The grip on my shoulder was tight, digging into the trapezius muscle just enough to be painful. It was the kind of grip that said, I have nothing better to do than make your day miserable.
"I'm talking to you, NPC," Jareth sneered, leaning down. His breath smelled like peppermint and arrogance.
I didn't struggle. In a world governed by stats and levels, struggling when your Strength is F-tier against a guy who probably had a C-tier physique was just asking for a dislocated shoulder.
"Look," I said, keeping my voice steady, though my heart was doing that nervous tap-dance again. "I'm just trying to get to the assessment. You're Jareth, right? House Pymbruk?"
I guessed. I didn't actually know. But in Aethelgard, if you threw a rock at a minor noble, you had a fifty-fifty chance of hitting a 'Pymbruk', 'Thorne', or 'Valis'. It was a safe bet for a generic bully.
Jareth blinked, the aggression pausing for a microsecond. "House Pyke, actually. And don't pretend you know me, Grey-coat."
"Right, Pyke. My mistake," I said quickly. "Great house. Known for their… lances?"
"Swordsmanship," he corrected, looking insulted.
"Exactly. Swordsmanship." I pointed casually toward the arched doorway leading to the courtyard. "Anyway, I think I saw Professor Hale watching from the balcony. You know how the Combat Instructors are about unauthorized duels on the first day."
Jareth froze. His eyes darted upward toward the stone balcony overlooking the exit. It was empty, of course. But the mere mention of Professor Hale—the Academy's terrifying Combat Head—was usually enough to scare any first-year straight.
Usually.
Jareth squinted at the empty balcony, then looked back at me with a smirk. "Nice try. Hale is on the stage. I just saw him."
Damn. I hadn't checked the stage personnel closely enough. My knowledge of the book was failing me because the book didn't have a scene where a nobody gets mugged in the hallway five minutes after the opening speech.
Jareth tightened his grip. "You think you're clever? I hate clever peasants."
He pulled back his free hand, making a fist. The silver ring on his finger caught the light. That was going to leave a mark.
"Hey!" a voice rang out. sharp and bright. "You're blocking the traffic flow."
We both turned.
Leaning against a stone pillar a few feet away was a girl. She had short, messy red hair that looked like she'd cut it herself with a dagger, and she was tossing a gold coin in the air with practiced ease. Her uniform was modified—sleeves rolled up, tie loose.
Ria. The Mischievous Trickster.
She wasn't looking at us. she was watching the coin flip. Cling, catch. Cling, catch.
"Walk around, Red," Jareth snapped, though he looked a little less confident. Ria was a commoner, but her entrance exam scores were rumored to be insane.
"Can't," Ria said, finally catching the coin and snapping it into her pocket. She pushed off the pillar and walked toward us, her boots clicking on the stone floor. "You two are creating a bottleneck. And I have a bet with a friend that I can get to the affinity crystal before the nobles clog up the line."
She stopped right next to Jareth, looking up at him with eyes that danced with dangerous amusement.
"So," she said, popping the 'p', "unless you want to explain to the crowd behind us why they're waiting in the heat, I suggest you move."
Jareth looked behind him. Sure enough, a small queue of irritated students was forming. Being a bully was fine; inconveniencing fifty people at once was social suicide.
He shoved me backward. I stumbled, catching my balance on a wooden bench.
"Lucky day, Grey-coat," Jareth muttered, adjusting his popped collar. "Pray you don't get sorted into my block."
He stormed off through the doors, his heavy footsteps echoing.
I let out a breath, straightening my jacket. "Thanks," I said to Ria. "He was about two seconds away from rearranging my face."
Ria didn't smile. She looked me up and down, her gaze lingering on my hands, then my plain face. It wasn't a look of interest; it was the look of someone inspecting a boring item on a shelf.
"Didn't do it for you," she said breezily, walking past me. "I was serious about the bet. If I lose, I have to clean the alchemy vats for a week."
She didn't wait for a response. She just waved a hand over her shoulder and vanished into the sunlight.
Cold, I thought. But consistent.
In the novel, Ria is self-serving and chaotic. She helps people only when it aligns with her fun or her wallet. At least she was acting according to character.
I rubbed my sore shoulder and followed the crowd into the courtyard.
The Central Courtyard of Saint Caelum Academy was a masterpiece of high-fantasy architecture. White limestone tiles stretched out in a perfect circle, surrounded by arched walkways draped in ivy. In the center stood the Affinity Crystal—a jagged, ten-foot-tall obelisk of raw mana quartz that hummed with a low, vibrating frequency.
