The pale morning sun filtered down into the courtyard of Neopolis Akademia, slipping between the concrete and the buildings. The air was a strange mixture of the smoke rising from the city's industrial district and that faint rusty, metallic smell seeping in from the distant Anomaly Barricades. Even though the Barricades were some twenty-five kilometers away from here, when the wind blew the right way the smell still worked its way deep into your nose.
We had slowly come to the end of the summer season by now.
I, Kai, had my back propped against one of the marble columns in the courtyard, watching the place with the low music leaking out of my earphones. Around me hundreds of students had gathered in clusters, some voices shrill with excitement, others sliding toward panic. Yesterday the end-of-period stat measurements had been processed; this morning everyone was learning their new ranking. Their pupils were slightly focused, locked onto those transparent blue panels hanging right in front of their field of vision.
I couldn't blame them. A new ranking meant a new scholarship, a new room, a new status. In this world everything was reduced to a number, and today everyone was learning that number.
I didn't even bother to close my panel. That transparent screen hanging in my upper right corner was, for me, nothing more than digital proof of how predetermined and inefficient life was.
I passed a light command through my mind and the panel expanded.
[Student Profile: Kai — Age 18]
Current
Intelligence: 48 | Defense: 29 | Attack: 30 | Speed: 31
Control: 49 | Capacity: 29 | Leadership: 24 | Adaptability: 26
Total Stat Score: 266 / 800
Overall Ranking: 4 / 1200
I had come fourth among twelve hundred students. My entrance ranking had been fifth anyway, so I was a recognized name at school. When I walked through the yard people either avoided my gaze or looked me over with envy. But no one had ever seen me on the training grounds working until I was drenched in blood and sweat, because there was no such person. The moment classes ended I would grab my bag, put on my earphones, and blend into the city. They called it "the arrogant genius pose." The truth was far more ordinary: why should I wear myself out?
In the first period everyone had tried to talk to me, because of my high achievement. I wasn't particularly hostile toward anyone, but I suppose my cold manner and lazy attitude kept people away. That was fine. I passed a second command through my mind and slid the panel over.
[Potential Limits]
Max Intelligence: 568 | Max Defense: 462 | Max Attack: 491
Max Speed: 532 | Max Control: 536 | Max Capacity: 516
Ceiling Total Score: 3,105
The System didn't give a ceiling for leadership and adaptability; it measured those two but couldn't calculate their ceilings. That was why the ceiling score was always the sum of six stats.
In this world there was a system that opened up in everyone after the fourth step of Chi; it was bound and installed in everyone from infancy onward, and you could open it once you reached the fifth step of Chi. Who was installing it, why anyone would do such a thing, I didn't know; and nobody asked, anyway. It had been discovered five hundred years ago and by now had become a mechanism as ordinary as a driver's license or an ID card. The System showed you your power, your defense, every other attribute of yours, and how you could develop them. But more importantly, it also told you your maximum potential with merciless clarity.
There was one thing you had to know from the start: the System's scale wasn't a straight ruler, it was a logarithmic staircase. Down at the bottom, the steps were stuck to one another; a kid who started training at seventeen could pile up forty or fifty points in a few months, and that surprised no one. The higher you climbed, the further the steps spread apart. Above two thousand, twenty points gained in a year counted as a great achievement; above three thousand, people gave years of their lives for a single point. That was why you had to be careful when looking at the gaps between us: in the lower ranks thirty points was nothing, at the top two points was worth a lifetime.
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Say your ceiling in attack is 300. Even if you tear yourself to pieces you might see 340, maybe another ten or twenty points if you train yourself to death. The strongest human in the world, War Lord Vane, had reached a score of 4,130 through forty-five years of hellish training, surpassing even his own ceiling of 4,086, the only human in history to pass four thousand, vomiting blood on the Anomaly fronts. At eighteen years old I was at a score of 266. My potential ceiling in attack was 491. No matter what I did, sooner or later I was going to end up sitting in one of the world's few prestigious seats anyway. In a world this predetermined, spending extra energy was just throwing that energy in the trash.
