After another invigorating spar with Gabriel, I walked through the showers with Nyla. The Vanguard had kept her own counsel this morning and had been quieter since the tower.

  I summoned The Sky Princess and Mooneater book and offered it to her. “Coatlie doesn’t mind if you give her books to Dalbod. He might have the first three, but I was assured the later books are far more exclusive.”

  She swiped the book. “Is this that YA smut bedtime story?”

  Coatlie gasped and unfurled from my neck enough to glare at her. “Each passage contains tons of subtext and hidden meanings that are referenced seven books from now.”

  “It’s about teenage snakes going through puberty and a weird training school where they don’t kill any monsters. How is anyone supposed to think exams are stressful?”

  Coatlie’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been listening to our storytime?”

  Nyla blushed and looked away. “No. You guys are loud and…” She mumbled the next part. “...the kitchen is a good place to meditate.”

  “Ah-ha! So you do like it!” Coatlie crossed her wings and smirked at Nyla. “And you call it smut.”

  “It’s definitely smut! There is scale-on-scale action basically every chapter.”

  “Your culture is weirdly touch-starved! Hugs are a very normal greeting.”

  Nyla stormed out. “Whatever, I’m going to class. Thanks for the book to help with my life debt.” She then rushed off.

  Coatlie grumbled about illiterate barbarians as she re-secured herself. I sighed at my friends bickering and hurried to enchanting. On the way there, the halls were littered with skeletons and zombies. More than Jeremiah’s team must have suffered losses and many more must be recovering from injuries. Bone shards clattered into the classroom as I slammed the door shut behind me.

  Once I sat next to Vanya, I thumbed toward the hall. “The hordes today are terrible.”

  She focused on inlaying a trench coat with elvish script that my eyes slid right over. The golden thread stitching continued without comment.

  “Vanya… nothing on my end is different from before this weekend.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to ask where your anger comes from. Anyone named at 12 has been through hell, much less a refugee. In a lot of ways, you remind me of older elves. But unlike most of them, you are content to let the damage fester and warp you. I… I’m struggling to find what I should say. What words will help you? What words are going to make it worse?”

  “Does anything have to change? Simply speak the way you have.”

  “How can I? You’re an incandescent ball of fury that wants to murder me.”

  I rubbed my temples. “I was a little stressed and then relieved that stress. That’s mentally healthy behavior. If my passions are a little larger than life… Well, that’s part of being a hero. Everything is exaggerated: my drive, my anger, my hate, and my love…” Our eyes locked on the last word.

  Vanya looked away. “I can’t believe you're an elf-chaser too.”

  “Would you rather hear that you are beautiful despite your elven features?”

  “Ha ha.” She turned back to me. “Are you serious? I… would rather hear that from someone who doesn’t want to murder me.”

  “Murder? No, never. If I killed you, it would be with your consent.”

  “That would never happen!” she hissed.

  “So there is nothing to worry about, right?”

  Gyro saved Vanya from responding by entering class in a cloud of bone dust. She got her coughing under control while wiping the chalkboard. “I hate undead infestations. The calcium is terrible for my hair,” the professor muttered before launching into another lecture on spatial mechanics. She wanted each of us to make a tier 5 variant by the end of the semester.

  I listened with one ear while assembling Hunter’s Scythe. Unlike most of my gear, I couldn’t enchant this one with Durability. That rune wasn’t necrotically aligned and all the enchantments had to match Hunter’s essence. Durability allowed me to fight higher tier monsters with subpar materials. Since I had Tier 5 monster components, that would be less of an issue.

  With the Greater Bone Terror skull fragments, I forged a lattice of bone into the shape of a handle and blade. Both ends of the stave portion were tipped with smelted chthonic and demonic horns. Within the lattice, I sealed the abyssal matter as a pseudo liquid that Hunter could manipulate to move. My remaining horns were stretched and made transparent to make a reinforcing layer around the lattice that let the violet liquid within shine through. For the inner edge of the blade, I inlaid it with the remaining bladedancer blades. A scythe was unwieldy enough as a weapon that reducing the effective angles only made it slightly more difficult to use.

  Class ended before I could start the actual enchanting. I turned to Vanya and asked, “Are we still on for that tier 1 dungeon?”

  She sighed. “Sure, but imps can be annoying.”

