"What about Ninya?" Ran asked, changing the subject.
Ken's expression shifted. "Oh. Yeah. Ninya's gone."
"Gone where?"
"Military. A General came to the school yesterday. He watched the Awakening Ceremony recordings, saw her results, and showed up in person. Offered her a full recruitment package on the spot. She took it."
Ran raised his eyebrows. Ninya had been one of the top students in their class. Quiet, disciplined, serious. He hadn't seen her soul type on the big screen during the ceremony because he'd been too focused on his own situation.
"What was her soul?"
"Steel Falcon," Ken said. "Rare-type. Attack category with a Speed sub-class. The General said it was one of the best movement-combat souls he'd seen in a decade."
"She deserved it," Leo said. "She worked harder than anyone."
Ran nodded. "Good for her."
They kept walking through the courtyard. Ken and Leo pointed out the stalls as they passed. A university offering scholarships for defense-type souls, a military branch recruiting support-types for field medic positions, another signing up Normal-type graduates for basic laborer contracts.
Then they saw the notice.
It was posted on every board and terminal in the building. The usual class schedule was gone. In its place:
Combat Assessment. 7:00 AM to 12:00 AM. All awakened students. Mandatory. One week.
No more math. No history. No electives.
The school wanted to see what the students could actually do now that they'd awakened. Raw talent, comprehension, adaptability. The things that mattered more than a soul's rarity on paper. The recruiters from the fair weren't leaving yet either. Final graduation was still a week out, and every department, every military branch, every university scout would be watching. If a student caught someone's eye during the assessment, they could get picked up before graduation day.
One week to prove you were worth something.
For Ran, the schedule was perfect. Class ended at noon. He'd be home by half past, doors locked by one, and inside the Private World by the time his family finished lunch. It didn't conflict with anything. If anything, the school had just handed him an extra hour.
He met Ken and Leo at the courtyard entrance and they walked to the training hall together. The corridors were full of the usual noise. Bragging, nervous chatter, idiots showing off their souls to anyone who'd look. But when they stepped through the double doors into the hall, the talking stopped.
A woman stood at the front.
She wore a dark grey military uniform, fitted, no wrinkles, no decorations except a single silver bar on her collar. Her black hair was pulled back tight, not a strand out of place. Narrow face, sharp cheekbones, and the kind of eyes that had already finished evaluating you before you'd finished walking in. She looked young, late twenties maybe, but nothing about her felt young. She stood perfectly still with her hands behind her back and waited for the hall to fill without saying a word.
When the last students filed in, she spoke.
"My name is Instructor Hara. I'll be leading today's session." Her voice was calm, clear, and carried to every corner of the room without her raising it. "Tomorrow, a different instructor will take my place. The day after, another. For the next seven days, you will be taught and assessed by officers from different branches. Each of us will evaluate you independently."
She paused and looked across the rows of students.
"If any of us see something worth recruiting, we will approach you after the assessment period ends. This is your window. What you show this week determines what doors open for you at graduation."
The room shifted. Ran could feel it. The usual half-asleep energy replaced by something sharper. Everyone understood what this meant.
Hara extended her right hand, palm up, and summoned her martial innate soul.
A bat materialized above her hand. It unfolded in mid-air, wings spreading wide, easily six feet across. Pitch black with veins of dark purple running through the membrane. Its eyes were two points of dull red light. It hung in the air beside her like it owned the room, and the pressure rolling off it made the students in the front row lean back in their seats.
"Level 50," someone whispered behind Ran.
The number rippled through the hall. The strongest student in the room was Victor Alfonso at Level 5, and that had taken a professional carry team and tens of thousands of silver. Level 50 was a different world.
Ran did the math. A new skill unlocked at Level 5, then Level 10, then Level 20. After that, every ten levels. 30, 40, 50. Six skills total. This woman had six active skills built on years of real combat, and she was just the first instructor. Six more were coming after her.
Ken leaned over. "Level 50," he said under his breath, like saying it again would make it more real.
"Yeah," Ran said. "I heard."
Leo just stared at the bat. He didn't blink for a while.
Hara recalled her soul. The bat folded and vanished. The pressure lifted.
"We start now," she said. "On your feet."
She started with the basics.
