your job to rescue him, and escort him through the obstacles to safety."
Nero blinked, and looked towards the instructor. Had he misheard? Had he been called here to be... a hostage? What?
Nero looked from the instructor to the other cadets, and found that none of them seemed surprised by this news. Instead, they continued to discuss the details of the course that they were going to undertake.
"Here, put this on," said another instructor as they handed Nero a padded jacket. Yet, instead of weights, the jacket seemed to carry some thick fluid.
"What’s this for?" he asked, as he put it on.
"If the jacket bursts and the fluid leaks, you’re considered dead," the instructor explained as he handed Nero a pair of padded pants as well. "Once you’re done, follow me. I’ll take you to your spot. As you’ve already heard, you’re not supposed to help the cadets whatsoever. Unless someone is leading you personally, you can’t even move, got it?"
Nero was about to nod, but then looked towards the building they were going into. He could feel a thick amount of cursed energy leaking out of that building.
"I’m supposed to... not protect myself while I’m in there?" he asked, doubtfully. Maybe this was a trap afterall.
"Yeah, don’t worry," the instructor said, guessing what Nero’s concern was. "The room you’ll be in will be protected. As long as you don’t leave, you won’t be targeted. You’re supposed to add to the difficulty of the course by being uncooperative. Every time we do this, we take a new cadet at random to fill the role of hostage."
The instructor’s assurances weren’t exactly reassuring, so Nero decided to keep his guard up. What were the chances that he was truly chosen at random with how hectic his schedule was?
The instructor led him through a special corridor, bringing him into the safe room where he was meant to wait for a rescue. The special corridor would be locked afterwards so that it couldn’t be used as an exit.
Nero studied the room, watching for any traps, but beside a door, and a window through which he could look out of, there wasn’t much to note. There was no danger in the room itself, as if everything was isolated using special means, but he could sense that right outside the room was a lot of cursed energy.
Nero checked to make sure that he could access his own aether, and then stood beside the window, hoping to see his rescuers in action.