They were led to a specific area of the enormous, open men’s courtyard, illuminated by a full moon.

Full of newcomers, hundreds of them.

Some crying. Others nervous, others trying to appear strong.

Veterans merely observing, in a circle around them, like guards.

A veteran climbed onto a statue in the center of the courtyard; it was a representation of the figure of Astraeus Eldrath, the founder.

"WELCOME TO THE BAPTISM!"

Shouts, whistles, laughter from the veterans.

A veteran arrived and grabbed Haru, forced his mouth open, and poured liquid over it.

"Drink, damn it!"

"Why me!?" Haru almost spat it out.

"Your mana wasn’t properly inhibited! They said you summoned a sword!"

Haru drank immediately, unable to resist.

"You got me..." he said, swallowing.

"Damn it, why did you drink!?" Golden complained. "That would be our trump card! We just had to pretend!"

"Relax..." Haru said.

"Relax!?"

"Relax. I have a plan."

"I didn’t summon Vorath. I took her from my inventory." Haru thought. "The system update doesn’t prevent us from taking things out of our inventory. Only from accessing the tabs."

Vorath, in Haru’s room, disappeared and returned to the inventory automatically.

"That means... whatever they did with mana... it only affects mana. Not the system..." Haru smiled, thinking about it.

A veteran atop the statue raised a golden staff, gleaming intensely.

"Today you learn the first lesson of the academy!"

Tense silence.

"COMFORT IS A LIE!"

Veterans around shouted: "OOOOOOH!"

"You will be divided into pairs!"

He pointed at the chained ones.

"Chained!"

"No mana!"

"No skills!"

He paused dramatically.

"Objective: survive until dawn."

Murmurs began to grow, frightened, confused freshmen.

"And to survive..." the veteran continued smiling, "...you’ll have to run."

He snapped his fingers.

The courtyard gates opened with a loud creak. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

And from inside... Roars.

Monsters began to emerge: spectral wolves, stone golems, venomous snakes, controlled summons, but dangerous enough to hurt...

A magical map appeared in the sky.

"Checkpoints scattered throughout the academy."

"Veterans will be hunting you."

"Last captured pair receives Full Baptism."

Haru: "...this is literally human hunting."

Golden: "I told you."

RUN, ROOKIES!

The summoned beasts began to roar... everyone started running, it became absolute chaos.

There were several pairs stumbling, people crawling. Veterans laughing.

Stumbling, Golden and Haru entered through the front door, arriving in the dark corridor, with extinguished lanterns, only the moon illuminating it.

"LEFT!" Haru shouted.

"NO, RIGHT!" Golden pulled.

The two hit a column, a current pulling them in opposite directions.

They fell together, shoulders hitting the stone floor.

Roars were heard behind them, beasts coming, claws scratching the ground.

"GET UP!" Haru shouted.

They immediately jumped up and started climbing the stairs, their legs coordinating:

"One, two. One, two. One, two."

After climbing the stairs, they didn’t stop, continuing to run until they found an empty room with a wooden door, no visible lock.

"Lock the door, damn it!" Golden shouted breathlessly.

Haru locked it, pulling the heavy bolt.

They rested, leaning against the wall, panting, sweat dripping.

They heard footsteps outside, other freshmen running and shouting.

And magic lanterns passing by; they could see yellow lights leaking under the door.

Then, a veteran’s voice echoed at the door: "The wolf smelled freshman..."

Golden and Haru looked at each other with wide eyes.

"So... what’s the plan?"

"First... calm down..." Haru controlled his breathing. "Maybe he’ll go..."

But you could see the paw and shadow of the spectral wolf there, through the crack under the door.

The wolf kept growling softly and sniffing incessantly.

The two remained in absolute silence inside the room.

"...he knows." Golden whispered.

The wolf began to scratch at the door, slowly, methodically, testing.

"You can go out alone..." a veteran said from outside, approaching.

Another veteran added: "Or Fenrir will come in."

"Think... think..."

Haru didn’t think much and found a maybe.

"Whatever they made us inhale... blocks our mana. Not the system... first premise, because the system doesn’t need mana."

"Whatever they made us inhale... blocks mana, but what about spirits?"

He remembered Flavius explaining: "Spirits are echoes of will."

Haru looked at the wall, then at his hands. Then he sat down and began to take off his shoes.

"What are you doing...?" Golden exclaimed.

Meanwhile, outside the room, the veterans were getting impatient with the game: "You’re going to resist, are you!?"

Haru continued, his socks also off, until his bare feet were on the cold floor.

"It turns out that Necromancers use the power of spirits to their advantage..."

He remembered Vandris’s diary: "External Host-Spirit, Vandris called it that, when spirits don’t have an established body, but borrow one."

"Skills."

"And normally... the first thing a spirit gives you is your vision. Seeing the spirit world... it’s symbolic."

He remembered Vorath’s labyrinth, the first time his eyes turned black, he saw pure mana flowing.

And more than that... He saw spirits walking on the walls as if they were the floor.

He stood up, his gray eyes beginning to glow slightly.

"Let’s go..." he said to Golden.

Golden resisted a little, not understanding Haru.

That resistance made chains clang.

And the wolf began to scratch forcefully, as if it knew there were more than two inside. There were hundreds of spiritual signatures now.

The veteran tried to open the door, pulling, pushing.

"Shit..." Golden murmured.

"Come with me!" Haru said.

There was no other way, the chain didn’t allow separation.

"A thousand times better to try than to fail without doing..."

Golden followed, Haru placed his foot on the wall.

"Spiritual property one: vision..." Haru murmured, remembering Vandris’s diary. "Spiritual property two: physical presence beyond the physical plane..."

Haru’s foot remained on the wall, as if gravity didn’t exist there. Trapped and solid...

Absolute silence.

