He drank some water, ate a honey-nut bar to recover the mental strain with Neural Gastronomy, and stood up again.

System. Activate Simulation Two: Phantom Svane.

The holographic figure shifted. It grew taller, broader. It donned the heavy plate armor of a Bronze Aegis. It held a training greatsword with a relaxed, terrifying stillness.

This was the test the Grizzled Veteran wanted.

“Begin.”

Ray didn’t wait. He extended his hand, palm open, fingers curled into a tight snap. A tiny, spinning bead of white-hot plasma condensed in the air inches from his skin, humming with potential energy.

“Ignis!”

He snapped his fingers. The bead launched forward with the sound of a whipping flag. It wasn’t a steady beam; it was a comet, a roaring streak of red and orange fire that illuminated the dark room, leaving a trail of grey smoke and the sharp smell of sulfur in its wake.

Phantom Svane didn’t dodge. He simply dipped his shoulder, angling his heavy pauldron. The bolt struck the enchanted metal with a heavy THUD and a flash of sparks. The fire splashed harmlessly, blackening the steel but failing to break the soldier’s stride.

Svane charged. It wasn’t a run; it was an avalanche of metal and muscle. He closed the distance in two strides.

Ray triggered ‘The Fulcrum Principle.’ He kicked the base of a heavy wooden weapon rack, sending it toppling directly into Svane’s path to break his momentum.

The Phantom Svane didn’t stumble. He didn’t stop. He simply lowered his shoulder and smashed through the rack, sending wooden splinters flying, his momentum unchecked.

Ray reached into his pouch and threw a Smoke Pellet. CRACK-HISS. Grey fog filled the center of the room.

The Phantom Svane didn’t stop. He knew where Ray had to be. He swept his greatsword in a wide, blind arc through the smoke, using the reach of the weapon to clear the zone.

Ray saw the blade coming. He tried to duck, using the Stoic Assassin’s Flowing Shadow Technique

, but the reach was too long, the angle too wide to evade completely.

The flat of the massive blade swung toward his ribs.

Ray reacted on instinct. He didn’t just take the hit; he braced. He planted his feet, his reforged muscles coiling, and brought his arms up in a cross-block, catching the flat of the blade.

CLANG.

The impact was immense, enough to shatter the bones of a normal child. But Ray held. His boots skidded backward on the stone floor, digging in, he didn’t fly through the air. He caught the weight of a full-grown, armored warrior’s swing and stopped it cold.

For a split second, the two of them were locked, the massive, armored hologram pressing down, and the small, twelve-year-old boy holding him back with impossible, unnatural strength.

Veteran: “You have him! Twist the blade! Surge into the gap! Use your strength!”

Ray looked at the hologram’s face. He felt the raw power in his own limbs, the urge to push back, to use his strength to throw the soldier off balance. He could do it. He could physically overpower a grown man.

But then the realization hit him like ice water.

Courtier: “Stop! If you throw him… if you show that kind of physical power in the arena… the ‘Frail Scholar’ narrative is dead. You reveal yourself as a physical anomaly.”

To win the fight, he had to reveal the secret of his body.

The hesitation was all the Phantom Svane needed. The hologram didn’t marvel at Ray’s strength; it exploited the pause. Svane released the sword with one hand and surged forward, grabbing Ray’s throat with a gauntleted fist and pinning him to the stone wall. The greatsword point hovered an inch from his eye.

[SIMULATION ENDED. WINNER: PHANTOM SVANE.]

Ray slid down the wall, rubbing his throat. He wasn’t winded. He wasn’t broken. He was just frustrated.

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A cool blue notification bloomed in his mind, analyzing the defeat not as a failure of skill, but as a conflict of parameters.

[SIMULATION DEBRIEF: CONSTRAINT ANALYSIS]

[PHYSICAL ASSESSMENT: Host successfully halted a high-velocity kinetic strike. Muscular density and skeletal integrity held without injury. Calculations indicate an 88% probability of physical victory had the host executed the counter-offensive.]

[STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT: Host voluntarily aborted the counter-offensive to preserve ‘Persona Integrity’. Simulation failure was a conscious strategic choice, not a capability failure.]

Veteran: “You hesitated. You had the power to turn that blade.”

Assassin: “But to use it would be a strategic failure. The target’s physical conditioning and instincts forced a trade. To win that trade, we must reveal our physical superiority. We cannot win a trade against armor while pretending to be weak.”

Ray stood up, brushing the dust from his tunic. The Veteran was right about the fight, but wrong about the war. Ray’s body was reforged, yes. He was stronger than most adults. But against a career soldier in full plate who was willing to tank a spell to deliver a kill? Ray had to go all out. To beat the Phantom Svane, he would have needed to use Aether-Infusion to blast through that armor, or his full physical strength to wrestle him down. Both would reveal his deepest secrets.

