The twin suns hovered above the Academy like patient gods, pale gold and cold white, their light blending into an amber haze that bathed the marble towers in spectral calm.
Students bustled through the courtyards, uniforms fluttering, laughter rippling through the morning air — but amid the chatter, one sight silenced them all:
The Ranking Board.
A seamless slab of arcane glass that floated beside the central spire, its light running in streams of digital gold. Hundreds of names shimmered across its surface, shifting every time a duel ended somewhere across the campus.
At the very top, untouched and unchallenged, one name glowed brighter than the rest:
> 1. Sebastian Raizen
Untouched. Unshakeable.
A name so heavy with expectation that even whispering it felt like invoking a law of nature.
No one spoke it carelessly.
Because everyone knew what it meant: perfection so precise it bordered on heresy.
---
Nova Terra Integration Chamber
The hum of the chamber was alive — a soft, electric vibration that pressed against the skin and bones. Cables snaked into the floor, pulsing with Netic energy from the Nova Terra branch of the Academy. The walls shimmered with hard-light glyphs that rearranged themselves continuously, like thoughts trying to form sentences.
Within that silent storm stood Sebastian Raizen.
He wasn't dressed for combat — only plain obsidian attire, a sleeveless neural suit marked by faint luminescent lines that pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat. A faint halo of light flickered across his back as the system synced with him.
> [Neural Sync: 99.98% established. Cognitive barrier disabled.]
His eyes opened.
Black, but not empty — there was a depth there that no data could map.
Across from him, six figures materialized — shimmering constructs formed from composite mana and algorithmic data.
Each one modeled after real Academy elites: Renji, Luna, Jovhan, Sylvaine, Kenjie, and a final one — Garet Caelren.
They stood arrayed like ghosts from six different realities, each with their own elemental hue.
The system's voice whispered into existence, calm and neutral.
> [Simulation parameters set. Difficulty: Adaptive Apex.]
[Objective: Survival for 60 seconds.]
Sebastian flexed his fingers. "Sixty seconds? I only need twelve."
---
The world shifted.
The moment his words faded, six enemies struck in unison — fire, steel, mana, and light converging upon him like a collapsing universe.
The first blow came from Luna's copy — silver arcs of swordlight cutting space itself. He sidestepped, just enough to let the aftershock pass through the afterimage he left behind.
Second strike: Renji's spectral fist, wrapped in Ki so dense it distorted gravity. Sebastian caught it — two fingers and a pivot. The data form flickered, its algorithms failing to process how mass had just been redirected without energy expenditure.
Third, fourth, fifth attacks layered upon one another — curses, constructs, elemental vortices. Each technique belonged to a different world, a different law of power.
Sebastian flowed through them all like water refusing to be held by shape.
He wasn't just dodging.
He was learning.
Each time his body twisted or blocked, the simulation's internal systems recorded anomalies: reaction times breaching superhuman thresholds, kinetic absorption beyond safety margins, spatial lag within a radius of 0.4 meters — a gravitational distortion formed by something that wasn't supposed to exist.
> [Anomaly detected.]
[Energy signature incompatible with current universal laws.]
The system's voice trembled.
Sebastian struck once.
No light, no burst, no theatrics — just motion refined into inevitability.
Every simulated enemy froze mid-attack.
The constructs flickered, their forms folding inward until they disintegrated like dying stars.
Twelve seconds.
Exactly.
> [Simulation complete. Efficiency: 98.92%. Record broken.]
The voice echoed through the empty chamber.
Sebastian exhaled slowly, the faintest trail of vapor escaping his lips. His gaze wandered upward, where the holographic ceiling shimmered with projections of the five universes — Jiyeon's martial constellations, Verneville's glowing sigils, Nova Terra's neural lattices, Xianjing's ethereal qi-rivers, and Abyssia's shadowed moon.
He spoke softly. "All fragments of the same broken whole."
The system did not respond.
He took a step forward, leaving faint ripples in the energy field. "Reset parameters."
> [Reset complete.]
"Load adaptive variant — full synchronization. Remove limiter."
> [Warning: Full sync risks neurological fracture.]
"I said—" His eyes sharpened. "—remove limiter."
> [Override accepted. Proceed.]
[New simulation: Zone Zero Access required.]
---
The Observatory
Far above the chamber, two figures watched through a glass projection window — Luna Blossomveil and Jovhan Raizen.
The Observatory overlooked the entire training sector, its walls woven with transparent runes that allowed one to see energy fluctuations down to the quantum thread. Instructors used it for research and evaluation; for Luna and Jovhan, it was where they studied him.
The screen before them replayed Sebastian's twelve-second massacre, frame by frame.
Luna's eyes lingered on the final moment, where time itself seemed to bend around his movement.
"He's preparing for something," she said.
Jovhan leaned back against the railing, crossing his arms. "He's always preparing for something."
"No." Luna's voice was quieter, her violet eyes narrowing. "This isn't training. It's… calibration."
"Calibration for what?"
Her gaze lingered on the hollow in the screen — where energy itself had thinned for a fraction of a second, the laws of the simulation collapsing into static.
"For war," she whispered.
Jovhan smirked faintly. "We're not at war."
"He is."
The silence that followed wasn't peaceful. It was heavy — the kind that carried unspoken knowledge.
Because they'd both seen the same thing that day:
When Sebastian moved, reality hesitated to keep up.
---
Zone Zero
When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in the chamber.
There was no sky here.
No walls. No ground.
Only shifting planes of glass and reflection — an infinite expanse where color bled into shadow and shadow bled into nothing.
> [Welcome to Zone Zero.]
The voice was different now — lower, older, almost alive.
