The rhythmic, tallic echo of steel eting starlight filled the high-tier training hall for the next three hours. Elena Reinhardt was a relentless instructor. Her S-Rank class, Starlight Spellblade, allowed her to manipulate kinetic vectors by solidifying ambient light, aning every single one of her thrusts could instantly change direction mid-flight.
To an ordinary student, fighting her felt like trying to parry a reflection in a shattered mirror.
CLANG!
Kai spun cleanly on his heel, using a newly refined vertical parry to slide the tip of Elena's rapier off the flat of his Desolation Blade. He didn't waste an inch of movent. Over the course of their grueling session, his SSS-Rank talent, Eye of the Primordial Sovereign, had been passively dissecting Elena's high-tier swordsmanship, stripping away the noble flair to isolate the raw, chanical efficiency underneath.
"Better," Elena panted slightly, stepping back and lowering her weapon. A few silver strands of hair stuck to her damp forehead, her crystalline blue eyes bright with an intense, competitive fire. "You're stopping the wide, wasteful arcs. The imperial basic style teaches you to swing with your shoulders, but true lethal force cos from the locking of your hips and the compression of your core. You have an absurd amount of raw Strength, Kai. If you learn to compress it into a three-inch thrust rather than a three-foot swing, nothing under D-Rank armorhide will ever stop you."
Kai stood perfectly still, his breathing completely level. Thanks to the steady, minor feedback of his Void Shroud keeping his true trics hidden, Elena still couldn't scan his status, but she was smart enough to judge his growth by pure physical results.
"Again," Kai said quietly, his voice devoid of fatigue.
Elena raised an eyebrow, a mix of admiration and exasperation crossing her face. "You're a machine. Most unawakened novices would have suffered severe muscle tearing from the sheer kinetic feedback of parrying my rapier by now. Your Endurance stat must be completely bloated."
Before she could raise her weapon for another round, the heavy tungsten-alloy doors of the training hall hissed open with a low hydraulic groan.
An academy attendant dressed in the formal, deep blue uniform of the administrative branch stepped onto the polished floor. He bowed deeply toward Elena, completely ignoring Kai, though his eyes darted nervously toward the shattered starlight fragnts still dissolving on the floor tiles.
"Lady Reinhardt, excuse the intrusion," the attendant said, his voice taut with anxiety. "An urgent decree has just been passed down from the Academic Board. All first-year students, regardless of their faction allegiance or shadow vanguard status, are required to gather in the Grand Amphitheater imdiately. The mandatory mid-term rift assignnts are being distributed ahead of schedule."
Elena frowned, her rapier dissolving into a shimr of silver light that bled back into her palms. "Ahead of schedule? The mid-term trials aren't supposed to take place for another two weeks. What changed?"
The attendant swallowed hard, his eyes flickering toward Kai for a brief fraction of a second before returning to Elena. "Commander Marcus Vance has formally invoked the 'Ergency Combat Readiness Act' through the High Council. He claims that due to the recent security breach in the outer periter—the variant Chieftain incident—the student body must be aggressively culled and tested to ensure imperial defense standards. The Board could not veto the decree."
A cold, calculating smile slowly spread across Kai's face. He didn't need his system's analytical processing to know exactly what was happening. Marcus Vance couldn't touch him directly within the academy walls due to the Grand Duke’s private decree, but the Ergency Combat Readiness Act was a secular legal loophole. By forcing a mandatory, public trial, the Vance family could place Kai in a high-risk scenario where an "accidental" casualty could be written off as a standard dungeon hazard.
"They're desperate," Kai murmured, sheathing the *Desolation Blade* with a clean, tallic click.
"They're foolish," Elena corrected, her voice turning icy cold as she turned to face Kai. "Marcus thinks he's forcing you into a corner where his family's high-tier enforcers can orchestrate a fatal accident inside the trial rift. He doesn't realize he's just handing you a slaughterhouse."
"Let them play their ga," Kai said, walking past the attendant without giving the man a single glance. "The faster I clear their trials, the faster I hit Level 10."
Thirty minutes later, Kai stood in the upper tiers of the Grand Amphitheater. The massive, stadium-like structure was packed with over three thousand first-year students, the air thick with a volatile mixture of panicked murmurs and arrogant posturing.
Down on the central obsidian stage, flanked by a dozen heavily armored enforcers, stood Commander Marcus Vance. Beside him was Leo Vance, his chest puffed out, wearing a brand-new, gleaming set of E-Rank silver-plate armorhide that practically scread generational wealth. Leo’s face had completely recovered its color, his eyes scanning the crowd like a vulture until they finally locked onto Kai’s position in the high rafters.
