The hum of the respawn room died down, replaced by the heavy, hydraulic hiss of the iron doors unsealing.
I finally had a chance to take a breath. The air smelled of ozone and antiseptic, which threw me for a loop for a second. Do they have antiseptics in a magic world? I wondered, blinking against the harsh lighting. And why would it smell exactly the same as a hospital on Earth?
I looked down at my hands. Ten fingers. No burns. My skin was unblemished, and the clothes I had worn into the arena were restored to their pre-battle state. Naturally, the same would happen if you exited via the portal. You were physically reset to the state you were in when you entered, which meant you couldn't lose items inside.
That gave me another thought. What would happen if I stole an enemy item and placed it in my inventory? Would the system be able to remove it from my dimensional pocket and give it back to the other person upon the reset? Definitely something I need to test, I thought to myself.
It was time to leave and find the rest of the team. My legs felt heavy, a phantom weight lingering from the sudden transition between existence, non-existence, and existence again.
To my left, Jarek Stone-Hollow was making his own way out.
He looked pristine. His skin was unmarred by the cracks my clones had inflicted, and the chunk of flesh I'd blown out of his side was restored. Physically, he was perfect but his eyes were furious.
He didn't look at me. He marched toward the exit tunnel, his heavy boots clanging against the metal grating. The tunnel was cool and shadowed, a long concrete throat leading back out to the blinding lights of the arena.
Jarek stopped just before the light hit him. He stood there for a moment, his silhouette framing the exit. Then, he turned.
He wasn't screaming like before. The cartoonish villainy was gone, replaced by a cold, simmering stillness that was significantly more unnerving.
"You turned yourself into a bomb," Jarek said quietly. "That wasn't combat, Murphy. That was desperation."
I stopped a few paces away, leaning against the damp wall of the tunnel. "It was a win condition, Jarek. Read the rulebook. The objective is to eliminate the enemy and capture the flag. I did both."
"It's a cheap trick," Jarek spat. "You emptied your entire mana reserve for one strike. You gambled the entire match on a single second."
He took a step towards me, looming in the half-light. "In the Dorm Wars, the matches aren't twenty-minute sprints. They can last for days. If you blow yourself up in the first ten minutes of a Siege, you leave your squad a man down for the rest of the battle. You become a liability."
"I'll keep that in mind," I said, keeping my face neutral.
Jarek sneered, shaking his head. "I don't think you understand. This was the Prelims. The safety rails were up."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
"The Pain Dampeners aren't set to fifty per cent in the main bracket, Murphy. In the Dorm Wars, they crank the realism up to near-zero. Next time you decide to vapourise yourself? You're going to feel every inch of your skin peeling off before the respawn kicks in."
He held my gaze for a second longer, letting the threat hang in the damp air.
"Watch your back, Jester."
He turned on his heel and stormed out into the blinding sunlight.
I stepped out of the tunnel and into the white heat of the arena.
The noise hit me instantly. It wasn't the unified, worshipping roar that Lysander had received. This was different. It was a chaotic, fractured sound. The students from the wealthy houses were murmuring, confused by the suicide tactic and the brutality of the finish. But from the upper tiers—the cheap seats where the Commoners, the scholarship kids, and the rejects sat—the noise was deafening. They were stomping their feet.
They loved seeing a tank get wrecked.
I scanned the sands and found my squad waiting near the barrier.
Grace was grinning, her goggles pushed up into her hairline. She smelled of ozone and grease, and she was currently stuffing a handful of twisted metal scrap into her dimensional bag.
"Did you hear the screams from the base?" she asked, practically bouncing. "My traps worked perfectly. Mechanical spikes and tension wires. Simple, brutal, effective. The mage stepped right onto a pressure plate and—snap."
"Remind me never to break into your room," I said, patting her shoulder.
"We did it," Finn breathed, clutching the empty air where the flag had been. "We're in. We're this year's official Argent dorm team."
"Look," Grace said, pointing up.
High above the arena, the massive projection crystals were cycling through the match highlights. The screen shifted from my explosive finale to the replay of the duel at our base.
Kael vs. Borg.
On the screen, it looked less like a duel and more like a natural disaster. Two giants were trading blows that sent shockwaves through the holographic dirt. Borg swung his hammer with enough force to shatter a siege wall, and Kael caught the shaft on his forearms, the impact buckling his knees but not breaking his guard.
