The first thing Lucian smelled was salt and a faint sourness, like someone who had been working hard or hunting. Not particularly dirty, just...
Smelled like human.
Lucian's ash-gray eyes slid sideways without moving his head. Karin was hunched over the plate, one knee up on the bench, her ponytail loose and falling forward.
She ate fast, both hands, no fork, tearing strips with her teeth and licking her fingers between bites. Her shoulders were relaxed in a way they never were outdoors. She looked, for the first time since he'd met her, genuinely unguarded.
And underneath the sweat, something else. Weak floral, slightly chemical. Cheap dormitory soap. The kind that never fully washed out of skin.
Well, it's expected from her. A fallen noble. He noted it, filed it away, and kept chewing.
But just as he marveled at it, his eyes widening with joy at the new passive skill he'd just acquired, the tip of his nose twitched.
His eyebrows drew together. He sniffed: sweat, medicinal floral. More like a hospital trying to smell like a garden. He had already stopped chewing mid-bite, jaw gone still, and the wide eyes that had been squinting with joy now narrowed as he slowly lowered the fork.
Strange. Lucian turned his head slowly, keeping it casual. His eyes swept the room, the window, the door, the corners, the ceiling. He didn't get up. He just sat there and listened.
Am I being monitored? He suddenly recalled reading Dawn of the Sword, the original novel, the part where Arthur was being watched by the Disciplinary Committee. The novel had described the smell in a single line.
Smelled of sulfur and lavender oil, meaning someone had been there before. Those weren't the exact words, but they were close enough, and now, sniffing that same combination of sulfur and lavender oil, he knew they were right.
...
Another day had passed. It was morning now in the Central Academic Core. To be precise: Class 1-D, the Vanguard Complex, Eastern Wing, basement level B1.
Why the basement? Simple. Class 1-D was the lowest-ranked first-year Vanguard class. Without Lucian's original memories to guide him, he probably wouldn't have known where to find it.
He had to take a narrow stone stairwell in the eastern corridor, the kind that felt like an old castle, dim and poorly ventilated and smelling of old sweat.
Lucian sat with his back to the wall, far right corner, with a clear line of sight to the door and the whole room in front of him. Back row. He wore the standard black-and-silver Aegis uniform blazer and kept his arms crossed.
This class wasn't even mentioned in the original story. He scanned each student in the room, frowning.
Forty students total, and all of them, according to Lucian's original memories, were the academy's leftovers. Failed nobles born with weak vessels like him, third or fourth children of noble families who couldn't afford proper tutors, and the commoner scholarship students.
"That's him... the Croft heir."
"He's back already? And his fiancée even stayed with him in the Recovery Ward? Why is she still with him anyway?"
The murmurs reached him, of course, but he didn't care. His expression didn't shift. His eyes kept moving across the benches, the corner of his mouth perfectly flat.
As long as you're not named characters, you're just side characters. Like me. His eyes settled on one student in particular.
A student who should be named Tobias, or Toibas. According to Lucian's original memories, he was the only person who had ever greeted Lucian with a nod, and Lucian had always nodded back. And right at that moment...
Average height, light sandy blond, soft gray-blue eyes glancing Lucian's way. He nodded. And Lucian, of course, nodded back.
The rest around him weren't important. Lucian's attention had already moved on.
With his new Predator's Scent, the room was an open book.
Front row, second from the left: skipped breakfast. Stale coffee and yesterday's bread on his breath.
Third row, aisle seat: nursing a mana burn. Ozone and camphor salve, faint under her sleeve.
Second row, far end: cheap alchemical perfume, the kind poor nobles used to cover the smell of a weak vessel.
Lucian noted all of it without moving his head.
Then he glanced at the cracked chalkboard. Reading about this class in the novel had felt interesting, but now that he was actually inside it, he was already bored. No familiar characters, no excitement, just a room full of bookworms who had clearly already formed their own circles.
Why am I even here?
Then it clicked. Hollow Ecology. Right.
It was a class that studied the underground world. Unlike the standard fantasy setups he'd read in dozens of other novels, this world had something different beneath the surface: not a hell, not a plain cave system, but a living, breathing ecosystem. The beasts. The miasma. The rifts they crawled up from.
The class covered three things: how to identify beast ranks, how miasma behaved, and how rifts formed.
Most of it Lucian already knew from the novel. But the details, the specific densities, the safe-to-eat parts, the warning signs, those were things he actually needed.
Then the front door creaked open.
The instructor walked in, or what looked like an instructor. A middle-aged man with thinning gray hair, a perpetually tired face, and the posture of someone who had long ago stopped expecting anything from Class 1-D. He set a worn leather satchel on the lectern and opened his roll book without looking up.
"Morning," he said. Still without looking up.
Nobody answered. A few students glanced at each other, then looked down again.
Obviously. With people like this, what do you expect? Lucian watched and said nothing.
The instructor flipped through the pages, then paused. His tired eyes lifted and scanned the back row.
"Croft."
Lucian raised two fingers lazily. He wasn't sure what the right response was, or how the original Lucian would have handled it. Well. Just be myself. He took a breath. "Present."
The instructor studied him for a moment, longer than he'd studied anyone else.
"You were out for three days. Recovery Ward Three, according to the note."
A few heads turned. Whispers started behind raised hands.
"I'm back now, sir," Lucian said. Flat. No explanation, no apology.
The whole class raised their eyebrows. Even the instructor. He grunted, marked the roll, and moved on.
Nothing like the old Lucian, who would have avoided conflict, answered politely. Now he was blunt and flat, and somehow no one dared to push back.
"...Very well. Open your texts to Chapter Four. Today we're covering miasma thresholds. Rank 1 exposure starts at forty-two percent concentration. Rank 2 at thirty-eight. Anything above forty-five will begin to corrode exposed mana channels within seconds. Turn the page..."
His voice faded into a dull drone. Half the class had already stopped listening.
Then.
BANG!
Right as Lucian was recalling the content from the original novel, the classroom door slammed open. There was no way it was part of the lecture, and nearly every student in the room flinched.
A face he didn't recognize stepped inside. Tall, broad-shouldered, athletic. Neat dark brown hair cut short and slicked back. Cold gray-blue eyes scanning the entire class.