The heat was worse out here. The sun beat down on the students, dividing them naturally into groups. The nobles stood in the shade of the eastern overhangs, fanned by magical breezes cast by their retainers. The commoners, like me, roasted in the center.
I found a spot near the back, leaning against a warm pillar, and brought up my internal status again.
[Current Story Stability: 99.5%]
It had dropped. Just by 0.3%, but it dropped.
Why? I watched Jareth shoving his way to the front of the line. Because I created a substitute villain?
In the original plot, Vance's arrest wasn't supposed to happen. He was supposed to be the "First Rival" for at least thirty chapters. By removing him, I'd forced the universe to fill the void with Jareth. But Jareth was a makeshift patch. He didn't have the backstory, the family influence, or the specific grudge against the Hero that Vance had.
The story was fragile.
"Next!" called out Professor Hale, who had apparently teleported from the stage to the courtyard. He was a massive man with scars running down his arms and a voice like grinding gravel.
The testing began.
It was boring at first. Student touches crystal. Crystal glows a color. Red for Fire, Blue for Water, Green for Wind, Yellow for Earth. Most got faint glows—Tier 1 or Tier 2 potential.
Then came the Golden Rows.
"Lysandra of House Aethelgard," Hale announced.
A hush fell over the crowd. Even the birds seemed to stop chirping. Lysandra stepped up to the crystal. She moved with that eerie grace, her hand reaching out to touch the jagged surface.
Hummmmm.
The crystal didn't just glow; it sang. A blinding column of pure white light shot into the sky, piercing the clouds.
"Holy Affinity. Tier... 9," Hale read, his voice actually wavering slightly. "Potential: S-Rank."
The students erupted into whispers.
"S-Rank? On the first day?"
"That's the Duke's daughter for you."
"She's a monster."
I watched Lysandra. She didn't look arrogant. She looked... tired. She gave a polite curtsy and walked back to her spot.
Perfect execution, I thought. Just like the book.
"Next. Kaelen... no last name."
The whispering changed tone. It went from awe to mockery.
"A commoner?"
"Look at his hair. Did he sleep in a barn?"
Kaelen walked up. He looked even more bored than before. He shoved his hands in his pockets, walking with a slouch.
Now, this was the moment.
I tensed up, watching closely.
In the book, this is where Vance's sabotage kicks in. Vance was supposed to have placed a dampening rune on the crystal base earlier that morning. When Kaelen touches it, the crystal is supposed to stay dark. Everyone laughs. They call him "The Defect." Kaelen accepts the insult silently, knowing his power is just dormant, setting up his "underdog" arc.
But Vance was in a dungeon cell.
I scanned the base of the crystal. No rune. No faint magical shimmer of sabotage.
Oh no.
If the dampener isn't there...
Kaelen reached out and slapped his hand on the crystal like he was high-fiving a wall.
BOOM.
It wasn't light. It was a shockwave.
The air in the courtyard cracked. A swirl of deep, violent purple and black energy spiraled out of the crystal, whipping up a gale that knocked several students off their feet. The sky darkened for a split second.
The crystal turned a deep, abyssal black, pulsing with a heavy, gravity-crushing aura.
"Darkness Affinity," Hale shouted over the wind, shielding his eyes. "Tier... Unknown! Potential... S-Rank!"
The wind died down as quickly as it had started.
Kaelen pulled his hand back, looking slightly surprised. "Huh," he said, loud enough for the stunned silence to carry his voice. "Expected less."
He walked back to the crowd.
But the crowd didn't laugh. They didn't call him "The Defect."
They backed away. They looked at him with fear. Absolute, primal terror. Darkness affinity was rare, and often associated with the Demon King's lineage.
"He's... he's one of them?" someone whispered.
"Did you see that color? That's not normal magic."
I put my face in my hands.
I broke the Underdog Arc.
Kaelen wasn't supposed to be revealed as a powerhouse until Chapter 20 during the Forest Expedition. He was supposed to be the "trash" student that Lysandra takes pity on, forming their bond.
Now? He was the scary S-Rank warlock. Lysandra wasn't looking at him with pity. She was looking at him with suspicion. Her hand was hovering near the hilt of the ceremonial rapier at her hip.
[Narrative Deviation Detected.]
[Story Stability: 95.0%]
"Five percent drop in one event," I muttered. "At this rate, the world ends by Tuesday."
I needed to fix this. Or at least, steer it. If Lysandra and Kaelen became enemies instead of allies, the main plot—the defeat of the Demon King—would fail.
