The taste of copper became Aamon Maverick's closest companion over the next twenty-nine days.
CRACK.
Aamon's vision swam as the reinforced hex-plated floor rushed up to meet his face for what felt like the thousandth time that week. The impact drove the air from his lungs in a violent rush, his ears ringing with the high-pitched hum of kinetic feedback. He lay there for a second, staring at the bright, mocking blue sky of Nocturnis City, trying to remember what it felt like to not be in agonizing pain.
"Your center of gravity was too high on the pivot," a cold, clinical voice stated from above him. "You telegraphed the dodge by shifting your weight to your back foot a full half-second before my strike connected. In a real fight, a Shadow-Wolf wouldn't just bruise your ribs, Maverick. It would tear out your throat while you were still thinking about moving."
Aamon groaned, rolling onto his back. Standing over him, barely breaking a sweat despite the rigorous two-hour sparring session, was Draco Riven.
The warrior looked down at him with those piercing, uncompromising golden eyes. Draco didn't show outright malice, but there was a distinct, undeniable intensity to the way he pushed Aamon. It was as if Draco had taken it upon himself to forge Aamon in the fires of absolute brutality, determined to beat the weakness out of him one fractured bone at a time. And frankly, Aamon was starting to suspect the edgy protagonist was actually enjoying it.
"I parried the first two strikes, Riven," Aamon wheezed, sitting up slowly and clutching his left side. "Give me some credit."
"You parried with your wrists, not your core," Draco corrected instantly, stepping back and resetting his stance. "You are relying entirely on Kinetic Edge to artificially harden your forearms, draining your mana pool to compensate for sloppy technique. Get up. Again."
Before Aamon could force his screaming muscles to comply, a warm, emerald-green light washed over him. The sharp, stabbing pain in his ribs instantly melted away, replaced by a soothing, localized numbness. The cracked bone knit itself back together beneath his skin in a matter of seconds.
"That's another eight hundred credits, Aamon," Seraphine's cheerful voice chirped from the sidelines.
Aamon turned to see the healer sitting comfortably on a conjured lawn chair at the edge of the training yard, sipping an iced latte and tapping away on her holographic datapad. She was wearing a pair of designer sunglasses, looking less like a combat medic and more like a tourist watching a brutal, underground blood sport.
"Eight hundred?" Aamon complained, climbing back to his feet and rolling his freshly healed shoulders. "Yesterday a cracked rib was only six hundred!"
"Supply and demand, darling," Sera replied smoothly, not looking up from her screen. "My mana reserves are getting low, which means the value of my healing goes up. Plus, there's a premium charge for treating the same idiot for the same injury three days in a row. Your running total is currently sitting at forty-seven thousand, two hundred credits. At this rate, when we graduate, I'm going to own your firstborn child."
Aamon let out a long, exasperated sigh. The month of hell had been exactly that.
Every morning began at dawn with grueling physical conditioning—running laps around the massive estate with weighted vests, lifting raw iron, and performing core-expansion meditations until their veins felt like they were filled with liquid fire. The afternoons were dedicated exclusively to live-fire sparring.
Because Sera was a support class, she spent her afternoons studying advanced anatomy, toxic properties, and practicing her aura projection. That left Aamon as Draco's sole, dedicated punching bag.
But despite the agonizing pain, the bruises, and the astronomical medical debt he was accruing, Aamon couldn't deny the results.
Later that evening, after the daily beating had concluded, Aamon stood in the en-suite bathroom of his sprawling bedroom, looking at himself in the mirror after a hot shower.
The boy staring back at him was fundamentally different from the sickly, malnourished slum rat who had nearly died in District 4 a month ago. The high-calorie, nutrient-dense diet provided by the Bureau, combined with the extreme physical trauma and constant core depletion, had forced his body into a state of hyper-accelerated adaptation.