  We returned to that first imp infested dungeon across from the goblin dungeon I had destroyed. Since I’ve been here, the tier 3 dungeon had also been infested by the tier 5 millipedes, leaving the imp dungeon free out of the original five.

  “I haven’t done a lot of dungeon delving, but I can still see a pattern.” Vanya eyed the other cave entrances warily.

  “While the millipedes are extremely durable, they’re tier 5 as a swarm. The individual bugs are merely deadly.” I reconsidered Vanya’s capabilities. Given that she intentionally maintained a weaker shade, she would be crushed to death by a cave-in. “A stealthy approach would be prudent, and it gives me a chance to see your fighting style in its optimal environment.”

  She twisted a silencer onto her submachine gun and loaded a special magazine before scoffing, “Let’s see what you call stealth.” Vanya crouched and all sound from her vanished. Not only did her footsteps make no noise, I couldn’t hear her heart. I clicked a few times and confirmed that echolocation couldn’t find her either.

  I sighed. “That second ability is marvelous. Lead the way.” I switched to my Oni armor and followed her. “You’ll want magic items to—”

  Vanya activated her new black long coat and became difficult to look at. More importantly, her thermal signature blended into the environment. Neither effect was as impenetrable as her Silent Step, but I doubted the imps could see her coming.

  I shut my mouth and followed her. My heartbeat slowed, an aura trick equalized the heat near my skin, and my feet made no noise in her wake. Next to the elf, my unpowered attempts at stealth were lacking, but should be sufficient for imps.

  This dungeon was far more finely worked than the goblin’s abode. The stairs were flat and smooth. Arches were decorated with filigree, and several partial summoning circles filled rooms. The imps were desperate and had tried sacrificing themselves to call a higher being to protect them. None had responded, prompting the imps to work harder on beautifying their location.

  Vanya moved with lethal efficiency. She checked corners and her ears twitched at the softest flap of wings. When she fired at a wall, I thought her True Aim ability had failed. The magic bullet then bounced around a corner and domed two imps. A perfectly accurate rapid-fire weapon was devastating against creatures vulnerable to it.

  While I held a few ice-knifes at the ready to throw, Vanya killed the imps before we saw them. The frozen weapons lingered in my hand unused. I might’ve been able to perform a similar trick by bouncing my weapons to where I heard the imps, but there was a good chance I wouldn’t get a perfect headshot, and the target would have time to scream.

  We were halfway through the dungeon before I could do anything. An imp circled around us and found one of its slain brethren. It yelped before I killed it, but that was enough for dozens of imps to begin panicking.

  Vanya stood and switched magazines. “Quick and loud?”

  I nodded and switched to my Inferno set. As I ignited the corpses of our victims, I shielded Vanya from blast. We then sprinted through the remaining corridors. I threw green fel flames while Vanya sent explosive rounds through the imps’ chests.

  Our pace quickly took us to the final chamber where the head imp was conducting a summoning rite. I ignited the spent sacrifices next to him as Vanya shot out his tongue. The creatures gurgled screaming brought a grin to my face and sent a slight shiver down my body.

  Vanya didn’t miss my heroic exuberance and frowned. “We should hurry out of here.”

  While we sprinted out, I asked, “Do you really feel nothing at the lamentations of the fallen? Is not the suffering of evil the greatest joy?”

  “I—” She panted between words. “—prefer—ice cream.”

  “Hmmm, Hiveborn honey, ice elemental tears, and wyvern’s milk make for a delicious dessert. It is possible to merge our joys and experience the pleasures of both.”

  “Did—you—just ask—me—on a date?” Vanya was as winded as she was incredulous.

  “It could just be a friendly outi—” A millipede the size of the tunnel burst in front of us and snapped its pincers. I grabbed my envenomed blade in both hands and Exemplified its sharpness before cleaving through the creature’s face. It split and showered us both in bug guts.

  With triumphant glee, I exploded the corpse and sent the flames rushing down the invading tunnel. More bugs roared in outrage as the fire spread to them. Their fury shook the dungeon and began to collapse it.

  Running out of time, I princess carried Vanya and leapt toward the exit, shattering tunnels with each jump. Even with the increased speed, we only escaped by the skin of our teeth before the cave collapsed and buried all inside.

  I laughed as the adrenaline faded, “Axel certainly didn’t use that dungeon.”

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  Vanya chuckled with me and then scowled. “Put me down.”