"Holy shit," Finn whispered. "You guys were really trying to kill each other."
I watched closely. The last few weeks of training had sharpened my vision, breaking down the brawl into frames of data.
On the screen, Kael ducked under a wild haymaker from the exhausted brute. He pivoted, stepping inside Borg's guard. It was perfect. Borg was over-extended, his ribs exposed, his chin wide open.
Kael wound up a massive, skull-crushing overhand right. It was a kill shot. If that fist connected, Borg's head would have looked like a dropped watermelon.
But then, Kael flinched.
On the giant screen, it was subtle, but I saw it. His eyes widened. The rage in his face faltered for a microsecond. He pulled the punch, turning the lethal strike into a glancing blow that sent Borg stumbling back instead of sending him to the graveyard.
The replay ended.
I turned to Kael. He was standing like a statue, staring at his own hands. His knuckles were raw and bloody.
"You had him," I said quietly, leaning in so the others wouldn't hear. "You could have ended it."
Kael looked down at me, his expression hollow.
"Why didn't you?" I pressed.
Kael didn't answer. He closed his fists, hiding the tremors. I knew why. He had felt the Red Haze rising. He had felt the monster scratching at the door, and he had been more afraid of what he would do to Borg than what Borg would do to him.
Heavy footsteps crunched on the floor behind us.
We turned. It was Borg. He stopped as he passed us. He ignored me. He ignored Finn.
He looked straight at Kael.
Borg grinned—a savage smile with sharp, dangerous teeth—and gave a single, curt nod.
Kael straightened up. He returned the nod, solemn and respectful.
Borg grunted, hitched up his trousers, and disappeared into the darkness of the exit.
"What was that?" Finn asked, blinking.
"Game recognise game," I said.
"Alright, victory lap over," Grace said, pulling a crumpled piece of parchment from her belt pouch. She tapped it with a grease-stained finger. "Murphy, we have a logistics problem."
"We usually do," I muttered, watching the last of the spectators file out. "What is it? Did the laundry burn down?"
"No. It's the roster," Grace said, frowning. "The Prelims allow four-man squads. That's fine. But the Dorm Wars require a full six-man roster to compete. We need two more bodies before the announcement ceremony tomorrow, or we forfeit."
"Six?" Finn squeaked. "Who else is crazy enough to join House Argent?"
"The rules say the majority of the squad has to be from our Dorm," Grace explained. "But we are allowed two 'Free Agents' from any house, provided they haven't been drafted by a Captain yet."
She looked at me, her expression serious. "I have someone. A Healer."
I raised an eyebrow. "From Argent?"
"No, from Vermilion. She's... quiet," Grace admitted. "People overlook her because she refuses to spar in Combat Class. She hates violence. But I've seen her knit bone back together in seconds. She's the best biological mechanic I've ever seen. And I believe we can trust her."
A healer was an easy yes. The worst thing she could do was not heal us, in which case we wouldn't be worse off than we already were.
"Done," I said. "Bring her in. That puts us at five. We need one more."
We reached the tunnel exit, ready to head back to the locker rooms, when a commotion near the main gate stopped us.
Lysander's golden armour was in the middle of a very public meltdown.
Or rather, Lysander was looming over Vespera Winter-Moon, looking impeccably bored while she looked ready to set him on fire.
"You are being dramatic, Vespera," Lysander sighed, dusting an invisible speck of lint from his lapel. "You represent House Aurelius. Appearances are the currency of power. You will attend the Rift Games Ball on my arm, or you won't be on this team anymore. Is that clear?! I won't have my squad scattered to the winds because you want to play 'independent'."
Vespera stood there, trembling. Her face turned a bright, furious red.
"You sacrificed Tolan," she hissed, her voice shaking. "You used him as bait in the match. And now you want me to be your... your ornament?"
"I want unity," Lysander drawled. "And I want a date who knows how to behave."
Vespera smiled, the air around her crackling with sudden frost. In a low, dark voice, she simply said, "I quit…"
She ripped the gold-and-white House Aurelius armband from her sleeve and tossed it to the side. She didn't wait for a response. She turned around and walked off toward the side gate, steam practically rising from her ears.
Lysander just shook his head, looking more annoyed by the littering than the loss of his strongest mage.