His pale blonde hair, once stringy and lifeless, now held a healthy, soft sheen, falling cleanly around his sharp, aristocratic features. His piercing blue eyes no longer held the hollow, haunted look of a starving orphan; they were sharp, focused, and vibrantly alive with the steady hum of stabilized F-Rank mana.
But the most drastic change was his physique.
The lanky, skeletal frame was gone. In its place was a body carved out of lean, dense muscle. He wasn't massive or bulky—he lacked the broad-shouldered, heavily muscular frame that Draco possessed. Draco was built like a heavyweight gladiator, designed to absorb impact and dish out overwhelming kinetic force.
Aamon, on the other hand, had developed a swimmer's build. His muscles were tightly wound, functional, and optimized for explosive speed and agility. His abdominal muscles were sharply defined, and the subtle, glowing blue lines of his mana circuits occasionally pulsed beneath his pale skin when he breathed deeply.
He flexed his hand, admiring the steady flow of energy. He was no longer a fragile liability. He was a proper, conditioned Arcanist. He was exactly the right fit for an agility-based combatant. He was genuinely glad of this progress; the transformation from a weak NPC to a capable player character was profoundly satisfying.
"I look good," Aamon murmured to his reflection, allowing himself a rare moment of vanity. "I might actually survive this."
But physical conditioning was only half the battle. The true leap in his survivability had occurred just three days prior, during a particularly savage sparring session that had led to a monumental discovery regarding his unique skill set.
Aamon closed his eyes, vividly recalling the memory.
Flashback - Day 27 of Training
The afternoon sun had been beating down mercilessly on the training yard. Aamon was exhausted, his F-Rank core practically running on fumes. He had been using Frame Lag heavily to keep up with Draco's relentless assaults, but his mana efficiency was still struggling to match the warrior's near-infinite stamina.
"You're slowing down," Draco had taunted, his golden eyes flashing as he advanced. "Your temporal shifts are getting shorter. You're out of mana. Defend yourself purely with your body!"
Draco didn't hold back. He stepped into a heavy, devastating combo—a feint to the left, followed by a blindingly fast spinning back-kick aimed squarely at Aamon's temple.
Aamon's Gaming Sense flared absolute crimson. It was a guaranteed critical hit. If that kick connected, Sera wouldn't be healing a concussion; she'd be scooping his brains off the hex-plates.
He didn't have the mana for Frame Lag. He didn't have the physical speed to duck. Panic, raw and unadulterated, spiked through his nervous system.
I need to not be here! Aamon's mind screamed. I need to be a ghost!
Instinctively, blindly, his core seized upon the only other skill he possessed. The skill he had completely ignored for combat because he thought it was only a cosmetic camouflage tool for spying.
[Spectator Mode] activated.
Aamon felt a sensation he had never experienced before. It wasn't the slow, agonizing stretch of time like Frame Lag. Instead, it felt as though someone had pulled the plug on his physical density.
The vibrant colors of the training yard instantly washed out, shifting into a muted, monochromatic grayscale. The sounds of the world—the wind, Draco's harsh breathing, the hum of the hex-plates—were instantly muffled, as if he had been submerged underwater.
But the most shocking thing was what happened to his body.
Draco's devastating kick, carrying enough kinetic force to shatter a boulder, swept directly through the space where Aamon's head was.
But there was no impact.
Aamon watched in absolute, wide-eyed bewilderment as Draco's leg phased entirely through his skull and shoulders, exactly like a localized hologram. Aamon felt a bizarre, icy chill where the limb intersected his body, but zero physical force.
Draco's momentum carried him forward, his eyes widening in profound shock as his attack met zero resistance. The warrior stumbled, barely catching his balance.
The grayscale world shattered. Spectator Mode deactivated just as quickly as it had turned on, draining the very last dregs of Aamon's mana and dropping him to his knees, gasping for air.
Draco spun around, his longsword already materialized in his hand, his Void Insight trait flaring wildly as his golden eyes scanned the yard in sheer panic. He looked at Aamon, who was kneeling on the ground, entirely unharmed.
