The Headmaster's gaze pinned me like a specimen under glass. His golden eyes—normally alight with dry amusement—were now the color of banked embers, cold and assessing. The infirmary's ambient hum of healing magic seemed to still be in his presence, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
"You collapsed during dinner," he began, stepping closer.
His boots made no sound on the polished stone.
"Professor Ilsa tells me your mana channels underwent spontaneous recalibration. An impossibility without external intervention."
A bead of sweat traced my spine.
"I—"
"Then," he continued, as if I hadn't spoken, "there's the matter of your eyes."
"Tha-"
"You looked at Kael Veldt before you fell didn't you?" the Headmaster murmured. "What did you see in him?"
My instinct screamed to lie. But Orthellius wasn't a man fooled by poor half-truths.
I'll gamble my life.
"Let me ask you something first, Headmaster,." My voice was steadier than I felt. "Why did you choose to admit Kael Veldt? Judging by his appearance and status, he is in neither a financial nor reputational state to be admitted into the institute."
"Similar to him are you not?"
"Extremely similar. Could you have spotted a genius in him?"
The Headmaster went very still. For a heartbeat, the only sound was the distant chime of the academy's wards cycling.
"Interesting, you have quite the mouth, Isaac."
"Yes, I admitted Kael Veldt because I spotted an intellectual genius in him. Mr Veldt scored perfectly on his entrance exams. Out of the First Years admitted, none scored a near perfect. In fact none scored anything above 90%. Except him, a prodigy by all metrics." His smile didn't reach his eyes.
"And let me take a guess, Headmaster. He scored a 0% on the practical magic test?"
The headmaster looks stunned:
"How did you come to that conclusion Mr Isaac?"
I hadn't. I just saw his stats.
"Logical deduction Sir"
"You're observant, Isaac."
He leaned in, the scent of ozone and old parchment clinging to him.
"Too observant for a first-year with no formal training. Almost as if..." His thumb brushed my temple
"You are not the proclaimed Isaac Mun"
The silence that followed was heavier than any verdict. The Headmaster withdrew, his expression unreadable.
"You must be mistaken for Headmaster. I think, therefore I am"
"Cogito Ergo Sum, Well said Mr Mun"
Interesting, this world is literature informed.
"Do you believe me?"
"No," a cold response. "Doctor, could you bring in the item I requested?"
The Doctor enters the room. The head of the alchemist and lead inventor of MagiTech in the Elenos Kingdom. Doctor Chester Veldrane.
"At your service Orthellius"
A matte-black case mounted on a steel cart, wires coiled like sleeping serpents, electrodes neatly bundled beside a console lined with blinking lights and dials. The printer, silent for now, waited like a judge's gavel. My dissenting judge.
"Polygraph…"
"I like that name Mr Mun. Veldrane, have you decided what this piece of technology will be called?"
"Not yet Orthellius"
"Call it a polygraph. It fits this MagiTech quite nicely"
"If it is your will."
He turns his attention back to me.
"Now, Mr. Mun, I'd like you to follow the specific instructions given by Doctor Veldrane."
It's an interrogation, not a conversation anymore.
"I will, Headmaster"
.
.
.
I sit on the chair where two rubber tubes are wrapped snugly around my chest and abdomen. Small metal sensors coated with conductive gel are fastened to my fingers. A blood pressure cuff is secured around my upper arm and a motion pad is placed under the chair. The process, clinical and unhurried, turns me into a network of signals—wired in, monitored, and watched.
"Now, Isaac. I want you to answer us just 5 questions."
"Alright Headmaster"
"Then let's begin," Orthellius nodded at Veldrane.
"Question 1: Are you from this kingdom?"
"No"
Veldrane nods
"Question 2: "Question 2: Is your knowledge of magic vast—both theoretical and practical?"
"Yes"
Another nod
"Question 3: How much do you know about the future?"
"Little"
The first shake of Veldrans head.
"A fair bit"
"Hmmm. Question 4: Are you truly Isaac Mun"
"I am"
Thankfully, a nod.
"Final Question: Do you know about my fate?"
Shit. Calm my heart rate. Prevent sweating. Control my breathing. You beat a polygraph by beating stress. Now. Answer:
"I don't"
.
.
.
A nod
.
.
.
"That settles it. Thank you Isaac"
"You're welcome."
"Thank you too Veldran, you're dismissed."
The humble doctor bows and leaves the room with the polygraph.
"I won't pry Isaac. But I do wish you use that knowledge for the betterment of Elenos"
The headmaster left without allowing me to bid him farewell. But his eyes were glistening.
