Ronan stood in the open field with roughly 220 other freshmen, morning mist clinging to the grass as the crowd clustered loosely around him. The atmosphere was cold, nervous energy rippling through the mass of freshman students waiting for the selection event to begin. Elara stood beside him, arms crossed rigidly, quiet for now but obviously tense.

Vice Headmaster Roman Sustrei stepped onto the platform – a brisk, no-nonsense man who clearly had no interest in ceremony. He skipped pleasantries and got straight to it.

"This is the selection event that will determine which freshmen earn a place among the Academy's representatives for the upcoming Radiant Crown Tournament."

The crowd shifted, bodies leaning forward.

"Only twenty-five spots are available."

Mutters rippled through the field. Twenty-five out of two hundred and twenty.

"The event takes place inside a warded boundary," Roman continued. "The boundary will shrink steadily over the next six to seven hours, forcing everyone into a smaller and smaller area as time passes."

Ronan listened carefully, noting the obvious survival mechanism. Sitting at the edges would become impossible. Confrontation would be forced.

"You'll be ranked by point total. Points build up slowly just for staying alive and active inside the shrinking zone – but don't rely on that. The passive rate is deliberately too slow to carry anyone into the top twenty-five on its own."

Someone behind Ronan swore softly.

"The real points come from two things. Eliminating another student, which rewards a large point bonus, and holding one of the terrain nodes scattered through the event zone."

Roman gestured vaguely toward the tree line.

"Ruins, a clearing, a few other landmarks. Nodes grant bursts of points to whoever controls them when scoring intervals hit."

Elara leaned closer. "So it's the Inter-Class War all over again."

Ronan didn't answer, still watching Roman.

"When the time is up, whoever holds the top twenty-five point totals advances. Simply surviving to the end guarantees nothing. All that matters is points."

That detail made several students pale. Survival alone wasn't enough, so simply staying alive and hiding wouldn't do much.

Roman's tone sharpened.

"No skill or artifact above Rank 3 is permitted during the event. Hard line. No exceptions." He paused. "Most of you couldn't use anything above your own rank regardless, so the rule mostly matters for anyone carrying something borrowed or gifted above their current level."

Fair enough, Ronan thought. Most students didn't have access to high-tier equipment anyway, and those who did from the noble families wouldn't be allowed to use them.

"Killing blows are absolutely forbidden. Full stop. Anyone caught crossing that line will face consequences far worse than simple disqualification."

Roman's gaze swept the crowd.

"Elimination means incapacitating someone, forcing a surrender, or knocking them outside the shrinking boundary. Nothing more. An Academy employee will automatically pull any eliminated student to safety the instant they're taken out."

He finished with logistics – how large the boundary currently was, how long until the first contraction, roughly where the nearest nodes sat from where they all – then stepped back without asking if anyone had questions.

Beside Ronan, Elara exhaled, something like relief in it.

"At least we're only up against other freshmen today. No upperclassmen."

Ronan nodded, though his real attention was elsewhere. This wasn't how the battle royale went in the novel he remembered – the format, the point system, the terrain nodes, none of it matched what he expected walking in. One more piece of evidence that the story around him had drifted from what he knew.

Still, one detail he cared about most had held true, freshmen were only facing other freshmen at this stage, not thrown in against seniors who'd had years longer to grow.

He scanned the crowd once, cataloguing faces on instinct – Luca, Grace, anyone else whose name carried weight – before Roman gave the signal.

The countdown to the event's start began.

And they were teleported away.

—

Ronan and the rest of the field vanished in a single synchronized flash of teleportation mana, the academy grounds replaced instantly by unfamiliar terrain.

Empty.

No other students in sight. No movement in the tree line ahead. No distant shouts or bursts of combat magic giving away where the nearest cluster might be fighting. Just open terrain stretching toward where the barrier's eventual contraction point would be, flat grass and scattered trees under morning sky.

Ronan exhaled slowly. The initial drop zone was wide enough that isolation, not crowding, was the default state right after teleport. That was the whole reason he wasn't wasting time on caution here. There was no reason for it.

He ran.

Not toward the center, where the early scramble for nodes and easy points would be thickest and most contested by strong students trying to make a fast statement. He ran along the barrier's edge instead, using the boundary itself as a wall at his back, cutting down the directions anyone could approach him from to essentially one – and, more importantly, using the edge as a search line, since whoever else spawned nearby was more likely to be found by sweeping the perimeter than by charging blind into empty open ground.

He activated Stealth as he moved.

The skill was high enough now – around level 13 – that he was functionally invisible to most casual detection, though he registered, distantly, that it had climbed levels faster than his mana pool had kept pace with. His reserves were still a Rank 2's reserves, and sustaining Stealth at this level while also staying ready to fight was going to cost him more than it should. He decided it was an acceptable cost for now and kept moving, node clutched in hand, senses open for the first sign of another person.

Several minutes passed with nothing. Then he found one – a girl, alone, turned mostly away from him, clearly still deciding on a strategy from what it looked like. She was still analyzing her surroundings, not making any fight for the center just yet.

Ronan categorized her instantly as low-tier, no notable rank presence, no obvious specialization, nothing that read as one of the fifteen or so students actually dangerous enough to avoid outright. If she'd been one of them, this would already be a problem. She wasn't.

He closed the distance fast.