The Anomaly's Path

”...Status screen.”

A sharp, mechanical chime vibrated through my head, and the familiar blue and black interface materialized before my eyes.

_

—『 STATUS SCREEN 』—

NAME → Leo von Celestial

RACE → Human (High Noble)

AGE → 18

BLOODLINE → Continuum Bloodline (Half-Awakened)

CURRENT RANK → Expert (Low)

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 (New)

『 AFFINITIES 』

∟ Lightning

∟ Space

∟ Soul Flame (Evolved from Black Flame / Continuum Bloodline)

『 ATTRIBUTES 』

∟ STR (Strength) → B-

∟ AGI (Agility) → B+

∟ VIT (Vitality) → B

∟ END (Endurance) → B+

∟ INT (Intelligence) → S

∟ WIL (Willpower) → S+

『 SUB-ATTRIBUTES 』

∟ LUCK → Unpredictable

∟ CHARM → SS

『 ENERGY RESERVE 』

∟ Mana Capacity → B+ (Continuum Bloodline)

『 MANA BREATHING 』

▸ Foundation Breathing Art

▸ Flowing Vessel Art

『 WEAPON ARTS & MASTERY 』

▸ Eclipse of the Singularity — Tier 2 (51%)

∟ First Form: Fractured Eclipse

∟ Second Form: Heaven’s Divide

『 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

『 UNREAD SKILLS 』

▸ Echoes of the Unforgotten (Evolvable) — Active

『 ACTIVE QUESTS 』

▸ [!!!!!]

—『 STATUS CLOSED 』—

_

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Expert Low. I had actually done it. Breaking through while fighting a monster that should have turned my mind into paste left me feeling lighter, denser, and infinitely more dangerous.

The stats had shifted noticeably across the board.

Strength up to B-, Agility to a solid B+, Endurance to B+, and even my Mana Capacity had climbed to a flat B+. It wasn’t a collection of massive, earth-shattering jumps, but it was exactly the kind of growth that came from nearly dying multiple times in a single week.

I should have been proud, and maybe a small part of me was.

But that pride was buried under layers of exhaustion and the list of ridiculous titles staring back at me. Heir of the Celestials. Scum of the Human Domain. Human Domain’s Failure. The Grumpy Spark of Duskfall.

I snorted. Grumpy Spark of Duskfall Really?

I got that stupid name from the trial, and now it was officially on my status screen. Some drunk idiots in a tavern started calling me that because I killed a bunch of slave traders and looked annoyed while doing it.

Alice probably bribed someone at the Academy to make it official. I would never have proof, but I knew it in my bones.

And then there it was.

The Primus. Sitting near the bottom of the list like it belonged there, like I hadn’t clawed my way through hell to earn it. The top spot. The number one. I had beaten Arthur Vale, the golden hero, and Roan Sol-Valis, the false protagonist.

But as my eyes traveled down to the very bottom, past my masteries, they locked onto the new entry under the unlocked skills section.

”...Echoes of the Unforgotten,” I muttered, my eyebrows twitching. ”What kind of edgy, poetic nonsense is this? Did the system hire a failed novelist to write my rewards? Sounds dramatic. A bit try-hard, honestly. Did I get a skill or a funeral invitation?”

It didn’t sound like a standard combat skill at all. Shaking my head, I focused my mind on the text and clicked it.

The blue light dimmed, and a separate black interface snapped open directly over the status screen, expanding with a cold, heavy pulse that made the hairs on my arms stand up. The description reshaped itself in a font that felt older than the rest of the interface, like the system was quoting a text copied from a ancient tomb stone.

_

Active Skill: Echoes of the Unforgotten (Evolvable)

Description: The Oldest Watcher never looked away.

When the world burned, the Oldest Watcher watched. When kingdoms fell and names were forgotten, the Oldest Watcher remembered.

Not the battles or the glory, but the small things — the last breath of a mother who never saw her son again, the letter left unread on a dead soldier’s desk, the prayer whispered into hands that never opened.

The Oldest Watcher gathered every piece of grief that existence decided was not worth keeping and held them all in the silence between heartbeats.

When the world moved on, the Oldest Watcher stayed. You carry the Oldest Watcher’s eyes in your soul because the fragment that refused to fade now lives inside you. You see what others try to bury, and you remember what the world chose to forget.