I watched her go. A slow smile spread across my face.
"I think I found our sixth," I said.
"You're crazy," Finn whispered. "Why in heaven's name would a noble even consider joining our team?!"
"All we can do is ask," I said. "Be right back."
I jogged after her, leaving the squad behind. "Hey! Winter-Moon!"
Vespera spun around near the iron gates. Her eyes were cold with anger. When she saw it was me, her expression hardened into a glare that could have frozen a volcano.
"What do you want, Murphy?" she snapped. "Here to gloat? I'm not in the mood."
"I saw what happened," I said, slowing to a walk. "He's an idiot."
She blinked, surprised by the lack of mockery.
I stepped closer, lowering my voice. I leaned in, placing my hands on her shoulders, and gave her what I thought was my best conspiratorial, business-proposition smile.
"Listen," I said. "Join me. I can give you a real challenge. None of that standing around looking pretty. It'll be dangerous, messy, and people will definitely talk... but I promise you we will make Lysander sick with jealousy."
Vespera froze.
Her eyes went wide. She looked at my face, then at my hands resting on her shoulders, then back at my face. The anger in her expression vanished instantly, replaced by a sudden, intense fluster.
The red flush on her cheeks deepened from anger to a shade of beetroot I didn't think was biologically possible for an Elf.
She opened her mouth to speak, but only a small squeak came out.
"I..." she stammered.
She looked at her feet. She looked at the gate. She looked back at me, her eyes panicked and frantic.
Then, she nodded. Furiously. Like a bobblehead in an earthquake.
Before I could ask for clarification, she turned and speed-walked away from me, vanishing into the crowd before she passed out.
I stood there for a second, scratching the back of my head.
"Weird girl," I muttered.
I walked back to the squad. They were waiting anxiously.
"Well?" Grace asked.
"She didn't actually say anything," I admitted. "She just turned red, squeaked, and left. But she nodded. I think we got her."
The walk back through the tunnel was quieter than the walk out. The adrenaline was fading, replaced by the dull, throbbing headache of mana exhaustion. My Core felt like a wrung-out sponge, dry and aching in my chest.
Grace fell into step beside me, the clinking of scrap metal in her bag keeping time with our footsteps. She wasn't smiling anymore. She was studying me with the intensity of a mechanic listening to a rattling engine.
"Murphy," she said, her voice low enough that the other teams passing by wouldn't overhear. "We need to talk about the finale."
"The explosion?" I asked, rubbing the back of my neck where Jarek's hand had been.
"The yield," she corrected sharply. "That wasn't a standard cast. You're a Dark Blue Core—maybe on the high end, sure—but you don't have the capacity to cast a spell with that kind of thermal output."
She adjusted her goggles, her eyes narrowing. "I know the math, Murphy. Energy doesn't come from nothing. So, how did you turn a room into a crater?"
"I didn't cast it," I said. "I built it."
Grace blinked. "Built it?"
"A Broken Rune," I added. "From our experiments in the basement. The ones where I removed the safety valves."
Grace's eyes went wide. She stopped walking. "You used an unstable rune?"
"I used it as a capacitor," I explained, leaning into the Artificer jargon I knew she'd respect. "I took that broken script and overloaded it. I didn't cast the spell; I overcharged it until it hit critical mass. It was similar to what we do in the workshop, except this time I intentionally pushed every drop of mana I had into the breakage point."
Grace stared at me, her mind racing through the calculations. I could see the moment the lie clicked into place. It made sense to her. It was reckless, mechanical, and violent—exactly the kind of solution she would have come up with.
"Variable Overflow," she whispered, a mix of horror and admiration on her face. "You created a feedback loop in a closed system. Murphy... that is incredibly stupid. If the item had disintegrated a second too early, you would have melted your Core. You could have burned your channels out permanently."
"It was a calculated risk. Besides, I would be restored back to normal as soon as I respawned," I said, shrugging. "I needed a bunker buster, so I made one."
Grace shook her head, starting to walk again, looking pale. "Oh god. You don't know."
"Know what?"
"Murphy, damage to your mana channels isn't physical. It's linked to your soul," she whispered harshly. "That isn't part of the Snapshot. That's not something the Rift can or would restore. You would have woken up broken."
My blood ran cold.
'Okay, so you almost crippled us for life,' Ronan noted in my head, his tone grim.
