The sun rose over the dark mountain.
Jin opened his eyes. He sat up on his hard mattress. He checked his internal core. The dense Aether from last night had pushed him slightly forward. He was not at Foundation Level 5 yet, but the progress was steady. The Devourer breathing technique was working perfectly.
He got out of bed and walked into the main hallway of the villa.
Luna was already awake. She stood near the stone dining table.
Jin looked at her. Something was immediately different.
She did not look tired or scared. The heavy, exhausting weight of being a weak mortal was gone. The air around her shoulders looked slightly blurred, like heat rising off a hot road. Her blue eyes were brighter. She stood up straighter.
"You assimilated the core," Jin said flatly.
Luna nodded. A wide, genuine smile broke across her face.
"Foundation Level 1," Luna said. She held her small hands out in front of her. "I can feel it, Jin. I can feel the distance now. I can feel the empty space between the walls. It is not just air anymore. It is something I can touch."
Jin nodded once. The loan was worth it. She was on the ladder now. She was no longer a liability dragging her feet in the dirt.
"Good," Jin said. "We have class."
They left the quiet courtyard of Villa 11. They walked down the white stone paths toward the academic sectors.
The morning was a blur of scheduled pain.
Instructor Vane taught them the orbital paths of the inner fire worlds. She made them memorize the toxic wind patterns of the magma oceans. She did not tolerate any whispering in the back rows.
Instructor Thorne was worse. The dirt arena was just as unforgiving as the first day. The baseline test continued. Run fifty laps. Do one hundred sit-ups. Do one hundred squats.
Jin pushed his repairing muscles to the absolute limit. He fell in the dirt again. His legs locked up. He lay on his back, breathed the raw Aether into his torn fibers, and forced himself back up.
By the time the afternoon rolled around, the freshmen were completely drained. They were covered in grey dust and dried sweat. They dragged their heavy legs through the crowded corridors.
Jin, Luna, Rian, and Elin walked together. They did not speak much. They saved their oxygen for walking.
They reached the eastern wing. They pushed the wooden door of Room 104 open.
The Basic Survival classroom was quiet. Instructor Boras was already there. He sat in a heavy wooden chair behind his desk. He rubbed his round stomach and watched the exhausted students file into the room.
Jin and his group took their usual seats in the middle row. The rest of the class filled the wooden desks. They slumped forward, waiting for another lecture on poisonous roots, healing weeds, or beast anatomy.
Boras did not pick up his white chalk today. He did not turn to the blackboard.
He stayed in his chair. He looked at the bruised, tired faces of the freshmen.
"I forgot to tell you something yesterday," Boras said.
His cheerful, loud voice was gone. He spoke normally, but the words carried a heavy, serious weight.
The students looked up. They stopped resting their heads on the desks.
"The free meals in the canteen last for three months," Boras reminded them. "That is not a random number picked by the cooks. Three months is your exact grace period. When that timer runs out, the Academy stops holding your hand."
Boras leaned forward and rested his thick arms on the desk.
"In exactly ninety days, you will all participate in the first-year tournament," Boras announced.
A murmur ran through the room. The rich kids from the capital sat up straighter. They liked tournaments. Tournaments meant clean sparring rings. They meant referees, safety rules, and showing off their expensive martial arts to the senior students. It was a chance to gain fame.
Boras saw their arrogant smiles. He crushed them instantly.
"It is not a sparring match," Boras said bluntly. "We are not going to put you in a clean ring with dull wooden swords. It is a live hunt."
The room went completely silent.
"We are going to load the entire freshman class into an imperial carrier ship," Boras explained. "We are taking you out of this solar system. We will drop you on a hostile, unmapped jungle planet in the outer rim. You will spend one week there. You will hunt beasts. You will harvest their cores. The student with the most high-tier cores at the end of the week wins the tournament."
Jin narrowed his dark eyes. He thought about the timeline.
An alien planet. No Academy guards. A massive free-for-all in a dense jungle. It was a brutal test of actual survival.
A boy in the front row raised his hand nervously. He was one of the rich heirs. His voice shook slightly.
"Instructor..." the boy asked. "What kind of beasts live on that planet?"
Boras looked directly at the boy.
"The environment is heavily saturated with raw energy," Boras answered. "It is a wild, untamed world. The weakest beasts you will encounter in that jungle are Foundation Level 5. They hunt in large packs. They are fast, and they are hungry."
Boras paused. He let the threat sink into the quiet room.
"The apex predators on that world," Boras continued, his voice dropping low, "are at the early Core Formation Realm."
Absolute panic exploded in the classroom.
Students started shouting. Several of them jumped up from their wooden chairs.
A Core Formation beast was a walking natural disaster. It could level a small town with its bare claws. A single roar from a Core Formation monster could shatter the internal organs of a weak Foundation student. The gap in power was massive.
The Academy was sending a thousand unproven teenagers to fight impossible odds. It was a death sentence for anyone who was not prepared.
"Quiet!" Boras snapped.
A dense wave of invisible Aether pressure rolled off his chubby body. It slammed into the students like a physical wall. The shouting stopped instantly. The students who had stood up fell back into their chairs, gasping for breath under the heavy weight.
Boras stood up from his desk. He looked at the terrified class.
"You have three months," Boras told them coldly. "If you are too weak to fight a Core Formation beast, then you better learn how to run and hide from one. Use the dirt track. Use your breathing techniques. Buy better weapons. Grow stronger, or die in the mud."
He did not offer any comfort. He did not say the teachers would save them if things went wrong.
"Class dismissed," Boras said.
He turned around and walked out the side door.
The freshmen sat completely frozen in their wooden chairs. The brutal reality of the Genesis Zenith Academy finally set in. They were not here to study. They were here to survive a meat grinder.
Jin picked up his notebook. He stood up.
Three months. He was currently Foundation Level 4. He needed to reach Level 10, the absolute peak of the Genesis State, to use the Devourer technique and survive a Core Formation beast. He had to cross six entire levels in ninety days.
The timeline was incredibly tight. The power requirement was massive.
He looked at Luna, Rian, and Elin. They were pale and terrified.
"Let's go," Jin said flatly. "We need to train."