The cyan barrier hummed, flickered, and dissolved into the ambient air.
The abrupt absence of the humming energy shield was instantly replaced by the chaotic, deafening roar of the Atrium. Hundreds of first-year students broke their collective silence all at once. The spectator ring surged forward, then hesitated, caught between the urge to investigate the three bleeding Glyphron nobles on the grass and the primal instinct to stay as far away as possible from the boy who had just dismantled them in under a minute.
I sat in the undisturbed safety of Syevira's isolation radius, the half-eaten burger resting on the stone table in front of me.
Thirty seconds.
That was all it took. He didn't even activate his Shard. He just walked through a coordinated 3v1 assault from upper-tier nobles like he was clearing cobwebs out of his path.
I watched Arga Orlando sheathe his battered broadsword. He didn't look at the cheering, terrified crowd. He didn't look at the Cinder Princess he had just saved.
He turned his head.
And he looked directly at me.
Across the manicured grass, through the gaps in the shifting crowd, his eyes locked onto mine. There was no rage in his expression. No post-battle adrenaline. It was a look of profound, chilling analysis. The gaze of someone who had memorized every single piece on a chessboard and had just noticed a piece that wasn't supposed to be there.
Above his head, my Native System flared to life.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
[ ANNOTATION — Arga Orlando ]
◈ [GREEN] [EYE] ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Eye?
Does that mean he is aware of me?
But Why?
Why is he looking at me?
I am sitting at a stone table. I am covered in dried mud. There is a violet fern frond stuck in my hair. From an external perspective, I am the absolute definition of a background asset—a low-tier NPC eating processed meat while the protagonist triggers the main plot.
But his eyes... he isn't looking at me like I'm a background asset. He's looking at me like I am a variable that just ruined his algorithm. Did he figure me out? Is he running a threat assessment on me right now?!
A veteran Regressor who just dismantled three nobles in thirty seconds is actively trying to classify me. I do not want to be classified. I do not have the mana, the health, or the structural integrity to be relevant to his plotline right now. If he walks over here, my only available defensive maneuver is to spontaneously dissolve.
My higher cognitive functions completely stalled.
I didn't consciously hold his gaze. I didn't deliberately suppress a flinch, nor was I actively trying to project the intimidating aura of an unbothered mastermind. My nervous system, overwhelmed by sudden existential terror and a chronic caloric deficit, simply abandoned all complex thought and defaulted to the most primal survival instinct available.
My hand moved entirely on autopilot.
I picked up the grease-stained burger and took a slow, mechanical bite. My face was completely vacant, entirely deadpan, because my brain was currently emitting unbroken white noise. I didn't break eye contact because I had forgotten how to blink. I was chewing purely because my body remembered it was starving.
In my peripheral vision, I became distantly aware that Syevira had stopped pretending to read her textbook.
She was looking at me. Not at the bloodied nobles. Not at Arga. She was watching me mechanically devour a dripping, structurally offensive stack of meat and grease while locked in an unblinking staring contest with the most dangerous person in the courtyard. Her amber eyes held a look of profound, weary exasperation—the expression of someone who had finally surrendered to the absolute absurdity of the person sitting next to her.
I did not have the processing power to explain to her that I was not doing this to assert dominance. I was doing this because my operating system had crashed.
Arga stared at my blank, burger-chewing face for one second longer. Then, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the parting crowd.
I swallowed the food. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird, but my hands remained perfectly steady on the table.
I need to stay as far away from that monster as physically possible.
Out in the courtyard, the collective realization of aristocratic bankruptcy was finally kicking in.
The noise that erupted inside the Atrium was not a cheer. It was a chorus of sheer, unadulterated financial grief. Students shrieked, clutching their heads. A wealthy Glyphron boy violently kicked a stone chair. A second-year dumped his entire tray of expensive Origin-meat into the trash in a fit of absolute despair.
"My stipend!"
"He didn't even use a spell! He just hit him with the sword!"
"How is that possible?! He was unranked! I staked three months of savings on Carault!"
