### Chapter 6: Shattered Expectations
The walk from the Assessment Crystal to Valerius's office was the longest fifty yards of Su Yuan's life. The Great Hall, once a cacophony of nervous whispers and jeers, had fallen into a profound, suffocating silence. It was the kind of quiet that follows a thunderclap, when the world seems to hold its breath. Every eye was fixed on him, a hundred pairs of pupils tracking his every move.
He walked past the rows of his peers, a sea of faces frozen in various states of shock. He saw Elara Vance, her mouth slightly agape, her earlier determination replaced by confusion. He saw Baelin Thorngage, who had always ignored him, now staring with an intensity usually reserved for complex spell diagrams. And he saw Kael, whose face was a bloodless mask of disbelief. The brawny apprentice looked as if the very foundations of his world had been pulverized, his smug confidence replaced by a dawning, primal fear.
Su Yuan kept his own expression neutral, his posture straight, his steps even. On the outside, he was a calm enigma. Inside, the mind of 'Void' was running a thousand simulations.
*Assessment results: Paradoxical. Purity: Impossible. Capacity: Unreadable. This outcome exceeds the initial objective of 'establishing a new baseline.' It has created a mystery. Mysteries invite scrutiny. Scrutiny is a threat.*
He had intended to craft a believable lie, to paint himself as a late bloomer. Instead, he had presented the academy with a miracle wrapped in a logical contradiction. He had hoped for a scalpel to carve out a new reputation; he had accidentally used a sledgehammer, and now the entire structure of their understanding was fractured.
Valerius led the way, his back ramrod straight. The instructor didn't speak, but the tension radiating from him was a palpable force. He was a man who prized order and logic above all else, and Su Yuan had just presented him with an event that defied both.
They left the Great Hall, the heavy oak doors closing behind them with a definitive *thud*, shutting out the stunned silence. The hallways of the academy were quieter, but Su Yuan could still feel the phantom weight of those stares. He was no longer Su Yuan, the 'Empty Vessel.' He was Su Yuan, the 'Anomaly.' The latter was infinitely more dangerous.
Valerius's office was exactly as Su Yuan had imagined it would be: spartan, functional, and severe. There were no comfortable chairs or decorative baubles. The walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with shelves crammed with books, their spines bearing titles in stark, blocky runes. The air smelled of old paper, ozone, and a faint, sharp scent of antiseptic potion. The only furniture was a large, unadorned mahogany desk and two stiff-backed chairs. The room was a reflection of the man himself—a space dedicated entirely to the pursuit of knowledge, stripped of all sentiment.
"Sit," Valerius commanded, gesturing to the chair opposite his desk. He did not sit himself, but began to pace behind the desk, his hands clasped behind his back. The rhythmic tap of his boots on the stone floor was the only sound.
Su Yuan sat. He placed his hands on his knees, his back straight, adopting the posture of a respectful, if nervous, student. He was playing a role, and consistency was key.
Valerius stopped pacing and fixed his piercing gaze on Su Yuan. "Explain it."
It wasn't a question. It was a demand for the universe to make sense again.
"Sir?" Su Yuan asked, his voice deliberately pitched to sound uncertain.
"Do not play the fool with me, boy," Valerius snapped, his voice sharp as broken glass. "The scroll incident two nights ago. Now this… this circus in the Great Hall. You go from having the mana capacity of a child to producing a reading that breaks a Master-Grade Assessment Crystal's metrics. Absolute purity? An Archon-Tier capacity fluctuation? These are not things that simply *happen*."
He leaned forward, placing his palms flat on the desk. His eyes narrowed. "You are hiding something. A powerful artifact? A forbidden ritual? Did you make a pact? I will have the truth."
Here it was. The crossroads. Su Yuan's mind worked with cold, machinelike efficiency. Denying everything would only increase suspicion. Admitting to the System was out of the question. He needed a new narrative, one that could encompass both the explosion and the assessment. A narrative that was fantastic, yet more believable than the impossible reality.
"I… I don't know," Su Yuan began, letting a tremor enter his voice. He looked down at his own hands, as if seeing them for the first time. "Two nights ago… when that beast attacked me, I thought I was going to die. I was terrified. It felt like something… snapped. Inside me. When I used that scroll, it felt like a dam broke."
He looked up, meeting Valerius's skeptical gaze. "Today, at the crystal… I just tried to do what you said. I reached for my mana, and it was… different. It felt… clean. Quiet."
