Webnovel's Extra: Reincarnated With a Copy Ability-Chapter 179: The Space They Leave

The next morning, Lucas noticed the gaps before he noticed the people.

It started in the dorm corridor. A door on the far end stayed shut longer than usual. Another room that normally opened early enough for a wave of sleepy complaints stayed quiet. When he reached the stairwell, he passed two first-years whispering over a tablet, stopping the moment they saw him.

He didn’t ask.

He didn’t need to.

By the time he pushed into the dining hall, the pattern had sharpened enough to stop pretending it was in his head. The room wasn’t empty. It was full enough that no one would call it strange at first glance. But once he started looking, he couldn’t stop.

A chair missing from one table.

A whole cluster reduced by two at another.

The loud guy from B-tier who always argued about timing over breakfast wasn’t there.

Neither was the girl who had spent the last week obsessively replaying projection logs like she could bully them into making sense.

Lucas slowed with his tray in his hands and scanned the room once more.

"Yeah," he muttered. "There it is."

Dreyden sat in his usual place, already halfway through breakfast. Raisel was there too, speaking quietly to Arden. Lucas dropped into the seat across from them harder than he meant to.

"They’re gone."

Raisel looked up first.

"A few."

Lucas laughed without humor.

"A few?"

Arden slid her tablet across the table. It wasn’t an official list. It didn’t need to be. Just names she’d been tracking from their rotation blocks, some highlighted, some crossed out.

"Some transferred to alternate drill tracks," she said. "Some requested reduced load. A couple are on medical review."

Lucas looked over the names.

"And the rest?"

Arden’s expression stayed neutral. "Didn’t show."

That sat there for a moment.

The dining hall noise continued around them. Trays clattered. Conversations rose and fell. Somebody at a nearby table was still arguing about whether wider spacing ruined anchor trust. The academy hadn’t paused. It never did.

Lucas leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his jaw.

"So that’s it," he said. "No announcement. No explanation. People just disappear sideways."

Dreyden set his cup down.

"They’re not disappearing."

Lucas looked at him. "Right. Sorry. They’re being redistributed into less visible failure."

Raisel’s mouth tightened just slightly.

Lucas saw it and exhaled through his nose.

"Yeah. I know. Cheap shot."

"It’s not inaccurate," Arden said.

That surprised him enough that he barked out a short laugh.

"Good to know someone here still believes in honesty."

Dreyden didn’t react to that. He rarely reacted to things said for effect.

Lucas picked at his food without much interest.

The part he didn’t like wasn’t that people were falling behind. The Triangle had always done that. It was the way it happened now. No spectacle. No obvious line where someone failed. Just a slow absence, like the system had opened a side door and people kept drifting through it one at a time.

He looked down at Arden’s tablet again.

"Who was in the grid last night right before we left?"

Arden didn’t have to ask which grid.

"Tarin," she said. "Then Sio. Then Marek."

Lucas nodded slowly. "Marek left after one cycle."

"Yes."

"And Tarin kept going."

"Yes."

Lucas’s fork paused halfway to the tray.

"Where’s Tarin?"

Arden held his gaze. "Medical review."

Lucas set the fork back down.

There was no appetite left in him after that.

The training hall made it worse.

That was almost funny. He’d expected the hall to feel emptier once he knew what to look for. Instead it felt more crowded. Not physically. Psychologically. The people who remained took up more space because all the empty spots around them had meaning now.

Lucas stood near the edge of the floor while the first projection grids warmed to life. He counted without meaning to.

Three faces missing from the left side of the hall.

Two from the central rows.

One anchor team reshuffled entirely because they were down a body and didn’t want to admit it out loud.

The remaining students moved differently too. Not slower. Careful wasn’t the word. It was something uglier than careful.

Measured.

Every person on the floor seemed aware that staying mattered as much as improving now. Maybe more.

"You were right," Lucas said quietly.

Dreyden stood beside him, attention already on the first active grid.

"Yes."

Lucas gave him a look. "You don’t even ask which part."

"You say that a lot when I am."

Lucas huffed.

A team in the nearest grid stepped into position. One of the anchors looked too stiff, shoulders high, hands set wrong on her weapon. Lucas recognized the look immediately. Not fear exactly. Fear came out cleaner than that. This was the look of someone trying too hard not to fail.

The projection fired.

First wave, clean.

Second wave, slight delay.

She adjusted early.

The suppressor on her right caught the mistake and compensated before it spread.

The formation held.

Barely.

Lucas watched her jaw tighten when the cycle ended.

"She’s gone by next week if she keeps doing that."

Raisel, who had come up on Lucas’s other side without him noticing, followed his gaze.

"Maybe."

Lucas shook his head. "No. Not maybe."

He almost said more, then stopped. The truth was he didn’t know if she’d disappear because of the grid itself or because she’d start making decisions around the fear of disappearing. At this point, the difference barely mattered.

The next cycle started. Another formation. Another set of micro-errors. Another narrow recovery.

Nothing broke.

And somehow that made it worse.

By the second rotation block, the instructors still hadn’t said anything.

No speech about resilience. No acknowledgment that some students were missing. No reassurance. No warning.

Just grids. Pressure. Observation.

Lucas watched Halvors walk the perimeter of the hall with his usual impossible calm and felt irritation crawl up the back of his neck.

"He knows."

Raisel didn’t bother pretending otherwise. "Yes."

"And he’s just going to let it happen."

"Yes."

Lucas looked at him. "You really need to start varying your answers."

Raisel’s expression barely changed. "You keep asking questions you already understand."

That irritated Lucas because it was true.

He pushed off the rail.

"I’m going in."

No one stopped him.

