Reincarnated Grandmaster

Chapter 6: Illegal Movements

The silver wand tip erupted. A blinding flash of blue lightning surged into the narrow stone corridor, vaporizing the damp moss on the walls. Julian’s face distorted with manic satisfaction as he unleashed enough voltage to turn a grown man into charred bone.

But inside Christian’s three-meter domain, the concept of wild, unpredictable energy did not exist.

The moment the lightning crossed the invisible perimeter of Kaelostra, it didn't strike. It rigidified. The spell froze in mid-air, its jagged forks locking onto perfectly straight, geometric vectors like glowing glass rods. Christian stood completely unbothered behind the suspended cage of electricity, his pitch-black eyes absorbing the harsh blue glare without a single blink.

Christian adjusted his footing, taking a single step to the left. He didn't look at the frozen spell; his mind simply mapped the coordinates of the corridor and inverted the grid. He shifted the exit vector of the space by exactly one hundred and eighty degrees.

The spatial law snapped back into place.

The frozen lightning didn't dissipate. It reversed. The entire bolt shot backward along its own track with twice its original velocity. Julian didn't even have time to lower his wand before his own spell slammed directly into his chest.

Julian’s protective amulet shattered as the impact threw him backward into the stone wall. He slumped face-first into the dirt, his blue silk robes scorched black and smoking faintly as he lost consciousness.

The two lackeys froze, their heavy iron maces trembling in their hands. The slave hadn't drawn a weapon; he had simply stepped aside and allowed the universe to break their master.

"W-What did you do?" one of the lackeys stammered, dropping his weapon into the gravel. "You're a slave... you're not supposed to have mana!"

Christian didn't answer, walking forward with a steady pace. The two lackeys scrambled backward against the walls, burying their faces in their hands, terrified to look into his vacant black eyes.

Christian paused beside Julian’s unconscious body. He reached down with two fingers, calmly unhooked the silver examinee token from the noble’s belt, and pocketed it. He didn't spare a second glance at the remaining two students. He simply turned down the left corridor and disappeared into the shadows.

For the next twenty minutes, Christian treated the shifting labyrinth as a simple exercise in timing. The multi-ton stone blocks moved through the depths, attempting to funnel examinees into dead ends. But to Christian, the entire labyrinth was a transparent layout. He calculated the ninety-second mechanical delay of the walls, bypassing hazards with absolute efficiency. When tunnel wolves blocked a main junction, he stood still for eleven seconds, waiting for a granite partition to slide shut and open a pristine shortcut.

He didn't break a sweat. He didn't run. He walked.

At the eastern edge of the sector, the obsidian exit gates came into view. A group of Academy proctors stood behind a long wooden table, expecting the first elite noble prodigies to emerge hours later.

The heavy iron door clicked. Christian walked out into the bright light of the lower courtyard, his white tunic pristine, his expression entirely vacant. He walked up to the main desk and placed Julian’s silver token alongside his own on the wooden table.

The head proctor, an elderly mage with a long gray beard, stared at the tokens, then looked down at his mechanical stopwatch. "Twenty-two minutes," the proctor whispered, his voice cracking as he looked up at Christian's iron slave collar. "This has to be a mechanical failure in the gate wards. No one clears the third sector in twenty minutes. Especially not a slave."

Within an hour, the floating crystal screens in the Academy’s high observation tower updated the live leaderboard for the entire campus to see. At the very top, above the names of prominent high dukes and prodigies, sat a name that send shockwaves through the crowd: Slave 704, representing the Erat House, with an unprecedented completion time of twenty-two minutes.

Inside the high tower, the Academy Elders were in an absolute furor. "This is an institutional insult!" an elderly noble representative slammed his fist onto the council table. "A branded piece of livestock occupying the top slot of the Imperial Academy? If the royal family sees this ledger, our credibility is ruined. The high families pay millions in tithes to ensure their children receive prime placement!"

"We cannot simply disqualify him," the Headmaster said calmly, staring out the window at the distant mountains. "The gate wards are absolute. He collected the tokens legally. If we manually alter the ledger without cause, the neutral magic factions will accuse us of political corruption."

A shadow moved from the corner of the room. A representative wearing the crimson crest of the Erat family stepped into the light, a cruel, knowing smile on his face.

"There is no need to disqualify him, Headmaster. The slave possesses an unstable spatial mutation. Academy rules state that if an examinee’s mana signature is deemed hazardous to peers, the council has the right to reclassify their placement. Put him in the D-Class."

The room filled with low, murmuring agreement. The D-Class wasn't a classroom; it was the graveyard of the Imperial Academy. It was the damp, isolated pavilion where the failures, the ruined nobles, and the politically unwanted were sent to be systematically broken or killed off during forced field exercises.

The next morning, Christian walked down the isolated, crumbling stone steps leading to the D-Class pavilion. The structure was located far away from the grand ivory spires of the main campus, buried in a damp, sunless ravine where the mountain fog never cleared. The air smelled of mold and wet stone.

Inside the lecture hall, only six other students sat scattered across the rotting wooden benches. They were a pathetic sight—disgraced nobles with scarred faces and commoners who looked entirely hollowed out by despair. They sat in total silence, staring at the floor.

Christian walked down the center aisle, his bare feet making a light tapping sound against the cold stone. He chose a seat in the very back corner, resting his hands inside his sleeves.

A heavy, deliberate footstep echoed from the front doorway.

A tall, lean man stepped onto the podium. He wore faded black mage robes, but his face drew the eye. His skin was pale and sickly, his jawline sharp, and his yellowing teeth were slightly exposed in a permanent, mocking grimace. His eyes were small, dark, and predatory—carrying the exact same corrupt, ruthless energy that Viktor Vallo had possessed back on Earth.

Lord Byron Erat had paid a very hefty sum in gold bearer bonds to ensure this specific instructor took the assignment.

The man let out a low, raspy chuckle that sounded like dry leaves scraping across a tombstone. He tapped his wooden staff against the stone floor, sending a ripple of oppressive, suffocating dark mana through the room.

"Welcome to the bottom of the world, rats," the instructor murmured, his gaze never leaving Christian's face. "I am Professor Vance. And I am going to teach you exactly how easy it is to die in the dark."