Winston stared at the word and his mind went blank for a moment.

He wasn’t stupid. Bottom of the class academically, sure but he knew the grade system well. Every student at Nightwing did. There were four class grades: Normal, Rare, Epic, and Sacred. That was it. That was the full list. Sacred was the top. Sacred was what the supervisor had been hinting at when his eyes drifted toward Freya.

But Legendary wasn’t a grade. It wasn’t supposed to exist.

’Is this a new grade? Something above Sacred?’

He couldn’t wrap his head around it. As a Fortunate, the realistic ceiling for his awakening had always been Rare. Maybe Epic if luck swung hard in his favor. But that was it. After all there was no bloodline that had been refining the Trait factor across decades. Just him, alone, starting from zero.

And yet.

Winston forced himself to breathe. This wasn’t the time to spiral. He still had fifteen minutes before he fully crossed into the Astral Heaven and completed his First Entry. Fifteen minutes to read every detail, absorb every mechanic, and figure out exactly what he was working with. He pulled up the class description and realization details without wasting another second.

[Legendary Class: Soul Emperor]

[Description: A class of absolute dominance. The Soul Emperor represents the pinnacle of authority over the fundamental essence of existence. Through the principle of Sovereignty, the world is no longer a battlefield, but a court where the user’s will is the ultimate law.]

[First Realization: Soul Garden]

[Mastery: 5] [0%]

[Effect: Converts the user’s inner consciousness into a sanctuary-graveyard for the fallen. When the user delivers a killing blow to a powerful being, their soul is "planted" within the Garden rather than passing into the afterlife.]

[Active Skill: Soul Burn]

[Effect: Forcibly ignites a selected soul from the Garden, converting its essence into volatile spiritual fuel. This energy can be used to reinforce the user’s Realization or supercharge a spell to devastating levels.]

[Passive Skill: Life Tithe]

[Effect: An absolute auto-resurrection. If the user sustains a lethal injury, a soul from the Garden is consumed to instantaneously repair the body to peak condition. Cooldown: one day per slot used.]

[Slot: 0/5]

[Souls: 0]

Winston’s eyes went wide.

’Isn’t this too broken?’

He had studied class descriptions back at the academy and he understood the general range of what a realization could do. He had never seen anything like this. The description alone was more domineering than anything on record, but the description wasn’t even the part that floored him.

It was the skills underneath it.

The ability to enhance spells, that alone was historic. Throughout the entire recorded history of class holders, the ones whose realizations could amplify spells had gone on to carve their names permanently into the history books. It was that rare. His homeroom Teacher at Nightwing had mentioned it exactly once, in passing, as something almost mythical.

Yet Winston had that. Sitting right there in his panel, listed casually under an Active Skill.

But Soul Burn didn’t stop there. The second function, using soul energy to reinforce the Realization itself, was something Winston had never even heard theorized. Boosting a realization through a skill was considered impossible.

Winston stared at the panel.

’Then what exactly am I looking at right now?’

To understand why Soul Burn’s second function broke every known rule, Winston had to think about how Realizations actually worked.

When a holder awakened their class and Trait, they received a Realization. That Realization was everything, it defined their power, their fighting style, their entire path forward.

And the way it grew was through Mastery.

Every five points of Mastery in a first Realization was equal to one level increase relative to monsters.

That was the standard ratio. It would shrink after ranking up and unlocking a second Realization, but for now, five points meant one level.

And the only normal way to gain those points was by killing monsters.

That was how it had always worked. Kill monsters, build Mastery, hit one hundred, attempt a rank-up.

The same system every class holder in history had followed. However Winston’s Realization didn’t follow it.

Soul Garden didn’t just reward kills, it captured souls.

And those captured souls fed directly back into his Mastery. It was temporary, yes, and the boost per soul was smaller than a clean kill.

But the implication was staggering.

If Winston filled all five soul slots, he wouldn’t just be gaining Mastery faster, he’d be fighting above his rank before he even earned the right to.

He’d be hitting harder, surviving longer, outpacing holders who had been grinding the standard way since day one.

’Yeah. This is too broken.’

And that wasn’t even counting the passive.