He was weaving a story of a traumatic awakening. A classic trope, but one that had a basis in magical theory. Extreme stress had, on rare occasions, been known to unlock a mage's latent potential. It was a one-in-a-million occurrence, but a million was a far more palatable number than infinity.
Valerius stared at him for a long, silent moment, his expression unreadable. He was processing the story, weighing it against the facts. It was a plausible, if highly improbable, explanation. It fit. A sudden, uncontrolled awakening of power would explain the destructive force of the [Glow] spell. And if that awakening had somehow altered the very nature of his mana core, it might explain the bizarre assessment results.
"An awakening," Valerius said, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. He clearly disliked the lack of concrete, verifiable data. He straightened up, his decision made. "The readings from the Great Hall are unreliable. The crystal is a delicate instrument, designed to measure potential within expected parameters. Your mana, by your own admission, is now… abnormal. It may have generated a false positive. We will conduct another test. Here. Now."
He walked to one of the bookshelves and pressed a hidden rune. A section of the wall slid aside with a low grinding sound, revealing a small, shielded alcove. Inside, resting on a velvet pedestal, was a sphere of obsidian-black crystal, roughly the size of a human head. It was crisscrossed with silver filaments that pulsed with a slow, rhythmic light.
"This is a Mana Stress Orb," Valerius explained, his voice all business. "It is not as subtle as the Assessment Crystal, but it is far more durable. It does not measure purity or potential. It measures one thing and one thing only: raw power output. It is designed to withstand the full, focused blast of an Archmage."
He levitated the orb from its alcove and placed it on the desk between them. It hummed with contained energy.
"Your story is that a dam broke," Valerius said, his eyes locking onto Su Yuan's. "I want you to open the floodgates. Place your hand on this orb and channel your mana into it. No tricks. No finesse. Just raw, unfiltered power. Show me the strength that you claim has awakened within you. Do not stop until I tell you to, or until you are completely drained. Is that understood?"
Su Yuan's inner 'Void' analyzed the situation. This was the true test. Valerius wanted to see his limits. He wanted to quantify the unquantifiable. If Su Yuan stopped too early, it would prove he had no real depth of power. If he showed too much…
But he had no limits. That was the problem.
He couldn't just keep pouring mana in forever. That would be a confession of his true nature. He had to give them a result that was both shocking and finite. He needed to be a deep well, not a boundless ocean. He needed to give them a number, a ceiling, something their minds could accept.
And he had an idea. An absurd, reckless idea. What if he didn't just meet their expectations, but shattered them—literally?
"I understand," Su Yuan said, his voice steady.
He rose from his chair and approached the desk. The obsidian orb radiated a faint coolness. He took a deep breath, playing the part of the nervous apprentice about to attempt something beyond his skill. Then, he placed his right palm on its smooth, dark surface.
"Begin," Valerius commanded, crossing his arms.
Su Yuan closed his eyes and reached into his core. This time, he didn't draw out a single, perfected drop. He opened a channel, a conduit from the infinite sea within him into the orb. He started small, letting a steady trickle of mana flow, equivalent to what a top student like Kael might produce.
The silver filaments on the orb began to glow, shifting from their soft, pulsing white to a bright, steady yellow. A low hum filled the room.
"More," Valerius ordered, his eyes narrowed, unimpressed.
Su Yuan widened the channel. The flow of mana doubled, then tripled. The orb's hum deepened in pitch, and the yellow light intensified, taking on a greenish hue. This was now approaching the output of a senior student. Su Yuan had been channeling for a solid minute, a length of time that would have left Kael panting and on the verge of mana exhaustion. Su Yuan hadn't even begun to feel a strain.
"Is this all?" Valerius pressed, his voice laced with skepticism. "This is respectable for a sudden awakening, but it doesn't explain the destruction of a ward-wall."
He thought it was a bluff. He thought Su Yuan's well was already running dry.
*He requires a more dramatic data point,* 'Void' noted internally. *The request is for the 'floodgates.' Very well.*
Su Yuan gritted his teeth, not from strain, but for show. He let out a sharp breath, as if exerting himself. And then he opened the channel wide.
It was no longer a stream. It was a river. A torrent. A tidal wave of pure energy slammed into the Mana Stress Orb.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
*VMMMMMMMM!*
The low hum became a deafening, high-pitched shriek that vibrated through the stone floor. The orb exploded with light, no longer yellow or green but a blinding, ferocious blue that bleached all color from the room, throwing Valerius's face into a stark mask of shadow and light. The silver filaments on its surface burned white-hot, like the filament of a lightbulb fed a thousand times its intended voltage.