'That would have been good information to have earlier, partner,' I shot back.
'I did not know,' Ronan defended himself. 'Remember, the Rift Games weren't a thing a hundred years ago. We are learning the rules as we break them.'
'What about the clones?' I thought frantically. 'I've probably blown up a hundred in the workshop. Why haven't I burned my channels yet?'
'Different mechanics,' Ronan advised. 'In the workshop, the rune sucks the mana out of the clone against its will. You are resisting the flow. Today, you were actively pushing every ounce of power you had into the breach. You were the one holding the live wire.'
'Well,' I thought. 'Fuck.'
"High risk, high reward," I said aloud, my voice sounding a little thinner than before. "But... let's find a different strategy to win next time."
Back at House Argent, I decided we weren't just going to rest. We were going to feast.
It was time we enjoyed some of the gold we had been making. I didn't buy potions or enchantments. I bought four crates of ice-cold ale and enough red meat to give a dragon cholesterol issues.
The sun was setting over the Academy, casting long golden shadows across the courtyard of our dorm. A month ago, this yard had been a depressing patch of dirt and dead weeds that looked like a graveyard for optimism.
Now? It was unrecognisable.
Using the laundry profits, I'd hired an Earth Mage freshman to level the ground and a Nature Mage to coax a lush, manicured lawn out of the soil. I'd installed heavy oak tables, benches, and—my pride and joy—a massive, circular fire pit lined with river stones.
In the centre of that pit sat a custom-welded steel grid I had commissioned from the smithy.
"What is this ritual?" Kael asked, staring at the roaring wood fire. He was holding a beer bottle delicately in his massive hand, looking confused.
"This," I said, poking the embers with a stick, "is a Braai."
"A barbecue?" Finn asked, reaching for a slice of raw beef.
I slapped his hand away with the tongs. Clack-clack.
"Don't insult me, Finn," I said gravely. "A barbecue is what Americans do with gas and sadness."
Finn blinked, rubbing his hand. "Americans?"
"Street slang for Nobles," I lied without missing a beat. "People with soft hands who fear dirt."
"And... cooking with gas?" Finn asked, looking even more confused. "What gas?"
"Street slang for magic," I improvised. "Taking the easy way out."
Finn opened his mouth to ask another question—probably what 'sadness' was slang for—but I turned slowly to look at him. I didn't blink. I let the mask slip just enough to reveal the cold, dead stare of a man who had lived a thousand lives in the gutter.
"It's all street slang, Finn," I whispered, my voice dropping to a low, intimidating rattle. "Don't ask about the streets."
Finn swallowed audibly and took a step back, holding his hands up in surrender. "Right. Got it. Street slang."
"Good," I said, the menacing aura vanishing instantly as I turned back to the coals. "Now, listen. A Braai is spiritual. It's wood, fire, meat, and patience. And rule number one: Only the Braai Master touches the grid."
I arranged the steaks—T-bones as thick as doorstops—onto the hot metal. The hiss was deafening. The smell of rendering fat and woodsmoke filled the air, instantly drawing students out of their rooms like zombies summoned by a necromancer.
"Grab a beer," I ordered the gathering crowd of House Argent rejects. "And someone watch the bread."
"The bread?" Grace asked, holding up a loaf of cheap white bread. "We're eating sandwiches?"
"Not sandwiches," I corrected. "Braai Broodjies."
I waved her over for a lesson.
"Look, it's an art form," I explained, buttering a slice. "Tomato. Onion. Cheese. Salt and pepper. Simple, right?"
"Right," Grace nodded.
"Wrong," I said. "Here's the secret. You close the sandwich, and then you butter the outside."
Grace looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "You butter the crust?"
"Trust the process, engineer," I grinned. "You put it on the grid over the coals. The butter crisps up, the cheese melts, the onion steams inside... it'll change your life."
As I worked the grid, flipping the broodjies with the practised flick of a wrist, I felt Ronan's curiosity bubbling in the back of my mind.
'You're proficient at this,' Ronan noted. 'I don't recall us ever having a 'braai' at the gas station.'
'No, we never did, but we should have' I thought back, taking a sip of ale. 'It's something I picked up in Pretoria. South Africa. Somewhere around the mid-nineties. Short life. Maybe four or five years.'
'You enjoyed it?'