  “Right!” She hopped out of my grip as I turned and updated the dungeon information. At tier 5, a team of fourth years would clean up this cluster as part of their school maintenance responsibilities.

  Vanya checked the time. “Shit, we have to get to our seminar.”

  “Race you there?” I offered.

  “Oh, you’re on.”

  Vanya took a different route than me, and despite being an order of magnitude slower, beat me there. Our last seminar of the year took us to the Vanguard tower where Burn Bright and Gyro stood on the center stage of the auditorium.

  Gyro whistled and got the class’s attention. “Students, Professor Burn Bright has been kind enough to invite us to the Vanguard’s spectacle arena, one normally reserved for special exhibitions. Make sure you give your full attention.”

  “I hope Crafters know to pay attention to their Vanguards.” Burn Bright stepped forward. Today his solid flame armor was especially ornate. “The Vanguard is the linchpin of your formation and the first to fall. Well timed support can be the difference between victory and everyone dying. But we’re not here to go over the Crafter’s role, we—Exemplar? Why are you in the stands? Get your ass down here!”

  I jumped from my seat next to Vanya and landed on the stage next to the professors.

  “Better!” He faced the class. “Exemplar doesn’t need any explanation on what a Vanguard does. She was one for years before switching teams. Instead of boring her with a lesson she doesn’t need, I thought she can help make this a teachable moment.” He looked at me. “Sounds good?”

  “Yes sir!” I stood at attention.

  “Fuck, I’m not that much of hard-ass. Quit making me look bad.” His sightless gaze went back to the students. “What better way to teach what it means to be a Vanguard than having you try to beat one of your peers? The goal of this class is simple: beat Exemplar. You will challenge her one by one to a duel. Class is over if one of you beats her or when she defeats all of you.”

  I glanced around the stage and raised my hand. “Are ring outs acceptable? We’ll be here all day otherwise.”

  Burn Bright laughed. “See how confident she is? Go ahead and draw a square.”

  I withdrew chalk from my ring and made a standard regulation King-of-the-Hill arena.

  “Now, we want them to see how a Vanguard fights. This isn’t a dueling class. Put away the fancy gear, the potions, and the homunculus. Only use the abilities you refined as a Vanguard.”

  Thankfully, I had placed all my old gear in storage. With a thought, I switched to a set of tier 1 steel full plate and a couple of tier 1 steel maces. Blades would have removed limbs, which was a little much for a friendly spar, and clubs would have resulted in too many broken bones, so I opted for the spiked metal rods. These bludgeons would make shallow holes and were really the kindest option.

  Burn Bright knocked on the thick steel of my spiked pauldron. “Sturdy and still covered in bloodstains. Whose are they?”

  “Gnomes from Solindale,” I replied. “That was the last town I purged before university.” Their purple gore acted like glitter once dried and made a dazzling display. “This is one of my war harnesses. Despite being merely tier 1, at 10 cm thick, the enchanted steel plates provide plenty of protection, and the maces are a mere 1 ton each. In an open field—or sturdy construction like this area—I don’t have to worry about shattering the environment and can make use of far heavier armaments.”

  The whispers of relief when I put away my ‘real gear’ died once my peers took in my visage. To many of them, I was Mari first, the novice Crafter trying her best. This was the first time most of them had truly seen me as Exemplar, the butcher of towns, bane of all monsters, and walking extinction event. I had spilled rivers of blood before they started training to be heroes.

  I clacked my maces together, causing the front row to flinch. “Fear not, I will keep the injuries light.” My voice reverberated from inside the massive helmet and created a tenor that did not ease the students in the slightest. “Please hurry, I have a Crafting project to finish today.”

  Lars Bedrock, the mountain of a Crafter, approached me first. “No reason to let a bunch of limp wrist blueprint experts get pulped when they first touched a sword a month ago. I’ll go first.” The man’s coal eyes smoldered as he wrapped himself in rock armor and pulled a shield and hammer from the ground. All glowed with Runes of Creation that his ability powered.

  Our arena was a box within a box. The larger box is what I had to knock him out of. Once he crossed the smaller box, I could engage. When his toe crossed that barrier, I ran at him. The speed was embarrassingly slow, but with armor this heavy, moving too fast would still break the ground unless I strained my aura.

