No one remembered.
That scared me more than anything else.
I stared at the classroom door. My hand hovering just slightly above the handle, like touching it would set something off. Like the old oak would gain life to ridicule me for it.
There was nothing there.
No whispers from behind it.
No eyes burning holes through me.
No creature to rip me from reality.
Nobody knew.
They didn't know.
They couldn't have.
Because as far as the world was concerned, I'd never lifted that weight off the rack.
Never felt it crush me.
Never died.
My left hand shook.
I hadn't been moved forward in time. It hadn't twisted space and reality. It had simply pushed everything back. Rewritten reality into a version where my bones weren't powder and my spine wasn't something out of nightmares.
The world was fixed.
I wasn't.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
The classroom felt normal.
Too normal.
The air in the room perfectly neutral. Groups huddled together in near silence.
Chairs scraped across the floor. Quiet conversations blended together. A thin hum from the mana-lamps ran through the air like a weak pulse, reminding us that we still existed.
Selene sat two seats to my right, leaning back, pen spinning lazily between her fingers. Although she tried not to show it, she would occasionally throw glances at me, as if she knew something.
Erhart had already been seated when I walked in.
Of course he had.
Perfect posture. Hands folded. Eyes forward. A perfect student.
A mannequin pretending to breathe.
Except Selene, no one stared at me.
Good.
That meant the reset held.
I walked to my seat and sat down slowly, listening to my own body. Every tiny movement. Every stretch of muscle. Every quiet shift of bone.
No pain.
That scared me more than pain would've.
[Status: Stable?]
A lie.
The instructor came in without ceremony.
No presence.
No weight.
Just a tired man holding too much responsibility and far too little faith.
He placed a stack of papers onto the desk and faced us.
"Hey."
We returned a good morning in response.
He nodded once and scribbled on the board with chalk, his handwriting coarse and rough, although still legible.
"M a n a."
White flakes fell to the floor.
"Most of you think victory is about power."
Some students shifted, shuffled in their seats to give the illusion of being interested.
Some didn't.
I stayed still.
He placed the chalk on the edge of his desk.
"You think power comes from who hits harder. Who releases more. Who can output the most."
He lifted a hand.
Blue mana gathered between his fingers, forming a small sphere.
No noise.
No flare.
No instability.
No excessive movements.
It just… existed.
Perfectly balanced, as if it had been present in the room with us, and we had just failed to notice its presence
"A refined B-rank," he said calmly, "will dismantle a reckless A-rank."
Someone let out a quiet laugh.
"A demonstration," the instructor continued.
He gestured, and smooth stones floated from a container at the front of the room. One dropped onto each desk.
One landed in front of me.
It looked ordinary.
Small.
Bland.
Unremarkable.
The kind of thing you'd see on the street and never look at twice.
"Fill it," he said.
A few more people laughed this time.
They always did that before failing.
"Infuse it without breaking it. No fractures. No cracks. Nothing."
He glanced around the room, never resting his eyes on anyone or anything.
"Too much power will destroy it."
That line didn't feel general.
It felt personal.
I didn't touch the stone immediately.
I studied it.
Nothing in this world was harmless.
I placed my fingertips against it.
Cold is the only thing I could describe it with.
Cold and endlessly indifferent.
Mana rose up instinctively.
It wanted out.
I didn't let it.
I tried to refine it, to turn a flood to a gentle stream.
The stone warmed slightly.
Didn't crack.
Didn't protest.
Good.
I never looked up.
I didn't need to.
I felt Selene's gaze anyway.
She wasn't subtle about it.
She never had been, nor had she tried to be.
I kept working.
Slow. Controlled. Clean.
Not like yesterday.
Not like the weight.
The memory hit without warning.
Cold metal. Wrong balance. Pressure that didn't make sense.
The sound of popping, originating deep in my body.
My fingers faltered for half a second.
My hand trembled.
The stone stayed intact.
Just barely.
I leaned back slightly, breathing out quietly.
From the side, she leaned closer.
"Did something happen to you?" Selene whispered.
"No."
Flat. Immediate. There was no other answer she would ever understand.
She frowned.
"You're lying."
"I'm not."
She studied me.
Longer than necessary.
"Your mana feels wrong," she said quietly. "Not weaker. Not more unstable."
Her eyes narrowed.
"Just… older."
I didn't answer.
I didn't know how to.
Older didn't make sense.
None of this did.
The rest of the lesson dragged on.
Stone drills, control patterns, breathing discipline, postural correction.
The boring things that became life-or-death once you ignored them for too long.
When the bell rang, my head hurt.
Not physically.
Mentally.
Like pressure behind the eyes welled up.
I stood up.
The room emptied slowly.
No rush. No tension like it usually would stir. Nothing.
That felt off too.
Erhart left first.
Didn't even look at me, too busy managing conversation with a hundred and one people at a time.
Fine.
Selene passed by after him.
She slowed as she got nearer to my chair.
"You're not as quiet as you think you are," she murmured.
Then she left.
I stayed.
For a while.
I didn't trust normal.
Normal was expensive.
It always charged interest later.
Eventually, I stood and walked into the hallway.
The corridor was too quiet.
Lights flickered once.
Just once.
That was worse than twice.
[Zero (■) status: dormant.]
Not comforting.
I moved slowly.
