The Great Hall of the Royal Adventurer Academy was a symphony of nervous energy. Hundreds of sixteen-year-olds stood in tightly packed rows, 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 and library dust, was now thick with the cloying sweetness of cheap perfume and the metallic tang of adolescent anxiety. Sunlight streamed through 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 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 cold, calculated observation.
He ignored the excited whispers, a symphony of hopes and fears that filled the cavernous hall.
"My brother got a C-Rank Knight class. If I get anything less, my father will disown me."
"Please, gods, anything but Farmer. Anything."
"They say Helena Croft is destined for at least a B-Rank. Her family's lineage is almost pure."
He had lived through this once before. The awe and wonder were gone, replaced by a cynical, analytical detachment. He wasn't here to be blessed by the gods. He was here to collect his weapon, and his camouflage.
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. He remembered she would awaken as a B-Rank Pyromancer. He also remembered finding her charred corpse in the Dragon's Maw dungeon three years from now, a victim of her own hubris. Over by another pillar, Thomas Crane, a lanky commoner everyone mocked for his stutter, was visibly trembling. In two years, he would awaken a rare S-Rank 'Sound Weaver' class and become one of the kingdom's most feared assassins. A potential asset, or a future threat. Zero filed the information away.
Knowledge was power. And in this hall filled with nascent potential, Zero was a god in all but name. A bitter, broken god of a future that would never be.
His eyes finally landed on a cluster of nobles near the grand dais. And there she was. Celeste. She stood beside Leo, a vision of serene piety in her simple but exquisitely tailored white gown. She offered a kind, reassuring smile to a nervous-looking girl beside her. The gesture was so perfect, so saintly, that it made the scar on Zero's soul ache with a phantom, burning cold.
The ghost of Ashe inside him, a maelstrom of rage and grief, screamed to be let out. He wanted to stride through the crowd, to call her out for the monster she was, to see the shock and fear on her perfect face.
But the new, cold part of him, the part that was Zero, held the ghost in a cage of ice. Not yet, the cold voice whispered in his mind. Revenge is not a wildfire. It is a perfectly forged blade, sharpened in secret and delivered at the opportune moment.
"All supplicants, silence!" a voice boomed, the command amplified by a subtle touch of mana. 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. Step forward when your name is called, place your hand upon the stone, and accept your destiny."
The ceremony began. 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.
"Gideon Moss. Class: Farmer. Rank: F." A smattering of sympathetic, pitying glances. The boy shuffled away, his future set in stone.
Zero watched, his expression unreadable. He wasn't focused on the results. He was focused on the System itself. He saw the faint, golden line of energy flow from the stone into each student. But in his glitched vision, something else happened. 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 a holy relic. It's a terminal. A server node. It connects everyone to a central host, the '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.
Finally, the names dwindled to the last few commoners.
"Ashe."
The name echoed in the now-quiet hall. Zero felt a phantom twinge, the last dying nerve of the boy he had been. He pushed it down and walked forward, his steps measured and even. He could feel the hundreds of pairs of eyes on him, the collective weight of their low expectations.
He reached the dais and placed his hand on the Awakening Stone. It was cool to the touch, and it pulsed with a faint, rhythmic energy, like a sleeping heart. The golden light that enveloped him was noticeably weaker than it had been for the others, a pale, watery glow like a dying candle.
The text appeared above his head, the letters a dull, unimpressive bronze.
[Ashe. Class: Porter. Rank: F.]
The words hung in the air, a final, damning judgment. A wave of snickers and cruel whispers rippled through the hall, a fresh movement in the symphony.
"A Porter? What a waste."
"My cousin's a Porter, hauls manure for the Royal Stables."
The humiliation was a tangible force, a wave of secondhand shame that washed over the crowd. He 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, to be erased from existence rather than endure the burning shame.
Now, he felt a strange, cold calm.
He walked back to his spot in the shadows, his face a perfect mask of numb indifference. He let them see the defeated, broken boy they expected to see. He let them believe they had him measured and found him wanting.
Let them whisper, he thought, the corner of his lip twitching in a smile only he could feel. Let them laugh. Let them pity the poor, useless F-Ranker.
He saw Celeste give him a brief, pitying glance before turning back to her conversation with Leo. That single, dismissive look was more fuel for the cold fire in his soul than a hundred insults.
The ceremony concluded. As the students began to disperse, a new, far more immediate problem presented itself. Marcus Vance, the arrogant noble who had tormented him in his past life, was swaggering towards him, his two burly cronies in tow. He had just received a B+ Mana Knight class and was radiating a smug, self-satisfied aura, looking for an easy target to solidify his new status.
Zero's mind raced. In his first life, he had shrunk away from this confrontation, earning him the brand of "coward." This time, he would not run. But what would he do? The alien System inside him was an unknown quantity. A weapon with no instruction manual. He didn't know its rules, its limits, its cost. To use it in public was a tremendous risk.
But to be seen as weak, to be seen as the same pathetic Ashe as before, was an even greater one.
He stood his ground, a silent, unassuming figure in the shadow of the pillar, and waited for the confrontation he knew was coming. It was a test. Not of his power, but of the new, cold, and terrifying thing that was growing in the ruins of his soul.