The mess hall was just another part of the training.
A different kind of Crucible, or whatever they called it.
Here, the weapons weren't sharp, pointy things.
They were whispers and eyeballs.
And man, was I losing.
Or, at least, that's what all these idiots thought.
Ever since my little… disagreement with Gandalf, I'd basically become a ghost.
A walking glitch in their perfect little system of who gets to punch who.
The other trainees didn't just avoid me anymore.
They looked straight through me, like I was a smudge on the window.
I was the level three scrub who somehow traded hits with a guy who was basically a walking nuclear reactor of sadness and muscles.
It just didn't compute for them.
And in a place like this, anything that doesn't compute is dangerous.
So they all just pretended I wasn't there.
My table was a sad little island in a sea of gray goo they called food.
My Aura of Fear had become my own personal force field.
It was pretty quiet.
