The Anomaly's Path

”Ohhh...”

”Ah... fuck...”

”Please... just let me die...”

”My legs... I can’t feel my legs...”

”Someone... just end it...”

For three straight hours, the big entrance of the fight arena had been echoing with tired, painful sounds. The drill had ended ten minutes ago, but nobody had moved. To anyone passing by in the main hall, the weak groans coming through the thick walls probably sounded very wrong.

But it was not that kind of pleasure. It was the sound of fifty troublemakers getting their souls beaten out of their bodies.

”Three minutes,” Morgana had said at the start. It was supposed to be a quick test.

She lied. The woman was an absolute monster.

By the time the watches on our wrists finally beeped, the whole arena looked less like a school room and more like a hospital after a disaster.

Forty-nine outcasts from everywhere were melted across the floor. To my left, a big beastkin guy with tiger ears was face-down in a puddle of his own sweat, his tail twitching.

A few feet away, a girl with short green hair was curled into a ball, muttering about her mother between dry sobs. Near the left wall, a broad-shouldered dwarf sat slumped against the stone, staring at his shaking hands like he’d never seen them before.

Somewhere in the back, someone was quietly crying — a raw, broken sound that no one had the energy to mock.

The fuck is he crying for? I got flattened by a Sovereign last night and tossed across this arena twice. You don’t see me bawling my eyes out. Tch. Amateurs.

Near a white stone pillar, a half-elf student was staring at the glass ceiling, looking like he was rethinking his whole life. Human nobles, pure elves, dwarves, mixed-bloods — all of them had the same look of deep, deep regret.

”Alright, that’s three hours,” Morgana announced, standing perfectly at ease right in the center of the floor. Her black ponytail was pristine, and her jacket didn’t have a single speck of dust on it. She looked down at the sea of broken bodies, a lazy, amused smile pulling at her lips.

”Get up, my little... my little sl—”

She stopped mid-word, clearing her throat with a fake cough.

I swear she was about to say slaves, I thought, my eye twitching. What the hell is wrong with this crazy woman? Where did that old man Vega even find her?

”Right. That bastard Vega made me sign a paper saying I cannot use that word on the first day,” Morgana said smoothly, not looking sorry at all. ”Get up, you lazy bastards. The bell rang. Leave before I decide to give you another hour to fix your shit fighting stances.”

God damn it, I grumbled internally, staying flat on my back as I stared up at the ceiling. My ribs felt like they had been crushed by something heavy.

In the game, you could just skip through boring parts and wait for a loading screen to pass the time. Where is my skip button now? Why do I have to actually feel all this pain?

Right next to me, a weak, trembling hand suddenly reached up into the air, blindly waving around like a drowning man looking for a lifeline.

”Leo...” Roan’s voice was completely hoarse, muffled by the stone.

He was lying face-down a couple of feet away, his silver spear tossed carelessly aside. ”If I die right here... make sure my death story says I died fighting a dragon. Do not let anyone know I got put on the floor by a woman who didn’t even break a sweat.”

”Get up, crazy elf,” I muttered, rolling onto my side with a heavy grunt. My bloodline was already working under my skin, taking away the pain, but my body was still very tired.

A few feet away, Alice was slowly pushing herself up into a sitting position.

Her arms were visibly shaking, and her face was flushed entirely bright red from the hard work, but her stubborn pride refused to let her stay down while the two of us were talking. She wiped the sweat from her eyes, her sharp glare locked right onto me.

”Stop muttering like a pair of dying dogs, you fucking pieces of trash,” Alice snapped, her voice rough and incredibly ragged. She locked her jaw, staring at the floor between Roan and me like she wanted to set it on fire.

”If you two bastards have enough breath left to whisper sweet nothings to each other, you have enough breath to get your pathetic asses off the floor. You are making my eyes hurt by just looking at you.”

I looked at her, then turned my head to Roan, a small tired smile on my lips.

”...Hey, Roan,” I said, raising an eyebrow. ”Look. Our classmate still has energy to yell at us. Did she not say earlier that my hit was just a cheap trick? And were you not crying that you could have handled the teacher better than me?”

Roan slowly rotated his head on the floor, his messy silver hair caked in dust, but a wild, painful grin immediately appeared across his face. ”Yeah. I definitely would have looked way sexier doing it. You looked like a dying frog trying to hug a tree.”

My lip twitched. Of course that was his answer.

”Exactly,” I chuckled weakly, pushing myself up onto my elbows.

”The arena floor is wide open right now. Why don’t you two step up and have a quick fight? Prove who’s the real boss of the misfits. I’ll sit right here and be the referee. I promise not to laugh when Morgana throws both of you through the wall.”

”Fucking bastard...” Alice muttered under her breath, her fists clenching tightly. She looked like she wanted to physically bite my head off, but her legs were trembling so badly underneath her uniform that she couldn’t even stand up straight.

”Haha! Don’t push her, man,” Roan laughed weakly, using his spear to pull himself off the floor. Once he was steady, he reached down and grabbed my hand, pulling me up. ”Come on, let’s get out of here before the teacher changes her mind.”

I stood up straight, running a hand through my hair to shake out the dust while hiding a sharp wince. I tapped my watch, bringing up the glowing blue holographic interface of the Astra Net schedule to see where we were supposed to go next.

Let’s see, I thought, scanning the text. Morgana’s practical hell is officially over. Next... we have a nice, glorious one-hour break for lunch. And right after that, a period of Advanced Mana Theory.

”Hey, where are we even supposed to go for the theory block?” Roan asked, leaning against his spear as he peered over my shoulder. ”The administrative wing all looks exactly the same. It’s just endless white marble and identical pillars.”

”Room 3-B,” I said, remembering the map I had looked at earlier. ”Down the west hall, past the fountains.”

”Great. Let us go before the food runs out,” Roan said, turning and walking toward a dark stone archway on the left side of the room.

The rest of Class Ascendant was already leaving, a slow, tired line of students dragging themselves to the exits. I shook my head, fixed my coat, and took a few steps toward the dark archway Roan had picked, thinking it was a shortcut.

Suddenly, a heavy hand grabbed the back of my collar and violently yanked me backward.

”Whoa, whoa, hold on, Lord Celestial,” Roan’s voice cut through my thoughts as he dragged me back onto the main path. ”Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I blinked, looking at the dark stone tunnel, then back at him. ”The western hallway. It’s right there.”

Roan stared at me, his elf ears twitching in disbelief. ”Leo. That is a cleaning tunnel for the trash robots. If you go down there, you will either get hit by a heavy iron cleaning drone or get lost in the school’s pipes.”

Alice stopped by the main door, looking back at us with a purely judgmental face. ”The Primus of our class can fight a Transcendent, but he cannot tell the difference between a hall and a trash dump. Unbelievable.”

Ugh. This damn place, I screamed internally, a sudden wave of embarrassment hitting me as I quickly snapped my collar out of Roan’s grip.

In the original game, there was a nice, glowing yellow pathing line painted directly on the floor telling you exactly where to walk! How am I supposed to navigate this massive fortress when every single door looks like a high-end palace gate?!

”I was just... checking the strength of the archway,” I coughed into my fist, not wanting to admit I had no sense of direction. ”Let us go. We are wasting lunch.”

”Right, right, checking the archway,” Roan laughed loud, keeping a hand on my shoulder as we finally walked out into the main hall. ”Sure, captain. Just walk straight and try not to lead us into a closet, okay?”

I said a stream of silent curses under my breath, my boots clicking on the shiny floor as our small, bickering group left the arena and moved with the rest of the class toward the central hall.