The symphony of whispers died down as Marcus Vance approached. His presence parted the sea of anxious students like a shark's fin through water, a wake of silence and nervous glances following him. He moved with the rolling, entitled gait of a man who had never been denied anything of consequence, his new B+ Mana Knight armor glinting with an ostentatious, almost desperate sheen in the stained-glass light. His two cronies, a pair of burly youths, flanked him, their expressions a perfect blend of sycophantic glee and brutish intent.
Zero didn't move. He remained in the cool, deep shadow of a monolithic stone pillar, a canvas of perfect, unnatural calm. Inside, however, a cold, rapid-fire calculation was taking place. The ghost of Ashe, the boy who had once been his entirety, was a panicked storm of adrenaline and fear, screaming at him to run, to apologize, to make himself small and simply cease to exist. It was a familiar, pathetic instinct, a survival mechanism honed by a lifetime of being prey.
Zero crushed it without a second thought, the new, cold part of his soul clamping down on the old one like a glacier grinding stone to dust.
Marcus Vance. Heir to the Barony of Stillwater, a minor house with major gambling debts. Personality: arrogant, performatively cruel, and pathologically insecure. Prone to theatrical displays of dominance to mask his well-documented mediocrity. A hollow threat, but a loud one.
"Well, well," Marcus began, his voice dripping with condescending amusement as he came to a stop a few feet away, forcing the students nearby to scurry back. "If it isn't Ashe, the academy's legendary baggage boy. Tell me, what does an F-Rank Porter even do? Do you get a special skill for folding laundry?"
His cronies laughed on cue, a pair of barking hyenas. The sound was loud and ugly in the cavernous hall.
Zero's eyes flickered down for a fraction of a second, not in submission, but in a sweep of pure, tactical observation. The flagstones of the Great Hall were ancient, worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. Near Marcus's expensive, silver-plated left boot, one stone was slightly uneven, its leading edge raised by less than a finger's width. A flaw. A minute imperfection in the grand design of the hall. A detail a thousand people would walk over and never notice. A detail a dungeon-map theorist, whose very survival once depended on spotting loose rocks and subtle tripwires, would commit to memory instinctively.
He met Marcus's gaze again, his expression utterly, unnervingly flat. "It's a versatile class."
The simple, uninflected response seemed to throw Marcus off. He had expected fear, pleading, or a stammered apology. Boredom was an insult he didn't know how to process. It was like swinging a sword and hitting empty air.
"Versatile?" Marcus sneered, puffing his chest out as he stepped closer, deliberately invading Zero's personal space. The scent of expensive, cloying cologne washed over him. "Is that what you call being destined to haul the crap of your betters? I am a Mana Knight. I will be slaying dragons while you're polishing my boots."
"Your boots could use it," Zero said, his voice quiet but carrying with an unnatural clarity in the sudden lull. His gaze dropped to Marcus's immaculate sabatons. "There's a scuff on the left toe. From where you tripped on the stairs outside the east entrance this morning."
Marcus's face went from smug to thunderous in an instant. It was true, of course. Zero remembered the minor, clumsy incident from his first life. But to Marcus, in front of this audience, it was a public declaration of his imperfection, a pinprick to his massively inflated ego. He wasn't a flawless hero; he was just a clumsy boy who tripped on stairs, and this F-Rank nothing had just announced it to the world.
"You little gutter rat," he snarled, his hand balling into a fist. A faint, tell-tale shimmer of blue mana, raw and uncontrolled, began to envelop it. "Think you're clever? I'm going to teach you your place."
He lunged forward, swinging a wide, telegraphed punch aimed squarely at Zero's face. It was a sloppy, arrogant attack, all power and no technique, meant to humiliate, not just injure. The crowd gasped, a collective intake of breath. This was it. The first fight of the new school year. The B+ noble versus the F-Rank porter. A public execution.
Zero didn't flinch. He didn't dodge. The world seemed to slow, time dilating around him as his mind became a supercooled processor, analyzing vectors and probabilities.
