The training hall was almost empty at this hour.
Most first-years preferred evenings in groups—noise, competition, witnesses. The private rooms cost extra academy credits, and credits were no longer something Jihan could ignore.
Rank 1 came with benefits.
And eyes.
The automatic door slid shut behind him with a soft click.
Room C-12.
Forty square meters of reinforced flooring. Impact-absorbing walls. Overhead drones mounted in the corners. A central console waited near the entrance, its screen dark until it detected his presence.
It lit up.
TRAINING SIMULATION ROOM – PRIVATE SESSION
Available Modes:
– Combat Analysis
– Reflex Calibration
– Boss Pattern Repetition
– Custom Scenario
Jihan rolled his shoulders once, loosening the stiffness from the day.
Three days until the next evaluation.
Three days until the academy "adjusted."
He tapped the console.
"Custom Scenario."
The screen flickered.
Input parameters.
He didn't hesitate.
"E-17 boss. Increase speed by 150%. Increase attack unpredictability."
The system processed.
A small red triangle blinked briefly in the corner of the screen.
Then vanished.
Parameters accepted.
The lights dimmed.
The room shifted.
The reinforced walls dissolved into forest.
Same dim green hue. Same twisted trees.
But the air felt heavier.
Different.
Jihan stepped forward.
The ground trembled immediately.
No build-up.
No dramatic spawn delay.
The ground swelled.
Not cracked.
Swelled.
A low grinding tremor rolled through the artificial forest, birds exploding from the treetops in a spray of startled wings—
Then the earth ruptured.
Stone burst upward ten meters ahead of him.
Dust slammed into his face.
The Guardian Golem hauled itself free in one violent motion, fragments of rock raining down around its shoulders.
Its eyes ignited.
Blue—
Then bleaching toward white.
Too bright.
Too sharp.
Jihan's breath hitched.
It moved.
No wind-up.
No heavy telegraph.
A fist erased the air where his skull had been.
He twisted sideways, feeling the pressure of displaced wind rake across his cheek.
The follow-up came instantly.
Not from above.
From below.
Stone split beneath his feet.
An uppercut of rock tore upward.
He barely kicked off in time—boots scraping against jagged stone as he flipped back.
He landed hard, knees buckling, palms slapping against gravel to steady himself.
It was faster.
The way it reset its stance—
Cleaner.
Its weight distribution adjusted between steps.
Less lumbering.
Less predictable.
He lunged forward before it could chain another strike.
Inside its reach.
Under the arc of its shoulder.
His palm drove into the seam of its side armor.
Impact thundered through the chamber.
A shockwave cracked bark from nearby trees.
Fractures spiderwebbed across the golem's ribs—
But slowly.
Too slowly.
The golem didn't stagger.
It pivoted mid-impact, shoulder dropping as its elbow shot toward his spine.
Jihan barely slipped aside.
The elbow clipped him anyway.
Pain detonated across his back.
He hit the ground, rolled twice, breath punched from his lungs.
"…You've improved," he muttered, pushing up, one hand pressed briefly against his ribs.
The golem's chest plates shifted.
Stone sliding over stone.
Locking tighter.
Its core light compressed inward like a contracting star.
The ground beneath him snapped.
Cracks raced toward his boots.
He jumped—
Too late.
Spikes speared upward, grazing his thigh.
Fabric tore.
Warmth spread down his leg.
He hissed through his teeth as he twisted midair and landed three meters back.
The spikes didn't stop.
They chased him.
Erupting in sequence.
Predicting his retreat path.
"That wasn't in E-17."
Another spike erupted under his heel.
He stumbled.
The golem closed distance in three heavy strides.
Its fist descended.
He braced both arms up—
The impact crushed him into the earth.
Stone cratered around his body.
For a heartbeat, his vision whitened.
Sound disappeared.
Then it all came back at once.
The weight was immense.
His forearms trembled.
Boots sank half a foot into fractured soil.
Stone groaned inches from his face.
His teeth clenched.
Veins stood out along his neck.
"Three days," he breathed through the strain.
