The Anomaly's Path

Click.

The sound was small.

In the big, open arena, it should not have carried at all. But against the sudden, heavy silence that followed my grip tightening, that single metallic sound of my sword moving from its cover rang out like thunder.

The blade did not leave the cover completely — just two inches of dark steel catching the bright stadium lights.

It was enough.

The air pressure dropped at once, a heavy, warping weight rolling off my core in visible waves.

My right hand stayed locked around the handle, the leather binding to my palm as my bloodline pulsed inside my veins, pulling raw power from the air and spinning it into sharp, wild arcs of black lightning that hissed against the sand around my boots.

The students right in front of me froze. The strong, organized front they had just spent the last two minutes building simply broke before I even took a step.

”H-he’s serious...” someone from the back line choked out, their voice cracking. ”Look at his hand! He’s actually drawing it!”

”Damn it!” a student yelled, fear in his voice. ”Do not break! If we scatter, he picks us off! Keep the barrier tight—”

”Hold... hold the lines!” a voice cracked from the third row. His shield was shaking so hard the iron rattled against his chest. ”He is just one guy! Get the barrier ready, now—”

The student never finished his sentence.

The boy standing right next to him — a tall human swordsman with his blade raised in a defensive stance, suddenly lurched forward. There was no sound of an approach. No flash of warning. The human’s eyes were still wide, staring at the empty space where I had been standing a second ago, even as his own knees gave out.

A clean, thin line of blood appeared across the back of his thigh, cutting the tendon without touching the bone. He did not even realize he was falling until his shoulder hit the dirt.

”What—where is he?!” the shield-bearer yelled, swinging his iron shield wildly into empty air.

He was looking where I was, not where I was going.

Using Volt Step with my space power, I did not travel through the arena. I changed my location within it. To the crowd watching, it looked like a glitch in reality, a flash of black lightning appearing at five different spots at the same time.

Fifty-four left, I thought, my mind cold and focused. Keep the cuts shallow. If they bleed too much, Morgana stops the match. Break the tendons, crack the joints, move on.

I appeared over the shoulder of an elf rogue who was trying to slip into the shadows.

Before his feet could leave the ground, I drove the handle of my sword into the base of his skull. The hit broke through his power like glass. He dropped at once, his body sliding face-first through the sand.

To my left, three weapon-users tried to swing at me together.

I didn’t parry. I didn’t even draw Tempest completely from the sheath.

Using my space affinity, I shifted the position of my cover by three inches mid-move. The heavy, iron-bound sheath went past their blades, hitting the leader across the throat with a heavy, winded thud, before bouncing back to catch the second under the chin.

Fifty-one.

The fear in the ring was easy to feel now. My soul perception showed the arena in sharp, ugly streaks of gray and scared yellow, their emotions breaking as they realized numbers did not matter when you could not even see your target.

”Back to back!” someone yelled from the rear. ”Elena, use the fire spell! Just drop it on us, do it now!”

Elena Ross was panicking, her fingers tearing through the air as she tried to force a massive fire spell to form over the center of the crowd. The crimson sparks were blinding, the heat beginning to warp the air above her head.

I appeared right in her blind spot, the black lightning under my feet leaving a burned trail across the sand.

”Too slow,” I murmured.

Her eyes darted sideways, filled with sudden fear. I did not hit her with the blade. I just reached out with my left hand, grabbed the center of her half-made fire spell, and let a small pulse of my space power crush the mana from the inside.

The spell broke with a dull pop, the force sending her stumbling backward into the sand, her hands smoking and useless.

Before she could recover, I was already gone, leaving only the smell of burned air and scorched fabric behind.

What followed next wasn’t a fight. It was a fast, clean sweep.

I moved through them like a blade through grass. A space fold here to get past an armored dwarf’s shield, followed by a hard kick to the back of his knee that made the joint pop out.

A quick burst of Starlight Steps to leave three fake copies in front of a line of spearmen, while the real me moved behind them, the blunt edge of my sword guard hitting their collarbones in three fast, steady hits.

Click. Thud. Click.

They tried using wide spells — frost blasts, earth walls, wind blades, but everything was too slow.

Every time an attack covered an area, I used my space power to slip into the gaps between their sight. I knew exactly where they would look before they looked there. I knew how their muscles moved before they swung.

Twenty left.

Twelve.

Five.

The whole stadium had gone quiet.

Thousands of students weren’t cheering anymore. They were leaning over the railings, their faces pale, watching a single, dark-coated figure take apart the strongest first-years without even pulling his sword all the way out.

The last three were standing near the edge of the ring, shaking, their weapons held with white-knuckled grips, surrounded by a sea of groaning bodies.

I appeared five steps in front of them.

”Do not...” one of them whispered, dropping his sword into the sand. He just sat down, his spirit completely broken by the huge gap in power.

The other two did not even try. They followed his lead, letting their weapons fall with dull thuds.

I stood alone in the center of the arena, surrounded by a hundred unconscious, twitching bodies. The black lightning around my skin slowly faded, going back into my body.

