Author's Note
Before this chapter begins, I want to take a moment to say something personal.
To Suinicide, thank you.
You have read every single chapter from the beginning, kept up all the way to Chapter 15, and stayed with the story from the earliest days when I had barely any readers at all.
Watching your name appear on my recent readers list every update means more to me than I can properly express.
You are one of the reasons I keep writing at 3 AM instead of sleeping.(I don't sleep lol)
To my ten current readers actively following the story, I see you.
Every single one of you.
When I check my stats and see you moving through the chapters, it genuinely fuels the next one.
This story exists because you exist.
To the six of you who plan to read, thank you for the interest.
I hope this world grabs you the way it has grabbed the others.
And to the invisible readers, the ones who don't register on the user stats, the guests, the lurkers, the people who quietly click through without following.
I know you are out there.
I see the view count.
I appreciate you just as much as the readers with usernames attached.
You are part of this too.
To all sixteen of you, and to whoever else finds this in the future.
Thank you for reading.
Now let us begin.
Six days remained until the midterm festival.
The morning sun cast long, golden shafts of light across the neglected courtyard of Class F.
The nineteen students, minus Crimson who was still recovering in the medical wing, were beginning their pre dawn conditioning routines with a level of focused intensity that had not existed a mere week ago.
Instructor Gage stood at the center of the courtyard, his tailored suit as pristine as always.
His piercing eyes tracked the movements of each student with methodical precision.
However, his mind was currently occupied with a very different type of calculation.
He blinked twice, activating a deeper layer of his minimalist system interface.
The translucent parchment window materialized silently before his eyes, glowing with the deep crimson light that vibrated with absolute authority.
Feedback Reward Calculation Complete.
Recent Physiological Breakthroughs Detected:
Student Lyssa: Spatial Distortion Talent Activation.
Points Awarded: 15.
Student Dorian: Adaptive Evolution Talent Activation.
Points Awarded: 15.
Student Crimson: Transcended Stage Two Achievement.
Points Awarded: 30.
Total Available Customization Points: 60
Gage read the notification with a quiet, calculating expression.
Sixty accumulated customization points, more than triple the amount he had used to initially reconstruct Crimson's genetic ceilings several weeks ago.
The system had rewarded him generously for the sheer magnitude of his students' collective transformation.
He tilted his head slightly, mentally calculating the most strategic allocation of the points across his entire class.
Seven of his students had not yet unlocked any hidden talents.
Their conditioning had reached various ceilings within their current genetic parameters, but their potential caps could be pushed further if he chose to invest the accumulated points directly into their blueprints.
Every single point he spent would translate into a permanent, structural upgrade.
He would not be able to accumulate this many points again before the festival.
Gage began his allocation with methodical precision.
System Directive Acknowledged. Allocating Customization Points:
Target: Silas Strength Cap A upgraded to S. (Cost: 5 Points) Endurance Cap A upgraded to S. (Cost: 5 Points)
Target: Jared Strength Cap A upgraded to S. (Cost: 5 Points) Endurance Cap B upgraded to A. (Cost: 5 Points)
Target: Kael Speed Cap S upgraded to SS. (Cost: 5 Points) Reflex Cap S upgraded to SS. (Cost: 5 Points)
Target: Zara Strength Cap A upgraded to S. (Cost: 5 Points) Physical Fortitude Cap A upgraded to S. (Cost: 5 Points)
Target: Raven Speed Cap A upgraded to S. (Cost: 5 Points) Reflex Cap SS upgraded to SSR. (Cost: 5 Points)
Target: Mina Reflex Cap S upgraded to SS. (Cost: 5 Points)
Target: Ash Reflex Cap SS upgraded to SSR. (Cost: 5 Points)
Allocation Complete. Fifty five points spent. Five points remaining in reserve.
A faint, warm ripple of golden energy cascaded silently through the courtyard, settling deep within the muscle fibers and neural pathways of the students Gage had upgraded.
They did not notice the change.
They would only feel the effects when they began pushing against their previous ceilings during their next conditioning session.
