Date: 20th July 2026
Location: Lecture Hall 102 / North Campus Café
Time: 09:15 AM BST
We reached the lecture hall for Professor Nolan's Theoretical Physics module.
The room was a steeply tiered amphitheatre of absolute boredom. It smelled heavily of cheap floor wax, chalk dust, and suppressed student resentment.
Nolan was a very different beast from Professor Vincy.
Where Vincy was an aggressive, intellectual shark, Nolan was a rigid bureaucrat with a deeply disturbing penchant for 'Standard Model' purity. He absolutely hated eccentricity. He despised 'accidental' geniuses.
To survive his class especially after the terrifying paranoia of our last encounter I had to be the one thing I hated most. A perfectly normal, unremarkable student.
I sat firmly in the third row, my posture perfectly straight thanks to my [Mastery Step] passive.
Dexter sat to my right. He casually occupied two standard plastic chairs because his shoulders were simply too broad for the university's pathetic furniture.
Albie sat to my left, desperately trying to look like he hadn't just spent the entire night aggressively playing the global stock market.
"Right," I muttered, loudly clicking a cheap ballpoint pen. "Mask fully on."
Professor Nolan marched in. His brown tweed blazer looked like it had barely survived a brutal war with a moth colony.
He immediately began scribbling equations on the massive whiteboard. They were so fundamentally basic they made my [Parallel Mind] want to physically weep.
F = ma. Really, Nolan? We were doing basic Newtonian mechanics while I currently had a Tesla 1.5 core generating a localized reality-distortion field in a Brixton basement.
["Do try to look somewhat interested, Architect."]
Eliza whispered directly into my earpiece.
["You are actively staring at the whiteboard like you are currently calculating the heat death of the universe."]
["Lower your eyebrows by exactly three millimetres."]
["You look like you are about to violently murder a piece of chalk."]
I aggressively adjusted my expression to 'Dull Interest'.
My left hand stayed hidden deep in my jacket pocket. I twitched my index finger in a sharp, highly precise sequence mapped directly to the Vanguard messaging interface.
A sleek holographic chat window instantly snapped open in the extreme corner of my AR vision, completely invisible to everyone but the squad.
[CHAT GROUP: UNIT 13-D]
ALBIE: This is literal torture. Can I play Tetris on my glasses?
RAMONA: Absolutely no. Nolan actively watches reflections in the window. Keep your eyes forward.
DOMINIC: I'm scanning the bloke in the front row. He's looking at dodgy sneaker sites. VIT 1.2.
MASON: Focus. Don't actively engage the network. Just take normal notes. Ramona, keep passively scanning the data flow. I want to know immediately if anyone pings our local server.
Across the crowded room, I saw Ramona's head tilt a fraction of a millimetre as the message appeared on her retinas.
She tapped her ballpoint pen on the laminated desk. Two sharp taps. Received.
"Mr. Pryce," Nolan's voice suddenly cut through the dull hum of the room like a rusty bandsaw.
I completely froze. My highly upgraded 36.0 Dexterity wanted to snap my head up, but I forced my muscles to move at normal human speed.
Nolan was staring directly at me. His cold eyes were narrowed behind his thick, smudged lenses. He sensed my disinterest exactly like a shark tasting blood in the water.
"Since you seem so intently focused on the ceiling tiles, perhaps you can effortlessly tell the class the resulting vector if we apply a centrifugal force of 500 Newtons to this particular rotating mass?"
The entire room went dead silent.
Albie shot me a terrified, 'please-don't-get-us-expelled' plea out of the corner of his eye.
I didn't even need to look at the massive whiteboard.
My [Overclock Mind] had already solved the basic equation the moment he drew the circle. I had factored in the ambient friction of the linoleum floor, accounted for the exact humidity in the damp room, and adjusted for the slight, annoying wobble in the front desk's metal leg.
"353.5 Newtons at a precise 45-degree angle to the tangent, assuming a perfect vacuum, Professor," I said.
My voice was flat, highly professional, and terrifyingly calm.
"However, if you actually account for the heavy air resistance in this poorly ventilated room, it is significantly closer to 349.2."
Nolan paused mid-breath.
He slowly looked down at his own notes. Then back up at the board. Then directly back at me. He looked exactly like he had just swallowed a very bitter lemon.
"Correct," Nolan muttered. He sounded deeply, personally annoyed that he couldn't publicly fail me. "Though the unprompted sarcasm regarding the university's ventilation is entirely unnecessary, Mr. Pryce."
"Just actively observing the physical data, sir," I replied smoothly.
I sank back heavily into my plastic seat. My heart rate spiked slightly from the intense mental pressure of hiding in plain sight.
"Being a 'Good Student' is honestly far more exhausting than building a bloody death ray," I whispered under my breath.
["Naturally."]
Eliza replied, her voice dripping with dry amusement.
