Claps rang out from the students.

  Mal felt his world implode. Everything seemed to be spinning in a circle around him, and he had to grip the side of the table to prevent himself from falling over. In all of his projections, in all of his dreams, this had been completely beyond the scope of possibility.

  He was going to be saddled with not one, but two Heralds. Him, a former Endbringer, a destroyer of worlds. Not only that, but his plan to avoid attracting attention? Based off of what the professor said, he could mark that down as a massive failure.

  His breath came in and out in short puffs. He did only get second place. The princess herself was in first. He was sure that the students would just file away Mal’s existence as an interesting tidbit. As long as nothing else happened, he’d quietly fade away from memory once he got better at this whole hiding-in-plain-sight thing.

  The smell of unaligned magic entered Mal’s nose. His heart rate sped up instinctively, then a light flashed above Mal’s head.

  His heart sank.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened.

  A student in front of him looked back in confusion, then looked up at Mal’s head. Her eyebrows shot up into her forehead.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in the school hospital?” she asked.

  Her words caused the person in front of her to look back in confusion. When he saw the text, his jaw dropped.

  “Wait a second, you’re the guy!” The boy’s eyes sparkled. “You’re the one who killed the Tungstenbird, right?”

  “I told you that was a rumor,” the student next to him shook his head. “You’re being ridiculous.”

  Unfortunately, that brief conversation attracted the attention of the person ahead of that student. Someone off to the side turned and looked over at the light above Mal’s head.

  Mal wanted to sink into the ground and disappear.

  “What is that student doing with a light over his head?” the headmaster looked over at Igna. “Did something go wrong with your spellcasting?”

  Igna’s eyes narrowed into a sharp glare directly at Mal. “No. Which means I believe that we have an escapee from the hospital building.”

  By this point, people from halfway up the table were poking their heads out to look back at Mal.

  His left eye twitched.

  I just can’t catch a break, can I?

  After that fiasco, Mal had ended up being dragged over to join the rest of his circle. They awkwardly stared at each other while the headmaster droned on for the next 30 minutes about the history of the school and congratulating the students.

  Mal internally referred to it as a droning, but in reality it was probably fairly engaging. The headmaster was charismatic, and had a good sense of humor about himself and his power. At one point, he referred to himself as barely stronger than a first year. That had gotten quite a few laughs out of most of the audience.

  If Mal didn’t know any better, he would’ve said that he spotted a brief twitch on the headmaster’s face at all of the laughter. He dismissed the idea.

  Either way, Mal wasn’t able to pay much attention to the speech. Instead, he was engaged in damage control inside of his mind.

  There was a small part of him that briefly considered trying to do the time spell again and get another shot. Unfortunately, that was an incredibly awful idea for a number of reasons. The first time had been down to pure luck. He’d also been at the height of his power as a mage. He had no idea if it could actually be replicated, and if he was wrong about that, then he’d be actually dead. For real.

  The other alternative was to walk up to the professor’s desk and take a massive dump right then and there in an effort to get expelled. Sadly, Mal had too much self-respect to do such a thing.

  He looked back over at Nima, who’d been staring at a spot on the wooden table with all the focus of a hanged man.

  “I actually got in,” he muttered. “I’m an E-rank, but I got in.” His blank stare turned into a scowl. “Eternus is gonna strike me down for this. The scales are all wrong. I’m probably gonna find out that my family burned all of our cash on card games or something in the next two hours.”

  Philo and Rolam, on the other hand, through some twist of fate, ended up seated next to each other. At least, in theory. In practice, they were both trying to put as much space between each other as they possibly could. Rolam was practically squishing Mal into the next student over, which was just all sorts of comfortable.

  Eventually, the headmaster finished his speech and instructed the new students to head to the dormitories.

  Mal was in a sort of daze as he walked alongside the rest of the students. Just an ant in an amorphous mass, as confused as anybody else there. Probably more so.

  When they came to the dormitories, all four stopped in front of the complex. At the front, there were two sets of buildings that were almost as grandiose as the central hall. Freshly painted red tiled roofs seemed to jut out against the blue sky. Some kind of white chalk was used for the construction, granting the walls an almost ethereal appearance.

