Chapter 136: Chapter 136

Elian broke the silence first, his voice tight and uncertain, trying to keep his composure in the face of the storm. “So what’s the plan, Vael? We’re already in this. You threw the stone, and now the water’s rippling whether we like it or not. Might as well know what you’ve got in mind instead of leaving the rest of us blind.”

Lessa shot him a glare so sharp it could have cut steel. She folded her arms and leaned forward, her tone dripping with disdain. “Really, Elian? We’re just going to roll over and take this? He didn’t even ask. Not one of us. He decided for us, dragged us all into a death sentence without so much as a nod. And you’re already begging him for the plan like that makes it fine? Hells, you sound like you’ve given up before the fight even starts.”

Elian’s jaw tightened, frustration bleeding into his words. “It’s not about giving up, Lessa. It’s about knowing the cards on the table. If we’re about to be thrown into a pit against veterans, I’d rather hear his damned plan than keep guessing. Ignorance is worse than suicide.”

Voices around the lounge started to rise, cadets muttering, some siding with Lessa’s fury, others with Elian’s sharp pragmatism. The arguments were reaching a fever pitch when the air shifted. Heavy boots echoed across the floor, and Sub-Instructor Michael shoved his way into the group. He stepped directly into Vaeliyan’s space, close enough that his breath carried the sharp stink of alcohol and bitterness. His finger jabbed into Vaeliyan’s face, so close it almost brushed his skin.

“You think this little stunt will save you?” Michael snarled. “You’re not clever, Verdance. You’re not bold. You’re just a reckless fool trying to play at being dangerous. You’ll humiliate yourself, and when you’re done losing to the top cadets in the Citadel, my niece will step over your corpse and take your place. That’s the reality. You were born to be a placeholder, nothing more.”

Gasps cut through the crowd, cadets backing away from the venom in his words. Some smirked, glad to see Vaeliyan confronted, while others shifted uneasily, knowing this was pushing boundaries.

Vaeliyan chuckled, low and sharp, a sound like a blade dragged across stone. He didn’t flinch, didn’t so much as blink under Michael’s finger. “Who knows, fuckstain, maybe you’re right. Maybe this is suicide. Maybe I fall flat. But here’s the truth, you’re already choking on my shadow. By the end, you’ll shit yourself every time I walk into the room. Maybe I’ll challenge you next. Did you know there isn’t a single rule against it? Not one. You can challenge whoever you want. Surprising oversight, isn’t it?”

The cadets hissed and murmured at that, some whispering in disbelief. The challenge boards had rules, but Vaeliyan was right, nowhere did it say the targets were limited to cadets alone.

Michael scoffed, lip curling into a sneer. “You’re less than a bug. An insect buzzing in the wrong hall. And I can’t wait to watch the Citadel grind you down and spit you out. Expulsion will be mercy for what’s coming. You’ll be begging for it when the fourth-years are through with you.”

Vaeliyan leaned forward, slow, deliberate, the space between them suffocating. His eyes burned with a light that was closer to promise than threat, his voice dropping to a growl. “Just know this, Michael. After today, your clock is ticking. When I’m a High Imperator, I’ll end you. Not just your career, not just your little post here. I’ll rip your still-beating heart out of your chest and make you choke on it before I erase your pathetic existence. And I don’t give a fuck who your House sends after me. After today, We’ll be worth more than any name they can throw. One nepotism brat like you won’t even register as blood spilled.”

The room went still. The crowd of cadets shifted, eyes wide, caught between horror and awe. Even the ones who hated Vaeliyan couldn’t mistake the weight of his words. This wasn’t a first-year bluffing to look strong. This was a death vow, and everyone felt it settle into their bones.

Michael’s hand twitched, his jaw locking, his body one heartbeat from violence. His intent was written plain, the need to strike almost too much for him to hold back. A hush fell, the crowd bracing for the explosion.

But before he could act, Damien Stone stepped away from the wall he had been leaning against. His voice cut through the tension like a scalpel, calm, sharp, measured, and infinitely more dangerous than Michael’s bluster. “Instructor, ” Damien drawled, his grin thin, his eyes predatory, “let it go. Just let him fail. The ones he faces will break him. His class will collapse. It’s already written in blood, and the board won’t protect him. His story ends here, in this spectacle of ignorance. Don’t stain your hands when the Citadel itself will devour him.”

The words sank into the silence like poison. Michael’s glare remained locked on Vaeliyan, but he held back, jaw grinding as he turned his head just slightly, enough to acknowledge Damien’s intervention.

The air stayed heavy, thick with unfinished violence, but every cadet in the room understood. A war had just been declared, not in blows but in promises. The countdown had already begun, and no one doubted blood would be demanded to settle it.