“Magic it is,”

Ray said, his voice steady.

“The Engineer lives to fight another day.”

The morning of the Trials arrived with a cold, grey light.

Ray woke from his meditation, his mind sharp and clear. The aches from the simulation were gone.

Rina was already awake, laying out his clothes. She had chosen a tunic of durable, dark fabric, something that looked scholarly but allowed for movement. It was a practical choice.

“You didn’t sleep,”

Ray noted, seeing the tension in her shoulders.

“I…”

Rina hesitated, smoothing the fabric.

“I keep thinking about the Mirror. If I had just stayed longer… if I had gotten the location of the trigger…”

Ray stood, walking over to her. He didn’t use a spell. He didn’t use a skill. He just used his presence, letting the Grizzled Veteran’s ‘Command Aura’ skill bleed into his voice, not to intimidate, but to stabilize.

“Rina. Look at me.”

She looked up, her eyes fearful.

“We are not going into this blind,”

Ray said, his voice resonating with absolute certainty.

“We have a plan. We have a team. And we have the advantage of being underestimated. You did your job. Now let me do mine.”

He reached for the ‘Theorist’s Glove’ on the table. He pulled it on, tightening the straps. He checked the small, jagged mirror shard he had embedded in the palm, the ‘vanity’ Caleb had mocked.

It caught the light, reflecting a fractured image of his own eye.

“Today,”

Ray said, clenching his fist, the crystal circuitry pulsing with a chaotic, rhythmic light,

“we stop hiding in the shadows. Today, we step into the light, and we make it our own.”

He turned to the door.

“Let’s go.”

Rina took a deep breath, the steel returning to her spine. She nodded, falling into step behind him. They walked out of the suite, past the silent, empty post where Sergeant Svane usually stood, he was also doing his own Promotion Trials. Ray and Rina headed toward the Great Hall.

The Phantom Proctors had taught him what he needed to know. He wasn’t the strongest fighter in the academy. He wasn’t the most powerful mage.

But he was, without a doubt, the most dangerous person in the room.

The corridors leading to the Academy’s Grand Hall were a river of noise and motion, filled with returning students, parents, and faculty flowing toward the spectacle of the promotion trials. Ray walked in the center of the stream, his pace measured, his expression calm.

Inside his mind, however, the war room was active.

Scholar: “The Mirror theory holds. The Golem theory holds. But the Hidden Room… that variable remains unknown. If the mechanism is magical, we can pick it. If it’s physical, we can force it. But if it’s a riddle? We lose time.”

Detective: “We’re going in blind on the entry point. That’s the weak link. If we get stuck at the door while the other teams rush the main archway, we look like fools.”

Ray’s focus was sharp, dissecting the plan, searching for the point of failure. But as he walked, a sudden, cold sensation pricked the back of his mind, a jagged spike of self-loathing that didn’t belong to him.

He paused, glancing over his shoulder. Rina was walking a step behind him, her head bowed, clutching his satchel like a shield. To the casual observer, she looked like a dutiful attendant. But through the Resonant Link, Ray felt her internal landscape. It was a storm of guilt.

She wasn’t just nervous; she felt like a traitor. The memory of her retreat from the groundskeeper’s shed, the moment her fear won, was playing on a loop in her mind. She believed her failure to map the specific trigger of the Hidden Door was going to cost him the trial.

Ray stopped in the middle of the corridor, forcing the stream of people to part around them.

“Rina,”

he said, his voice low but cutting through the ambient noise.

She flinched, looking up.

“Young master? Did I forget something?”

Ray didn’t answer immediately. He sent a pulse of warmth through the link, as he activated the World-Weary Healer’s ‘Calming Presence’ skill, a wave of empathy designed to stabilize her spiraling emotions.

“You’re thinking about the door,”

Ray stated.

“You’re thinking that because you didn’t get the key, we’re going to fail.”

Rina’s eyes widened, shimmering with unshed tears.

“I… I should have stayed. I should have been stronger.”

“If you had stayed,”

Ray said firmly,

“you might have lost control. You might have been discovered. And then we would have nothing.”

He stepped closer, lowering his voice so only she could hear.

“You gave us the Mirror. You gave us the Golems. You didn’t fail, Rina. You armed us. Now, stand tall. I need my partner, not a servant.”

Rina took a shuddering breath, the cold spike of guilt in Ray’s mind receding, replaced by a fragile but growing warmth. She straightened her shoulders, nodding once.

“Yes, young master. I’m ready.”

They continued, the bond between them settled. They emerged from the corridor into the cavernous expanse of the Grand Hall.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep