The iron doors of the Labyrinth did not simply shut behind them. They bit into the stone floor with a finality that cut the initiates off from the world of light. In an instant, the Grand Arena, the sun-kissed spires, and the watchful eyes of the faculty gave way to a crushing, absolute velvet darkness.
Darkness had been his first foe to many, but to Aleric, it was nothing more than a change in the medium of his calculations.
He stood perfectly still, his breathing a slow and rhythmic process that did little more than stir the stale air. He did not move a muscle. He was listening to the silence. It was not silent. Beneath the muffled sobs of a few noble-born initiates fifty paces behind him, there was a sound—a high-frequency vibration that had the effect of a needle pressed against the soft tissue of his eardrum. It was the sound of ten thousand glass-thin wings beating in the rafters.
The Void-Phages had been woken by his intrusion.
Aleric could feel the microscopic point of contact on the side of his neck. He did not flinch. His red eyes were open in the dimness, seeing nothing, analyzing everything. One scout Phage had landed. It was one of the translucent, eyeless creatures, its thorax glowing with faint, sickly blue luminescence. It was not biting for blood. Its proboscis was hovering just above his skin, drinking in the microscopic plumes of raw mana that Aleric's body naturally vented as a byproduct of living.
"Error in initial projection," Aleric thought, his mind cold and metallic. "I have honed my efficiency to ninety-five percent. In the open world, that is elite. In this chamber, that five percent of waste is a beacon."
Behind him, the panic broke out. A noble student, unable to endure the sensory deprivation, lit up his mana shield. It was a beautiful, shimmering dome of translucent gold—a testament to his expensive tutoring. But to the Phages, it was a dinner bell. The raw, unrefined mana-fumes rising off the shield were so thick they were practically visible as a greasy smoke in the dark.
The humming in the rafters turned into a roar. A glass-like wave of thousands of Phages descended from the ceiling. They did not attack the student; they attacked the shield. They clung to the golden dome, their abdominal sacs swelling as they vacuumed the raw mana directly out of the magic. The shield flickered, groaned, and then shattered—not from force, but from being drained of its essence.
Aleric closed his eyes. It was time to adapt.
Sub-Dermal Loop: Initiation.
He visualized his mana-channels not as open vents, but as a closed, pressurized circuit. He manualy rerouted the flow, forcing the energy away from his skin and deep into the density of his bone marrow and muscle fibers. He used his own physical mass as a leaden casket for his energy.
The pain was agonizing. It was as if he was swallowing liquid iron, a searing heat that emanated from the inside out as his body fought to resist the pressure. His skin turned cold to the touch. The scout Phage on his neck went rigid, its sensors suddenly detecting nothing but dead rock. Disappointed, it released and spiraled towards the brighter, louder feast behind him.
But the pressure building within Aleric was becoming unbearable. He could not maintain this condition for long; the heat would soon burst his own veins. He reached into his core and deliberately created a small, focused droplet of raw mana in the palm of his hand.
Quickly, he cast a thin layer of magic around it—a brittle, crystalline sphere that enclosed the raw mana within. With a flick of his wrist, he propelled this Mana-Ball thirty meters down the left-hand corridor. When it struck the far wall, the magical barrier burst, releasing a focused "scent cloud" of raw mana.
The humming pitch of the maze changed in an instant. Half the swarm in the corridor turned away from Aleric, pursuing the decoy.
"Summoning."
The word was a silent vibration in his chest. Tracker and Unit 06 stepped out of his shadow. Since they were made of "processed magic"—a completed shadow matrix with no raw magic leakage—they were ghosts even to the Phages.
"Roam. Fifty-meter perimeter. Identify physical tripwires. Find the primary junction."
The two shades disappeared into the darkness. A sharp pulse of data slammed into Aleric's mind from the upper reaches of the Academy. One of the four units Aleric had left behind in the Grand Arena's rafters had checked in.
Shade 03 Report: The Headmaster has activated the Second Scrying Mirror. They are seeking your signature.
The faculty weren't fools. They would expect the top contestants to have some form of sub-dermal insulation or core-locking. Aleric's signature didn't appear as a corpse on the scrying mirrors. Instead, it appeared as a sharp, pulsing line of absolute stability—a "Ghost State."
From the touch of Tracker's vibration, Aleric moved. He walked with a ghost-like fluidity, stepping over jagged obsidian shards and avoiding pressure plate traps that his shades detected in the darkness.
He came to a massive, circular door of solid granite: the First Gate. There were no handles, only a small, crystalline indentation in the center designed to accept a mana-pulse. It was a filter. To pass, a student had to feed the door exactly enough energy to trigger the mechanism—but not so much that they attracted the swarm hovering just inches above.
Aleric looked up. The ceiling here was a solid, vibrating mass of translucent wings.
"Summoning."
Tracker emerged from the stone floor, its shadow-hand pressing firmly against the granite. Aleric used the shade as a bridge. He drew a sliver of mana from his sub-dermal loop, turning it into a high-density needle of magic. He pushed the energy through the shade.
The crystal in the door began to glow a faint, steady amber. There was no "leak." Every single particle of energy was being vacuumed directly from Aleric's core into the door's mechanism. On the scrying mirrors above, Aleric's signature remained a geometric proof of his control.
A few Phages dropped from the ceiling, sensing the intent of magic, but they found no "scent" to latch onto. They spiraled around Aleric's head, their wings brushing against his hair, but he remained a statue.
Suddenly, the sound of heavy footfalls echoed from the tunnel entrance. Valerius came out of the darkness, his face pale and slick with sweat. He was hiding his mana core behind a crude "Iron-Wall" seal, which, although effective, made a loud noise.
"You, you commoner, get out of the way," Valerius growled. "I won't let my time-score be ruined by your slow and pathetic trickery."
Valerius moved towards the gate, his own hand glowing with a brilliant, unstable mana charge, ready to "slam" the gate open.
Aleric, however, didn't turn around, calculating the trajectory of Valerius' leakage.
Input at 92%. Impact in three seconds. Valerius' leakage will trigger a Sector-Wide Swarm.
Aleric injected the final 8% of the toll into the gate. The granite gears creaked in protest. Just as the gate swung open, Aleric didn't walk through—it vanished into the opening just as Valerius' hand made contact with the crystal.
A brilliant flash of raw, wasted mana exploded from Valerius' palm as he over-fed the lock. The roar of the Phages above was instantaneous.
Aleric stood on the other side of the closing stone slab, his ledger perfectly balanced, as the screams of the "Elite" began anew behind him.