Life Tithe was its own category of unfair. One soul consumed per use, one day cooldown per slot, those were real limits. Winston wasn’t ignoring them. But five soul slots meant five potential resurrections. Five full recoveries from lethal damage. In the Astral Heaven, where a single wrong move could end a first entry permanently, that wasn’t just safety.

That was freedom.

Most holders entered the gate terrified of dying because death meant it was over. Winston could die, recover, and keep going. More than that, he could take risks other holders wouldn’t dare. He could push into fights slightly above his level, make mistakes, learn from them, and walk away. That kind of opportunity didn’t exist for anyone else. It couldn’t. The system didn’t allow it.

A wide grin spread across Winston’s face before he could stop it.

He let himself have exactly one second of that feeling. Then he reined it in. A class like this could go completely to waste in the hands of someone who got overconfident.

Clear head first. Full analysis second. Then action. He had spent his entire six years at Nightwing being underestimated, the last thing he was going to do now was underestimate the situation himself.

The panel was still open. The class was understood. Now it was time to handle the spell scrolls the academy had given him before the fifteen minutes ran out.

❖❖❖❖

The spell scrolls were next. Winston pulled his focus together and got to work.

Spells were stored blueprints, learned once, but used repeatedly, drawn from the same energy pool.

They were the second pillar of combat alongside a holder’s Realization, and every serious holder built their fighting style around both.

There were three types. Permanent spells, these spells had physical forms and were either weapons, armor or tools that could be summoned and dismissed.

Expendable spells, these spells had no physical form but produced direct effects, the kind that hit hard and fast in the middle of a fight. And then there were Sentient spells, the rarest category, living constructs comparable to monsters themselves.

The academy had given Winston three scrolls and ten Level 2 energy recovery potions to carry him through his First Entry.

’They really came through.’

He opened the first scroll.

[Lesser Drake Gladius — Level 3]

[Type: Permanent]

[Cost: 60 Energy]

[Description: A broad, double-edged shortsword forged from volcanic iron and infused with the essence of a juvenile drake. Thick and serrated near the crossguard, the blade tapers into a leaf-shaped point built for devastating close-quarters thrusts. The pommel is fashioned from a sharpened drake claw. The steel carries a permanent dull-red glow and radiates a low, dry heat. At Level 3, the wielder gains "Lesser Embers" — the blade cauterizes wounds as it strikes, ensuring even a shallow cut leaves a lasting burn.]

[Dark Wolf’s Mantle — Level 2]

[Type: Permanent]

[Cost: 40 Energy]

[Description: A heavy cloak crafted from the interlocking pelts of shadow-touched timber wolves. The fur is an abyssal black that swallows ambient light. The shoulders are capped with bleached pack-leader fangs serving as crude pauldrons, and the interior is lined with enchanted silk that muffles movement. At Level 2, the mantle grants a passive "Alpha’s Presence" aura — low-level predators hesitate in the wearer’s presence, and stealth receives a slight boost when crouching in dim environments.]

[Energy Coating — Level 5]

[Type: Expendable]

[Cost: 50 Energy]

[Effect: The caster’s equipped weapon or armor is enveloped in a shimmering, high-density kinetic film for 30 seconds. Increases base physical damage by 2.5% and adds "Vibrational Bypass," allowing the gear to ignore 1.5% of the target’s physical resistance. At Level 5, the energy is dense enough to generate a secondary reactive shield, automatically absorbing one incoming projectile or spell of moderate power before the coating dissipates.]

Winston set the scrolls down and took stock. A solid weapon. A stealth and intimidation cloak. A combat buff with a built-in defensive layer. Ten potions to keep his energy from bottoming out. For a Fortunate with no family backing, this was a genuinely strong starting kit.

After that he tore the scrolls open one after another, absorbing each spell as it dissolved into light. The knowledge settled into him cleanly, all of it slotting into place like muscle memory he hadn’t earned yet.

Then the fifteen minutes ended.

The ground vanished beneath him and a falling sensation hit hard and fast, pulling him downward into open air, and the in-between space dissolved completely around him.

The Astral Heaven swallowed him whole.