The relentless scratching of pens and the tapping of tactical tablets echoed throughout the classroom like the countdown of a bomb waiting to detonate.
The air hung heavy with the scent of damp chalk, cold sweat, and stale coffee, creating an oppressive atmosphere that pressed against every student’s chest.
From behind her desk, Livia Moreau observed the room with an expression carved from stone, yet her eyes betrayed a surgeon’s precision.
She was not watching for cheating.
She was searching for the students whose minds were beginning to fracture beneath the mathematical weight of their own trauma.
At the front of the room, Issa Kaneshiro had not raised his head in over twenty minutes.
Where everyone else saw the terrifying remnants of Morgen’s Domain Authority, Issa saw nothing more than an immense system of differential equations waiting to be solved.
Billions of sand particles moved simultaneously at impossible velocities, each trajectory governed by fluid dynamics and centrifugal force.
If someone attempted to stop the storm through brute strength, the accumulated kinetic mass would pulverize any defensive technique long before it reached its target.
Perfect motion does not exist, Issa concluded as his pen raced across the page.
Every rotating system, regardless of its scale, inevitably generated microscopic friction nodes where grains collided and momentarily lost momentum.
If his own Spirit could reverse the vector polarity of a single one of those nodes at precisely the correct instant, the resulting imbalance would cascade through the entire structure.
The collision chain would propagate throughout the Domain, collapsing the sand vortex inward upon itself.
For exactly 2.4 seconds, Morgen’s perfect defense would destroy itself without Issa ever needing to overpower it.
It was not combat.
It was tactical engineering in its purest form.
Several desks behind him, Raad nervously chewed on the end of his pen while struggling against concepts that refused to fit his instincts.
Having grown up fighting in the streets, theory came far less naturally than survival.
His Spirit specialized in electricity and lightning, making it practically useless against sand, whose silica composition acted as an exceptional electrical insulator.
Launching a lightning bolt directly at Morgen would accomplish little more than striking an enormous wall of rubber.
Raad’s eyes drifted toward the atmospheric density charts before he quietly opened an electromagnetism module on his tablet.
If he could not electrify the sand itself, then he would attack the air supporting it.
Coulomb’s Law quickly covered the pages of his report alongside calculations concerning dielectric breakdown.
His hypothesis proposed concentrating an absurd electrical potential at a single point inside the storm until the trapped atmospheric gases ionized into a pure plasma channel.
From there, applying the Lorentz Force by violently reversing his own magnetic polarity would hurl that plasma outward, producing an electromagnetic shockwave powerful enough to push aside the insulating sand.
For a brief instant, a perfectly empty tunnel through the Domain would exist.
Across the aisle, Leila Amrani wiped her damp palms against her uniform.
Her hands trembled almost imperceptibly.
Unlike Kaïs or Raad, she possessed no destructive techniques whatsoever.
Her Spirit specialized entirely in cellular biology, regeneration, and biological homeostasis.
Livia’s assignment, however, had been perfectly clear.
Every student had to discover a method of breaching Morgen’s Domain Authority using nothing but the true nature of their own Spirit.
Leila remembered the Suppurations, grotesque mutations whose energy signatures resembled Morgen’s in unsettling ways.
A Suppuration was not simply a monster.
It was a living organism whose biological regulation had collapsed into uncontrolled spiritual cancer.
What if healing itself could become a weapon?
The thought horrified her, but she forced herself to continue writing.
Her report explored apoptosis, programmed cellular death, alongside catastrophic metabolic overstimulation.
Since Morgen’s Domain carried his own biological signature, overloading the neural receptors embedded within his aura rather than healing them could theoretically trigger uncontrollable hypermitosis.
The overwhelming metabolic burden would force even someone like Morgen to retract his Domain before his own body began mutating.
It was a horrifying theory, cruel enough to make her stomach tighten, yet she filled every remaining line of her paper.
“Five minutes remaining.” Livia’s voice cut cleanly through the room, cold and absolute.
Tariq jolted slightly, his burning eyes lifting from the page.
Unlike the others, his paper contained almost no numerical calculations.
Instead, an intricate framework combining quantum mechanics with optical refraction spread across the sheets before him.
He had finally understood something fundamental.
Shadows possessed no mass whatsoever.
Morgen could dominate only what physically occupied space.
If he wished to survive against such an opponent, then he could no longer think of his Spirit as a weapon.
He would have to become absolute absence itself, reducing the frequency of his Spirit to absolute zero and slipping between the microscopic intervals where Morgen’s matter could no longer bend reality.
“Pens down.
Lock your tablets.” The order fell like an executioner’s blade.
A collective sigh swept through the room, carrying equal measures of exhaustion and reluctant relief as the students obeyed without protest.
Livia silently walked between the rows, collecting each examination.
Goman Arashi released his paper with obvious reluctance.
His solution relied upon gas thermodynamics to generate a localized vacuum implosion, proof that beneath his shattered pride, his elite education had survived the destruction of his arrogance.
Livia stacked every report inside a reinforced case before adjusting her glasses.
“These examinations will be delivered directly to the Investigation Commission.
They will determine your future tactical value.
Those who answered with brute force alone will be summoned tonight to surrender their uniforms.
