The ceremony finally concluded. Adrian watched the last student descend from the crystal platform, their B-Rank Lightning affinity barely registering a flicker compared to the cosmic storm he had unleashed.
The proctor approached slowly, his earlier nervousness transformed into something deeper. Reverence carved lines around his eyes that hadn't existed an hour before.
"Mr. Blackwood." The title carried weight now, "If you would accompany me."
Leo started forward, confusion creasing his features. The proctor's raised hand stopped him mid-stride, a barrier invisible yet absolute.
"Your friend will be processed with the other awakened students." Each word fell like a gavel. "This is a separate matter."
Adrian nodded to Leo, whose expression shifted from confusion to understanding. The SSS-Rank reading had already carved a wall between them, one that would only widen with time.
The proctor's hand gestured toward a corridor Adrian had never noticed before, its entrance marked by subtle differences in the marble's grain. Restricted access, hidden in plain sight.
The corridor stretched longer than the building's exterior suggested, reality bending around EUO's architecture.
An elevator waited at the corridor's end. The proctor's palm pressed against a scanner that hummed with frequencies beyond human hearing.
"After you"
The elevator ascended, Adrian's enhanced awareness catalogued each floor they passed, the mana signatures growing denser with altitude.
Twenty-three floors. Twenty-four. Twenty-five. The building had appeared only ten stories tall from the street.
The doors opened onto a chamber that existed in defiance of the building's external dimensions.
His parents stood near the room's center, their legendary composure intact but their posture speaking volumes. Thomas Blackwood's hand rested on his wife's shoulder, a gesture of unity in the face of uncertainty.
Beside them waited a mountain of a man whose very presence compressed the room's atmosphere. General Ironwood's uniform bore insignia of rank markers that whispered of authority absolute.
Adrian's newly awakened senses recoiled from the mana pressure radiating from the General. Where his parents' power felt like controlled fire, Ironwood's presence was molten steel, dense and unyielding.
The General's mana signature carried layers Adrian's parents lacked, decades of accumulated power compressed into human flesh. For the first time, Adrian encountered an A-Rank whose strength exceeded his legendary parents.
"Thomas. Elara." The General's voice carried the weight of mountains grinding against each other. "Your son has created quite the stir."
Thomas Blackwood stepped forward, his defender's instincts reading the room's undercurrents. "General Ironwood. We appreciate your personal attention to this matter."
"SSS-Rank Echo." Ironwood's gaze fixed on Adrian, "The archives suggest this affinity died out centuries ago."
The tactical display behind them flickered with Adrian's awakening data.
"The energy readings were... unprecedented." The proctor's voice trembled at the memory. "The crystal nearly shattered under the strain."
Adrian remained silent, the source energy whispered within him, recognizing fragments of itself in each person's mana signature.
Elara Blackwood's eyes never left her son's face. "Adrian, how do you feel? Any disorientation or unusual sensations?"
"I feel fine, Mother." His voice carried the same calm that had defined him since childhood. "Better than fine, actually."
General Ironwood's gaze was sharp and analytical as he sized Adrian up.
"Adrian Blackwood. An SSS-Rank awakening is an event of global significance. The first in humanity."
"Ordinarily, you would go through standard placement. But you are not an ordinary case."
"You have been selected for the Global Defense Academy's 'Vanguard Program', a specialized track reserved for the top one percent of prodigies."
The chamber's mana currents shifted like tectonic plates beneath Adrian's enhanced perception. Within him, the Source sang recognition, this was inevitable, necessary, correct.
"It would be my honor, General. I will not disappoint the Organization."
While the General looked pleased, Elara stepped forward, her maternal instincts fracturing her Defender's discipline. "General, the Vanguard Program... the risks are extreme. Is this wise, given the unknown nature of his Echo affinity?"
Her voice carried concern that resonated through the chamber's enhanced acoustics, each word weighted with a mother's fear disguised as tactical assessment.
Thomas's hand settled on her shoulder with the finality of a closing door, his own expression carved from the same stone that had forged their family's legend. "Elara. He is a Blackwood. This is his path."
His words carried the accumulated weight of their bloodline's service, generations of sacrifice compressed into simple truth. "We are A-Rank Defenders, and he is our son. He was born for this."
...
Adrian returned to the Blackwood estate with his parent. Thomas and Elera led Adrian directly to the family's private training hall.
The family training hall occupied the estate's heart, a cathedral of combat where generations of Blackwoods had forged their legendary skills. Reinforced walls bore scars from decades of unleashed power, each mark a testament to the family's relentless pursuit of excellence.
"You have one week before the Academy."
The training hall's ambient lighting dimmed automatically, responding to the serious tenor of Thomas' words.
"We will use every moment. Let's find out what this [Echo] affinity is truly capable of."
"The EUO's data on [Echo] is almost nonexistent. What little we have suggests severe limitations."
"It says an Echo user must first comprehend a skill to use it, or witness it being used to mimic it. It also states that any mimicked skill will be significantly weaker than the original."
Adrian's face remained a portrait of attentive neutrality, but within him, the Source sang with barely contained amusement. The cosmic torrent that flowed through his essence knew no such limitations, recognized no such boundaries.
This misconception would be his greatest weapon, a shield of ignorance that would protect him from scrutiny until he chose to reveal his true nature. Let them believe in weakness where infinite strength resided.
"We will start with the absolute basics." Thomas produced a sheet of material that defied easy categorization, part metal, part parchment.
The skill book felt warm against Adrian's palm, its surface alive with potential energy that made his fingertips tingle. Runes writhed across its surface.