"What... what did you just do?" Draco demanded, his voice cracking slightly, completely abandoning his stoic persona. He lowered his sword, staring at Aamon as if he had just watched a ghost materialize from the ether.
"I... I dodged?" Aamon panted, wiping sweat from his brow, his developer brain rapidly processing what had just occurred.
"That was not a dodge," Draco said, taking a slow step forward, his eyes wide with a mix of awe and terror. "My Void Insight... it didn't just miss you. For a fraction of a second, you ceased to exist. Your mana signature, your heartbeat, your physical mass—it vanished from the fabric of reality. My leg went right through you. You became entirely incorporeal."
Over by the sidelines, even Sera had dropped her datapad, her sunglasses sliding down her nose as she stared at Aamon in utter disbelief. "He's right. Your vitals completely flatlined. I thought you had spontaneously died. So this was the skill that helped you survive the rift that night. It's no wonder that those trolls couldn't find you despite their trait."
Aamon stared at his hands, a slow, disbelieving grin spreading across his face.
Spectator Mode. In the game, it was a developer tool meant to let admins fly around the map and observe players without interacting with the world. It made the admin invisible and intangible.
He had assumed that in this reality, the System had nerfed it down to a simple optical camouflage skill, akin to standard invisibility magic. But he was wrong. The System had translated the 'admin' properties literally.
It didn't just bend light around him. It shifted his physical form out of the current dimensional phase. It turned his body completely corporeal, granting him absolute intangibility. More importantly, it completely erased his presence. It bypassed even Epic-tier detection traits like Draco's Void Insight and Battlefield Precognition, because you can't predict the movements of something that isn't technically there.
It was the ultimate defensive trump card. An absolute, infallible i-frame (invincibility frame).
Of course, the limitations immediately made themselves apparent at that. Activating it even for a split second had completely drained him of his remaining arcane reserves. And while in that grayscale state, he couldn't interact with the physical world either—he couldn't attack while intangible.
But as a purely defensive tool? It was utterly broken. If he timed it perfectly, he could phase through the most devastating ultimate attacks in the world without taking a single scratch.
"It's an advanced concealment skill," Aamon lied smoothly, looking up at Draco, desperately trying to cover up the fact that he was essentially using a cheat code. "It drops my physical density to zero for a millisecond. But it completely bottoms out my core. I can only do it for a while."
Aamon used this skill for a minute long when he was inside the rift. But at that time, the trolls only sniffed where he seemingly vanished. Maybe being attacked even though he was in state of Spectator Mode might drain his arcan reserve significantly.
But Aamon still has to experiment as his condition from back then was different from now. Where back then he still has considerable amount of arcane reserves while right now he was drained because of grueling sparring.
Without a doubt, if he can really hold this camouflage state for a minute longer, where his presence are completely undetected, even with epic-grade traits and skills, this skill can become a great tool to survive against unforeseen dangers. Aamon also has an idea of where he can exploit this skill, but it might took a while to get it tested.
Draco stared at him for a long, silent moment. The hostility that had defined their early interactions had slowly, imperceptibly morphed into a deep, begrudging respect over the past month.
"That type of skill and on an F-Rank core too," Draco muttered, shaking his head slowly. He dismissed his mana blade. "You are an anomaly, Maverick. But a useful one. If you can master the timing on that... you won't be a liability in the Rift."
End of Flashback
Aamon snapped out of his reverie as a sharp, electronic chime echoed through his bedroom. He walked over to the desk, picking up his Bureau-issued holographic datapad.
A high-priority message was flashing on the screen, marked with the silver ARIES crest.
FROM: Agent Myra Elswright
TO: Special Recruits (Riven, Blackwood, Maverick)
SUBJECT: Phase One Completion & Armament
MESSAGE: Your thirty-day physical and arcane conditioning period has concluded. Report to Sector 4 Gear Warehouse at Bureau Headquarters immediately. It is time to select your favored artifacts for tomorrow's Rift insertion.
