Infinite Awakening: 10,000x EXP Converter!

”BZZZZZT!”

The massive holographic banners above the Ironclad Academy’s Grand Arena glowed with violent energy.

However, the mechanical hum was quickly drowned out by the volume of noises that grew louder and louder.

Four thousand sixteen-year-olds stood packed tightly into the Grand Arena.

It was an open-air Arena built from black iron and reinforced with Essence warded steel. Towering holographic banners displayed the academy crest, a clenched fist wrapped in crackling lightning. The words ”Ironclad Academy: Forged Through Struggle” glowed in bright blue letters directly above the main gate.

Greedy merchants hovered near the entrances. They sold useless charm talismans and luck amulets at highway robbery prices to desperate, gullible parents.

Uniformed attendants guided wealthy families to the lavish VIP seating, while everyone else squeezed into the cramped general stands.

Somewhere in the massive crowd, a mother was crying. Whether from sheer joy or absolute terror, nobody could tell.

Alvian stood silently in the middle of it all.

His hands were stuffed deep in his pockets, his fingers wrapped tightly around twelve credits that could not buy anything of value.

Suddenly, someone jostled him from behind. It was just the natural compression of four thousand bodies crammed into a space meant for three thousand.

He stumbled forward half a step and quickly caught himself.

A girl about his age glanced back at him.

She had dark hair pulled back with a simple metal clip and wore a standard academy uniform that was clean but clearly not custom-fitted. There was no embroidery. No arrogant family crest.

Her sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, showing faint silver lines on her arms from working long hours with Essence circuits.

”Sorry,” she said. delivered cleanly and without emotion.

”It’s fine.”

She held his gaze for maybe half a second longer than necessary. It was not flirtatious. It was more like she was trying to read something hidden on his face.

Then the chaotic crowd surged, and the brief moment dissolved.

This was the day his entire life had been building toward.

Every single child in Vaeloria was taught the brutal history of their world from the moment they could read.

Centuries ago, humanity had been a hyper-advanced, technologically supreme civilization. That glorious Golden Age ended abruptly in the Cataclysm, an apocalyptic event that violently shattered the very boundaries of reality.

Multidimensional tears, known simply as Rifts, opened across the globe. They dumped fractured pieces of alternate realities, ruined ecosystems, and horrific dimensional beasts directly onto the planet.

Nearly eighty percent of all life was wiped out in the terrifying first invasion.

It was only through decades of hiding, exploring ruined Old World tech, and desperate strategizing that the survivors finally learned to harness the dimensional energy from the Rifts.

They called this miraculous energy Essence.

By absorbing it, humanity learned to awaken innate talents, utilizing that cosmic energy to finally fight back and become gods in their own right.

For the last several years, Alvian and his peers had sat in stuffy, boring classrooms. They memorized the exact characteristics of dimensional beasts and the twisted layouts of the Rifts.

For the last four months, they had endured grueling physical training as lowly academy recruits.

It all culminated in this exact moment, the Awakening Ceremony.

But for Alvian, this wasn’t just about graduating or earning a shiny metallic badge. It was strictly about survival.

Three years ago, his father, a low-tier Vanguard scout, died horribly when a volatile Tier-2 Rift collapsed. He left behind nothing but debts and a rusted silver pocket watch.

To keep Alvian and his adopted little brother, Leo, from starving to death in the Undercity slums, his mother, Martha, had taken up unauthorized scavenging in the dangerous outer Rifts.

Without the expensive magitech respirators the arrogant nobles wore, the ambient dimensional energy had severely poisoned her.

Her lungs were slowly crystallizing into brittle rock. She desperately needed a fifty-credit vial of medicine by tonight, or she would literally suffocate in her own bed.

”Move forward, please! Keep the line moving!”

A stern instructor with a crackling shock baton tapped it against his palm, herding the students like terrified cattle toward the arena floor.

The Essence Monolith sat heavily at the center.

It was a staggering fifteen-meter-tall pillar of deep blue crystal that pulsed with a slow, rhythmic light.

In Vaeloria, your Talent determined your whole life. A-Ranks were treated like demigods and prepared for top leadership roles. E-Ranks were viewed as useless failures, forced into dirty sanitation work or sent into dangerous, low-level Rift battles.

Students had been placing their trembling hands on it all morning.

”Whoosh!”

A girl had triggered a massive burst of spectral fire that made the Monolith practically scream.

Another boy summoned a terrifying phantom wolf that prowled the air above his head for ten full seconds before dissolving into motes of light.

Each impressive result drew wild cheers, shocked gasps, or polite applause depending on the rank.

”Alvian Vance.”

The proctor’s voice boomed coldly across the arena.

Nobody reacted. Nobody knew who he was.

The anonymous Undercity kid with the tattered uniform and the rust-stained boots simply did not register on anyone’s radar.

He calmly climbed the steps to the Monolith.

The proctor, a tired-looking woman with silver hair, wore an expression that clearly said she had overseen eight hundred of these boring ceremonies. She gestured toward the crystal surface without even bothering to look up from her datapad.

”Place your hand on the stone.”

Alvian pressed his palm flat against the cold surface.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

The crystal hummed faintly beneath his fingers. It felt warm and vibrating, as if aggressively searching for something hidden inside him.

Then, the glow finally started.

It was a murky, pathetic blue light. It looked exactly like a puddle of dirty water.

