“Now that that’s done with,” Thaddeus said, voice back to its self, “We really should focus on the actual class. Everyone is here, so let’s not waste it.”

  He snapped his fingers and white letters burned onto the board in neat rows in seven empty slots, stacked like a ladder.

  “Yesterday’s tour showed you the gym, cafeteria, garden, pool, dorms. Besides that, you also all came, even with the allowance not to come to half of your classes. This brings me great joy!”

  He tapped the top slot. “First period: Demonology. The study of the things that want us dead.”

  Notebooks flipped open fast. Pens clicked. Even Dragan pulled out one already filled with some drawings, still rubbing his skull.

  “Most of you think you know plenty,” Thaddeus went on, pacing. “You don’t. In this room we cover structure, tiers, strengths, weaknesses, evolutions, habits, allies and much, much more. Things such as what they want, what makes them laugh. Everything that keeps you alive longer than five seconds in a real gate.”

  He stopped. “Basic distinctions. Someone give me the starting line.”

  Seraphina’s hand shot up first, and two others joined her. Thaddeus ignored them all. His masked gaze landed on Damian, who was still staring sideways at Damaris.

  “Young Steel, if you may.”

  Damian straightened, flashing his polished smile. “Of course, esteemed teacher. Demons divide into seven primary races—one for each great sin.”

  Thaddeus nodded. Eight slots filled instantly with glowing script:

  PRIDE LUST GREED GLUTTONY WRATH ENVY SLOTH

  There was some silent discussion between the other students as Damian leaned back, smug. “Great Apostle, surely you’ve… miscounted? Everyone knows there are only seven sins.”

  Thaddeus barked a short laugh and hopped onto his desk in one smooth motion, striking an exaggerated hero pose. “First reality check, children: you know nothing.”

  The pose dropped. He crouched, elbows on knees.

  “This place exists because most truth isn’t on the public net. If it was, why pour billions into Minos Prime? You’re here for the classified layers. The elite cut.”

  He pointed at Damian. “And no, young Steel, I didn’t miscount.”

  A few kids leaned forward.

  “You’ve all heard the basics,” Thaddeus said. “Greed demons hoard wealth and kidnap people for ransom. Gluttony eat anything that moves, people included. Lust take captives for… obvious reasons. Wrath just break and kill everything and everyone they find.”

  He ticked them off on his fingers.

  “We’ll devote full days to each. There is so, so, so much to learn from our privately paid for investigations.”

  Nephara raised a lazy hand, a new pen spinning between her fingers. “Tech—I mean, teacher. You really got me curious, what’s the last one?”

  Thaddeus’s mask tilted toward her. “Ah. Yes.”

  “Tell me, Miss Justine—have you been taking your theology classes back in primary school?”

  Nephara blinked, pen stopping mid-spin. She dropped it on the desk with a soft clack and glanced up at the ceiling like the answer might be written there. “I guess? But I don’t see what that has to do with this.”

  Thaddeus leaned forward a bit. “What exactly confuses you, then?”

  She shrugged, meeting his mask straight on. “Well… the only real new thing here is the supernatural part showing up in real life. Tons of religions talk about demons, heaven, hell, angels, whatever. But this whole guardian-angel-descending-as-a-game-system thing? Never once hinted at. Not in any book. And the Ten Commandments? Never brought up as actual angels. To top it off, they have names, and none of them was ever listed anywhere. Besides, they don’t talk about religion and such, they just say they serve one God and shut up about the rest.”

  “Correct,” Thaddeus said, voice almost cheerful. “But that’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking if you know the basics of Christianity. I’m asking this since you’re American, yes?”

  Nephara snorted. “Yep.”

  “As an American,” Thaddeus said, “You’d probably lean toward thinking your religion got it right. And I love that you saw straight through the cracks.”

  He hopped off the desk again, pacing slow. “Plenty of faiths have demons, hells, angels—damn near identical ideas with the only difference being their names. But as you can all see, none nailed it exact. They all missed the big one of what we have gathered, and that is that most demons are just… creations. They appear to be a tool for a greater power, and nothing more.”

  The goth girl in the front row leaned forward so hard her chair creaked. Everyone else just stared.

  “In stories,” Thaddeus went on, “The ultimate evil is always conscious. Corrupted. Smart. Powerful enough to scare the creator who made it. Christianity’s easiest parallel are its fallen angels.”

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Gasps hit the room like a wave.

  Seraphina’s hand flew to her mouth. “N-no way…”

  Dragan let out a low, drawn-out “Auuuuu…”

  Even Damian’s smirk slipped for a second.

  Thaddeus raised a hand. “Demons tied to sins? They are but simple, mindless creations. But Originals…” He tapped the board again. “Those guys have human-like consciousness. They are also older than anything we can wrap our heads around.”

  He let that sit.

  “We’ll dive deeper into them later. For now: remember Originals are no-go zones. Even the weakest one could give me a real fight.”

  “Impossible!” Damian and Ethan blurted at the exact same time.

  They both snapped looks at each other, scowled, and shut up fast.

  Thaddeus chuckled. “Oh, it’s true. These days the Apostles spend most of our time hunting Originals when a gate with them pops up. We have become extermination squads, basically.”

  A hand went up from the middle rows from a quiet kid no one had really noticed till now. Black turtleneck, black-and-silver jacket, medium black hair with faint light-blue streaks, big brown sunglasses indoors like he didn’t care.

  Thaddeus nodded. “Mister Monroe, go ahead.”

  The kid stood slow, voice calm but clear. “Is that why John Romano isn’t at the institute right now?”

  The name dropped like a bomb, making half the class explode.

  “Yo, did someone say Saint Romano?!”

  “The Honored Saint himself?!”

  “That guy’s a walking legend!”

