Afternoon sunlight filtered through the holographic floor-to-ceiling windows of Terra Academy's Seventh Affiliated Middle School, spilling lazily across the polished desks. The climate-control system kept the classroom air at just the right temperature, making it a perfect sedative.
Jian Xing let out an enormous yawn, struggling to prop up his increasingly heavy head with one hand.
At the lectern, an elderly professor with graying hair and several academic medals pinned to his chest was waving his laser pointer with theatrical enthusiasm. Behind him, the holographic projection shifted with his movements, displaying magnificent vistas of the stars.
"Class, look at this reconstruction from historical records!" The old professor's voice trembled slightly with excitement. "This was the moment when the fleet of the Imperium of Man achieved its decisive victory in the Viola Nebula, toward the end of the great Emperor's Great Crusade! Only through the Emperor's unparalleled strategic vision and the physical might that allowed him to rival gods in a mortal body did we fully unite the Milky Way Galaxy and establish today's magnificent Grand Unified Alliance!"
Jian Xing sighed and idly twirled his electronic pen.
History books always used such impassioned language, but to students sitting in a classroom preparing for their final exams, those grand words meant nothing but disaster. His gaze drifted past the front row and settled on several very different classmates.
A Necrontyr girl named Tara, seated in the front row, was discreetly picking at a newly scabbed wound on her knee.
By the aisle on the left, a Krork classmate who had already shot up to three and a half meters tall, wearing a specially made oversized uniform, was staring at the Dataslate before him and sweating profusely.
As for the newly transferred T'au exchange student on the right, he was diligently taking notes.