NOVPUBTarkos turned to face him now, a hint of warning in his expression. "Yinfrost caters more to women than men. The city is steeped in Yin qi. Unless a man is practicing the Jade Serpent cultivation style, he'll freeze into a statue within minutes."
Victor's brow lifted. "Sounds like my kind of place. Maybe they just want us to chill out, literally."
Tarkos didn't laugh, but the corner of his mouth twitched. "We'll need Yin Jaded Robes. I have a few contacts who can get us a pair, but you should prepare. If I reach the city before you return. I'll make arrangements."
Victor gave Tarkos a wave. "Alright, deal. Keep my seat warm. Or...cold, I guess."
He brought up his logout interface, and the world faded.
---
The warmth of the dorm struck him first. Afternoon sunlight trickled through the half-open blinds. He stretched beneath his blanket and blinked the real world into focus.
Kairo was seated across the room, focused on a stack of books lined up before him. Always serious...
Victor rubbed his eyes and groaned, "Back to the mundane."
His watch buzzed repeatedly. Tapping it, a holographic screen flickered to life.
Selene: Hey! Wanna hang?
Selene: Or are you still playing the role of Sleeping Beauty?
Selene: You better not be ghosting me. I know where you sleep.
Victor chuckled and replied, "Just woke up. Gimme an hour?"
Selene: Fine. You get a 60-minute pass. Clock is ticking.
Victor set the watch aside and shuffled to the mini-fridge for a quick brunch: a mana-infused snack bar and half a carton of juice. He quietly pulled his phone from beneath his mattress and connected it to the Academy's secure internal network. A few swipes later, he was greeted with a surge of notifications.
Subscribers: 971,204
His jaw slackened. "What the—?"
Just days ago he was hovering near 600k. Now? The numbers had skyrocketed. His video content—stealth recordings of Academy training routines, dorm antics, and lectures—had gone viral. Forums were ablaze with theories, edits, and admiration.
Some clips were funny, like Reed getting his sword stuck in the mud. Others were serious training montages showing Aria performing high-speed techniques or Selene effortlessly vaulting over obstacles.
Victor tapped on the comments beneath his latest video:
"Anyone else crushing hard on Amara? Those green eyes, bro..."
"Reed's a comedic legend. We need a blooper compilation."
"Yo Victor go live!! We need to see this stuff in real-time!"
He smirked. Live streaming wouldn't be easy.
Every time he recorded footage, he had to shroud the camera in his qi, especially in lecture halls or combat zones to cloak it. He also made it float sometimes so he couldn't imagine how much more stressful a live stream would be.
He replied to one comment: "Might go live during the legacy competition. Stay tuned."
Before he knew it, the hour had passed.
Selene: "Time's up, Sleeping Beauty. I'm outside your dorm. Let's go cause trouble."
Victor chuckled and quickly got dressed in a loose-fitting combat shirt and academy-standard boots. He tucked his phone away and stepped out.
Selene leaned against the wall, wearing a short red jacket over her uniform and a pair of enchanted earrings that glinted under the hallway lights. She popped a lollipop from her mouth and grinned. "Let's go. I found something new."
"Should I be scared?"
"Absolutely."
She led him across the campus, past dorms and sparring yards, down a lesser-known stairwell that twisted underground. They passed warning signs that were either old or mostly faded.
Victor glanced around. "Is this, like...restricted?"
"If it was truly restricted, the signs would glow," Selene winked. "Trust me. It's mostly forgotten."
The air grew cooler as they descended, and a quiet vibration reverberated from the stone walls. At the end of the stairwell was a large chamber with a cracked arena floor.
"Old training chamber," she said while twirling her lollipop. "Used by third-years years ago. But it still works. Sorta."
Victor raised a brow. "What do you mean sorta?"
Selene pulled a small glowing crystal from her pocket and chucked it into the center of the room. It clinked, pulsed, and then shattered. The air warped.
Suddenly, dozens of training bots materialized, some humanoid, others resembling magical beasts.
"Combat playground," she said proudly. "And it's just the two of us. Wanna spar or team up?"
Victor drew his standard-issue blade and twirled it. "Let's see what you've got, red menace."
...
...
