While Michael's "Team Anomaly" executed their flawless, resource-hoarding clears and Leon's "Azure Blade" powered through with heroic, mana-draining effort, the rest of the Academy's elite were locked in their own desperate struggles.

The Trial Tower was broadcasting rankings in real-time, and for the ambitious, this was a special kind of hell.

[Floor 2: Wave Survival - Team Stormshield]

"RAAAH!" Aiden Stromfang roared, his twin short-swords crackling with a furious, high-voltage discharge.

He blurred forward, a whirlwind of lightning, and tore through the last F-Rank Wild Hound.

The beast dissolved into data particles just as its claws raked harmlessly across Chris Blackthorn's raised shield.

CLANG.

Chris grunted, planting his feet. "That's the last one. Wave three cleared." He was breathing heavily, his entire shield arm aching from the non-stop impacts.

His team—a balanced mix of two tanks and three melee DPS, built for brawling—was exhausted, their uniforms virtually smoking from mana overuse.

"Hah! See that? Barely broke a sweat!" Aiden cheered, deactivating his [Lightning Cloak].

The moment he did, he staggered, leaning on his swords for support. "Okay... maybe a little sweat."

"We're at 40% mana, Aiden," Chris said, his voice a low rumble.

"And my shield's durability is down. That was... inefficient."

"Inefficient? We looked awesome!" Aiden protested, before his stomach growled.

"Man, I'm starving. Potions, potions!"

He and the others pulled out the standard-issue blue vials and chugged them. The mana bars on their HUDs refilled, but a new, sickening icon appeared.

[Debuff Acquired: System Sickness. -20% Mana Regeneration for 30 minutes.]

"Ugh," Aiden groaned, rubbing his temples. "I hate this part."

"Checking ranks," Chris said, ignoring the complaint.

He pulled up the Tower leaderboard on his interface. His stoic expression faltered, his eyes widening almost imperceptibly.

"What? What is it? Did we drop?" Aiden scrambled over.

He stared at the screen.

__________________________________

[FLOOR 2 - SQUAD RANKINGS]

Team Anomaly: 18m 22s (BONUS: Flawless, Stance Mastery, Crowd Control)

Team ??? (Eric): 22m 10s

Team ??? (Selena): 23m 45s

Team Azure Blade (Leon): 24m 10s

Team Stormshield (Aiden): 24m 50s

.......

Aiden's brain tried to process the information. He didn't care about beating Eric or Leon by a few seconds.

His eyes were locked on the first line.

"Eighteen minutes?" Aiden said, his voice flat.

Then, it escalated. "EIGHTEEN?! We took almost twenty-five! And... 'Flawless'?!"

He looked at his own team, who were bruised, bleeding virtual blood, and sick from potions.

"How in the hell did that team of rejects get a 'Flawless' bonus?!"

Chris just stared at the name. "Michael Wilson."

He remembered the boy from the Labyrinth, the quiet, unnerving calm.

He'd seen Michael's strategy of using Alex as a lure. But this... this was different.

"Look at their mana expenditure," Chris said, tapping a sub-menu.

"Average... 25%. Kaelen Vance, the healer, used the most. Michael Wilson... used 0%."

Aiden's jaw dropped. "Zero? He didn't do anything?! He just let his reject team carry him?!"

"No," Chris said slowly, a new, dawning respect in his eyes.

"He didn't need to do anything. That's the terrifying part. His strategy was so perfect that he, the leader, was never required to intervene. That's... that's a different kind of strength, Aiden."

Aiden looked at the screen, at the humiliating gap in their times, and a slow, feral grin spread across his face.

"That crazy, Cursed-King bastard... he's not a fluke. He's a monster." He cracked his knuckles, the [System Sickness] debuff suddenly feeling irrelevant.

"Alright! I'm fired up! Let's get to Floor 3! I'm gonna catch him!"

[Floor 2: Wave Survival - Team Regal Fire]

"Hold your ground! [Firewall]! Now!" Lyra Braveheart shrieked, slamming her staff down. A wall of roiling flame erupted, bisecting the plaza and forcing the second wave of Hounds to split.

"Your mana," Aurelia Miller stated, her voice icy calm from the back line. She loosed three, precise [Ice Lances] that shattered the legs of a flanking Hound.

"You are at 35%, Lyra. You cannot afford another spell of that scale."

"Shut up and fight, Miller!" Lyra snapped back, her face flushed with exertion and rage.

"You want them to overwhelm us? Your stupid ice needles aren't stopping them!"

"My 'ice needles' are surgically crippling their charge, allowing our tank to breathe," Aurelia retorted, her rapier flashing as she parried a lunge that had slipped past.

"Your [Firewall] just burned half our remaining resources to make a pretty light show. We are clearing this floor, but our efficiency is abysmal."

Their team a volatile mix of Lyra's raw power, Aurelia's cold tactics, and three other high-strung nobles—was a dysfunctional, powerful mess.

They cleared the final wave, but only after their tank's shield was broken, two members were in the "danger" zone, and all five of them had to use mana potions.

They collapsed near the fountain, glaring at each other.

"Well," Lyra panted, "we're alive. No thanks to your micromanaging."

"We're alive," Aurelia corrected, already cleaning her blade, "because my 'micromanaging' accounted for your emotional overspending."

She didn't even look at Lyra. Her interface was already open. "Checking rankings."

The silence stretched. Lyra, annoyed at being ignored, stomped over. "What? Did that bastard Leon beat us?"