  “Bro, he’s the strongest Saint alive, hands down!”

  “GOD, I just want to look him in his beautiful eyes!”

  Nephara twirled her pen again, muttering under her breath, looking at Ben who just squealed like a girl. “Chill out my guy...”

  Damaris didn’t react out loud. She just stared at the word LUST glowing on the board, fingers tight around her pen until the plastic groaned.

  “Mr. Monroe is correct,” Thaddeus said finally. “Saint Romano is currently deployed in Morocco. Besides that, I really can’t speak about much else. He should come within a week, and you will be able to meet him, but he won’t be here for long, as his presence is requested everywhere, at all times.”

  Not needing to say much else, he continued the lesson. “This was just an overview, so just remember the basic seven, and that if you ever hear me or the Apostles say the word ‘Original Demon’ while on an expedition, just turn tails and run.”

  Only a few murmurs escaped the students before their teacher raised his voice and continued. “As we have covered these basics, let’s cover the other even more basic basics! Can anyone now tell me the evolutions and tiers of such demons? Let’s say demons of wrath, for example.”

  Haruno raised his hand, sitting up a little straighter in the back row, his dark hair falling over one eye.

  Thaddeus pointed at him with two fingers. “Yes, Mr. Haruno. Enlighten us.”

  Haruno cleared his throat, voice steady but not cocky. “Wrath demons, correct? They evolve like this: Imps, Spirits, Beas—”

  “Stop,” Thaddeus cut in, raising a palm. “That’s the public wiki version. Anyone can memorize a list. Show me you didn’t just parrot it. Pick a couple of those tiers and actually tell me something about them. Make it useful.”

  Haruno blinked, caught off guard for half a second. Then he nodded. “I understand. The weakest of those unholy creatures are the Imps—basic foot soldiers for anything bigger. Human guns, rockets, and even blades could damage them greatly, depending on where they are hurt. Next up are spirits. Those are way tougher and almost no regular weapon touches them anymore.”

  “Oh boy, let’s pump the brakes right there,” Thaddeus said, starting to pace between the rows. A couple of kids tracked him like he was a shark in a tank. “I can already tell your knowledge comes from experience, not deep thinking. That’s fine and expected, even at your age. But I’m betting you’ve all heard the campfire stories about how they evolve, where they come from, all that jazz.”

  A ripple of nods. A few sheepish glances. Nobody argued.

  “Good,” Thaddeus said, stopping in the middle aisle. “Then listen close, because most of what you think you know is half-true at best.”

  He turned on his heel, mask sweeping the room so every kid felt pinned for a second.

  “Demons work the same way we do. They possess the same system, same levels and somewhat same skills, that we do. The only meaningful change is that they get experience from killing humans and only humans. Not each other, which is a problem for us. That fact alone makes them play nice under one banner.”

  A couple of pens scratched faster.

  “Every fifty levels, an evolution window opens, and those simple imps get to evolve to the higher tiers, the ones you have all memorized. At one hundred, they start picking up actual skills. You were correct to say that the hierarchy starts with imps, and I bet that everyone’s deeply familiar with them. Simplest creations out there, totally subservient to whatever’s above them.”

  He kept walking.

  “Imps have zero abilities. Ever. Heavy weaponry drops them clean. You can even tickle their HP with small-arms fire, with maybe ten damage a bullet if you’re lucky. The main reason for this is that they’re almost purely spiritual beings.”

  A couple of soft “ohhh”s slipped out.

  “Angels and demons are in the same boat,” Thaddeus went on. “All are spiritual entities at the core. To walk our world they need a physical body. That body weakens them compared to their true form, but it still takes time to build. Seven days, exactly.”

  He let that hang.

  “That’s your gate timer, kids. Higher demon, usually a spirit or knight rank opens a subspace pocket tied to Hell. Sets up shop. Orders hundreds of imps to start knitting physical forms and we get one week to clear it before they finish manifesting.”

  The teacher continued “Now for anything above an Imp? Normal weapons are worthless. Only we can really hurt them anymore. Our skills, our abilities, they hit the soul directly. Of course, as is with all, there are exceptions with each skill, but the point stands.”

  Nephara leaned back, pen twirling again. “Exceptions?”

  “Of course,” Thaddeus said, flashing a thumbs-up even though no one could see his face. “Elements matter. You can take your average skill, which is light, and it does fifty percent bonus damage against almost all demons! There are many elements that have different interactions with different demons, but that’s a whole different class. I’m not the elements guy—another Apostle will bore you to tears about that later.”

  Quiet laughter rippled through the room.

  “What I’m a specialist at is Demonology, and the demons you really need to worry about are Imps, Spirits, Beasts and Knights! These demons are the ones you will be fighting until the average class level is 180. Until then, I will make sure that you don’t even come across anything above that.”

  “Knights, sir. Really?”

  Thaddeus tilted his mask toward the voice. “Really what, Miss Seraphina?”

  She didn’t blink. “I’ve heard the stories about them sir… About how different from all the others they are. About how strong they are, how many skills they have and how many plans and traps each can place within their Gates…”

  A couple of kids shifted in their seats. Damian leaned forward, smirking like he was about to correct her, but he stayed quiet.

  “I understand why you might get unnerved,” Thaddeus said. “Knights sit at the top of the standard hierarchy for a reason. They’re the first tier where the demon starts thinking like a general instead of a soldier. They command. They adapt. They have skills that can rewrite the battlefield in seconds.”

  He turned back to the class.

  “Most of you won’t face one until you’re well past level one hundred and twenty. But some gates accelerate. Some bosses evolve faster during a Gate break. I wish you to get enough knowledge, and if somehow you come across it soon, to know what to do. Of the somewhat common demons, Knights truly are the worst…”