  Behind those, there was another set of buildings in the same style of construction, though not quite as fancy. The buildings were a little bit lower to the ground. There were fewer windows and fewer angles. It was more square in construction than the first set. The paint had faded, but it was clear that it would be a perfectly functional set of buildings.

  But past that, there was a final set of buildings. Instead of a single solid square, the buildings were laid out in a more U-shaped pattern with a courtyard in the middle. Several tiles were missing from the roof, a roof that didn’t stretch particularly high, being only a mere two stories. There were noticeable chips at the edges of the walls, and there was a brick that was outright missing, along with a shattered window.

  “Which one are we supposed to go to, honored leader?” Rolam said.

  Mal jolted. “Honored what now? And how would I know which one to go to?”

  Philo looked at him. “The ape didn’t get the card?”

  “Card? What card?”

  Philo reached into a pocket on the side of his hip and pulled out a gleaming white card with a complicated rune pattern on the front. Philo flipped it around. On the other side, there was text.

  Building F.

  Room 57.

  Mal checked his own pocket and pulled out the exact same card. It must’ve appeared at the same time as he’d been marked with the light. He just didn’t notice due to the shock of the event.

  He looked over at one of the fancy buildings to the right. A gold plate with an ‘A’ chiseled into it greeted his eyes.

  Mal ran his vision back toward the last set of buildings. He had a good idea of which one was Building F.

  They trudged along the road until they reached the last set of dorms. On the side of one of the U-shaped units, a faded F had been roughly painted onto the wall. A mailbox at the front looked beaten and rusty.

  Up close, the courtyard was in a horrendous state. An optimist might call it wild. Someone living in reality would’ve called it a potential pollen hazard. Mal didn’t even count it outside the realm of possibility that a body could die there and wouldn’t be found for at least a few days due to the sheer size of the weeds.

  “This is where we’re going to be sleeping?” Philo grimaced. “Maybe the insides will be better.”

  Mal kept as straight a face as he could. He did not, in fact, believe that the insides would be much better.

  They walked on the stone pathway on the side of the courtyard, circling around to a corner in the back.

  Room 57.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  The plaque was rusted and almost unreadable. The 7 had a good portion of its bottom chopped off. Frankly, there was a one-in-two decent chance it could have been 53 if not for the fact that the door previous to this one was 56.

  Mal reached out his key card to the lock. Something inside the lock twisted, and it made a horrible grinding noise. Mal winced back, along with the rest of his circle.

  The grinding stopped, and the door gently squeaked open.

  Mal poked his head inside.

  The first thing Mal noticed was the stench. Rotten eggs. Rotten eggs everywhere. Mal pinched his nose and forced himself to continue looking around. The floor had a hole in it, descending to Eternus knew where. Bits of the white paint on the wall were peeling off. The window in the back was so thoroughly foggy that Mal could basically only use it to determine if it was light outside. There was a single table in the corner of the room with four chairs. One of the chairs was missing a leg, while the table had a large chip that had been sliced off the side. The only other piece of “furniture” was a mop and bucket off to the side.

  “Wow, they really shelled out for us, didn’t they?” Mal muttered sarcastically.

  “Don’t say that!” Philo stepped inside, then his eyes watered and he pinched his nose. “It’s not that bad, it just needs a little love.”

  Rolam took a single step inside and his face fell instantly.

  “It smells like a deer died in here, the necromancer brought it back to life, and it spent the next three weeks shoving bits of its rotting corpse in between all the cracks on the floor.”

  Thank you for that visceral image, Rolam, Mal thought to himself.

  Nima looked around himself in a circle. “I—I think we’re actually going to die if we stay here. Are we sure we can’t request some sort of cleaning or repair? Surely this isn’t up to the standard of an illustrious Academy like Exodi.”

  Mal shook his head. “You’re missing the point. It’s like this on purpose.”

  Nima looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

  Mal stepped over to the table and ran a finger along the top. The dust was so thick that his finger looked like it had grown a beard.

  “This is motivation for us to do better. Remember what we were told at the start of the exam?” Mal asked. “Those who do better will receive better accommodations, more access to resources, and there’s probably a litany of other things that weren’t included in that list.”

  Nima squinted his eyes. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. I went to boarding school, and it was nothing like this.”

