The SSS Talent That Wasn't Supposed to Exist

THE GIRL WHO CAN SEE THE LIE

The pungent smell of antiseptic and burnt dust hung heavy in the back corridor of the evacuation area. Arka’s footsteps came to a halt as Elena stepped into his path, cutting off access to the campus exit gate. The evening breeze whipped her messy silver hair while her eyes locked onto Arka with sharp intrigue—like an investigator who had just discovered a crack in a wall of evidence.

"I know what I saw in the hall earlier, Arka," Elena whispered, her voice quiet yet heavy with emphasis. "Your Talent... it’s no ordinary F-Class. It doesn’t even fit within the system’s classification."

Arka adjusted his thin-framed glasses, letting the reflection of the evening light hide the glint in his eyes. He let out a soft breath through his nose. "Elena, you’re just panicking. That insect monster simply had a visual weakness toward stationary objects. I just happened to read its movement pattern faster because I frequently read monster taxonomy literature."

"Don't lie to me!" Elena cut in, taking a step closer. A cold chill emanated from her mana aura, which began to flicker faintly. "I hold Truth Seeker. My Talent's job is to dissect truth from lies, read mana flows, and see the structure of a person's status. And when I tried to inspect you..." Elena swallowed hard, her voice trembling slightly. "...My system suddenly errored out. Total rejection."

Arka stared at Elena flatly, showing not a single trace of panic. "Maybe your Truth Seeker hasn't been properly calibrated yet. You just got that Talent this morning, right? Your mana fluctuations are still unstable."

"No! This isn't about calibration!" Elena insisted, her golden pupils glowing dimly as she tried to dissect every audio frequency and gesture from Arka. "I can tell when someone is lying. Heartbeat, micro-expressions, mana waves... everything is readable to me. So stop making alibis."

Arka fell silent for a moment. He crossed his arms over his chest, matching the sharp gaze of the S-Class student before him without a shred of fear. Silence crept between them for a few seconds, accompanied by the distant wail of ambulance sirens outside the perimeter.

"Fine," Arka said softly. "If your Truth Seeker capability is truly that incredible..."

Arka took a single step toward Elena, closing the distance between them until she could feel the extraordinary calm radiating from him.

"...Then can you tell if I say: My Talent is just an F-Class?" Arka looked straight into Elena's golden pupils. His voice was steady, without the slightest tremor of doubt.

Elena held her breath. Intuitively, the Truth Seeker Talent within her mind worked automatically, responding to Arka's statement by dissecting its validity. She braced herself to receive a surge of red signals—the absolute indicator of a deliberate lie crafted to deceive her.

However, in the next second, Elena's expression froze completely.

There was no red signal. No ripple of deceit.

Within Elena's consciousness, her Truth Seeker ability actually radiated a pure, absolute golden glow. An undeniable resonance of fact echoed in her mind:

[Statement Evaluation: TRUE] [Subject Truly Believes His Talent is F-Class] [No Intent to Deceive Detected]

Elena's eyes widened, and she took half a step back with a deathly pale face. Her trembling fingers hung in the air.

He's not lying...? Elena thought in shock.

Theoretically, if someone were keeping a secret or trying to hide an S-Class power behind an F-Class label, Truth Seeker would immediately detect that manipulative intent as a lie. But the system's answer just now was far too clear: Arka was not acting at all. In the deepest corner of his heart, Arka truly believed that he was merely the owner of a weak, useless F-Class Talent.

Arka was not lying to Elena. Arka was simply voicing the reality he believed in.

A terrifying realization hit Elena's mind like a bolt of lightning: Arka himself did not know who or what actually resided within him. That monstrous, reality-bending Talent operated beneath Arka's own consciousness, manipulating the world without its owner even realizing the scale of the threat he carried.

"Well, Elena?" Arka asked flatly, breaking the silence. "Still want to say I'm lying?"

Elena opened her mouth to reply, but her tongue suddenly felt numb. She stared at Arka with a gaze now filled with a mixture of disbelief and hidden fear.

Bzzzt! Bzzzt!

A sudden high-frequency vibration cut short their confrontation. An invisible electromagnetic wave swept across the evacuation yard, causing the emergency lights around them to flicker rapidly.

Two tactical helicopters without commercial markings landed smoothly on the main campus field. From inside the aircraft, four soldiers clad in jet-black armor stepped out, bearing the symbol of a silver-winged garuda on their chests—the emblem of Aegis, the government's special security division exclusively handling potential spatial threat disasters and system anomalies.

A broad-shouldered officer wearing tactical glasses stepped through the crowd of whispering, panicked students. His heavy, measured footsteps came to a halt right in front of Arka and Elena.

"Arka Pratama?" the officer asked, his voice cold and rigid like a machine.

Arka lowered his hands. "Yeah, that's me."

The officer pulled out a document tablet stamped with a glowing red seal. "We are from the Aegis Special Investigation Division. The recordings of the Talent scan incident and the attack from the rift on this campus have been transferred to the central server. By order of headquarters, you are required to come with us now to undergo a thorough examination."

Elena turned quickly toward the officer. "An examination? On what grounds? He's just an F-Class student who survived the incident!"

The Aegis officer did not look at Elena. His eyes remained locked on Arka, hiding something behind his tactical lenses. "There was a soul resonance surge and an unidentified system data anomaly during the incident. Aegis Command needs to determine whether the subject is an asset... or a high-level threat."

Arka stared at the armored soldier in front of him, then glanced briefly at Elena, who still stood frozen. Inside his pants pockets, Arka clenched his fists tightly.

A special government examination. If they delved deeper into his soul core, the secret of the Storyteller and his corrupted system data could be completely exposed.