["Acting stupid is a highly demanding full-time job for someone of your massive ego."]
["But do look on the bright side, Pryce."]
["Your passive stamina recovery is holding steady, and your 3.8 Vitality means you won't immediately faint from doing basic maths."]
I subtly checked the raw user count on my HUD while Nolan continued to drone endlessly on about friction coefficients.
Location: Corridors of London MetTime: 11:30 AM BST
The main student lounge was a chaotic, noisy sea of completely mundane lives.
Tired students were loudly arguing over expensive meal plans. Plastic trays clattered aggressively against cheap tables. A broken vending machine hummed a dull, electrical drone in the corner.
But as I crossed the threshold toward the back corner of the café, the ambient noise began to sharply bleed away.
It was a conceptual vacuum. The air grew incredibly heavy, thick with the pressurized weight of individuals who absolutely did not belong in a drafty university cafeteria.
Standing perfectly still near the faux-marble water fountain was Professor Vincy.
He looked every bit the distinguished, tenured academic. But his actual presence was a highly invasive surgical probe.
As I walked past, he didn't move a single muscle. But I physically felt his cold gaze strip away my fragile student facade. He was looking directly at the violent, violet hum of the Tesla core burning in my mind.
He knew.
He was an apex shark swimming in a shallow koi pond, actively watching the local experiment with a clinical, predatory curiosity. He was the establishment's eyes, and right now, those ancient eyes were wide open.
I didn't give him the satisfying validation of a glance.
I moved straight past him. Even with my newly stabilized 3.8 Vitality, my bones felt incredibly brittle. It was like I was made of cheap glass about to violently shatter under the sheer atmospheric pressure he exerted.
I reached a secluded corner booth and slid into the vinyl seat.
Vincy followed behind me with a measured, predatory stride. He slid into the opposite seat with a casual, terrifying elegance.
Next to him sat a boy they called Blanche.
He looked unnervingly, nearly identical to me. He was lanky, deeply pale, with a heavily tired slump to his narrow shoulders. But his eyes were completely wrong. They were endless, unsettling voids that swallowed the fluorescent light.
This was the real board.
We were currently sitting in the dead middle of a massive surveillance web. World Council CCTV cameras were ticking like mechanical metronomes on the ceiling directly above us.
One wrong move, one accidental flash of raw 'Power', and the sky would finally have a legitimate reason to descend on Brixton.
"So," Vincy said slowly. His deep voice sounded like heavy velvet dragging over a sharpening stone. "The little Architect has been incredibly busy."
Vincy leaned forward, resting his elbows on the sticky table. "Over eight thousand active souls. That's a massive flock of sheep to shear, Pryce. Or should I formally say... TimeLink?"
The name was deliberate bait. It was a sharp, barbed hook thrown directly into the dark water to see if I would violently flinch.
He casually used the encrypted name of my own pirate system as a code for my identity. He could hear the Clock Timer actively ticking in the background of reality.
Behind me, Dexter stood like a massive, silent stone golem.
To my eyes, he was just my highly reliable muscle. He was a recently awakened "Chaos" anomaly who was still just a raw mess of unrefined kinetic energy.
But as I sat there, my 210.5 Spirit stat picked up something incredibly strange.
Vincy a terrifying man who routinely treated the entire world like his personal footstool shifted his ceramic coffee cup just a fraction too quickly when Dexter stepped fully into his peripheral vision.
And Blanche? The creepy boy was actively staring at Dexter with an expression that heavily bordered on romantic, obsessive fascination.
It was the exact look a psychotic master painter gives a blank canvas that is somehow already violently bleeding.
"They've officially flagged the rogue frequency, you know," Blanche chirped happily, leaning far across the table.
He slowly moved a glass salt shaker exactly two inches to the left. It was a silent, aggressive gesture in our unspoken tactical game.
"The New Order, the World Council... they can actually feel the vacuum," Blanche grinned, showing slightly too many teeth. "They think you've found a clever new way to tap into the ambient energy."
"They don't know exactly what you are, Pryce. But they know you're the one holding the ticking Timer to their entire kingdom."
I leaned back against the vinyl seat. My 999 Intelligence rapidly processed the complex bluff.
They knew I was the mind behind the tech. They recognized the basic code. But they were aggressively testing the actual depth of my apocalyptic knowledge.
"The World Council is frantically looking for a common thief," I said smoothly. My fingers tapped a silent, rhythmic Morse code on the table's greasy surface.
"They are absolutely not prepared to find a Creator."
I locked eyes with Vincy. "You see a stolen remote control. I see a brand new frequency entirely. One that absolutely does not belong to your 'Order'."
Vincy's dark eyes narrowed sharply. But his attention kept involuntarily, nervously flickering toward Dexter's massive chest.
It was honestly hilarious, in a deeply dark, twisted way.
