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Chapter 5 - 5 : A Test Meant to Kill the Weak

A bell rang across the academy, cold and mechanical.

"All first-year recruits to Arena Theta. Testing begins in one hour."

Riven stood at the edge of a cracked fountain, overlooking the campus courtyard. Behind him, towers spiraled into the clouds. Ahead, dozens of students in ornate uniforms moved like royalty, their mana signatures radiating off them like heat.

They talked. Laughed. Measured one another.

And ignored the quiet masked boy in the shadows.

"So this is how they do it now…" he muttered.

The Survival Exam.

A "placement trial," they called it. But Riven had lived through enough loops to know the truth.

It wasn't a test of potential. It was a culling of the inconvenient.

✨ Arena Theta – 60 Minutes Later ✨

Massive, jagged walls encircled a battlefield the size of a stadium. No rules. No teams. Sixty students entered. Only twenty advanced.

The rest?

Dropped. Expelled. Or dead.

Ylira Faegwyn stood at the center, arms folded.

She scanned the crowd until her sharp elven eyes found him.

"Room 00X…" she whispered. "Why is someone like him even here?"

Even she couldn't explain it. The system didn't recognize him. His power level showed as zero.

Yet the air shifted around him, ever so slightly. Like the calm before a thunderclap.

"BEGIN."

A flare burst into the sky, and chaos erupted.

Blades. Fireballs. Shadow summons. Ice arrows. Students turned on each other like hungry wolves.

Riven didn't move.

Instead, he walked slowly toward the edge of the arena, watching the others fight.

A girl screamed nearby — a beastkin student tackled by two noble swordsmen. They laughed as she bled.

This isn't a test. This is a power display.

"Stay down, weakling," one of them spat.

Then a stone slammed into his head, knocking him flat.

Everyone turned.

Riven stood alone, a small rock still in his hand.

"Excuse me," he said dully, "but trash shouldn't speak so loudly."

The second swordsman snarled and lunged at Riven.

Too slow.

In one fluid motion, Riven stepped past the swing, grabbed his wrist, and snapped his arm at the elbow. The student dropped screaming.

Everyone froze.

Wait… that wasn't luck…

Riven reached into his cloak and pulled out nothing.

But his enemies backed away — instinct screaming that he wasn't unarmed.

"I don't care about passing," Riven said coldly. "But if you step toward me, I'll assume you've failed."

No one moved.

Outside the arena, professors watched through scrying crystals.

"That masked boy… we don't have any records on him."

"He's reading movements like a third-year assassin."

"Is that… time-prediction?"

Another voice cut in. Older. Cold.

"Monitor him. He may be part of the Anomaly Class we erased."

Back in the arena, only nineteen students remained conscious.

Riven looked up as the final flare lit the sky.

He hadn't drawn a weapon.

Hadn't used a skill.

But his name was now whispered across the campus.

"Who is he?"

"What class is that?"

"Was he… smiling?"

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