Chapter 216: 216 | Welcome to the Advanced Track
Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. Even Caden had stopped fidgeting.
"Let me be specific." Steele began pacing deliberately. "Ashida. Your terrain manipulation is solid but your conditioning is mediocre. An enemy who closes distance faster than you can reshape the ground will kill you."
Ren’s jaw tightened.
"Hardy." Felicity flinched. "Your illusions are exceptional. Your fitness is below standard for support staff, let alone combat. A Hero who can’t run a mile without collapsing dies in the field."
Felicity’s smile vanished.
"Holt. You think holding back protects you from expectations. It doesn’t. It just means when you finally need to perform, you won’t know how."
Something flickered behind Caden’s eyes.
"Kennedy. Your social intelligence is obvious. Your tactical application is unclear. Being likeable doesn’t stop bullets."
"Osei. You have the capability to compete with anyone here. Your Aspect control is impressive. Your willingness to engage is questionable. A Hero who watches from the sideline isn’t a Hero."
"Ortega. You have drive, ambition, and physical foundation. What you lack is patience. You burned out in the first lap because you couldn’t stand not being first. That mentality will get you killed."
Camille’s hands clenched but she said nothing.
"Park. Your Aspect is clever and your conditioning solid. Your reliance on absorbing damage before outputting it is a critical weakness. An opponent who doesn’t hit you has already won."
"Soleil. Your Aspect is one of the most dangerous in this cohort. Your belief in yourself is the weakest. Until you understand what you’re capable of, you’re a liability."
Rina’s red eyes glistened but she held together. Barely.
Steele continued down the list, finding something wrong with everyone. Not cruelly, but with clinical detachment that somehow made it worse. She wasn’t angry or disappointed. She was simply stating facts, like a doctor listing symptoms of a disease seen too many times.
When she finished individual assessments, she paused.
"Most instructors won’t say this because they think it hurts morale. Most of you, right now, seem like glorified sidekicks. Is this really what the greatest Hero school has to offer?"
The words landed like physical blows. Some faces went red with shame. Others hardened with anger. A few went blank.
"I’ve seen the Class 1-A roster and their preliminary assessments. Based on today, most of you would be outclassed by students who didn’t make the Advanced Track."
Camille’s jaw was so tight I thought her teeth might crack.
"Class assignments aren’t purely merit-based. They factor in Aspect classification, personality compatibility, team composition needs. Several of you are here because your Aspects filled tactical gaps that 1-A lacked, not because you outperformed other applicants."
I watched Petra Lang’s face drain of color.
"Most of you don’t deserve to be in 1-B. You barely deserve the Advanced Track. And if you expect comfort about that, you’ll be disappointed. Comfort isn’t my job. My job is turning raw material into functional Heroes. Right now, that material is substandard."
Nobody spoke.
"At least, that’s how you are now."
The shift was subtle but noticeable. A door cracking open after slamming shut.
"I don’t tell you these things because I enjoy cruelty. You need to hear them. The Hero industry won’t coddle you. Villains won’t grade on a curve. The people you protect won’t care about your potential or feelings. They’ll care whether you can save them when everything goes wrong."
She paced slower.
"You have two years to become something more. Some of you will rise to meet that challenge. Some will fail and wash out. Some will scrape by with minimum performance and spend your careers as exactly what I said: glorified sidekicks."
Her gaze swept across us.
"The choice is yours. I’ve given you the honest assessment you needed. What you do with it isn’t my responsibility. What I won’t do is pretend you’re ready when you’re not. I won’t tell you you’re special when you haven’t earned it. I won’t let you coast because you passed an entrance exam."
She stopped pacing.
"Tomorrow is Sunday. Rest. Monday, actual classes begin. I expect you at this field at six in the morning for conditioning drills that will make today look like a warm-up. If you cannot handle that, tell me now so I can begin paperwork for your transfer."
Nobody spoke.
"Dismissed."
The cohort dispersed slowly, like survivors trying to remember how walking worked.
