David swooped low over the cracked pavement, the hum of his makeshift flight chair cutting through the air. Below, the corpses of the massive shadow panthers still smoked faintly, their dark fur glistening with the oily sheen of residual mana. Perfect.

  He leaned down, fingers glowing faintly blue as he extracted the crystalline cores from the beasts’ forehead. The shards pulsed weakly in his palms.He didn’t have time to savor the thought. The distant, wet roar of the Cthulhu-beast echoed behind him, closer now.

  David vaulted back onto his hovering chair and kicked off the ground, shooting upward. From above, the battlefield stretched out like a graveyard — charred remains of monsters, shattered parts of the buildings. He started turning the crystal in his hand into mana. The ones from the fliers were small; he absorbed them immediately. The larger ones — from the panthers — had colossal energy stored inside.

  “One or two overcharges, easy,” he muttered. “That should be enough to—”

  A distant shriek cut him off. The monster was still coming, its tentacles slicing through the air.

  David clenched his jaw and fed another core into his body. His core throbbed, trembling at the edge of transformation to the next level.

  “Almost there,” he whispered, gripping the chair’s controls tighter as he accelerated toward the horizon. “With this boost, I’ll come up with something. I have to.”

  Interlude 5

  Half a year had passed since he visited that “anomaly”.

  The bear-like administrator Kra’velon had long forgotten about that miserable human—the one he’d assigned an unkillable Examiner to, just to get rid of him.

  The control room, where he sat it, hummed with low, rhythmic vibrations from the conduits that lined the walls. Holo-screens floated before Kra’velon, their light reflecting off the polished metal floor. He sifted through a cascade of nursery reports with the weary impatience of someone burdened with too many tasks and too little interest.

  Then he froze.

  …

  Nursery 4575 — 242 candidates

  Nursery 4561 — 1264 candidates

  Nursery 2127 — 1 candidate

  …

  He blinked once. Then again.

  "No way… that persistent little insect is still alive?" Kra’velon muttered, his voice a deep, gravelly rumble.

  He leaned forward, claws tapping against the projection panel, summoning up archived feeds. He had set those recordings himself—fragments of the candidate’s final moments, stored out of idle curiosity the last time he’d checked in on the weakling. He remembered wanting to see the brat’s final, pathetic death. The end of a wasted investment.

  But now…

  The Administrator’s eyes narrowed. Lines of data scrolled past, and in the reflection of the screens, a faint smirk appeared on his face.

  "Let’s see, then," he rumbled, talons flicking through the files. "How did you manage to survive this long, little human?"

  Kra’velon watched iteration after iteration, his expression shifting from mild curiosity to growing disbelief. Each replay revealed more irregularities—more impossible developments.

  On the projection before him, a human—small, fragile, primitive—was fighting the assigned boss. At first, it seemed like another doomed attempt. But then the human unleashed strange metal constructs and fired some projectiles from slender iron tubes. One of the attacks actually injured the monster.

  Kra’velon leaned forward, his goat-like eyes narrowing. “What in the Abyss is that weaponry? And those… golems? He shouldn’t have access to such constructs. He doesn't know a damn thing about structured magic.”

  He scrubbed through more footage, watching as the human switched tactics—elemental blasts, improvised traps.

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  “Rewind,” Kra’velon muttered, tapping the rune interface. The recording flickered back a few moments. He counted aloud, tapping his claw against the console. “One… two… three… four—FOUR LAWS!?”

  His voice broke into a growl of frustration. “By the Architect’s bones! I missed a four-law candidate?!”

  He slammed a fist on the console, denting the metal. “Low-ranked core or not, with four fundamental laws this one could reshape the entire sector!”

  The administrator’s mind raced. He’d ignored the anomaly for months, assuming he would “disappear”.

  The next recording began to play. The candidate was flying at high speed. Hovering over the settlement on what looked like a chair, propelled by pure mana. Kra’velon’s expression twisted in disbelief.

