The marble floor of the Silverpeak Battle Academy’s Grand Dining Hall reflected the mid-morning light with unforgiving clarity, highlighting every speck of dust. Alex Vex was on his knees, scrubbing the floor with a threadbare, gray rag that should have been discarded weeks ago.His uniform was cheap, ill-fitting denim—the non-sanctioned attire for the lowest-paid, unranked maintenance staff. He was nineteen years old, and he was scrubbing away the muddy footprint of a twelve-year-old student who had just purchased his first elemental focus wand.A soft, almost musical laugh drifted over from the high-backed velvet booths reserved for the Academy’s elite.“Look at him. Did you know the Lin family actually pays him a stipend? It’s not much, but enough for rice and water, apparently,” whispered one voice, laced with disdain.“He is Lin Mei’s husband, after all,” replied another, harsher voice. “The shame-shield. Who else would marry a man with a zero-mana core? They keep him around so t

The silence in the holographic training room was absolute, broken only by the shuddering breaths of twenty paralyzed students. The Level 30 Armored Orc Warlord knelt on one knee, its massive, spiked head bowed. The guttural sound it had emitted wasn't a roar of aggression, but a message in a dead language: a military protocol command.“General Protocol 7. Target: The Unstable Core. Command: Await Signal.”The students had no context for the words, but the sheer size of the Orc and its sudden submission was terrifying.In the control room, Professor Silas was frantic. His face had gone from pale to a sickly green. He wasn’t looking at the Orc; he was staring at the blinking red console lights and the transcript of the Orc’s voice.“T-t-terminate simulation! Emergency termination!” Silas shrieked, slamming his fist repeatedly onto the console’s button.The system ignored him. The emergency termination function, designed for scenarios far less severe than this, was locked. The Orc remain

The name, whispered by Lin Mei, felt like a spike driven into the Aethelian AI Core inside Alex’s chest.Jia.Alex’s facial expression remained cold, but his internal processes registered a near-fatal spike in threat assessment. The Archangel was not just a powerful combat unit; it was a unit associated with the current timeline, and possibly with the Lin family's pawn, Lin Mei.The shadow that fell across the Dean’s Office was no longer just the hole in the ceiling. It was the Archangel itself, a figure dropping silently from the sky through the fractured ceiling.The figure landed with a soft thud that cracked the marble floor further. It was feminine, cloaked in jet-black tactical armor that seemed to absorb all light, yet moved with liquid, inhuman grace. Her face, partially obscured by a dark visor, was severe and beautiful, and her presence made the room’s ambient mana instantly dense and cold."Subject 002," Alex stated, his gaze fixed on the Archangel. "Designation: Jia."The

The Core was screaming.The pulse—the deep thump-thump that resonated through the ancient stone—was no longer a rhythm; it was a desperate, erratic hammering. The Core was oscillating wildly, and the massive sphere of destructive mana crackling in the hands of High-Guard Antares was only making the energy crisis worse.Jia descending. Antares launching. Core near-failure. Time to reaction: 0.1 seconds.Alex Vex executed Evasion Protocol Alpha—a counter-intuitive move that prioritized tactical acquisition over self-preservation.He did not dodge Antares's blast. He moved directly toward the conduit feeding the spell.He launched himself into the air, not with a jump, but by using a micro-burst of kinetic energy fired into the stone floor, propelling him like a missile toward the wall. Antares, programmed to eliminate threats, reflexively tracked him, and the massive sphere of mana fired, screaming through the air behind Alex.Alex slapped the conduit. The ancient, carved stone pipe con

The cyan glow of the Aethelian Fusion Reactor provided the only light in the cavernous Core Chamber. The deep, destructive thump was gone, replaced by a rhythmic, calming hum—the sound of infinite, stable power.Alex Vex stood beside the massive crystalline Core, his hands resting on the smooth, cold surface of the nearest anchor pylon. He was trapped, sealed by a massive steel door jammed with the body of High-Guard Antares, but he was surrounded by the raw blueprints of a dead, superior civilization.He needed to escape. Demolition was impossible; any use of explosives would trigger the Core’s fail-safe and destroy the city. He needed a precise, targeted, kinetic force application that could shear meter-thick steel without damaging the structural integrity of the surrounding bedrock.He closed his eyes and initiated a deep, sustained Core Data Link via his Subject 001 implants.The knowledge flooded him: detailed schematics of the Aethelian power grid, the complex math behind kineti