Chapter 2: First Principles
The cryptic message from "???" burned in his mind for days. The other players have noticed. It wasn't a warning; it was a taunt. A declaration of war from the shadows.
Rocky's return to school was a study in social collapse. The story had crystallized: the Jobless designation, the glitch, the brief disappearance. He was now a phantom, a walking cautionary tale. The initial mockery had cooled into something worse—apathetic dismissal. He was a non-entity in a world that now worshipped specialized power.
All except for Instructor Garrus. The man's mechanical eye seemed to track Rocky with unnerving precision during "Dungeon Dynamics & Basic Mana Theory."
"Combat is a language," Garrus barked, his prosthetic hand clenching into a fist with a hydraulic whine. "Warriors speak in force and angles. Mages speak in formulas and intent. If you don't know the language, you're just noise. And noise gets eliminated."
Rocky's hidden passive, Mimic's Insight, was always on, a low-grade hum in his perception. He watched the archived dungeon feeds Garrus showed—not as entertainment, but as deconstruction. He saw the elegant, wasteful arcs of a Pyromancer's firestorm, the mana bleeding into the air as showy radiation. He saw the subtle, grounding stance of a Stoneguard before a quake, the way they channeled force through their core and into the earth.
[Understanding: Elemental Mana Waste Patterns - Increased]
[Understanding: Kinetic Redistribution (Basic) - Increased]
"You. The one they call Jobless," Garrus's voice sliced through the holoscreen's glow. The class stiffened. "In a live dungeon, a low-tier Slime is oozing toward your team's flank. Your healer is focused, your tank is engaged. What is your move?"
A loaded question. A trap. The obvious, humiliating answer: Scream for help.
Rocky met Garrus's gaze. "Identify the slime's core composition. If it's water-based, a localized thermal shift from a nearby Mage's spent embers might destabilize it. If it's acidic, use the tank's discarded shield fragment as a conductive wedge to divert its path toward a hostile monster, triggering a distraction. The move isn't an action. It's resource identification."
The room was silent. Garrus's organic eyebrow twitched. "Theoretical. You lack the perception or the tools."
"I have eyes and a brain," Rocky said flatly. "The environment is full of tools everyone else ignores because they're too busy looking at their skill bars."
For a second, he saw it—not approval, but a fierce, grim recognition in Garrus's human eye. You see it too. The inefficiency. The waste.
"The correct answer," Garrus announced to the class, turning away, "is to trust your team's roles. But remember: dogma gets you dead. Sometimes… the environment is the tenth party member. Remember that."
The real test was announced that afternoon: the mandatory "Familiarization Run" in the city's training dungeon, "The Crucible of Echoes." A safe, sanitized C-tier simulation where no one really died. Panic attacks, yes. Broken bones, occasionally. But not death.
Teams were auto-assigned. Rocky found himself grouped with Jace, now a keen-eyed Tracking Ranger, and two strangers: Mia, a Cleric of the Dawn whose hands already fluttered with nervous light, and Ben, a hulking Rune-Knight whose scowl could curdle milk.
"A Jobless?" Ben spat, hefting his massive, rune-etched shield. "Fantastic. Babysitting duty."
"We protect all," Mia said, though her voice wavered. "It's our calling."
Jace shrugged at Rocky, an apologetic look on his face. "Stick close to me. I'll try to keep a perimeter."
Rocky just nodded, his attention on the dungeon gate—a shimmering bronze oval humming with controlled, benign energy. A safe tutorial. But his skin prickled. The air smelled too clean, too curated. After the raw, desperate truth of his secret trial, this felt like a lie.
They stepped through.
The Crucible was a beautiful, sterile hellscape. Floating crystal platforms hovered over a serene nebula of pastel mana. The "echoes"—monster constructs of solidified psychic energy—glittered harmlessly. They hit with blunt force, designed to sting, not shred.
Jace's arrow took the first Echo Wolf in the side, its form rippling like disturbed water. Ben's shield slam sent a second wolf construct skidding back, dissipating. Mia maintained a gentle zone of mending light. It was a ballet of prescribed roles.
Rocky observed. Mimic's Insight dissected everything.
[Echo Construct: Psionic Shell around a Mana Kernel. Primary Weakness: Harmonic Disruption.]