The cadet lounge buzzed with restless energy, a pressure that clung to the skin and dug heavy into the chest, refusing to let go. Sixteen cadets crowded the space, shoulders brushing, knees bumping, breath mingling in the heat of it. The air stank faintly of stimulants and sweat, an undertone of nerves sharp enough to taste. Some leaned back against the walls with arms folded in self-defense, others sprawled half-exhausted across couches as if surrendering to gravity, a few perched on the arms of chairs like restless predators ready to bolt. But every eye, without fail, was fixed on Vaeliyan. The room itself seemed smaller for it, as though his presence alone pressed the walls closer, his focus a weight none of them could shake.

“You actually have a plan, ” Roan said at last, his tone wavering between accusation and disbelief. His knuckles whitened where his hands gripped his knees. “Not bluster. Not bravado. A real plan?”

Vaeliyan let one corner of his mouth curl, though the faint twitch in his eye betrayed the sleepless hours stacked behind him. “Of course.” His words weren’t a boast, not a performance. Then, steady as if he’d been rehearsing it since birth, he laid it out for them. Piece by piece. Step by step. Enough that even the harshest doubters could see the shape of it forming, like the skeleton of some enormous beast rising from the dust. He spoke of angles no one else had dared to consider, paths that bent rules until they broke clean, contingencies nested so deep that failure had nowhere to land. He showed them a structure sharp enough to cut the breath out of the room, and in that moment, none of them could deny it, he had been thinking further ahead than anyone else.

The silence fractured with a sharp laugh. “This is madness, ” Sylen muttered, her voice edged with awe as much as violence, her knuckles tapping against the wall like she was holding herself back from striking something. “Absolute madness. But it’s glorious madness. And I love it.”

A nervous ripple followed, spreading quick and unsteady. Heads nodded, shoulders shifted, lips curled in reluctant grins. Some were drawn by dread, some by the raw electricity of possibility, but all of them were caught. Even the skeptics who had whispered about being dragged into his schemes looked shaken now, unsettled by the depth of his foresight, as if they had glimpsed a machine already grinding forward and realized too late they were caught in its gears.

“Did you even sleep, Vaeliyan?” Varnai asked finally, voice low, almost hesitant. Her eyes narrowed as though half-afraid of the answer.

Vaeliyan’s eye twitched again, betraying more than words ever could.

Jurpat yawned so wide it looked painful, his voice carrying the rasp of exhaustion. “Gods no. He didn’t let me sleep either. We ran the Nespói sim straight through until Dr. Wirk’s class. Every scenario, every outcome, beaten bloody into shape. I swear, if I even smell coffee right now, my heart will probably explode from all the stims he shoved at me just to keep up.”

The group broke into uneasy laughter, loud and too sharp, spilling out more from nerves than humor. It fizzled into quiet almost as fast, leaving behind a silence more intense than before. What lingered wasn’t comfort, but the slow, steady weight of realization pressing in on every chest. They were no longer just cadets lounging half-asleep in their downtime. They had been shown a glimpse of something larger, something impossible, and the boy who had dragged them into it was no longer just another body among them. They looked at Vaeliyan and saw a conductor poised over an orchestra, every note his to command. They saw someone ready to shape raw chaos into a weapon sharp enough to cut the Citadel itself.

For the first time, belief threaded through every single one of them, binding sixteen voices into one silent chord. They didn’t speak it, didn’t dare break the spell, but the truth rang clear in the air between them: this might actually work.

Everyone got dressed in their Legion armor as they prepared to step into the pods, the weight of steel and expectation settling over them like a second skin. Plates locked into place with heavy clicks, seals hissed as helmets tightened, and the air filled with the sharp tang of oil, steel, and breath filtered through systems. Each cadet carried not just weapons but the burden of what this match meant: it wasn’t just another fight, it was the crucible that would burn their names into the Citadel’s memory or erase them entirely. The room felt like a forge, and every one of them was about to be tested in fire. Follow current novels on novèlfire.net

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Across the line of armored figures, Vaeliyan stepped forward. His presence drew every eye, his voice cutting clean through the hiss of machinery and the murmured oaths of preparation. “This is it. Even if we fail, they will never come at us the same after what we’re about to do. We’ll prove that levels don’t matter as much as dirty, filthy tricks. A flechette to the head you don’t see coming is still a death sentence, whether you’re first or fourth year. Remember what Lessa taught us when she single-handedly beat Alorna.”

Lessa, half-hidden behind her visor, immediately waved her hands. “Hey, don’t say that, ” she protested, voice tense, eyes darting left and right. “She might be anywhere.”

