Chapter 7: Results And Mockery
An hour later. A lifetime.
The same grand auditorium, now transformed. The neat rows of desks that had held so much silent tension were gone, replaced by a massive, anxious crowd milling about on the polished floor. The space felt less like an exam hall and more like a gladiatorial arena, with the combatants waiting to hear who had survived the first culling.
Thousands of applicants stood shoulder-to-shoulder, a sea of faces turned towards a colossal, dark scoreboard that dominated the far wall. It was a monolithic slab of black glass, silent and imposing, holding the fate of every person in the room within its dormant circuits.
The air, once still with concentration, was now a buzzing hive of nervous energy. Hope and fear were a palpable, electric current running through the room, raising the hairs on Kael's arms. He could see groups of students huddled together, whispering frantic reassurances, while others stood alone, pale and trembling.
Kael stood at the very edge of the crowd, a lone island in a churning ocean of bodies. His back was pressed against the cold marble wall, the only solid thing in a world that felt like it was about to dissolve into pure anxiety.
His heart was a frantic drum against his ribs, a wild bird trapped in his chest.
"Did I pass? Did I fail? Was it all for nothing?"
"My answers… they were honest, they were mine… but were they what they wanted? Was my way… the wrong way?"
Every doubt he'd ever had was screaming in his mind, a chorus of failure. He had bet everything on a strategy of pure, unadulterated self-expression. Now, he was about to find out if it had been brave or just incredibly stupid.
A sudden, confident cheer erupted from the center of the crowd, parting the sea of nervous students.
Ren had arrived.
He moved through the throng with the same easy confidence as before, a magnetic, almost predatory smile on his face. He wasn't worried. This was a victory lap for him, a formality before the real competition began.
"The test was a joke," he said, his voice carrying easily over the din, pitched for performance. "My prep school's final was ten times harder. The real challenge starts with the power evaluation. That's where the wheat is separated from the chaff."
His friends laughed, their faces glowing with reflected glory.
Kael watched him, a knot of dread and envy tightening in his stomach. To be that certain. To have that little doubt. It felt like a power greater than any Evolve, an armor that nothing could penetrate.
He pressed himself further against the wall, trying to become invisible. He just wanted to see his name, or not see it, and then disappear before anyone could notice him.
BZZZZT.
A low, resonant hum filled the auditorium, vibrating through the floor.
The giant scoreboard flickered to life, its surface shimmering like a pool of dark water.
A collective gasp swept through the crowd, thousands of voices becoming one.
This was it. Judgment day.
—--
The board glowed with a blinding white light, forcing everyone to shield their eyes.
Then, the names began to appear.
They didn't all come at once. The Academy knew how to create a spectacle, how to wring every drop of drama from the moment. This was part of the test: to see who could withstand the pressure.
The Top 100 materialized first, appearing in descending order in shimmering, golden letters that seemed to burn with their own internal light. Each name was accompanied by the crest of their former school, a mark of prestige.
RANK 3: REN VALERIUS - CRESTWOOD ACADEMY
A roar of applause and astonished murmurs shook the auditorium. Third place. Out of thousands of the most talented applicants in the nation. It was an incredible achievement, a declaration of dominance.
Ren didn't even look surprised. He simply basked in the attention, a faint, arrogant smile playing on his lips as if he was slightly disappointed not to be first. He gave a lazy, dismissive wave to the crowd, the gesture of a king to his subjects.
His friends clapped him on the back, shouting his name with genuine, star-struck awe.
More names appeared. Prodigies from famous hero families, their lineage a guarantee of success. Students from elite, private academies, their education a weapon. Each name was met with a fresh wave of cheers or respectful, envious whispers.
These were the future stars, the next generation of legends, and everyone knew it.
Kael's eyes scanned the golden list, a desperate, foolish part of him hoping for a miracle that he knew was impossible.
His name wasn't there. Of course it wasn't. These names were forged from gold; his was barely scratched into tin.
He felt a hundred feet tall and an inch wide. A ghost watching a celebration he had no part in.
He was smaller than small, shrinking with every cheer for someone else's success. The gulf between his world and theirs widened into an impassable chasm.