"Three days and you learned new tricks?"
The system flickered across his sight.
[External Adjustment Detected.]
[Calibration Source: Unknown.]
A pulse rippled through the forest.
Subtle.
Wrong.
The light between the trees flickered.
For a split second—
Shadows pointed in the wrong direction.
Tree bark blurred like low-resolution texture snapping into focus.
The air felt thinner.
Not simulated.
Interfered with.
His eyes snapped back to the golem's blazing core.
"You're not evolving."
His arms shook violently now.
The stone fist pushed lower.
Another inch and his guard would collapse.
"You're being tuned."
A crack split across his right forearm.
Not bone.
Stone.
His grip tightened around the golem's wrist.
Muscles screamed.
He drove one knee upward into its elbow joint.
Stone splintered.
The golem tried to retract—
He didn't let it.
He roared—not composed, not calm—raw effort tearing from his throat as he forced himself upward inch by inch.
The ground crumbled under his boots as he rose.
Half a step.
Then another.
He shoved the fist aside.
It smashed into the earth next to his head.
He surged forward before it could reset.
Inside its guard again.
His breathing ragged now.
Blood trickling from his thigh.
Shoulders burning.
He slammed his palm against its chest—
The impact reverberated.
But the golem didn't break.
It answered with a point-blank core pulse.
The blast threw him backward through two trees.
Wood splintered.
His back hit a trunk hard enough to rattle his teeth.
He slid down to one knee.
Coughed.
Copper flooded his mouth.
He spat red into the dirt.
"…Fine."
He pushed himself up slowly.
The golem approached.
Steady.
Relentless.
Its core brighter than before.
The forest flickered again.
Longer this time.
The sky texture above glitched—
Clouds stuttering like frames dropped.
He exhaled once.
Stepped forward.
The golem's fist came down again.
He didn't dodge.
He caught it.
The collision detonated through his bones.
His heels carved trenches into the earth.
His arms buckled—
Then locked.
His jaw trembled.
Breath shaking.
But he held.
Stone shrieked under pressure.
His eyes lifted.
Met the blazing white gaze inches from him.
"Whoever's watching," he said quietly, voice rough,
"Watch closely."
His fingers dug deeper into the stone wrist.
Cracks split from his grip.
Wrist to elbow.
Elbow to shoulder.
The golem jerked, trying to withdraw.
He stepped in.
Close enough that the heat of its core burned against his palm.
He placed his hand flat over the glowing center.
No technique.
No restraint.
Everything he had left surged forward.
The chamber imploded inward with the force.
Air split.
Light fractured.
The golem shattered from the core outward—
Not exploding—
Unraveling.
Stone disintegrated into white particles before they hit the ground.
Silence followed.
Not fading.
Not echoing.
Silence.
The forest froze.
Leaves hung suspended mid-fall.
Dust stopped mid-air.
Then—
The entire environment flickered violently.
The forest vanished.
The training room returned.
But the overhead drones were glowing red.
The central console screen pulsed with a warning symbol.
SIMULATION ERROR
Unauthorized Parameter Override Detected
Jihan exhaled slowly.
"Unauthorized."
He stepped toward the console.
The red warning flickered again.
Then—
It changed.
Parameter Adjustment Logged.
Difficulty Scaling: +240%
Cause: Performance Outlier
He stared at the number.
Two hundred forty percent.
That wasn't the 150% he input.
He hadn't authorized that jump.
The system screen trembled faintly.
For a fraction of a second—
A second interface bled through the academy's training UI.
Not blue.
Not red.
Silver.
Clean.
Minimal.
No academy branding.
No student ID marker.
Just a line.
Calibration acknowledged. Continue.
Then it vanished.
The academy interface returned to normal.
No record of the intrusion.
Jihan stood very still.
The room felt smaller now.
Not physically.
But in authority.
He tapped the console again.
"Run combat analysis."
The screen responded instantly.
Reaction Time: Above Recorded Baseline
Force Output: Within Expected Range
Energy Efficiency: Elevated
Anomaly Flag: Cleared
Cleared.