[Rune-Knight Defensive Stance: Excellent frontal dispersion. Lateral stability compromised during forward counter-shove.]
[Cleric's Radiance: Life-aspected mana. Potentially disruptive to unstable psionic harmonics.]
They moved forward. The constructs grew more complex. A knight of shimmering force appeared on a narrow bridge, its greatsword heaving waves of concussive air.
The team's rhythm began to falter. Ben was a rock, but each parry shook the platform. Jace's arrows barely scratched the surface. Mia's healing light was irrelevant; they needed a breakthrough, not mending.
"We can't punch through!" Ben grunted, shield arm trembling.
Rocky saw it all. The Knight's predictable, two-second recovery after its overhead smash. The resonant frequency of the crystal beneath their feet. The nature of Ben's runes—kinetic diffusion. The nature of Mia's light—harmonic ordering.
A insane, beautiful synthesis clicked into place.
"Mia!" Rocky's voice cut through the noise, calm and commanding. "On my signal, hit Ben's shield with a pure Light infusion. Not an attack. A coating."
"It'll blind him!" she cried.
"Ben, on its next strike, don't just block. Shove up into the blow. Jace, target the visor the instant it recoils."
"That's suicide!" Ben roared.
The Knight raised its sword. Time slowed.
"Now!" Rocky commanded.
Doubt was a luxury they couldn't afford. Mia acted, a chord of pure sunlight striking Ben's shield. The runes erupted into blinding, furious luminescence. The sword fell. Ben roared, and in a move that defied all standard defense doctrine, he met the force-wave with an upward, lifting slam.
The collision wasn't a block. It was a catalytic reaction. Ordered Light met chaotic Force, supercharged by kinetic runes. The resulting resonant burst blew the Knight's arm back, sent fracturing cracks of light through its form. It staggered, wide open.
Thwip. Jace's arrow found the core.
The Knight dissolved into a shower of silent, shimmering confetti.
Panting, stunned, the team stared at the empty space where a roadblock had been. Then they stared at Rocky.
"What," Ben breathed, his shield's light fading, "was that?"
"Applied principles," Rocky said, already scanning ahead. But his interface glowed with private victory.
[Synthesis Successful: 'Resonant Catalysis' (Improvised). Efficiency: 82%. Understanding of Force/Light Mana Interaction: Major Increase.]
[Title 'System's Wild Card' Effect: +25% Understanding Gain from Unorthodox Actions. New Skill Fragment: 'Catalytic Insight' Formed.]
Before they could process it, the Crucible shuddered. The serene pastel nebula beneath them darkened to a bruise-like purple. The comforting hum of the simulation warped into a distorted, static-laden shriek.
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A jagged, screaming tear of darkness ripped the chamber open. From the void emerged a creature of silent entropy—a skeletal amalgam of sharp, black metal and devoured light. It moved without sound, its gaze two pits of cold negation that swept over the team before locking onto Rocky with terrifying purpose.
A new, invasive system alert, edged in corrosive crimson static, burned across Rocky's vision:
[From: The Silent Chorus]
[Message: Anomaly Confirmed. The Improviser. The Unscripted Variable.]
[Directive: Immediate Erasure.]
"A breach… a real monster…" Mia whimpered, her holy light guttering against the pervasive emptiness the thing emitted.
Ben raised his shield, but the runes were dim, as if drained. Jace nocked an arrow, but his hands shook.
The void-stalker ignored them. It was here for one thing. Him.
The hidden players from the message hadn't just noticed him. They'd sent an assassin. And they'd hijacked a training dungeon to do it.
The creature's blade-limb rose, drawing all light and warmth from the air around it. The platform beneath their feet began to frost over, crystals turning brittle and grey.
Rocky's mind, cold and clear, assessed the tools available. A terrified Cleric. A shaken Rune-Knight. A Ranger. A resonating, now-dying crystal environment. And a monster designed to erase existence.
He wasn't a Warrior, a Mage, or a Rogue. He was the Apex Improviser. And his first public test had just become a fight for survival.
A sharp, hungry smirk finally touched his lips, mirroring the one from his window the night before. This was the real game.
"Alright," Rocky said, his voice cutting through the paralyzing dread. "Lesson's over. Let's see what you're made of."
(Chapter 2 End)