  Impossible. Absolutely impossible. His core was tiny—barely sufficient to sustain a normal spell, let alone flight. Yet there he was, cutting through the air with fluid control.

  Kra’velon snapped his clawed fingers, opening the energy consumption logs for Nursery 2127. The numbers made his small quantity of fur bristle. The nursery was drawing the same amount of energy as a fully populated one—despite housing only ONE candidate.

  He froze. Then the realization hit him like a hammer.

  “He’s been feeding on the crystals,” Kra’velon growled aloud, his voice echoing across the observation chamber. “All this time!?”

  The absurdity of it made him bark a laugh, half in awe, half in outrage. “How could one being possibly harvest so much on his own!?” he roared, slamming a clawed fist into the console.

  Then, he got it—the strange metallic constructs that had accompanied the human. Some sort of golems, responding to his commands.

  Kra’velon scrolled through iteration after iteration, and his expression twisted even more. On one recording, the candidate dismantled what appeared to be a ventilation unit atop a ruined building and—using the Laws of Ice and liquid from that device—attempted to freeze the monstrous boss in place. Another Law? Kra’velon blinked twice, his pupils narrowing. That made at least five now.

  The next iteration made even less sense. The human had built a bizarre device—some kind of linear weapon that spat a projectile faster than Kra’velon’s eyes could track. It tore straight through the creature’s shield, punching a hole through it. The monster survived, but barely. The weapon, however, overloaded and died in a shower of sparks. The Administrator squinted. “What in the Void... what kind of construct even is that?”

  He switched again. Now the candidate was channeling mana into the dome itself—an absurd amount. The entire nursery trembled under the surge. But, of course, nothing happened. The dome was system-forged, immune to tampering. The attempt was futile, but Kra’velon could almost admire the audacity.

  Then came the most absurd iteration yet. The human charged the boss barehanded, closing the distance between them in a reckless blur. Kra’velon leaned forward, expecting instant annihilation... but no. The candidate endured several strikes from the creature’s tentacles, his body battered but unbroken. The Administrator rose sharply to his feet, disbelief flashing across his angular features.

  He opened the coordinates for Nursery 2127, ready to jump in, when a deafening, guttural roar erupted from the playback. Kra’velon’s gaze snapped back to the display—just in time to see the human, bloodied and trembling, grab one of the monster’s massive tendrils and tear it free and only then the monster won.

  For a long second, the Administrator simply stared.

  Then he swallowed hard. “...Impossible, what level [Physical Enchantment] does he have?”

  And with a flick of his wrist, teleporting straight into the nursery.

  Kra’velon hologram flickered into existence inside the single dome of Nursery 2127. The candidate was on the roof of that office building he was usually fighting on.

  He was slouched on a chair, motionless, a bottle dangling loosely from his hand. His eyes, dull and empty, reflected neither fear nor purpose. Around him, the strange golems shuffled about putting crystal-cores into the big pile.

  Kra’velon frowned. With a gesture, he summoned the system overlay, letting its data stream flicker before his eyes. What he read made his lackluster fur bristle. The golems carried no mana. Not a drop of it. They were… hollow? Empty vessels, held together by something that defied his understanding.

  He took a cautious step forward to the candidate—and immediately felt resistance. The air thickened around him, like wading through invisible tar. Another step, and the pressure mounted. It wasn’t physical. It was the weight of mana, dense and immense, he felt it even though he projected himself here.

  Instinctively, Kra’velon activated his level 4 [Mana Perception] (pretty decent for an administrator). The world bled into luminous waves of blue and gold—and then his jaw fell open.

  It was as if a star had been trapped inside the frail human’s chest. Light pulsed through him, radiant and terrible, a density of energy that made Administrator like Kra’velon feel small. The readings were absurd. Impossible.

  “Impossible…” he whispered, voice trembling. Then, louder—“Impossible!”

  He stumbled back, clutching his head, eyes wide in disbelief. “Damn it! Damn it all!”

  He opened the system interface and tried to change the boss, but it couldn't be done after he had already been appointed.

  I lost such a chance, such a chance!