Leo didn't hide his intent. He raised a hand and slowly drew a finger across his throat, a venomous, triumphant sneer distorting his features.
"Quiet!" Marcus Vance's voice bood through the amplifying arrays embedded in the walls, instantly silencing the three thousand students. "Due to the glaring incompetence and cowardice displayed by certain elents during the initial awakening trials, the High Council has deed the current freshman tier soft. The empire has no use for dead weight."
Marcus waved his hand, and a massive, holographic projection erupted above the stage, displaying a list of localized dungeon rifts and their respective danger classifications.
"The standard training rifts are hereby suspended," Marcus announced coldly. "For the mid-term trial, the freshman tier will be deployed directly into the Obsidian Jagged Crags—a confird Tier-1 Restricted Zone. You will be deployed in assigned vanguard pairs. Your objective is not survival; it is liquidation. The bottom ten percent of the performance ledger will have their academy credits permanently revoked and their cultivation resources seized by the state."
A wave of collective panic rippled through the amphitheater. The Obsidian Jagged Crags wasn't a standard goblin cave. It was a brutal, vertical labyrinth populated by *Gargoyle Stalkers* and *Ashen Orcs*—monsters with high base Strength and natural stone armorhide that required heavy, coordinated physical force to break.
"The automated system has already finalized the pairing arrays based on current performance trics," Marcus continued, a dark, satisfaction settling into his eyes. "Find your partners and report to the transit gates imdiately."
Kai looked down at his survival badge as it vibrated against his chest, a fresh line of text glowing faintly on the glass surface.
[Academy Trial Deploynt]
> Target Rift: Obsidian Jagged Crags (Tier-1 Restricted)
> Assigned Partner: None (Solo Deploynt Authorized by Administrative Exception).
Kai’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. A solo deploynt into a Tier-1 Restricted Zone ant the system had been manually overridden. Marcus Vance had entirely stripped away his ability to rely on a partner, ensuring that if he were surrounded by a pack of stone monsters, there would be no one to split the agro or call for dical extraction.
"They really aren't hiding it anymore," a voice whispered from behind him.
Elena Reinhardt walked down the stone stairs, her presence causing the nearby students to instantly clear a path. Her badge displayed a separate, high-tier solo deploynt to a Tier-2 zone, as expected for an S-Rank heir. She looked at Kai’s screen, her jaw clenching slightly. "Marcus manually signed that exception. He's using the administrative authority of the Vanguard Enforcent Unit to legally isolate you. The Obsidian Jagged Crags has a baseline level requirent of Level 6. To the public, he’s sending an unawakened F-Rank to a guaranteed execution."
"Level 6?" Kai asked, his lips curving upward into a cold, silent grin that sent a shiver down the spine of a nearby student. "Then the experience point yields should be excellent."
Elena blinked, montarily stunned by his response. Anyone else would be calculating their chances of survival or begging her to have the Grand Duke veto the assignnt. But Kai was looking at a death trap and calculating the efficiency of his level progression.
"The Ashen Orcs drop Earth Attribute Cores," Elena said, her tone shifting back to her sharp, pragmatic frequency. "If you extract enough of them, your system points should skyrocket. Don't die out there, Kai. I haven't finished fixing your crude swordsmanship yet."
"I don't plan to," Kai said, turning his back on the amphitheater and walking toward the lower transit gates.
As he entered the obsidian processing tunnel leading to the rift arrays, he checked his internal interface one last ti, ensuring his Void Shroud was perfectly stabilized.
INFINITE EVOLUTION SYSTEM
> Host: Kai Raven
> Level: 5 (430/1000 EXP)
> Talent: Eye of the Primordial Sovereign (SSS-Rank)
> HP: 180/180
> MP: 18/18
> Strength: 18 ( 15 from Desolation Blade)
> Agility: 15 ( 12 from Tempest Stride - Zephyr)
> Endurance: 17 ( 3 from Tempest Stride - Zephyr)
> Evolution Points (EP): 79
With his gear accounted for, his effective Strength sat at thirty-three, his Agility at twenty-seven, and his Endurance at twenty. He was technically five levels below the dungeon's baseline requirent, but his chanical attributes were already dense enough to crush a Level 10 unawakened novice.
The massive iron tracking gate at the end of the tunnel humd to life, its green mana lights reflecting off his sleek, tallic *Tempest Stride* boots. The enforcers guarding the gate looked at him with pity, believing they were watching a dead man walk into a at grinder.
Kai stepped onto the teleportation pad, his hand resting firmly on the hidden hilt of the Desolation Blade. The world wanted to use him as a political statent, but as the white light of the spatial rift swallowed his body, Kai knew that the Vance family had just opened the doors to his playground. The countdown to his Level 10 Class Awakening was about to accelerate in blood.
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