Aamon felt a sudden, cold knot form in his stomach.
This was it. The tutorial phase was over. Tomorrow, there were no hex-plates, no blunt weapons, and no Sera sitting on the sidelines to heal a fatal mistake. Tomorrow was real blood and real monsters.
He quickly dressed in a clean set of tactical Bureau fatigues—dark grey cargo pants and a fitted black undershirt—and headed downstairs.
Draco and Sera were already waiting in the massive foyer. Draco looked as stoic and focused as ever, dressed in identical fatigues. Sera, abandoning her high-end sportswear, was also wearing the standard tactical gear, her hair tied back tightly. The playful, capitalistic glint in her eyes was gone, replaced by the serious demeanor of a combat medic preparing for deployment.
"Ready?" Draco asked simply.
"As I'll ever be," Aamon replied.
"Let's go get some shiny toys," Sera said, said with a cheery smile plastered on her face.
They left the dormitory, walking the short distance back to the towering glass structure of the ARIES Bureau Headquarters.
Unlike the day Aamon arrived, they didn't go to the Translocation Chamber. Instead, they navigated through a labyrinth of security checkpoints, taking a heavily armored elevator deep into the subterranean levels of the facility, finally arriving at the Sector 4 Gear Warehouse.
The doors parted with a heavy hydraulic hiss, revealing a massive, cavernous vault.
It looked like the armory of a futuristic army. Rows upon rows of weapon racks stretched into the distance, holding everything from standard-issue ballistic firearms to massive, glowing arcane staves. The air smelled of oiled steel, polished leather, and the distinct, ozone-like tang of highly concentrated mana crystals.
Standing in the center of the room, flanked by two heavily armed quartermasters, was Agent Myra Elswright.
She looked exactly as immaculate as she had a month ago, her white trench coat pristine, though there were faint, dark circles under her eyes, indicating a month of relentless field deployments.
Her sharp gaze swept over the three of them as they approached. She didn't offer a warm greeting. She didn't smile. She simply assessed them.
She looked at Draco's rigid, disciplined posture. She noted the stable, dense aura humming beneath Sera's skin. And finally, her eyes locked onto Aamon. She took in the drastic physical transformation, the lean muscle, and the quiet, focused intensity in his blue eyes.
"You survived the month. I am mildly impressed," Elswright stated, her tone crisp. "I have reviewed your sparring telemetry and aura expansion data. Riven, you are already of E-Rank and your arcane reserve is excellent but still has room for improvement. Blackwood, your arcane density is great and in stable shape. Maverick..."
She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly. "...Your arcane capacity is still severely lagging behind the other two. However, your kinetic control and evasion telemetry are... highly anomalous. Acceptable, for now."
She turned away, gesturing to the massive rows of equipment behind her.
"Tomorrow at 09:00 in the morning, we deploy to Fixed Rift designation 'Iron-Tooth'. The biome is a localized forest distortion. The primary hostile entities are F-Rank Iron-Hide Boars and F-Rank Lesser Shadow-Wolves. Your objective is to secure the perimeter and clear a designated nest to harvest core samples. I will be present solely as an observer and emergency extraction protocol. I will not intervene unless you are facing absolute, imminent death."
She stepped back, sweeping her arm toward the racks.
"The ARIES Bureau provides its agents with the finest equipment on the continent. Tonight, you will select your primary weapon artifact and defensive gear. Choose wisely. In the Rift, a poorly balanced weapon or a restrictive piece of armor is a death sentence. You have twenty minutes."
Aamon thought for a while. In the game, artifacts were classified by grades using the same classification of talents. From common grade to mythical grade. The grade of the artifact depends on the materials they came from and the rarity of those materials, including arcane objects to carcasses of exotic monsters and beasts.
The three recruits didn't need to be told twice. They immediately fanned out, drawn by their innate class affinities, including Aamon.
