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  Spurred on by the harsh shouts of Mentors, hundreds of disciples were fighting on the parade grounds. Others, sitting atop the hills, were deeply immersed in meditation. Waterfalls cascaded down onto their shoulders. They flowed down their hands and into a lake. Some were having philosophical lessons. They were sitting in a semicircle around a Sage, who was telling them about the path of cultivation. The disciples asked questions and he answered every one of them patiently.

  There were plenty of various residential premises. Some were full and overcrowded, some were empty. Some looked very ordinary and even poor, while others were richer and seemed massive. Not far from the tower stood ten separate, very presentable houses. Even a noble wouldn’t have been ashamed to live in one of them.

  “Don’t act so surprised, disciples.” Mentor Jean said, leading the group along a wide, yellow paved road. “Our School is open to visitors from the city. Officials and nobles often come here. Many of them were once disciples of our School. I will say that the medallion you’ll earn once you graduate will remain with you for the rest of your life.”

  “What do we have to do to graduate?” One of the girls asked.

  Mentor Jean laughed.

  “Young lady, you’ve just gotten here and are already dreaming of your final exam? Everything in due time. What was I talking about... Oh, right. We are open to any visitors. However, there are also visitors who’ve never worn our badge. That’s why we have the veil that hides a large part of ‘The Holy Sky’ School from the rest of the world.”

  “But why?”

  Jean didn’t turn around. Hadjar, walking at the front of the column of disciples, felt that the Mentor’s aura was hidden. Even so, it was clearly at a level beyond that of Traves in his true form. It was stronger than the aura of the inner circle disciple, Dalit, from the exam. “In addition to the Tournament of Twelve, which will take place in just a few years, Schools sometimes go to war with each other for resources or for the title of the most prestigious School. So, we don’t see much point in supplying potential enemies with any information.”

  Hadjar had heard a bit about the wars between Imperial schools. They were always waged with the tacit approval of The Darnassus military. However, there was one immutable law (because of which the School floated above the city): the war mustn’t spread beyond the territory of the attacked school. Otherwise, the punishing hand of the Emperor would ‘caress’ both institutions.

  As they strolled along, Hadjar listened to Jean and looked at the other disciples. Most of them, like him, wore silver tokens on their chests. Gold ones were much rarer, emerald ones even rarer, and you almost never saw wooden ones. Due to some strange custom, the wooden tokens were reserved for the personal disciples of the School Masters and Mentors.

  Every time he looked at the cultivators around him, Hadjar couldn’t help but compare them to the only measure of power he knew: the Shadow of Traves and Traves in his true form. Most of the disciples with the emerald tokens could fight Traves’ Shadow on equal terms. Some of them could even hurt it. A few of the inner circle disciples who’d participated in the exam could probably defeat his Shadow. But only Mentor Jean could’ve fought Traves in his true, dragon form.

  Jean pointed to a row of simple, four-story buildings:

  “Those are the dormitories of fully-fledged disciples. Everyone has their own room, with everything they need for meditation and personal cultivation.”

  Hadjar quickly counted the windows. It turned out that, on average, about three thousand fully-fledged disciples lived in ‘The Holy Sky’ School at any given moment.

  “On the opposite side,” Jean gestured to the right. They saw two-story buildings that were far more luxurious. “Are the homes of the inner circle disciples. The rooms there are much more spacious and comfortable.”

  Hadjar made the new calculations: about a hundred and fifty people.

  “And those are the private homes of the top ten core disciples.”

  “Top ten core disciples?” The same girl who’d asked the first question asked.

  “Yes,” Jean said. “There aren’t many core disciples in the school. There’s rarely more than twenty of them. Most of them are at the top of the Jade Cloud list.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Jean smiled, but his eyes were full of gloom, doom, and overwhelming boredom.

  “All in due time,” the Mentor answered. “By the way, only the inner circle disciples are allowed to leave the school grounds freely. They often use that privilege, and some of them even live in the city.”

  Einen and Hadjar looked at each other. There was no doubt that the islander had also tried to count the number of various disciples. However, it turned out that their information wasn’t particularly accurate. Give or take twenty to thirty people.

  “By the way, I forgot to tell you this.” Hadjar guessed he hadn’t forgotten, and had omitted the information on purpose. “As soon as you accepted the Academy badge, you took an oath not to divulge the information you receive here. This applies not only to any information about the School, but also to all the Techniques and knowledge that you may master during your time here.”

  Hadjar touched his medallion involuntarily. In principle, there was nothing too worrisome about such an oath. It didn’t bind him in any way, and it was a perfectly normal precaution.

  “Now, let’s continue our introductory session in the Treasure Tower.”

  Such a simple, but oh so mesmerizing name — the Treasure Tower.

  Chapter 430

  Up close, the tower looked even more imposing than it did from a distance. It was conical in shape and had seven floors. Images of dancing dragons, soaring phoenixes, and peacocks swirled around its facade. The latter were a symbol of the Empire. Its coat of arms was a depiction of a peacock feather assuming the form of the ‘power’ hieroglyph.

  “Gatekeeper.” Mentor Jean bowed low.

