Nar lay awake, staring at the darkness above his head.

  The soft breaths from Kur and Mul meshed with the ever-present background hum of the ship’s engines. As for Tuk, he could hear him tossing and turning, sighing, as the ring tosser tried to sleep.

  The days had flown by in a whirlwind of endurance, new knowledge and training.

  Slaying was a lecture they had every other day, given to them by Professor Vissur, who delivered death with every monotonous syllable from his translator machine.

  He showed them pictures and videos of different beasts, pointing out teeth, claws, muscles and hide. He showed them armor plates and spikes, scales and bouncy flesh. He told them what to look for whenever encountering a new beast, and what to expect based on several indicators.

  Professor Vissur drilled into their heads how to stay alive, what could possibly be poison, what could expand and reach out to grab, what was acid and so on… Then, he told them how to kill everything. To find the weak points, and to aim for that without mercy.

  In TSA, a morsvar, Senior Instructor Buj, who was also an instructor for the Tanks Hall, took them through various situations and instances of combat.

  What should they do if they found themselves surrounded? What should a tank do if they lost aggro and their taunt skills were still on cooldown? What should they do if the enemy had anti-aggro skills, like they had faced during their Climb? How should a tank prioritize what to tank, and what to let through? How to position the enemy to maximize the party’s DPS and ensure their safety?

  On and on, different situations, different videos, different discussions. To Nar, it seemed as though every scenario in the Endless Labyrinth could happen, and they were being taught how to react and manage each and every one of them, which seemed like an impossible task.

  And as Instructor Buj drone on through scenario after scenario, he set about cycling a small amount of aura through his pathways.

  He quickly found himself continuing to do so, whenever he had to sit down for theoretical classes, or whenever his mind wandered. It became almost like a tick. An itch he needed to scratch. And since he needed to improve on his cycling anyways, he was happy to oblige.

  His aura reached down his arms, his legs, and when it reached his brain, there was a sudden moment of emptiness, less than a split-second of a jarring feeling of being pushed out of his own body.

  Nurse Kit had told him that the feeling would eventually go away, as he strengthened his mind’s pathway, and opened up the ones for his nose, eyes, mouth and ears, and others to follow.

  Nar had woken up in the exact same room in the sick bay, or one that looked exactly like it, after the Teacher of Mastery had helped him establish the pathway up his neck, into his head and connected his aura to his brain. It had been a lot more difficult than even splitting the lower pathway down his legs at the same time had been.

  He had been blocked at every turn, as though his mind refused to be connected to his brain.

  “You are attempting to connect your brain to your aura, while at the same time using your brain to do it,” the Teacher of Mastery had explained to him, patient as always. “It’s like trying to scratch the back of your hand with the same hand that needs the scratching. Slow down. Breath. It will work.”

  And eventually, it had. And everything had exploded in a bright blast of gray aura.

  He had screamed in fear, as the aura voraciously rose to consume him, but at the last second, walls of cold dark blue light had flared into existence, containing his raging mass of gray aura.

  “Don’t panic. This is normal,” the teacher had told him. “Your aura is pouring onto your brain, uncontrolled and without knowing where to go. I will keep it under control, and you will follow my instructions. No need to speak. I can see within your mind.”

  One by one, they had established dozens of further pathways into Nar’s brain, the teacher calling out parts of his brain to which the System gave no meaning to. Each pathway was a much smaller version of the main pathway that connected his aura core to his brain, and was akin to the smaller lines he had drawn into his fingers and toes.

  He felt each of them, as though he were truly carving tubes for his aura to circulate inside his brain. At one point, he lost his sense of balance, and the teacher had to stabilize him. At another, he lost all hearing, and the patient short man spoke directly into his mind, guiding the line of burning light across his brain.

  Connecting his brain to his Aura had been one of the most surreal experiences that Nar had ever faced, and has he finished, the Teacher of Mastery instructed him to keep cycling, all across his body, but not to try to open anymore pathways or strengthen the ones he already had, as though Nar had the foggiest idea of how to do that. Then, the man said Nar would be sleeping in the infirmary to keep his brain and pathways under observation for the night. And having said so, darkness had claimed Nar.

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  The next thing he knew, he was waking up to nurse Kit checking in on him. She followed a similar procedure to the first time Nar had awoken in the infirmary, and checked his arms, legs, torso and especially, his head.

  “Looks like everything’s good!” she had declared, typing onto her screen. “You can return to your classes as normal.”

  And so he had.

  Basic stance, passing step, advancing and retreating step, gathering step and triangle step. All the steps the master had listed on that first, intro session, instructor Koh saw fit to torture squad 8 with.

  Of course, no one ever begrudged warm up or protested when they were put through the extra pain of their stretches at the end of class. That lesson had been learned, and Nar threw himself at the teachings of instructors Koh, Mes and Tob with voraciousness, having seen firsthand how his master skillfully used them against him again and again, on their daily, late night sessions.