"Open your status," she said. "Palm forward, focus on the center of your chest, and pull."
Half the room already knew how. The other half fumbled for a few seconds before a translucent panel flickered to life in front of them. Ran opened his without issue. He'd been checking his stats in the Private World for days, and it worked the same way as the virtual game he'd played his entire past life on Earth. He made sure to look confused for a beat before letting the screen settle.
"What you're looking at is your stat sheet," Hara said. She projected her own onto the wall behind her, numbers blurred out. "Strength determines your raw physical output. How hard you hit, how much you can carry. Agility covers speed, reflexes, and coordination. Intelligence affects your ability to process, strategize, and in some cases, amplify soul-based abilities. Perception is your awareness. How fast you read a situation, how accurately you track a target."
She let that sit for a moment.
"Your stats grow when you level up. You also get attribute points to distribute manually. How you spend them matters. A bad build will hold you back more than a weak soul ever will."
She scanned the room. "Now. Who here has unlocked a skill?"
Nobody moved. Then heads started turning toward one person.
Victor straightened up in his seat. He didn't wait to be called. "I have. Level 5. Acid Spit."
Hara looked at him. "Show me."
Victor walked to the front, rolling his shoulders like he was stepping into a ring. He summoned his Poison Worm, the slimy purple thing coiled on his palm, dripping. He faced one of the training dummies along the wall and pointed his hand. The worm spat a glob of green acid. It hit the dummy's chest and hissed, eating through the outer layer.
Victor turned back to the class with a grin.
"Do it again," Hara said.
He did. Another glob, another hiss. He looked at her, waiting.
"Your stance is wrong," she said. "Your feet are square. Your shoulder is leading instead of your hip. You're throwing your whole arm forward like you're tossing a ball, which means your accuracy past ten meters would be gone. And you're wasting energy. The worm is spitting at maybe forty percent output because you're tensing your wrist and choking the channel."
The room went quiet.
Victor's grin disappeared. "I hit the target."
"You hit a stationary dummy from six meters. A Level 1 with a rock could do that."
A couple of students in the back coughed. Someone bit their lip. Nobody laughed out loud, but the room was trying very hard not to.
"Again," Hara said. "Widen your stance. Left foot forward. Drop your shoulder. Relax the wrist and let the soul channel through the forearm, not the hand."
Victor's jaw tightened, but he did it. The next spit came out faster, thinner, and punched a clean hole through the dummy instead of just melting the surface.
He stared at it.
"Better," Hara said. "Sit down."
Victor walked back to his seat without a word. A few students exchanged looks. The message was clear. Rank and money didn't mean anything in this room.
After the classroom session, Hara led them outside to the training field.
Racks of weapons lined the edges. Swords, spears, staffs, axes. But Hara walked past all of them and stopped at a long table covered with firearms. Pistols, rifles, a few compact models Ran didn't recognize.
"You'll use these first," she said.
A few students frowned. Guns were old technology. A standard firearm couldn't scratch an awakened person. The bullet didn't carry enough force to get past even a low-level body's natural resistance. Most people considered them useless.
Hara picked up a pistol and held it flat on her palm.
"A regular gun fires a regular bullet. Against an awakener, that's nothing." She loaded a single round. "But a gun is a tool, and a tool is only as dead as the person holding it."
She raised the pistol, aimed at a reinforced target fifty meters out, and fired. The shot cracked through the air, louder than a normal gunshot, sharper. The target didn't just dent. A chunk blew apart. The metal frame behind it bent inward.
"I channeled my stats through the weapon," she said. "Strength amplifies the firing force. Perception sharpens the aim beyond what your eyes alone can do. Agility controls your draw speed and recoil recovery. Intelligence lets you calculate trajectory adjustments faster than conscious thought."
She set the pistol down.
"Any awakener can swing a sword. That's instinct. But applying your stats through a precision tool like a firearm requires control, focus, and understanding of how your body has changed. That's what I want to see today."
She gestured at the table. "Standard pistol, ten rounds each. Targets at twenty meters. Don't try to channel anything yet. I want your baseline. Just shoot."
Students filed forward. Ran picked up a pistol, checked the weight, and took a spot on the line next to Ken and Leo.
