The battlefield was a waking nightmare.
Arcane detonations flared like lightning through smoke-drenched trees. The Chimera loomed above the treeline—three heads howling across elemental spectrums. One spat acid. One belched flame. The third exhaled a vibrating, humming pressure that shook the very air, rattling bones in chests.
Students scrambled in every direction.
Some flung spells with shaking hands. Some screamed and fled. Others barked strategic gibberish like "flank it!" while hiding behind scorched trunks.
No one noticed the ground shift.
A root bent. A stone tilted.
And then Zane.
He emerged like a corpse being exhumed too early.
His hands trembled. His skin was crusted with dried mud, blood, and mushroom slime. One eye twitched involuntarily. He didn't walk—he oozed out of the soil like someone being reborn through the world's least sanitary womb.
But his grin? Radiant. Wild. Deliriously satisfied.
Because no one saw him.
Not a single soul.
> [S.A.S.S. STATUS: "Invisibum" Passive Engaged – You are too pathetic to be seen as a threat.]
He collapsed beside a half-buried mana conduit—one of the glowing arteries that connected the Trial Arena's central monolith to its surrounding magical infrastructure.
> [MONOLITH CORE INTERFACE DETECTED] [WARNING: Unauthorized Interaction] [Risk of Catastrophic Failure: 41%] [Reward Tier if Successful: ???]
Zane's cracked lips peeled into a smile. His voice rasped like someone gargling gravel.
"System… how do you say 'let's YOLO' in Elvish?"
The system, unhelpfully, stayed quiet.
So Zane tapped the conduit.
And everything changed.
---
It had taken him three nights of crawling, hallucinating, and whispering to worms to get here. He had memorized student patrol paths, monster migration patterns, and soil density charts just by being dirt.
He hadn't fought a single beast. Not one.
He'd just waited.
Watched.
And now, after eating nothing but fungal crackers and a half-digested snake (long story), he was here.
The mana conduit pulsed against his palm.
> [MAGIC CORE AUTHENTICATION… ERROR]
[SIGNATURE FOUND: "Zane" – Status: Unknown / Mutated / Malnourished]
[Mana Residue: Highly unstable – Eligible for override attempt]
> [Chance of Death: 42% and rising]
> [Continue?]
Zane squinted. "Was that number higher a second ago?"
> [Yes. Your stress levels are funny to me.]
"Same."
He inserted a scavenged arcane lens—formerly part of a dead alchemy student's monocle—into the interface slot. The system hesitated. Then blinked.
> [IMPROVISED INTERFACE ACCEPTED – 48% STABILITY]
Zane wheezed a laugh. "Close enough for necromancy."
The core crystal lit with dim blue veins, flowing like a heartbeat.
And then the world twitched.
---
The Chimera's fire head exploded.
Whether from a lucky hit or spontaneous combustion, no one was sure.
Professors stared at their floating mana screens.
Professor Lirael: "The monolith's readings are off. Feedback loops spiking. Terrain nodes desyncing. What is that—who—"
**Professor Vance
They think the trial is about courage. About facing monsters. About flashy spells and who has the shiniest sword. But the real battle? The real war? Is the one waged under their noses, by a man who hasn't had a real bowel movement in three days. Let's keep digging.
The Chimera's fire head exploded into a sizzling spiral of teeth and scorched air, flinging molten fragments across the forest like meteor shrapnel.
A cheer went up—brief, confused, hollow.
Students ducked. Professors leaned forward at their observation deck, which hovered high above the Trial Arena like an invisible judge.
Professor Vance, bald, bearded, and one bad week away from retirement, narrowed his eyes.
"There's a surge coming from beneath the central node. Someone's tampering with the core matrix."
Professor Lirael, ever the pessimist, slammed a sigil-stone.
"That's impossible. The subsurface layer is sealed. Even staff need triple access to reach the interior grid."
But something was happening.
Mana pathways flickered. The Chimera's earth head stumbled, roaring in confusion, as the ground warped beneath its massive feet. Vines sprouted where there had been none. Arcane interference waves pulsed like sonar, and somewhere in the chaos…
Zane giggled.
The core interface was alive.
Blue veins of energy spiraled upward through the glassy walls. Zane's filthy hand hovered just above the conduit, and the interface pulsed in response, like a dog waiting to be walked by its clearly unqualified owner.