I watched the flames lick the fat dripping from the steaks. 'The food? Yeah. The weather? Beautiful. The life? Not so much.'
I flipped a steak.
'My father in that one was a mean bastard,' I told him casually. 'Drank Brandy and Coke like it was water. He took the art of the Braai very seriously. If I burnt a broodjie—even a little black on the corner—he'd break one of my fingers.'
Ronan went silent. The indignation flared hot in his chest—the Paladin's instinct to protect the innocent.
'He beat you?' Ronan asked, his voice low.
'Weekly,' I said, moving the steaks to a cooler part of the grid to rest. 'Usually on Saturdays. Rugby was on. If his team lost, I got a hiding. If they won, I got a hiding because he celebrated too hard.'
'I am sorry, Murphy,' Ronan whispered. 'To be a child in such fear...'
'That's the thing, Ronan,' I said, watching Kael stare mesmerised at the sizzling meat. 'I wasn't scared. I was physically eight years old, sure. But mentally? I was already ancient. I'd died a hundred times by then. I'd been eaten by wolves, burned at the stake, and drowned in trenches.'
I took a swig of beer.
'I wasn't afraid of a drunk with a belt. It didn't hurt, not really. Pain is just information. But I learned to act like it hurt.'
'You... acted?'
'If I stood there and took it, he'd get madder,' I explained. 'He wanted the fear. He wanted the tears. So, I gave him a show. I'd scream, I'd cry, I'd beg. It made him feel big. He'd get it out of his system faster, pass out, and I could go back to reading my book.'
'That is...' Ronan struggled for the word. 'Bleak.'
'It was survival,' I said. 'Just another role. Just another masquerade.'
I looked around the yard.
Finn was laughing at something Kael signed. Grace was arguing with a first-year student about the structural integrity of a tomato slice. The fire popped, sending sparks up into the twilight sky.
'But the food,' I thought, smiling for real this time. 'The food was worth it.'
I tapped the tongs on the side of the grid.
"Alright, you vultures!" I shouted. "Meat's resting. Broodjies are golden. Come and get it!"
The squad descended on the food.
Finn took a bite of a toasted sandwich, the molten cheese and onion dripping down his chin. His eyes went wide.
"Okay," Finn mumbled, mouth full. "Butter on the outside. That is genius."
The smell must have drifted across the quad, because ten minutes later, the iron gate creaked open.
I looked up from the fire.
Jarek stood there. He wasn't in his armour; he was wearing casual academy robes, flanked by Borg and the lanky Fire Mage, Valen.
The chatter in the yard died instantly. Finn froze, the half-eaten broodjie hovering halfway to his mouth.
Jarek sniffed the air, his eyes locking onto the sizzling T-bones.
"That," Jarek said, pointing at the grid, "smells significantly better than the sludge they're serving in the Mess Hall."
"It's cow," I said, flipping a steak. "Real cow. Not 'mystery protein'."
I grabbed a cold beer from the crate and tossed it through the air.
Jarek caught it one-handed. He looked at the bottle, then at me.
"Truce?" I asked.
Jarek cracked a smile—a genuine one this time, not the sneer from the arena. The bitterness of the loss seemed to have evaporated the moment real food was involved. "Truce."
He walked in, his squad following. The tension vanished instantly. Within minutes, Borg was sitting next to Kael, the two giants communicating in a series of grunts and nods while comparing bruises on their forearms. Valen was trying to explain the thermal dynamics of his fireball to Grace, who was dismantling his theory with a cheese sandwich in her hand.
Jarek leaned against the stone wall next to the fire pit, taking a long swig of ale.
"You're a maniac, Murphy," he said, shaking his head. "That explosion... I still feel it in my teeth. Effective, though. I'll give you that. I've never seen a tactic like that in a prelim."
"We work with what we have," I shrugged, basting the meat.
"Speaking of which," Jarek gestured to my squad with his beer. "You need six for the Dorm Wars tomorrow. You got a plan? Because if you're short, any one of us would jump at the opportunity. We aren't Tier One, but it's better than forfeiting."
"Appreciate the offer, but I think we're full. We picked up a couple of strays this afternoon."
Jarek nodded, clinking his bottle against the rim of the braai grid. "Good. I want a rematch next year. You are representing House Argent tomorrow, so don't make us look weak."
