Royal Imperial Academy - Artificial Dungeon, First Floor
Darkness swallowed them whole.
For half a breath, there was absolutely nothing. No sound. No air current. Just the crushing weight of the earth above them.
Then-
Fwoosh.
The torches along the stone corridor flared to life in perfect, terrifying unison.
Mana-fed flames burned a cold, ghostly blue against ancient walls carved with worn, unreadable runes. The air down here tasted of damp earth, rust, and mana. It was heavy. Old.
Leonardo stepped forward first.
His heavy boots struck the stone with calm, metronomic precision. He didn't look back to see if his team was following; a true Vanguard assumes the line holds.
Behind him, Rayan lifted his heavy iron shield, his breathing shallow. Mira adjusted her grip on her wooden staff, her knuckles white. Cedric exhaled slowly, checking the balance of his spear with trembling fingers.
No one spoke for several seconds.
They listened.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Somewhere deeper in the winding corridor, something shifted in the dark. The sound of claws scraping against wet stone.
Leonardo extended a hand slightly, calling for a halt without a word.
"Mana signatures?" he whispered, his eyes scanning the gloom.
Mira closed her eyes, her brow furrowing in deep concentration.
"…Three," she said after a moment, her voice tight. "Low-tier. Moving fast. Quadrupedal."
Rayan swallowed hard. "Beasts?"
"Likely," Leonardo replied calmly.
He drew his blade, Solaris.
The steel shimmered faintly in the gloom, casting a warm golden glow as golden coloured mana flowed into the metal. It was a beacon in the dark.
"Formation," Leonardo commanded.
They adjusted instantly. Rayan to the left flank, Cedric to the right, Mira in the center pocket.
Good. They were scared, but disciplined.
They listened.
From the shadows ahead, the scraping grew louder. Faster.
Three Ironfang Wolves emerged from the gloom.
They were lean and starved. Their gray hides were reinforced by jagged, metallic growths along their spines. Their eyes glowed a dull, sickly red.
Cedric inhaled sharply. "Already? We just stepped inside!"
Leonardo didn't hesitate. He didn't wait to be engaged.
He stepped forward.
The first wolf lunged, jaws snapping for his throat-
Steel flashed.
Leonardo moved cleanly. There was no wasted motion, no brutal hacking. It was Imperial Swordsmanship. Absolute precision.
His blade cut up through the creature's jaw and sheared cleanly through its skull in a single, fluid arc.
The body collapsed into digital ash before it even hit the stone floor.
The second wolf circled, aiming for the backline.
Rayan stepped into the gap perfectly on time, slamming his heavy shield into the beast's side, knocking it off its trajectory.
"Mira!" Rayan grunted.
Mira's staff glowed with pale green light-
A pulse of compressed wind struck the staggering wolf mid-air, blasting it backward into the cavern wall with a sickening crunch.
"Rear!" Cedric shouted, panic in his voice.
The third wolf had slipped around the chaotic melee in the dark, launching itself at the spearman.
Cedric met it head-on.
His spear thrust cleanly into the wolf's shoulder joint.
It wasn't a perfect, lethal strike, but it stopped the momentum. The wolf shrieked, snapping its iron jaws inches from Cedric's face.
Leonardo pivoted on his heel.
With a short, brutal downward strike, Solaris severed the wolf's spine.
Silence returned to the corridor.
Three piles of dissolving data.
Total combat time: Less than twenty seconds.
Their smart watches gave a ding,
Rayan exhaled shakily, lowering his shield. "That was… fast. We did it."
Leonardo flicked his blade, throwing off a few lingering drops of digital blood before sheathing it.
"Too fast," he murmured.
Mira frowned, leaning on her staff. "What do you mean? We neutralized them efficiently."
"This is the first evaluation floor," Leonardo explained, his eyes scanning the darkness ahead. "The first encounter is designed to test reaction time and situational awareness, not lethality. The beasts are programmed to stalk. To probe our defenses."
Cedric stiffened, pulling his spear free. "So?"
Leonardo walked over to where the first wolf had spawned.
"They were overly aggressive," he said quietly.
Rayan wiped sweat from his forehead. "They're dungeon beasts, They're monsters. That's normal."
"No," Leonardo corrected, his voice hardening. "They attacked without probing. They didn't test our flanks. They charged blindly into drawn weapons."
A heavy pause settled over the team.
"They didn't attack us because they were hungry," Leonardo whispered. "They charged us because they were running away from something else."
Mira's grip tightened on her staff. "That's… that's not normal behavior for a controlled simulation."
The air in the dungeon shifted.
It was subtle at first. Like the atmospheric pressure dropping before a massive storm.
Leonardo felt it again.
That phantom thread inside his chest.
Pulling. Taut. Vibrating with cosmic tension.
The Shift. His chest tightened painfully, a cold sweat breaking out on his neck.
Rayan noticed the Prince falter. "Your Highness? Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Leonardo snapped, though his eyes had sharpened to an intense, predator-like focus. "Stay alert. Something is fundamentally wrong here."
As if summoned by his words-
A low, rumbling tremor ran through the corridor.
Dust fell from the ancient ceiling. The blue torches flickered violently, struggling to stay lit.
Then-
A roar.
It didn't come from ahead of them.
It didn't come from behind them.
It came from everywhere. It reverberated through the stone, shaking the marrow in their bones.
The mana in the dungeon surged. Wild. Toxic. Unstable.
Mira staggered, dropping to one knee as she clutched her head. "The ambient mana-it's spiking! That's not first-floor density! I can barely breathe!"
The solid stone wall at the far end of the corridor began to crack.
Spiderweb fractures shot up the masonry.
The wall split.
Something massive was pushing its way through the very architecture of the dungeon.
It was not a wolf.
It was not a standard tutorial beast.
Heavy, jagged scaled hide scraped against the stone, sending showers of sparks into the dark.
Two massive, vertical-slitted golden eyes opened in the gloom.
Ancient.
Heavy.
Hungry.
Cedric's voice broke into a high-pitched wheeze.
"That… that's not supposed to be here."
Leonardo stared at the creature pulling itself from the fractured wall.
Their watches started the automatic life saving procedure after sensing the mana density,
It was an Iron-Scale Drake.
A creature listed strictly in the mid-tier bestiaries. A monster that required a team of third-year elites to subdue.
Not a hurdle for first-year evaluations.
The thread inside Leonardo's chest pulled agonizingly tight.
This was not a glitch. This was not a coincidence.
Fate had been rewritten, and the dungeon was warping to match the new, chaotic script.
The Drake stepped fully into the corridor.
The stone beneath its massive, taloned claws fractured into powder. It exhaled a cloud of sulfuric ash.
Rayan took a step back. Cedric raised his spear, his arms shaking uncontrollably.
Leonardo did not step back.
He raised his glowing blade slowly.
There was no panic in his blue eyes. Only cold, hard calculation. He was the Shield of the Empire. If he broke, they died.
"Change of formation," Leonardo said quietly, his voice cutting through the terror of his team. "Rayan, Cedric, fall back. Mira, prepare maximum output."
And for the first time since entering the Academy-
The dungeon did not feel like a test.
It felt like something had awakened, and it wanted them dead.