The hallway outside the lecture hall was wide enough for a battalion to march through, but with Marcus Cinandra standing in the center, the space felt suffocatingly narrow. Marcus was a mountain of a guy in his early twenties, his height towering over the average student. He wore a single silver hoop in his right ear that glinted under the mana-lights, and despite his youthful face—his eyes held the jaded cruelty of a veteran. On his chest, the Tier-seven badge gleamed like a predatory eye, marking him as a Platinum-Rank elite.
Unlike his younger brother Caleb, Marcus didn't just flicker with sparks. He possessed a dense, oscillating aura of kinetic energy that made the very air hum. It was like standing next to a running engine; the vibrations rattled my teeth.
"You've got a big mouth for a guy who belongs in a trash compactor," Marcus growled, his knuckles cracking with the sound of breaking timber. "In this world, Oliver, theories don't win fights. Power does. And your power is a joke."
Around us, the crowd grew. Students from the Silver and Gold tiers watched with amused smirks, their arms crossed. To them, this was the highlight of the day: watching an E-rank "trash" get deleted from the school registry in the most painful way imaginable.
I stood my ground, my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my black hoodie. My heart rate hadn't increased by a single beat. I knew the Zero-Point Martial Arts was locked tight—the System Sage had been quite clear that its "free trial" was over. I had to rely on the raw, mechanical knowledge of my original Earth, amplified by this new, hyper-efficient body. I stood sideways, facing him with an expressionless, hollow gaze.
"Are you done staring?" Marcus roared. He didn't wait for an answer. He lunged.
To the onlookers, Marcus was a blur of golden light. His Tier-seven speed was so immense that he left a vacuum of displaced dust in his wake. He pulled back a fist that glowed with the concentrated kinetic energy of a falling meteor.
"Die!"
But I wasn't fighting his fist. I was fighting his momentum.
As the punch arrived, I didn't retreat. I moved in. My hands came out of my pockets, fluid and soft, defying the rigid tension of the room. I caught his wrist—not with a grip of strength, but with a guiding, ghost-like touch.
Using the basic principles of Aikido, I turned my body in a circular motion, mimicking the way a whirlpool handles a crashing wave. Because Marcus had put 100% of his Tier-seven power into the strike, he had no brakes.His body was a runaway train, and I was merely the rail that led him off a cliff. I stepped into his blind spot, applied a slight downward pressure on his elbow, and twisted his wrist into a spiral.
"Wha—?!" Marcus gasped.
The laws of physics took over. His kinetic energy, intended to crush my skull, was suddenly inverted. Marcus didn't hit me; he hit the floor. The sound was like a demolition charge going off as his massive frame slammed into the marble. The impact cratered the reinforced tiles, sending shards of stone flying like shrapnel.
I stood over him, still holding his wrist in a delicate but unbreakable lock. One wrong move from him, and his own Tier-7 strength would snap his radius like a dry twig.
"Physics doesn't care about your Rank, Marcus," I said, my voice flat and echoing in the dead-silent hall. "The harder you strike, the harder you fall."
Before the situation could escalate into a lethal exchange, the temperature in the hallway plummeted. Frost began to crawl up the lockers, and the floor turned into a treacherous sheet of ice.
"That's enough, Marcus."
Suki Von Valerius stepped forward. Her presence was like a glacier—beautiful, silent, and terrifyingly heavy. The students parted for her like the Red Sea. She didn't look at Marcus; her eyes were locked onto mine, searching for a ghost she couldn't name.
"The Academy rules forbid unsanctioned duels in the transit halls," she said, her voice like cracking ice. "Marcus, you are a Tier-7. Attacking an E-rank student with intent to kill is beneath the dignity of the Cinandra family. Leave. Now."
Marcus spat on the floor, his face twisted in a mask of humiliated rage. But he wasn't stupid enough to challenge a Von Valerius. He stood up, his arm trembling from the torque I had applied. "This isn't over, Veyron. I'll see you in the Ranking Arena. You won't be able to hide behind a girl's skirt then."
He turned and limped away, his sycophants trailing behind him in stunned, fearful silence.
Suki turned to me. The hallway was still freezing, but she seemed to radiate a hidden heat—a frustration she couldn't quite mask. She stepped into my personal space, her scent reminding me of winter pine and old memories.
"You," she said. "That wasn't mana. That was... pure redirection. How does an E-rank know how to manipulate the kinetic flow of a Tier-seven?"
I looked at her, searching for the girl I had loved in my past life. Her eyes were hardened now, shielded by the expectations of the Diamond Rank.
"Maybe I'm just a fast learner, Suki," I said, using her name without the "Lady" or "Miss" titles the others used.
She flinched at the familiarity. "Don't call me that. We aren't friends. I only stepped in because I hate seeing talent wasted on a brute like Marcus. But don't think you're safe. The Cinandras are like vipers—they'll wait until you're at your weakest."
"I'm never at my weakest, Suki," I replied, stepping past her. I didn't give a damn about the Cinandras, but if they wanted to become pebbles in my shoes, I would grind them into dust.