This skill is not a weapon and not a curse.

It is simply... witnessing, holding the weight that everyone else dropped, and being the one who stays when everyone else turns away.

Effect: When you press your bare hand against another person’s skin, you do not enter their mind. You do not steal their thoughts or dig through their memories. Instead, you step into the silent void — the space between what they remember, what they lost, and what they fear.

You see the face they can no longer picture, hear the voice they once knew, and feel the empty place in their chest where someone used to breathe. You witness the person they left behind, the last words they never answered, and the exact moment they stopped believing that anyone would ever come for them.

Time bends inside that space. What feels like hours passes in seconds outside.

But when you return, the weight stays with you — a quiet echo that never fully fades, like a ghost that does not speak and only waits. You do not control them or break them. You simply see, and in seeing, you understand why they are broken.

Cost: You can use this skill once every three months because the soul needs time to settle — both your broken places and theirs. If you push faster, something cracks and leaks, and things that should have stayed buried will find their way back out.

If the other person’s darkness is heavier than yours — more broken and deeply scarred — the skill reverses. The door opens inward instead of outward. You do not step into their ruins; they step into yours.

They see everything you carry in silence, the names you whisper alone in the dark, and the weight you never put down. They see the exact moment you stopped being one person and started being something else, and they cannot unsee it.

_

My eyes widened.

My breath hitched in my throat, the casual humor completely dying on my lips. I read it. Then I read it again. And then, for a third time, my eyes traced the very first line of the description, a cold, paralyzing chill breaking out across my skin and racing straight down my spine.

The Oldest Watcher...

”Fuck,” I breathed, the word slipping out as a ragged whisper.

I knew that name. I hadn’t heard it in the game, or on any forum.

I had heard it directly from the mouth of that entity during our first encounter in the trial, when they had dragged my consciousness into that strange, shifting mountain valley and used Mia’s face to keep my soul from shattering.

Their voice echoed perfectly in my head, rolling like shattered glass:

”Call me what you wish. The Forgotten One. The Oldest Watcher. The Silence Before the First Word. Or nothing at all. I have answered to worse. I have answered to nothing for so long that even I have forgotten which name was ever truly mine.”

They had told me that. They didn’t claim a single identity, but there it was.

The Oldest Watcher was The Forgotten One. Or The Forgotten One was the Oldest Watcher. They were the exact same entity.

My mind began to spin, fracturing into a dozen dangerous directions.

The description explicitly said ”the Oldest Watcher”. Not a watcher, but the oldest.

Which meant there were others. Younger Watchers? Different Watchers? Was there a whole race of these entities? What were they? Were they gods? No, that didn’t feel right. The presence I felt in the trial was ancient, far older than any description of a god I had ever read, but it wasn’t divine in the way the Church talked about divinity.

In my thousands of hours playing the original game, through every forum post, hidden quests, and secret lore guide, the word ’Watcher’ had never appeared. Not once. The game world had clear boundaries — there were gods, and there were demons.

But this was not simple.

And then there were the flames.

The black flames — now evolved into my Soul Flame — that lived inside my chest, hungry and patient. The Forgotten One had called it a seed that I had opened myself in the ashes of Wayford. But the skill description explicitly called it their eyes.

’You carry the Oldest Watcher’s eyes in your soul.’

”The fragment...” I muttered, my hand instinctively coming up to touch my chest, right over my heart where the core pulsed.

Was that what the flames actually were? Eyes?

Was I carrying a piece of this ancient entity inside me, watching through me, remembering what I saw? What the fuck was Nova then? Was the system itself just another tool used by them, or was the system trying to categorize something that shouldn’t even exist?

The sheer volume of unanswered questions made my head throb with familiar frustration.

Every time I got a little stronger, a little more powerful, the pile of things I didn’t know just got bigger. Agh! So many questions, but not a single damn soul to answer them!

Honestly? I wanted to ask Nova.

But knowing that glitchy bastard, I knew I would never get an answer. Maybe he had some kind of restriction or something that kept him quiet. Or maybe he just enjoyed watching me suffer. Either way, I knew better than to waste my breath.

I was dancing in the palm of an entity whose gender I didn’t even know, whose true form would literally liquefy my brain if I looked at it, and who had casually warned me not to trust anyone — including them.

