Spirit Sword Academy
When the light disappeared, they had already appeared next to the school, hundreds of feet in the air.
Suddenly, William felt queasy and dizzy, as if he had been spinning around in circles for hours. Eventually he couldn't hold it back and went out of the carriage to vomit on the ground.
After a few moments, William recovered.
"What was that?" he asked.
"It happens when you go through the formation for the first time. You'll get used to it eventually."
The guard led William back into the carriage, and they rode towards the school.
"Don't we have to clean up the mess I just made?"
"Don't worry about it. The creator of the formation already thought of that and added in a self cleaning formation."
William turned around and noticed that the vomit on the floor had started to float and come together in the shape of a sphere. Suddenly, a fireball came out of the formation and hit the vomit, burning it. Then, a light wind blew, and the ashes were blown into the air.
"Pay attention." William turned back around to face the front.
"Okay," said one of the guards, "'we're going to drop you off near the entrance. Just head into the gate and walk straight forwards, then take the third left. That's where the auditorium is, and also where they're going to brief you about how the school operates. Don't get lost."
"Okay."
The carriage stopped near a large gate, and he jumped off. There was already a crowd of people going through the gates, and when William finally got in, he found himself in a large courtyard, just outside the school. William looked up at the school building. While not as impressive as the royal palace, the school was a large building, three stories tall and hundreds of meters wide.
William walked through the tall front door of the school, entering into a long hallway with many paths branching off it. Following the crowd, he arrived at the auditorium, a large room filled with seats surrounding a rectangular platform at the back of the room. Finding a seat, he sat down, waiting for something to happen.
For a few minutes, people streamed into the auditorium to take their seats, and loud conversations could be heard across the room.
Suddenly, the lights went dark, and the room quieted down. At this time, a man flew in through the doors, flying to the top of the stage and landing there. They turned to face the students, revealing a well chiseled face with a short beard.
"Hello, new students. I am Rex Cornell, the Dean of the Spirit Sword Academy. I am a stage 7 nascent soul realm cultivator who took up this position 23 years ago. Now, I'm sure you don't know much about this place. The Spirit Sword Academy was founded hundreds of years ago by an unaffiliated cultivator, who was in the earth spirit realm."
"For those of you who aren't aware, the earth spirit realm is one cultivation stage above the nascent soul realm, and these cultivators have the power to destroy an entire city in a matter of minutes. Our founder focused on their comprehension of the sword, creating their own unique sword intent when they were seven and had already reached the nascent soul realm by the time they were fifteen."
"Most of the techniques in the school are derived from the techniques he left behind and even more are based off similar principles. For those of you who are not sword cultivators, I will say that our school is focused primarily on swords and has few teachers on other weapons or subjects. Ergo, it is very likely that you would be better off with the other two academies, and while we are enemies, I would rather not have a talented cultivator be limited in an environment where they cannot thrive."
"Now, for those of you who are sword cultivators, you may be wondering who will be teaching you, and how we will allocate cultivation resources to our students. The solutions to both lie in one answer: the freshman tournament."
"A tournament will be held with every student here participating. This will showcase some of your skills, attracting teachers to take you in as their students, while also deciding your ranking in the school, which can be viewed using the ranking boards around the school or with your student identification, which will be given to you shortly."
"You can also change your rank afterwards during the monthly school tournament, or by challenging someone higher than you on the ranking at any time, so long as they accept your challenge."
"As for its purpose, your ranking is what will decide how many resources you get, higher ranking meaning better resources."
"Now, the freshman tournament will be held in three days at the school arena, after you've all adjusted to the environment here. More details will be posted to your student identification tokens."
"For now, I would like for all of you to raise your hands while I give you your student identification tokens."
Along with the rest of the crowd, William raised his hand. William noticed the dean raising their hand before a large number of pale blue tokens flew at the crowd.
William narrowed his eyes. The sheer number of tokens they could control... it almost looked similar to the Sword Control Scripture.
