Chapter 3: Welcome to Class F(ailures)

Alaric's new job as "tactical assistant" came with many vague responsibilities.

Most of them involved being blamed for things he didn't do.

Like now.

"Why are we in a dungeon?" he asked, as the creaky elevator rumbled down beneath the Academy.

Professor Gaelin, holding a glowing map with one hand and a fried mushroom skewer in the other, grunted. "Remedial combat field training. Class A took the top floors already. You get the basement."

"The haunted part?"

"No such thing as ghosts," Gaelin said. "Just mana echoes and poor life choices."

The rest of Class F huddled in the corner of the elevator.

The elf girl yawned loudly. "Do we fight, or can I nap and absorb XP through the air?"

"You need real combat," Gaelin said. "And so does your creepy friend."

Everyone looked at Alaric.

He blinked. "I'm not creepy. I'm economical."

---

The dungeon was made of cold gray stone, torches that didn't burn, and long hallways that smelled like cursed laundry.

The assignment was simple: find the flag. Bring it back.

Try not to get cursed or eaten.

Naturally, the first hallway collapsed after five minutes.

"Trap?" one student asked.

"No," Alaric said, examining the wreckage. "Structural sabotage. Looks melted."

Gaelin narrowed his eyes. "Melted?"

Alaric nodded.

"From inside the stone."

That wasn't normal.

Neither were the claw marks on the walls they found five minutes later.

Or the whispering rune circle behind a broken statue.

The elf girl poked it. "It's still warm."

Alaric didn't touch it.

Instead, he focused.

Closed his eyes.

And whispered:

"Cognition Split."

—Processes the present and short-term future in parallel threads. Allows real-time danger scanning.

His vision split—his left eye seeing now, his right processing a second ahead.

He saw the spike before it moved.

Alaric grabbed the elf by the collar and pulled.

CLANG.

A black tendril whipped out of the wall—narrowly missing her face.

She blinked. "Whoa. You predicted that?"

"Please stop touching glowing things."

---

They followed the trail deeper.

What they found wasn't a flag.

It was a room full of bones.

And in the center?

A cage.

Empty.

But something had been there. Recently.

Professor Gaelin muttered a word that was probably illegal.

"This wasn't a training route," Alaric said.

"No," Gaelin replied. "This is a binding chamber."

"For what?"

The answer came as a guttural growl from the shadows behind them.

And two glowing red eyes.

---

The growl deepened.

Everyone froze.

From the shadows behind them, a creature stepped into the torchlight—slow, hulking, skin stretched over jagged bone like leather over broken glass. It had no nose. Its mouth opened sideways. Its eyes weren't eyes. Just pits that burned red with something wrong.

The elf girl whispered, "That's not on the dungeon list."

Professor Gaelin slowly stepped in front of the students.

"That's not supposed to be here."

The thing's claws scraped the stone floor. A ripple of black mist followed.

Alaric stepped forward once, calmly.

Gaelin grabbed his shoulder. "Get back! You're a support—"

"No," Alaric said quietly, staring at the creature. "I've seen this kind of energy before."

"You've what?"

"From a dream. A memory. A name I wasn't supposed to know."

The demon screeched.

The air pulsed—so thick with mana that even the walls groaned.

The students behind him screamed. Someone tried to cast. The circle fizzled.

Panic spread.

Alaric didn't move.

He looked into the demon's hollow face.

And stepped forward.

One step.

Two.

Gaelin shouted something. Alaric didn't hear it.

The demon lunged.

Alaric raised one hand.

And whispered:

"Dominion Field: Level One."

—A localized field of overwhelming mental force. All hostile minds within range are forcibly suppressed, slowed, and mentally disoriented.

The space around him snapped.

Invisible pressure crashed down in a five-meter radius.

The demon stumbled midair.

Its claws missed.

It dropped to the ground like a puppet with tangled strings, skidding into the dirt.

Alaric didn't stop walking.

The demon rose—screeching now, spitting black fluid that burned the stone.

Alaric reached it.

And tapped a finger to its forehead.

"Neural Spike."

