The reprieve was a fragile thing, a thin sheet of ice over deep, dark water. The whispers bought time, not respect. The Practical Evaluation loomed in three weeks—a public spectacle where students would be tested in simulated combat or utility scenarios. My pathetic **[Flicker Step]** alone would be a curiosity at best, a joke at worst. I needed synergy. A second piece to turn a party trick into a plausible skillset.
Machina's solution was, as ever, ruthless in its logic.
**[ANALYSIS: YOUR COMBAT EFFECTIVENESS IS NEGATIVE. YOUR SOMATIC SHELL CANNOT WITHSTAND A DIRECT IMPACT FROM EVEN AN UNARMED, UNENHANCED PEER. [FLICKER STEP] PROVIDES EVASION, BUT EVASION WITHOUT A COUNTER IS MERELY DELAYED DEFEAT. YOU REQUIRE A DEFENSIVE PRINCIPLE.]**
"Defense? With an F-rank core? The weakest barrier spell would shatter me from the inside out," I argued silently, hunched over a tattered bestiary in the library's deepest aisle.
**[INCORRECT. YOU THINK OF DEFENSE AS A WALL. CONSIDER IT AS A LENS. OR A MIRROR. SCANNING ACADEMY THREAT REGISTRY… FILTERING FOR LOW-ENERGY, HIGH-PRINCIPLE DEFENSIVE TRAITS… TARGET IDENTIFIED.]**
The profile that materialized in my vision was not a beast, but a plant. A semi-sentient one.
**TARGET: SILENTFOLD POND-LILY (MATURE COLONY)**
**LOCATION: BOTANICAL CONSERVATORY, HALL OF STILL WATERS**
**THREAT ASSESSMENT: F-RANK (PASSIVE)**
**CORE TRAIT: [KINETIC DISPERSAL FIELD]**
**DESCRIPTION: GENERATES A LOCALIZED, LOW-ENERGY FIELD THAT ABSORBS AND DISSIPATES MINOR IMPACT FORCE AND SOUND VIBRATIONS, PROTECTING ITS DELICATE PETALS. A PRINCIPLE OF DISTRIBUTION AND NEGATION.**
**OBJECTIVE: ARCHIVE THE DISPERSAL PRINCIPLE. RATIONALE: A PASSIVE, LOW-COST DEFENSIVE FIELD WOULD ALLOW YOU TO SURVIVE GLANCING BLOWS OR REDUCE THE IMPACT OF FALLS, SYNERGIZING WITH [FLICKER STEP] TO CREATE A VIABLE 'EVASIVE TANK' ARCHETYPE FOR ASSESSMENT PURPOSES.**
A flower. I was going to steal from a flower. The absurdity was almost comforting.
The Botanical Conservatory was easier to access than the Menagerie, but no less awe-inspiring. The Hall of Still Waters was a tranquil, humid space filled with placid pools and floating flora. The Silentfold Lilies were breathtaking: large, pearlescent blooms that seemed to drink the light, floating on water so still it looked like glass. The air around them was peculiarly hushed, as if sound itself died at their periphery.
**[APPROACH. PHYSICAL CONTACT IS REQUIRED FOR OPTIMAL ANALYSIS OF THE FIELD'S STRUCTURE. THE LILY IS NON-HOSTILE. ITS DEFENSE IS ENTIRELY PASSIVE.]**
I knelt by the pool's edge, the damp stone soaking through my trousers. Up close, the Lily's field was palpable to my **[Mana-Sense]**. It wasn't a shield; it was a complex, gossamer web of energy surrounding the bloom, a vibrating matrix that seemed to *catch* incoming energy—the faint vibration of my breath, the minute kinetic energy of a drifting spore—and spread it out into the surrounding air and water until it was nothing.
The principle was *dissipation*. Not blocking, but accepting and diffusing. Turning a punch into a push, a push into a breeze.
I reached out, slowly, and let my fingertips brush the very edge of a petal.
The sensation was extraordinary. The slight pressure of my touch didn't vanish, but it *spread*. The feeling localized in my fingertip diffused up my hand, into my wrist, becoming a faint, warm tingle rather than a point of contact. It was as if the Lily was teaching my own body its trick.
I closed my eyes, focusing entirely on the field's structure. I visualized my own pathetic mana, not as a wall, but as a net. A spiderweb designed to tremble and distribute, not to hold. I thought of the Mossback's patience, of accepting force rather than resisting it. Of the Glimmerwisp's sensitivity, feeling the energy to understand how to break it apart.