"Ohh, we have a few more tricks up our sleeves," I grinned. "Now, grab a plate."
The moon hung high over the Academy, painting the stone floor of my private room in silver light. The dorm was quiet now, save for the settling groans of the old timber and stone. The smell of woodsmoke and rendered fat still clung to my clothes, a lingering reminder of the feast.
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at my hands, but my mind was picking apart a conversation I'd had with Timothy earlier that evening.
He'd explained the "Reset"—how the Rift takes a snapshot of us upon entry and restores us to that state when we leave. That's how we get our gear back, even if it's shattered during the match.
'Ronan,' I thought, breaking the silence in our shared headspace. 'I've been running the logic on the Rift's recovery system. Timothy said it reconstructs us. So, here is the hypothetical: If I place a stolen sword—or my own sword, for that matter—in the Inventory just before the match ends, what happens?'
'You are hoping for a duplication glitch,' Ronan noted dryly. 'You hope that the Rift will see you missing a sword, build you a new one, and then you can pull the original out of the void. Two swords.'
'Exactly. Infinite money.'
'It will not work,' Ronan replied, crushing my dream instantly. 'Based on what we have observed, the Rift does not create matter from nothing. It is a closed system based on the Law of Equivalent Exchange. When a shield breaks in the arena, the shards are still there. The Rift gathers the raw material and reassembles it based on the snapshot. It is a recycler, Murphy, not a god.'
I frowned. 'So if I put the sword in the Inventory...'
'Then the raw material is missing from the Rift's scan,' Ronan explained. 'It cannot find the steel to rebuild the object. You would wake up with the sword in your Inventory, yes. But the "snapshot" version would fail to materialise because the ingredients are gone.'
'And since everything is recorded on giant projection crystals,' I sighed, 'I would just be waking up with stolen evidence and a felony charge for theft.'
'Precisely,' Ronan said. 'Larceny of physical assets is a dead end.'
I tapped my chin. 'Okay. But what about Mana Beasts? Timothy said the arena generates Blue-Rank monsters. They have Cores. Students are expected to hunt them. Some even consume the cores mid-match to restore mana.'
'That,' Ronan mused, his tone shifting, 'is a different variable. A Core is not matter; it is condensed fuel. The system expects that energy to be consumed or dissipated back into the environment when the beast dies. It writes off that energy loss as operating costs.'
'So...' I felt the greed spark again. 'If I kill a Dire Wolf, and instead of eating the Core, I put it in Stasis...'
'The system will simply register it as "consumed",' Ronan agreed. 'To the Rift controller, it makes no difference if the energy was dissolved into your stomach or dissolved into the air. It is gone from the immediate board.'
'But wouldn't that drain the system? You said it's a closed loop.'
'It is,' Ronan said. 'But think of the scale, Murphy. The Academy pumps enough mana into that arena to generate a jungle, weather systems, and hundreds of beasts. Stealing one or two Blue Cores is like stealing a cup of water from a river. The system will top itself up from the main lay-line without even registering a warning error. It is a drop in the bucket.'
I grinned in the dark. 'So we can't clone swords. But we can farm cores.'
'As long as we are not greedy,' Ronan cautioned. 'If you try to drain the entire lake, the water level will drop, and the Faculty will start looking for the leak. But a few cores per match? That is... an acceptable margin of error.'
I nodded slowly, satisfied. We had a business plan.
But as the excitement of potential wealth faded, reality set back in.
I looked at my hands again. I wasn't seeing skin; I was seeing the memory of Jarek's throat.
I had grabbed him. I had used every ounce of strength my Dark Blue-enhanced muscles could muster. But it had felt like trying to strangle a mountain. His skin had been hard, cold, and unyielding.
Light Green.
"He was too tough," I whispered to the empty room. "My clones couldn't scratch him. My swords bounced off. If I didn't have the bomb, we would have lost."
'The gap in raw power is becoming a liability,' Ronan's voice rumbled in the back of my skull. It wasn't an accusation; it was a tactical assessment. 'Technique and trickery can bridge a river, Murphy, but they cannot bridge an ocean. Jarek was merely a Light Green. In the main tournament, we will face Solid Greens. Perhaps even a Dark Greens.'
'It is time,' Ronan stated.
I nodded. I stood up and pushed the small desk against the wall to clear the floor space.
