In this loop, the Champion Dion doesn’t die. Or at least, they don’t find his body. The usual day when he dies passes, and there’s no information on it, no panic spreading through the Academy. Everything continues as if nothing had happened.

A change of schedule like this could’ve been caused by an Examiner or, more likely, by a Candidate. It also means that for some reason, someone is killing the Champion and that it’s not part of the floor´s "schedule.". It also means that, in some incredible way and with a liberal application of fuckery, there’s someone here who happens to be capable of killing a Champion.

Or I'm wrong, and someone actually managed to save the Champion, disrupting the original schedule. At this point, I don’t think the system even knows what's going on anymore.

I'm also reminded of the Floor quest that says: Locate and protect the Ruler Candidate.

The wording, as silly as it is, also hints at something. There are, at least according to the highly unreliable Ari, three Candidates remaining. Protecting any Candidate probably won’t work, the system isn’t nice enough to make it that easy for us.

So I come to the conclusion. One of the Candidates is a person who, in the real world, went on to become the Ruler’s disciple and heir. Someone who could be called the Ruler Candidate. So it is up to us to find out which one of the three it is and to protect them, with us likely replacing the role of someone who helped that person to survive, or doing something the Examiner did that allowed the candidate to “win”?

Maybe there is a small change that would make that Candidate die, unlike the real history, that change made to create this quest for us?

Like some kind of butterfly effect, but dumber. One missed coffee break, and now the Ruler’s heir gets assassinated, unless we can stop it. Wouldn’t even be the weirdest thing we’ve seen in the tutorial.

That also likely means that if we leave things as they are now, the “true” Candidate will die. If that happens, I'm sure nothing good will come of it. The way this floor is set up, I think failing the quest would probably trap us in this loop until the tutorial ends. It's even possible that the 'record' gets destroyed when all the Candidates die, causing us to disappear along with it. Which would be a very on-brand ending.

Congratulations, you solved nothing and got deleted.

That kind of stuff.

If my thinking is correct, that likely means Ari either isn’t the true Candidate, or that she is, and is currently on track to die soon, and that her only chance to survive is with our help.

Or maybe I’m just hallucinating and overthinking a bunch of bullshit.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

As much as the mental exercises and testing I’ve been working on with these shapes pain me, the unanswered questions here do as well.

In the end, there are four people we’ve come to suspect. Ari, Tyven, the ten-year-old girl, and Vance.

For the moment, the others don’t really suspect the ten-year-old little monster all that much. Her personality doesn’t make her seem like the sort to follow schedules or be tricky. She also enters the Academy on day 8, so this stands as another point against her. Yet her talent cannot be underestimated, and she stays on the list for now.

As for the assassin who tried to kill me, it’s got to be one of the Candidates who somehow got access to some kind of incredible toxin. That, or an Examiner who manipulated a native into killing me while trying to dodge the rule that kills them for harming anyone other than a Candidate. I'm sure the rule wouldn't be so loosely defined that 'hiring' help would count. Of course, that's only if Ari was telling the truth.

But even here, Group 4 cannot come to a clear conclusion. Some seem to think that it should be possible for an Examiner to hire someone to kill people, while others think such cheap tactics would’ve been banned, causing them to be killed.

We also start searching for the core that triggers the resets. Controlling something like that would be incredible, and at this point, it’s fairly certain someone here knows how to locate it, which explains the changing duration of the loops.

And we continue to abuse the mechanisms of this floor as much as possible. Knowledge gained or bought, lessons from skilled Professors, passives, skills tested. All these shards we have make our group likely the richest in Earth’s tutorial by a wide margin.

Even though everything seems fine, that doesn't last long because the same person who tried to kill me tries to kill Tess next.

While guarding her target, she gets hit in the arm with the same kind of dart that hit me. Knowing what’s about to follow, she destabilizes primordial lightning inside her body and blows off her entire arm, along with a huge chunk of her shoulder.

In a show of wild determination, she doesn’t use the healing mark she got from Lily, worried that if the toxin were there, it would just spread faster, and proceeds to retrace the attack’s trajectory as the attacker escapes.

Like some nightmarish manifestation of lightning brought to life, she smashes through a window and leaps from rooftop to rooftop, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

She almost catches them. But just as she’s about to close the gap, the floor resets. And all of us are pulled back into that small room.

That seems to confirm that whoever attacked me and her knows how to locate the core.

