Parker Thane’s sword rattled in his hands. Blood flowed from his brow, circling his skull where it dripped from his chin to the floor. A haze of smoke and magic filled the room. Glowing slitted eyes appeared through the smoke. A monster growled. Parker’s sword fshed—steel met enamel, and he was flung backwards. He rolled across the floor until his back hit the barrier. He looked up through wavering eyes and looked upon the carnage with a heavy heart. His wounds glowed white and healed, but his exhaustion didn’t fade; memory of the pain remained like the grip of phantoms firmly wrapping his heart. Finally, his eyes scanned upwards to the assembly stage, and he gazed upon the visage of the demonic dragon that threw him and all his fellow students into this macabre meat grinder.

  Parker grit his teeth as the beast that knocked him back approached with its knife-long teeth. If those fangs fell upon him the pain would be unbearable even if the injury healed. The sensation of flesh being ripped from bone was something unimaginable—he would never forget it for as long as he lived from this point forward. The shaking in his hands stopped. He gripped his sword and stood again to meet the enemy. He pushed past the barrier that had been holding him back. Another awakener advanced through the grueling trial of Princess Scale. Many others simultaneously advanced past their limits. The monsters were slowly being beaten back.

  Harper knelt on the ground behind the back lot of the school, two buildings away from the auditorium; they were tucked away out of sight from the security cameras between two high walls. She coughed and gagged. Her throat seized and tears streaked down her face. The world spun around her and it felt like her head was in a vice.

  “Aww, was it too much for you?” Caroline’s voice echoed in Harper’s skull. “Your ability should let you adapt to this much, shouldn’t it?” Caroline’s hands glowed bck as she used her ability.

  Harper’s lip quivered. Her eye twitched and she reached for her mana. She forced it to circute through her body, trying to follow the method she had learned from Scale—but she flinched as a sharp pain interrupted her. A fist nded on her back and she fell ft, her hands and knees giving out beneath her. Mana raged through the circuits in her body. She groaned in pain as her body formed the mana equivalent of an embolism in her meridians. Her ability failed completely, and the partial adaptations she had were undone. The groan turned into a scream. She curled into the fetal position. The sound of ughter rang like bells.

  “Stop being such a pussy!” One of the nameless underlings kicked Harper. More ughter followed.

  “Aren’t you gd you’re spending time with us? Look at how much you’re learning!” Caroline’s voice dripped with sarcasm. She ughed and her mana flowed freely. The dark magic circling her hands stretched towards Harper, dripping malice like pus from an infection. “Let’s take her back to my pce.” She crouched and leaned close. “I’ll always be here to help you practice, Harper. After all, we’re friends.”

  Scale watched from the podium. She took note of those that had impressive showings, taking particur note of three children specifically. Those kids had potential, massively so, and two of them didn’t even have a contract with a Consteltion.

  “Beautiful.” Scale couldn’t stop herself from commenting on it. Watching the endless struggle of mortal beings towards the heights was enough to fill her heart. In moments like this, witnessing the indomitable human spirit, Scale felt her decision to walk among the mortals was the correct one. She had doubted herself in the past, being ever weak to her own anxieties. It was only amidst the toil and trials that she could reaffirm her own purpose—she continually achieved enlightenment by living vicariously through the ephemeral humanity. A scale could only weigh one object against another, and that meant any distance could alter the result. The Judge could not take her mission lightly.

  “You are all doing so well!” Scale encouraged the children. She immediately received resentful stares. She greeted those stares with a gentle smile. Her blue eyes glowed in the bloody haze that filled the room. She raised her hands. “I see now that I underestimated all of you.”

