Dev stood in the cold, gray hub, his newly-repaired soul-form humming with a power that felt almost too large for its container. The warm, intoxicating flood of Soul-Essence from the duel had settled, leaving a sense of dense, coiled strength.
Selina was watching him, but not at him. Her gaze was fixed on the updated Status panel floating beside his shoulder, her head tilted slightly. The cold, bored indifference she'd worn since his arrival was gone. It had been replaced by a different kind of coldness—a focused, sharp, professionalism. The look a butcher gives a prize-winning bull.
He was no longer trash to be disposed of. He was a resource to be processed.
"Level 4. Sync Rate 4%. Title: 'Indomitable'. S-Rank Combat Assessment," she recited, her voice flat, as if reading an inventory list. "The System's initial assessment of your S-Rank potential appears to have been... accurate. Your performance was acceptable."
She waved her hand, and the panel vanished.
"By passing the Title Duel, your contract has been validated. Your status as 'Dreg' is revoked." She met his gaze, her eyes as sterile as the hub itself. "You are now formally an Initiate of the Ebonguard. Do not expect congratulations. You have merely proven you are not a complete waste of our Faction's resources."
Dev said nothing. He didn't care about her congratulations. He only cared about the feeling of his new stats—the (SPI: 25) that made the hub feel sharp and clear, the (RES: 24) that made her cold aura feel like a mild breeze, the (STR: 9) that made him feel... solid.
"Your Title, 'Indomitable'," she continued, "is more than a simple stat boost. It is a permanent marker on your soul-form. It identifies you as an asset with high-Resistance potential. Other Factions will be able to see it. It makes you a target."
"Good," Dev said. The word was cold, and it surprised even him.
Selina's lip twitched, the closest he'd ever seen her come to an expression. "Good. Your previous weapon was scrap metal, destroyed by your own incompetence. An Initiate cannot proceed with such. Your performance has granted you access to the Faction Armory. You have 114 Nexus Shards. They are useless as savings. Spend them."
She turned and walked, not to a portal, but to a section of the gray wall that dissolved into an archway at her approach. Dev followed.
The room beyond was not the trash heap he'd seen before. It was a clean, sterile, black-walled chamber, lit by the same cold, sourceless light. On racks were weapons. Dozens of them. All were matte black, functional, and humming with a faint trace of power. Short swords, daggers, bucklers, staves.
"Faction-grade, Tier 1," Selina said, gesturing to the racks. "Suitable for Initiates, Levels 1 through 5. Choose. And be quick. Your time in the Nexus is almost over."
Dev walked past the daggers. He needed reach. He recalled the shattering of his rusted blade against the Punisher's arm. He needed durability.
He stopped in front of a row of short swords. They were simple, leaf-bladed, with no crossguard and a hilt wrapped in rough, black leather. He reached out, his (SPI) stat flaring. His [Spatial Awareness] didn't just feel the weapon; it probed it. He could sense the density of the metal, the cold, sleeping energy within it. It felt solid. Real.
[Ebonguard Initiate's Sword]
[Tier: 1 (Level 1-5)]
[A basic, Faction-forged blade. Durable and sharp.]
[Cost: 100 Nexus Shards]
"This one," Dev said.
He picked it up. A prompt appeared, asking him to confirm the purchase. He willed 'Yes'. 100 Shards vanished from his total. The sword felt heavy in his hand, a solid, reassuring weight. It was a real weapon.
When he turned, Selina was already at the archway.
"Your task is simple, Initiate," she said, her voice already distant. "The Weeping Woods was a nursery. Your Title Duel was a graduation. Your real work, the reason our Faction has invested in you, begins at Level 5."
She looked back at him, her eyes seeming to pierce right through him. "This 'Nexus' is a battlefield, and we are losing a war you cannot yet comprehend. Get to Level 5. Grind in the woods. Kill everything you can. When you are ready, we will deploy you to a real warzone. Do not fail."
Before he could respond, the familiar, powerful pull of the waking world hooked into his soul. The gray hub dissolved, and Selina's cold, calculating face vanished into the darkness.
Dev awoke. The transition was seamless. He opened his eyes to his dark, gray bedroom, but the world was different.
The 2% Sync Rate had faded his bruises.