And then, the grief violently pivoted into searching for a scapegoat.
"Wait! Who was the bastard that announced the match?!" a third-year shouted, his face flushed with panicked rage. "The mud-stained kid! He's the one who said it was free Credits! Where is he?!"
"Find him! He set us up!"
Heads began to snap up. Frantic, angry eyes swept across the Atrium lounge.
I am sitting at a stone table. I am covered in dried mud. I have a highly conspicuous violet fern frond sticking out of my hair. From a visual standpoint, I am an absolute, undeniable beacon.
A mob of freshly bankrupted aristocrats looking for a scapegoat is mathematically more dangerous than a Tier 3 anomaly. Evasion is physically impossible. My F-Rank circuit lacks the capacity for a confrontation. Therefore, only one viable survival strategy remains.
Aggressive assimilation.
Without hesitating for a single fraction of a second, I dropped my head into my hands, violently hunched my shoulders over the stone table, and let out a loud, agonizing groan of absolute, unadulterated financial devastation.
"My stipend!" I wailed, pitching my voice perfectly to match the exact harmonic frequency of the mass despair in the room, but adding a pathetic, wet crackle at the end. "I put everything on Carault! My entire first-month allowance! How could a Noble Lord lose to an unranked?! I'm going to starve! How am I going to pay for my ORG maintenance?!"
I slammed my fist against the stone table. Not too hard, because my bones were currently fragile from an extreme caloric deficit, but exactly hard enough for the necessary theatrical acoustics. Then, I let my forehead hit the stone surface with a dull, hollow thud, violently clutching my mud-caked hair in sheer, theatrical misery.
"I'm ruined! I'm completely ruined!" I moaned to the table, my voice cracking with the manufactured devastation of a broken man. "I ate moss for three days to save that stipend! My village sold their only livestock to send me here! How am I supposed to pay for my ORG maintenance now?! I'm going to crystallize in the hallways! I'll have to sell my circuit nodes on the black market just to afford bread!"
Several upper-tier students who had been turning to glare in my direction immediately froze. The murderous rage on their faces fractured, quickly replaced by profound, uncomfortable pity and intense second-hand embarrassment. Looking at an exhausted, mud-stained commoner openly having a mental breakdown over his lunch money was simply too pathetic even for them.
"Gods, avert your eyes, it's actually depressing," a second-year Noble muttered, taking a physical step back as if poverty were contagious.
"Is he... is he weeping over a basic enrollment stipend?" a Glyphron girl whispered, her face twisting in aristocratic revulsion. "Look at him. He's practically feral. He doesn't even know how multiplier odds work."
"Just leave it," another sneered, aggressively adjusting his collar to regain some semblance of dignity. "He's just a filthy provincial who thought he could play with Noble money. Let him starve. If you touch him, you'll probably catch whatever disease makes you wear a fern in your hair."
In their eyes, I was no longer the criminal mastermind who had manipulated the multiplier; I was just another gullible, destitute idiot who had fallen for the illusion of 'free money' and was now facing absolute starvation.
The threat neutralized itself. Disgusted and deeply uncomfortable, the angry mob averted their eyes and moved their attention elsewhere, cursing their own luck rather than associating with my rock-bottom misery.
I maintained the posture of profound grief for an additional four seconds, just to ensure perimeter security.
Beside me, sitting safely within her invisible isolation radius, Syevira picked up the empty ceramic cup of iced mocha she had stolen from me and slowly swirled the irregular chunks of melting ice at the bottom.
Clink, clink.
"You do not own any livestock," she observed, her amber eyes fixed entirely on her textbook. Her voice was completely flat, delivering the factual absurdity with the exact cadence of a weather report.
"I am adapting to the local ecosystem," I whispered to the table, still violently clutching my mud-caked hair. "Tragedy is highly effective camouflage."
Then, my ODICIOS interface flared brightly over my wrist, letting out a sharp, incredibly loud chime.
I immediately sat up straight. My face returned to a completely vacant, unbothered deadpan.