”...A petty, violent saint, right?” I mocked myself, running a hand through my white hair. ”I’m just a puppet with better stats.”

I forced my attention away from the theories and looked at the effect of the skill. It was terrifyingly absolute because it wasn’t mind-reading or memory theft but something far worse — a dive straight into a person’s deepest trauma.

To step into that silent void and witness the exact moment someone stopped believing that anyone would ever come to save them felt less like a skill and more like a psychological weapon. In a world filled with broken nobles and desperate soldiers, knowing exactly why someone was broken wasn’t just powerful.

It was a cheat code for destruction.

But the cost was high. Three months between uses meant it was a last resort, not something I could use all the time.

And that risk of it turning around...

My jaw tightened. If I touched someone whose internal ruins were darker, more shattered than mine, the door would swing open inward.

They would see me.

Not just Leo von Celestial, the arrogant noble failure — they would see the Earth gamer who died, the anomaly transmigrated into a dying world, the silent weights I carried alone in the dark, and the moment I stopped being a normal person and became something entirely different.

”Yeah, let’s make sure I don’t use this on any absolute psychopaths,” I muttered, a grim smirk touching my lips.

I let out a long breath and waved the screen away. It flickered and vanished, leaving me alone in the quiet room.

”...Well,” I said to the empty room, my voice flat. ”That’s enough of that for one morning.”

Standing around a room being frustrated wasn’t going to untie this knot or raise my core rank. The entity told me to become stronger — stronger than I thought I could be — and only then would I get my answers.

It was time to go. Today was Orientation Day. The global rankings were going to be unveiled, the academy arc was officially launching, and the world was finally going to find out exactly who took the number one spot.

I grabbed the black shirt from the rack and turned toward the bathroom to wash the leftover grime from my face. It was time to show the Human Domain what the anomaly could do.

_

Meanwhile, in the Student Council Vice President’s Office...

The office was a big room inside the Academy’s main building, with tall windows that looked out over the central yard. A heavy wooden desk sat in the middle, buried under piles of papers, forms, seating charts, and a dozen other documents that had somehow grown overnight.

Sylvia von Celestial sat behind that desk, her black hair tied back in a messy ponytail, her ocean-blue eyes scanning the latest report with an expression of pure exhaustion. Her Vice President uniform was clean — black coat, silver trim, white shirt — but dark circles hung under her eyes, and her posture had given up on looking proper a long time ago.

She had been sitting here for hours. The pile of paperwork had not gotten smaller. If anything, it had grown.

”Ugh,” Sylvia groaned, dropping her head onto her folded arms. The papers crinkled under her cheek. ”...Why do I have to do all of this? Why me? Why today?”

The room offered no answers. The walls were silent. The stack of documents gleamed under the mana-lamps like a mountain of judgment.

”I am the vice president,” she grumbled, her voice rising in a tired, annoyed ramble. ”Vice. As in second. As in the person who is only supposed to step in when the actual president is busy being important. Not the person who gets stuck with a whole library of paperwork.”

She rolled her head to the side, staring blankly at the wall.

”I didn’t sign up for this,” she muttered, letting her head fall back onto her arms. ”I signed up to fight monsters and look cool while doing it. Not to arrange chairs for a bunch of old men in fancy robes.”

Today was orientation day. In just a few hours, the two hundred survivors of the Sealed Valley would gather in the great hall. Their families would watch from across the world. The Astra Union would be there, cameras rolling, recording every word for the broadcast.

...And Sylvia had to give the opening speech.

It was not because she wanted to.

The Student Council President had decided to leave for a mission two weeks ago and wouldn’t be back for another seven days. He had shrugged, said ”you’ve got this, Vice President,” and walked out the door with his bags packed and a smile on his face.

Sylvia was going to kill him when he returned.

Every year, the President gave the orientation speech, welcoming the new students and talking about honor and duty. It was tradition. But this year, the President wasn’t here. And Sylvia, as Vice President, had to fill his shoes.

”I am going to embarrass myself in front of the entire world” she said to the empty room. ”I am going to walk onto that stage, open my mouth, and absolutely nothing coherent will come out. They will broadcast it everywhere. My family will watch.”

