"Heh?"
The redhead fingers paused mid-air, The floating screen before her flickered, once
but that was enough.
Her eyes narrowed, The data stream had stuttered, Not crashed. Not errored.
But rather 'Resisted', absolutely not normal.
Most candidates were passive during a mana attribute test. The system scanned, categorized, archived. People didn't fight back, not consciously, not unconsciously. Even prodigies merely reacted.
But this girl, Melissa tilted her head slightly, studying the fluctuating lines on the screen.
"Mmm."
A smile curved her lips, "So you're aware," she murmured, "let's see what you wish to hide" She lifted one hand and released a thin wisp of mana, refined and controlled, threading it toward the pod through invisible conduits embedded in the room. At the same time, her other hand resumed typing, faster now. Commands stacked upon commands. Override protocols. Pressure calibration. Core resonance amplification.
If the system was being resisted, she would simply listen harder.
Inside the pod…
Scarlett felt it immediately.
Her chest tightened, Not pain… 'pressure'
Like invisible hands wrapping around her lungs, her breath hitched.
"What…?" she rasped, She tried to lift her hand to her throat…Nothing.
Her body refused to respond, Panic surged hot and sharp, The lights inside the pod dimmed, then shifted colder, blue bleeding into silver, silver into something glacial. Frost bloomed along the inner surface of the pod like delicate veins.
Her breath came out in a thin, trembling fog.
"I..I can't….." she tried to say but no sound emerged, Her heartbeat thundered in her ears. 'What is happening?'
The air felt thinner with every second. Each inhale burned. Each exhale felt weaker than the last.bHer vision blurred at the edges.
No.
The word echoed in her mind, sharp and absolute.
No. Not like this.
She had died once already.
She had crawled through agony, through rebirth, through baptisms that shattered and rebuilt her from the inside out, She had not endured all that just to suffocate inside a testing machine.
I don't give up easily.
Her thoughts snapped into focus, hardening like steel.
I've never been that kind of person.
Her lips trembled as another wave of cold swept through her body. Her core stirred uneasily, compressed too tightly, restrained by her own desperate suppression.
Her master's voice flickered through her memory, irritatingly smug.
You will rule the First Continent.
A bitter laugh bubbled up inside her chest.
Really?
Wouldn't it be humiliating if I died here?
"Scarlett, future ruler of the First Continent, killed during a mana attribute test."
Embarrassing.
The absurdity almost made her furious.
"No," she screamed silently. "No, no, no."
Her consciousness wavered.
The darkness crept closer.
Breathe.
The thought came to her suddenly, clear and grounding.
Not in.
Out.
She had been fighting the system by holding everything back, compressing, suppressing, locking her core down so tightly it was suffocating her instead.
Exhale.
With what little control she had left, Scarlett released a single breath…and with it, she let go.
Just enough for the restrictions to shatter.
The pod shuddered violently.
A sharp, crystalline sound rang through the room as the temperature spiked and dropped at the same time.
On the far side of the testing chamber, A long-forgotten machine stirred.
The old monitor.
It sat in the corner, bulky and outdated, its casing scratched and dulled with age—an artifact from the early days of mana-science integration. Most modern systems ignored it entirely, routing data to sleek floating interfaces instead.
But now,
Its screen flared to life.
Static crackled.
Then Light.
The screen filled with shifting graphs, raw and unfiltered.
The redhead breath caught.
"What…?"
She abandoned her station instantly, sprinting out from behind the glass partition. Her heels struck the floor sharply as she crossed the room, eyes locked on the ancient monitor.
The female hulk stood frozen near the pod, mouth hanging open.
On the screen Five distinct graphs bloomed.
Or rather….
Erupted.
The first burned red—deep, violent, alive.
Fire.
It roared within its boundary, waves of heat distortion rippling outward.
The second shimmered silver.
Ice.
Soft. Elegant. Deadly.
Petal-like motes drifted through its graph space, falling slowly as if caught in a silent snowfall.
The third spread wide and heavy.
Earth.
Green, dense, enduring.
Hailstones formed and shattered repeatedly across its display, cycling through growth and destruction.
The fourth, brown for wood…. Or not?
She frowned.
"This shade…" she murmured.
It was too dark.
Too saturated.
Almost bordering on black.
Not decay, but age. Depth. Roots sinking far deeper than they should.
"A mutation?" she whispered.
Then…
Her breath stilled.
The fifth graph, It didn't fit…It wasn't an element listed in any standard registry.
The color was… wrong, Not wrong as in flawed but wrong as in unfamiliar.
A shifting, luminous hue that reminded her of the night sky just before dawn, dark, endless, and scattered with countless points of light.
Like…
"Dense Stars dotting the night sky," the female hulk breathed.
The redhead turned sharply.
The woman stared at the screen as if hypnotized, her earlier hostility forgotten.
"What kind of element is this?" the hulk demanded. "Is this in the national record?"
She didn't answer…She couldn't.
Her mind raced.
Five elements.
One mutated.
One unclassified.
Her hand trembled slightly as she reached toward the screen, then stopped herself.
This wasn't something she could handle alone, her expression hardened. She opened her palm, a device materialized above it, sleek, blue-lit, semi-transparent. It resembled a mobile phone only in concept. Mana lines traced its surface, forming a rotating holographic sigil shaped like a castle. It rang once.
Then again but…
"Melissa," a female voice sounded, smooth and unhurried.
The 'redhead' identified as Melissa straightened instantly.
She turned slowly, deliberately, until she faced the cameras embedded in the room.
"She's my student," the voice continued evenly. "You know what to do."
The device in the other hand, the receiver already answered, appeared a woman in a holographic way, sitting on a luxurious couch looked at Melissa
They both stared for a minute but then…the woman murmured quietly "I see…"
The call cut.
Melissa exhaled quietly and lowered the device.
She turned toward the female hulk, Her gaze was sharp, The hulk stiffened.
Cold sweat broke across her back.
"Yes, Elder," the female hulk and Melissa responded hoarsely.
Behind them, the pod stirred quietly,
Making a soft sound as it opens quietly
Scarlett lay trembling, unaware but sure of the storm she had just unleashed.
Her breathing slowly steadied, sigh she couldn't stop it…
Her core pulsed, calm now, quiet, obedient.
She opened her eyes, looking out towards the now standing two women calmly…
"Are we done"?