—A single psychic strike sent directly into the brainstem, breaking all internal magical flow and scrambling mental balance.

The red lights in its skull blinked once.

Then vanished.

The demon's body jerked.

Collapsed.

Didn't move again.

Silence.

Behind him, no one spoke.

The only sound was Alaric's quiet exhale.

Gaelin stepped forward slowly.

"...How?"

Alaric turned toward him. "It was unstable."

"You stared it to death."

"Technically, I poked it."

---

The elf girl whispered, "Okay, he's not cursed. He's the curse."

A student behind her fainted.

Alaric dusted his hands. "So… does that count as extra credit?"

---

The body was gone by the time they returned.

Not moved. Not dragged.

Gone.

Professor Gaelin filed a report. The kind you write when you don't want people to ask questions.

> "Unregistered magical creature encountered. Neutralized by… situational advantage. No casualties. Room… sealed."

He handed it to a nervous clerk and muttered, "If anyone asks what kind of creature it was, just say 'magical accident' and walk away."

The clerk nodded very quickly.

---

Back in the classroom, Class F sat in stunned silence.

The elf girl chewed a pencil.

One of the quieter students stared at Alaric like he'd grown horns.

The spoon-talking boy whispered, "Did he blink it to death?"

"I think it blinked first," the elf muttered.

Professor Gaelin stood at the front, scratching his head like it owed him money.

"I've worked here fifteen years," he said. "I've seen wild summons. Cursed relics. Once watched a student accidentally teleport their pants to another dimension."

He looked at Alaric.

"But you. I don't even know what department to report you to."

"Support?" Alaric offered.

"Intervention unit."

"I'd rather nap."

"You don't get to nap. You murdered something that was trying to eat the walls."

"I didn't murder it," Alaric said. "It jumped. I tapped."

The elf girl raised her hand. "I vote we promote him to class mascot."

"We're not voting on this," Gaelin muttered.

"I'll make shirts."

"We are not making shirts."

---

Later that evening, Alaric walked alone down a quiet hall lined with statues of former Academy archmages, most of whom looked like they'd never smiled in their lives.

He paused at a small display alcove.

Inside was a locked case containing an old book—The Bestiary of Forbidden Kin.

Alaric stared at the faded sketches. One of them looked… close. Not identical, but close to the creature he'd defeated.

No name. No description. Just a red wax seal across the page.

He touched the glass.

It vibrated—just slightly—beneath his fingers.

Something behind the page pulsed in his mind. A faint echo. Not magical.

Familiar.

He drew his hand back.

Someone had tried to catalog that thing.

And then someone had tried to erase it.

---

Elsewhere, in a chamber beneath the Academy, a cloaked figure knelt before a red sigil carved into the floor.

It pulsed once.

A second figure emerged from the darkness—armor faintly etched with the Veyron family crest.

"Report."

"The test creature was lost," the robed figure said.

"Cause?"

"Unknown. Some… force. Not magic."

The armored figure was silent for a long moment.

Then:

"We proceed with phase two. The headmaster must remain unaware. Activate another gate."

"Yes, my lord."

"And ensure the boy doesn't get curious."

"Which boy?"

The armored figure turned.

"The one we thought was useless."

---

The next morning, Alaric was summoned to the Headmaster's Office.

Again.

This time, the hallway wasn't empty.

Two armored guards stood at the door, looking both official and deeply uncomfortable, like they'd been told to babysit a dangerous artifact without reading the manual.

Inside, the headmaster sat at his fireproof desk, staring down at a scroll that looked far too serious for a normal school day.

Alaric sat without being told.

He even folded his hands neatly.

The headmaster didn't speak for a while.

Then, finally:

"Explain."

Alaric blinked. "The weather?"

"The creature."

"Oh. Right."

Another long pause.

The headmaster tapped the scroll.

"No mana. No incantation. You subdued a creature that erased two wards and partially devoured a binding seal."

"I poked it."

"With what?"

Alaric tilted his head. "Optimism?"

The guards shifted nervously.

The headmaster leaned forward.

"You used something. We've consulted the diviners, the senior instructors, and two necromancers. None of them could explain the effect you created."