**[COMPREHENSION PEAKING. INITIATE ARCHIVAL.]**
I activated **[Adaptive Mimicry]**. The warmth flowed, but this time it was a gentle suffusion, a cool, spreading calm. It felt like dipping into still water.
**[ARCHIVAL PROCESS INITIATED…]**
**[TARGET: Silentfold Pond-Lily Colony. CORE TRAIT IDENTIFIED: [Kinetic Dispersal Field].]**
**[ANALYSIS: Passive, low-energy field. Absorbs kinetic energy and vibrational force across a surface area, dispersing it harmlessly. Maximum dissipation threshold: very low (equivalent to a light slap).]**
**[COMPREHENSION CHECK: EXCELLENT (User grasped the non-resistant, distributive principle).]**
**[PHYSIOLOGICAL RESONANCE: HIGH (Human somatic field readily adapts to low-level energetic modulation).]**
**[ARCHIVAL SUCCESSFUL. TRAIT: [Kinetic Dispersal] (Passive) integrated permanently. Mana cost: Negligible. Effect: Continuously disperses a minor amount of kinetic force impacting the user's body. Effect scales slightly with user's mana refinement.]**
I opened my eyes. The status updated.
**4. [Kinetic Dispersal] (F-Rank Trait - Passive) - SYNCH: 85%**
I stood up. I felt no different. I picked up a small, loose piece of gravel from the path and dropped it onto the back of my hand from a few inches up.
It didn't bounce off a shield. It struck, but the sharp *tap* was muted, and the sting was… less. It was as if the impact had been smeared across a wider area of skin over a fraction of a second. It was trivial, but it was *there*. A principle, integrated.
It wouldn't stop a knife or a hammer blow. But it might turn a staggering punch into a shove. A shove I could **[Flicker Step]** away from.
The synergy was crude, but it was a foundation. Evasion and mitigation. A fighting style for someone who could not afford to be hit.
My training shifted. Machina designed drills in a secluded, abandoned bell tower on the academy's eastern edge. I would practice **[Flicker Step]** until the nausea threatened to overwhelm me, then rest while Machina lectured me on anatomy—pressure points, joint locks, the structural weaknesses of the human body. I had no strength to exploit them, but knowledge was its own weapon.
Then came the striking drills. Against a straw-stuffed dummy, I practiced something Machina called the **"Sting-Flicker."** The concept was simple: use **[Mana-Sense]** to identify the dummy's "core" of packed straw (a mock-up of a center of mass). **[Flicker Step]** to within one meter, usually appearing at an oblique angle. And deliver a single, precisely targeted strike—a finger-thrust to a mocked-up kidney, a heel-palm to the floating ribs—using the minimal momentum of my reappearance. The **[Kinetic Dispersal]** trait meant the recoil from my own weak strikes was slightly less jarring, allowing for marginally faster recovery.
It was the fighting style of a ghost with a pin. But it was *something*.
A week before the Practical, my routine was shattered.
I was returning from the bell tower late at night, slipping through the silent dormitory halls, when I heard it: a muffled sob, choked off quickly, from a half-open door to a supply closet.
My first instinct, honed over two lifetimes, was to keep walking. But my **[Mana-Sense]**, always active now, brushed against the energy inside. It was a frantic, splintered turmoil I recognized—the fractured, leaking core I'd sensed in the noble's son from my first day using the sense. Corin.
Against all better judgment, I paused. I peered through the crack.
Corin was huddled on the floor, fine clothes rumpled, face buried in his knees. His shoulders shook silently. The aura of his core was a pitiful sight—a cracked vessel slowly emptying itself. He'd been hiding it, using his family's status to bluff, but the pressure had finally broken him.
I should have left. His suffering was not my problem. The world was full of broken things.
But I saw myself in him. Not the Blank, but the man who had died full of regret for never trying. Corin wasn't malicious, just desperate. And in his shattered core, Machina saw something else.
**[ANOMALOUS MANA SIGNATURE DETECTED WITHIN SUBJECT 'CORIN'. NOT A SKILL. A… FRACTURE PATTERN. ANALYSIS SUGGESTS POTENTIAL FOR EXTREME, ONE-TIME ENERGY RELEASE IF THE FRACTURE CATALYZES. A LIVING MANA BOMB. PROBABILITY OF DETONATION WITHIN THE YEAR: 34%. THIS POSES A COLLATERAL RISK TO YOUR ENVIRONMENT.]**
A risk. That, I could act on.
I pushed the door open. Corin jerked his head up, eyes wide with terror and shame. "V-Veridian? Get out!"
