For two days after her strange encounter in the library, Yuna Kwon did not touch her artifact. Instead, she thought.
She replayed the janitor's words over and over in her head. Signal noise. Data flow. It was a ridiculous, overly simple way to think about a power that could summon blizzards and freeze oceans.
It was like trying to describe a hurricane using the word "breezy." And yet, the idea refused to leave her mind. It was a splinter, a tiny, annoying thought that she couldn't ignore.
Her entire life, her training had been about one thing: power. More power. She was taught to be a cannon, to overwhelm her enemies with unstoppable force.
The backlash, the pain, the internal damage that was just the price you paid for wielding such strength. Her family had always told her to endure it, to become strong enough to withstand the recoil.
But no one had ever suggested that she could just... turn the power down.
On the third day, she couldn't stand it anymore. She booked a private high-security training room, a stark white cube designed to withstand the fury of an S-Rank artifact.
Usually, she would enter a room like this and prepare for a battle, a violent explosion of power. This time, she felt like she was trying to defuse a bomb.
She stood in the center of the room and activated the [Glacial Core]. The familiar, crushing wave of cold filled the space, and the agonizing pain began to seep into her bones.
It was a feeling she knew well, a cold fire that burned from the inside out. This was the "signal noise" the janitor had talked about, the chaotic overflow of her own power poisoning her.
Normally, this was the point where she would grit her teeth and push through the pain, forcing out a powerful attack.
But this time, she did something different. She didn't try to create a storm. She didn't try to form a single ice spear. She tried to do almost nothing.
She closed her eyes and focused, not on the power, but on the flow. She imagined it not as a raging river, but as a small, steady stream.
She tried to smooth out the jagged edges, to calm the roaring chaos into a quiet hum. It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do. Her power fought back, wanting to be unleashed.
It was like trying to hold back a pack of wild dogs with a single piece of string.
She focused on the janitor's words. Reduce the signal noise. She ignored the impulse to attack and instead poured all her concentration into simply stabilizing the energy within her.
She visualized the data bleed Alex had seen, that ugly red corruption, and tried to build a tiny, mental wall around it, to guide the pure blue energy around the flaw instead of forcing it through.
For a full minute, she just stood there, sweat beading on her forehead despite the freezing temperature of the room. She wasn't attacking anything. She was just standing, concentrating, her knuckles white.
Then, she felt it. A change. It was small, almost unnoticeable, but it was there. The burning, icy pain in her veins lessened.
It didn't disappear, but it went from a roaring fire to a dull ache. The crushing pressure in the room eased slightly.
For the first time in years, she was holding her artifact's power in a stable state without feeling like she was about to tear herself apart.
She held it for ten more seconds before the strain became too much. She released her connection to the artifact, falling to one knee and gasping for breath.
The room quickly warmed back to a normal temperature. She was exhausted, more tired than after a real fight. But the lingering, agonizing backlash that usually crippled her for hours was... less.
It was still there, a painful echo in her bones, but it was bearable. It was a small victory, but it felt more significant than any battle she had ever won.
It worked. The janitor's stupidly simple advice actually worked.
A wave of conflicting emotions washed over her. First, there was a surge of elation. A new path, a way to manage her curse, had opened up.
But right behind it came a wave of deep, profound annoyance. Why hadn't her family's experts, the S-Rank strategists, the artifact historians, why hadn't any of them ever suggested this? Why did it take a random, F-Rank IT guy with a grease stain on his uniform to give her the key?
It was illogical. It made no sense.
She spent the next day looking for him. She didn't know his name, only his face and his job. She walked through the service hallways and utility sectors, places she had never even known existed.
The other students gave her strange looks, wondering why the great Yuna Kwon was slumming it in the basements. She ignored them.
She finally found him in a long, dim hallway on the fourth floor. He was standing on a small stepladder, humming a cheerful, tuneless song while he fiddled with a flickering light panel on the ceiling.
He had a tool belt around his waist that looked like it had been through a war, and he was completely absorbed in his work.
She walked up to him, her footsteps echoing in the empty hall. "You," she said. Her voice was sharper than she intended.