The grid he chose wasn’t one of the harder ones. That was deliberate. He didn’t want the spectacle of pushing himself against the worst the system could offer. He wanted to see what the room looked like from inside when you already knew what it was doing.

Two others joined him. A quiet B-tier suppressor with tired eyes and a first-year anchor who looked like he’d been told to stand still and do his best not to embarrass himself.

Lucas took one look at the first-year and softened his tone without thinking.

"What’s your name?"

The kid blinked. "Tomas."

"Alright, Tomas. If you freeze, I’ll call you. If you mess up, reset. Don’t spiral."

The boy nodded too fast. "Okay."

The suppressor glanced at Lucas, surprised maybe, or just checking whether that tone was real.

Lucas ignored it.

The grid lit.

First wave.

Lucas didn’t try to beat it. Didn’t try to read beyond what was there. He moved when it moved. The suppressor followed well enough. Tomas almost stepped late, corrected, and stayed with them.

Second wave.

The delay hit.

Lucas felt Tomas tense before the kid actually moved. He saw the shoulders lock, the breath catch, the small panic that happened right before a bad decision.

"Wait," Lucas said.

Tomas waited.

The wave shifted.

"Now."

They moved.

The formation held.

Lucas heard the boy exhale sharply through his teeth.

By the end of the cycle, nothing dramatic had happened. No breakthrough. No disaster. No applause from the room because the room had forgotten how to do that.

When the grid dimmed, Tomas looked at Lucas like he wanted to say thank you but didn’t know if that was allowed here.

Lucas saved him from the moment.

"You hesitate loud," he said.

Tomas flushed. "Sorry."

"Don’t apologize," Lucas said. "Just fix it."

The boy nodded once, more grounded this time.

When they stepped out of the grid, the tired suppressor fell into step beside Lucas for a few paces.

"You make it sound easy."

Lucas gave her a sidelong look.

"It isn’t."

"Could’ve fooled me."

That made him snort.

"Trust me. I’m annoyed the whole time."

For the first time, she almost smiled.

Then she went back to her group.

Lucas stood still for a second longer than necessary. He could feel Dreyden watching him from the rail.

When he turned back, Dreyden said the thing Lucas already knew he was going to say.

"You adjusted your pressure to the weakest point."

Lucas rolled his eyes. "Yeah."

"You don’t usually."

"Yeah."

Dreyden tilted his head slightly. "Why?"

Lucas looked back toward Tomas, who was now rejoining another first-year cluster near the wall.

"Because he was already halfway out before the cycle started."

No one answered that.

They didn’t need to.

The day dragged after that.

Not because the drills were long, but because everything in the room felt doubled now. The visible exercise. The hidden one underneath it. Students running cycles while also trying to prove—to themselves, to the academy, to whoever was counting—that they still belonged in the room.

By late afternoon, the strain had started to show.

A student on the far side of the hall snapped at her partner for a mistimed shift. Not loud. Sharp. Embarrassed more than angry.

Another walked out after a bad cycle and didn’t come back for the next one.

No one chased him.

That hit Lucas harder than he expected.

The absence of reaction. The way the hall just absorbed it and kept moving.

He found himself standing still near the wall, watching the door long after it had shut.

Dreyden came to stand beside him.

"You can’t track all of them."

Lucas didn’t look at him. "I know."

"Then stop trying."

Lucas laughed once, dry as dust. "That’s your advice?"

"It’s reality."

Lucas let that sit, because he was too tired to argue and too angry not to understand the point.

Across the room, Halvors finally raised a hand and the remaining projection systems dimmed.

No dismissal speech.

No closing remarks.

The students left in slower groups than usual.

Some talked. Some didn’t.

Lucas waited until the hall had thinned before he spoke again.

"This is the ugliest part so far."

Raisel, gathering his things nearby, looked up. "Why?"

Lucas stared at the now-dark grid.

"Because it works."

That was the thing. If the system had been cruel and useless, he could’ve hated it cleanly. But it was doing what it was built to do. Filtering for people who could keep their footing when certainty vanished. He understood the logic.

He just hated what the logic cost.

Arden slung her bag over one shoulder. "Understanding it doesn’t make it kinder."

Lucas looked at her.

"No," he said. "It doesn’t."

That night, the dorm corridor was quieter than the one before.

Not dead. Just thinner.

Lucas walked back with the others and found himself counting doors again.

One still closed.

Another open, but half-packed.

Someone moving their things without saying they were moving.

He stopped in the middle of the hall and looked down the long stretch of it.

Dreyden didn’t stop with him at first. Then he did.

Lucas folded his arms.

"Tell me something."

Dreyden waited.

"When does it stop feeling like this?"

Dreyden looked at the corridor, at the doors, at the evidence of quiet exits and careful persistence.

"It doesn’t," he said.

Lucas stared at him for a second, then laughed because the alternative felt worse.

"Yeah," he said. "Figures."

He pushed open his room door and stood there for a moment before stepping inside.

The room felt the same.

That was the worst part.

Everything looked the same.

The academy. The halls. The routines.

And underneath it, the shape of the place had changed completely.

Lucas dropped onto his bed and stared at the ceiling, feeling the day still running through his body like an echo he couldn’t shut off.

He thought of Tomas.

Of Tarin.

Of the student who had walked out mid-session and never come back.

Then he thought of himself, standing in the grid and adjusting his pressure to keep someone else from slipping out of it.

He didn’t know whether that meant he was adapting or just getting harder to unsettle.

Maybe those were the same thing here.

Across the room, his interface pulsed once with tomorrow’s schedule.

He didn’t open it.

Not yet.

For a few minutes, he let the room stay dark and the question stay unanswered.

Then he reached for the screen anyway.