I hung back, watching my classmates process their collective destruction.
Camille was talking to Theo in low, intense tones, channeling humiliation into planning rather than despair.
Caden had found Marco. For once he wasn’t joking, his expression thoughtful in a way I hadn’t seen before.
Rina had retreated to the furthest edge of the field, sitting alone with her sheep mug, staring at nothing. Her tail hung limp behind her.
I should probably check on her.
I started walking before I finished deciding.
"Lukas."
Steele’s voice stopped me.
I turned to find her focused on me with intensity that made my skin prickle.
"A word."
It wasn’t a request.
I walked over, maintaining relaxed posture. A lie, but I was getting better at telling it.
Steele waited until I was close enough that our conversation wouldn’t carry. "You’re good at hiding."
"I don’t know what you mean."
"Don’t. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years. I’ve trained hundreds of students. I know what deception looks like."
I said nothing.
"Your entrance exam doesn’t match your capabilities today. Your physical stats don’t match your registered Aspect profile. Your agility run was almost perfectly calibrated to be impressive without being suspicious, which is itself suspicious."
She stepped closer.
"You’re hiding something. I don’t know what. I don’t particularly care, as long as it doesn’t endanger my students or compromise my program. But understand this clearly: I will push you harder than anyone else. Not because I dislike you. Because I can see you’re operating at a fraction of your actual capability, and that waste offends me professionally."
She leaned in slightly.
"You can keep your secrets, Belmont. Everyone has them. But in my class, you will perform at your actual level or explain why you can’t. Those are your options."
She stepped back.
"Dismissed."
I walked away with Steele’s words echoing in my head.
She was right. I was hiding something. Several somethings. The System. My fake Aspect. My real capabilities. The fact that I was essentially a fraud.
The smart play was to continue hiding. Keep my head down. Perform at registration level.
But Steele had just announced that most of us weren’t good enough. That we were glorified sidekicks. That we barely deserved the Advanced Track.
And somewhere in my chest, where the Demigod trait sat like a constant reminder, something stirred.
Pride, maybe. Or ego. Or just the fundamental inability to accept being called inadequate when I knew, with absolute certainty, that I was anything but.
I found Rina exactly where I’d left her, posture defeated in a way that made my chest tight.
"Hey."
She flinched, then looked up with red-rimmed eyes. "Lukas. I’m fine. You don’t have to check on me."
"I know I don’t have to. I’m doing it anyway."
"Why?"
"Because Steele was wrong about you."
Rina’s laugh was bitter. "She wasn’t wrong. My conditioning is terrible. My confidence is worse. I’m too scared to use my Aspect properly. I’m exactly the kind of glorified sidekick she was talking about."
"No, you’re not."
"You don’t know that."
"I know your Aspect made an entire field of combat-trained students stop caring about fighting. I know Steele called it one of the most dangerous abilities in the cohort. Your only problem is that you don’t believe in yourself."
Rina was quiet.
"That’s the hardest problem to fix."
"Maybe. But it’s also the only one that matters. Everything else can be trained. Self-belief has to come from inside."
"Easy to say when you finished fourth in the mile and third in agility."
"I held back."
The words came out before I could stop them.
Rina looked at me, eyes wide. "What?"
"I held back during evaluations. I could have done better but I was trying not to draw attention. Steele noticed. She pulled me aside to tell me she knows I’m hiding something."
"Why would you hide being good?"
"Complicated reasons. The point is, everyone has something they’re not showing. You think Caden actually tries? You think Petra is as confident as she pretends? You think any of us showed exactly who we really are?"
Rina was quiet, processing.
"Steele said most of us don’t deserve to be here. She’s wrong. We’re here because we earned it. We’re here because we have potential the Academy recognized. The question isn’t whether we deserve to be here. It’s whether we’re going to become the people our potential says we could be."
"That’s very inspiring," Rina said quietly.
"I stole most of it from a motivational poster in the administration building."
She laughed. Actually laughed. The sound was small and genuine.
"Thank you," she said.
"Anytime."