Draco marched straight toward the heavy melee section. He bypassed the massive broadswords and heavy battleaxes, his eyes scanning the racks until he found exactly what he was looking for.
He reached out, his scarred hands gripping the hilts of two matching, perfectly balanced longswords.
They were beautiful, deadly weapons. The blades were forged from a dark, matte-black alloy, designed to not reflect light. They were slightly thinner than standard longswords, perfectly sacrificing a margin of raw blocking power for a massive increase in swing speed. Tiny, silver lines were etched along the fullers—materials designed to perfectly conduct and amplify spatial magic. Rare-grade artifact, Twins Gilded Longsword.
Draco gave the swords a few experimental, blindingly fast twirls, the blades cutting through the air with a deadly whoosh. He sheathed them across his back, crossing the scabbards in an X-formation. The dual-sword offensive style perfectly complemented his aggressive, burst-damage combat philosophy.
Sera gravitated toward the specialized support and mid-range section.
She ignored the standard staves and wands, her eyes locking onto a glass display case holding a spool of dark, braided material.
"I'll take the Thorn-Weave Whip," Sera told the quartermaster, pointing to the case.
The quartermaster unlocked it, handing her the weapon. It was a vicious piece of equipment. The whip was ten feet long, braided from the durable, flexible vines of a C-Rank monster plant. Interspersed along the braid were tiny, razor-sharp metallic barbs. It was because of this it was considered a rare-grade artifact.
Sera uncoiled it with practiced ease, letting her emerald mana flow into the handle. The barbs instantly extended, glowing with a faint, sickly purple light as her Toxic Assimilation trait passively coated the weapon in a potent paralytic toxin.
It was the perfect weapon for her. It allowed her to stay at a safe mid-range distance, pulling aggro off her teammates or paralyzing enemies, all while leaving her off-hand free to cast healing auras.
Aamon, meanwhile, stood in the agility and rogue section, staring at a massive wall of blades.
He knew exactly what he needed. He couldn't wield a heavy sword like Draco; he didn't have the brute strength, and it would slow him down. His entire combat style relied on Kinetic Edge—the skill that coated his limbs or weapons in a hyper-sharp, chainsaw-like layer of buzzing mana. Kinetic Edge didn't require a large surface area to be lethal; it just required a medium that could handle the friction.
He needed speed. He needed rapid, successive strikes.
His eyes landed on a pair of weapons resting on a velvet cushion.
They were dual daggers. The blades were roughly fourteen inches long, curved slightly forward like the fangs of a predator. They were forged from Phase-Steel, an incredibly expensive, highly conductive alloy that was visually a pale, shimmering silver. The hilts were wrapped in shock-absorbent manticore leather.
Aamon picked them up. They felt like extensions of his own arms, practically weightless, yet perfectly balanced.
He willed a fraction of his mana into his hands. Kinetic Edge activated.
The pale silver blades of the daggers instantly ignited with a roaring, buzzing layer of neon-blue mana. The air around the blades distorted violently, the sound resembling the low, angry hum of a high-voltage power line. Because the daggers were made of Phase-Steel, they didn't resist the mana; they amplified it, holding the kinetic charge perfectly without overheating. It was considered a rare-grade artifact, Shifing-Phase Daggers.
Aamon gave a swift, experimental double-slash at the empty air. The blue trails of light lingered for a fraction of a second, the speed of the strikes vastly superior to anything he had managed barehanded.
"Perfect," Aamon whispered, the blue light reflecting in his eyes. He dismissed the mana, sliding the daggers into twin tactical sheaths that attached magnetically to his thighs.
"Artifacts selected," Elswright's voice called out, drawing them back to the center of the room. "Now for defense. The Bureau does not issue bulky plate armor to elite operatives. It restricts movement. You rely on your speed, your wards, and your awareness."
She gestured to a rack holding dozens of identical, sleek black vests.