The golden names faded, replaced by the cool, silver lettering of the next five hundred ranks.
Kael scanned the list again, his heart hammering against his ribs, a frantic, desperate beat. Hope was a poison, and he was drinking it down. "Maybe… just maybe…"
Nothing. Still nothing. The hope curdled into a cold, heavy dread in the pit of his stomach.
Ren's gaze swept over the crowd, a predator seeking out the weak. This time, it landed directly on Kael. He saw the desperation, the flicker of hope dying in Kael's eyes.
Ren's smile widened into a cruel, knowing smirk.
He mouthed the words silently across the distance, a private, devastating blow just for Kael, each syllable a perfectly formed shard of ice.
"Don't. Bother. Looking."
The world tilted. The air grew thin.
"He's right. I'm not here. I failed."
—--
The silver names vanished, taking with them the hopes of the ambitious middle-tier.
The crowd began to thin as the top-ranking students, their places secured and their egos inflated, headed for the exits with triumphant smiles. They had no interest in the fate of the commoners.
What remained was the anxious majority, the ones now sweating, their fates still hanging in the balance.
Then, the final list appeared. A long, scrolling cascade of names in plain, stark white. No school crests. No fanfare.
This was the list of the survivors, the ones who had made it by the skin of their teeth.
It scrolled impossibly fast. A blur of letters and numbers that were hard to track, a waterfall of data. Kael's eyes darted back and forth, trying to catch his own name in the flood, his breath held tight in his chest.
He missed it. He was sure of it. He had scanned the M's, and it wasn't there.
His stomach clenched into a painful knot. This was it. The final confirmation of his failure. The long, lonely walk home. The look on his mother's face.
The scroll stopped. The final name on the list settled at the very bottom of the massive screen, alone and exposed.
And Kael's world stopped with it.
RANK 2147: KAEL MORISCORE: 41%(PASSING THRESHOLD: 40%)
He stared. He blinked. He read it again. His mind refused to process the letters.
It felt like a language he didn't understand. He read it a third time, tracing the shape of his own name on the glowing screen.
The numbers didn't change. The name didn't change.
He had passed.
By a single, solitary percentage point. The last person. The absolute bottom of the barrel.
A wave of relief so powerful it was dizzying washed over him. It was a physical force, making his vision swim and his ears ring.
His knees buckled, and he had to grip the cold marble wall to keep from collapsing. He had done it. He was still in the game. He had—
PFFT-HAHAHAHA!
Laughter. Sharp and cruel.
It started with one person, a loud, barking laugh that cut through the tense silence. Then another joined in, then a dozen, then it spread like a virus through the remaining crowd.
"Are you kidding me? 41%?" a voice shouted, pointing a finger directly at Kael. "That's not passing—that's surviving by a rounding error!"
"He's the last place loser! The anchor of the whole exam!" another jeered, the insult echoing in the vast hall.
The relief vanished, atomized by the heat of a thousand mocking eyes. It was replaced by a hot, creeping shame that burned from his neck to the tips of his ears.
Ren, who had lingered by the exit specifically to watch this moment, strolled over. His expression was a perfect mask of mock pity, a performance for the crowd.
"Barely scraping by?" he said, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. "I'm almost impressed, Mori. I didn't think you had it in you to be this pathetic. To fail so publicly."
He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper that felt like venom being poured directly into Kael's ear.
"You should've just quit. It would have been less embarrassing for both of us. Now you're just a stain on the Academy's legacy."
—--
The world became a vortex of mockery, a swirling storm of contempt with him at its calm, terrified center.
Ren's words opened the floodgates. The courtyard, which had moments ago been a place of shared anxiety, now had a single, unified target. It was a release valve for their own stress, a chance to feel superior by trampling on someone who was clearly inferior.
Him.
"Hey, it's the 41% kid! Don't trip on your way to the next exam!"
"Did you guess on every question? Or did you just write your name and get bonus points for effort?"
"My little sister could have scored higher than that, and she can barely read! She's five!"
"He's taking a spot from someone who actually deserved it! What a waste!"
