The Anomaly's Path

The third floor of the Student Council building was always quieter than the rest of the campus.

Up here, the wide hallways were lined with polished silver trim and oak doors that kept out the noise from the lower courtyards. Council members moved between offices, carrying stacks of papers and reports, while a few second-year reps spoke in low voices near the center of the hall.

I walked straight to the end of the quiet corridor and pushed open the last door on the left without knocking.

Sylvia was sitting behind her desk, buried under a mountain of paperwork — budget forms, event schedules, and reports for the upcoming practical midterms. She didn’t even look up as the door swung open.

”What mess did you cause this time that made you come here yourself?” she asked, her pen moving across the page without stopping.

I paused near the doorway, resting a hand on the back of a chair. ”Can’t a brother come out to see his only dear older sister?”

Sylvia’s pen stopped mid-stroke. She slowly raised her head, looking at me with a deep frown and a look of pure disgust.

”Eww, fuck, what is wrong with you, Leo?” she said, her eyes narrowing like she was looking at something rotting on her floor. ”Did you finally lose your mind?”

”You don’t have to show such a disgusted expression,” I muttered, pulling out the chair across from her desk and dropping onto it. ”Did I say something wrong? Is it a crime for me to come here to see you?”

”Oh, really?” Sylvia set her pen down quietly, crossing her arms as she leaned back in her chair. ”And how many times did you come visit me in the past three months without a reason? You only show up when you need something or when you’ve caused trouble.”

”...”

I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out.

In truth, I knew I hadn’t visited her once over the last few months. Between Morgana pushing us past our physical breaking points every morning, Lorien forcing me to separate my affinities, and Zane’s array classes, I barely had time to think.

When I wasn’t training, I needed what little time was left just to be alone — dealing with my core, my sword art, and everything else piling up inside my head.

”Alright, look, that was all in the past,” I said, waving a hand dismissively. ”I was busy, you know? And besides, I’m literally sitting right here right now.”

Sylvia just stared at me with complete distrust, one eyebrow raised in flat silence. The corner of my mouth twitched. She really didn’t buy a single word.

”So...” she said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her desk. ”What do you actually want?”

I dropped the act and leaned back in my seat. ”Fine. Midterms are coming soon. I need your help going over the written test.”

I expected her to shut me down right away, complain about her own workload, or lecture me on how I should have prepared weeks ago. Between managing council work and keeping her own Rank 2 spot in the second-year, her schedule was a complete nightmare.

Instead, Sylvia just looked at me for three quiet seconds, let out a short breath, and picked her pen back up. ”Fine. I’ll help you.”

I blinked. ”...Wait, what?”

Sylvia didn’t look up from her papers. ”What?”

”You actually accepted?” I asked, staring at her. ”Aren’t you buried in council work and your own midterm prep?”

Her eyebrow twitched. A faint blue vein popped on her temple as she looked up from her page. ”What do you mean ’wait, what’? You came into my office asking for help, and now you’re shocked that I said yes? Did you want me to say no?”

”No, no, it’s just...” I gestured vaguely between us. ”I fully expected you to refuse or yell at me first. It’s kind of shocking that you accepted right away without making a fuss.”

Sylvia’s eyes narrowed into sharp slits. ”And when did I say I was doing this for free?”

I let out a loud laugh, leaning back in my chair and clapping my hands once. ”Aha! There it is. There was no way my cold-hearted older sister would suddenly do something nice out of the goodness of her heart.”

”Leo, I swear to God, you can get out right now if you don’t want my help,” she snapped, pointing her pen directly at my face.

”Alright, alright, I’m quiet,” I said, holding up two hands in surrender. ”So... what do you want?”

Sylvia lowered her pen, eyeing me with a cold look. ”...You have to grant me one request when the time comes. I will ask you for it soon enough.”

My smile faded, replaced by a suspicious glare. ”A request? Absolutely not. No way am I agreeing to a blank check. What if you ask me to do something insane, like manage the council’s budget or go hunt a Grade 8 monster by myself?”

”It won’t be absurd, you idiot,” Sylvia muttered, rolling her eyes. ”It will be well within your capabilities. Do you want my help or not?”

I stared at her for a long moment, weighing my options. Runes and Arrays, Vance’s Mana Theory, and all those Gate history were going to take hours alone. Sylvia was second rank in her year for a reason. Her written scores were among the best in the academy.

”...Fine,” I grumbled, crossing my arms. ”I accept. But if you ask for something stupid, I’m not doing it.”

”Deal,” Sylvia said smoothly. ”Meet me back here tomorrow around this time after your classes end. I’ll make some time to teach you, but don’t expect me to go easy on you.”

