The Great Hall of the Royal Adventurer Academy was a symphony of nervous energy. Hundreds of sixteen-year-olds, dressed in their finest—and in most cases, only—formal tunics and gowns, stood in tightly packed rows. They were a vibrant, anxious tapestry woven beneath a vaulted ceiling painted with the heroic constellations of the Zodiac Knights. The air, usually filled with the scent of old stone, floor wax, and library dust, was now thick with the cloying sweetness of cheap perfume and the metallic tang of adolescent anxiety. Sunlight streamed through the high, stained-glass windows, each an immaculate depiction of a legendary hero slaying some mythic beast, bathing the hall in a kaleidoscope of reverent, judgmental light.
Zero stood near the back, an island of absolute stillness in a roiling sea of fidgeting youths. He was intentionally positioned in the shadows of a large stone pillar, a place where the crowd was thinnest. It was a habit from his first life: make himself as small and unnoticeable as possible. The irony was that now, he used the same tactic not out of fear, but for observation.
He ignored the excited whispers, the boasts of those from noble families who were certain of A-Rank destinies, and the fearful, fervent prayers of the commoners who hoped for anything better than an F-Rank in masonry or farming. He had lived through this once before. The awe and wonder were gone, replaced by a cold, analytical detachment. He wasn't here to be blessed by the gods. He was here to collect his weapon.
His gaze swept across the crowd, a predator cataloging its prey. He saw them all, their faces young and unlined by the hardships he knew were coming. There, near the front, was Helena Croft, the daughter of a viscount, preening in her silk dress and flashing a smile that was all teeth. He remembered she would awaken as a B-Rank Pyromancer, arrogant and powerful. He also remembered finding her charred corpse in the Dragon's Maw dungeon three years from now, a victim of her own hubris after she tried to solo a brood mother. Over by another pillar, Thomas Crane, a lanky commoner everyone mocked for his stutter, was visibly trembling. In two years, after a near-death experience, he would awaken a rare S-Rank 'Sound Weaver' class and become one of the kingdom's most sought-after, and feared, assassins. A potential asset, or a future threat. He filed the information away.
Knowledge was power. And in this hall filled with nascent potential, Zero was a god in all but name.
His eyes finally landed on a cluster of nobles near the grand dais. And there he was. Marcus Vance. Heir to a wealthy barony, with slicked-back blond hair that caught the light and a patrician sneer that was already well-practiced. In his past life, Marcus had been his tormentor-in-chief, a constant, petty thorn in his side who delighted in reminding Ashe of his F-Rank status. Marcus wasn't a grand villain, not one of *them*, but he was a symptom of the disease that riddled this world: the belief that rank equated to worth.
Seeing his youthful face, so full of unearned arrogance, didn't spark anger in Zero. It sparked an idea. A test. A way to gauge the capabilities of his broken System in a controlled environment.
"All supplicants, silence!" a voice boomed, the command amplified by a subtle touch of mana. It echoed through the hall, and the nervous chatter died instantly. Headmaster Valerius stood on the dais, a man whose stern face was a roadmap of scars from a hundred battles. Beside him, resting on a velvet cushion, a single, flawless crystal pulsed with a gentle, white light. The Awakening Stone.
"Today, the gods see fit to bless you with a path," the Headmaster began, his voice a low rumble. "They will grant you a System, a Class, and the potential for greatness. Whether you seize that potential or squander it is entirely up to you. Step forward when your name is called, place your hand upon the stone, and accept your destiny."
The ceremony began. The first name called belonged to a duke's son, who swaggered forward and received an unsurprising A-Rank 'Guardian Knight' class. The hall erupted in polite, envious applause.
As each student touched the stone, a cascade of golden light would envelop them, and a window of text, visible to all, would appear above their head.
"Helena Croft. Class: Pyromancer. Rank: B." A wave of impressed murmurs. Helena beamed, her chin held high as she walked back.
"Gideon Moss. Class: Farmer. Rank: F." A smattering of sympathetic, pitying glances. The boy shuffled away, his face pale, his future as a tiller of soil now set in stone.