  “Your boarding school wasn’t directly bordering a wasteland full of enough magical beasts to burn an entire city to the ground. This place is designed to turn every single one of us into master warriors. Any incentive that they can use, they’re going to take advantage of, no matter how unfair or cruel it might seem.”

  It could’ve been worse, anyway. Mal remembered a factoid about how the school used to use the lowest performing students as test subjects for experimentation by the higher performing students. Thankfully, that had been abolished several hundred years ago, but there were definitely remnants of that mindset that had persisted into the modern era.

  The four stood in silence for nearly a full minute. Nobody wanted to take the lead, which was understandable to Mal. Not to mention, several of them were probably wondering why on earth they even made this decision. Philo had talked a good game, but it was very different to speak about something versus actually experiencing it.

  This is what you signed up for, Mal thought. Best get used to it. Everybody here is gonna need to shape up fast, or this circle needs to implode so that we get reassigned. Either way, that’s gonna take at least a month or two.

  After nearly another minute of silence, Mal decided that things should actually start getting done.

  “I don’t know about you all, but I think the first priority is figuring out what’s making that smell,” Mal said.

  Philo sighed. He adjusted the spellbook in the crook of his shoulder. “You’re right, of course. Philo shudders to think of what we’ll find.”

  Rolam cast Philo a side-eye. “Probably just… some spoiled food? Surely the academy wouldn’t dishonor us too badly.”

  Rolam didn’t even sound like he believed himself.

  For the next five minutes, the group combed through the common room, looking for the source of the stink. Of course, there wasn’t exactly a lot of places to search. The common room was little bigger than a prison cell.

  After that, there was a door leading into an absolutely microscopic hallway. Within this hallway, there were four doors along the side and one at the end. Mal walked over to the end and poked his head in.

  A basic bathroom greeted him, mildew growing on the ceiling. The smell wasn’t as strong here, so Mal went into one of the other doors.

  What greeted him was what was clearly meant to be a bedroom of some sort.

  Actually, Mal was ninety-nine percent sure it was a bedroom, given the fact that there was literally just a bed in the corner. The rest of the room was completely barren.

  “Oh, that’s disgusting!” a voice yelled from one of the other rooms.

  Mal perked up, then turned around and exited out of the door. The faces of Nima and Philo greeted him. It seemed they’d also been in the dorms, having had the same idea as Mal. Mal went to the only door where there wasn’t a head poking out. Rolam was in the middle of the room with his hand covering his mouth and a particularly green tinge to his face.

  “Where is it?” Mal asked.

  Rolam pointed a shaky finger at a hole in the floor at the end of the room. Flies circled around it, their incessant buzz signaling what Mal had already suspected from the start.

  Rot.

  Even with his nose clipped, Mal could still somehow taste the stench on the air from how strong it was.

  He looked into the hole.

  He almost jolted back from the instinctual disgust. The hole had been filled to the brim with corpse after corpse of rat. Decay had long since set in on these bodies, tufts of hair falling off of their skin.

  Something pulsed underneath the surface of one of the rats’ bodies. Mal poked it with his shoe and flipped it over.

  Dozens of maggots squirming inside of the corpse greeted him.

  A few footsteps came from behind him. Nima took one look at the hole, then fled out of the room. A loud retching noise echoed from outside of the front door.

  Philo approached, then winced. He shook his head in confusion.

  “Why on are there—” he gulped visibly. “Why are there so many of them?”

  “Who knows?” Mal muttered. “Could’ve been a botched experiment. They could’ve been someone’s familiars. Could be anything, really. Wizards are already a screwed up bunch. Especially so with the lovely people here at Exodi.”

  Philo’s eyes shot open. “Should we report this to the school?”

  Mal shrugged. “We could, but it wouldn’t help. There’s nothing illegal about this. It’s just weird and disturbing.”

  “Can we just get out of here!?” Rolam shouted from behind them.

  Mal looked back and nodded. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter why it’s here. The important part is throwing it out.” Mal pursed his lips. “Get the bucket, please.”

  Rolam scurried off and returned shortly with the bucket. Mal took it, then put it off to his left. He clicked his tongue.

  “Philo,” he said. “I hate to ask this of you, but can you tear up your shirt? I need some kind of cloth to do this with. I really don’t want to touch a corpse with my bare hands.”

  Mal wasn’t necessarily squeamish, but even he knew that touching a corpse with your bare hands was asking for trouble.