I let out a low sigh and stood up from the chair. ”Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

Sylvia didn’t even bother looking up again, already reaching for her pen to return to her paperwork. Without another word, I turned and left her room.

_

Leaving the Student Council building, I headed straight for the Primus Tower.

I passed through the quiet lobby, rode the elevator to the top floor, and stepped into my room. I didn’t stop in the living area or the bedroom. I walked straight to the private training room at the end of the hall and pushed the door open.

I walked into the center of the room and drew Tempest from its sheath.

My mind was clear. The written exams were sorted out, with Sylvia agreeing to help me go over the material, I wouldn’t have to worry about pulling down Class Ascendant’s overall ranking. That meant I could focus entirely on what actually mattered: my own strength.

I took a low, balanced stance on the floor. Using the mana control I’d been practicing every day, I pushed a thin thread of mana down the steel, focusing only on my Lightning affinity.

Tempest gave off a faint hum — a quiet shake so small it barely moved the dust on the floor. Not a single stray spark escaped the edge. The mana stayed locked tight against the dark metal, dense and fully contained.

I sank deeper into the stance, letting my breathing slow until the silence of the room pressed heavy against my ears.

Then, I moved into Eclipse of the Singularity.

First came Fractured Eclipse.

I stepped forward, folding Space around my feet with a quiet shift.

Before, shifting through Space was a violent, noisy mess. It tore up the stone under my boots and dumped half my mana on the floor just to cross a few yards. Now, the move was almost dead silent. My boots barely touched the stone.

Three separate afterimages blurred across the room at the same time. Each one struck from a different angle in the exact same moment. Then they snapped back together into one body at the center.

Speed. Evasion. Survival. The form I’d built when I was terrified of being pinned down, trapped, and torn apart in the dark.

Without breaking my momentum, I shifted my weight, dragging Tempest back to center for Heaven’s Divide.

I centered my balance, locked my eyes on the dark, mana-absorbing wall, and delivered a single cut straight through the air.

The blade didn’t slash through physical resistance. It ignored it completely, striking directly at the space in front of me. The air gave a quiet, sharp sound, like a small twig snapping in the dark, and forty feet away, a thin, perfectly flat line split across the wall.

The metal didn’t crack. It just split along a clean, thin line.

Then the momentum died.

I brought Tempest to a dead stop, holding the sword flat before my eyes. My chest rose and fell in a slow, steady rhythm. I watched the faint mana cling tightly to the dark steel, flickering with small, unstable ripples of pale violet near the hilt.

The Third Form. The unnamed form. The Form of Acceptance.

Unlike the first two forms, this wasn’t just a physical move. Fractured Eclipse and Heaven’s Divide were physical, they needed mana, focus, and sword skill. They could be practiced and improved over and over again.

But the Third Form wasn’t a technique.

It was a statement. It was the moment I stopped trying to force reality to bend and simply decided that the cut had already happened. It wasn’t about speed or precision. It was pure Will and Intent, forcing my existence onto the world until it obeyed.

And that was exactly why I couldn’t use it freely.

My current rank, Master Mid, was the first wall. When I first forced it, I succeeded through pure desperation and the Soul Flame’s power.

But it almost tore me apart. My channels cracked, my core screamed, and my body started breaking down from the inside. Without reaching Grandmaster rank, my soul simply didn’t have the weight to hold the strike safely.

Then there was my body itself. The strike strained my whole existence, ripping my muscles and tearing my bloodline channels.

But that didn’t discourage me.

Over the past three months, I’d been forcing myself to recreate small pieces of this technique during late-night training. Even when the pain was unbearable, even when my veins felt like they were full of crushed glass, I kept pushing my body to its limit so it would get used to the strain.

The Continuum Bloodline healed me every time, slowly building up my body’s tolerance for the backlash.

The hardest part, though, was the soul itself. You can train a muscle and grow a core through repetition. But you can’t force a soul to grow heavy through simple physical work. The soul is tied directly to Will and Intent.

Lorien’s lectures had made it clear: if your Intent shakes for even a fraction of a second, the whole framework falls apart. Forcing Lightning, Space, and Soul Flame to merge at once demanded a level of absolute mental conviction that I was still fighting to forge every single day.

I knew I was still far from mastering it.

But every late-night training, every tear in my channels, and every drop of blood spilled in this room was just raw material being fed into the fire. I had to keep grinding, rebuilding my foundation piece by piece, until my body, mind, and will finally locked into place as one.

I stood in the silence of the training room for a long moment, letting the heat from the blade fade into the cold air. Slowly, I brought Tempest back to my side and sheathed it with a soft click. I took a long, quiet breath, letting my shoulders drop as the tension drained from my limbs.

