The Anomaly's Path

I stared at the empty doorway where Elisabeth had just vanished, my grip still tight around my fork.

What the hell was that?

That girl did not look at me like a student looks at a classmate. She looked at me like she knew what I wore to sleep. Or worse, like she was deciding where to hang my body. It was a cold, calculating look that felt way too heavy for a first-year student.

”Hey, Leo. Are you listening to me? Your eyes are popping out,” Roan’s whiny voice broke my thoughts. He was still poking his dry piece of bread with a miserable expression. ”Seriously, if you are not going to finish that side dish, I can feel my organs shrinking. My elf ancestors are crying in the spirit world right now.”

I blinked, pulling myself back, and looked at my plate. The meat was gone. Only a few scraps of grains were left. I had not even noticed I finished the whole thing while staring across the room.

”There’s nothing left to give you, idiot,” I dryly muttered, pushing the empty tray forward. ”...And your ancestors are probably crying because you lost all your money to a bunch of senior scammers on day one.”

”It was not older students! It was a very close bet!” Roan argued back, though his elf ears turned bright red.

”A close bet that left you eating hot water with salt,” Alice said, setting her own clean plate down. She did not look at Roan’s sad face. Instead, she fixed her collar, her face getting sharp. ”...We have been sitting here too long. Lunch is almost over.”

I checked my watch, and my lip twitched. She wasn’t wrong. I had been so busy enjoying the food and overthinking that the whole hour had disappeared.

”...Room 3-B,” I muttered, remembering the massive map I had memorized from the orientation booklet. At least, I thought I did. ”Down the west hall, past the fountains. If we don’t move right now, we’re going to be wandering the corridors like lost ghosts.”

_

We did not just walk.

We ended up running. The academy did not feel like an academy. It felt like a big, fancy city built to make normal people feel small.

We walked through glass skyways that looked down over the training yards, rushed past big indoor yards where water fountains pulsed with the beat of the air, and took two wrong turns down a long hall lined with stone statues of old heroes.

Every statue looked like it was staring down at us for being late.

By the time we finally stopped outside the big wood doors of Room 3-B, we were ten minutes late.

”My legs are burning,” Roan wheezed, leaning on the wall like a dying man. ”If the teacher takes my points, I am sleeping on your floor, Leo.”

”Like hell you are,” I said, catching my breath. I looked at Alice, who was glaring at the door handle like she could melt it with her eyes. ”Alright, let us sneak in through the back. If we are quiet, no one will see us.”

Alice pushed the heavy ironwood door open, and the three of us stepped inside, trying our absolute best to blend into the shadows.

We failed instantly.

The moment the door opened, a wave of silent, heavy pressure hit us. This was not a normal classroom.

It was a big, tiered room built like an arena. Rows of desks went up toward a glowing ceiling, and every seat was full. All students from Classes Veritas, Fortis, Audax, and Ascendant were packed into this one room.

And because the room was dead quiet, the loud creak of our door made all 197 pairs of eyes turn to us.

Down in the front row, Arthur was sitting next to Amelia, his golden eyes calm. Nyra was already on his other side, like she had somehow become attached to him in a single morning.

A few rows up, Lyssaria didn’t even look back, but Caster had a big, amused smile on his face, already acting like he and Riven had been friends for ages. Riven sat next to him, looking as cold and annoyed as ever. How the hell did that happen so fast?

Cordelia sat with Julia, the two of them whispering about something. Julia was already stuck with the clumsy princess.

..And Elisabeth sat alone, as always. Her violet eyes cold, her face blank.

But hey, I thought, looking at the two disasters sitting next to me. On my left, a broke elf prince and on my right, a crazy girl who followed me around for no reason. I should have known.

My life was going to be a comedy show. Truly, I was overflowing with joy.

The main cast was getting cozy way too fast. Even the ones who should hate each other were sitting together like old friends. This wasn’t normal.

But then again, neither was I.

I cleared my throat, quickly pulling Roan and Alice into the nearest empty row in the very back corner, wishing the floor would just swallow us.

Down on the round stone platform, the instructor paused.

Professor Vance did not look like the tough fighters we had seen in the morning. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties, with a young face and messy brown hair. Instead of armor or a combat uniform, he wore a simple, loose researcher’s coat over his clothes.

He looked thin and a bit awkward — the kind of bookworm who would get crushed by a room full of proud noble students.

When his eyes landed on me, a flash of fear crossed his face. He clearly knew my name from the high exam scores on his tablet, and his fingers started tapping on the wood of his desk.

”Ah... um, right,” Professor Vance said, his voice cracking a little as he cleared his throat. ”Please, uh, find your seats quickly. We were... just about to start the basic lesson.”

A few high nobles let out soft, unimpressed sighs, clearly losing respect for the teacher already.

But the exact moment Vance turned back toward the massive, floating blue holographic display in the center of the platform, his entire aura completely shifted.

The nervous stutter vanished instantly. His posture locked in, his back straightened, and his eyes became incredibly sharp and serious. The awkward researcher disappeared. In his place was a smart man who knew his stuff.

”Welcome to Mana Theory,” Vance said, his voice now clear in every corner of the big room without any help.

”...I know most of you spent your morning getting thrown through walls or sweating through hard drills. You think mana is just a muscle you flex. You think whoever hits harder wins. Let me fix that wrong idea right now. That way of thinking is the fastest way to die in a Gate.”