She looked at me with a confused, lingering gaze. "That's some confidence you've got... but be careful when meeting people like that."
"Thank you for the advice, Suki. How about we become friends?" I stretched out my hand to her. "The name is Oliver."
She hesitated, her gloved hand hovering in the cold air. For a moment, the "Ice Queen" looked human. Then, she reached out and shook it. "Just friends. No problem," she replied softly.
We parted ways. As I walked down the corridor, I let out a long breath of relief. "Mission accomplished," I whispered to myself. Phase one of reintegrating into her life was complete.
.....
I didn't go back to my dorm. I had a mission. The System quest had promised me information on my parents, and I knew exactly where the Academy kept its dirty secrets.
Using Hyper-Encryption Decoding, I bypassed the security of the Restricted Records Wing. To the Tier-nine guards patrolling the corridors, the doors remained shut and the alarms silent. I moved through the digital grid like a ghost in the machine. To me, this high-tech fortress was a playground.
I slipped into the dark room, the only light coming from the glowing data-crystals stacked on the shelves like glowing ribs. I searched for hours, my fingers flying through holographic interfaces, looking for the record of my parents' last raid—the Void-Fall mission.
Nothing.
Every record regarding the Veyron Demi-Gods had been permanently erased, scrubbed from the servers with a level of authority that even I couldn't bypass yet. I clenched my fist in anger, the violet-black sparks of Heaven's Judgment dancing at my knuckles. I couldn't even ask the System Sage to locate them, I hadn't met the requirement of reaching the Diamond Rank.
"Someone is hiding the truth," I muttered, the darkness of the room pressing in on me. "And I'm going to tear this Academy apart to find them."
As I left the library and headed toward the E-Class dorms—affectionately known as the "Slums" of the Academy—I realized I wasn't alone. The Slums were a stark contrast to the rest of the school, the walls were cracked, the mana-lights flickered, and the air tasted of copper and dampness.
In the common room, a group of students was waiting for me. They weren't like the elites. One girl, Ria, had an arm made of scrap metal and hydraulic pistons. Beside her sat a boy named Kael, whose eyes were permanently clouded with a leaking wisp of black smoke—a mana-mutation that most called a curse.
These were the defective ranks. The ones with abilities too dangerous or "unstable" for the high-tier families to claim.
"We saw what you did to Marcus," Ria said, her metal hand clenching with a rhythmic hiss. "The elites are already talking. They're scared of you, Oliver. And when they're scared, they strike hard."
"Let them strike," I said, sinking into a tattered, coffee-stained sofa.
"We want in," Kael added, the smoke from his eyes swirling with intensity. "We've been stepped on for years because our mana-veins don't fit their 'Linear Fluid' theory. But your lecture... it made sense to us. If we are Standing Waves, we don't need their permission to be powerful."
I looked at them. They were the losers. The outcasts. They were exactly what I had been before I died in that alleyway in Shang City.
"You want to follow an E-rank?" I asked, testing their resolve.
"No," Ria said, her mechanical fingers twitching. "We want to follow the guy who's going to burn the Tiers to the ground."
I leaned back, a dark grin spreading across my face. My parents were betrayed by the elites. My original life was stolen by an elite. And now, I had a small army of "defects" ready to help me take it all back.
[NEW QUEST: THE FOUNDATION OF THE UNRANKED]
[OBJECTIVE: Train the E-Class outcasts into a Tier-S Strike Team.]
[REWARD: Unlocks 'Heart of Nebula' Shared Aura.]
"Alright," I said, the violet-black thunder crackling between my fingers. "Tomorrow at dawn, in the North training field. I'm going to show you how to stop being victims and start being anomalies."
.....
High above the Slums, in the opulent silence of the Headmaster's office, two figures watched the security feeds.The headmaster, a man whose presence felt like a mountain, leaned back in his leather chair.
"The boy is a catalyst," a voice whispered from the shadows of the corner. "He's using the Veyron name to gather the dregs. We should have ended the bloodline when we had the chance. He's a loose thread."
The headmaster looked at the screen, watching Oliver's grin. "No. Let him play. The Vanguard tournament games are approaching. If he survives the preliminary rounds, we'll see if his Standing Wave can withstand the power of a true god."
He turned off the screen, but his hand lingered on the power button. He couldn't shake the feeling of the energy he had seen. It wasn't mana. It was something absurd—something that shouldn't exist in a world governed by Tiers.
.....
Miles away in the Northern Spire, Suki Von Valerius sat on her balcony. She stared at a small, withered flower kept in a reinforced glass case.
"Oliver? What the hell is that guy?" she whispered to the wind.
She didn't know why she had agreed to be
friends. She didn't know why the boy in the black hoodie made her heart throb with a grief that felt centuries old. But as she watched the cold stars, she realized he was the first person in years who didn't look at her Tier-mark. He looked at her.
"That guy..." she muttered, a tiny, almost invisible smile touching her lips. "He's something else."