And so it went. Knight. Archer. Alchemist. Taylor. The hall was a lottery of fate, and the gods were fickle dealers.
Zero watched, his expression unreadable. He wasn't focused on the results. He was focused on the System itself. As each student was Awakened, a faint, almost imperceptible line of golden energy would flow from the stone into them. But in Zero's vision, something else happened. Something no one else could see. A flicker. A tiny, black-pixelated distortion would appear in the golden light for a nanosecond, like a single dead pixel on a perfect screen.
*It's a network,* he realized with a jolt of ice-cold clarity. *The Awakening Stone isn't some holy relic channeling divine will. It's a terminal. A server node. It connects everyone to a central host, a 'Divine System.' And my System… it's a rogue client. A virus that wrote itself onto the local hardware of my soul.*
This understanding changed everything. He wasn't just a boy with a broken power. He was an error in the fabric of their reality. A glitch in the divine matrix. The thought was terrifying, and in its terror, it was utterly exhilarating. It meant he wasn't bound by the same rules.
"Marcus Vance. Class: Mana Knight. Rank: B+."
Marcus strutted away from the stone, a smug grin plastered on his face. A B+ rank was exceptional, guaranteeing him a place in the academy's elite track. He caught Zero's eye from across the hall and gave him a look of dismissive contempt. The message was clear: *This is the difference between us.*
Finally, the names dwindled to the last few commoners.
"Ashe. Class: Porter. Rank: F."
The words hung in the air, just as they had a decade ago. A wave of snickers and whispers rippled through the hall. "A Porter? What a waste." "My cousin's a Porter, hauls manure." "At least it's not Farmer."
The humiliation was a tangible force. Zero felt the stares, the pity, the contempt. In his first life, this moment had shattered him. He had wanted the floor to swallow him whole. Now, he felt nothing but a cold, calm focus. He walked back to his spot in the shadows, his face a perfect mask of indifference. This was the mask he needed. The perfect cover. Who would ever suspect an F-Rank Porter of harboring the power to topple kingdoms?
His placid reaction seemed to infuriate Marcus more than any outburst could have. As the Headmaster gave his concluding remarks, Marcus and his two cronies, a pair of burly youths with more muscle than sense, swaggered over, blocking Zero's path.
"Well, well," Marcus's voice cut through the murmurs, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. "Look what we have here. A Porter. I suppose someone needs to carry our gear while the real adventurers do the work. Isn't that right, Ashe?"
Zero looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time. He saw the expensive, embroidered tunic. The perfectly styled hair. The casual cruelty in his eyes. And behind it all, a deep-seated insecurity. A desperate need to assert his dominance. A perfect test subject.
Zero didn't reply. He simply met Marcus's gaze, his eyes holding that dead, ancient light. The silence stretched. The lack of fear, the absence of the cowering deference Marcus expected, was a public slap in the face.
"What's the matter, baggage boy? Cat got your tongue?" Marcus sneered, stepping closer until he was invading Zero's personal space. "Or are you just too stupid to form a sentence? I challenge you to a practice duel. Right here, right now. Let's see what a useless Porter can do before you start your glorious career of polishing my boots."
A challenge. In front of half the student body. It was a public humiliation ritual, designed to cement Marcus's status at Ashe's expense. In his first life, Ashe had refused, earning him the brand of "coward" for the rest of his academy days.
Zero's lips curved into the faintest of smiles, a chilling sight on his otherwise impassive face. "Fine."
The single word was so unexpected, so devoid of fear, that Marcus was taken aback for a second. The crowd, which had been starting to disperse, now gathered in a tight circle, their faces alight with the promise of a spectacle.
Marcus quickly recovered, his sneer returning. "Brave words for a walking suitcase. Let's see if you can back them up." He adopted a classic Mana Knight stance, his hands beginning to glow with a faint blue aura. It was the academy's most basic technique, `[Mana Strike]`. Predictable. Flashy. Inefficient.
Zero didn't move. He just watched, his mind a whirlwind of calculations. His stats were pathetic. He could feel it. Strength: 5. Agility: 7. Endurance: 6. His only registered skill was `[Inventory]`, an extradimensional space that could hold up to fifty kilograms of non-living matter. It had no combat application.