  On those private sessions, the master would always spar with Nar first, furthering his command of the basic footwork of his sword style, then he would guide him along towards unlocking his [Sword Aura] skill, and improving his budding combat cycling.

  “That’s it. You have the basics down!” the master had told Nar, less than an hour ago.

  In Nar’s hands, the sword glowed with the shifting grays, dark blacks and bright whites of his aura. The blade looked as though it had been reforged in light, and Nar’s eyes had gazed upon his sword, bright and wide.

  “[Sword Aura] is more than just pouring out aura onto your sword, like [Aura Attack] is,” his master explained once more. “It's about the union of movement, skill, technique, aura and the intent that goes into the strike. And intent means purpose. It is the clarity in the blade. The focus! Determination! Energy and conviction and commitment! All of these are absorbed into the sword, and combined, yield much more damage than [Aura Attack] ever could with just aura alone. Remember that tomorrow, and return to me with your new skill.”

  But now, laying alone in his bed, just a few hours away from combat, he couldn’t help but relive all that he had gone through to get to where he was.

  The guardians at first, slowly ramping up in difficulty. The cannibals assaulting the cubeplant, trying to make a feast of those who dwelled within, and who had failed in their quotas. The bridges, with their fire and explosions, and charred corpses. Then the vague, dark and dread filled memories of their short time in the cannibal camp, and their mad, purple haze of a run to escape the horrifying deaths that awaited them there. As well as those they had been forced to abandon behind them…Then the columns of pressure, with its hundreds of thousands of guardians, led by the giant monstrosity that had almost ended them.

  All of that, and it had still been followed by the mysterious circular chasm and its spiders, as well as the insanity of the Ceremony of Final Atonement… And the men who had nearly made it all be for nothing in the arena, less than an hour of them stepping into the O-Nex.

  Was cycling his aura, not well enough to be called combat cycling just yet, going to be enough for whatever challenge had been set up for them in the morning? Would his basic grasp of [Sword Aura] be enough to survive and unlock the skill? Or the steps he still struggled to remember and move with, do anything for him?

  He balled his hands into fists.

  Was he scared?

  The captain, and the masters and instructors had warned them again and again to take their learning and training seriously, as the assessments carried with them the risk of death.

  Nar had no doubt that they had been speaking the truth. Why would they bluff, if every Slaying class reinforced and drove deeper home the point that delving was a dangerous occupation? Why were they being put through an insane pace of accelerated learning, if not because what awaited them required it? And why not threaten them with the jaws of death, if their goal was to raise new elite combat delvers for Tsurmirel?

  As the captain had told them, time was experience, and no one was going to waste time teaching them things that weren’t important, or warning them of things that did not require warning.

  No, the assessment was going to be a serious affair.

  He expected something huge from their mysterious first go at combat since the Ceremony. There were nearly one thousand apprentices on board, and whatever was going to happen was going to be big enough for all of them to participate all at once, side by side.

  And the mystery of it all had him going through his training and new knowledge in a frenzy that he couldn’t still, wanting to make sure that he had, indeed, done everything he could to make himself as ready as possible and more. That he hadn't forgotten anything. No important point, no advice thrown in passage, that could mean the difference between him and his party staying alive, or dying in whatever test the Scimitar had set up for them.

  His mind was filled with limbs, spiders and salivating mouths. Not even cycling and deep breathing brought him the silence he yearned for.

  Across from him, in the lower bunk, Nar heard Tuk turn once more, and sigh as though his entire soul was escaping his body.

  That doesn’t sound good, Nar thought.

  The ring tosser had been nervous for days. Agonizing over trying to get all nine of his rings back under control. He had accumulated injury after injury in his reckless despair, and the Master of Thrown Weapons had even told him to stop and go for a walk on the Third of that week.

  All of them had it rough, but Tuk was the only one who had to actually completely rebuild himself from scratch, going back to that time, months ago, where he had been forced to slowly learn how to use his aura to power his rings, one by one.

  Another long sigh came from the darkness, and Nar grimaced.

  He half rose to his elbow, considering if he should or not do it, but another sigh sealed his decision.

  “Tuk? Tuk?” he whispered into the dark.

  There was a moment of silence, and for a few seconds, Nar thought that perhaps he had been imagining it, and that he was, in fact, the only one up at that ungodly hour.

  “Nar?” came the reply from below. “You awake?”

  “Yeah…” Nar said, guilty of the brief spark of relief that he felt from not being the only one unable to sleep. “Are you okay?”

  Tuk sighed again. “Nah, man. I… I-I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Me neither…” Nar said, fully sitting up.

  He tried to string together something that would help the trugger feel better, and help him fall asleep, when Tuk spoke again.

  “I know this is weird but… Would you like to go for a walk?”