Their potential had just been permanently expanded.
Gage closed the interface with a small wave of his hand, his expression returning to its usual state of icy composure.
He watched his students train for several more minutes, quietly satisfied with the state of his class.
Then, the heavy iron gates of the courtyard creaked open once more.
A middle aged administrative clerk stepped hesitantly into the yard, accompanied by two of the academy's silent stone maidens who were escorting a wheelchair between them.
The chair's polished wooden frame moved smoothly across the packed dirt, its wheels rotating in an eerie silence as the maidens pushed it toward the center of the courtyard.
Sitting in the wheelchair was a young girl approximately sixteen years of age.
She was small and thin, her frame indicating years of chronic malnutrition.
Her long dark hair was tied back in a simple, practical braid that fell across her right shoulder.
Her clothes were faded and patched in multiple places, clearly hand me downs from a family that had nothing else to offer her.
Her legs rested motionless against the wheelchair's footrests, wrapped in thick woolen bandages that had been changed too many times to count.
Her eyes were the most striking feature of her appearance.
They were a sharp, piercing shade of grey, and they burned with a bitter, cold hostility that seemed entirely too heavy for someone so young.
She stared straight ahead as the maidens wheeled her toward Gage, refusing to make eye contact with any of the surrounding students who had paused their training to observe the strange new arrival.
The clerk cleared his throat awkwardly.
"Instructor Gage."
"I have been directed by the central administration to deliver an additional student to your class."
"She has been approved for participation in the upcoming midterm festival as a guaranteed forfeiture entry."
Gage's icy gaze shifted from the clerk to the girl in the wheelchair.
He activated his system silently.
The translucent parchment window materialized before his eyes, cataloging the girl's true metrics with detailed precision.
Target: Kraelly Class: Guaranteed Forfeiture Entry
Overall Potential Tier: SS
Current Status: Complete Lower Body Paralysis (Nerve Damage Category Three)
Current Physical Attributes:
Strength: E / S
Endurance: E / SS
Speed: F / UR
Reflexes: F / SSR
Mana Capability: F / A
Combat Mastery: F / A
Hidden Talent: Neural Overload (Locked)
Gage's expression did not change by a single fraction of an inch, but his mind processed the profile with a slow, growing interest.
The girl's active statistics were catastrophic.
Her current strength, endurance, speed, and reflexes were all locked at F tier due to her paralysis, and her mana capability was essentially non existent from years of malnutrition.
But her genetic ceilings were staggering.
Her speed potential was capped at UR tier, one of the highest ceilings he had ever observed in a commoner student.
Her reflex potential was SSR.
Her endurance ceiling was SS.
Her combat mastery potential was A tier.
And her hidden talent was completely locked, a mysterious inheritance that would not activate until certain physiological thresholds were breached.
This girl was not a forfeiture entry.
This girl was a masterpiece hiding beneath a broken body.
Kraelly finally shifted her cold grey gaze upward, meeting Gage's icy expression with an unflinching, hostile stare.
"Are you the instructor?" she asked flatly.
Her voice was surprisingly steady for someone in her physical condition.
It carried the tired, resigned tone of a person who had been forced to develop a thick emotional shell to survive.
"I am."
Gage's low voice was calm and measured.
"My name is Instructor Gage. Welcome to Class F."
Kraelly let out a bitter, humorless laugh.
"Welcome to Class F."
"That is rich, coming from a man who is about to send me into an arena to be publicly incinerated by a noble prodigy."
Her sharp grey eyes narrowed with a cold, dangerous intensity.
"Do not pretend that I am anything other than what I am."
"I signed the forfeiture entry papers because they promised me twenty gold coins for participating."
"Twenty coins that will barely pay for a single visit with a specialist healer who might, if I am incredibly fortunate, be able to reduce the pain in my nerves by ten percent."
"I am not here to fight."
"I am not here to learn."
"I am not here to be a student."
"I am here to receive my compensation, to be knocked unconscious in the first thirty seconds of my match, and to leave this cursed academy with enough coin to buy myself one more month of survival."