> [Unauthorized Access Confirmed]
[S.A.S.S. Override Mode: Improvise, Adapt, Sabotage]
[MISSION OBJECTIVE: ???????????]
[HEIST MODE ENABLED]
[You are now considered: "Anomaly Class: Ghost Rat"]
Zane blinked. "That's… oddly accurate."
His body was failing. Muscles quivered. He hadn't had proper food in days. The last thing he'd eaten was a suspicious mushroom that may or may not have given him brief telepathy with a squirrel.
But his mind? Clear. Focused.
"Alright, boys," he whispered, looking at nothing and everything. "Time to do crime."
Zane crouched low, skittering through a forgotten maintenance tunnel like a feral data gremlin.
This place hadn't seen a soul in years—just mana maintenance bots and residual echoes from the Trial's original architects. The symbols on the walls weren't even modern runes. They were pre-Faction Era glyphs.
That meant one thing: No security updates.
> [Activating System-Guided Sneak Mode]
[PASSIVE: "Too Broke to Notice" Engaged – Your presence is beneath the Monolith's awareness.]
He passed by a dormant golem unit. Its eyes flickered once, then returned to darkness.
"Sleep tight, stoneboy," Zane muttered.
The Chimera faltered again.
Now its third head—the sonic one—convulsed violently. A pressure blast hiccupped mid-scream and collapsed in on itself.
Boom.
Another cheer, more confused than before. The crowd was beginning to murmur. Students who had been barely clinging to life were now cautiously advancing, unsure if the gods had finally decided to do them a favor.
Professor Helreth slammed both fists onto his mana console.
"Someone's tampering with the internal flow matrix! The terrain's warping—nodes are reshuffling!"
Professor Lirael hissed, "There's a foreign script rewriting relay protocols. Not just interfering… reprogramming."
Then came the signal.
Buried in the relay was a blinking symbol—a sigil only one professor recognized.
A symbol from a long-abandoned mage codex:
The symbol for chaos entropy.
And below it, in crude, mismatched glyphs:
"Hi."
Zane was no longer sneaking.
He was dancing.
He spun once, arms out like a wizard ballerina with a death wish.
The mana core glowed brighter with every gesture.
> [Redirecting 3% Core Power to Arena Node D-11]
[Redirecting 6% to Terrain Elevation Subsystem]
[Establishing Personal Cache Vault – (Name: "Zane's Totally Legal Hideout")]
[DISGUISE INSTALLED: Signal registered as natural anomaly]
Zane was rebuilding the battlefield like a troll modding a game server.
"Raise that ridge," he muttered. "Flood that ravine. Let's drop a fake loot chest over here and… yes. Perfect."
His plan wasn't to win.
It was to control the map. To make everyone else fight harder while he ghosted through the trial collecting points, relics, and possibly antique shoes.
> [S.A.S.S. WARNING – Mana Overload Threshold: 88%]
[HEART RATE: 180 bpm]
[HALLUCINATION LEVEL: Mild]
Suddenly—
A voice.
"You dance like a dying elf."
Zane froze.
Standing across the glowing interface table, arms crossed and very imaginary, was Vegeta. Or at least, a malformed hallucination that looked 80% like him and 20% like an angry turnip.
Zane didn't blink. "Hi, Dad."
The hallucination scowled. "You're about to burn out. Stop playing Minecraft with a magical reactor and get the hell out."
Zane licked his cracked lips. "Let me just finish this one sidequest."
Panic had turned to silence.
Professors stared. Mana screens buzzed static. No one could find the source.
Because the source had no signature.
"Nothing on scrying," Lirael whispered. "Nothing on heat vision. There's no one down there."
Then the Chimera dropped dead.
No explosion. No final roar. It just… stopped.
Its legs buckled. The body slumped. Arcane light fled its body like a tide going out.
> [TRIAL BOSS DEFEATED – Bonus Points Awarded to "???"]
[UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT. AWARD HELD FOR MANUAL REVIEW.]
Professor Vance, breathing hard, finally croaked:
"…There's a ghost in our system."
---
Zane, dragging himself out of a runoff pipe with mushrooms growing from his collar, took one last deep breath of the musty earth.
He emerged under a false tree—one he had planted himself two days ago, knowing he'd need an exit.
He collapsed, chuckling.
> [TRIAL CONTINUES: 3 Days Left]
[CURRENT STATUS: Unknown / Undetected / Unbothered]
[Your current rating: "??? The Dirt King"]
Zane smiled.
"Now we farm."