Blackwood Institute

[Blackwood Institute Room #14]

𝑳𝒍𝒐𝒚𝒅

"Eh?"

A line that came out of my mouth surprisingly often each time I got woken up by people talking in the hallways. I never understood it anyway, why are they up so early in the morning? Taking a single look from the window let me know that it's definitely not time for breakfast, let alone time for groups of cadets to be walking to the training hall.

A perk or a curse at the same time, who knows? After the re-evaluation when first year finished, and getting promoted to a U-C , I got relocated into a room very close to the training hall that upper cadets share with only a single roommate that's usually assigned as a sparring partner to the former.

That brings me the question. 'Where even is he? Wait, or she?' .

It's been 2 weeks since the start of the year program and I still haven't seen my roommate.

The classes are gonna start pretty soon and they still haven't even brought their stuff into the room.

Whether something bad happened to them or not, since their status is "Closed training", I don't have to worry about getting into trouble. Instead, I get to have this relatively cramped room all for myself, so no complaints from me.

Sudden knock on the door pulled me away from my thoughts-

"Room #14, Cadets Lloyd and Ithel." A female voice came from behind the doors.

"Cadet Lloyd, present."

"Good. Cadet Ithel is still at Instructor Alarics place, I assume?"

'Instructor Alaric? Is that where they spend their time? I thought Instructor Alaric was only training "special" people who show extraordinary aptitude towards becoming another Ruler or even Monarch level.'

"I can confirm they still haven't entered the room or training hall a single time since the start of the year, Instructor Gweneth."

With no response coming back to me after that, I got up from the bed and readied myself for morning warm up. Before that though, can't skip breakfast, can I?

[Institute Canteen]

"Why the gloomy face, young man?" The older lady teased almost every cadet with any line she could think of, I mean why wouldn't she? Having to be in the kitchen early enough so the food is ready before the sunrise, must be a truly tedious task.

"Scrambled eggs and two slices of toasted bread to the side, please."

"Not in the mood young cadet?"

"Definitely not this early, old lady."

She grumped and sent me to the takeout window.

After finishing my surprisingly tasteful meal, I headed to the library like I usually do so I don't train with full stomach.

-----

While I was walking to my usual seat, I noticed a group of people failing their classes listening to a 3rd year M-C and decided to quietly listen to what he had to say.

"-ever since then, after the Great Liberation, we've gotten the chance to search for all kinds of cores and use them for ourselves to become stronger. There are few known types and while there are some mutations they still fall under these three categories. Body cores, that allow us to "repair" our body to its perfection, most common method of using body cores is endless physical training that surpasses the limits of your body, on the same principle of how muscles grow, except infinitely more effective. Second main category would be Item cores, these allow you to mold an item into reality with your will and soul alone. Best example would be Instructors at our great Blackwood Guard Institute, where to be classified and promoted to an Instructor, besides the required knowledge of what you'd be teaching, you also need to have at least solid mold. Example for Spearfighting Instructors, you are required to be able to manifest a long stick with an edge. The last, and least researched category would be an Aspect core, which for its name worth, lets you manipulate an aspect of imagination. Similar to Item cores, except Aspect cores can only be molded into single use "spells-sort-of".

Now if you paid any attention in the first years Basic Core Recognition class, you'd know that recognizing these three types of cores is easy but hard to determine its quality. For example once you identify a core based on its color; black being a body core, dark blue being an item core, and white core being an aspect core. You need to determine how pure it is. The average cores in our realm are 2% Purity, so they'll weigh around 10 kilograms. With each percent presenting a 10 times increase and 1% being 1 kilogram, theoretically if the current you without any body core and a weak mortal body manages to find a god-like 10% purity core, same purity as our Lord. It'd fluctuate at around the 10,000,000,000 kilogram or 10 megatonnes, and you'd have no way to pick it up or use it as trying to put it inside your body would instantly crush you on the spot."

'Well for what it's worth, it doesn't hurt to relax and have most of the first years teachings summarized into a 5 minutes long boring speech.'

After the 3rd years ted-talk was over, I suddenly had the mood to research about less known aspect core variants such as the Sun that our Lord uses, which is similar to fire aspect but leagues above it. This core despite only being 4%, when combined with the Lords 10% body core allows him to train his body at the most dangerous areas in our realm. Thanks to this power, our Lord was invited by the Lord of a middle realm to be his subordinate, and now in the countless institutes over the world, we the cadets have the chance to find a future career in guarding important characters from that middle realm.