"That sounds expensive."

"Are you cursed?"

"Unconfirmed."

"Possessed?"

"Unlikely."

The headmaster narrowed his eyes. "What are you?"

Alaric smiled. "A very good student."

The desk creaked.

"You understand I'm trying to help you."

"I believe that."

"I'm also trying to determine if I need to call in a cleansing squad."

"Please don't," Alaric said. "They're noisy. And flammable."

"Flam—?"

"Long story."

The headmaster sighed and sat back.

"Until further notice, you are officially under investigation."

"For what?"

"...We're not sure yet."

"Sounds serious."

"You'll be monitored. Discreetly."

Alaric nodded. "They'll get bored."

The headmaster raised an eyebrow. "We'll see."

---

As Alaric walked back through the halls, he sensed it immediately.

The presence.

A trained mage might not have noticed—but he wasn't a mage.

Someone was tailing him. Quietly. From a distance.

Psychic threads brushed past his awareness—minds too distracted to register him directly, but too focused to be casual.

He smiled faintly.

"Cognition Split."

—Layer one: walking and acting normal. Layer two: tracking the thoughts of the man pretending to clean a window.

He turned the corner.

The "janitor" blinked and looked down at his mop, then suddenly remembered he wasn't supposed to be there.

Alaric kept walking.

---

He returned to Class F like nothing had happened.

The elf girl looked up from drawing battle strategy on her desk with a jellybean.

"Did you get expelled?"

"Nope."

"Darn."

"I'm under magical surveillance."

"Ooh. Fancy."

She offered him a jellybean.

He took it.

Sat down.

And calmly began drawing a map of the dungeon in his notebook—marking the location where the demon had appeared.

He underlined it twice.

Then wrote one word in tiny script:

> Why?

---

It started with a flicker.

A brief, almost lazy tug at the edge of Alaric's mind—like a dream trying to sneak in while he was still awake.

He was sitting under a tree near the Academy's west wing. It was quiet, the sun was nice, and his classmates were busy failing a magical plant-identification quiz inside. Life was, briefly, peaceful.

Then the pull came again.

This time stronger.

Wrong.

He closed his eyes and reached out—not physically, not magically, but with something deeper.

A psychic scan. A wide mental sweep.

And there it was.

Buried under the west courtyard.

Another circle.

Like the one from the dungeon.

Except this one wasn't broken.

It was active.

---

That night, he returned alone.

No lights. No footsteps. Just moonlight and the soft sound of grass under boots.

He moved behind the herbology shed, past the rusted alchemy drainpipes, and found it.

A stone slab, newly laid.

It hadn't been there yesterday.

There were no signs of construction. No magical residue.

But underneath it, sealed beneath a paper-thin layer of glamor, was a full summoning circle.

Etched in blood.

Not fresh, but not old either.

Alaric crouched.

Traced one finger through the air.

"Veil Pierce."

—Disrupts visual and magical camouflage by focusing on psychic distortions.

The illusion rippled and peeled away like wet paint.

The circle pulsed once in response.

Still quiet.

Still cold.

But not empty.

He felt something underneath. A pressure. A hunger.

Waiting.

Like the last one.

But not just a creature this time.

A gate.

He stood slowly.

Some of the symbols were familiar now.

Repeating across multiple summoning sites.

He memorized every one.

Every line.

Every flicker.

And then he turned, about to leave—until he felt the presence again.

Not magical.

Not from the summoning.

Watching him.

From across the field.

High up.

A window in the west tower glinted—just once.

He couldn't see who was behind it.

But he knew.

Someone was keeping tabs on this site.

Someone with authority.

And if that wasn't enough to confirm it...

The crest engraved in the corner of the stone slab was unmistakable.

Veyron.

His family's name.

Carved into a secret demon gate.

---

Alaric didn't speak.

Didn't panic.

He simply stared at the symbol for a long moment.

Then turned and walked away.

There would be no report.

No public exposure.

Not yet.

But one thing was clear.

His family wasn't just hiding something.

They were building something.

And he was going to dismantle it.

One gate at a time.