…
A sigh tears itself from my lungs—long, ragged, and louder than I intended. It's the kind of exhale that carries the weight of near-death, the kind that leaves your ribs hollow after. For a second, I swear I taste it again—that creeping void, the same darkness that swallowed me whole twice. The memory clings like a shroud, whispering that if I so much as blink too hard, I'll fracture apart and find myself back there, choking on nothingness.
But I don't.
The air stays in my chest. The world stays solid.
And for the first time since I woke up in this nightmare, I let my shoulders drop.
Finally,
I can breathe. I can focus on myself:
"Temporal Anchor, Self-Statistics"
Name: Isaac Mun
Class: Anomalous Entity
Title: "Adept of the Howling Void"
Stats:
- Strength: 1-Star
- Vitality: 3-Star
- Agility: 3-Star
- Intellect: 5-Star
- Stamina: 100%
Attributes:
Temporal Anchor (Version 2): A true reminder that you're an outsider. After encountering the nexus, you have been granted the authority to 'perceive' into the baseline of this world — With sufficient acceptance, you may see more…
Hollow Frame (Curable Debuff): While the mind is expansive, the body is a hollow mimicry — merely a shell incapable of expressing full potential in the material plane.
Element Affinity:
Wind (Main Element): 2-Star
Mana Remaining: 300/300 MP
Oh. My name updated itself, the characters rewriting themselves like ink dissolving in water. Isaac Mun solidifies. My name. Probably because somewhere between dying twice and clawing my way back, I stopped pretending this frail vessel belonged to someone else.
But that's not what matters.
Temporal Anchor (Version 2).
The words glow in my vision, searing themselves into my retinas. The old function—perceiving inhabitants—was a hack, a workaround. This? This is something deeper. It's not just seeing stats anymore. It's understanding them as the world itself does, as fundamental as gravity or entropy. The system isn't overlaying data anymore—it's syncing with reality's own code.
And the upgrade requirement?
Sufficient acceptance.
A laugh claws its way up my throat. Of all things—empathy? Not mana density, not combat prowess, not some arcane trial of will. Just… caring enough.
How absurd—an attribute that reminds me of my alienness but requires me to accept it?
Inconceivable.
Well, what does even 'perceiving' into the baseline of the world even mean?:
"Temporal Anchor. Activate."
A familiar sting pricks behind my eyes—sharp, insistent—and suddenly, the world unfolds.
Reality dissolves into a seething tide of 1's and 0's, a churning digital undercurrent beneath the illusion of solidity. The walls, the floor, the very air—all reduced to raw, pulsing code, flickering like unstable voltage.
And then the gridlines carve through the chaos.
Neon-green lattices slice the void into jagged segments, overlaying the room with a structure that shouldn't exist—coordinates, hitboxes, collision meshes—all laid bare. The world isn't just visible anymore.
It's debugged. But what does it let me do?
One.
Time itself seems to drag, as if the universe has dipped into molasses. The breeze tousling the leaves now moves with deliberate lethargy. My own breath stretches—inhales lingering like held notes, exhales unwinding in slow, measured ribbons.
A passive effect.
The world hasn't slowed. I've sped up. Or rather, my perception has. It's a diluted version of what Seraphyne possesses—her "Eyes of an Emperor" lets her parse reality at a glacial 35%% reduction. Mine? A modest but invaluable 15%.
An hour for the world is an hour and nine minutes for me. Not enough to dominate. Just enough to adapt.
Two.
Then—a flood. Memories surge through my mind, not as fragmented recollections, but as a continuous stream. The polygraph interrogation replays itself—the Headmaster's piercing gaze, the weight of his questions—but it's imperfect. Hazy at the edges. The working memory model fractures under scrutiny.
The visuospatial sketchpad—where images should be stored.
The phonological loop—echo chamber of sound and speech.
The episodic buffer—the binder of context.
Yet here, they bleed together. Raw data, unprocessed, unfiltered. Not photographic memory. Eidetic. I don't see the past with flawless clarity. I reconstructed it. The colors are approximations. The voices and echoes. But the information remains. Temporal Anchor Version 2 doesn't record. It preserves me. A constant preservation that I don't belong to, I'm a cheap copy of the Heroines attributes.
But I don't mind.
Imperfect or not, it's useful. A weapon, a tool—another frayed thread I can pull to unravel this world's secrets. And for now? That's enough.
Gratitude is a strange feeling when you're trapped inside a dying game. But I'll take it. I'll take anything that gives me an edge.
Tomorrow.
Orientation. The first real step into this fractured academy, this glitching reality where every face might be a lie, every lesson a trap.
But not yet. I make my way back towards The House of Sylvas dormitory.
I reach my room and jump on my bed.
Today, I rest.
Today, I let my mind stitch itself back together—before I wake to a world that's already corrupted.