The system's voice rang in his ear.
"The technique they use has a 78.433% similarity with the Sword Control Scripture. It is likely an imitation technique or some kind of technique based off it."
William remembered the founder they mentioned. Could it be...
"There is about a 64.8% chance they're the same person. However, there is still not enough data to provide conclusive evidence."
William felt a token come into his hand and quickly put it in his spacial ring for now. He thought more about this. If the founder really was the so called "Thousand Sword Demon," then he likely shouldn't reveal himself. After all, those who were too high profile were also the first to die. Besides, when had being low profile ever failed a protagonist?
Anyway, he decided not to use 1000 Swords Converge during the tournament, using only his other techniques. This could also serve as a kind of test for him, possibly bettering his techniques if he fought against a skilled opponent.
Deciding to continue that train of thought later, William refocused his attention on the dean.
"...now that that's over with, I'll tell you how to use the student identification tokens, or student tokens for short. First of all, I want everyone to drop some blood on your respective tokens."
William did as he said, and the token glowed once in a dim white light.
"Now, simply insert your spiritual energy into it and input your information."
William pushed some spiritual energy into it and seemed to see a thick illusory book in his head. On its own it flipped through the pages, and William could see small snippets of information about people. Finally, it stopped on the blank page and William took a look.
___________________
Name:
Sex:
Birth date:
Cultivation:
___________________
William looked at the page and had a horrible idea. A moment later, he had filled in all his information.
___________________
Name: Ben Dover
Sex: No thanks!
Birth date: Tomorrow
Cultivation: Earth Spirit Realm
___________________
After a moment of admiring his work, he got serious and removed it all. putting in his actual information. Then, he closed the book and stopped inputting spiritual energy into the token.
After a while, the dean started to speak again.
"Now that you're done, you will soon be assigned an instructor and a room number. Simply follow the signs around the school, which I hope you are capable of, and you'll know where to go. Later on, you may also sign up for electives if you want, like blacksmithing or beast taming. And do remember that you are freshmen, as I don't want you going into the living spaces of your seniors. That is all I have to say."
William immediately checked his token again and found his information.
"Room A34, instructor Jared Massey."
William went out of the auditorium, getting pushed along by the crowd. He looked over the heads of the others and could see five signs, labeled "Freshmen," "Sophomores," "Juniors," "Seniors," and "Cafeteria & Library."
The crowd all went down the hall for freshmen, and eventually found themselves at another intersection.
William saw several signs, one of which had a large letter A on it, next to three more with the letters B, C, and D. Nearby, there was another hallway labeled "Occupations & Other Weapon Arts."
William went down hallway A and eventually found himself in a large open room with doors along both walls and what seemed like a training area in the middle, with a few racks holding training swords and a few dummies in the corner. Looking at the doors, he found room 34 and opened the door.
Stepping into the room, he looked around. The room was very modern, with smooth wooden floors and clean white walls. There was a small chandelier on the roof, glowing in a bright white light, and two clean white couches placed near a coffee table. There were also three doors connected to the room. The first led to a bathroom, another to a private training room, and the last one led to his bedroom.
William stepped into the training room and sat down on the floor. Then, he took everything out of his spacial ring. It had only been a short time since he got the spacial ring, but it was already congested with items. Placing his forging supplies in a corner of the room, William placed his swords neatly on one side and looked at what remained.
"That's the book for the illusory sword art. There's my student token and a few gold coins. Some newly forged swords... what are these?"
William picked up three white crystals.
"System, do you know what these are?"
"They're the rewards from the "Ambush" quest. Three escape crystals. They let you teleport about 1,000 meters away from your current location."
"Oh, right. That quest. Why didn't I see the notification for my rewards?"
"You got them at the end of the third day, which is when you were sleeping."
"That makes sense."
Finding other random things he put in his spacial ring, William threw them all out. Just as he had put everything he had back into his spacial ring besides his forging equipment, he heard the sound of a whistle outside his room.
"Students, gather!"