She paused, breathing heavily after her rant, waiting for a response.

Nothing. The room was entirely silent.

”Seriously? No sympathy at all?” Sylvia grumbled.

She turned her gaze toward the soft sofa in the corner of the room — the office’s designated resting spot. Sitting there, completely calm and away from the paperwork disaster, was a girl with hair as black as night and deep, quiet crimson eyes.

Seris Lunaria sat perfectly still, her delicate, pale face bathed in the morning light. But she wasn’t looking at Sylvia. Her entire universe had narrowed down to a single object sitting on the low coffee table in front of her: a beautiful, rich chocolate cake.

Seris had been sitting there for an hour, patiently waiting for Sylvia to finish her work so they could finally eat.

Sylvia’s eye twitched. She stood up from her desk, her chair scraping against the floor, and walked over to the sofa. She leaned down, putting her hands on her hips.

”Are you even listening to me?” Sylvia demanded.

Seris didn’t look up right away, but she gave a slow, serious nod. Her crimson eyes stayed locked on the cake. ”...I am listening,” she said, her voice soft and low, barely a whisper.

”Oh, really?” Sylvia crossed her arms, a sarcastic smirk playing on her lips. ”Then clear the drool off your face first.”

Seris blinked.

Her hand instantly flew to the corner of her mouth, wiping at her perfectly dry, pale skin. Realizing she had been teased, she quietly dropped her hand, her expression remaining entirely unreadable, though her ears flushed slightly.

Sylvia let out a long, heavy sigh, the tension finally leaving her shoulders. The sheer ridiculousness of the situation made her forget her anger for a second. She collapsed onto the sofa right next to Seris, leaning back against the cushions.

”...Just eat it,” Sylvia said, gesturing toward the cake. ”Take my piece too. You know I’m not fond of sweet things anyway.”

Seris’s head snapped up, her crimson eyes briefly widening in what could only be described as pure, joy. Without a moment’s hesitation, she picked up the small fork.

Nom. Nom.

She started eating with quiet, steady bites, her cheeks puffing out a little as she chewed. Watching her friend find joy in a slice of cake brought a real, warm smile to Sylvia’s face.

Feeling completely drained, Sylvia shifted on the sofa and leaned her head heavily against Seris’s shoulder. She let out a weak groan. ”I’m so exhausted... I seriously hate that bastard president. I hope he gets stuck in a swamp on his way back. Leaving all his work on me like this...”

Seris didn’t stop eating, but she calmly raised her left hand and patted Sylvia’s messy hair in a slow, steady rhythm. It was a sweet, friendly gesture — the comfort of a quiet friend sitting with a loud friend who needed to complain.

After swallowing another bite of cake, Seris spoke up. ”...I will help you.”

Sylvia lifted her head from Seris’s shoulder, her ocean-blue eyes practically sparkling with hope. ”Really?! You’ll help me finish all this paperwork?”

Without waiting for an answer, Sylvia threw her arms around Seris in a big, dramatic hug. ”Thank you! You are an angel, Seris! A chocolate-loving angel!”

Seris endured the tight hug stoically, her fork still held up so she wouldn’t get cake on Sylvia’s jacket. ”Only the sorting,” Seris clarified softly. ”I do not do math.”

”I’ll take it!” Sylvia laughed, releasing her and sliding back into her seat.

But as the reality of the upcoming orientation come back into her mind, Sylvia’s smile faded into a frown. She stared at the ceiling, her hands resting on her lap.

”Speaking of the freshman batch... I still can’t believe it,” Sylvia muttered, her voice turning complex. ”That fool Leo actually managed to become a Primus. The top freshman.”

She paused, a mix of pride and worry in her chest. ”I mean... I knew he was strong. After what happened during our spar in the training hall, I knew he wasn’t the failure everyone thought he was. But still... a Primus.”

Seris tilted her head slightly, her fork hovering in the air. ”...Leo?” she murmured, her voice laced with genuine confusion.

Sylvia rubbed her temples and let out a weary sigh. ”Did you already forget? My younger, troublemaking, absolute headache of a brother. The one who caused that disaster in the garden weeks ago.”

A spark of recognition finally hit Seris’s crimson eyes.

”...Ah,” Seris whispered.