I let out a breath, the steam visible in the cooling air. I slowly slid Tempest back into its scabbard.

Click.

The sound echoed across the entire stadium.

”He... he actually did it,” someone whispered from the stands, breaking the silence.

Professor Morgana stood up from her seat, her face unreadable. She looked down at the scene, then back at me. She did not look surprised — she looked like someone whose worst guesses had just been proven right.

”Healers,” Morgana’s voice rang out, cold and sharp. ”Get down there. Move the unconscious ones to the medical wing first. Those with cut tendons get healing right away. None of them are dead, but if you do not fix those leg wounds within five minutes, half of them will be limping for the rest of the semester.”

At once, the big iron gates at the bottom of the stadium opened, and dozens of white-robed healers rushed onto the sand, carrying stretchers and glowing green tools, moving through the wreckage like ants.

The stadium stayed in a stunned silence as the healers worked. No one knew how to react. A hundred fighters had been taken down in less than two minutes.

Then, a loud crack broke the quiet.

”Oh my god! Are you guys seeing this?!” Cynthia’s voice burst through the speakers, booming over the crowd with wild excitement. Her long purple ponytail flew as she leaned over the announcer’s booth, holding her speaker tight.

”One minute and forty-two seconds! One man just sent a whole army of a hundred challengers straight to the medical wing! I told you all he was not just talking big during the ceremony! Our young Primus did it! Talk about a clean sweep!”

The crowd in the upper rows began to buzz, her dramatic words finally letting them break their shock, a low murmur of awe and fear passing through the stands.

Down on the field, I ignored her voice. My stamina was draining a bit, but my bloodline was already working, and I slowly let my eyes move away from the healers clearing the field.

Now, the only thing left was the real fight.

I looked toward the outer edge of the arena. They were all still standing there, exactly where they had agreed to wait.

Roan, Alice, Julia, Amelia, Arthur, Cordelia, Riven, Nyra, and Marius. They had not left the field, and their eyes were locked on me. Now that the crowd was gone, the open space of sand between us felt very small.

They were not here to back down. Every single one of them had stepped down to challenge me for the Primus title, or to test my limits.

Roan was leading the walk forward, his boots crunching against the dirt.

His silver hair was a mess, his uniform unbuttoned at the collar, and his hand was resting on his spear. He had a big, wild smile on his face, his eyes burning with dangerous excitement. He had been forced to sit on the sidelines and watch me fight, and he was completely done waiting.

”You really thought you would get to rest after dealing with that weaklings?” Roan called out, his voice echoing across the open arena as he stopped thirty steps away. He cracked his neck, his power flaring outward in a wild wave.

”Come on, Leo. The warm-up is over. I told you I was not going to wait until next year.”

Right behind him, the rest of the top ranks closed in, spreading out into a loose, deadly half-circle that cut off my paths to the exits.

Arthur stepped forward, his face dead serious, his blade already drawn and pointed at the ground. Riven squared his shoulders, his steel-red eyes locked on me with fierce heat.

To his side, Alice let out a soft, ready hum, her amber eyes tracking my form, while Amelia stood with her perfect, graceful posture, yet her face held a stern seriousness that showed she was not planning to hold back.

Nyra, Cordelia, Julia, and Marius drew their lines, their big powers flaring up one after another, filling the arena with a whole new level of pressure.

I looked at the group of them, a heavy, strange feeling tightening in my chest.

These were not just talented students. They were the main characters. Not all of them were here — Caster, Elisabeth, and Lyssaria were still watching from the stands, but the ones walking toward me now were the heart of this year’s batch.

Back in my past life, before everything went dark and I woke up in this body, these were the legendary figures I used to control behind a glowing screen.

They were the main cast of the game I had played for hundreds of hours, the heroes meant to save or destroy the world. Seeing them standing here in person, breathing, giving off real power, and radiating different waves of intent, sent a strange feeling through my body.

This wasn’t some generic fantasy novel where the transmigrated protagonist casually mocks the main cast or assumes he’s automatically superior to everyone.

From the very first day I landed in this harsh world, my life had not been a game.

It had been a constant, bloody fight just to survive, to avoid my own death, and to keep my head above water against a world that tried to crush people like me. I had to crawl through hell and risk my life many times just to stand where I was right now.

...And looking at them now, a sudden, cold spark lit up under my ribs.

A couple of strange, heavy emotions mixed inside me.

I was not the player anymore, and they were not pixels. I had spent my whole life running from fate, but here, in this moment, I wasn’t running anymore. Now, the top fighters of this generation were standing right in front of me, daring me to prove I belonged.

A sharp sense of excitement went through my cold focus. I was actually looking forward to this. I wanted to see how strong the world’s chosen generation really was. I wanted to see if they could push me to my limit.

A small smile tugged at the corner of my lips. My hands hovered just an inch above Tempest’s hilt, the black lightning starting to crackle and hiss against the sand, responding to the sudden surge of power in my core.

”Fine,” I said, my voice dropping into a flat, serious tone as the top ranks got ready. ”Let us see what you have got.”