Ken turned the gun over in his hands. "When's the last time you held one of these?"
"Gym class. Second year, maybe."
Leo aimed at his target with one eye closed. "This feels weird after watching her blow that thing apart."
"Just shoot," Ran said.
The first volley was rough. Shots went wide, low, high. A few students flinched at the recoil. Victor hit the outer ring three times out of ten and looked annoyed.
Hara walked the line without correcting anyone. She was watching how they stood, how they gripped, how they reacted to the kickback. Gathering data.
Ran kept his shots average on purpose. Five hits, five misses. Nothing impressive, nothing embarrassing. Right in the middle of the pack where he wanted to be.
"Not bad for a baseline," Hara said. "Now we work."
She collected the scores without reading them out loud. Just noted them on her tablet and moved on.
"That was your body without intention," she said. "Now I want to see what happens when you use what you have."
She reached into a case behind the weapons table and pulled out a small metal box. Inside, five pills sat in padded slots. Each one was a deep blue, about the size of a marble, faintly glowing.
"Concentration Pills," Hara said, holding one up between two fingers. "Military personnel use these during extended combat operations and breakthrough training. They sharpen your focus, deepen your meditation state, and improve your ability to refine skills under pressure. One pill costs two thousand silver on the open market. I have five."
She set the box down on the table.
"Top five shooters in this round get one each. The rules are simple. Channel your stats into the shot. Strength, perception, whatever you've got. Closest grouping to the bullseye wins. Ten rounds per person."
The energy on the field shifted immediately. Two thousand silver a pill. Students who had been half-paying attention were suddenly locked in.
Ran's problem was straightforward.
He was Level 5. His stats were higher than almost everyone on this field. Most students sat at Level 1 or 2, with a handful at 3. The only other Level 5 was Victor, and Victor had gotten there through a carry, not through actual training. Ran was different. He'd spent years in his past life grinding a virtual game with an almost identical stat system. The Private World worked the same way. He knew how to use every point he had.
If he channeled properly and shot the way he could, he'd take first. Maybe by a wide margin. And then every recruiter, every instructor for the rest of the week, would be staring at the kid with the Basic Orb who somehow outshot a room full of awakened students. That was exactly the kind of attention he couldn't afford.
But he wanted that pill.
He did the math. Five pills. Victor would almost certainly take first. He had Level 5 stats and enough ego to go all out. A few Level 3 students with combat souls might land in the top four if they channeled well. If Ran placed fifth, he'd get a pill and nobody would think twice. Fifth place from what everyone believed was a Level 1 would raise eyebrows but not alarms. He could chalk it up to a lucky round.
Lower than fifth, he walks away empty-handed. Higher than fourth, he starts drawing eyes.
Fifth. That was the line.
The students lined up again. Hara gave the signal.
The difference was immediate. Some students figured out channeling on instinct. Their shots hit harder, landed tighter. Others struggled, gripping the gun too hard or overthinking it. A Level 3 girl two spots down from Ran put four rounds inside the inner ring and pumped her fist. Victor fired with a locked jaw and visible effort. His grouping was tight, not clean, but tight enough. His body knew how to receive power even if his technique was rough.
Ran watched the scores forming. He tracked who was hitting what.
Then he fired.
He kept his breathing steady and let just enough of his stats bleed into each shot. Not all of it. Not even close. He tuned his perception down to what a decent Level 2 might manage. Dialed his strength back so the shots didn't punch harder than they should. Every round was calculated. Close enough to matter, far enough from the center to stay unremarkable.
Three in the inner ring. Four in the second ring. Three wide.
When the round ended, Hara walked the line and tallied the scores. She read them out.
"First, Victor Alfonso. Second, Lena Zhao. Third, Derek Tan. Fourth, Sara Moon. Fifth, Ran Aldric."
Victor turned to the crowd and soaked it in. He didn't say anything, but the look on his face said enough.
Ran just nodded. Ken gave him a nudge. "Not bad for a guy with a dead Orb."
"Got lucky," Ran said.
Hara handed out the pills one at a time. When she reached Ran, she placed it in his palm without a word. No extra look, no pause. Just another student collecting a prize.
He pocketed it and stepped back in line.
Fifth. Right where he needed to be.