Webnovel's Extra: Reincarnated With a Copy Ability-Chapter 180: Fault Lines

The schedule wasn’t different.

That was the first thing Lucas noticed when he finally opened it.

Same blocks. Same rotations. Same evaluation tag sitting quietly at the top like it hadn’t already reshaped half the academy.

For a second, he just stared at it, thumb hovering over the screen.

"Figures," he muttered.

No escalation. No warning label. No note about missing students or adjusted expectations. Just another day, formatted clean and neutral.

He locked the screen and got up anyway.

The corridor had that early-morning stillness again, but now Lucas knew better than to trust it. Quiet didn’t mean calm here. It meant something had already happened, and the system had decided it didn’t need to say it out loud.

A door down the hall opened as he stepped out. Tomas.

The kid looked like he hadn’t slept much, but he was dressed, alert, already holding a tablet in one hand.

He hesitated when he saw Lucas.

"Morning."

Lucas nodded. "You coming in early?"

Tomas glanced at the screen in his hand. "Wanted to run the grid logs before first block."

Lucas leaned against the wall for a second.

"Trying to figure it out?"

Tomas shook his head quickly. "No. Just... trying to get used to how it feels."

Lucas studied him.

That answer was better than he expected.

"Good," he said. "Don’t chase patterns that aren’t there."

Tomas nodded, a little more steady than yesterday.

"You’re coming down?"

"Yeah."

They walked together without saying much after that. It wasn’t awkward. Just quiet in a way that didn’t need to be filled.

Halfway to the stairwell, Tomas spoke again.

"People are saying Oversight flagged a threshold."

Lucas glanced at him. "People say a lot of things."

"I know." Tomas hesitated. "But... does it feel like that to you?"

Lucas didn’t answer right away.

He thought about the hall yesterday. The missing faces. The way people moved like the floor could give out if they stepped wrong.

"Yeah," he said finally. "It feels like something’s being measured."

"What kind of threshold?"

Lucas pushed the stairwell door open.

"The kind you don’t get told about."

The training hall filled slower than the day before.

Not dramatically. Not enough for anyone to call it out. But the rhythm was off. People arrived in smaller groups, spread out instead of clustering.

Lucas noticed who stood where.

The ones still pushing toward the center. The ones hanging back near the walls. The ones who looked like they were deciding which side they belonged to.

Dreyden was already there.

Of course he was.

Lucas walked over, Tomas trailing half a step behind until he caught himself and adjusted.

"You sleep?" Lucas asked.

Dreyden didn’t look away from the grid warming up across the room.

"Enough."

Lucas huffed. "That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only one that matters."

Lucas shook his head, but there wasn’t much heat in it.

Raisel and Arden joined them a moment later. No greetings. No wasted motion.

The grid lit.

The first rotation started without announcement.

Lucas didn’t move right away. He watched.

Not the grid itself. The people stepping into it.

A girl from A-tier entered with two others, shoulders relaxed, movements loose. She wasn’t overthinking it. She wasn’t rushing either. Just... steady.

First wave.

She moved clean.

Second wave.

Adjusted without hesitation.

Third.

Held.

Lucas exhaled slowly.

"She’s fine."

Raisel followed his line of sight. "For now."

Lucas didn’t like the way that sounded.

Two cycles later, the shift came.

Not loud. Not obvious.

A different team stepped in. One of them—broad-shouldered, confident posture—moved like he’d already decided he wasn’t going to fail.

Lucas recognized that too.

It never held.

First wave, perfect.

Second wave, the delay twisted the angle just enough.

The anchor corrected early.

The suppressor followed.

Too aggressively.

The formation overcompensated.

The third wave hit the gap they’d created themselves.

Reset.

The man swore under his breath.

"Again," he said.

They went again.

Same start.

Same confidence.

Same mistake.

Lucas felt it before it happened the third time.

"Stop," he muttered, too quiet for them to hear.

They didn’t stop.

Third cycle.

Worse.

The grid cut out.

The man stood there for a second, chest rising, jaw tight.

Then he stepped out.

Not dramatic.

Not angry.

Just... done.

Lucas tracked him all the way to the door.

"...There."

Dreyden didn’t ask what he meant.

"I see it," Lucas said. "It’s not the ones who struggle first."