I ignored him, stepping inside and closing the door. I kept my distance, leaning against a shelf of cleaning solvents. "Your core is fractured," I stated, my voice devoid of pity. "It's leaking. You have maybe a year before the structural failure becomes critical."
He stared at me, his face pale. "You… you can't know that. No one can see that!"
"I can." I tapped my temple. "Late-bloomer perk. Useless, mostly. Except for seeing broken things."
The fight drained out of him. "What do you want?" he whispered.
"I don't care about your secrets," I said. "But a core detonation in the middle of the dorms would be… messy. Inconvenient."
A hysterical laugh escaped him. "Inconvenient? Is that all?"
"I might know a way to stabilize it," I said, the words leaving my mouth before I'd fully thought them through. Machina was flashing warnings, calculations scrolling.
**[PROPOSED ACTION HIGHLY IRREGULAR. DIRECT INTERVENTION IN ANOTHER'S MANA SYSTEM BEYONDS CURRENT CAPABILITY. HOWEVER… THE FRACTURE PATTERN IS A UNIQUE PHENOMENON. OBSERVING ITS STRUCTURE COULD YIELD COMPREHENSION OF 'RUPTURE' AND 'CONTAINMENT' PRINCIPLES. HIGH RISK, HIGH REWARD.]**
Principles. Always principles.
"How?" Corin breathed, a flicker of desperate hope in his eyes.
"I need to see it. Fully. You'll have to lower any mental defenses, let me sense the entire pattern. It will be… uncomfortable."
He hesitated, warring with pride and desperation. Desperation won. He nodded, closing his eyes.
I knelt before him, ignoring the filth on the floor. I placed two fingers lightly on his forehead, a focus point. I opened my **[Mana-Sense]** completely, pouring my attention into the chaotic, brilliant disaster of his core.
It was like staring into a star being torn apart by its own gravity. Jagged lines of failed integration, feedback loops of mana leaking into his system, causing the tremors and emotional volatility. The principle was one of *catastrophic failure*, of a system too rigid to contain its own potential. But within the fracture lines, I also saw the ghost of what could have been—immense, volatile power.
I understood it. The terrible beauty of something built to be great, breaking under its own design. The principle of *Fragility* and *Overflow*.
**[COMPREHENSION ACHIEVED: PRINCIPLE OF 'UNSTABLE CONTAINMENT'. ARCHIVAL POSSIBLE?]**
Could I archive a flaw? A pattern of breaking? The idea was terrifying. But as a defensive concept… to understand how something breaks is to know how to *make* it break. Or how to provoke a break in something else.
I didn't try to copy the core itself. That would be suicide. Instead, I focused on the *pattern* of the fracture, the geometric certainty of its failure points. I archived the *map* of the collapse.
**[ARCHIVAL PROCESS INITIATED…]**
**[TARGET: Corin's Fractured Core (Pattern Only). CONCEPT IDENTIFIED: [Rupture Catalyst - Theoretical].]**
**[ANALYSIS: Not a skill. A conceptual understanding of structural weakness in concentrated mana systems. Cannot be actively used without significant mana and control. Stored as reference data.]**
**[ARCHIVAL LOGGED. NEW DATUM ADDED TO COMPREHENSION LIBRARY: 'MANIC SYSTEM FAILURE MODELS'.]**
I withdrew, my head pounding from the intensity of the broken energy. Corin gasped, slumping against the wall. But the frantic, splintered aura had… calmed. Not healed. But the act of having it fully witnessed, of having its chaos mapped and acknowledged, had somehow taken the terror out of it, stabilizing the feedback loop slightly.
"It won't explode tomorrow," I said, standing up on shaky legs. "The pattern is stable for now. You need a real healer. A core specialist. Tell your family. Stop hiding."
He looked up at me, tears clean on his cheeks now. "Why? Why help me?"
I looked down at him, this broken noble in a closet. "Because broken things left in the dark tend to blow up," I said, echoing Machina's cold calculus. "And I live here."
I left him there, a secret shared and a dangerous new principle etched into the library of my soul. I had no new skill to show for it, only a darker kind of knowledge. But as I walked away, I realized the encounter had served another purpose. It was a rehearsal.
The Practical Evaluation would be full of people trying to break me. Now, I understood a little more about how things break. And how a single, precise sting, delivered from nowhere, might just be enough to trigger a failure.
The stillness of the Lily and the strike of the Mantis were coming together. The thief was learning not just to take, but to undermine. The stage was set.