Action: Right hook. Speed: moderate. User is off-balance, leading with his pride instead of his feet. Probability of impact: 98%.
Ashe's ghost screamed. Zero acted.
He didn't try to block the punch. He didn't need to. His eyes were locked on the flawed flagstone at Marcus's feet. As the mana-infused fist flew towards his face, Zero focused his will on that flaw, on the simple, physical reality of the loose cobblestone. He envisioned a subtle, kinetic echo, a transfer of force. This wasn't a spell; it was a nudge. A whisper to the physics of the world.
His System, the alien parasite in his soul, responded instantly. A flicker of corrupted white text, visible only to him, burned across his vision. The characters were jagged, like cracks in reality.
[ECHO OF KINETICS... CONTAINED.]
The cobblestone beneath Marcus's advancing foot did not move. But the concept of its sturdiness, its kinetic resistance, was captured. For a single, infinitesimal moment, it was as if that patch of floor ceased to exist as a solid object.
The second command was just as instinctual, a simple release of his will.
[ECHO UNLEASHED.]
The kinetic energy was not just returned; it was inverted. Instead of the floor pushing back on Marcus's foot, the floor gave way, then slammed upwards with the exact force of his own aggressive stomp.
The impact was brutally, exquisitely efficient. The heavy, sharp-edged stone slammed into the arch of Marcus's foot with the force of a perfectly timed hammer blow. The delicate metatarsal bones, unsupported and in mid-stride, stood no chance.
A sickening crunch echoed in the now-silent hall.
Marcus screamed—a high, undignified shriek of pure, unadulterated agony. His attack vanished, the mana around his fist dissipating into nothingness. His leg buckled, his balance evaporated, and the momentum of his own punch carried him forward into a graceless, sprawling heap on the floor. He landed hard, his chin cracking audibly against the flagstones.
To the stunned onlookers, it was a freak accident of impossible timing. It looked as though the arrogant Mana Knight, in his haste to bully a lowly Porter, had tripped on a loose stone and broken his own foot like a clumsy child. It was pathetic. It was humiliating. It was, to a growing number of students, absolutely hilarious.
A few students choked back snorts of laughter. Helena Croft stared, her mouth agape in disbelief. Celeste's perfect brow furrowed in confusion, her analytical gaze flicking from the whimpering Marcus to the utterly still Zero, a flicker of something unreadable in her eyes.
Zero stood over the moaning noble, his shadow falling across his prone form. He hadn't moved an inch from his starting position. His face was a mask of cold indifference, as if he were merely a bystander to the event.
"You were right," Zero said, his voice calm and clear in the hushed hall. "Mana Knights are destined for great things. Just try not to trip over your own destiny on the way there."
He turned his back on the scene and began to walk away, his footsteps measured and silent. He didn't look at anyone, didn't acknowledge the whispers that were now erupting all around him. The crowd parted for him now, not with pity, but with a new kind of energy—one of confusion, of shock, and of a sliver of newfound, inexplicable respect.
Behind him, Marcus Vance, cradling his shattered foot, stared at his back with eyes full of pure, unadulterated hatred. "I'll kill you for this!" he shrieked, his voice cracking with pain and humiliation. "You hear me, you worthless piece of trash? You are dead!"
Zero didn't look back. He kept walking, his stride even and unhurried. The ghost of Ashe was silent now, stunned into submission by the cold, precise violence of his new self. Zero had won. He had established a new narrative. Not a hero, not a villain, but an enigma. Something to be wary of.
But his internal monologue was cold and clear, already moving on to the next problem. Threat acknowledged. Probability of reprisal: 100%. Expected location: the shadowed alley between the academy and the dormitories. He is too proud to let this stand. He will send his cronies.
He pushed open the heavy oak doors of the Great Hall and stepped out into the bright afternoon sun, knowing full well that his next test was already waiting for him in the darkness. The real lesson wasn't for Marcus. It was for the world. The age of being stepped on was over.