  Lars responded by making a trench and forming a wall behind it. I leapt and scraped the runes with the spikes on my mace. After disrupting the enchantments, my body burst through the obstacle. I then repeated the process with Lars’ shield and kicked him out of the arena.

  “You rely too much on runework for durability. The crystal lattice structure of your creations is woefully lacking. I would read Terra’s guide to geomancy. The discipline greatly overlaps with your power.”

  The former Guardian groaned and sat up. “Isn’t Terra an elemental?”

  “An elder earth elemental, yes. Who better to learn from?” I faced the crowd. “Next!”

  Since Lars wasn’t maimed, a string of students were quick to ‘get this over with’. Most didn’t put up much of a fight, but a few had clever enough tactics that I had to sunder items, break small bones, and flay a bit of skin. With each defeat, I offered helpful critiques on their tactics. Burn Bright also made the occasional bit of commentary, but seemed content for this to be my show.

  Grumbling increased among the students until our ‘leader’ selected in the Commander seminar was shoved forward. The man was over 6ft, vaguely good looking, and had brown short hair. Doug drew a tier 5 sword he cobbled together with his tier 5 core Crafting ability. It, like him, looked generic as hell. For a second, I thought his primary ability was a memetic effect to be forgettable.

  He yelped and flinched when I lunged for him. The flinch sent his sword in an arc that produced a rolling wall of flames that I had to leap over. When I crashed to the ground, Doug sent another wave as he built up confidence. This one I sliced in half with a cutting technique meant for blades, but I angled my spike just right to mimic an edge.

  Doug tried a couple more Flamewaves before switching to ice. I smashed those with great sweeps and stomped toward him through any remaining frost. A different gem glowed on the blade, and he sent an Acidwave. I backed up and dug grooves in the arena with mace strikes to funnel the fluid away before resuming my advance. I have to admit; he has lasted longer than Lars.

  Our fearless ‘leader’ panicked and sent alternating waves of sonic and lightning. With my aura, I routed the shock through my armor into the ground. For sonic, I smacked my maces together in a counter frequency, canceling most of the effect.

  “Five different elemental waves is certainly a choice for a tier 5 sword. The focused abilities are far more powerful than general manipulation and training would be the same to use a variety of elements. It’s not completely terrible, but…” My maces caught his blade on either side and then shattered it with a twist. “I expected something better.” I drove the end of my mace into his gut.

  Instead of the expected ‘oof’, Doug grinned and grunted out, “Surprise!” He then socked me across the face. As I launched to the side, I hooked his neck, twisted him in front of me, and kicked the strongman out of the arena. Doug crashed through the back wall into a utility section. After the dust settled, he waved an arm and shouted, “I’m alright!”

  I couldn’t help but smile. At least the guy was a good sport. The slog of students after him were in far worse spirits. Many used potions, consumables, and other precious materials to extend their suffering or force me to hurt them worse. A blind swordswoman even cried when I broke one of her spirit bonded katanas. That’s her fault for using such an important item for a game.

  Towards the end, my maces dripped with human blood. Burn Bright clapped and shouted, “Come on Vanguards! I know you’ve watched many fall before you, but if YOU don’t fight the monster, then she’ll kill YOUR team. That’s the burden of Vanguards. When the challenge is too much, you have to fight anyway and hope your team can pull your ass out of the fire. There is no backing down, no retreat, no surrender. Finish the fight.”

  The gaggle remaining were mainly full-time Crafters that I didn’t meet in the introductory classes. They deployed drones and were devastated to see their precious creations ripped apart. Hmmm, I may not be making friends today. Finally, Vanya stepped to the square, and she looked terrified, but resolved.

  “Vanya my friend, why have you made me wait?” I spread my arms and flicked blood from the last victim. Joyful exuberance tinged my words; today had been a good day.

  She held her grenade launcher in one hand and machine gun in the other. “Have to save the best for last, right?” A faint tremble in her voice belied her true feelings. My friend was scared of me. Why? Had I not demonstrated my restraint and perfect control with minimizing injuries? We would have to talk later. For now, I readied my stance.

  Vanya fired three smoke grenades and activated her cloak. When I reached out with my senses, I discovered that the overlapping fields were designed to block all of them except hearing, leaving Vanya invisible. Impressive. Bullets thunked into my armor as the heroine fired perfect shots with only a vague understanding of my direction.

