Levi stepped through the entrance of the Institute of Ascension and stopped.

  Something was off.

  The entrance hall stretched out before him in all its grandeur. Vaulted ceilings soared upward into shadows and marble floors gleamed under the natural light that streamed in from stained glass windows on either side. Students moved in clusters around him, and the end of the hall was lined with a set of warpgates, about twelve feet tall and half as wide, tall obsidian rings shimmering with an unearthly azure light.

  There was nothing distinctly out of the ordinary, but Levi couldn’t dismiss the subtle wrongness that made the back of his neck prickle. He swept his gaze across the entrance hall once more before he paused.

  Hold on a moment. He mentally measured the distances between the walls and ran some calculations.

  Fuck. He was right.

  Spatial manipulation. The Institute was bigger on the inside than the outside.

  Levi hated buildings like these. Compressed and folded space made his instincts muddled and his mental blueprint of the building worthless. Escape points became unreliable. Distance was impossible to accurately judge. Attacks could come from angles that shouldn’t exist.

  Magical architects, he groused. It appeared they were the same in every world. No sense of consideration for people like him.

  “Lord Ironwood!” Levi turned to see a young man hurrying up to him. He was shorter than him, with straight brown hair and a pair of round glasses covering his eyes. “You’re almost late,” the young man said, slightly out of breath. “I was worried you wouldn’t come.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Levi said. “There was a meeting I had to attend…”

  “No need to apologize, Lord Ironwood,” the young man said, thrusting a stack of parchment into his hands. “Here you go.”

  “What is this?” Levi asked, looking down as he leafed through the papers. It appeared to be an essay of some sort.

  “Your homework, sir,” the young man said. “You told me last week to finish this essay for you. I did as you ordered,” He paused, suddenly looking nervous. “Is it not to your liking, sir?”

  Levi looked at him. He took in the young man’s shabby appearance, the subpar grooming and secondhand robes. He was clearly not a noble, or if he was, then one of the lower ranking ones. His body language was subservient, and more telling was the hint of resentment that Levi could detect in the young man’s eyes.

  Ah, shit.

  The previous Levi had bullied this kid, hadn’t he...

  This was awkward. Levi sighed, rubbing his face with a hand. “What’s your name again?”

  The young man flinched. “Excuse me? I’m Andevar. Did you forget again?”

  “Mmm,” Levi didn’t answer the question. “And your last name?”

  Andevar narrowed his eyes. “You already know,” he said accusingly. “Just check with institute registry. Why even bother asking?”

  Levi paused. Institute registry? What was that?

  “Just humor me. What is it?”

  Andevar glowered at him. “Baker. Andevar Baker,” he said, his voice quiet and clearly defensive. “What of it?”

  “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

  It was just as Levi had thought. ‘Baker’ wasn’t exactly a noble last name; in fact, if naming conventions were the same in this world as his previous one, then ‘Baker’ probably alluded to Andevar’s family’s line of occupation. A commoner bloodline, in other words.

  The previous Levi had probably abused his noble lineage – incompetent and disinherited he might’ve been, he was still the son of a marquis – and bullied Andevar, forcing him to do his homework for him.

  Hmm…

  Well. Waste not, want not.

  “Nothing,” Levi said, pocketing the homework and clapping Andevar on the shoulder. “Thanks for your hard work, I appreciate it. Shall we head to class?”

  Andevar looked wary, as though waiting for the other shoe to drop, but he slowly nodded. “As you wish, Lord Ironwood.”

  “Call me Levi,” Levi said, waving him off.

  “Huh?” Again, Andevar seemed thrown for a loop. Levi ignored him, walking toward the warpgates at the end of the hall. “Ah, wait, Lord Iro– Levi, where are you going?”

  Levi paused, turning to look back at Andevar. “To class? That’s what the warpgates are for, no?” He presumed that was how they got around within the Institute.

  Andevar stared at him. “What? No, students are forbidden from taking them.”

  Levi blinked, glancing at the warpgates. Sure enough, he’d missed it earlier, but everyone who entered or exited the portals seemed to be older than the average student population.

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  “I see,” Levi said. “Then what do students use to ascend? Magical elevators?”

  Andevar looked at him weirdly.

  “... no. We take the stairs.”

  Levi looked back at him, his expression unreadable.

  It was official. If Levi ever met whoever designed the Institute, he was going to kindly introduce their face to the ground.

  Bad enough the spatial manipulation was constantly making his internal compass do backflips in agitation, but forcing him to manually climb dozens of flights of stairs on top of that?

  What a colossal pain.

  Apparently, the Institute espoused the idea that adventurers needed not only ingenuity but also grit to undertake hard work without shortcuts. Which apparently translated to climbing hundreds of steps each time they wanted to get to class.

  It grew more difficult with each ascending level as well – it started off as a normal square spiral staircase, but after a couple floors, the stairs became steeper, wider, more slippery, and every so often a step would disappear. On floor five, arrows began shooting out of hidden compartments in the walls; on floor ten, you had to hold your breath to avoid the knockout gas.

  According to Andevar, it was nearly impossible for most students to reach above floor forty simply due to how dangerous the magical and physical obstacles became. The floors above forty were reserved for research labs, higher-tier training facilities, forbidden vaults, administrative offices, and the like. The highest floors were the Restricted Sanctum.

