The charcoal stick snapped in Leo's hand, leaving a smudged, unsatisfying line across the page. He sighed, leaning back from his easel. The life drawing model on the podium was bathed in the soft, afternoon light filtering through the art studio's high windows, but Leo couldn't capture it. His mind was elsewhere—on student loans, on his dead-end part-time job, on the sheer, boring normality of it all.
"Problem, Mr. Vance?" Mr. Davos, the art teacher, paused behind him, his voice a low rumble.
"Just can't get the light right," Leo muttered, running a hand through his dark, artfully messy hair. A few girls in the class glanced his way, as they often did. He was used to the attention his looks brought, even if he found it mostly irrelevant to the things that actually mattered, like getting this damn sketch right.
"The light is fine. Your focus isn't," Mr. Davos said, not unkindly. "You're trying to force it. Art isn't about forcing. It's about seeing the potential in the subject and... drawing it out."
Before Leo could reply, the world screamed.
It wasn't a sound, but a sensation—a shrieking, tearing vibration that came from everywhere and nowhere at once. The windows didn't break; they rippled, the light outside twisting into impossible colors. The floor bucked like a living thing. Easels toppled, and students screamed as a searing, electric-blue light flooded the room, burning away all shadows.
Floating in the center of the chaos, words etched themselves into Leo's vision in a font of cold, hard light.
[System Initialization Complete.]
[Welcome to Earth (Iteration 734). An Integration Protocol is now in effect.]
[Distributing Classes and Skills... Now.]
A collective gasp, punctuated by more screams, filled the room. Panic erupted.
"What the hell is that?"
"Is this a prank?"
"I can't move!"
Leo was frozen too, his heart hammering against his ribs. This wasn't a dream. The words were real, seared into his retinas. A second later, a new, personalized screen appeared before him.
[Name: Leo Vance]
[Race: Human (Baseline)]
[Level: 1]
[Class: None]
[Base Ability: Photogenic - boosts charisma stat by x2]
Photogenic? Of all the useless things. He almost laughed.
[Awakening Personal Skill...]
[Your Skill is: Appraise & Forge (F-Rank)]
[Appraise & Forge (F-Rank): Allows the user to analyze objects and living beings, storing their skill blueprint. Permits the fusion of stored skill blueprints to create new, composite skills. Permits fusion of skill blueprints with physical objects to create enchanted items. All creations are soul-bound to the user. Proficiency and Rank of creations are limited by user level.]
The world snapped back into focus, but it was a wrong focus. The air hummed with unseen energy. From the hallway came a sound that froze the blood in Leo's veins—a guttural, chittering roar, followed by the shattering of glass and terrified shrieks.
"Barricade the door!" Mr. Davos yelled, his voice cutting through the panic. He was heaving a heavy supply cabinet in front of the classroom door. A few of the more level-headed students, including Chloe Winters, the class rep, rushed to help.
Chloe's face was pale but set with determination. As she strained against the cabinet, a faint, shimmering aura flickered around her. Leo's new skill instinctively activated.
[Appraise: Chloe Winters]
[Race: Human]
[Level: 1]
[Skill: Aegis (E-Rank) - Conjures a small, personal barrier of hard light. Duration and strength are limited.]
[Store Skill Blueprint? Y/N]
Leo mentally selected Yes. A strange sensation, like a mental photocopy, occurred. The blueprint for [Aegis] was now his.
So, he wasn't the only one. He glanced around wildly. Maya, the quiet bookworm who always had her nose in a fantasy novel, was staring at her hands, a tiny, flickering spark of electricity dancing between her fingers. His [Appraise] fed him the data.
[Skill: Arcane Bolt (E-Rank) - Fires a single, weak projectile of arcane energy.]
[Store Skill Blueprint? Y/N]
Yes. Another blueprint stored.
Then the main door to the art studio splintered. Not from the outside, but from the inside. The storage closet at the back of the class exploded outwards in a shower of wood and canvas. Standing in the wreckage was the real stuff of nightmares.
It was a grotesque, vaguely humanoid creature the size of a large dog, its skin a mottled, sickly green. It had too many joints in its elongated limbs, all tipped with incredibly sharp claws and its head had a long wolf like maw filled with needle-like teeth. It let out another wet, chittering shriek.