For everyone else, the theoretical examination is officially over.” She nodded toward the massive double doors at the rear of the classroom.
“Stand up.
Professor Vang is already waiting for you outside for the practical specialization examination.
Don’t keep him waiting.” The scraping of chairs across the concrete floor became the only sound accompanying their departure.
Tariq, Raad, and Issa instinctively regrouped, soon joined by Kaïs and Leila as they stepped into the corridor.
Their faces were hollow, their eyes exhausted, and none of them spoke.
The theoretical examination had drained them mentally, yet everyone understood that the day was nowhere near over.
The moment they pushed open the doors leading outside, the atmosphere shifted completely.
They did not emerge into an ordinary training hall but into the Academy’s Southern Arena, a colossal open-air basin stretching across several thousand square meters.
The battlefield had been constructed to resemble the aftermath of an urban war.
Rusted armored vehicles lay abandoned between collapsed slabs of reinforced concrete, while twisted steel pylons rose from the ground like the skeletons of long-dead giants beneath the pale afternoon sky.
Standing at the center of the artificial wasteland was Professor David Vang.
His posture remained perfectly straight despite the years etched into his face, and the wind gently lifted the fabric covering the metallic prosthetic attached where his left arm had once been.
Behind him stood the three Captains of the Investigation Commission in near-military formation.
Thiago Vane remained expressionless as always, Ornella casually spun a small sphere of fire between her fingers, and Kei Aris stood with both hands buried inside his pockets, his sleepy expression betraying nothing.
High above them, on an observation platform overlooking the arena, the elegant silhouette of Director Mazen Nazari stood against the gray sky.
Yet it was not the Director who caught Raad’s attention.
His breathing stopped abruptly, and he froze halfway down the entrance ramp so suddenly that Kaïs nearly walked into him.
“What is it?” Kaïs muttered impatiently.
Without answering, Raad slowly raised a trembling finger toward the Captains’ platform.
Standing less than a meter away from Thiago Vane, wearing a Commission tactical jacket that was obviously several sizes too large for him, was a familiar young boy with hardened eyes and an infuriatingly confident grin.
Soura Sayal.
“…What the hell is he doing here?” Raad whispered, utterly stunned.
Only a few months ago, Soura had never even stepped inside one of the Academy’s classrooms.
Yet now he stood beside the nation’s military elite as though he belonged there, his relaxed posture bordering on outright insolence.
While dozens of students stared in disbelief, Soura merely slipped his hands deeper into his oversized pockets, looking completely unaffected by the attention.
Professor Vang stepped forward.
The sharp echo of his boot striking concrete instantly silenced the growing whispers rippling through the crowd.
“You’ve just spent two hours trying to dismantle a monster’s Domain Authority using nothing but a pen,” the old veteran barked, his gravelly voice carrying effortlessly across the arena.
“Theory keeps you from dying because you’re stupid.
Practice keeps you from dying, period.” He swung his prosthetic arm toward the sprawling ruins surrounding them.
“Welcome to the Practical Specialization Examination.
Codename: Variable Asphyxiation.
The rules are simple.
You’ll be divided into six-person squads and deployed at opposite ends of this combat zone.
Your objective is to locate a simulated beacon hidden somewhere inside the ruins and successfully extract it through the northern gate.” Kaïs narrowed his eyes.
A retrieval exercise?
It sounded far too easy.
Ornella stepped forward before anyone could relax, her smile widening as she watched suspicion spread across the students’ faces.
“Don’t celebrate just yet, children.
In the real world, you’ll almost never fight while operating at one hundred percent of your potential.
Suppurations reshape their surroundings, and battlefields themselves become hostile.
That’s why, the moment the starting signal sounds, Director Nazari will impose a topological distortion across the entire arena.” A shiver spread through the assembled students.
Far above them, Mazen gently inclined his head.
The air surrounding his body immediately began vibrating with an indescribable geometric heaviness, as though space itself had quietly shifted out of alignment.
“Your Spirit signatures will immediately be reduced by eighty percent,” Vang continued.
“Your senses will be disrupted, your perception distorted, and navigation will become unreliable.
To make the simulation realistic, Captain Kei and Captain Ornella will enter the battlefield alongside you.
They’ll fight using only a fraction of their actual strength…
but they’ll be hunting you.” Kei slowly lifted his eyes from beneath tired eyelids while Ornella’s tiny flame continued dancing lazily above her fingertips.
“Captain Kei’s darkness will steadily consume the battlefield,” Vang said.
“Captain Ornella’s fire familiars will track your thermal signatures.
If either one finds you, expect absolutely no mercy.” Thiago Vane finally crossed his arms.
His gray eyes briefly settled on Tariq before shifting toward Soura, then returned to the assembled students.
“If even one member of your squad is neutralized, captured, or voluntarily withdraws,” he declared calmly, “the entire team fails the examination and is permanently expelled from the Seminar Program.
From this moment onward, you are no longer individuals.
You are organs belonging to the same body.” A suffocating silence settled across the arena.
Thiago slowly raised one hand.
Every tactical terminal attached to the students’ wrists vibrated simultaneously.
The squad assignments had arrived.