The jeers and insults rained down on him from all sides. He was a spectacle. The lowest-ranking student, the exam's official joke, a walking cautionary tale.
He looked around, his eyes searching for a single neutral face, a single person not laughing, a single hand not pointing.
He found none.
Even the other low-ranking students, the ones whose names were only a few lines above his, kept their distance. To be associated with him was to be tainted by his failure. Solidarity was a luxury they couldn't afford.
He saw the proctors observing the scene from the stage. Warden. The others. They did nothing. Their faces were impassive, their eyes sweeping over him as if he was a piece of trash someone had forgotten to clean up.
In their world, strength commanded respect. Weakness deserved only contempt, especially when it was officially quantified for all to see.
This was part of the test, too. The psychological culling.
If you couldn't handle mockery, you couldn't handle a supervillain's monologue.
Kael stood frozen in the eye of the storm, his face burning, his hands shaking at his sides.
Every instinct screamed at him to run. To flee the auditorium, the Academy, this entire life he was trying to build, and never look back. To hide from the shame that felt like a physical weight trying to crush him into the floor.
But he thought of the hole in the wall. A perfect, impossible circle born of his will.
He thought of the look on Proctor Elara's face, a flicker of something he hadn't understood then, but clung to now. He had written his truth, and somewhere, it had registered.
He planted his feet. The simple act felt monumental.
He straightened his back, inch by painful inch.
He lifted his chin and met the mocking gazes, one by one, his own eyes watering but unbroken.
He wouldn't run. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing him break.
He would stand here and take it. He would let it burn.
—--
Eventually, the crowd grew bored. Like a pack of predators, their attention spans were short.
Their mockery faded as they moved on, their energy shifting as they began talking excitedly about the next phase of the exam—the power evaluation. Kael was old news, a momentary diversion, the appetizer before the main course.
He was left alone in the now-cavernous, nearly empty auditorium. The giant scoreboard still glowed, his name a lonely beacon of failure at the very bottom, a permanent digital scar.
The silence that remained was somehow louder and heavier than the jeers. It was filled with the ghosts of their laughter.
He walked out of the dome, not letting himself run, each step a conscious effort to fight the frantic urge to flee. He walked until he found a small, forgotten quad, a patch of green grass tucked away between two towering academic buildings, hidden from the main thoroughfares.
He sank onto a bench, the adrenaline finally leaving his system, replaced by a profound, soul-deep exhaustion that made his bones ache.
The shame was still there, a hot coal in his gut. The humiliation of being publicly branded the worst of the best, a statistical anomaly, a joke. It was a feeling he knew would stick to him for a long time.
But beneath it, something else was stirring. A stubborn, defiant spark, fanned by the winds of their ridicule.
He replayed the scene in his mind. The laughter. The insults. Ren's triumphant, cruel face.
And his own score.
41%.
He had passed.
They saw it as a mark of shame. A sign that he didn't belong, proof that he was an imposter.
But he saw it for what it was. A validation.
His unconventional answers, his refusal to play their game, had been just enough. His mind, his experiences, his heart—that was what got him that one, crucial point.
Proctor Elara, the man on the rooftop, must have seen something in his words.
A pass is still a pass.
He had faced a test designed for a different kind of mind, a different kind of education, and he had answered it on his own terms. And he had passed.
He had survived.
He looked up at the sky, at the imposing towers of the Academy that seemed to pierce the clouds. They looked less like a dream now, and more like a challenge. A fortress he had to conquer.
The next test was the power evaluation. His weakest area.
The place Ren and everyone else expected him to be utterly, completely crushed. They would be watching, waiting for him to fail spectacularly.
He thought of the needle of light. The impossible hole. The secret burning inside him, a power he didn't understand but knew was his.
He clenched his fists, his knuckles turning white. The shame was still there, but now it was fuel, poured onto the fire of his resolve. The mockery was a whetstone, sharpening his will to a razor's edge.
His eyes, which had been downcast and uncertain, now burned with a cold, clear fire.
"I'm not done yet." The words were a silent promise, a vow whispered to the uncaring sky. "You think that was my limit? You haven't seen anything."
—--
End of Chapter 7