In her mind, the name ’Leo von Celestial’ didn’t bring up images of a powerful, legendary noble or a prestigious Primus. Instead, her mind instantly flashed back to a chaotic afternoon in the garden, a sudden collision, and a white-haired boy staring blankly at her while his hand was completely, accidentally planted right on her chest.

...Or when he gave her the chocolate.

The chocolate-giving pervert boy, Seris thought to herself, her expression remaining deadpan while she took another calm bite of cake.

”You have no idea how much trouble he can cause,” Sylvia continued, sighing deeply. ”I know exactly how Leo is. He’s a magnet for disaster. Because of all this paperwork and orientation prep, I haven’t even been able to go see him since we got to the academy.”

Seris chewed quietly, listening.

”That’s why I took precautions,” Sylvia said, a faint glimmer of satisfaction returning to her eyes.

”I wrote out an entire speech letter and had Lyra deliver it directly to him. I told him exactly what he can and cannot say. It’s basically a script so he doesn’t open his mouth and say something stupid or rude.”

She leaned back against the sofa, crossing her arms. ”I just hope to God he actually reads it and doesn’t say something crazy. Especially with the Astra Union guests sitting right there in the front row. It’s a massive international stage.”

Sylvia’s expression suddenly darkened, and a sharp, sinister grin appeared on her face. ”Hehe... but if that bastard really does something today... if he ruins this ceremony...” She cracked her knuckles with a terrifying, slow rhythm.

”This time, no one will save him. Not Mother, not Father. I will personally end him.”

Seris paused mid-bite, her fork freezing inches from her mouth.

Looking at Sylvia’s dark, wild grin, Seris’s mind suddenly went back to the big gala. She remembered Leo standing in the middle of a tense room, wearing the same kind of crazy look threatening to beat up some noble brats.

They definitely have the same blood, Seris thought, a rare bit of amusement passing through her quiet mind. Yeah. They are definitely siblings.

”Alright, the cake is gone, the warnings are set, and the stage is waiting,” Sylvia said, her vice president attitude snapping back into place. She stood up from the sofa and fixed her uniform coat. She looked toward the door.

”Let’s go, Seris. The orientation is about to start, and we have a storm to deal with.”

Seris stood up quietly, smoothed down her skirt, and followed Sylvia out into the busy halls of the academy, ready to face whatever trouble Leo was about to cause.

_

Author’s Note:

The chocolate-giving pervert boy, Seris thought.

Just what is Leo doing 😭

Ahem.

Anyway, I have a question. Well, you see, I got a very good response about Roan and Alice’s characters. Honestly, I expected that a bit. It would be like if I said Yu Yeorum from ’Kidnapped Dragon’ didn’t inspire me to write Alice.

And about Roan? Honestly, you would find characters like him in many novels. You see, in most stories, they make a tiny, edgy, arrogant elf boy, and I hate that. I know that frustration.

But Rimmer from ’Reincarnated Assassin is a Genius Swordsman’ inspired me to write Roan. Both are elves, but not your typical cliché arrogant elf. So yeah, I have to give credit to the original stories. They deserved it.

Also, I hope no one ships Alice and Roan 😅

I haven’t thought of this ship, and rather than making them lovers, I would rather kill one of them. Alright, alright, don’t give me that look.

I was joking (I wasn’t.)

And also, man, I’m crying.

Y’all really hate Amelia and Arthur. I mean, sure, there are some readers like Red storm who like Amelia, but most of y’all hate them. It’s kind of funny to me, though. You still have to bear some of their POV screen time in future Chapters.

I honestly don’t wanna write irrelevant side characters that everyone forgets.

Also, you can give me some tips about romance. And don’t just say ”get a gf, author.” I mean, you all don’t have one yourselves, so I am also like y’all.

Sigh.

Anyway, keep dropping your thoughts. I read them and try my best.

Like I remember someone saying to me that they need Seris’s POV. I don’t remember who it was. Maybe it was Gromp right? Damn, sorry if I forgot your name. And yeah, honestly, she was going to appear later, but I added her in this Chapter because of you 😅

So yeah, thanks for that.

Also, shoutout to everyone who keeps commenting and voting. You guys are the reason I keep writing. Anyway, that’s enough yapping. Enjoy the story.

Goodbye!