"This is much cooler without the overwhelming dread," Lily commented idly, looking over the Starry Sea in all its galactic, violent, watery glory. "The last time I was on an ethership before heading to the Academy was to watch my father murder an island of 'disobedient' people. This is much nicer."

Caeden chuckled. "Yeah, this time, we're just going to fight monsters. Much less stressful."

"I know you're joking, but it really is."

He wasn't sure what to say to that, so Caeden just let it go.

They were on the deck of an ethership, sailing through the air on the way to a mid-sized continent. The Central Academy had decided that the top 100 of their best students would go on a trip to fight monsters for the second half of their first school year. Real-life experience for what would be a part of their duty when they joined the military after their five-year training period. That is if they managed to meet the graduation requirements. Those who didn't make the cut had to enter the military early, with fewer options for what their post was. Usually, that meant being uncomfortable and far from home.

Their ethership for this trip differed from the one that had taken Caeden and Erik from their continental home of Arturus to the Academy. That ship had been a War God, a vessel built for active combat, fit with weapons to level cities and the speed to cross the vast territories of the Central Authority in mere weeks instead of the months it could take a lesser vessel.

This was not a War God. The sleek design and multiple flight crystals were replaced with a fat body and a single, larger crystal engine. This was a Turtle Fortress. Designed to carry important people wherever they wanted to go in comfort and safety, just not all that quickly. The single flight crystal was much more durable and defensible than a War God's multi-crystal design, but it was also significantly slower. This ethership trundled along at an abysmal hundred miles an hour. A War God could easily go four times as fast.

However, the accommodations were spectacular. On the War God, Caeden and Erik had slept in bunks with the soldiers. Here, they each had their own room to themselves with a dedicated bathroom, even nicer than their school dorms.

The fatter body of the Turtle Fortress contained much thicker armor than the War God but also luxuries like training rooms, a 24/7 fully staffed kitchen, sports rooms, a pool, and an entertainment center.

One of the most amazing things Caeden had discovered in his time in Central City was how much more advanced the entertainment industry was. On the continent, the cities might have a theater where a few plays were performed each year by roving bands of entertainers. The people involved didn't have the best reputation, often being run out of town for some sort of indiscretion. The people of the continents generally didn't have much time or respect for the arts. They were busy surviving.

The same was not true for Central City. The beating heart of the Central Authority was chock full of bored immortals with nothing to do all day and not a care in the world. There, entertainment thrived. Books, plays, performances, singing, dancing, and music of all varieties. There was even some new ethertech that recorded visuals and could play them back on demand, leading to pre-recorded shows as a new medium. Called CV, or crystal vision, this new method was apparently very popular with islanders around Caeden's age.

The Turtle Fortress was tailor-made to entertain a bunch of rambunctious young people on the multi-week journey to their destination. Caeden and his friends were mostly interested in the built-in IP training rooms and the onboard library. They had kept up their training regimen from the Academy even as they traveled. For the most part.

Caeden was the unlucky one for the most part. There was no etherforge on board for obvious, explosively dangerous reasons. So his main pastime was withheld from him. Also, Caeden's other training had been stalled out. He had been busy learning to use the multitude of forms his shrouded weapon, Forged Infinity, could take. Eight different forms with dozens of variants within. He had a lot of training to do. Unlike Erik, who had reached a level of proficiency in his chosen discipline that he could train on his own, Caeden was still primarily reliant on the teaching of others to progress.

The one saving grace was that his swordsmanship and Ki teacher, Blaine Bladeson, had made the trip with them. His lessons in those classes had only intensified with all the spare time and energy he had now. Both he and Lily participated in those lessons, learning more about the process of Ki Creation and advancing their skills.

Cat was doing what she usually did, trying to create new specters. It was an involved process, testing out new ideas, trying to increase their capabilities without growing the shroud cost beyond all reason. Everyone did their best to help out, offering to be testing partners for her new designs and seeing how well they performed against each of their different combat styles. Despite all the free time, she hadn't had any luck so far. Every new design ended up either having an overlap in purpose with the ones she had already created or being wildly inefficient to the point of unusability. Caeden knew she had spent the last week simply reviewing those failed designs, trying to morph them into something usable.

She would have to stop soon. They were almost there. Caeden and Lily were staring across the Starry Sea and its massive waves toward the continent on the horizon. Their destination for this trip. At least, the first part of it.

When they first left the Academy, their supervising teacher had explained how this whole excursion would work.

"It's a straightforward suppression mission, something all of you will eventually become intimately familiar with in your time with the military. This is the most common mission most of you will be sent on." Samantha Saorise, a beautiful dark-skinned woman with an arm made of pure obsidian and Lily's personal idol, explained to them. Lily had been ecstatic to learn she would be their supervisor.