The nineteen other students of Class F had gathered near the perimeter of the central yard, their eyes tracking the exchange with a mixture of pity and quiet uncertainty.
None of them knew how to react to the bitter girl in the wheelchair.
Gage tucked his hands casually into his suit pockets.
His icy expression did not shift.
"Kraelly," he said quietly.
"I understand your circumstances more than you realize."
"But I would like you to consider an alternative before you commit yourself to your predetermined loss."
Kraelly's grey eyes flashed with sudden, contemptuous fury.
"An alternative?"
"What alternative could you possibly offer me?"
Gage tilted his head slightly.
"What if I trained you to walk?"
The entire courtyard fell into a shocked, deathly silence.
The nineteen students standing along the perimeter froze completely, their eyes widening in disbelief as they processed the impossible statement their instructor had just uttered.
The two silent stone maidens who had escorted the wheelchair took an involuntary half step backward, unable to comprehend what they had just heard.
The middle aged clerk's mouth fell open in a silent, appalled gasp.
Kraelly's face went completely pale for a brief moment.
Then her hostility exploded outward with the violent intensity of a bottled up storm finally being released.
"How dare you," she snarled, her voice trembling with a raw, uncontrolled rage that made her entire body shake in the wheelchair.
"How dare you stand there in your fancy suit and mock me to my face!"
"I have been paralyzed since I was two years old!"
"Do you understand what that means?"
"I have never taken a single step in my entire life!"
"I have watched other children run and play while I dragged myself through the dirt on my elbows!"
"I have listened to healers explain, over and over and over again, that my nervous system is destroyed beyond any conceivable form of repair!"
"And you have the audacity, the absolute audacity, to stand there and offer to train me to walk?"
Tears began to well up in her sharp grey eyes, but she blinked them back with the fierce, defensive stubbornness of someone who had trained herself to never cry in public.
"Get me out of here," Kraelly commanded the two stone maidens.
"Take me back to my room."
"I will accept my forfeiture."
"I will take my twenty coins."
"I will leave this academy and pretend I never met this cruel man."
The two maidens hesitated, their eyes flicking uncertainly toward Instructor Gage.
Gage removed his hands from his pockets.
He knelt down slowly on one knee, bringing his eye level directly parallel to Kraelly's.
His icy expression did not shift into any form of false sympathy or condescending gentleness.
He simply looked at her with the same calm, focused intensity he applied to every single one of his students.
"Kraelly," he said quietly.
"I am Instructor Gage."
"There is nothing I cannot teach."
His voice carried an absolute, unshakeable certainty that vibrated through the still air of the courtyard.
Kraelly's angry expression faltered for a single, brief moment.
Something in his voice was different from the countless empty promises she had heard from healers, from priests, from noble charities, from every well meaning stranger who had ever attempted to give her false hope over the past fourteen years.
He was not offering pity.
He was not offering sympathy.
He was stating a fact.
"You are lying," Kraelly whispered, her voice cracking slightly.
"You are lying to my face."
"No one has been able to help me. No one has ever been able to do anything."
Gage tilted his head slightly.
"Every single healer who examined you was operating under a fundamental misunderstanding of your genetic composition."
"They believed your nervous system was destroyed. It is not."
"Your nervous system is dormant."
"It has been suppressed by a locked genetic trait that your body has never been able to overcome without external assistance."
"I am the external assistance."
Kraelly stared at him for a long, contemplative moment.
Her grey eyes searched his face for any sign of deception, any hint of the mocking cruelty she had come to expect from strangers who noticed her broken body.
She found nothing.
Only the cold, professional certainty of a man who had absolutely no doubt in his own capabilities.
"Prove it," Kraelly whispered.
"Prove that you are not lying to me."
Gage nodded once and stood up.
He turned to the middle aged clerk and the two silent stone maidens.
"You are dismissed."
"Kraelly will remain here for the remainder of the day."
The clerk bowed hesitantly and hurried out of the courtyard, followed closely by the two maidens.