  “Young Jean.” An old man wearing a grey, patched cape smiled. He sat on a chair near the entrance and looked dispassionately at his possessions. “I haven’t seen you here for a long time.”

  “I was here yesterday, Gatekeeper.”

  “Yesterday. Today. A hundred years ago. Time flows differently for me. You know that.”

  Jean bowed again, and then turned to the startled disciples. Only Hadjar and Einen weren’t surprised by the exchange. Both of them felt the same energy in the old man that they’d felt in little Serra and Erra. The Gatekeeper wasn’t human. He was a golem, one so complex that it could’ve easily competed with the Key and the List of the ancient civilization. Well, the most valuable treasure of the library of Mage City had really been the elixir, because the rest of the knowledge had long since been either rediscovered or surpassed.

  “You can enter the Treasure Tower only if the Gatekeeper allows it. The Tower is empty today, but that only happens on exam days. Right now, the Treasure Tower is only open to newly arrived disciples. Otherwise, we would never have gotten here because of the crowd.”

  It was quite a logical decision. Hadjar presumed that the remaining two exams had already been completed as well, but neither the fully-fledged nor the inner circle disciples were visible on the horizon.

  Maybe they didn’t want to risk bloodshed? Their pride was as important to the young practitioners as the air they breathed. Einen and Hadjar could endure most (but not all) insults. To someone younger and endowed with great power, a sidelong glance was a cause for a blood feud.

  “Gatekeeper.” Jean made an inviting gesture.

  The old man grunted something unintelligible and rose from his seat. When he reached the disciples, he gave them a slightly mocking look, and then went over to the massive gates. They were bolted with a metal that Hadjar couldn’t recognize and protected by a ten-layer barrier of magical hieroglyphics. Huge, woven from light, they hovered in the air. The energy they radiated felt much heavier than Dalit’s pressure had been. Hadjar had no doubt that the spell had been cast by someone even higher tha
n the Lord level.

  “The spell of the Ten Worlds,” Jean explained while the Gatekeeper was doing some sort of ritual. He made strange gestures with his hands, gradually pushing the hieroglyphics aside. “Thousands of thousands of years ago, a single spell was cast on the Treasure Tower. It was created by the founder of our school — cultivator Boundless Sky.”

  After another hieroglyphic was pushed aside, Hadjar shivered slightly. He knew perfectly well that he couldn’t even scratch such a veil. If he tried, the power contained in the spell would scatter him to the wind.

  “What level was the founder?” A voice called from the crowd.

  “No one knows,” Jean said a little mysteriously. “He was clearly beyond the Nameless Level, the one that comes after the Lord level. Nobody knows what such a high level of cultivation entails... Well, humility is also a worthy trait for a cultivator to possess, so I will elaborate that you probably can’t find the answer to that question in the Empire.”

  A wave of murmurs and whispers swept through the crowd. Hadjar figured Jean was lying. The Mentor surely knew about the existence of the Land of the Immortals, but apparently, just like Hadjar, he had no idea what level of cultivation a cultivator needed to reach to become an Immortal. As for the Nameless level, Hadjar had heard of it in the Sea of Sand.

  A few minutes later, the Gatekeeper opened the tower gates. Mentor Jean was the first to enter, followed by the disciples. A sigh of admiration and surprise escaped all of them. Hadjar and Einen had seen something similar before in Mage City, but they couldn’t help but marvel at the sight as well.

  The huge room was filled with shelves of books and scrolls, racks with numerous weapons, and shelves with a variety of reagents and alchemical pills. There was a price tag next to each item. It was painfully similar to the kind of library the Imperials had brought with them when they’d supposedly wanted to help Lidus.

  “There are seven floors in the Tower,” the Gatekeeper’s voice sounded very hollow in this vast space. “Every disciple of ‘The Holy Sky’ School has access to the first floor. The second floor is only for fully-fledged disciples and higher. The third and fourth ones are reserved for the fully-fledged disciples that pass a test.”

  “What kind of test?” Somebody asked.

  The Gatekeeper completely ignored the question and continued:

  “The fifth floor is only for those who pass the third and fourth test, and also have the medallion of an inner circle disciple. The sixth one is for those who meet the previous conditions, as well as pass the test of the sixth floor. The last floor, the seventh, is only for personal disciples of Masters and Mentors. However, just a wooden token isn’t enough to access it. A disciple has to pass a test and only then can they get access to the seventh floor. Only six of the current seventeen core disciples have access to the seventh floor.”

  Hadjar looked up. A wide ramp ran up the side of the wall, ending at the ceiling of the second floor. The first three floors were the most ‘open’ and hardly had anything valuable on display.

  “Look at your tokens carefully,” Jean said, pointing at the chest of one of the disciples. “Do you see that stone in the center? Touch it with your mind.”

  Hadjar complied with the request. Concentrating, he detached a part of his mind. Each cultivator visualized this process in a different way. It was easiest for Hadjar to imagine that his thoughts, after turning into a stream of wind, were free to leave the halls of his mind. When his mind touched the stone, the number 150 appeared in his mind’s eye.