"We'll be headed to a mid-sized continent, somewhere not too far out. All of you should already know this, but for those who don't pay attention," She raised her voice and glared at a group who was very obviously whispering among themselves instead of listening, "As landmasses get farther from the Pillar and become exponentially larger, the monsters that live on that land also become bigger, more powerful, and much more of a threat. It's only on land masses classified as continents that you start to see large packs and intelligent monsters."

"Now, monsters are not like unshrouded and naturally occurring life. You won't be able to insert your shroud into their bodies to kill them, much like another shrouded. They also give off invasion pressure the same as we all do. So it's by that metric that we rate them, as the more powerful monsters have a higher IP. The continent we are going to, Ilfella, is rated from 50 to 5,000 in the innermost areas of the continent." Everyone was listening to Samantha at this point.

"We will start at the shores with the weakest monsters and work our way in. We'll be landing at a port city only a small bit inland, just past the wave border. From there, we will be practicing one of the main skills you will need to cultivate for these missions. Can anyone tell me what that is?" She looked around, waiting.

Lily's hand immediately shot up.

"Yes?"

"Investigative aura sense," Lily stated with confidence. "Monsters will be obvious to our senses like another shrouded would. We can use our auras to track them."

Samantha nodded. "That is correct; using investigative sense will be a key ability on this training mission, but that wasn't what I was referring to. A solid answer nonetheless. Any other guesses?"

Lily looked crushed, despite Samantha's commendation.

Caeden had a sneaking suspicion he knew the answer from personal experience. He raised his hand.

"Yes, Caeden?"

"Talking to the locals, right?"

Samantha smirked, and Caeden knew he'd gotten it right. "Care to elaborate on that answer?"

"We're visiting a foreign continent. There's a lot of ground to cover, more than we could ever handle based on just our auras. The people who live there are going to know where the monsters are; they have to deal with them. If we just ask where the monsters are, it'll make our job a lot easier." Caeden explained, everyone watching him.

As the de facto leader of the Forged, he was famous enough that people tended to listen to him. Especially after his battle with Solar Radiance, the Sun Seat faction. Sweeping their entire team had vastly increased his standing among his peers. The fact that he was currently the only nascent shrouded, having awakened his incarnation during that series of fights, only added to that.

"Correct on all accounts. Yes, talking to the locals is the most important thing you need to learn how to do." Samantha smiled.

"I don't get how that's a skill." Someone spoke up. "Just ask where the monsters are; there you go. It's not like it's hard."

"Consummately wrong. Let me ask you this. What kind of monster is it? How many are there? How long ago was it seen, and has it been seen elsewhere? All of this information is vital to your success. Asking a single person for information or relying wholly on a single account is a good way to head face first into a fight you weren't ready for. You need to learn how to parse the information you're given to figure out the truth of the situation before you walk yourself and others into a losing battle. Monsters are powerful. Do not underestimate them or take them lightly." She warned. The speaker looked suitably chastened.

"More than that, we're not always welcome out here on the continents. People may not want to talk to you. You need to learn how to get information from the unwilling and parse truth from lies. There is more to these missions than just killing monsters in straightforward combat. Learn or suffer the consequences."

Which led them back to now, Caeden and Lily staring over the Starry Sea at their destination in the distance.

"How do you think we'll do?" Caeden asked.

"All of us, just fine. I'm more worried about them." Lily looked across the deck to the white, fluffy beanbag chair that was her bonded monster, the Icecrage Bear cub, Snowball. Standing atop his sleeping form was her other bonded, the Midnight Roc, Sky.

"They'll be fine. You talked to Lumiere and his brothers." Caeden reassured her, thinking of the eccentric fellows who had sold Lily her pets. "They said it was better for them to get some combat experience at this point. They'll be fine. They're monsters, after all. Not regular animals."

"I know, I just worry. They grew up so fast." Lily frowned.

Caeden shook his head. He had seen images of what a fully grown Icecrag Bear and Midnight Roc looked like, and neither of her bound were anywhere close to fully grown. Their adult forms were powerful, fearsome monsters. So much so that even their toddler forms were strong enough to challenge some of what they would face in the coming days.

Instead of bringing it up, though, Caeden just looked back at the continent, the coast rapidly approaching in the distance. The Turtle Fortress may be slow, but that was only considering the vast distances they had to cover to get here. Once Ilfella was actually in view, they approached quickly. The continent's primary color was a rocky grey with small hints of green here and there. So very different to the verdant forest and plains of Caeden's home continent.

"Did you look up what kind of continent this was?" Lily was their group's bookworm, so she tended to know the pertinent facts.

"Yeah. Primarily a quarry continent. Lots of earth ether with several veins of various metal ethers and small pockets of more complex types. Not much natural wildlife and lots of rocky terrain. Honestly, it only has anyone living her because of the abundance of ether." Lily shrugged.

"Neat. Never been to an ether mining continent before." Caeden grinned.

"You've never been to another continent before." Lily rolled her eyes.

"Not true! There was the thing with the ancient structure and the War God exploding."

"I don't think that counts."