The massive crowd of ten thousand students began to scatter.
The heavy, suffocating pressure of the Dean's aura was gone. The amphitheater was loud again. Students pushed past each other, forming groups, shouting directions, and rushing toward their newly assigned training sectors.
Jin did not run. He walked with a steady, measured pace. He moved against the flow of the panicked crowd.
Luna followed closely behind him. She had to take two quick steps for every one of his. Her small face was scrunched up in deep confusion.
"Jin," Luna asked, keeping her voice low. "What is a 'signing bonus'?"
She was a ledger keeper. She knew about copper coins, daily wages, and merchant tariffs. But the corporate vocabulary of a modern Earth logistics manager was a completely alien language to her.
Jin stopped walking. He looked down at her.
He realized his old terminology had slipped out. It was a minor error. Explaining the concept of human resources, corporate recruitment incentives, and contractual bonuses to a girl from a medieval dirt-town was a massive waste of time. It would not improve their survival odds.
Jin waved his hand dismissively.
"It is nothing," Jin said flatly. "It just means we are getting paid upfront for a job we have not done yet. Let's go."
He turned back around and continued walking.
Luna did not ask any more questions. She accepted the simplified data. If Jin said they were getting paid, she believed him. She kept her eyes on the back of his black uniform.
Jin raised his left arm. He pulled back the dark sleeve of his standard-issue uniform.
Locked tightly around his pale wrist was a thick, seamless band of dark grey metal.
It was not a leather strap. It had no buckles and no clasps. The moment they had registered their names at the outer gate that morning, the Academy quartermasters had clamped these bands onto their wrists. The metal had instantly shrunk, locking itself directly to their biological pulse.
It was an Aether-band. To the local students, it was a mysterious magical artifact.
To Jin, it was just an advanced smartwatch.
It was a piece of high-end corporate technology. It did not use microchips or lithium batteries. It was powered by the ambient energy of the capital and connected to the Academy's central intelligence array.
Jin tapped the smooth surface of the dark metal with his right index finger.
The Aether-band hummed softly. A small, glowing projection of hard blue light instantly hovered two inches above his wrist. It was a perfectly crisp holographic interface.
Jin's corporate mind was instantly at ease. He had spent ten years of his life staring at glowing screens and managing digital ledgers. This was his true element. The magic of the Apex Empire was chaotic and violent, but this device was pure, organized data.
He navigated the glowing blue interface with rapid, precise taps of his finger.
He checked the first tab. It was his daily schedule.
The Academy did not waste time. The schedule was brutal. Physical conditioning at dawn. Aether-theory lectures at midday. Lethal combat sparring in the afternoon. Every single hour of the day was rigidly optimized to forge the students into weapons.
He swiped to the next tab. It was the internal market.
The Academy operated on a closed economy. Gold coins and low-tier Aether cores were completely useless here. The only currency accepted inside the golden dome was 'Merit Points'. Students earned Merit Points by completing dangerous missions, winning arena fights, or hunting beasts in the simulated environments.
Jin checked his current balance. A large, glowing zero hovered in the air.
He swiped the screen again. He did not care about his lack of funds right now. He needed directions to the primary asset. He opened the third tab.
A highly detailed, three-dimensional topographical map of the entire Genesis Zenith Academy projected from his wrist.
The map was incredibly precise. It showed the towering obsidian peaks, the massive training arenas, the faculty villas, and the sprawling student dormitories. Dozens of tiny blue dots moved across the map in real-time. The band was tracking the movements of the entire student body.
Luna gasped quietly as she looked at the glowing blue projection. She had a simple iron band on her own wrist, but she had been too terrified to touch it.
"It is a map made of light," Luna whispered in awe.
"It is a basic GPS UI," Jin corrected her in his mind, though he did not say it out loud.
He used his fingers to pinch and zoom the glowing map. He ignored the dormitories. He ignored the combat arenas. He dragged the map toward the absolute center of the academic sector.
He found a massive, imposing structure labeled The Gene Archive.
It was exactly what he was looking for. The library. The vault. The place where the free legacies were kept.
Jin tapped the building on the holographic map. The Aether-band chimed softly. A glowing blue navigation line appeared on the projection, charting the most efficient walking route from his current position directly to the Archive.
"Follow me," Jin ordered. He dropped his arm to his side. The hologram vanished instantly to save power, but the route was locked in his mind.
They walked through the Academy grounds.
The scale of the institution was staggering. They passed colossal statues of ancient, heavily mutated warriors. They walked over wide, arching bridges made of solid white crystal that spanned deep, artificial canyons. The air was thick with the smell of ozone and blooming lotus flowers.
Jin observed the other freshmen as they walked.
The divide in the student body was immediately obvious. The wealthy heirs from the inner cities were casually tapping their Aether-bands, checking their schedules and chatting about the market. They had been raised with this kind of advanced biological technology.
The poorer students, the massive mercenaries, and the outer-rim scavengers were completely lost. They were staring at their wrists in fear, treating the metal bands like cursed shackles. They were wandering aimlessly, unable to figure out the simple interface.
It was a severe technological bottleneck. The Academy did not provide tutorials. You either adapted to the tools, or you failed.
Jin had a massive hidden advantage. His Foundation Level 4 body was incredibly weak, but his modern, analytical mind allowed him to interface with the Academy's high-tech infrastructure flawlessly.
They walked for twenty minutes. The crowds of loud, chaotic freshmen slowly thinned out. Most of the students were heading toward the residential sectors to claim their beds and secure their personal territory.
Jin did not care about a bed. A bed was a liability if you could not defend it.
The glowing blue line in his memory directed him down a wide, quiet avenue lined with tall, ancient trees with silver leaves. At the end of the avenue, the trees cleared.
Jin stopped walking.
He stared at the building at the end of the road.
It was the library. But the word 'library' was a massive understatement. It was a fortress of pure data.
The Gene Archive was a colossal, brutalist monolith. It was a perfect cube, easily fifty stories high, built entirely from seamless, dark grey void-stone. There were no windows. There were no decorative banners or beautiful dragon carvings like the front gate.
It was designed with one singular, absolute purpose: extreme security.
The building radiated a heavy, crushing silence. The ambient Aether around the monolith was perfectly still, frozen by massive, invisible warding arrays.
A single, massive pair of doors made of thick, dull iron sat at the base of the cube. The doors were closed.
Four Academy guards stood in front of the iron doors. They did not wear the ceremonial silver armor of the city patrol. They wore heavy, matte-black tactical gear. Their faces were completely hidden behind opaque black visors. They radiated a terrifying, heavy energy. They were Peak Nascent Soul elites.
This was the vault. Inside that massive grey cube were thousands of biological blueprints. The secrets of fire, gravity, lightning, and extreme physical density were all stored inside.
"Is this it?" Luna asked quietly, standing in the shadow of the massive monolith. She sounded incredibly small.
"Yes," Jin said. His dark eyes locked onto the heavy iron doors. "This is the bank."
He adjusted the collar of his black uniform. He checked his posture. He prepared to walk up to the guards and demand his signing bonus.