The proctor finally looked up from her datapad. Her expression did not change, but something shifted behind her cold eyes. She had seen this exact pathetic display before. She had seen it way too many times.

”E-Rank,” she announced. Her voice carried across the silent arena like a grim funeral bell. ”Clearwater Talent.”

There were two seconds of dead silence.

Then, the mocking laughter hit like a tidal wave.

”Hahaha! Clearwater? What does that even do?”

”He probably summons a glass of water. Maybe two if he really pushes himself to the limit!”

”I didn’t even know E-Rank existed in the codex! What a piece of trash!”

The glowing holographic display above the arena updated instantly, showing his humiliating results in bright blue letters for all four thousand students to see.

[E-RANK: CLEARWATER Talent]

A wealthy student in the third row turned to his friend, speaking loud enough for everyone nearby to clearly hear.

”My cousin awakened a D-Rank and he is still working the filthy sewers in the fourteenth level. E-Rank? That is not even a real Talent, that is a literal disability.”

Alvian scanned the cruel crowd out of pure instinct.

He saw smiling faces. Smirking faces. Bored faces already looking away because a trash E-Rank was simply not worth their precious attention.

’Great, I can single-handedly solve a minor drought,’ He mocked himself.

Then, he spotted one face that was not doing any of those things.

Toward the middle of the eastern section. It was the girl from the crowd.

She was looking directly at him. She was not laughing. She was not pitying him.

The proctor waved Alvian off the platform without another word. She was already loudly calling the next name.

”Hey, slum rat.”

Alvian was halfway back to his spot when Darius Magnus stepped directly into his path, completely blocking him.

Darius was tall, blonde, and wearing a lavish custom-fitted uniform that probably cost more than Alvian’s entire apartment building.

Two lackeys flanked him closely. Marcus Cole and some other arrogant kid whose name Alvian never bothered knowing because they were all the exact same person wearing different bodies.

Darius’s powerful family owned half the Upper Wards. His wealthy father sat comfortably in the VIP section, draped in Essence woven silk, casually chatting with the academy’s Chancellor like they were old friends.

”The sanitation guild is always hiring,” Darius said, grinning evilly. ”You know, the people who clean the sewage tunnels? I am sure they could really use a guy who can summon a tiny glass of water.”

Marcus snorted loudly. The other lackey laughed right on cue.

Alvian’s jaw tightened slightly. His fists balled tightly inside his pockets.

’Fight back and you get expelled. Expelled means losing the stipend. Losing the stipend means mom dies,’ he thought with a bitter, dangerous smirk.

At least a funeral would be cheaper than her expensive medicine.

He stepped around Darius without a single word and kept walking.

”Coward,” Darius called out after him. ”Even your backbone is E-Rank.”

More cruel laughter echoed through across the stands. Alvian did not even bother to turn around.

The boring ceremony dragged on for two more hours.

”BOOM!”

Darius got his C-Rank Magma Talent, making the Monolith erupt in a terrifying display of molten fire, and the crowd went absolutely ballistic.

Students stampeded desperately to congratulate him. The Chancellor himself stood up and applauded the genius. Darius’s father looked like he had just won the cosmic lottery, which, considering the family’s disgusting wealth, he basically had.

Alvian watched from the very back of the coliseum. He was completely invisible, utterly irrelevant, and burning with a cold rage so deep it actually scared him.

”Serah Garrick.”

Alvian’s eyes lifted instantly.

It was the girl from the crowd. She climbed the steps to the Monolith with a quiet composure and absolute discipline. She wasn’t nervous in the slightest.

She pressed her palm to the crystal, and instantly...

”WHOOSH!”

A massive pillar of golden-white fire erupted directly from the crystal surface, spiraling upward like a released dragon’s breath!

The scorching heat washed over the first three rows of the arena. Arrogant students flinched backward, screaming and shielding their faces in terror.

The holographic banners above flickered and distorted wildly as the raw, untamed Essence output violently interfered with their projection fields.

The fire did not burn chaotically. It moved with terrifying intent, coiling and uncoiling in perfectly structured patterns. It was almost like the divine fire was trying to speak.

The tired proctor stood up from her datapad for the very first time all morning, her eyes wide with utter shock.

”B-Rank,” she announced. For the first time, her voice carried something other than professional neutrality. ”SunFire Talent!”

The arena did not cheer. Not immediately. There was a stunning two-second pause as their brains tried to process the birth of a monstrous genius.

Up in the VIP section, three different noble family heads leaned forward simultaneously, their eyes burning with intense greed.

Serah calmly pulled her hand from the Monolith. The golden fire faded instantly.

She looked at the stunned crowd for exactly one second, her expression completely unreadable, then walked back to her spot without even acknowledging the deafening applause that followed.

She did not look at the VIP section. She did not look at the powerful Chancellor. She did not look at the greedy noble families who were already whispering to each other and making frantic notes.

Alvian, watching closely from the back, noticed that her hands were shaking slightly as she sat down. She quickly shoved them under her thighs to hide the weakness.

’She’s terrified,’ he realized.

She wasn’t scared of the Talent. She was terrified of the bloodthirsty sharks that came with it.

The moment the ceremony concluded, he did not stay for the fake celebrations.

He slipped out silently through the academy’s east gate while everyone else was busy crowding around Darius and comparing their useless Talent rankings.

He had somewhere much more important to be.