The year was 100 AC—After Cascade.
One hundred years ago, reality had fractured. The Great Cascade, as historians now dryly called the world-ending magical apocalypse, had fundamentally rewritten the laws of physics, showering the planet in arcane energy and gifting (or cursing) humanity with Abilities. Now, society wasn't measured by wealth or title, but by the glowing, colored letters assigned by the Authority: Ranks S to E.
Elias Vance, currently sweating in the sterile, chilled assessment room of the Neo-Kyoto Testing Facility, was widely predicted to be an E-Rank. E for 'Exhaustingly Effortless' to ignore.
He stood on a hexagonal pressure plate, his scrawny frame feeling every ounce of the mandated, form-fitting black uniform. Two Authority Assessors—a bored-looking woman with shimmering, sapphire-blue skin (likely a rare A-Rank Etherealist) and a gruff man who looked like a perpetually disappointed gym teacher (probably a solid B-Rank Kinetic)—watched him with clinical detachment.
"Alright, Vance," the Kinetic man grunted, adjusting the monocle that displayed his own Ability metrics. "We're starting the initial psychometric scan. Just clear your mind. Think of… nothing. We're measuring ambient energy leakage and latent affinity."
"Nothing. Got it," Elias muttered. Thinking of nothing was his specialty, a skill honed by 16 years of being utterly unremarkable in a remarkable world.
The hexagonal plate beneath him hummed, and a soft, white light enveloped him, passing through his body like a weak X-ray. Elias didn't feel anything, which was the problem. Most people felt a tickle, a surge, an uncontrollable desire to freeze the water bottle or spontaneously combust a cushion.
The Etherealist sighed, her blue skin catching the diagnostic light beautifully. "Scan complete. Status: Inert. Mana leakage: 0.0001 units. Latent affinity: Undetermined."
The Kinetic man scribbled furiously on his datapad. "Pathetic. Look, Vance, let's skip the fancy psycho-crap. We're going straight to the physical test. Attempt to manifest something. Anything. Heat, cold, light, a spark, a vague feeling of existential dread. Push your Core."
Elias nodded, clenching his fists. He focused on the tiny, dull ache in the center of his chest—the supposed location of the human 'Mana Core.' He imagined it was a star. Then a dying ember. Then a flickering candle.
Come on, overwhelming ability. Give me anything. Give me the power to perfectly organize my socks.
He strained. His face turned a deep, concerning shade of purple. The air pressure in the room remained perfectly stable. Nothing bent, nothing glowed. The only sound was the clicking of the Kinetic Assessor's pen.
"Time elapsed: thirty seconds," the Etherealist announced, her voice flat. "Zero manifestation. Zero external effect. We're moving to the final stage."
Elias dropped his hands, deflated. His fate was sealed. He'd be a Loader, or maybe a Cleaner. Jobs that didn't require Mana.
The Kinetic Assessor then brought out the final piece of equipment: a small, dark metal cube, about the size of a tea caddy, sitting innocently on a pedestal. It was the Comprehension Cube, the ultimate litmus test for the rarest and most potent kind of Abilities—the mental ones.
"This cube contains a theoretical framework for a self-sustaining perpetual motion machine, written in the lost pre-Cascade language of Old Gaelic. It is pure gibberish to 99.9% of the world," the Kinetic explained, sounding like he was reciting a user manual. "A true S-Rank mentalist could instantly grasp the core concept. We're just looking for a tiny flicker of accelerated pattern recognition. Hold it, Vance."
Elias took the cold, smooth cube in his hands. It felt heavy. It looked ancient.
He didn't try to force a power. He simply looked at the engraved symbols and numbers, the incomprehensible loops and scratches of Old Gaelic.
And then, a sound occurred in his mind. It wasn't a roar or a flash. It was a soft, almost imperceptible click.
The moment his fingers touched the metal, his mind didn't just see the Gaelic letters; it saw the sound patterns of the words, the grammar structures, the underlying linguistic roots tracing back millennia. Then, the symbols transformed. They weren't letters anymore, they were mathematical operators, vectors, and complex energy diagrams.
The 'theoretical framework' wasn't theoretical at all. It was real. It was perfect.
Elias didn't understand the perpetual motion machine; he knew it. Every flaw, every necessary calibration, every catastrophic endpoint if the design wasn't corrected. The entire concept—the language, the physics, the engineering—fused into a single, undeniable truth in the span of one breath.
He let go of the cube, his mind reeling from the sheer, sudden tidal wave of raw information.
"Well?" the Kinetic Assessor asked, rolling his eyes. "Did you feel smart for a second?"
Elias was staring at the wall, but he wasn't seeing the wall. He was seeing the complex arrangement of wiring inside the wall, the precise mixture of concrete in the drywall, and the exact date the copper pipes were installed, based on the unique signature of pre-Cascade alloy standards.
He turned to the Assessors, his eyes wide, a slight, almost manic smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
"Sir," Elias said, his voice now low and calm, unlike his usually squeaky tenor. "The cube's mechanism for stabilizing the magnetic vortex is flawed. If you swap the molybdenum armature for an iron-nickel alloy—which is less stable, yes—you can prevent the catastrophic harmonic decay that occurs at 73% efficiency."
The two professional Assessors froze, their clinical detachment shattered.
The Etherealist's sapphire skin seemed to lose a shade of blue. "What did you just say?"
"Also," Elias continued, tilting his head slightly as he looked at the Kinetic Assessor, "your monocle is a Class 3 Analyzer from the Authority's 47th production batch. The pressure clamp is calibrated 0.005 newtons too tightly, causing a mild, continuous headache. And that's why you've been grumpy all morning. You might want to fix that."
The Kinetic man slowly lowered his datapad. He stared at Elias, then at the Comprehension Cube, then back at Elias.
The hexagonal plate beneath Elias, which hadn't moved an inch, suddenly sputtered. The white light turned green, then bright violet, and finally stabilized on a color that hadn't been seen in the facility in over two decades: a faint, pulsing Black aura.
The Etherealist gulped, checking the screen that displayed the official rank. It was blank. The system was failing to assign a category.
"This is impossible," she whispered.
Elias, the boy who was supposed to be E-Rank, felt a strange, intoxicating serenity wash over him. He finally understood.
He wasn't weak. He was just off. And now, with the click of Instant Comprehension, the world was no longer a mystery to be solved.
It was a vast, open-source textbook, and he just found the index.