"Alright," I said, cracking my neck. "Let's break the ceiling. Cue the music."
'As you wish,' Ronan replied, his mental tone shifting from tactician to DJ.
A second later, the distinct, swampy guitar riff of Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress by The Hollies started playing in the back of my skull. It was a driving, rhythmic beat—perfect for a demolition job.
I bobbed my head once to the rhythm, then focused.
Ronan reached for the Core. Construct.
The air shimmered, and the room instantly became claustrophobic.
I summoned Ronan Clones.
Twelve of them squeezed into the small stone chamber. They sat in the lotus position on the floor, on the desk, and two even leaned against the door to keep it shut.
They closed their eyes in unison.
"Begin," I whispered.
The Echo Engine roared to life.
Usually, we used this method to refill the tank—a gentle, steady stream of ambient mana flowing from twelve sources into one vessel. But tonight, we weren't filling the tank. We were trying to burst it.
The clones inhaled. The ambient mana in the room was sucked into a vortex, channelled through their temporary cores, and slammed into mine.
I gasped, gripping the bedsheets.
It wasn't a stream. It was a firehose.
My Core was already full from the recovery stasis. The extra energy had nowhere to go. It swirled inside the Dark Blue sphere in my chest, churning like a storm-tossed sea. It pressed against the walls of my spirit, demanding release.
Compress, I commanded.
The headache started immediately—a sharp, grinding pressure behind my eyes that pulsed in time with the bass line in my head.
Aether at the Blue rank is like water. It flows. But Green rank? Green is life. Green is growth. To get there, you have to force the water to become something denser. You have to crush it until the liquid structure collapses and reforms into something solid.
"Push," Ronan ordered, his voice echoing from twelve mouths and inside my own head.
I gritted my teeth. I visualised the sphere of dark blue light in my chest. I imagined giant iron walls closing in on it, squeezing it down.
Smaller. Denser. Harder.
The hum in the room grew louder, vibrating against the stone walls until the glass in the window pane began to rattle in its frame. The air grew heavy and metallic, charged with enough static to make the hair on my arms stand up.
My skin felt like it was burning, but that was just the surface level. Inside, it felt like someone had poured molten lead into my veins and was trying to compress it with a hydraulic press. The pressure in my chest wasn't just agonising; it was wrong. It was the kind of pain that told a biological organism it was about to cease existing.
Any normal mage would have stopped ten minutes ago. A sane mind would have shattered under this kind of sensory overload. To force a breakthrough this violently was to risk lobotomizing yourself, turning your brain into a scorched husk to save a few months of meditation.
But I wasn't normal. I was a callus shaped like a man.
I didn't fight the pain; I filed it away. Nerve damage in sector four. Thermal warnings in the chest cavity. Ignore. I dissociated, stepping back from the screaming nerves just like I had done when the wolves ate me, or when the fires took me.
"More," I hissed, sweat dripping from my nose.
The clones frowned in unison, doubling their effort. The intake screamed.
Because we were compressing it this hard—forcing an ocean into a cup—the result wouldn't just be a standard Green Core. It would be dense. It would be heavy. When this broke, I wouldn't just be a Light Green mage; I would be walking around with the magical density of a star. From what Ronan said, I would likely be the strongest Light Green this Academy had seen in a hundred years.
The Dark Blue sphere trembled. It was fighting me. It wanted to stay fluid. It wanted to stay safe.
Break, I thought, pouring every ounce of my will into the command. Just... break.
The pressure hit critical mass.
CRACK.
The sound wasn't in the room; it was in my soul. It sounded like a glacier calving.
The surface of the Dark Blue sphere fractured. A spiderweb of fissures raced across the containment field.
And then, from the heart of the pressure, a single, blinding vein of light shot out. It wasn't blue.
It was Emerald.
The light flooded the room, washing away the shadows, vibrant and alive. The pain vanished instantly, replaced by a surge of power so potent it made my teeth ache.
I opened my eyes, gasping for air. The clones faded, their job done.
I looked down at my chest. The deep, bruised indigo was gone. In its place, a pale, flickering green flame burned steadily in the centre of my being.
"Light Green," I whispered, feeling the new depth of the reservoir.
The song in my head faded out on the final chord.
'Welcome to the next tier,' Ronan said, sounding satisfied. 'Now... we can really fight.'