Gage turned his attention back to Kraelly, who was watching him with the guarded, wounded expression of an animal that had been hurt too many times to trust anyone completely.
"Wheel yourself to the center of the courtyard."
Kraelly hesitated for a moment, then gripped the wheels of her chair and began pushing herself slowly forward. Her thin arms strained with the effort, but she reached the designated position without complaint.
Gage knelt down beside her once more, his icy eyes activating his system interface silently.
He extended his right hand and hovered his fingertips approximately one inch above her lower spine.
"Do not move."
"Do not speak."
"Simply focus on your breathing."
Kraelly closed her eyes, her thin shoulders trembling slightly with the effort of maintaining her composure.
Gage's system interface expanded into a much more complex configuration than she could have possibly perceived.
The translucent parchment window sub divided into a detailed neural mapping display, showing every single dormant pathway within her paralyzed body with sharp, glowing clarity.
The system began to identify the exact locations of her locked traits.
The pattern was unlike anything Gage had observed in his other students.
Kraelly's paralysis was not caused by physical damage.
Her nervous system had been systematically suppressed at the cellular level by an ancient bloodline trait similar in nature to Lyssa's spatial distortion.
Her body had been holding itself back, refusing to unleash the true magnitude of her genetic inheritance because her mind had never been prepared to handle the overwhelming sensory input her real nervous system would produce.
She was not broken.
She had been cocooned.
Alert: Locked Trait Analysis Complete.
Neural Overload Suppression Field Detected.
Threshold Requirement: Direct Physical Guidance Protocol Available.
Gage narrowed his eyes slightly, focusing his intent through the system interface.
He mentally accessed his remaining five customization points and directed them into a completely new configuration.
System Directive Acknowledged.
Allocating Final Five Points into Kraelly's Neural Suppression Field.
Suppression threshold reduced by fifty percent.
Warning: Target may experience severe sensory overload upon initial activation.
A soft, warm pulse of golden energy passed silently from Gage's fingertips into Kraelly's lower spine.
The paralyzed girl gasped sharply as a strange, tingling sensation began to spread through the parts of her body she had never been able to feel before.
Her toes.
Her calves.
Her thighs.
Sensations she had only ever imagined through the descriptions of others suddenly bloomed within her nervous system, alien and overwhelming and beautiful all at once.
"What is happening?" Kraelly whispered, her voice trembling with a mixture of fear and disbelief.
"What are you doing to me?"
Gage did not answer immediately.
He was too focused on the delicate, precise process of guiding her suppressed neural pathways back to life through the customized protocol his system had granted him.
"Focus on your breathing," Gage said quietly.
"You are about to attempt something your body has never done before."
"You are going to fail. Multiple times. That is expected."
"Do not become discouraged."
Kraelly nodded slowly, her sharp grey eyes now filled with a strange, wide eyed wonder as she continued to experience the alien sensations flooding through her lower body.
Gage stood up and stepped back from her wheelchair.
He extended both of his hands toward her.
"Try to grasp my hands, Kraelly."
Kraelly looked up at his outstretched hands with sudden, sharp uncertainty.
"Instructor... I do not know if I can."
"You can."
Gage's low voice carried the same absolute, unshakeable certainty from before.
"Grasp my hands. Do not think about anything else."
Kraelly slowly reached forward with her trembling hands, extending them toward Gage's outstretched fingers.
Their palms connected.
Gage held her hands firmly, his grip warm and steady.
"Now."
"Push against my hands."
"Use your legs."
Kraelly's face went pale.
"Use my legs? Instructor, I cannot..."
"Push, Kraelly."
The command carried an authority that bypassed her mental defenses entirely.
Kraelly closed her eyes and forced her mind to focus on the alien, tingling sensations in her paralyzed limbs.
She tried to move them.
She tried to activate them.
She tried to command her body to do what it had never done in fourteen years.
For a long, agonizing moment, nothing happened.
Then something inside her body responded.
Her right calf muscle twitched.
Kraelly's grey eyes snapped open in absolute shock.
"I... I felt that."
"I felt my leg move."