The 4% Sync Rate, combined with his new, powerful Level 4 (CON) stat, had erased them.
He didn't just feel "better." He felt healed. He threw the blanket off and sat up, his movements fluid and certain. He rushed to the cracked mirror in the bathroom, his heart pounding a strange, heavy rhythm.
He stared at his own reflection, and for a moment, he didn't recognize the person looking back.
The sickly, yellow-green map of his old life was gone. His skin was clear. Pale, yes, but healthy. He was still skinny, his ribs still a visible ladder under his skin—the 5% physical change hadn't happened yet—but he was unblemished.
The evidence of the beating that had killed him, the marks he had woken up with every single day, had vanished as if they had never been.
He looked normal. And on his frame, "normal" looked utterly alien.
He got dressed, the school uniform feeling strange on his new, painless body. As he walked, the world felt different. His 4% Synced (AGI: 9) gave him a silent, fluid grace. He didn't shuffle; he moved. His 4% Synced (SPI: 25) was a revelation. His [Spatial Awareness] was a constant, 360-degree sphere of perception. He felt the rumble of traffic, the chatter of the crowd, the hostility of a barking dog—all as clear, distinct data points in his mind.
He was a predator, walking through a sleeping herd.
He knew the ambush was coming before he even saw it.
As he walked down the main school corridor, he felt it: a spike of raw, unfiltered hostility from a side hallway to his right, the one that led to the bathrooms. His [Spatial Awareness] thrummed, a familiar warning. 'Hostile entity. Level 0.'
He didn't slow down. He didn't speed up.
He simply turned the corner into the empty hallway.
Devis was there, his face a blotchy, purple mask of pure rage. The public humiliation from yesterday had clearly eaten him alive. He wasn't with his crew. This was personal.
Devis didn't talk. He didn't posture. He just roared—a raw, animal sound of fury—and threw a wild, powerful haymaker, putting all his weight into a punch aimed directly at Dev's head.
And then, the world stopped.
It didn't literally slow down. But Dev's (SPI: 25) and (AGI: 9) processing speed was so profoundly superhuman that the attack seemed... lazy.
He saw it all. The tensing of Devis's shoulder. The rotation of his hip. The predictable arc of the fist. The grimace of exertion on his face. It was pathetic. It was a Level 0 attack.
Dev didn't flinch. He didn't dodge.
He simply raised his left hand, opened his palm, and caught it.
THWACK.
The sound echoed in the empty hallway, a wet, percussive smack of a fist hitting an immovable object.
Devis froze. His punch had been stopped. Caught. His fist was enveloped in Dev's hand, and it wasn't a struggle. It was just... held. He tried to pull back, his eyes widening in confusion, and then in a sudden, cold spike of genuine fear.
He couldn't move. He was trapped. Dev's 4% Synced (STR: 9) was like a steel vise. This was impossible.
Dev looked at him, his eyes completely, utterly empty. The cold, analytical gaze of the hunter who had stared down the Punisher.
"Don't," he said. His voice was quiet, flat, and dead.
Then, he pushed.
It wasn't a punch. It was a single, firm, contemptuous shove against Devis's chest.
But with his (STR: 9), it was like being hit by a small car. Devis was blasted backward, his feet tripping over each other. He stumbled, completely off-balance, and crashed hard onto his back, the wind knocked out of him in a choked, gagging gasp.
The physical "day-life" plot was over. The threat was neutralized.
Dev stared at the whimpering, gasping bully on the floor for a beat, his mind already moving on. This was a waste of time. He turned to walk away.
And froze.
At the far end of the hallway, standing by the intersection, was Mina.
She was holding her books to her chest, her knuckles white. She wasn't walking. She wasn't just arriving. She was standing. She had been watching.
She had seen the entire, impossible event. The ambush. The punch. The catch. The effortless, contemptuous shove that had put the school's apex predator on his back.
Her face was pale. The sharp suspicion from yesterday was gone. It had been replaced by something new. A wide-eyed, terrifying, absolute certainty.
She wasn't looking at a boy. She wasn't looking at an anomaly.
She was looking at a monster.
Dev met her gaze for one, long, silent second. Then, without a word, he turned and continued walking, leaving her alone in the hallway with the broken, gasping bully on the floor.