  The warpgates allowed the staircase to be bypassed entirely, but those were strictly controlled by operators located in the administrative offices. Only professors, researchers, licensed adventurers, and otherwise guests were permitted to take them.

  The source of dark magic had been somewhere in the upper floors, presumably within the Restricted Sanctum. It was unsettling; the moment Levi had deactivated his True Sight (keeping it on for too long always gave him a splitting headache), he had been completely unable to sense or detect the vile aura. It was concealed very well. Yet, just the knowledge that it was somewhere above him kept him tense and on edge. He had considered going straight to it, but he needed more information first. He didn’t survive this long by rushing in blindly.

  The staircases weren’t empty. Countless students streamed up and down around them, the echo of hundreds of asynchronous steps within the stairwell creating almost a rainfall effect. Most of them seemed to be teenagers, with the youngest being maybe twelve or thirteen, and the oldest was… well, himself. Even Andevar was a year or two younger than him despite them being in the same class.

  Everyone dressed in their own style, and there seemed to be no specific uniform. Levi himself was still dressed in the same expertly tailored red vest, white button down shirt, and black trousers he’d worn to the meeting with Lord Ironwood.

  The majority of students had clothing of equal quality as Levi’s own, and they carried themselves with a certain grace and pompous self-assuredness that suggested they were either aristocrats or upper class of some sorts. More than a couple of them nudged each other and laughed at Levi and Andevar as they passed – or more specifically, they sneered at Andevar and laughed at Levi.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out the social dynamics here.

  If Levi remembered correctly, marquises were pretty high up there in the noble hierarchy. Below the king, maybe below dukes too? Or was it the other way around… Either way, from the way Lord Ironwood had ranted earlier, Levi reasoned it was safe to assume the Ironwood family, House Ironwood, was a fairly big deal. And he was the former disinherited heir who’d just been caught in a cheating scandal. There might as well have been a large red target painted on his back.

  Levi snorted and ignored it all, brushing off the whispers and laughs as one would dust. Words held power – he would never deny that, as some might thoughtlessly do. The very beauty of language meant it could be inverted to wound and maim deeper than even magic sometimes. But words from schoolchildren?

  He wagered he’d survive.

  Without much else to do, Levi took out the essay Andevar had written for him and began to read through it. The paper was written on the topic of proper mana expenditure and management during an adventure. He wasn’t sure how he could understand the language he’d never seen before today, but he was thankful all the same for his body’s built-in literacy.

  Levi hummed, noting specific sentences that stood out to him.

  Standard doctrine recommends maintaining a 15% MP reserve for emergency skills or retreat…

  While mana potions can be used to restore mana points, it is recommended to not consume more than {(N+3)/2 x 100} MP within a twelve hour period, with N being your MAG level…

  To account for sudden level-ups in the midst of combat, adventurers are expected to consult the System and memorize the mana cost growth rates before embarking on any quest…

  Levi frowned. Mana points? Growth rates? He didn’t know those even could be measured, much less be quantified to a specific standard unit.

  In Levi’s old world, one had to basically just estimate the amount of mana they needed for each spell and pray they had enough mana left in their reservoirs. This was complicated by how mana itself was highly variable, inconsistent, and contradictory by nature; casting magic depended on a wide variety of factors, including but not limited to environmental influences, emotional resonance, belief attenuation, and so on.

  However, it seemed the denizens of this world had somehow managed to figure out a quantifiable model. He assumed that was what the term ‘System’ referred to – the essay had referenced it more than once throughout.

  But what did level-up mean? Why did they call it ‘experience point’ when just ‘experience’ would’ve been adequate? One needed experience to improve their abilities, after all…

  Levi mulled on it for several seconds before shrugging, accepting it as a unique idiosyncrasy of this world.

  They finally reached their classroom on the thirty-eighth floor. As students in their seventh and final year (ninth year technically for Levi, since he’d been held back twice), their classes were held in the upper limits of floors that students could feasibly access. Indeed, the obstacles in the last ten floors had been rather tedious to deal with – shifting staircases that rotated without warning, subtle illusions that had them going in circles, and an entire section of stairs where they had to dodge alternating blasts of frost and fire magic.

  “We’re late,” Andevar bemoaned. “If you noticed the illusion ensnare us, why didn’t you say so sooner? Professor Heimler will be furious…”

  Levi shrugged. “I wanted to see what it had in store for us.”

  They entered the classroom together. Levi strolled in first, uncaring of the smattering of whispers that immediately broke out when the students saw him. Andevar entered after him, shoulders hunched and gaze downward.

  “I am glad to see you two could finally join us,” a sharp, cultured voice cut through the air like a knife.

  Levi turned to see Professor Heimler looking at them with a displeased expression. The professor cut an intimidating figure—tall, with short blonde hair meticulously slicked back, sharp aristocratic features, and cold eyes. His burgundy robes were immaculate, his posture rigid.

  “Hey professor,” Levi greeted amicably. “Sorry we’re late.”

  Andevar shot him a panicked expression as the entire class immediately went silent.

  Huh. It seemed he’d committed a faux pas of some sorts.