"No."

"It’s the ones who think they shouldn’t."

Dreyden nodded once.

By mid-morning, the pattern sharpened.

Not everyone was failing.

Not even most.

But the ones who did didn’t all fail the same way.

Some broke on the grid, obvious and immediate.

Others held, held, held—

and then left anyway.

Lucas watched a pair from B-tier finish a clean cycle, step out, exchange a few words, and then one of them just... didn’t step back in.

No injury.

No argument.

Just a quiet decision.

Lucas frowned.

"That doesn’t make sense."

Arden glanced at him. "It does."

"They passed the cycle."

"Yes."

"Then why leave?"

Arden held his gaze for a second.

"Because passing once doesn’t guarantee they can keep passing."

Lucas went still.

"...Yeah."

That one landed deeper than the others.

When Lucas finally stepped into a grid again, it felt different.

Not harder.

Heavier.

Like the space itself remembered who had stood there before and who hadn’t come back.

Tomas joined him again, along with a different suppressor this time.

Lucas didn’t say anything at first.

The grid activated.

First wave.

They moved.

Clean.

Second wave.

The delay hit.

Lucas adjusted.

Tomas followed.

The suppressor hesitated, just for a fraction of a second.

Lucas felt it.

"Stay with it," he said, not looking at him.

The man corrected.

Late, but not too late.

The formation held.

Third wave.

Faster.

Lucas moved without thinking about it.

Not predicting.

Not reacting to the delay.

Just staying with the motion.

They cleared it.

The grid dimmed.

When they stepped out, Tomas let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh.

"That felt... better."

Lucas nodded. "Because you didn’t try to control it."

Tomas wiped his hands on his pants. "Yeah."

The suppressor looked at Lucas.

"You don’t talk much in there."

"Talking slows people down," Lucas said.

"You talked just enough."

Lucas shrugged.

"That’s the idea."

As the day went on, fewer people left mid-session.

Lucas noticed that too.

Not because things got easier.

Because the ones still here had already decided something.

They weren’t staying by accident anymore.

They were choosing it.

That changed how they moved.

Still tense.

Still unsure.

But committed in a way that didn’t crack as fast.

Lucas leaned against the wall during a break, watching the floor.

"...It stabilized."

"For now," Raisel said.

Lucas shot him a look. "You ever get tired of saying that?"

Raisel’s expression didn’t shift. "No."

Lucas snorted.

Halvors finally stepped onto the floor near the end of the last rotation.

Not to stop anything.

Not to correct.

He just stood there, watching a cycle complete from inside the boundary instead of above it.

Lucas noticed immediately.

"...That’s new."

Dreyden’s attention sharpened slightly.

"Yes."

They watched in silence as the grid ran.

A team completed the sequence.

Clean.

Not perfect.

But solid.

Halvors didn’t speak.

He didn’t nod.

He didn’t react at all.

When the grid dimmed, he stepped back out of the boundary and left the floor without a word.

Lucas let out a slow breath.

"What was that?"

Arden answered quietly.

"Validation."

Lucas looked at her.

"Of what?"

"That the system can run without him."

Lucas stared at the spot where Halvors had stood.

"...Yeah."

When the session ended, fewer people rushed out.

Some stayed.

Not to train.

Just to stand there, looking at the grid like they were trying to understand what had changed.

Lucas didn’t rush either.

He rolled his shoulders once, feeling the fatigue settling in.

"Still hate it," he said.

"No one asked you to like it," Raisel replied.

Lucas smirked faintly. "Good. Because I don’t."

The walk back felt different from the night before.

Still quiet.

Still thinner than it used to be.

But not as fragile.

Lucas noticed doors open this time that had been closed yesterday.

Not all of them.

But enough.

He paused halfway down the corridor again.

Dreyden stopped beside him.

Lucas glanced down the hall.

"They didn’t all drop."

"No."

Lucas nodded slowly.

"Some did."

"Yes."

Lucas exhaled.

"...And the ones who didn’t are different now."

Dreyden didn’t answer.

He didn’t need to.

Lucas pushed off the wall.

"Alright," he said. "Let’s see what tomorrow takes."

Because whatever this threshold was—

They weren’t past it yet.

Not even close.