Kazuki opened his eyes to an explosion of color.
Crimson chalk dust floated in slow spirals through the air like falling petals. Desks rearranged themselves mid-float, drifting across the room as if tugged by invisible strings. The walls shimmered—not solid, but phasing between stone, metal, and something that looked suspiciously like tree bark.
He was in a classroom.
Except the blackboard was floating. The teacher's podium had no legs. And a clock on the far wall ticked backward.
Kazuki sat upright in his desk, disoriented. His limbs still tingled from the Adaptation System's activation.
He checked his forearm. Faint glyphs glowed beneath the skin—soft silver markings that pulsed once per second. With each pulse, the air felt heavier.
A voice crackled to life from nowhere.
"Subject: Kazuki Tanaka. Placement Error Detected. Routing to nearest valid session."
He barely had time to mutter, "Wait, what?" before the floor vanished.
He landed hard on polished obsidian tile. All around him, marble pillars arched into a vast underground coliseum. Dozens of students—older than him, sharper, each radiating raw power—stood in a circle around stood in a circle around a dueling platform etched with glowing runes. The air thrummed with energy—raw, volatile, and far beyond anything Kazuki had ever felt before.
A tall girl with emerald hair stepped forward from the circle. Her boots echoed sharply as she walked, and her eyes glowed with an unnatural blue. She cracked her knuckles and tilted her head at Kazuki, a smirk playing on her lips.
"Fresh meat?" she said. "Or just a misplaced janitor?"
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
Kazuki opened his mouth, but before he could speak, a glowing sigil activated beneath his feet. The arena locked him in.
"Opponent substituted. Combat trial will proceed," a voice boomed overhead, cold and mechanical.
Kazuki's heartbeat thundered in his ears. Combat trial? He wasn't even supposed to be here!
The emerald-haired girl summoned a thread of glowing light between her fingers, spinning it lazily like a cat playing with string.
"Don't worry," she said with a wink. "I'll keep the burns shallow."
She whipped her hand forward.
"PLASMA THREAD!"
The glowing filament snapped across the air like lightning. Kazuki barely managed to duck—too slow. The thread grazed his shoulder, and searing pain shot through his nerves like fire dancing under his skin.
He hit the ground hard.
[Adaptation System Alert]Ability Detected: Plasma ThreadAnalyzing structure…Synaptic bridge formed…Copy Protocol Initiated.
Copied Ability: PLASMA THREAD (Lv. 1)Duration: 10 minutes
The world shifted.
Suddenly, he understood.
The sensation of energy arcing through nerve pathways. The pressure points in his hand required to generate the filament. The ambient charge needed to maintain cohesion.
It wasn't memory. It wasn't instinct. It was like someone had uploaded the spell directly into his soul.
Kazuki raised his trembling hand.
"Let's see if this works."
With a surge of will, light coalesced between his fingertips.
A flickering, unstable thread of plasma whipped into existence.
Gasps filled the coliseum.
Even the emerald-haired girl hesitated. "You… you copied me?"
Kazuki didn't answer. He couldn't. Every cell in his body screamed in protest, and blood began to trickle from his nose. He lashed the plasma thread sideways in desperation.
CRACK!
The attack split one of the arena's rune-pillars in two.
Kazuki staggered, collapsing to one knee. The energy filament fizzled and vanished.
[Time Remaining: 9:43]
"Enough," said a calm voice from the shadows.
Silence fell.
A tall figure stepped into the arena—robes of midnight silk billowing around him. His silver hair gleamed under the magical lanterns, and an aura of compressed time surrounded him, bending the air with every step.
"Professor Akashi," someone whispered reverently.
He ignored the others and walked straight to Kazuki, kneeling beside him.
"You shouldn't have survived that copy. Not on your first night."
Kazuki looked up, dizzy and bleeding. "I… didn't mean to."
Akashi placed a hand over Kazuki's chest. The hourglass symbol shimmered to life above him.
"A Class Null," he murmured. "And yet the System chose you."
He stood.
"Class dismissed. Kazuki Tanaka, you're coming with me."