  Scale’s holy magic bloomed through the room. Time ticked away but the monsters were dying too quickly. She couldn’t let such a valuable lesson end too early due to her own miscalcutions. The healing applied not only to the students but also to their foes, now. The difficulty spiked. The monsters also received minor buffing magic. Scale wanted to see the results. She wanted to see how these children would grow. She only regretted not being able to watch Harper in these struggles. It felt like the jigsaw puzzle in front of her was missing a crucial piece to properly dispy the image as a whole. Her smile faded. A part of her heart ached. She felt a terrible premonition, as if she didn’t act now she would lose something valuable. Her intuition screamed at her. Her heartbeat swelled in her chest. She overlooked something…

  Scale opened the barrier and released a flood of mana to block any curious onlookers. She would only allow spells to flow in one direction through the gap. Her detection magic pulsed, roaring like white water rapids, and it surged throughout the entire campus. Her eyes looked upon everything within her domain. She looked at the nervous professors outside the barrier. She looked at the gathering reporters waiting to ambush her by the school gates. Her domain expanded farther, stretching beyond the campus to cover the entirety of Response City. It continued expanding, endlessly and without pause. No matter how much mana she poured into her detection, she could not find Harper. She started to panic.

  Soon, Scale’s magic touched every corner of the world. Her fists trembled. White light filled the auditorium. The students soon found themselves back in their seats unharmed, their clothes and bodies restored in an instant, and all the monsters disappeared. The Gate on the stage closed, colpsing under enormous outside pressure. It literally popped like a balloon.

  The surge of holy magic didn’t stop there. Gates worldwide closed one by one, struck by the invisible hammer of a transcendent being. Every single monster, demon, and yokai vanished from the face of the earth. The collective human consciousness shuddered.

  The children in the audience lost consciousness. The teachers outside the barrier colpsed. Every Awakener in Response City fell to their knees. Cars veered off the road. Pnes fell from the sky. The world began to die.

  Scale’s eyes wept blood. She pushed more mana through her body. Her transformation started to become undone. Draconic features appeared starting with horns and scales. Wings sprouted from her back. Her tail wrapped around her waist. She growled in a guttural tone.

  Soon, her magic started to pierce the veil. It penetrated spatial walls, and drilled into even pocket dimensions. The pnet shook. Consteltions looked towards her but soon turned their heads away in fear. No one would dare step forward. They instinctively knew that if the Judge dropped all pretenses nothing would survive.

  The [System] started printing gibberish. Those who were still conscious could only see endless numbers stretched across the horizon. The bounds of reality were being shattered piece by piece.

  “Found you.” Scale’s voice echoed across the cosmos. The pressure vanished. The world returned to normal. The fallen pnes were hung in the sky like paintings. Crashed cars were reset. The course corrected itself. Holy magic that transcended all limits could even heal time.

  Harper turned the corner and came face to face with the very group of people she intended to avoid.

  “Harper.” Caroline’s voice was stately and level; she sounded like a diplomat instead of a cssmate. Her fxen hair danced behind her as she swished her head.

  Harper’s breath hitched. She hiccuped and stumbled as she stepped backwards, but a hand pressing against her shoulder stopped her. That hand belonged to a brown-haired girl named Maya, and that hand pushed Harper forward into the middle of the hall; she was now surrounded.

  [3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510]

  [Error]

  [Error]

  [Error]

  [Found you.]

  A pair of white hands ripped through time and space. Harper was yanked backwards by those hands into the broken river of time. Memories of a future she hadn’t yet lived echoed through her head. She watched herself be beaten, broken, and then dragged into a subspace to eventually be killed. It felt like she lived every moment of it yet it also seemed a dream. Her breath caught in her throat. Her head spun. Those memories started to fade in intensity, but they never truly went away. A part of her soul screamed.

  And then Harper regained consciousness in the middle of a battlefield. She was in the auditorium fighting alongside her fellow students. Her hands were shaking but she cast her ability upon her fellow students, and her buffs allowed those around her to advance further along the path toward victory. The battle resumed. She focused her support on one of the strongest students, a boy named Parker. With her help, he started to sughter the beasts even as Scale buffed them further.

  There was no sign of Caroline or her posse anywhere in the entire school.

  Scale watched the students fight. The puzzle was completed. The image it drew made her heart swell. Her vertical slit eyes trembled and recovered to their normal human shape.

  Outside the veil, one [Mad God] wailed about time shifting unnaturally. No one believed him, or, if they did, they didn’t show it. Even enemy factions came together in unified understanding to simply let sleeping dragons lie.