She looked at the screen. Her eyes widened. She saw their team, "Regal Fire," ranked 6th. She saw Leon's team at 4th.

And she saw "Team Anomaly" at 1st.

Lyra was silent for a full three seconds. Then she pointed a trembling finger at the screen.

"What. Is. That."

"That," Aurelia said, her voice a low, dangerous monolith of pure, analytical disbelief, "is an impossibility."

She tapped the sub-menu, her eyes scanning the data feed. "Flawless clear. 18 minutes. Minimal mana usage. Michael Wilson, 0%."

"He's cheating," Lyra stated, her voice flat. "It's the only answer. That... commoner... is using a system exploit. There is no other logical way for that collection of F-Rank failures to outperform me."

"No," Aurelia whispered, her mind racing, connecting dots. The Labyrinth. The Spirit Contract failure. The tamed C-Rank beast. The... efficiency.

"It's not an exploit. It's a script. He's not fighting the Tower, Lyra. He knows the Tower. He knew exactly where those Goblins would spawn on Floor 1, didn't he? He knew how the Hounds' AI worked, so he designed a perfect counter-strategy. He is... he is playing a different game."

The implications of this terrified Aurelia far more than any monster.

It meant Michael wasn't just a rival; he was an unknown variable that rendered all her calculations, all her noble-bred strategies, completely obsolete.

Lyra just scowled. "I don't care if he's cheating or scripting. He's making me look bad. When I see him, I'm going to burn that smug, commoner face of his."

"You'll have to get in line," Aurelia murmured, staring at Michael's name. "This changes everything."

[Floor 2: Wave Survival - Team Twilight Grace]

Selena Veylan's scythe, a whisper of shadow and light, cut through the last Hound. Elara Moonshade, standing beside her, loosed a final arrow that pinned its partner to the ground.

Their team—a graceful, elegant, and surprisingly lethal combination of elven archery, royal magic, and two stoic Class B tanks—cleared the floor with minimal damage, but high mana cost.

"A full clear," Selena said, her voice soft but relieved. She sent a pulse of [Holy Light] over her team, healing the minor scrapes on their tanks.

"Well done, everyone. A most... bracing, encounter."

"Their pack tactics were impressive," Elara noted, her elven eyes already scanning the dark alleys.

"They fought with a singular, desperate hunger. It felt… unnatural."

"It's the Tower," Selena said. "Its constructs are not meant to be natural."

She pulled up the rankings, a polite smile on her face, expecting to see her and Leon near the top.

The smile froze.

Elara leaned in, her gaze sharpening. "Team Anomaly. Again."

Selena's mind flashed back to the Labyrinth, to Michael saving her from the shadows, to the dark, feral beast on his shoulder at the Sanctuary.

She remembered her fear for him, the pity she'd felt.

That pity now felt... foolish. Misplaced.

"Flawless," Elara whispered, her perception more keen than any human's. "No damage. Low mana. Selena... that is not the mark of a 'Cursed King.' That is the mark of a 'Perfect Commander.'"

She looked at Selena, her ancient, elven wisdom seeing past the human politics.

"His 'curse'... his 'failure'... I believe it may all be a diversion. He is hiding his true strength. And he is hiding it very, very well."

Selena stared at his name. The boy who seemed so out of place, so awkward, so... common. He had just, without fanfare, outperformed every noble, every prodigy, every "hero" in their class, twice in a row.

"Michael..." she whispered, a knot of confusion and a strange, unwelcome flicker of... admiration... tightening in her chest. "What in the world are you?"

[Floor 3: The Hidden Path]

The teleport was jarring. All at once, the different teams found themselves in the maze of crumbling stone corridors. The air was damp and smelled of mildew and F-Rank bats.

Aiden's team charged forward. "Let's find the exit! Last one there is a rotten Goblin egg!"

Lyra's team bickered. "This way, you idiot!" "No, the runes clearly point this way, Braveheart, if you'd bother to read!"

Selena's team moved with quiet, elven grace, Elara in the lead, her hands glowing as she read the "natural" mana flow in the stone.

They were all moving, all struggling, all competing, all lost in the maze.

And then, it came.

A digitized chime echoed, not in their ears, but in their very minds. A system-wide alert that overrode all other notifications.

[SYSTEM-WIDE ALERT: Team Anomaly has discovered a Hidden Passage!]

Aiden stopped mid-charge. Lyra and Aurelia stopped mid-argument. Selena and Elara froze, their hands glowing.

A what?

Aurelia was the first to react, sprinting to the wall her map designated as the alert's origin. It was... just a wall. Blank, damp stone.

"There's nothing here!" she yelled, her voice echoing with frustration.

"No mechanism! No flawed runes! It's a dead end!"

And then, as they all stared in baffled fury at their various blank walls, the second alert came, like a slap in the face.

[SYSTEM-WIDE ALERT: Team Anomaly has defeated 'Secret Mini-Golem' (F-Rank)!]

[SYSTEM-WIDE ALERT: Team Anomaly has acquired [F-Grade Runic Steel]!]

The corridors were silent.

Aiden, for the first time in his life, was speechless.

Lyra let out a scream of pure, unadulterated rage that sent a cloud of bats shrieking from the ceiling.

Selena just stared at the wall, her mind blank.

Aurelia Miller, the logical prodigy, slammed her fist into the solid stone wall, her knuckles cracking, her cold composure finally, irrevocably, shattered.

"Michael... Wilson..." she seethed, her voice a low, dangerous hiss.

"You are a cheat."

(To be Continue)

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