Right at that moment the king of idiots showed up.
"You're back on those indifferent, sour-faced airs of yours, Kai."
His voice was choked with arrogance. I lifted my head slightly. Alex was standing across from me — the school's number one, a name of average city income but the highest score of the generation, at least for now. The Jade badge on his chest had caught the light and was gleaming. I had a badge too; because I was fourth, mine was Sapphire. The school's badge ranking went Jade, Diamond, Emerald, Sapphire, Ruby, Amethyst, Platinum, Quartz, and Gold, and was given to the top nine. Tenth place was the school's unluckiest rank; you got into some privileges but you never got to wear a badge.
"Alex," I said in a flat voice. "I like to philosophize inside myself. Let my soul stay alive, not my body. Well away from you muscle-pile war maniacs, of course."
I lowered my earphones to my neck but didn't bother to straighten up off the column.
"This period's over too, and I crushed you again," Alex said, puffing out his chest. "While you were lying here killing time, I just came out of the school's special Hyper-Saturated Chi Chamber session. I carried my total score to 284."
[Student Profile: Alex — Age 18]
Intelligence: 22 | Defense: 33 | Attack: 37 | Speed: 37
Control: 32 | Capacity: 47 | Leadership: 32 | Adaptability: 44
Total Stat Score: 284 / 800
Overall Ranking: 1 / 1200
Potential:
Intelligence 548 | Defense 467 | Attack 495 | Speed 516 | Control 522 | Capacity 508
Ceiling Total Score: 3,056
Alex was first, but the gap between us amounted to eighteen points; at this level that was nothing more than one month gone well. If I planned enough I would probably break his nose — although, as it happened, in the days ahead the nose that got broken was mine, but that's another story. Even someone in thirty-fourth place could have beaten me up anyway; in the top hundred everyone could pose a threat to everyone. As you climbed the upper steps of the staircase the gaps started to get serious, but at our level everything was still flexible.
On top of that, my potential was among the best of the generation. Because I knew this, needling Alex always pleased me; his ambition couldn't digest this fact, and he kept picking at me and showing off.
"Congratulations," I said, without even maintaining eye contact. "A very great achievement."
He frowned. My lack of reaction had begun to drive him up the wall.
"Look, Kai, your potential may be higher than mine, but I'm sure I'll pass you. In fact, maybe I'll pull your plug before you ever reach your potential — what do you say?"
I looked at him and smiled. Nonsense aside, he was one of the three or four people who could get along with me. I knew half of what he said was a joke, and he knew this side of me. However much we seemed not to get along, it wasn't that I didn't like him. In the end, most people couldn't get along with someone like me — crude, having lost his mother and father; the lowness of my Adaptability stat was probably because of that too.
Not that I cared much. I was enjoying my life with the opportunities the school gave to the top ten rankings. I had no interest in hiding my strength, but I wasn't pushing myself either. I was just enjoying the moment. Maybe indifference was in my nature. But these days those words were nothing more than words.
According to an my old man in the back streets, people used to sacrifice themselves for one another. A mother could die for her son. Beyond money there were concepts like honor and dignity — a person could walk into a burning building to save someone they had never met. Today these things maybe hadn't disappeared entirely, but they had gone thoroughly blunt; people counted such things as either weakness or fairy tales.
Alex must have noticed I had sunk into these thoughts, because he threw his hand onto my shoulder. "Where did you go off to? Did you slip into that philosophical trance again?"
"I was just thinking," I said, shaking myself. "By the way, you don't need to be this happy just because you won. The gap between us is eighteen points, I'll remind you. On this step eighteen points is worth a month."
"Even eighteen points is a difference," Alex said, puffing out his chest. "If you'd stop thinking and put in some work, maybe one day you could actually compete with me."
"Compete?" I said, laughing softly. "I'm already winning, Alex. It's just that nobody sees it."