"These are Iron-weave defensive vests," she explained. "They are designed to be worn under your standard fatigues. The material is woven with microscopic kinetic-absorption runes. They will not stop a direct, full-force blow from a high-tier monster. But they will absorb and distribute the kinetic shock of grazing hits, shrapnel, and blunt-force trauma, preventing internal hemorrhaging and organ rupture."
Aamon, Draco, and Sera each took a vest. Aamon ran his hand over the material. It was incredibly thin, feeling like a heavy, dense silk, yet it carried a surprising weight. He immediately slipped his combat shirt off, pulled the tight-fitting Aegis-Weave vest over his torso, and put his shirt back on. It was completely concealable and didn't restrict his range of motion in the slightest.
"You are geared," Elswright finalized, checking her datapad. "Return to the dormitory. Eat a high-protein meal. Hydrate. And sleep. Do not stay up analyzing tactical data. A rested mind is your greatest asset in a Rift."
She looked at the three of them, her stern expression softening for just a fraction of a second.
"Tomorrow, you will stop being recruits playing on hex-plates for a while. Tomorrow, you will step onto the real battlefield. Dismissed."
The walk back to the dormitory was utterly silent. The sheer weight of what was coming had settled over them like a physical blanket.
They proceeded directly to the dining hall. The automated dispensers hummed to life, providing them with massive, nutrient-rich plates of steak, complex carbohydrates, and steamed vegetables.
But unlike the boisterous breakfast of their first day, or the snarky banter of their usual lunches, dinner was a quiet, solemn affair.
Sera, usually the vibrant center of conversation, ate methodically, her eyes distant, likely running through hundreds of triage scenarios and toxic compound combinations in her head. She was a healer; the burden of keeping her teammates alive rested heavily on her shoulders.
Draco was equally silent. He ate with military precision, his golden eyes locked onto his plate. But Aamon could see the subtle, rhythmic tapping of Draco's fingers against the mahogany table. It wasn't fear. It was anticipation. The warrior was essentially a caged tiger, mentally preparing himself to be let off the leash and return to the environment that had defined his tragic life.
Aamon ate his food mechanically, chewing and swallowing without really tasting the premium meat.
After they finished, they cleared their plates with a few brief, muted nods of acknowledgement, parting ways in the main hallway and heading to their respective rooms.
Aamon entered his room. The lights automatically dimmed to a soft, warm hue. He unbuckled his dual daggers, placing them carefully on the nightstand next to his bed. The pale silver blades seemed to gleam even in the low light, a silent promise of violence.
He stripped off his fatigues and the Aegis-Weave vest, taking a quick, hot shower to wash away the sweat of the day's training, before sliding under the crisp, cool sheets of his massive king-sized bed.
He lay on his back, staring up at the dark ceiling.
The silence of the room was deafening. His heart was beating a steady, heavy rhythm against his ribs.
For two years, he had typed out descriptions of Iron-Hide Boars charging through the underbrush. He had programmed the attack patterns of Lesser Shadow-Wolves, tweaking their speed and damage outputs on a spreadsheet to ensure the game was challenging but fair.
But this wasn't a game anymore. There were no spreadsheets. There were no difficulty sliders.
If a Shadow-Wolf ripped his throat out tomorrow, he wouldn't respawn at a checkpoint. He would simply bleed out on the damp earth of a dimensional distortion, his story ending just as it had begun.
A deep, visceral dread pooled in the pit of his stomach. It was the primal, human fear of death.
But running parallel to that dread, burning hot and bright in his chest, was something else.
He looked over at the daggers resting on the nightstand. He thought about the dense, lean muscle he had built over the past month. He thought about the electric, buzzing power of Kinetic Edge, and the reality-defying absolute defense of Spectator Mode.
He wasn't an NPC anymore. He was an Arcanist.
Aamon Maverick closed his eyes, his breathing slowly evening out as exhaustion finally overtook the adrenaline.
He was terrified. But as he drifted off to sleep, a fierce, undeniable anticipation pulled at the corners of his mouth.
He was ready.