He laughed quietly.
"Of course."
A soft vibration brushed against his awareness.
Not the academy system.
Not the dungeon framework.
His.
[Administrator Authority Strengthened.]
The words didn't glow.
Didn't pulse.
They simply existed.
He rolled his neck once and dismissed the interface.
If they were adjusting.
He would adjust faster.
Across the academy grounds, in a restricted observation room two floors beneath the Evaluation Division, a different screen flickered.
On the primary monitor, the playback for Room C-12 looped.
The central instructor—Assistant Director Kim—stood rigid.
Beside her, a man in a tailored charcoal suit leaned against the console, his shadow stretching long across the floor.
He didn't look at the reports; he looked at the data spikes.
On screen, Kang Jihan's form blurred.
The simulated environment stalled, a jagged tear appearing in the digital sky before snapping back into a hellscape of fire.
The man in the suit reached out, his gloved finger tracing a crimson line on the graph. "Two hundred forty percent," he murmured.
The light from the screen caught the sharp edge of his jaw. "The safety inhibitors didn't just fail. They were bypassed."
Kim's hand tightened on the back of her chair. "He requested one hundred fifty. I saw him input the command myself."
"The system didn't listen to him," the man replied. He tapped a key, slowing the footage to a crawl. "It listened to a higher priority."
They watched the playback again. Jihan was mid-swing when the world turned to static.
Frame 1,042: The monster's movement locks.
Frame 1,043: A string of unauthorized code flickers in the bottom-right corner—too fast for the human eye, but burning bright on the diagnostic.
Frame 1,044: The difficulty surges, and the simulation resumes as if nothing happened.
"That isn't an academy correction script," the man said, his voice dropping an octave. "Our local AI doesn't have the architecture to 'improvise' a death-trap."
Kim leaned in, her eyes reflecting the scrolling green code. "Then what are we looking at? A glitch in the core?"
"A glitch doesn't rewrite enemy logic in three milliseconds," he countered.
He straightened, his suit jacket settling perfectly. "A glitch is an accident. This was an invitation."
Silence pressed into the room, broken only by the rhythmic whirring of the cooling fans.
"Is it the Guilds?" Kim whispered. "They've been scouting the top tier for months."
"The Guilds are loud. They use sledgehammers." The man shook his head, eyes fixed on Jihan's calm expression on the frozen screen. "This was a scalpel."
"The Ministry?"
"Too much red tape. They couldn't get past our firewall without leaving a digital footprint the size of a crater."
He paused, his expression darkening. "This came from inside the root directory. Something with deeper permissions than the Board itself."
The screen flickered one last time, a brief pulse of white light, and then the feed stabilized into a clean, empty room. The evidence was burying itself.
The man turned away from the monitor, his gaze already calculating. "Increase the monitoring on Kang Jihan. I want dedicated sensors on his biometric output and his private quarters."
"For the mid-term evaluation?" Kim asked, her pen hovering over her tablet.
"For everything," he replied, walking toward the heavy pressurized door. "If someone is testing him, I want to see the results before they do."
Training Room C-12 still smelled faintly of heated stone.
Jihan pulled a towel from the wall rack and wiped his palms slowly, dragging the fabric across his fingers, over his knuckles, along the faint scrape at his wrist. His breathing had already leveled out.
Inhale.
Four counts.
Exhale.
Four.
He tossed the towel back onto the rack and turned toward the console.
The screen waited.
Neutral.
Patient.
He tapped the interface.
Mode Selection.
His finger hovered over custom parameters—difficulty sliders, environmental variables, spawn delays.
He withdrew it.
"Boss Pattern Repetition."
No modifiers.
No input.
He let the cursor blink once—
Then confirmed.
The overhead lights dimmed in smooth increments. The floor vibrated softly as projection fields activated. Walls dissolved into shifting grids of green light.
Trees rose from the ground.
Not growing.
Rendering.
Trunks forming in vertical bands, bark textures sliding into place. Wind whispered through branches that hadn't existed three seconds earlier.
