The sun rose over Orizon. The light hitting my window was a harsh, crystalline blue that felt like a needle to my eyes. I was still slumped against the bedframe, my skin the color of parched parchment, held together by sheer stubbornness and a single unit of mana.
[Mana Pool: 1/100]
The Stone was a cold lump behind my sternum, its maintenance draw now a rhythmic, hungry pulse. Because I was at the absolute bottom of my pool, my "Blank Slate" physiology was reacting to the pressure differential. My body was acting like a vacuum, pulling in ambient mana from the Tower's dense atmosphere with frantic efficiency.
On paper, my regeneration was at its peak. I could feel the energy rushing into my pores—a tingling, magnetic surge that should have filled my pool in minutes. But the Stone sat right at the intake. Like a high-speed turbine placed in a wind tunnel, it intercepted every drop of energy before it could settle.
The "Mana Suction" was keeping me alive, but it wasn't making me stronger. I was a high-speed conduit—energy rushed in, the Stone consumed it to maintain the Vault, and my "storage" stayed at a flat, agonizing one percent. I was running at redline just to stay in neutral.
I forced myself to stand, my electrolyte-heavy honey-water mixture sloshing in my stomach. Every muscle was locked in a violent, microscopic shiver from the Endothermic Arrest I'd performed on my shoulder.
Akhtar was waiting on the white marble grounds when I arrived. He didn't look like a teacher; he looked like a predator waiting for a weak link to snap.
"You look like a corpse, student," he said. "The 'failed cycle' clearly took more out of you than I thought."
"I'm fine," I lied. Each word felt like a crack in a frozen lake.
"We shall see. Today is about Kinetic Dispersion." Akhtar raised a hand, and a spinning orb of compressed air formed in his palm. "If you cannot generate mana, you must learn to redirect the force of those who can. Deflection is a matter of angles, not power."
My heart hammered. My left collarbone was a jagged mess, held together only by the frozen, rigid state of my muscles. If I took a direct hit to that shoulder, the "cryogenic" stabilization would shatter like glass. "Great, Of all things this is the lesson I get??!!" I complained in my mind not believing this bad luck.
Akhtar flicked his wrist. The air-bolt hissed toward me.
I didn't try to block. I used Vector Addition. I stepped into its path at a thirty-degree angle, letting the sphere glance off my right shoulder. The force still sent a jarring vibration through my frame, threatening to undo the delicate thermal balance in my left arm.
The vibration caused my focus to slip. The "Mana Suction" faltered for a micro-second, and the Stone—unwilling to let its maintenance fee go unpaid—snapped the last unit of mana from my pool.
[0/100 Mana]
My vision tunneled. My heartbeat skipped—a hollow, terrifying thud—as the Stone reached past the empty pool and gripped the bio-electric current of my heart. Vitality Drain. It felt like my very life was being unzipped from the marrow out.
"Again," Akhtar commanded. He moved—a blur of blue light—closing the distance in a second. He slammed a palm toward my chest, a "High-Pressure" strike meant to test my internal stability.
I did the only thing a weak scientist could do when faced with a superior force: I performed a Momentum Transfer. I didn't push back; I let my body go limp, turning myself into a projectile. I used the "Work" he put into the strike to carry me away from him rather than letting the energy shatter my ribs.
I hit the marble floor and slid ten feet. The frozen block of my shoulder cracked. A trickle of warm blood began to seep through the frost on my skin.
"Enough," Akhtar said, standing over me. His voice was cold, his Mana-Sight deactivating as if he couldn't bear to look at such a "blown-out" signature. "Go to the infirmary. If you aren't recovered by tomorrow, I will report your 'accident' to the Council. They don't keep weaklings who can't hold their own weight."
He turned and walked away, leaving me in the dirt.
I stayed on the ground. As the Stone had forced the "Pure Mana" residue from the hound to brace my skeletal structure against Akhtar's blow, I felt a searing, permanent change. The mana didn't just brace my bones; it etched into them.
The conductivity of my nerves increased, but it came with a jagged, phantom pain that I knew would never leave. I had force-loaded my hardware. My body could now handle higher energy flows, but every breath now felt like I was breathing ground glass. It wasn't a gift; it was a scar.
The infirmary was a trap. They would warm me, they would patch the bone, and then they would log my "instability" in the Tower's permanent records. Akhtar wasn't giving me advice; he was giving me a timer. In twenty-four hours, the Council would see my failure .
I didn't need a healer.
The "Mana Suction" was still pulling mana from the air, but I was too damaged for it to matter. If I wanted to survive tomorrow, I needed energy that wasn't tracked, wasn't gentle, and wasn't meant for students. I needed to reach Tier 2 tonight, or there wouldn't be enough of me left to report.
I sat up, clutching my bleeding arm. The Rogue Path was about to get a lot more criminal.