"Next! Ren!"
I froze.
It was my turn.
I pushed off the pillar. My legs felt like jelly. I walked toward the crystal, feeling hundreds of eyes on me—not because they cared, but because they were still reeling from Kaelen's display and were looking for something normal to cleanse their palates.
I approached the humming obelisk. It was warm, radiating the residual energy of the two S-Ranks.
Okay. I'm an NPC. I have no magic. Just touch it, get the 'None' result, and go sit down.
I reached out. My fingers brushed the smooth quartz.
Nothing happened.
No light. No sound. No wind.
"Affinity: None," Hale announced, sounding bored again. "Potential: F. Next."
A ripple of laughter went through the crowd. "Back to normal," someone joked. "A total dud."
I pulled my hand back, relieved. The camouflage held. I turned to walk away.
But as I turned, I felt a strange sensation. A prickling on the back of my neck.
It wasn't the system text. It was a gaze.
I glanced toward the side of the courtyard, near the faculty seating.
Sitting there, holding a notebook, was a girl with glasses and hair tied in a strict, severe bun. She wasn't looking at Kaelen. She wasn't looking at Lysandra.
She was looking directly at me.
Elara. The Clever Side Heroine.
In the novel, she's the strategist. The one who figures out the villain's weakness. She notices details everyone else misses.
She pushed her glasses up her nose, her eyes narrowing slightly as she stared at me. She scribbled something furiously in her notebook.
I kept walking, forcing myself not to look back, my heart rate spiking.
Why is she looking at me? I tested as 'None'. I'm invisible.
Unless...
I looked down at my hand—the one that had touched the crystal.
There, just on the tip of my index finger, was a tiny, microscopic speck of grey light. It wasn't magic. It looked like the same glitchy smoke as the System Text. It flickered and vanished in a second.
Elara had seen it.
I swallowed hard, merging back into the crowd of grey uniforms.
The ceremony dragged on. I tuned it out, my mind racing. I had changed the villain (Vance to Jareth). I had changed the hero's introduction (Underdog to Monster). And now, the smartest character in the series had me on her radar.
I needed a workspace. I needed to figure out the rules of this "Observer" power before I accidentally deleted gravity.
"All students," Headmaster Eldric's voice boomed as the sun began to set. "Report to your dormitory assignments. Classes begin at dawn."
As the crowd dispersed, I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder again.
I sighed, preparing for Jareth round two. "Look, I really don't have any lunch money—"
I turned around.
It wasn't Jareth.
It was Kaelen.
The Main Hero was standing there, looming over me. Up close, his dark energy was palpable, making the air taste like ozone. He looked intense, his brow furrowed.
"You," Kaelen said. His voice was deep, lacking the social grace of a normal teenager.
"Me?" I squeaked. "I'm just Ren. I got F-rank. Total dud. You saw."
"I saw," Kaelen said. He leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a whisper so low only I could hear. "When the crystal turned black... everyone stepped back. You didn't."
I blinked. I didn't?
I replayed the memory. When the shockwave hit, I had been too busy panicking about the plot deviation to be scared of him.
"You were analyzing the base of the crystal," Kaelen continued, his dark eyes boring into mine. "You were looking for something. What was it?"
Crap. He's sharper than in the book.
In the book, Kaelen is dense until the plot needs him to be smart. But without the "Underdog" mask, he was just... direct.
"I... I thought I saw a bug," I lied. "A big beetle. On the base."
Kaelen stared at me for a long, uncomfortable silence. Then, he let go of my shoulder.
"You're a bad liar, Ren," he said. "But you're the only one here who isn't afraid of me. That makes you interesting."
He turned and walked away toward the dorms, his dark cape billowing.
I stood there, stunned.
Great, I thought, rubbing my face. Just great.
I wanted to be invisible. Instead, I had the attention of the Hero, the suspicion of the Strategist, and a bully waiting to beat me up.
And I still had 0% progress on the "Ending" target.
As I began the long walk to the commoner dorms, the grey text surfaced again, delivering a message that made my steps falter.
[Objective Added: Survive the Night.]
[Reason: Narrative Correction Event Imminent.]
I stopped dead in the middle of the empty courtyard.
"Correction Event?" I whispered to the empty air. "What does that mean?"
A loose cobblestone near my foot suddenly dislodged and flew past my ear like a bullet, shattering against the wall behind me.
I looked at the stone. Then I looked at the sky. The sun had set, and the shadows were getting very long, and very weird.
"Right," I said, breaking into a run. "It means the world is trying to kill me."