“Sorry, Alorna, ” Vaeliyan said with exaggerated formality, turning his head from corner to corner. “Alorna check.”

The group chuckled, but every one of them copied the motion, scanning the shadows as if the instructor might literally crawl out of the wall.

“Clear, ” Torman finally muttered, a grunt that let the tension slip into nervous laughter.

Vaeliyan raised his gauntleted hand, bringing the focus back. His tone sharpened, edges like a blade. “Anyway, here’s the truth: we don’t have to win clean. We don’t have to all survive. Hells, we don’t even need to survive at all. The only thing that matters is that we kill them first. That’s all the pit cares about. That’s all the Citadel respects. And we are going to follow every word Deck ever drilled into us about breaking rules, cutting corners, and spitting on fair play.”

There was a ripple through the group, some laughed, some clenched fists, some exhaled hard like they’d been holding breath for too long. The tension was no longer fear; it was turning into fuel.

“Sure, they’ll be doing the same, ” Vaeliyan pressed on, pacing like a predator before the kill. “But here’s the difference: we are the only class that doesn’t get punishment laps. Which means no one in this place can be better cheats than us.”

That broke the room into rough laughter, even as the fire in their voices sharpened. The energy swelled, rolling toward eruption.

Vaeliyan raised his fist, shouting loud enough to rattle the helmets. “We are not human!”

“We are cheaters!” the group bellowed back, unified and fierce.

Vaeliyan groaned and pressed a gauntlet to his visor, muttering, “I set myself up for that one.”

Sylen doubled down, slamming her chestplate with a fist. “We are not human!”

“We are Legion!” the rest roared, the sound crashing against the walls.

“We are not human!” Ramis bellowed, voice cracking with raw intensity.

“We are Legion!” they thundered again, louder, the chant becoming a storm.

“We are not human, ” the twins declared in eerie synchronicity, their voices unnerving even through their helmets.

“We are Legion!” This time the response was a roar so loud the walls themselves seemed to vibrate. They weren’t just saying it, they were becoming it.

Elian’s voice cut through the wave, jagged and unrelenting. He stepped forward, visor gleaming in the harsh light. “Kill them dead. Even if it means we go down, we take them with us. Every one we kill is one step they’ll never get back. Even if we lose, killing just one of them proves we are better than they ever were. So kill them all!”

The room exploded with voices, the chant rolling into chaos. Fists slammed against armor, helmets clashed together, boots hammered the floor. It wasn’t discipline anymore, it was frenzy, a Legion wound tight, ready to break loose into blood and ruin. And Vaeliyan stood in the middle of it, watching the fire spread, knowing this was exactly what he wanted: not soldiers waiting for orders, but monsters hungry to carve their place into history.

They entered the green glowing gel, and it entered them. Cold, cloying, and invasive, it sank through skin and muscle, finding its way into every pore, until flesh and nanite simulation were indistinguishable. Each cadet knew this moment well, the point where body and avatar blurred, where pain became real, and where the pit itself decided who they would be.

Then Vaeliyan was in Nespói, inside a cage. The bars were thick, jagged iron, scarred with rust and streaked with moss. Sunlight filtered through the dense canopy above, cutting across the bars in fractured lines of green and gold. He grinned beneath his helmet. This was the first part of his plan. Here, he was safe from the jungle, unlike the real thing, where safety was a lie and every shadow held teeth. He didn’t hesitate, not for an instant. While others were still coming into existence, disoriented by the transition, he was already moving. He crouched low, fingers brushing against the strange metal plate beneath his boots, setting up before anyone else had even spawned in. His hands moved with precision, almost ritualistic, preparing the stage. And as soon as he felt the first ripple of others arriving around him, he pressed a button on the plate.

And then he fucking booked it.

The cage door didn’t open gently. It tore free as the mechanism engaged, bars collapsing into themselves with a grinding shriek. Vaeliyan bolted out like a predator unleashed, sprinting into the half-shadow of the jungle. He didn’t look back. He knew what he’d left behind would speak for him.

In the viewing booth, Sub-Instructor Michael leaned forward, hands braced against the rail. His eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of the sudden chaos. The cadets of the 93rd were scattering like chickens with their heads cut off, stumbling over roots and crashing into undergrowth, scrambling to get away from the strange plate the upstart had placed in his cage.

What is he up to? Michael thought. Sweat tickled the edge of his brow as the simulation hummed louder, responding to whatever the boy had triggered.

That’s when the unthinkable happened.

