Rhaevia stared at the completely empty ranking screen projected from her wrist communicator.
The six rescue points she had legitimately earned just minutes ago were completely gone. They had not been reduced by an algorithmic penalty, nor had they been placed under routine system recalculation. They were thoroughly and systematically deleted from the database.
Her expression remained perfectly calm, completely devoid of any outward distress. Only the slight, subtle tightening of her pale fingers around the metallic edge of the communicator betrayed her true thoughts.
Someone had directly accessed the academy’s core ranking system from an external node. She tapped the glowing holographic interface again, opening the underlying system logs to check for standard network errors.
The interface displayed a spotless, impeccably clean administrative record. There was no indication of a connection glitch, no sign of a database corruption, and no recorded trace of her six rescue points ever existing in the primary ledger.
That seamless, artificial perfection was precisely what made the situation so glaringly suspicious.
In her previous life on a blood-soaked, apocalyptic Earth, Rhaevia had spent years fighting human enemies who understood a vital truth. They knew that the single most effective way to destroy a formidable rival was not always with a physical weapon.
Sometimes, you simply erased their public achievements from the records. Quietly altered their administrative files to render them powerless. And manipulated the system until the entire world believed they had never accomplished anything of value.
Rhaevia opened the detailed, local trial log stored inside her communicator’s offline cache. The emergency rescue operation had been fully documented by her personal sensors.
Six distinct cadet biometric signatures were officially linked to her local rescue beacon. The precise timestamps matched the academy’s central clock, and even the high-resolution battlefield coordinates were permanently preserved in her local memory bank.
Yet, on the public leaderboard visible to the entire freshman class, her total survival points had been manually altered to absolute zero.
How extraordinarily interesting, Rhaevia thought, her dark eyes narrowing into cold, calculating slits.
The malicious alteration had definitely not originated from a basic user interface exploit or a low-level student hack. Someone had bypassed multiple security layers to access the deeply buried academy core database.
Executing a silent data deletion of that magnitude required immense administrative authority. It required someone sitting high up in the organizational hierarchy.
She swiftly executed an advanced diagnostic sweep, checking the hidden access history of her communicator’s recent network handshakes. Most of the recent administrative entries were heavily encrypted behind multi-layered military firewalls.
Her fingers paused over the glowing screen as a single, temporary authorization signature flashed across the diagnostic log for less than a second before automatically purging itself.
Rhaevia instantly memorized every alphanumeric character of the string, burning the encrypted identifier into her mind. Then, with a casual flick of her wrist, she closed the holographic screen entirely.
She could have easily reported the obvious technical anomaly to the local squad instructors. She could have raised a massive public protest alongside the very cadets she had just pulled from the jaws of the Zerg swarm.
She chose not to.
If the shadowy figure operating behind this manipulation realized she had already discovered the file tampering, they would instantly cover their tracks and destroy the central logs.
Worse than that, they might realize her true competence and launch an immediate, far more lethal strike against her while she was still isolated on this barren death world.
Therefore, Rhaevia decided the most logical course was to pretend she was entirely clueless. She lowered her arm, allowing the communicator to drop to her side, and let out a deliberate, dramatic sigh of disappointment.
"It looks like the network system must have suffered a severe atmospheric malfunction during the crash," she remarked aloud.
Several nearby cadets, who had been watching the holographic leaderboard with wide eyes, immediately surrounded her in a flurry of outrage.
"That can’t possibly be right!" a young noble boy shouted, staring at her empty profile in utter disbelief. "You literally risked your life and went back into a Zerg-infested canyon to pull six of us out!"
A girl beside him crossed her arms, her face red with indignation. "Everyone in our squad saw you trigger that landslide! How could the system wipe out your points like you did nothing?"
Rhaevia merely shrugged her shoulders with an air of complete, helpless indifference.
"The central database is managed by the main command ship, so there is nothing an E-rank student like me can do about a system glitch," she stated flatly.
Her seemingly weak, passive response made the surrounding cadets grumble in frustration, but seeing that she had accepted the outcome, they slowly drifted away to tend to their equipment.
While their attention was completely distracted by their own conversations, Rhaevia tapped a hidden command prompt on her wrist device. She activated a covert, background diagnostic monitoring script that she had constructed using old-world protocols.
The background program silently began recording every single incoming system ping, every microsecond timestamp, every external access attempt, and every encrypted authorization request sent to her device.
If you want to play a coward’s game of hiding digital evidence from a veteran commander, she thought as her lips curved into the faintest, icy smile. Then I will happily let you believe you have already won.
For the next several hours, Rhaevia continued navigating through the brutal survival trial as though nothing unusual had occurred. She guided her squad across the barren terrain, fortifying positions and locating clean water sources without bringing any attention to herself.
Yet, behind her calm facade, her mind was constantly analyzing every variable. She closely observed the behavior of the squad instructors, monitored the public command channels, tracked the automated ranking updates, and evaluated the sudden timing of the evacuation orders.
She soon pieced together a deeply troubling, highly logical pattern.
The emergency retreat order had been broadcast across all cadet channels shortly before the six stranded students had even sent out their frantic distress signal.
Furthermore, the precise coordinates of their localized distress ping had originally been routed through a high-priority, instructor-level command channel.
Whoever is altering my official scores must possess direct administrative access to far more than just the academy’s public leaderboard, she reasoned silently.
Rhaevia copied the newly discovered routing data directly into her communicator’s isolated memory cache. She would conduct a thorough, deep-network investigation the second she stepped off this miserable planet.
For the time being, maintaining her physical survival and keeping her squad alive remained her primary objectives.
Suddenly, her wrist communicator vibrated violently against her skin, flashing an aggressive crimson prompt across its screen.
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED HIGH-LEVEL EXTERNAL ACCESS ATTEMPT DETECTED.]
Rhaevia’s dark eyes sharpened into pure steel as she realized what was happening. Someone sitting in an orbital command hub was currently attempting to remotely wipe her local memory cache to erase her newly collected diagnostic data.
She reacted with instantaneous, battle-trained speed, slamming her thumb onto the emergency override button to physically sever the communicator’s wireless receiver.
She managed to cut the connection in less than half a second, but it was just barely too late to stop the incoming packet entirely. A single, high-level administrative authorization code flashed brightly across her glowing display before the screen went completely black.
Rhaevia’s breathing instantly stilled as she read the glowing characters.
She immediately recognized the distinct, high-tech formatting of the security clearance classification. It was not a standard academy-level clearance code, nor was it a clearance level granted to senior field instructors.
The string was stamped with the absolute highest military security clearance available across the entire frontier training operation.
[AUTHORIZATION LEVEL: IMPERIAL MILITARY - CLEARANCE BLACK.]
Rhaevia stared at the darkened screen, her gaze turning as cold as liquid nitrogen.
The person actively targeting her and suppressing her existence was not merely a corrupt academy teacher or a jealous noble student. Someone wielding supreme, top-tier military authority was orchestrating this entire operation from the shadows.
And as she looked up toward the dark sky where the massive battleships hovered, she knew her true fight was only just beginning.