Victor trudged into his dorm room well past 9pm with his legs dragging like sandbags.
Every bone in his body ached from the madness that was a full day spent with Selene.
The girl was pure chaos wrapped in sugar and sarcasm. First, she'd made him climb what she dubbed "Mount Suck-It-Up," a rocky formation in a secluded part of the Academy that was strictly off-limits.
Then she started a shouting match with a group of high-ranking healer girls just because one of them made a snide remark about Victor being the "pervert from Camp 11." The shouting match quickly escalated when Selene socked one of them straight in the nose. Blood, insults, and laughter followed.
Victor had barely kept up. He still had bruises on his arms from slipping down rough stone paths and his throat felt hoarse from all the defending he had to do. Now all he wanted to do was flop on his bed, log into Ascendant Realms, and finally complete his travel with Tarkos.
He was just about to pull his bedsheet over his head when Kairo stirred in the sitting area. The guy, who had been seated cross-legged in front of a mound of books for hours, finally shut one of the massive tomes and stood up.
"Finally done," Kairo muttered while stretching his back with a crack.
Victor peeked from under the sheet. "Done with what?"
Kairo looked at him with a mix of smugness and exhaustion. "The assignment."
Victor blinked. "What assignment?"
Kairo raised an eyebrow. "The one from General Studies. You know, the one Instructor Kaelani Vos assigned two weeks ago? Locate the Uncharted Wilds on the present-day world map. It's 20 marks. Due on Monday."
Victor bolted upright like someone had lit a fire under his sheets. "Shit! Shit! Shit! Did you get it?"
"After visiting three different libraries, sifting through outdated maps, cross-referencing geological records, and practically living with my face buried in pages, yeah. I got it."
Victor clapped his hands together in a pleading gesture. "Bro, you're my lifesaver. Pass it over. Let me copy real quick."
Kairo's face remained as unreadable as ever. "No."
Victor blinked. "No?"
"You heard me. I didn't break my back doing this just so someone who spent the day sucking face with a chaotic demon in a skirt gets a free ride."
Victor chuckled while scratching the back of his neck. "Okay, fair, but come on. You can't let me fail."
Kairo crossed his arms. "Have you even stepped foot in a single library since we arrived at the Academy?"
Victor went quiet.
"Exactly. Strength isn't everything, Victor. Knowledge is power. You want to survive out there? Start acting like it."
With that, he packed the towering stack of books into his arms and walked out the door. Victor followed a few seconds later, only to find the hallway empty. Kairo had vanished.
Victor let out a long, theatrical sigh. "This is the universe punishing me for being hot, isn't it?"
Still, there was no use whining. If he didn't get that assignment done, he'd get a zero. And from what he'd heard, Instructor Kaelani Vos took her 20-mark assignments very seriously. So, with reluctant determination, he got dressed, grabbed his student card, and headed toward the nearest library.
He wasn't sure what he expected when he stepped into the Academy's Archive Spire, but it sure as hell wasn't this.
The place was massive. As tall as a cathedral and layered in ascending rings that spiraled upward like a coil of knowledge.
Books floated in neat, glowing rows, arranged by subject, date, and restricted access. Barricades divided the space based on rank. F-Ranked students could only access the bottom floor. B-Ranked students like Victor could go as high as the third ring.
He placed his palm on the identification scanner, and the barricade shimmered before parting to let him through. A floating orb greeted him and requested the category of his research. Victor told it: modern geography, post-Terraform Event era, classified realms.
The orb blinked twice and zipped upward before returning with a map the size of a small table and a series of dusty books.
Victor sighed. This was going to be a long night.
He started by flipping through books with titles like "Post-Portal Continental Shifts," "Lost Territories and Forbidden Biomes," and "Chronicles of the Eastern Rifts." 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘱𝘶𝑏.𝑐𝘰𝑚
The deeper he read, the more disturbed he became.
The world outside the domed cities wasn't just dangerous—it was an alien hellscape. Certain forests grew roots that could trap vehicles and crush them. Lakes turned into mirages the moment you reached them, vanishing into smoke and revealing mana-devouring sinkholes beneath.
Mountains that changed shape based on celestial phases. And then there were places where time didn't flow properly—walk in during sunset and come out to find a year had passed.