Golden stared at him, mouth agape. "...what the hell was that?"

Haru slowly climbed the wall, foot by foot, his body now perpendicular to the floor...

Golden jumped onto his back, the extra weight causing Haru to slip slightly.

"Careful!"

...

Veteran slammed the door shut, wood exploding.

Wolf entered first, sniffing, searching.

But the room was empty.

Only the air vent in the ceiling was open, the metal grate removed.

"They went into the duct!" Veteran shouted. "They’re going into the duct!"

Haru and Golden were already inside the duct, in a cramped space, cold metal and absolute darkness.

Strangely but functioning, following its path, curving randomly.

"Dude... what was that...?" Golden asked breathlessly. "I thought your mana was inhibited!"

"You have a strong mana center? Did you drink a potion to prevent it? How?"

"Spirits..." Haru replied.

"What do you mean, spirits? Your ancestors’ spirits? Is that it?!"

"Yeah... I also hear a grandmother’s voice in my head. That’s right, ancestral spirits..." Haru said sarcastically.

Silence for a moment.

"Shall we stay here and wait for dawn?" Golden asked.

"It’s the safest thing to do..." Haru replied. "Let’s camp..."

"What’s camping?" Golden didn’t know the expression.

Haru smiled, even in the dark.

"The safest thing to do..."

Haru realized he was violating his otherworldly gamer law; when he was on the other side of the screen, he played wanting to survive but never camped.

It wasn’t fun, he said.

Today he was the dummy in the game.

And he could feel pain.

"Yeah... as long as they don’t find us here..."

Suddenly, the pipes began to get cold, not normal cold, but an unnatural cold.

Air condensing, metal freezing, their breath turning to mist.

The experienced ice veterans were prepared to freeze the freshmen in the pipes. They knew that sooner or later they would have to go down.

"It’s getting cold..." Haru said, his teeth starting to chatter.

"Let’s get out!" Golden replied.

They started looking for a place to go down, but they didn’t know where they were; the pipe was a labyrinth.

And it was getting colder and colder, frost forming on the metal walls.

Haru’s fingers had already frozen; he couldn’t feel them anymore, his skin turning bluish.

"Here!" Golden found the gate and kicked it.

The gate fell open.

They fell together, hitting the ground with a loud noise.

When they opened their eyes...

They were surrounded by people.

Not veterans, dozens of them, sitting in circles.

A large, empty, cold room.

"Ah, damn it..." Golden murmured. "At least we lasted..."

"Last nothing. You only delayed the inevitable," one of them replied.

Haru looked around and counted quickly. There were some sweaty ones. And in the corner of the room... Three veterans playing cards, they didn’t even look when Haru and Golden fell.

Night had already swallowed a good part of the Capital when Eugen arrived before the House of Genials.

The mansion was different from other imperial noble residences. There were no excessively patrolling knights, no absurd gardens, no golden statues trying to demonstrate power. The House of Genials looked more like a giant laboratory transformed into a residence.

Lights were still on on several floors.

Tubes released steam from the sides of the building.

Occasional small explosions came from inside.

Servants rushed past carrying papers, tools, strange metal boxes.

Eugen observed everything in silence, standing in a specific spot on the wall.

His blue eyes slowly lifted to one of the illuminated windows on the second floor.

There was Genius.

Walking back and forth.

Scribbling formulas on a wall.

Throwing sheets of paper on the floor.

Tending to strange mechanisms scattered around the room.

Disassembled trinkets occupied practically every possible space. Gears. Crystals. Incomplete metallic arms. Magical tools. An open mana core glowing blue in the middle of the table.

The room resembled the mind of someone unable to stop thinking.

Eugen watched silently.

Genius’s movements were too fast.

Precise.

Without hesitation.

Without weakness.

Without pain.

This was impossible.

In the original game... at this point... the character Genius Genials should have been bedridden.

The disease should have already destroyed half his body.

His lungs failing.

Constant fevers.

Blood.

Entire days unable to get out of bed.

But there...

He walked normally.

He breathed normally.

His fingers didn’t tremble.

His posture was vibrant.

There was no decay in that body.

Eugen narrowed his eyes.

"So it really happened..." he murmured softly.

Inside the room, Genius stopped before a painting covered in violently scratched symbols.

Then he kicked a chair in frustration.

"How did he do that...?" his voice came out irritated.

He picked up another sheet of paper, crumpled it, and threw it on the floor.

"Hacking a divine system... what kind of monster does that?"

His eyes gleamed, not with fear. With obsession.

"Is there anyone more brilliant than me...?"

That clearly bothered him deeply.

But at the same time... it motivated him.

Eugen realized it immediately.

Genius wasn’t broken by Haru’s existence.

He was hungry.

Like a scientist who had finally found something impossible to explain.

"So that was it..." Eugen thought.

"Haru unknowingly created the worst possible scenario..."

Because now Genius had a goal: to overcome his impossible.

Eugen watched his body move around the room again.

No sign of the disease.

None.

There were only two possibilities.

Either the original destiny had been naturally altered... Or someone already knew from the beginning.

Eugen’s fingers slowly touched the hilt of the sword at his waist.

Very few people in the world knew the true cure for that disease, even fewer had the resources to produce it.

And even fewer would understand the symptoms early enough to save Genius before the inevitable collapse.

This required: knowledge, time, precision, and impossible information.

"So someone interfered before the story began..." Eugen concluded.

His eyes grew cold.

"Someone who knew the future."

Inside, Genius returned to the table and picked up a small, broken crystal.

Mana began to circulate through his fingers as he adjusted tiny runes with fine tools.

Eugen finally smiled slightly.

"So..." he said, slowly drawing the sword a few inches from its sheath.

The holy blade reflected the moonlight.

"...Genius Genials is now a Gamer."