”...Status screen,” I called out softly to the empty room. A dark, blue-black window appeared in the air before my eyes, glowing like starlight. It had been months since I last checked my stats.

I looked at the screen floating in the dark room.

_

—『 STATUS SCREEN 』—

NAME → Leo von Celestial

RACE → Human (High Noble)

AGE → 18

BLOODLINE → Continuum Bloodline (Half-Awakened)

CURRENT RANK → Master (Mid)

CORE → ??? Rank

PATH → The Anomaly’s Path (Origin Rank)

『 TITLES 』

∟ Heir of the Celestials

∟ Scum of the Human Domain

∟ Human Domain’s Failure

∟ Anomaly

∟ The Watcher’s Apostle

∟ The Grumpy Spark of Duskfall

∟ The White Reaper

∟ The Primus of Class Ascendant

∟ The One Who Walked the Path Trial

『 AFFINITIES 』

∟ Lightning

∟ Space

∟ Soul Flame

『 ATTRIBUTES 』

∟ STR (Strength) → B+

∟ AGI (Agility) → A-

∟ VIT (Vitality) → B

∟ END (Endurance) → B+

∟ INT (Intelligence) → S+

∟ WIL (Willpower) → SS-

『 SUB-ATTRIBUTES 』

∟ LUCK → Unpredictable

∟ CHARM → SS

『 ENERGY RESERVE 』

∟ Mana Capacity → A- (Continuum Bloodline)

『 MANA BREATHING 』

? Foundation Breathing Art

? Flowing Vessel Art

『 WEAPON ARTS & MASTERY 』

? Eclipse of the Singularity — Tier 3 (58%)

∟ First Form: Fractured Eclipse

∟ Second Form: Heaven’s Divide

∟ Third Form: The Form of Acceptance (Incomplete)

『 REGISTERED SKILLS 』

Combat Skills

? Flash Instinct — Active/Passive

? Spatial Slip — Active

? Volt Step — Active

? Starlight Steps — Footwork (Grandmaster-rank technique)

? Soul Perception (Passive)

Bloodline Skills

? Mana Generation — Passive

? Energy Siphon — Active

? Passive Healing — Passive

? Adaptive Resistance — Passive

Utility Skills

? Void Storage — Space Affinity

? Echoes of the Unforgotten — Active (Cooldown: Ready!)

『 ACTIVE QUESTS 』

? [!!!!!]

—『 STATUS CLOSED 』—

_

I stared at the lines floating in front of me.

My rank was officially Master Mid, but my attributes, especially Intelligence and Willpower, were sitting at ranks that didn’t make sense for a first-year student.

My progress on Eclipse of the Singularity had jumped to Tier 3 at 58%. The interface didn’t list the Third Form as ”???” anymore. It registered it under the temporary name I’d given it: The Form of Acceptance.

The system was recognizing my progress, even if the form wasn’t finished yet. I was close. Much closer than I thought.

I dismissed the screen with a wave of my hand, watched the light dissolve into thin air, and walked out of the training room, shutting the doors behind me.

_

Days continued to pass in a steady, silent rhythm.

The academy grounds grew quiet as the exam period officially drew near. The usual loud talk in the dining halls faded into low, stressed conversations over notes. Every student was locked in their own head, saving energy for what was coming.

My routine turned into an exhausting, clockwork cycle.

Every morning started with Morgana beating us black and blue on the training grounds, testing our endurance until our muscles shook.

From there, my afternoons were spent under Lorien’s watchful eye, forcing my affinities apart and refining my mana channels. Once regular classes wrapped up, I headed straight to Sylvia’s office, where she spent an hour breaking down Vance’s complex mana theories and historical Gate timelines.

And when night finally settled over the campus, I went back to the Primus Tower.

Inside my private training room, surrounded by dark, mana-absorbing walls, I practiced alone, swinging Tempest, testing my mana efficiency, and slowly chipping away at the foundation of my sword art until my hands were numb and my head throbbed.

I wasn’t the only one suffering. The rest of Class Ascendant was feeling the pressure just as hard. Roan and Alice also spent their time training, and I even noticed both of them were learning under Lyssaria for the written midterms.

Even the rest of the students, usually arrogant and loud, could be seen pacing through the courtyard with stacks of theory papers, muttering curses under their breath. Everyone knew that a single misstep during the midterms could tank their standing.

Slowly, the first chaos of the prep smoothed out into a focused, disciplined grind. The messy formulas and historical dates that felt impossible a week ago began to lock into place.

Before I knew it, the first day of the midterms arrived.