The red box appeared at eye level before Arthur’s knees had fully straightened.

[Minor Character: Vexis Lestilaut has entered the main story domain]

He read it once.

[Your presence alone will alter the course of the story]

[You will accumulate RP as the main story progresses depending on your actions]

Arthur looked at it.

So every significant move I make here changes something downstream.

He let the notification fade.

"ESTEEMED PARTICIPANTS. THE CEREMONY WILL NOW BE CONDUCTED BY HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY. THE EMPEROR OF THE ELERCROSS EMPIRE."

Everyone around Arthur dropped immediately.

’BOW. NOW.’ Vexis appeared beside him.

Arthur’s knees met the stone.

He looked up from the bow.

Upper seats. A middle-aged man with greying hair and a long white robe. A staff in one hand. A gold and red crown sitting level on his head like it had always been there.

I forgot his name. It wasn’t relevant until now.

The emperor raised one arm.

The warmth came immediately.

Not the sun. Something deeper. It moved through Arthur’s chest and found his Mageia core the way water found a low point and settled there. Slow and steady. Like something being filled from the bottom up.

He remembered this.

Chapter 71. The emperor’s aetheric blessing. In the novel it had hit Xavier like a revelation. A breakthrough moment. The regressor who already knew the empire’s future feeling the weight of it land anyway.

Arthur looked sideways.

Xavier was kneeling two rows over. Eyes closed. His face doing something Arthur couldn’t read from this distance but didn’t need to.

He already knew what was happening inside that chest right now.

The main character I followed for two thousand Chapters.

Stay out of his way. Get the RP. Don’t get pulled into his orbit.

He looked back at the floor.

The blessing passed.

Everyone stood.

"THANK YOU TO HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY FOR THE BLESSING BESTOWED UPON OUR YOUNG REPRESENTATIVES. NOW. THE RULES OF THE FIRST FORMAT."

Arthur scanned the floor while the announcer spoke.

Elias was three groups over. Black hair, purple eyes, standing with his triad. Arthur looked at Roz.

"Can you detect any elven essence on him right now?"

"No." Roz’s eyes moved across the floor. "Too many aetheric fields in one radius. Hard to isolate."

"Specifically him."

Roz looked. "Nothing clear."

Consistent with the vision. He takes the vial after losing to Xavier. That’s the third category. Not today.

Arthur had time.

Not much. But time.

His eyes moved across the floor.

Xavier’s triad. White hair unmistakable. Beside him a blue-haired man with sharp eyes. Calver. On the other side a man with white and black hair, broader, standing slightly back. Auros. Arthur remembered them from the novel. Supporting characters. The kind that existed to make the main character look better by comparison.

He looked away.

And found her.

Dark brown hair cut straight at the collarbone. Grey-green eyes already moving across the floor the same way Arthur’s had been. Alfia Everreth stood at the center of her triad with the posture of someone who had already assessed the room, filed everything useful, and was now simply waiting for it to start.

She hadn’t looked at him yet.

Arthur looked away first anyway.

"THE FIRST CATEGORY. TREASURE HUNT."

The announcer’s voice hit every surface and came back.

"THE CRESLAN KINGDOM HAS PROVIDED A DEDICATED ISLAND FOR THIS FORMAT. YOU WILL BE TRANSPORTED THERE VIA RELIC STONE. THE ISLAND IS SEALED FOR THE DURATION OF THE CATEGORY. NO OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE. NO EXTERNAL SUPPORT."

Arthur looked at the representatives around him.

Some of them had gone still.

"EACH TRIAD WILL HUNT FOR TREASURE MARKERS HIDDEN ACROSS THE ISLAND. EACH MARKER CARRIES A CREDIT VALUE. VALUES VARY. YOU MAY TAKE COLLECTED MARKERS FROM OTHER TEAMS BY ANY MEANS AVAILABLE TO YOU."

By any means.

Arthur held that phrase for a second.

"EACH TEAM MUST ACCUMULATE THREE THOUSAND CREDITS BEFORE TIME EXPIRES. THE TEAM WITH THE LOWEST CREDIT TOTAL AT THE END WILL BE ELIMINATED REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THEY REACH THE THRESHOLD."

"ONE HOUR. THE ISLAND HAS TERRAIN. IT HAS WEATHER." A pause. The deliberate kind. "IT HAS THINGS THAT ARE NOT OTHER STUDENTS."

Arthur looked at Roz.

Roz looked back with the expression of something that had been on many islands and had opinions about all of them.

"IF YOU WISH TO FORFEIT USE THE RELIC STONE PROVIDED. YOU WILL BE RETURNED TO THE COLISEUM IMMEDIATELY. YOUR TEAM’S CREDIT TOTAL AT THAT MOMENT WILL BE YOUR FINAL SCORE."

At the center of the floor a large blue box materialized out of compressed smoke. It cracked open. Individual relic stones in rows, each tagged with a triad number. Alongside them, containment pouches, rope, basic combat equipment.

Everything a person might need.

Or not enough of what they actually would.

Theodore tapped Arthur’s shoulder.

"I’ve been training my bellus for scouting." He reached into his bag and a small creature came out. Brown fur. Black eyes. Already alert, nose already moving. "She can map terrain and feed the information back to me directly. If we split the search radius we cover ground faster than anyone running a standard hunt."

Arthur looked at the bellus.

Roz looked at the bellus.

The bellus looked away from Roz immediately.

Smart creature.

"That’s good." Arthur looked at Theodore. "Really good actually." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Theodore almost smiled. The almost kind that meant he’d been hoping for that exact response.

Kreasial was already cracking her knuckles.

"Whatever you two are planning." She looked at Arthur specifically. "Don’t hold me back. Either of you. Especially you, goldie."

"You don’t have to worry about me."

Yeah right. I am absolutely shitting bricks right now.

He looked out across the floor. Dozens of triads. Every upper class team with two years of competitive history and real training behind them. And the Misfits standing in the middle of it with a scouting bellus, a woman who hit things very hard, and a shadow network nobody in this world had ever seen before.

A sealed island.

Unknown terrain.

Things that are not other students.

He thought about shadows under forest canopy. Natural dark. How much of an island was covered in it at any given moment. An anchor network with no walls to limit its spread. Just open ground and whatever was growing across it.

He almost actually smiled.

"Okay." He looked at both of them. The nervous grin came out before he could stop it. "Misfits. Let’s not lose miserably."

Theodore smiled.

Kreasial grinned wider than necessary.

"FATAL HARM IS NOT PROHIBITED. USE OF MAGIC IS ALLOWED." A beat. "THE FIRST CATEGORY STARTS NOW— YOU HAVE 40 MINUTES TO PREPARE!"

Somewhere across the floor while triads broke formation and moved toward the blue box, one figure stood still.

White hair. Not moving with the rest of his group.

Blue eyes finding a specific point across the coliseum.

Calver said something to him from the left. Xavier didn’t respond.

He was looking at the gold hair on the other side of the floor. The gold eyes. The face of a person whom his memory told him to be dead by now.

Xavier’s memory told him he should have.

He had seen Vexis Lestilaut in this timeline before.

Xavier stood still while everyone else moved around him.

He opened his mouth.

"Isn’t he supposed to be dead?"