  “All of you, after passing the exam, were given some Glory points. Using them, you can buy any of the items stored in the Treasure Tower. You also have to pay to attend lectures, training, or use the training grounds. You also have to pay for a space to study in and maintenance. However, the fees can also be paid with Imperial coins. For an ordinary disciple, it costs fifty coins for six months, or three hundred Glory points.”

  The 1:6 ratio surprised Hadjar a little. Still, he was familiar with the system. It was almost the same thing he’d seen in the Moon Army, so it wasn’t surprising that a similar system was being used in the Empire itself.

  “How do we earn those points?” Einen asked.

  “Yes,” another young man asked, “what do we need to do?”

  “We’ll talk about the points later. Right now, you should walk around the first floor and look at the things on offer. I would advise you not to buy anything just yet. Just look at the prices so you can form an adequate plan for the future.”

  Hadjar and Einen nodded to each other and went in different directions. That way, they’d be able to see more and then exchange information.

  As he walked among the shelves, Hadjar became convinced that there was something off about how they treated ordinary disciples. Something very... fishy. For example, to obtain a Spirit level Technique (the ‘Light Breeze’ Technique was at the Earth level. The level classification of Techniques was the same as that of artifacts), an ordinary disciple had to pay a thousand Glory points! A fully-fledged disciple could buy it for five hundred, and it cost an inner circle disciple two hundred, while a core disciple could get it for... forty points. It was clear that the school was more inclined to nurture those who were more powerful, but there was no sign of the ordinary disciples being given a fair chance to succeed.

  A Blue Blood pill, which was used to restore energy, cost an ordinary disciple two hundred and fifty points. It was also at the Spirit level.

  In general, with the exception of a few artifact weapons and armor that were at the Earth level and cost at least five thousand Glory points, Hadjar didn’t find anything that was above the Spirit level. Even the meditation scroll that allowed a person to advance from the initial stage of the Heaven Soldier level to the middle stage was also at the Spirit level and cost about three and a half thousand points.

  It must be understood that the meditation scrolls were valued most and... least of all. Those who didn’t get a scroll that would allow them to advance all the way to the Spirit Knight level were doomed to a terribly difficult path of cultivation.

  This was due to the fact that frequently changing one’s meditation Techniques had a very detrimental effect on the soul and core of a practitioner or cultivator. Hadjar, who had received the ‘Path through the Clouds’ meditation scroll from Traves, was a very lucky man. Meditation Techniques up to the Heaven level only allowed a cultivator to advance their level of cultivation. Heaven level ones and above, however, endowed one with innate skills that didn’t require energy to use.

  If Hadjar reached the Spirit Knight level with the ‘Path through the Clouds’, he would be able to... fly. At the moment, he had no idea how that would be possible. In addition, the scroll stated that, starting from the middle stage of the Heaven Soldier level, he would need special resources. For example, seven liters of Primordial Water. Hadjar didn’t even know what ‘Primordial Water’ was! Not to mention the other resources, the names of which he couldn’t even read!

  “Holy shit,” Hadjar swore when he spotted it, and turned toward it.

  He was now, like the others, very eager to earn more points. Not for the sake of rare resources, ingredients, Techniques, artifacts, or potions, but to buy what most of the disciples were crowding around. At the very end of the first floor, on a separate stand, lay a gold token. No, it didn’t instantly make its owner a fully-fledged disciple, but instead allowed them to take the exam to become one. It cost seven and a half thousand Glory points!

  Chapter 431

  Mentor Jean looked at the disciples knowingly. It had taken them only a few minutes to realize that joining ‘The Holy Sky’ School wasn’t a blessing that had been granted to them by the Heavens themselves, but only the beginning of a difficult and complicated path.

  In the entire history of the School, there were only a few thousand ordinary disciples who had been able to rise from the bottom and become fully-fledged disciples. One hundred and seventy of those had made it to the rank of inner
circle disciples and... none had become personal or core disciples. There were a great many reasons for this, and most of them had little to do with a disciple’s power.

  “Now let’s go to the Hall of Fame,” he said, turning around and heading for the exit.

  Hadjar and Einen hurried after him. Neither of them had taken anything from the first floor, unlike a lot of the others. Many had ignored Mentor Jean’s advice. Some had spent all of their one hundred and fifty points on various ingredients, alchemical pills, and potions.

  Judging by their appearance, these disciples were from distant provinces. Big fish in a small pond. Back home, they were considered geniuses, but here they were worthless commoners. Maybe Einen and Hadjar were the same. However, they had a lot of life experience and steely willpower hardened by countless battles. Hadjar, who had passed the crucible of war, might’ve had more military experience than all the other disciples here, except Einen.

  After leaving the first floor, Hadjar already knew what goal he would work toward in the near future. All these pills, Techniques, and artifacts, if Hadjar understood anything about the Empire, were nothing compared to those on the next floor. That meant he needed to-

  “We need to become fully-fledged disciples.” Einen voiced his thoughts. “That’s the only way we can get up to the other floors.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth.” Hadjar clapped his friend on the back and added, “I’m also sure that some of the lectures, training sessions, and practical demonstrations can only be attended if you have the required token.”