  Philo let out a strange laugh. “I don’t even normally wear clothes. I picked this up today, when I arrived in the city. It’s fine. The new robes should be more than enough.”

  Philo used his claws to tear off his shirt and cut it into a nice rag.

  Mal used it to take the rotting rats out of the hole, one by one. He took all of the gross matter that he could, then wiped his forehead with his sleeve.

  He stepped outside and passed by a still-hurling Nima. He went around to the back of the building and was pleasantly surprised to see a small pedestal with a circular rune scraped on the top. If he remembered correctly, anything he tossed onto the top would be sent directly to the disposal facilities on campus.

  Teleportation was tricky and expensive. Exodi was one of the few places with enough ambient unaligned mana to allow for such a spell, one of the many benefits of living in a place like Exodi.

  There was a distance limit, of course, but for Exodi’s purposes it worked fine.

  Mal poured out the corpses onto the teleporter, and it flashed with a blue light.

  Mal breathed through his nose and let out a sigh of relief.

  The smell was gone.

  When Mal stepped back into the dormitory, the mood wasn’t exactly… positive.

  Nima had collapsed into one of the chairs at the table and was leaning back with his hands covering his face. Rolam’s hands were shaking and his teeth were grinding together as he glared at the window. Philo was the only one with a neutral expression on his face, though Mal could tell that it was brittle and could shatter at any moment. He was reading over something attached to the wall that Mal had missed when he first entered in.

  When Mal entered back in, Philo glanced over at him. “You got rid of them?”

  “Yeah, they’re gone.”

  Philo didn’t ask any questions and instead turned his head back. Mal looked at it curiously. It was a piece of paper that had been either taped or glued onto the wall. It was full of squares and boxes and numbers, and it took Mal a full several seconds before he realized it was a calendar.

  “Well, at least we have one amenity.” Mal stepped over to it. “What does our schedule look like?”

  “Tomorrow is going to be Magical Theory 101, combat, and then herbalism.” Philo scratched his head. “It feels a little bit out of order. Spellcraft and potions are the next day. Philo thinks they should’ve come first.”

  “To be fair, I think everybody knows the basics of spellcraft,” Mal said. “I don’t think the order particularly matters. The first couple of classes are going to be review for most people, not new material.”

  “Yeah, I guess that makes sense—”

  “How are you guys so calm about this?”

  Mal stopped. He turned and looked at Rolam. Rolam had turned around and was now glaring at both Philo and Mal.

  “Calm about what?” Mal asked.

  “This!” He waved his hands around himself, motioning at the entire room. “All of this! We completely failed. We’re the worst circle in the entire school. That’s why we were given this room, because we’re all talentless.”

  Nima stuttered. “T—that’s not true. Don’t you remember how we killed the Tungstenbird? And Mal came in second.”

  “Yeah, he came in second.” Rolam’s voice turned dark. “So why did he get saddled with all of us? How does that make any sense?”

  Philo was about to say something when he bit his lip and paused. After that short moment, he opened his mouth to speak again.

  “We should just be grateful for what we have,” Philos said. “The amount of people who passed the written exam is minuscule. The amount of people who then make it through the practical section is also minuscule. We’ll be able to work our way up from here.”

  “No way.” Rolam scoffed. “This whole arrangement is gonna collapse in on itself in a few weeks.”

  Philo’s eyes narrowed. “Why’s that?”

  “Because half of us shouldn’t have even been here.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  The air seemed to suck out of the room. Philo winced at his own statement.

  Mal hissed through his teeth. “Maybe we should take a second—”

  “You should never even have been here!” Rolam yelled. “You’re a draconid. What are you doing in the Academy for wizards?!”

  “Philo thinks the same thing applies to you.” Philo’s voice was sharp as a knife. “The elves have academies of their own. Why are you on the other side of the continent? Based off the way that your spells kept on fizzling out in the forest, Philo can take a guess why.”

  Rolam’s eyes bugged out, and he took another step forward.

  A knock on the door froze all of them in their steps.

  Mal looked back and forth between the two of them. Rolam clicked his tongue and straightened out his robes. Philo rolled his eyes and looked back toward the schedule.

  Since none of them were going to answer the door, it looked like it was up to Mal.

  He stepped over to the door and opened it.