The metal plate began to unfold. Slowly at first, with a hiss of compressed steam, then violently, like a blooming iron flower tearing through the earth. Whatever it was, it was massive. Pieces slammed outward and upward, unfolding like an ancient war machine remembering how to breathe. Michael’s breath caught as the jungle trembled. The ground shook. He could see why the cadets had started running. The trees were being cut down, stripped apart in clean, vicious sweeps, the trunks splintering into neat sections as if some invisible blade had passed through them. The jungle wasn’t simply being destroyed, it was being rewritten.

That’s when the violence truly began.

The metal plate convulsed, iron arms punching upward with bone-snapping force. Panels slammed outward, dirt and roots ripping free in wet clumps. The sound wasn’t just mechanical; it was like an animal breaking its own ribs to crawl out of its skin.

The canopy screamed. Bark split in explosions of dust, leaves rained like shredded banners, branches cracked in rolling detonations as steel jaws tore the jungle down. Trees were dragged into the maw of the machine, stripped, carved, and stacked with inhuman precision. Logs slammed together not like lumber but like corpses tossed into trenches. Nails drove themselves with the deafening crack of thunder. Ropes pulled taut until wood groaned under strain. Resin smoke bled into the air, thick with the stink of fresh wounds and hot oil.

Michael’s throat went dry. His heart hammered against his ribs as sweat rolled down his temple. “What the hells is that thing?” he shouted, his voice cracking across the booth.

The other instructors shifted uneasily, whispering among themselves, but before anyone could answer, a hand gripped Michael’s shoulder. Firm. Steady. Commanding enough to still him like a leash on a frantic dog. The room went quiet.

Imujin’s voice rumbled, low and unyielding, resonating like distant thunder. It was not a suggestion. It was not reassurance. It was judgment.

“That, my dear Sub-Instructor, ” Imujin said, eyes never leaving the glass, “is the future.”

When the chaos finally stopped, they looked upon a sheer impossibility: a fortress in the heart of Nespói.

A wooden palisade encircled the clearing, the thick logs driven deep into the soil and lashed together with rope and steel nails until they stood like the ribs of some titanic beast. The wall rose higher than two man, thick enough to hold a line, and already ladders leaned against its inner side. Ramparts had been shaped from split trunks, the tops shaved flat so hoofs could pound across them. Platforms extended outward where Vaeliyan’s machine had bolted planks into place, giving room for lancers. Towers stood at each corner, four sentinels peering out over the choking jungle, their lines harsh against the canopy. And at the center loomed a larger tower, taller than the rest, a looming command post that gave a view in every direction, an eye above Nespói itself.

The air stank of resin, wood dust, and sweat. Chips from hacked branches littered the ground. Fires burned in makeshift pits filled with boiled tar, and sharpening stakes. The walls weren’t perfect, splinters gaped, lashings strained, the whole thing looked rushed, improvised, but it was real. It stood. Against all sense, against the chaos of the jungle, Vaeliyan had made something solid. and impossible in the heart of Nespói, a place where no one had ever endured more than a desperate skirmish, he had created permanence, however fragile.

He had transformed the match. What Deic had envisioned as a slow-burning guerrilla war had been gutted before it began. She wanted a hunt through the trees, ambushes, attrition, forcing the 93rd to bleed away until they broke. Instead she faced siege warfare, a stronghold bristling with possibility. She hadn’t prepared for this. None of them had. The fortress was wood, yes, and it would never withstand the unbroken fury of fourth-years hammering at it for more than a few blows, but that didn’t matter. It only needed to last long enough to drag the fight into unfamiliar territory, to flip the script from survival to defiance. It forced the enemy to reveal themselves, to commit, to expose their plans against walls that should never have existed in the first place.

And that was the point: Nespói was never supposed to be held. Not for a minute. Not for a second. The jungle existed to consume, to erase, to prove that no cadet could stand ground inside it. Yet here was a fortress, defiant, undeniable, a place where Class One could draw lines in the dirt and dare anyone to cross them. A place where they could stand shoulder to shoulder and say: we are not prey. The walls turned the jungle’s logic upside down. They gave the cadets the chance to fight like soldiers instead of fugitives, to build momentum instead of scatter.

That fact alone cemented Vaeliyan’s legacy. Whether they lived or died, whether the fortress held or fell in flames, the holos would be seen by every cadet, every instructor, every member of command watching from the glass. They would see what had been built, and they would know the name Vaeliyan Verdance. He had done the unthinkable: not just fight in Nespói, not just survive it, but claim it. He had turned the jungle’s curse into his stage and written his name across it in wood and fire. Even if the walls were torn down, even if every tower splintered to ruin, the idea of it would remain.

And this was only the opening move. Vaeliyan still had more tools in his arsenal, more surprises buried beneath his grin and his calm. The fortress was not his endgame, it was the first stone in a wall no one else could see yet, the beginning of a plan that reached further than anyone watching dared to imagine.