Or so everyone thought.
*The System is a network. Skills are applications. Classes are user roles,* his mind raced, applying his newfound understanding. *But an error, a glitch… a virus… it doesn't have to follow the user rules. It can exploit the base code.*
"Are you going to fight, or just stand there and die?" Marcus taunted, growing impatient with Zero's stillness.
Zero's eyes flickered to a loose cobblestone near his foot, its edge slightly raised from the floor. An idea, insane and brilliant, sparked in his mind. He focused his will on his `[Inventory]` skill, not as a container, but as a raw function. He tried to "feel" its code. A line of glitching text scrolled through his vision, visible only to him.
`[Skill: Inventory. Function: Store/Retrieve. Standard Latency: 0.5 seconds.]`
He had never seen that before. *Latency*. A programmed delay, probably to prevent exactly what he was about to do. He pushed his will further, picturing the cobblestone vanishing from the floor and appearing in an inventory slot.
`[Store: Cobblestone (2.1kg). Executing...]`
The stone disappeared from the floor without a sound, leaving a small, dirt-filled gap.
Marcus, seeing Zero just staring at the ground, finally lost his patience. "That's it! You're finished!" He lunged forward, his glowing fist aimed squarely at Zero's face, a move of pure aggression with no finesse.
The world seemed to slow down. Zero saw the punch coming. He saw the arrogant curl of Marcus's lip. He saw the path the fist would take. His body, weak as it was, moved with an instinct born of a decade of life-or-death battles. He took a half-step back, a subtle, practiced pivot that made the charging punch miss by a hair's breadth.
And as Marcus's momentum carried him forward, overextended and off-balance, Zero acted.
He focused on his `[Inventory]` again. Not just on retrieving the stone, but on the *location* of its retrieval. A meter in front of him. Directly in the path of Marcus's charging right knee. And he tried to do one more thing. He tried to break the rule. He tried to bypass the latency. He flooded the skill with his will, with the malice and certainty he now possessed.
`[Retrieve: Cobblestone (2.1kg). Location: Vector 3.4. Overriding Latency Protocol... WARNING! System Violation Detected!]`
The warning flashed a brilliant, angry red, but Zero pushed through it with the sheer force of his intent.
The cobblestone appeared in mid-air. It didn't fall. It simply *materialized*, instantly occupying a space that Marcus's knee was about to be in.
The laws of physics are crueler than any god. An unstoppable force met an immovable object.
A wet, sickening *CRUNCH* echoed through the now-silent hall.
Marcus screamed. It was a high, piercing shriek of pure, unadulterated agony. He collapsed to the ground in a heap, clutching his leg. His kneecap was pointing in a direction it was never, ever meant to. The duel, if it could even be called that, was over.
Stunned silence. The entire student body stared, their jaws slack. No one had seen what happened. There was no flash of mana, no skillful parry. From their perspective, Marcus Vance, the B+ Mana Knight, had somehow charged forward and shattered his own knee on… nothing.
Zero looked down at the writhing, weeping noble, his expression as impassive as ever. The test was a success. He could manipulate the base functions of his skill. He wasn't just a user. He was an admin.
He turned and began to walk away, the crowd parting before him like water before a shark.
"You… you bastard!" Marcus howled from the floor, his face twisted in a mask of pain and fury. "You'll pay for this! My father will hear about this! Guards! Get him!"
Two of Marcus's lackeys, burly youths who had been watching from the sidelines, finally snapped out of their stupor. Their faces hardened with a mixture of fear and duty. They moved to block Zero's path, their hands reaching for the training swords at their belts. They cornered him at the edge of the hall, near a darkened, disused corridor that led to the academy's storage cellars.
Zero didn't stop. He didn't slow down. He simply walked toward them, his gaze as cold and empty as a winter grave. The whispers of the crowd faded behind him as he and the two thugs were swallowed by the shadows of the alley-like corridor. A fight was coming. His first real fight in this new life.
A genuine, predatory smile touched his lips for the first time. It was time for another test. This one would be far less clean.