Alex nearly jumped off the ladder in surprise. He fumbled with a screwdriver, catching it just before it fell. He looked down, his eyes wide.
"Oh! Miss Kwon! You scared me." He offered a slightly goofy, apologetic smile. "Can I help you? Is your network port acting up again?"
Yuna's brow furrowed. She had to remind herself that to him, she was just another student. "No. The port is fine."
She crossed her arms, her patience already wearing thin. "It was your advice. From the library."
Alex blinked, pretending to be confused. "My advice? Oh! The network cable thing? Did it help you with your... homework?" He was laying the "clueless janitor" act on thick.
"It wasn't homework," she snapped, then took a breath to calm herself. "The analogy. It worked. It reduced the... backlash. The pain." Admitting this to him felt like admitting defeat, but she had to know more. "I need another one."
Alex just stared at her, his head tilted. "Another analogy? Miss, I'm just an IT guy. I fix lights. I mop things. I don't know anything about S-Rank artifacts."
"Don't play dumb with me," Yuna said, her voice low and intense. She took a step closer, looking up at him on the ladder.
"You gave me one piece of advice and it was more useful than a decade of elite training. So, give me another."
Alex sighed internally. This was getting complicated. He couldn't just keep ignoring her. He had to give her something, another breadcrumb to follow that would satisfy her for now.
He glanced around for inspiration. His eyes landed on her data pad, which she was holding at her side. The screen was on, and he could see at least twenty different applications and windows open at once. The perfect idea came to him.
He pointed at her data pad with his screwdriver. "That thing," he said.
Yuna looked down at her pad, confused. "What about it?"
"You've got a lot of programs running," Alex said, his tone simple and matter-of-fact, as if he were explaining how a toaster works.
"The message app, the browser, a game, the school news feed... all at once. When you do that, what happens to the machine?"
Yuna thought about it. "It gets slow," she said. "And the battery drains faster. Sometimes it gets hot."
"Exactly," Alex said with a nod, as if she were a star pupil. "It gets hot. It's working too hard, trying to do everything at once.
Sometimes, the best way to make a computer run better isn't to buy a faster processor or a bigger battery." He looked her right in the eye, his expression one of simple, earnest helpfulness.
"Sometimes, you just have to close the programs you aren't using."
He then turned back to the light panel and gave a wire a final twist. The light flickered once, then shone with a bright, steady light. "There we go. All fixed."
He climbed down the ladder, packed his tools, and started to walk away. "Have a good day, miss."
Yuna stood frozen in the hallway, her mind racing. Close the programs you aren't using. It was another laughably simple idea.
But once again, it hit her with the force of a physical blow. Her artifact had dozens of functions. It could create shields, summon blizzards, form weapons, lower temperatures.
When she fought, she was unconsciously keeping all those "programs" running in the background, ready to be used. The immense energy required to keep all those options open was a huge part of the strain, the "heat."
What if she only activated the one function she needed at that exact moment? Could she reduce the load that much?
The advice was brilliant. It was genius in its simplicity.
And it was the final piece of the puzzle that made no sense.
She watched him walk away, his tool belt jingling softly. A janitor. An F-Rank. She suddenly hurried to her data pad and, with trembling fingers, accessed the academy's student registry.
She typed in the only information she had: "Custodial & IT Support, First Year." A few names popped up. She scanned the pictures until she found his face, the same harmless, slightly goofy smile from the ladder.
The file read: Vance, Alex. Rank: F. Department: Custodial & IT Support. Noted for causing a catastrophic system failure during entrance exams.
Yuna stared at the screen, her heart pounding. It didn't add up. None of it. An F-Rank who had somehow broken the entire exam system.
A simple IT worker who spoke in analogies. An insightful janitor who understood the fundamental mechanics of her unique, S-Rank artifact better than she did.
A deep, unshakable suspicion began to form in her mind, a cold certainty that chilled her more than her own power ever could.
The quiet tech support guy was a complete and total fraud. Alex Vance was hiding something. And she was going to find out what it was.