Every step too loud. Every breath too obvious.
Then I heard footsteps.
Not behind me.
Ahead.
I slowed.
Turned the corner.
And stopped.
Someone stood there.
Older, with long brown hair and dark green eyes that reminded you of an emerald. With an entirely different uniform and the wrong energy.
He didn't belong.
You could feel when someone didn't.
He leaned against the wall, arms folded a little too loosely.
Tall, broad-shouldered, calm.
He looked at me like I was a problem he'd already solved.
"You're interesting," he said. "Very interesting."
I didn't answer.
I didn't want to.
Words gave things a dangerous weight.
"I don't know what you mean," I responded finally.
He smiled.
Not kind.
Not cruel.
Informed. Like he knew more about me than I knew about myself.
"That's fine," he said. "You will."
He pushed off the wall and walked toward me.
He walked slowly. And yet, I felt as if even if I ran, I wouldn't escape him.
Every step felt heavier than anything I'd experienced.
Instinct screamed.
Run.
I ignored all of it.
He passed close.
Shoulder just brushing up against mine.
An electric shock shot up my arm.
But it wasn't pain.
It was closer to... recognition.
Like my nerves had just seen something they weren't meant to.
I froze.
He kept walking.
Didn't look back.
His footsteps faded across the street, leaving no trace he had existed except the memory burnt into my mind.
Silence returned to how it was.
My left palm burned.
Not a hot, scalding pain reminiscent of boiling water.
It was cold.
A freezing cold.
The kind that left burns.
I looked down, fighting the fear rising in the back of my throat.
A faint black mark sat on my skin.
Like a burn carved of darkness.
"System Analysis." I expected it to take a moment, to at least try and diagnose the issue.
[Analysis failed.]
It hadn't even taken half a second. Like the ability simply crumbled before it.
[System unavailable]
Of course.
In my time of need, the system would always be sure to fail me.
I thought about just dropping it.
Giving up on it all.
Letting the world consume me whole.
Why did I even try?
Erhart, Selene, and everybody else could sort it out.
I was an outsider here, and I always would be.
I closed my hand slowly.
If the classroom had been a lie…
And that weight was the truth…
Then this mark…
Was something far, far worse.
I leaned against a wall.
Just to breathe.
Just to stay upright.
And deep in my chest, something began to stir.
Not mana.
Not any ability, creature, or anything I could remember having seen before.
Something else entirely.
Something that wasn't me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I woke up drenched in a cold sweat.
Was that a dream?
Were the effects of the past few days finally eroding my mental state?
I looked at my hand.
The faint black marking was still there.
I felt a sense of familiarity beyond just having had it applied.
Like I had always known it.
Like it was made specifically for me.
I decided mulling over it would achieve nothing and that I would show it to a teacher or mage at some later point.
I didn't feel fine. But I felt restless.
I jumped out of bed.
I realised it was a weekend, meaning I had free time.
I thought it would be about time to get some real work done.
The best thing I could do to distract my thoughts was to go to a dungeon.
The nearest public dungeon was just over 7 km away, well within running distance.
I had my shower, although still it felt a bit primitive compared to what we had in the future.
And I was a little bit too giddy to eat my breakfast.
Even though I had been to hundreds, if not thousands of dungeons in the past, this one was still the first one in this body, and I needed to know what my limits were.
And I stepped out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Three and a half minutes later, I had arrived at the dungeon site, locked down and surrounded by tape, the type you see in those old detective movies. Along with hundreds of guards situated along its path.
Bit of security, eh?
I walked up to a guard.
"How can I receive entry?" I asked as innocently as my face could muster.
"Don't you look a bit young, scuttle along to your mommy." The guard responded, not even giving me the respect of a glance in my direction.
"I'm asking how to get entry, and as a guard here, it is your responsibility to assist me." I had worked with a few guards before, and it was part of their job to assist people in entering.
"What are you gonna do about it?" He had finally turned to me now, daring me to do something.
I thought about fighting him right here, but that would only cause problems. And to be frank, I'm not even sure I could beat him with this body.
"Nothing sir!" I donned an innocent grin, and walked away.
I would remember that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Along the way, I needed my ID card anyway, so instead of going back home, I decided to go to the nearest association.
It was just over 20 km away, a less sprintable, more joggable distance
I wanted to see how fast I could really run, so instead of, like a normal person, walking or booking a cab, I ran.
3:43.81 seconds.
That was good.
Even by the standards I had even before I regressed, that was still fast.
It was nowhere near as fast as I was at my peak.
But it was better than I was at this age.
What did my stat menu actually look like by now?
"System Stats." I was getting a bit tired of having to say it out loud every time, but for now I would have to bear with it
[Name: Aren Vale
Strength: 5.67 / Agility: 15.32 / Stamina: 5.51 / Mana: 9.2 / Vitality: 5.6 / Potential: ?
*Stats may be boosted due to the effects of ■r■■'s M■r■i■g]
On one hand, yay, boosted stats.
On the other hand.
What was that?
Why did it show a little bit?
Had I gained some level of access?
Or did it want to be seen.
The eldritch monsters had been messing with my life for a bit now.
And I wanted to tear them down from their thrones.
But for now, I would have to focus on the task before me.
Getting an ID from that looming, towering building in front of me.
[5 Days Left]