The Guardian Golem emerged—
And it wasn't alone.
Three smaller constructs phased in around it, each landing in a different quadrant. They didn't crowd. They spaced themselves evenly, forming a loose diamond around him.
Not random.
Deliberate.
Jihan's mouth tilted slightly.
"Finally."
The smallest construct lunged first.
Left flank.
The second moved half a beat later.
Right rear.
The third remained still.
Waiting.
Testing.
The main golem advanced dead center.
He stepped forward instead of back.
Stone fists descended from two angles at once. He slipped between them, shoulder brushing rough granite as he pivoted. The third construct attacked exactly where he would have retreated.
He didn't retreat.
He cut inward.
His palm struck the nearest construct's elbow joint. A sharp crack snapped through the forest. The limb dislocated. He followed with a short hook of force into its torso.
The construct shattered into fragments that dissolved before touching the soil.
Two remained.
The ground split open behind him.
He rolled through the rupture, gravel tearing at his sleeve, and came up beneath the second construct's guard. A knee drove upward. Stone fractured along its spine. It fell apart mid-motion.
The third came fast.
Faster than the previous pattern.
Its fist clipped his shoulder.
Pain flared down his arm.
He didn't wince.
He stepped inside the follow-up and drove a straight palm through its core seam.
Silence.
Then collapse.
The main golem's roar shook leaves from the canopy.
Its core brightened.
White edged toward silver.
It charged.
No feint.
No bait.
Pure force.
Jihan adjusted his stance.
Shorter steps now.
Tighter arcs.
The world narrowed to angles and timing.
A fist tore past his ribs.
He pivoted on the ball of his foot, letting it skim his uniform instead of crush bone. His counter landed against its ribs—sharp, controlled.
Stone splintered.
The golem retaliated with a downward hammer strike.
He raised both forearms.
Impact detonated through his frame.
His heels carved grooves into the earth.
Breath left him in a harsh burst.
He redirected the weight, sliding off-center, and turned the force sideways instead of down.
The golem overextended.
Half a second.
Enough.
He pivoted.
His palm struck the glowing center with no wasted motion.
The core collapsed inward.
Light imploded instead of exploding.
The forest unraveled in a clean sweep—trees dissolving into grids, wind fading into silence.
The room reassembled around him.
White walls.
Smooth floor.
Soft overhead lighting.
The console chimed once.
Session Complete.
Performance Score: 1,214
He stepped closer.
Read it again.
"…You're climbing."
No warning banners.
No amber alerts.
Just numbers.
He rested his hand lightly on the edge of the console.
Warm.
Stable.
The door slid open with a soft hydraulic sigh.
Two students stood outside, leaning against the opposite wall. They had been pretending not to look at the external performance display.
The screen refreshed automatically.
1,214.
One of them blinked.
"That room caps at twelve hundred, doesn't it?"
"Thought so."
The first swallowed. "Wasn't first place under a thousand?"
"Yeah."
Their eyes shifted to Jihan.
He walked past them without slowing.
Their conversation died mid-breath.
His footsteps echoed lightly as he reached the stairwell.
His phone vibrated.
Not the academy tone.
Not a guild.
A thinner chime.
He unlocked it.
Text hovered across his vision instead of the screen.
[Hidden Quest Progress: Rank 1 Stabilizing.]
[Next Evaluation: Survival-Type.]
[Environment: Variable.]
[Advisory: Expect interference.]
His thumb paused against the side of the phone.
"Survival."
He repeated it quietly.
"Not elimination."
A faint smile ghosted across his face.
"Good."
He slipped the phone back into his pocket and looked up the stairwell.
Upper floors glowed under artificial lighting.
Clean corridors.
Orderly schedules.
Closed doors.
He started climbing.
Behind him, far down the hallway—
Training Room C-12's console screen dimmed.
For a fraction of a second, a thin silver line ran horizontally across the black surface.
It shimmered.
Paused.
Then disappeared.
The system interface returned to idle.
Waiting.
To Be Continued.....