Gage nodded once.
"Again."
Kraelly closed her eyes and tried again.
Her left calf muscle twitched this time.
Then her right thigh.
Then both her thighs simultaneously.
The nineteen students of Class F, who had been watching in stunned silence from the perimeter of the courtyard, began to slowly drift closer, their eyes wide with disbelief as they witnessed the impossible unfolding before them.
Gage tightened his grip on Kraelly's hands.
"Now."
"Stand up, Kraelly."
Kraelly's face went completely white.
"Instructor, I have never..."
"Stand up."
Kraelly gritted her teeth and pushed through the overwhelming wave of sensory chaos flooding through her nervous system.
She forced her legs to obey.
She forced her muscles to activate for the very first time in her entire life.
Her thin, atrophied thighs trembled violently as they began to bear the weight of her body.
Her knees buckled almost immediately.
She would have collapsed forward if Gage had not been holding her hands firmly, guiding her weight distribution with the effortless expertise of a master craftsman.
But she was standing.
She was standing.
Her feet were pressing against the packed dirt of the courtyard.
Her legs were supporting her weight.
Her body, which had never known anything except the confines of her wooden wheelchair, was upright for the very first time in her existence.
Kraelly's grey eyes were wide with an expression that could not be adequately described by any human language.
Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Her mind refused to process what her body was doing.
Then something inside her broke.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
Every single wall she had constructed over the past fourteen years of suffering, every single defense mechanism she had developed to survive the bitter cruelty of her circumstances, every single ounce of forced hostility she had used to keep the world at a safe distance, all of it collapsed simultaneously.
Tears began to pour down her face.
They were not the controlled, hidden tears of a girl who had trained herself to suppress her emotions.
They were the raw, unfiltered sobs of a child who had just been given something she had convinced herself she would never, ever have.
"I am standing," Kraelly choked out, her voice cracking on every single syllable.
"I am... I am standing."
Her legs continued to tremble violently, but they held her weight.
Her hands still gripped Gage's tightly.
Her sharp grey eyes were now completely soft, transformed by the overwhelming emotional cascade into the wide, wondering gaze of a child seeing the sunrise for the very first time.
She looked up at Gage's calm, icy expression, and her wounded soul made a decision that no amount of bitter defensiveness could have prevented.
She released his hands and threw her arms around him.
Her body collapsed forward against his chest, her thin frame shaking uncontrollably as she buried her face against his tailored suit jacket.
She sobbed openly, her wounded pride completely dissolving into a raw, unfiltered stream of gratitude.
Gage stood perfectly still.
His icy expression softened by a barely perceptible margin.
He did not push her away.
He did not offer any performative words of comfort.
He simply stood there, allowing her to release fourteen years of accumulated pain against his shoulder.
The nineteen students of Class F watched in stunned, absolute silence.
Even the ambient sounds of the courtyard, the distant birds, the soft breeze, the far off training drums of the noble classes, seemed to fall completely silent in respectful acknowledgment of what had just occurred.
Kraelly clung to Gage for several long minutes, her sobs slowly, gradually fading into softer, more controlled crying.
Then she whispered something into the fabric of his suit jacket.
Her voice was so quiet that only Gage could hear it, but the twenty other people in the courtyard immediately understood the emotional weight of whatever she had said.
"Please..."
"Please teach me to be strong."
Gage looked down at the trembling girl clinging to him.
His icy expression softened once more.
For the first time since arriving at Pristina Academy, his low voice carried a subtle, quiet warmth that had never been present before.
"I will."
Six days remained until the midterm festival.
And Class F had just gained its most impossible member.
Author's Note:
Here is Kraelly's initial stat panel:
Target: Kraelly Class: F (Newly Assigned)
Overall Potential Tier: SS
Current Status: Neural Suppression Partially Released
Current Physical Attributes:
Strength: E / S
Endurance: E / SS
Speed: F / UR
Reflexes: F / SSR
Mana Capability: F / A
Combat Mastery: F / A
Hidden Talent: Neural Overload (Locked)