Valerius's eyes widened in shock. He took an involuntary step back, his professional composure finally cracking under the sheer scale of the power being displayed. This wasn't the out-of-control surge of an apprentice; this was the sustained, overwhelming power of a battlemage in the throes of combat. And it wasn't stopping. It wasn't even wavering.
"Enough!" Valerius shouted, his voice barely audible over the orb's scream. "Stop the flow, boy! That's enough!"
But Su Yuan didn't stop. He was committed now. He feigned a look of intense, sweaty concentration, his eyes squeezed shut, as if he had lost control of the power he had unleashed. In reality, he was calmly maintaining the flow, watching the orb's reaction with the detached curiosity of a researcher. The silver filaments were beginning to smoke, and hairline fractures, like tiny veins of black lightning, were starting to appear across the obsidian surface.
The pressure in the room became immense. Books rattled on their shelves. The very air seemed to thicken, crackling with raw, untamed magic.
Valerius drew his own mana, preparing to erect a shield. He realized, with a dawning horror, that the boy wasn't showing off. He genuinely couldn't stop. The awakened power was too much for his untrained mind to control. This was a runaway arcane reaction.
*CRACK.*
A sound, sharp and final, cut through the noise.
It wasn't an explosion. It was an implosion of light and sound. The blinding blue radiance vanished in an instant, the deafening shriek ceased, and the room was plunged into an eerie, ringing silence.
Su Yuan collapsed to his knees, panting heavily, his act of exhaustion perfect in its execution. He looked up at the desk.
The Mana Stress Orb was still there. But it was no longer a perfect, black sphere. A massive, deep fissure ran through its center, branching out into a spiderweb of smaller cracks across its entire surface. The silver filaments were dark and dead. The light within was extinguished.
He had broken it. An artifact designed to withstand the power of an Archmage, shattered by the continuous output of a first-year apprentice.
Silence reigned in the office for a full ten seconds. Valerius stood frozen, his hand still raised to cast a shield that was no longer needed. He stared at the ruined orb, then at the 'exhausted' boy on the floor, and a new theory, terrible and magnificent, began to form in his mind.
The boy wasn't a liar. He wasn't using an artifact.
He *was* the artifact. A vessel for a catastrophic, untamed power that had lain dormant his entire life, only to be violently awakened by a brush with death. The impossible purity, the fluctuating capacity, the overwhelming output… it all pointed to the same conclusion.
Su Yuan wasn't a late bloomer. He was a natural disaster in human form.
Slowly, Valerius lowered his hand. The stern, demanding instructor was gone. In his place was a man looking at a live, ticking bomb and realizing his job was not to interrogate it, but to figure out how to disarm it—or at the very least, how to aim it.
"Get up," Valerius said, his voice quiet, stripped of its earlier anger and filled with a new, heavy gravity.
Su Yuan staggered to his feet, leaning on the desk for support.
"From this moment on, you will cease your regular studies," Valerius declared, his gaze intense. "Your ability is too volatile. Your control is nonexistent. Leaving you in the general populace is an unacceptable risk." He paused, his eyes sweeping over Su Yuan, as if re-evaluating every inch of him. "You will report to me, here, every morning before sunrise. You will become my personal apprentice. We will not be studying theory from books. We will be forging you a cage for the storm you hold inside. Your first lesson will be control. Your only lesson will be control. Until you can summon and dismiss your power as easily as breathing, you are a danger to yourself and everyone in this academy."
It was not a punishment. It was a promotion born of absolute terror.
Su Yuan had done it. He had shattered their expectations. He had replaced the mystery of his talent with the far more manageable problem of his lack of control. He was no longer a puzzle to be solved, but a weapon to be aimed.
"Yes, Instructor," Su Yuan managed to say, his voice a hoarse whisper.
He had traded the scorn of his peers for the obsessive focus of one of the academy's most powerful mages. It was a dangerous, high-stakes gambit, but it was a victory.
As he was dismissed, walking on unsteady legs out of the office, his hand slipped into his pocket. He hadn't even noticed the daily reset happen during the interrogation. His mind brushed against the System interface, and a new line of text glowed in his vision.
`[Item: A Single, Perfectly Normal Sock]`
`[Quantity: ∞]`
`[Description: Clean, grey, and utterly unremarkable. Its partner is likely lost to the great abyss.]`
Su Yuan almost smiled. The universe, it seemed, still had a sense of humor. He had a god-like power core, a terrifying new master, and now, an infinite supply of single socks.
His path forward was going to be anything but normal.