Han-gyul held up a packet of spicy seafood ramen like it was a holy relic. "I'm telling you, Jin-woo, the broth consistency is better. If I flash-heat it with my friction, the noodles don't get soggy. It's science."
Jin-woo didn't even look up from his book. He just adjusted the silent bubble around his head, making a small gesture with his hand that effectively muted Han-gyul's enthusiastic shouting.
Min-ho didn't join the debate. He pulled the thin blanket over his shoulders and turned toward the wall. The springs of the bunk bed groaned, a reminder that the Academy's funding didn't trickle down to the D-class housing. He closed his eyes and let his breathing slow. Within seconds, the sounds of the dorm room faded into a dull hum, replaced by the weightless pull of the Slumber Realm.
He landed on the Jade Bed. The pale green stone was cool against his skin, vibrating with a low-frequency energy that mirrored his own heartbeat. The gold clouds above were thick today, swirling in heavy currents that suggested the "Forge" was reacting to his recent physical breakthrough.
Min-ho sat up and looked at his hands. After the encounter with Chae-won, he realized his biggest obstacle wasn't the monsters in the gates; it was the physics of the world itself. If he wanted to move at his true speed, he had to stop treating the ground like a stationary object and start treating it like a fragile shell.
He spent the next few weeks in the time-dilated silence of the Forge practicing a single movement: a step.
He visualized his mana not as a blunt force, but as a series of microscopic anchors. Every time his foot touched the obsidian floor of the Slumber Realm, he used a sliver of the Eternal Epoch Refining Scripture to redistribute his mass. He wasn't making himself lighter; he was making the impact wider, spreading the pressure of his Star-Forged Marrow across a larger surface area before his weight could settle.
It was tedious work. It required a level of mental focus that would have burned out a normal mage's brain in hours. But here, time was a resource he had in abundance. He repeated the step thousands of times until his body began to do it instinctively. By the end of the session, he could sprint across the platform without leaving a single scuff mark on the obsidian.
Before exiting, he touched the Lunar Tether. He felt a faint, steady pulse from the other side. Min-ah was asleep back at their house. The pendant was working, keeping her mana calm and shielding her from any external probes. He felt a brief sense of peace before the Forge dissolved and he woke up to the sound of a buzzer.
"Get up, Min-ho! We're late for the briefing!"
Han-gyul was frantically pulling on his combat boots, nearly tripping over a stack of textbooks. Jin-woo was already dressed, standing by the door with a neutral expression.
"Briefing for what?" Min-ho asked, sitting up.
"The field exercise," Jin-woo said. "Every class gets assigned a training gate on the first week. S-class gets the B-rank ruins. We get the Green Zone."
The "Green Zone" was the Academy's term for E-rank gates that had been partially cleared and stabilized. They were essentially outdoor classrooms where the risk of death was low, provided the students followed the instructions. For the D-class, it was less of a hunt and more of a scavenging mission. Their job was to collect low-grade mana crystals left behind by the automated cleanup crews.
Min-ho followed his roommates down to the staging area near the campus gates. A beat-up tactical bus was waiting for them. Their instructor was a man named Park, a veteran C-rank hunter with a permanent scowl and a prosthetic arm that looked two decades out of date.
"Listen up, you lot," Park shouted over the idling engine. "I know you're the D-class. I know the Association thinks you're just here to fill the quota. But a gate is a gate. If you get lazy in a Green Zone, a forest cat will still rip your throat out. Stay in your three-man cells. Collect fifty grams of crystal shards each. Do not cross the red perimeter line. If you see a monster, you run to me. Understood?"
"Yes, Instructor," the class chimed back, though half of them looked like they were barely awake.
The bus took them to a wooded area three miles north of the campus. The gate was a shimmering vertical tear in the air, guarded by two bored-looking Association soldiers.
As Min-ho stepped through the portal, he felt the familiar shift in atmospheric pressure. The Green Zone was a lush, overgrown forest where the trees grew to impossible heights and the air tasted of pine and raw energy. It was beautiful, but to Min-ho's refined senses, it felt hollow. This gate had been picked clean of anything truly powerful.
"Okay, let's get this over with," Han-gyul said, pulling a small plastic collection jar from his belt. "Jin-woo, you keep the silence bubble up so we don't attract any strays. Min-ho, you... uh... just look for shiny rocks, I guess."
They spent the first hour wandering through the underbrush. Han-gyul used his friction ability to melt the sap off old tree stumps to reveal the small, glowing crystals embedded in the wood. It was slow, tedious work.
Min-ho walked slightly behind them, his eyes scanning the treeline. He wasn't looking for crystals. He was looking at the way the mana in the air was flowing. Something felt off. In the Slumber Realm, he had learned to read the "breath" of a dungeon. A healthy gate had a steady, cycling flow of energy. This one felt like it was holding its breath.
"Does the air feel heavy to you?" Min-ho asked quietly.
Jin-woo stopped and deactivated his silence bubble. He frowned, sniffing the air. "Now that you mention it, it's really quiet. I haven't heard a single bird since we passed the stream."
"Maybe the S-class cleared them all out from the neighboring zones," Han-gyul suggested, though he looked uneasy.
Min-ho knelt down and pressed his palm to the soil. He didn't use any mana, just his physical sensitivity. He felt a vibration deep in the bedrock. It wasn't the steady pulse of a stabilized gate. It was a jagged, frantic rhythm.
"We need to go back to Instructor Park," Min-ho said.
"We only have twenty grams of crystals," Han-gyul argued. "If we go back early, we'll fail the first assignment. Come on, Min-ho, don't be a coward."
Before Min-ho could reply, the ground lurched. A low, guttural roar echoed through the forest, shaking the leaves from the trees. It wasn't the sound of an E-rank forest cat. It was deep, resonant, and carried a weight of malice that made Han-gyul drop his collection jar.
The shimmering green sky of the gate began to flicker, turning a bruised shade of purple. The trees around them started to wither in real-time, their bark turning black and crumbling into ash.
"Gate mutation," Jin-woo whispered, his face turning pale.
In the distance, the red perimeter line—the magical barrier that marked the "safe" zone—shattered into fragments of light. The "Green Zone" was collapsing.
Min-ho stood up, his gaze fixing on a point deep within the shifting woods. He saw a shape emerging from the shadows. It was huge, covered in jagged plates of bone, with eyes that burned like dying embers. It was a Calamity Stalker, a creature that shouldn't exist in anything less than a B-rank gate.
"Instructor Park!" Han-gyul screamed, turning to run back toward the entrance.
But the path they had taken was gone. The forest had shifted, the space-time coordinates of the gate twisting into a labyrinth. They were trapped in a pocket dimension that was rapidly being consumed by the mutation.
Min-ho looked at his roommates. They were paralyzed with fear, their minor abilities completely useless against a threat of this scale. He looked at the Stalker, which was now picking up speed, its bone-claws carving deep gouges in the earth as it charged toward them.
'I can't let them die,' Min-ho thought. 'But I can't let them see what I am.'
He stepped in front of Jin-woo and Han-gyul, his shoulders relaxing as he entered the state of "Lightness" he had practiced in the Forge. He didn't look like a hero. He looked like a student who had finally run out of patience.
"Stay behind me," Min-ho said, his voice cold and steady. "And whatever you do, don't blink."