Chapter 470: Golden Sage
To call the assembly a grand affair was a disservice, for it would be treating the assembly too lightly. There were at least one hundred Mystics all around them, not only acting as guards for the assembly, but displaying the full force of the academy. There were nearly as many staff members as there were cadets, showing the immense work that went into running the Kolar Military Academy.
With the presence of Isabella, that made hundreds of Mystics and one Ascendant, making the fighting force of the academy equal some of the major battalions of competing nations. To think that such a force was completely dedicated to training and nurturing cadets all around the year without having any other military duty was a sheer testament to the immense military might of Kolar.
There were no outsiders here, so the sole purpose of such a grand assembly was targeted towards the cadets. Whether it was to impress them, motivate them, or pressurise them, this one assembly could accomplish all of those tasks.
The cadets, especially the newest cadets, all stood in silent awe as they waited for this assembly to begin. By now, many of them had already understood from their senior battalion members just what to expect from this assembly, but knowing only increased their anticipation, it did not decrease it.
The morning was not exactly silent. The morning breeze was not absent of the songs of nearby birds, or the flapping of hundreds of uniforms. Even so, when the loud, grating sound appeared, it felt as if it had broken through the silence of the assembly, marking the beginning.
Besides the new cadets, no one seemed surprised by the sound, nor were they taken aback by the moving lid. Nero observed that the lid of the stone box was at least 20 cm (8 inches) thick, and could be even thicker considering he was just making a rough estimate from afar.
That was merely the lid alone. The actual box was probably around 1.5 meters wide (5 feet), 1.8 meters (6 feet) tall and 2.7 meters (9 feet) long. It was easy to imagine that such a box might contain a body, but who could be large enough to require such a massive box? Surely not a regular human.
He did not have to wait long to find out because the lid did not serve as a serious obstacle at all. It was pushed aside easily, falling beside the box with a loud thump. A golden glove, one that was unbelievably large, grabbed the side of the box as if for support to lift oneself up.
There was no wait, no time for suspense to build. From within the box emerged a behemoth of a man wearing a golden armour, with similarly golden tubes coming out of his back, pulsing with unbelievably dense aether.