[Appraise: Tecron spawn (F-Rank Minion)]
[A failed construct of malformed biomass. Driven by base hunger.]
[Weakness: Its amorphous form is susceptible to focused piercing damage and fire.]
The class descended into pure bedlam. Students scrambled over each other, screaming, trying to get away. The creature lunged, its bladed limb scything towards a paralyzed student.
"No!" Chloe screamed. She thrust her hands out, and a hexagonal pane of shimmering light, no bigger than a dinner plate, materialized in front of the student. The creature's claw slammed into it with a sound like a gong, and the [Aegis] shattered into motes of light. Chloe cried out, stumbling back as if struck.
The Spawn recoiled for a second, then focused on her, its maw drooling.
Focused piercing damage. Fire.
Leo's mind, usually buzzing with a dozen different ideas for a painting, went utterly, terrifyingly calm. He had two skill blueprints: [Aegis] and [Arcane Bolt]. One was defense, one was a weak attack. Alone, they were useless to him. But together...
[Fuse Skill Blueprints: Aegis + Arcane Bolt? Y/N]
Yes.
Blue light enveloped his hands. In his mind's eye, he saw the two blueprints swirl together, the defensive matrix of [Aegis] intertwining with the projective energy of [Arcane Bolt]. They solidified with a soft chime.
[Skill Forged: Aegis Bolt (E-Rank)]
[A composite skill. Projects a small, hard-light barrier that can be fired as a kinetic projectile. Soul-bound to Leo Vance.]
He had a weapon. A real, usable skill that was his alone.
The Corrupted Spawn shrieked and leaped at Chloe.
Leo didn't think. He didn't need a stick or a weapon. He simply raised his hand, feeling the strange new energy coursing through him, and focused on the creature. A hexagonal pane of hard light, identical to Chloe's but thrumming with violent energy, materialized in the air before his palm.
With a grunt of effort, he thrust his hand forward. The Aegis Bolt shot across the room, spinning like a discus of solid light. It wasn't fast, but it was accurate. It struck the leaping creature square in the chest.
There was a flash of brilliant blue light and a sound like a thunderclap in a tin can. The creature was thrown backward, a sizable chunk of its chest blown out. Black, viscous blood spurted from the wound. It thrashed on the ground, its shrieks turning into gurgles, before falling still.
[Corrupted Spawn Defeated!]
[+10 Experience Points.]
The silence that followed was deafening. Every eye in the room was on him. On the handsome art student who had just killed a monster with a gesture.
Chloe stared at him, her breath catching, her own hands still raised in a futile defensive posture. Maya looked from her own sparking fingers to Leo, her eyes wide with a dawning, theoretical understanding. Luna, the school idol who had been hiding behind an overturned easel, peeked out, her usual bubbly persona replaced by sheer, unvarnished shock.
Mr. Davos was the first to speak, his voice hoarse. "Leo... what did you do?"
Leo looked down at his hands. They were trembling. He could still feel the phantom vibration of the fusion, the thrill of creation mixed with the horror of what he'd created it for. He had made something new. Something that belonged only to him.
A new screen popped up, personal and terrifying.
[Your party has been challenged. The Tutorial Dungeon: 'Broken Academy' has been generated.]
[Primary Objective: Survive until sunrise.]
[Secondary Objective: Locate and secure the Designated Safe Zone (Artifact: 'Heart of the School').]
[Failure: Death.]
Leo looked from the screen to the faces of his classmates—to Chloe's shaken resolve, to Maya's analytical fear, to Luna's sheer panic. They had simple, System-given skills. He had... a factory.
He took a deep breath, the scent of ozone and something burnt filling his lungs. This was no longer a boring, normal world. And he was no longer just a pretty face with a sketchpad.
He met Chloe's eyes, then Maya's, then Luna's. "I think," Leo said, his voice steadier than he felt, "we need to stick together. I can make us things no one else can." He gestured to the dissolving corpse. "But I need your help to do it."
The potential was there, shimmering in the air like one of his unfinished sketches. He just had to find the right components to complete the picture.
And he may have just found them