He tapped the screen, and the picture zoomed in on a glowing blue body, showing a web of bright lines.

”Let us start with the basics,” Vance said, looking at the rows of students.

”What is mana? It isn’t just a magical gift from the heavens. It is the basic energy that flows through everything in this world. It is in the air, the ground, and the stones under your feet. Eight hundred years ago, during the First Descent, the sky cracked open, flooding our world with this energy and waking up our dormant Origin Cores. Think of mana as raw fuel. But raw fuel is useless if your engine is bad.”

He pointed to the center of the chest on the screen, where a glowing ball of light sat.

”Your core pulls the fuel in,” Vance said, his hands moving to break down the picture.

”But once it is inside you, it must move through these paths — your mana vessels. Think of them like veins for energy instead of blood. If your veins are small, stiff, or not trained well, trying to push a strong spell will not make you strong. It will break your body from the inside.”

”Professor!” a sharp voice cut in from the middle rows. It was an arrogant student from Class Fortis, his chin up. ”If our core rank is already set at birth, does not a higher rank beat poor training just by having more power? Power solves everything.”

A few students murmured in agreement, looking down at the platform.

Vance didn’t look annoyed. In fact, a small, knowing smirk crossed his youthful face.

”A good, textbook wrong idea,” Vance said smoothly. ”Let us test that logic. If I give a new driver a fast race car with a big engine, and I give a pro driver a normal sedan, who wins on a curvy mountain road?”

The student blinked, stopping mid-sentence.

”The professional,” Vance answered firmly.

”Because... the new driver will crash into the first wall. In our world, a person with a B-rank core who has perfect control over their mana vessels will use a skill with no wasted energy. A higher rank who just ’flexes’ their power will waste half of their output into the air, making their moves loud and draining their energy in five minutes. Good control does not just save your life — it beats raw power.”

”Most of you are stuck on step one,” Vance said, his eyes scanning the crowd, stopping for a moment on Arthur, then Amelia, then landing on me in the very back. ”...You think you are fast because the system gave you a high number. But the system only tracks your potential. It does not run your body for you.”

He gestured to the floating text boxes, breaking them down one by one.

First was Reinforcement, the basic art of spreading mana through muscles and bones for raw speed and durability. Then came Skill Activation, pushing energy into specific patterns to trigger your registered skills. After that was Technique Infusion, pushing energy into weapons to change how they work.

...And finally, External Projection, letting mana out of the body to make fire or shields.

”Let us make this real so you feel the cost,” Vance said, stepping away from his desk. He raised his right hand, palm up. ”Everyone, close your eyes. Pull a tiny thread of mana into your hand. Do not send it through your main core path. Push it through the small side vessels in your fingertips.”

A rustle went through the room as nearly two hundred students closed their eyes and tried the exercise.

Beside me, Roan winced, his elf ears twitching as he tried to control the flow. Alice’s breathing got a little rough, her fingers tight on her desk.

I did what he said, reaching out to the thick energy in the air. The moment I pulled that small thread into my fingertip, a sharp burning pain shot through my hand. It felt like trying to push a thick rope through a small hole.

Tch. My bloodline kicked in immediately, the passive healing soothing the sting, but it still hurt. Not as much as it probably hurt the elf next to me, but enough to remind me that even an anomaly has limits.

The resistance was still there. My body was different, not invincible.

”Open your eyes,” Vance said.

Around the room, many students were rubbing their hands. A few lower-ranked students were breathing hard, their skin red.

”What you just felt is resistance,” Vance said, pointing to his own palm, where a small, steady ball of blue mana was spinning easily.

”You’ve all used mana before. But you’ve been shoving it through your main channels like a bull in a china shop. Today, you learn to thread it through the smallest paths, the ones you’ve ignored until now. My vessels are trained. To me, this is easier than breathing. To you, it hurts. If you tried to throw a full spell right now through those weak vessels, the heat alone would burn your nerves. This is why we train control before power.”

He leaned forward against the podium, his face turning very serious. The easy, relaxed feeling in the room disappeared, replaced by a heavy, cold weight.

”...The mana in our world is rising,” Vance said, his voice low and dark.

”The Magic Tower’s predictions are bad. The gates are showing up faster every month, and the crack in the sky a few months ago proves that things are speeding up. Within a few years, we will see incursions that this continent hasn’t faced since the Descent. If your core control is not a perfect habit by next month, you will not even survive the first wave.”

The room went very quiet. All students leaned in, their pride gone.

Vance let the heavy silence hang for a long moment, then a sudden, sharp look entered his eyes.

”Now... since we have all four classes in one room, let us look at what happens when the basic rules break down,” Vance said, swiping his hand across the screen.

The blue diagram of the body broke apart. In its place, a colorless light flickered to life. It had no hue, no warmth — just an empty void that seemed to drink the light around it. It did not pulse like normal mana.

The air around the picture seemed to bend and twist, like the image itself was too strong for the room to hold.

”Mana is fuel,” Vance said, his eyes locked on the colorless void. ”But... there is a power that sits under it. An energy that does not just shape the world... it rewrites the rules of existence.”

He paused, letting the heavy weight of that empty light sit over the quiet room.

”And that,” Vance smiled faintly, his sharp eyes reflecting the cold glow, ”...is where today’s lesson truly begins.”