Here I was, the literal Architect of a global-shattering system. Yet the most dangerous man on campus was significantly more worried about the bloke I brought along to carry my heavy textbooks.
I knew Dexter was marked 'Abnormal'. But Vincy looked like he was sitting next to a highly unstable, ticking nuclear warhead.
"Elegant," Vincy whispered. His voice completely lacked its usual, biting edge. "You've successfully convinced the sheep to hide voluntarily in your basement. You really are a monster, Pryce."
"I'm a scientist," I corrected flatly.
Blanche giggled loudly. He moved a torn sugar packet across the table to rapidly counter my verbal "move."
He kept stealing wide, hungry glances at Dexter.
"The storm isn't coming, Pryce. You actually are the storm," Blanche whispered. "But your... heavy bodyguard? He is the total silence after the storm. The kind of silence that simply doesn't end."
Blanche shivered with delight. "I genuinely haven't seen a student with such a terrifying, summa cum laude aura in a very long time."
I blinked slowly. Summa cum laude aura? Since when did Dexter remotely care about academic grades? It was a metaphor. Blanche was mocking the academic setting to describe a prime apex predator.
"He's just an unpaid intern," I lied, aggressively bluffing through my teeth. "Recently awakened. A bit rough around the edges, but he gets the physical job done."
Behind me, Dexter just stood there. His heavy face was a complete, unreadable mask of absolute boredom.
He had absolutely no idea that the two most terrifying entities in the room were currently calculating exactly how many milliseconds they would survive if he decided to move his hands.
To me, Dexter was just a 0.1-second time-stop away from safety. To them, he was raw Chaos incarnate.
"A 'rough intern'," Vincy repeated, his voice desert-dry. "Of course. And I suppose the massive Tesla Core draining the grid is just a late school project?"
"Exactly," I replied smoothly, abruptly standing up.
My stamina was stable, but if I stayed in this heavy atmosphere any longer, the arrogant "God" vibe I was projecting would probably violently collapse.
"By the time the Timer hits absolute zero, the physics experiment will be entirely complete."
I looked up at the ceiling camera. "Try not to let the CCTV footage get too blurry, Professor. I'd absolutely hate for the Council to miss my graduation."
I turned and confidently walked away. Dexter followed closely behind with his heavy, rhythmic thud.
I could physically feel their intense eyes burning into the back of Dexter's skull. Vincy's gaze was cold and highly suspicious. Blanche's gaze was hungry and deeply curious.
"Mason," Dexter whispered in his deep rumble as we reached the glass exit doors.
"Yeah?"
"Why was that creepy pale kid looking at me like I was made of chocolate?"
I snorted, pushing the heavy door open into the London drizzle. "He's just an Art major, Dex. They're all completely weird. Just keep looking incredibly scary."
[SYSTEM UPDATE: TESLA 1.5 - THE ARCHITECT'S ASCENSION]
[GRID STATUS: OPTIMAL]
Total Registered Souls: 8,241
Grid Stability: 52% (Ascending)
Tesla Core Path: Creator (Rivaling Established Logic)
Passive Siphon Rate: 1.2% / Hour (Bio-Entropy Conversion)
[SQUAD STATUS: UNIT 13-D]
DEXTER: [ERROR - UNREADABLE] (Note: Subject is unintentionally terrifying the 'Watchers' significantly more than the Architect.)
SHIENNA: 96.8% Sync (Sight: Critical.)
RAMONA: 44% Sync (Logic Leak: Active.)
DOMINIC: 40% Sync (Static Veil: Active.)
ALBIE: 35% Sync (Radar Ping: Active.)
[MASON PRYCE - CURRENT DATA]
LEVEL: 5
INT: 999 (Memory of 999 Loops Active)
STR: 10.8 (Above Average - Highly Functional)
VIT: 3.8 (Stabilized - Respiratory threat eliminated)
DEX: 36.0 (High Precision)
SPR: 210.5 (Overwhelming Output)
SKILL: [Slow Time - Lv. 2] (Recoil: High / Cooldown: 24h)
[ELIZA'S SUMMARY]
[Pryce, that was an absolute masterclass in highly aggressive bluffing.]
[You sat at the table with the apex observers and firmly held your ground without breaking a sweat.]
[But I absolutely must mention that your 'bodyguard' is currently the highest source of stress for Professor Vincy's internal heart rate monitors.]
[He genuinely does not see a student; he actively sees a total void.]
[You are not just a desperate regressor anymore, Pryce.]
[You are a Creator actively playing a deadly game of chess with a King-sized piece you don't even know how to properly use yet.]
[Go home, eat your pasta, and try to relax your elevated heart rate.]
[Even a massive 'TimeLink' server needs to act like a normal human brother once in a while.]
[Oh, and I took the absolute liberty of aggressively hacking Vincy's personal phone while you were talking.]
[He is currently looking for a localized 'Glitch' in the university library.]
[Perhaps we should aggressively get there first?]