  Since being quiet wouldn’t protect me, I said, “This is a good combo, but—” A bullet wiggled through the grill of my helm and hit my uvula. That triggered my gag reflex and stopped my monologue with embarrassing efficiency. Once I recovered, I began spinning.

  Chase’s whirlwind attack wasn’t stupid. It had its uses. As my speed picked up, the smoke began to dissipate, but Vanya had a clearer idea of where I was and shot for more vulnerable areas like my eyes and joints. I flicked down a secondary visor and sealed my helmet from the world. The amount of times I needed airtight armor was staggering.

  My friend's bullets still found ways into my flesh. She had mercy on me. The bullets pumped flames down my veins, depolarized neurons, and injected venom into my muscles. If she was being really mean, all of them would have exploded once inside of me.

  Vanya fired another smoke grenade, but enough of it had cleared for me to kick this one off the stage. A few more spins dispersed enough concealment that I located Vanya and charged. Both of my maces swung to pulp her head between them before I tossed them aside and shoved her out of the arena. She plopped on her ass and scooted with a bewildered expression.

  After retrieving my weapons, I began prying bullets out with the spikes on my maces. “As I was saying, the combo is good, but the weakness then becomes the smoke or large-scale AOE attacks.” Vanya continued to gape at me. “Did you really think I was going to hurt you?”

  “I saw you smiling.”

  “Because I was winning! Can’t people be happy when they win?” My question received groans from several of the losers. Those with the worst injuries didn’t speak up. “This is a class activity. Two professors are watching it.”

  “Sure, it’s fine,” Vanya said as she stood up, but I could tell it wasn’t ‘fine’. Her lack of trust in me hurt more than I expected. I trusted her in spite of her elven nature. Why couldn’t she look past a little desire to rip out her entrails and wrap them around my arms? Like a more intimate hug. I wasn’t going to actually do it though.

  No one gets me.

  Alone on that stage with my entire class standing against me, I had never been more isolated. My peers didn’t see a more experienced hero given friendly pointers in a low-stakes environment. They saw a named hero taunting them with their obvious inadequacies as she maimed them with a smile. I had overestimated the fiber of my fellow Aspiration heroes. The people here weren’t fundamentally different from the rest of the rabble.

  The part of my heart that had started to open to my fellow humans recalcified. Vanya didn’t like the real me. No one liked the real me. No one would ever really like me.

  I clacked my maces again. “I’m growing bored. Pick this up before I lose my patience.” If they didn’t want my friendship, then they could take my scorn.

  The rest of the fights were brutal and quick. I had no words for the cowards that waited to the end. Those that delayed the most experienced more of my wrath. By the end, Gyro was calling matches and giving me a concerned look. “Are you alright?”

  I shrugged. “This is nothing.” Nothing I haven’t experienced before.

  When it was over, I stormed off to the nearest workshop and started enchanting Hunter’s Scythe. I could have done this in my dorm, but I wanted to be productive. If the team was playing a boardgame, I would be expected to join them and pay attention, but they could tell I was bored and itching to kill monsters. They would then radiate pity, and I would assure myself that their pity was the sign of poor survival motivations. I was fine. I didn’t need fucking pity. Any contentment or companionship I could ever crave was lingering in any dungeon or across any portal. Hell, I apparently wanted to fuck the monsters too. Why did I need any fucking humans?

  My misanthropy was the right mindset to create my blasphemous weapon. While the second years were dying trying to kill a necromancer, I made a device that could animate corpses, control undead, and corrupt the will of intelligent undead until they fell under my control. Hunter could then sacrifice minions to restore his form or heal other minions.

  When I placed him in the socket at the back portion of the blade, he glowed like an evil eye in the weapon and floated next to me. “We are going to do great and terrible things.”

  I grabbed the haft and gave him a few test swings. “That is the essence of heroism.”

  "Hello! Welcome to Coatlie's book nook. I've slithered into the author notes to share a story that really spoke to me! The Apprentice of Ouroboros is about a snake named Neska (look at that name again and rearrange the letters). She struggles with certain serpentine realities such as not having arms and needing to master magic (really difficult without hands!). Anyhoo, I recommended it for anyone else craving a snake MC. Hopefully, I get to read more of it, but I had to go through shenanigans to read what little I could. Well, that's all for now. See the rest of you in the next book nook! Good luck out there!"