It spoke from everywhere and nowhere.
Sebastian floated, his body surrounded by faint geometric lines — mathematical scars left behind by the simulation engine trying to understand him.
He rotated his wrist, watching as his reflection multiplied endlessly into the horizon. "You still exist."
> [I am the root between realities — where the five systems meet and dissolve.]
[Why return, Raizen?]
"I've grown bored of fighting ghosts that can't evolve," he said simply. "I need opponents that think."
> [Then you know who waits here.]
He nodded once. "All of them. The 1% Operatives."
For a moment, even the void paused — as if the concept itself took time to process his request. Then came the answer, not as a voice, but as a vibration through every atom of his being.
> [Then prove you're ready.]
---
Darkness expanded outward like an ink tide. Shapes began to form — vague at first, then sharp, like statues waking from ancient dreams.
They wore no faces, only masks carved with symbols — eyes that burned with recognition, as though they remembered him from before he was born.
Sebastian cracked his neck, flexing his hand. "So the 1% still linger."
Each figure represented an ideology — Will, Order, Chaos, Truth, and Void. Echoes of beings that once nearly destroyed universes. They weren't real yet — but they remembered how to kill.
One stepped forward, its mask etched with the sigil of Truth.
> "Your kind wasn't meant to exist again."
Sebastian's lips curved. "Then call this an error in your system."
The ground — if it could be called that — shattered under the pressure that followed.
Energy without color erupted from the entity, twisting the plane into spirals of light. Sebastian didn't retreat; he leaned into it, eyes narrowing, every muscle adjusting by instinct.
He was studying.
Recording.
Evolving.
They clashed.
For one instant, the void remembered motion.
The shockwave that followed shattered horizons.
Sebastian slid back, boots skidding against non-existent ground, dustless and silent. His arm trembled — not from injury, but from excitement. The faint white cracks on his forearm returned, glowing faintly beneath his skin like fracturing glass.
"Better," he whispered.
The entity attacked again, this time with speed that transcended time — motion that shouldn't exist within the simulation.
Sebastian vanished.
The next second, his palm was pressed against its mask.
"Predictable."
He clenched.
The mask disintegrated.
The body followed.
The void pulsed once — like a heart skipping a beat.
Then the other four came.
---
It wasn't battle anymore. It was language.
Every strike spoke of ideals — Will clashing with Defiance, Chaos wrestling with Calculation, Void seeking Completion.
And Sebastian moved between them like punctuation — rewriting, interrupting, ending.
Every time he was hit, he adapted.
Every time he struck, his efficiency increased.
Zone Zero's laws started to fracture.
> [Warning: Simulation integrity dropping below 40%.]
[Energy overflow detected.]
Sebastian ignored the alerts. His heartbeat synced with the hum of the realm — faster, sharper, deeper. His shadow rippled with strange motion, like something beneath it was moving independently.
He caught the blade of the Chaos-Operative barehanded — not blocking it, but absorbing the strike entirely. The weapon dissolved, its energy collapsing into the white light running along his veins.
The other entities hesitated.
He exhaled slowly, voice calm. "The difference between me and you…"
His right eye flashed — for a heartbeat, it wasn't human.
A ring of white threaded through black. Abyssal.
"…is that you obey rules."
He stepped forward — and the world folded inward.
---
When the simulation finally terminated, silence reigned.
Sebastian stood alone in the void, surrounded by fragments of broken geometry and fading echoes of light.
> [Simulation complete.]
[Pattern assimilation: 14%.]
[Efficiency: 84.9%.]
He rolled his shoulders. "Too low. Again."
> [System recovery required before reinitialization.]
He frowned. "Then repair yourself faster."
> [Raizen… you are approaching resonance drift.]
"Good."
He turned away, the void rippling in his wake. "It means I'm waking up."
---
The Observatory – Later That Night
Luna remained in the Observatory long after the lights dimmed. The simulation readouts were still glowing faintly, running across the panels like nervous handwriting. Jovhan had already left; even the instructors had stopped monitoring. Only she remained — eyes locked on the data window.
One fragment in particular looped endlessly: a faint spike, recorded right before the simulation destabilized.
She zoomed in. The waveform was unidentifiable — neither mana, Ki, nor any measurable energy. Yet it carried all of them within it.
Entropy given rhythm.
"What are you becoming, Sebastian…" she murmured.
The screen flickered, reacting as if something heard her.
Then it stabilized.
---
Southern Wall
Sebastian sat atop the Southern Wall, the same place he had stood after his duel with Garet. The night stretched infinitely ahead — twin moons overlapping, reflecting their light over the Academy like mirrored eyes.
He leaned back, hands behind him, gaze distant.
The air smelled of rain and ozone.
He could still feel the echo of the 1% within him — data fragments gnawing at the edges of his consciousness.
He didn't hate it.
He welcomed it.
Because that hunger — that relentless pull toward evolution — reminded him of something older than ambition.
Something like a promise.
Or a curse.
He stared at his palm. White veins glowed faintly beneath the skin before fading again. "Still too much restraint," he said quietly.
The wind carried his voice down to the courtyard, where students trained under moonlight, unaware of the storm forming above them.
He closed his eyes. For a fleeting moment, he could hear echoes — laughter, war cries, screams. Memories not his own, yet painfully familiar.
"I've seen this before," he whispered. "Over and over. Until it all ends."
He smiled faintly — not in arrogance, but in recognition.
"If this world's script says I'll fall," he said softly, "then I'll rewrite the ending myself."
The twin moons trembled.
And somewhere deep within the Academy's core, an unseen system responded:
> [Zone Zero: Connection stable. Subject Raizen — Unclassifiable.]