"This is a skill book. The runes contain the codified knowledge of a skill."
"Channel your mana into it, and the knowledge is transferred directly to your mind."
"But if you cannot comprehend the principles behind it, the knowledge will fade."
Adrian accepted the F-Rank Fireball manual. To his parents, he appeared focused but uncertain, a prodigy facing his first real test.
"Close your eyes." Elara's voice carried the gentleness of a mother guiding her child's first steps. "Feel the mana flowing through your body like warm honey in your veins."
The meditation came naturally, his consciousness sliding into the spaces between heartbeats where the Source whispered its eternal truths. Mana moved through him not like honey but like molten starlight, each particle carrying the memory of creation itself.
His fingers made contact with the skill book's surface, and the runes erupted into incandescent life. Knowledge surged into his consciousness like a deluge of pure concepts, blueprints of mana circulation that detailed the essential mechanics of ignition, thermodynamic principles that explained the union of energy and form.
For any normal awakened, the data stream would have been overwhelming, But for Adrian, whose affinity is secretly a connection to the [Source] of all powers, the knowledge snapped into place instantly, as if he was being reminded of something he had always known.
Ten minutes passed in perfect silence, his parents watching with the intensity of scientists observing a critical experiment.
Adrian opened his eyes, meeting his parents' expectant gazes with calm certainty. "I'm ready. I understand it."
Thomas and Elara exchanged a look that spoke volumes, disbelief and wonder warring across their legendary composure.
"Ten minutes?" Elara's voice cracked, maternal pride wrestling with professional skepticism. "Adrian, that's impossible."
Her hands trembled almost imperceptibly, the only outward sign of the emotional earthquake reshaping her understanding of her son's capabilities. "Even the most gifted prodigies take an hour to comprehend an F-Rank skill on their first attempt. Many fail."
"Then show us," Thomas commanded, "Cast it."
Adrian extended his hand, palm up.
The skill book's knowledge flowed through Adrian's consciousness. To any observer, he appeared to follow the manual's instructions with textbook precision, but his internal process defied every assumption about Echo affinity.
His white-grey mana responded with perfect obedience, flowing through the pathways exactly as the runes dictated. No waste. No inefficiency. No struggle to force incompatible energies into alien patterns.
The sphere ignited above his palm, its flames dancing in patterns that seemed almost alive. Bright orange tongues licked at the air with hungry precision, the fire's core burning white-hot with concentrated power.
Adrian thrust his hand forward. The fireball streaked across the training hall like a miniature comet, its passage leaving wavering heat distortions in the air.
The impact resonated through the reinforced chamber. Intense flames exploded outward from the target dummy, consuming the practice construct in a conflagration that painted the walls in dancing amber light.
Silence stretched between them. Thomas and Elara stood frozen, their legendary composure shattered by what they had witnessed.
"The diagnostics..." Thomas whispered, his voice barely audible above the crackling flames still consuming the dummy's remains.
Elara moved to the nearby console, her fingers dancing across holographic displays that materialized at her touch. Energy readings cascaded across multiple screens in streams of phosphorescent data.
Her face drained of color as the numbers solidified into undeniable truth. The readings pulsed with aggressive red warnings, measurements that challenged everything she understood about F-Rank skills.
"Thomas..." She turned to her husband, her voice carrying the tremor of someone whose world had just shifted on its axis. "That wasn't an F-Rank skill."
The console's displays painted her features in harsh blue light as she continued reading. "The power signature is cleanly in the E-Rank spectrum. It's... stronger."
Adrian allowed a small, controlled smile to touch his lips, the expression hidden from his stunned parents. The test had exceeded even his expectations, the Source's perfection manifesting exactly as he had hoped.
His explanation emerged with carefully crafted uncertainty, each word designed to plant seeds of the truth while maintaining his facade. "I... I'm not sure. When I comprehended it from the skill book, it felt... incomplete."
"The data says my mana is a 'blank slate,' a 'perfect mirror,' right? But what if at SSS-Rank, it's more than that?"
Thomas leaned forward, his analytical mind seizing upon Adrian's words.
"When I learned the Fireball, it wasn't like memorizing a script." Adrian's voice carried the wonder of discovery, each word carefully weighted. "It was like looking at a blueprint."
"The F-Rank blueprint felt... inefficient. There were wasted pathways in the mana flow, tiny leaks of energy in the structure." Adrian gestured toward the still-smoking target dummy. "It was designed to be simple and stable for anyone to use."
"But my affinity... it didn't just copy the blueprint. It automatically streamlined it." Adrian's explanation built momentum, truth disguised as speculation. "It's like it saw the flaws in the original design and corrected them."
He spread his hands in a gesture of innocent bewilderment. "Trimming the wasted energy and focusing all of it into the core of the spell. What came out wasn't a degraded copy, but a... refined version."
Thomas's expression shifted from confusion to something approaching awe, his tactical mind processing implications that stretched far beyond a single enhanced fireball.
"Maybe that's the real reason the Echo affinity has such a high mana cost, according to the data." Adrian's voice carried the excitement of genuine discovery. "It's not because the copying is inefficient."
"It's because this refinement process itself is incredibly power-intensive."
Thomas stood motionless, his mind wrestling with contradictions that defied easy resolution. The ancient data clearly stated that Echo skills would be weaker than their originals, yet the evidence before him painted a different picture entirely.
His analytical nature demanded logical conclusions, even when faced with the impossible. Finally, understanding bloomed across his features.
"Unless..." Thomas's voice carried the weight of revelation, each word carefully measured. "Unless the SSS-Rank reading changes everything we thought we knew about Echo affinity."