Following the instructions of the woman who still hadn't spared him a glance, Aren stepped into the capsule. Her voice reached him through the glass, slightly muffled but clear.
She adjusted her spectacles, her eyes fixed on the data. "The evaluation takes place within a virtual simulation to measure physical performance and neural synchronization. Your Nyx rank will be calculated based on your somatic and cognitive responses."
She tapped a series of commands before continuing. "Standard tiers range from F to A. Superior tiers are classified from S to SSS. Beyond those lie the outliers—the Legendary EX-tier and the Divine L-tier."
She paused, adding a final note of professional indifference. "Understand this: the rank only measures your current output. Growth is always an option for those who seek it. No one truly accepts their rank as a fixed limit."
That much was obvious. In this world, satisfaction was a rare luxury; everyone was hunting for a way to climb higher.
It was the reason so many strengthening methods existed—and why annual evaluations were mandatory.
As the woman activated the sequence, Aren closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he stood in a white void. Lines of light raced beneath his feet and across the ceiling, rapidly stitching the space into a structured room.
Floating spheres suspended at varying heights shimmered in the distance—the primary source of the coming assault. Traps lay dormant, scattered across the floor.
His aim was simple: survive.
"Simulation begins in ten seconds. Prepare yourself."
The countdown echoed through the sterile space. "...3, 2, 1. Test started."
An axe whistled through the air from the far end of the room. The blade slammed into the spot where Aren had stood a heartbeat before, splintering the virtual floor. He slipped to the side in one fluid motion, his expression unbothered.
"Starting rough, I see," he mused.
Two spears shot toward him in tandem. He leaned his torso aside to evade the first, then ducked low as the second hissed over his head. The weapons thudded into the ground, pinning the space around him like a cage.
The assault didn't relent. A volley of knives hissed toward him in a synchronized strike.
Instead of retreating, Aren lunged forward. He gripped the heavy axe still embedded in the floor and, with a violent heave, hurled it directly into the path of the incoming blades.
Steel clashed against steel; the knives lost their momentum and clattered uselessly to the ground. Those that slipped past the arc of the axe, he parried with a series of sharp, surgical movements.
As he bypassed the debris, the woman's voice crackled through the speakers—this time, laced with genuine intrigue.
"Hm... an unconventional approach. You don't seem like the type to take a step back, do you?"
The remaining weapons pulverized the floor where Aren had stood a second before, missing his heels by inches. A moment later, her voice rang out again, unable to mask her growing amusement.
"Fine, then... let's move on to Phase Two!"
The ground beneath Aren rumbled at her command. The square tiles, already fractured by the barrage, disintegrated, revealing a yawning void beneath.
Only the sections struck by weapons vanished, but every tile trembled with a frantic vibration just before it plummeted.
"Now we're talking," he remarked, his voice echoing cheerfully through the simulation.
As the vibration hummed through his boots, he slid to the side without a hint of hesitation. The tile he had occupied shattered, collapsing into the darkness.
Meanwhile, in the monitoring bay, Tiana's eyes remained fixed on the data readouts. She watched in stunned silence as the boy anticipated every move before the simulation even launched the attack.
"Uh... professor? Are these readings correct?" an assistant asked, his voice trembling with doubt.
The Nyx Registration Center hadn't designed this test to measure survival duration. Its sole purpose was to record somatic and neurological shifts as candidates navigated obstacles.
But the data was fracturing. The graph on the main monitor had spiked far beyond the expected parameters, bleeding off the edge of the scale.
The head engineer frowned, her confusion turning into a dawning realization. "Is the equipment malfunctioning... or is he?"
Tiana didn't bother looking at the hesitant voice beside her. Her eyes remained anchored to the screen, tracking Aren as he moved with a fluid, almost predatory grace. It wasn't just survival; it was a dance.
"Do you honestly think that's possible?" She asked, her voice dangerously calm. "Do you have any idea how many times these machines are calibrated before a cycle begins? This isn't a glitch in a single device. The entire system is verifying this evaluation."
The rookie engineer flinched at her biting tone. "No... I'm just... I've seen no one maintain that level of focus," he stammered, gesturing to the monitor where the concentration graph had flatlined at its absolute maximum.
"Then use your mouth for something useful," Tiana snapped, her disdain palpable. "If you label every stroke of genius as a malfunction, you'll be left with nothing but trash."
She dismissed him with a final, cutting glance and turned back to the screen, her excitement now impossible to hide. The rookie clenched his jaw, swallowing his annoyance.
He knew better than to push further; his senior's tongue was sharper than any blade in the simulation, and she would dismantle him without a second thought.
***
A sharp hiss echoed through the bay as the capsule pressurized. A cloud of cool vapor spilled out, obscuring the floor.
As Aren stepped into the light, he noticed the shift. The woman who had greeted him with indifference was no longer alone; a small entourage of researchers stood behind her, their eyes wide.
She approached him quickly, her hand extended. "I am Tiana Collum, Chief Engineer of Nyx Rank Research."
"A pleasure, Ms. Collum. I'm Aren Rayne."
Aren took her hand, a faint, knowing smile playing on his lips. Tiana nodded, her satisfaction visible.
"I'll be blunt: your results are unprecedented," she said, gesturing toward the monitors. "I've never seen a Nyx with a mental capacity that eclipses the scale like yours."
Aren followed her gaze to the graphs. Every parameter related to cognitive performance had surged into the red, hitting the ceiling of the system's capabilities.
The Void affinity, Aren mused silently. And the nature of my 'special' status.
Tiana stepped closer, holding a sleek device tipped with a needle-thin probe. "Now, if you're ready," she said, her voice dropping to a professional hum. "Let's find out where you truly stand."