----------------------------------------

POV Kim Min-Jae

Another loop starts, and I’ve already spent most of my shards on passives I continue to test. One supports my Gravitational Wavelength Eye, and the other allows me to massively strengthen my [Telekinesis]. As far as I’ve tested, I think these are the ones I’ll keep, and it doesn’t hurt that they’re both mid arcane.

Not that long ago, I honestly believed it would take a lot more time before I could even hope to get my hands on any proper upper epic passives. It always seemed like something far off, like one of those goals that always remain just out of reach, no matter how much you grind.

It is an incredible amount of shards. But the knowledge in the library is incredible as well.

Somehow, even though I tell myself to hold back, I keep spending more and more time here. The temptation is constant. With every book I open or mana stone I touch, a dozen new ideas take form in my head.

At this point, whenever I’m here, I tend to forget all about following my schedule. I know I should try harder, and I know that Tess and Nat wouldn’t like it, but I’m tired of the rules. I just read what I want and focus on mapping the books and mana stones I plan to bring to the next floor. There’s so much to learn, it makes my head spin. It’s like I’m drowning in ideas, in a good way. The deeper I go, the more I realize how little I really knew before.

Some in the group, the twins, might tease me, but I’ve already learned enough to improve the ways I’m using my mana and gravitational energy and apply them to my future plans. I’ve also discovered better ways to use [Telekinesis]. The skill isn’t actually all that rare, so there’s a lot of knowledge about it. I’ve found ways to lift heavier objects more easily and reduce the mental effort needed to control multiple projectiles.

There’s even an obscure method buried in a flawed book of theory that suggested I should be syncing my [Telekinesis] with external vibrational frequencies. It sounded ridiculous at first, but it worked. A bit. Though I’m trying to connect it to Gravitational Wavelengths instead of the normal range of vibrations.

Most of what I learn, I keep to myself, planning to surprise everyone when the time feels right. At this point, I’m confident I could defeat both Dennis and Aaron at once, especially with all the work I’ve put into seeing through their illusions and countering their speed.

The others have warned me to be careful around Tyven, especially after Nat and Tess got themselves attacked. With how I’ve been acting lately, there’s no way he hasn’t noticed me. Every Candidate’s probably been suspecting that we were “bugs” since our first loop, when we appeared out of nowhere. That’s why I don’t think we really need to stick to the schedule, like some in the group say.

If they’re already watching us, what’s the point in pretending? I'd rather dig deeper while I still can.

Tyven spends a lot of time in the library, and from what I’ve seen, he follows the schedule exactly. He uses the same door to enter, at all the same times, he sits at the same table. Even the bottle he brings is always filled to the same level, with the same drink.

He always takes mana stones from the same shelf and reads them at his table. Every single day, without fail, no matter how closely I watch.

If this floor is really over three years old, and the Candidates are 100 loops in, it's hard to believe it's possible to keep exactly the same schedule for over three years, especially with Ari so close to him and watching the whole time.

Maybe I’m feeling off after the early reset, or maybe it’s the shock from one of my friends almost dying, but I decide to break my schedule a bit more. For the first time, I walk over to Tyven’s table and sit across from him.

“Is this seat free?” I ask quietly.

He looks up in that shy way of his and nods. Then he glances back at the mana stone in his hand. He does that often, even though you can’t read them with the naked eye. Still, I’ve noticed it helps with concentration, the same way waving my hand helps me focus whenever I’m using [Telekinesis].

“My name is Kim,” I whisper. “What are you reading?”

“I’m Tyven,” he replies softly. “Foundations of Basic Arrays by Solen Vey.”

Then a small smile appears on his face. “It sucks.”

“Solen Vey? Didn’t he write Advanced Studies in Magical Geometries? I wanted to burn that thing five minutes in.”

“Just be sure to use an advanced geometric structure when you set it on fire.”

That makes me laugh for a moment, and I glance down at my own mana stone. The stone in my hand is old, slightly chipped, but it pulses with steady light. I run my thumb over one of the surfaces without thinking, feeling the warm hum through my skin.

I look up again when I notice something moving in the corner of my vision. Tyven is waving slightly to get my attention.

When I meet his eyes, he shifts his jacket. And underneath, a spider clings to his black sweater. With its legs spread, it’s about the size of my hand, excluding my fingers. The spider is missing one of its eight legs, much like Tyven is missing one of his four arms.

Tyven smiles shyly, and the spider, still clinging to his clothes, wobbles from side to side as if greeting me.

“That’s Septa,” Tyven whispers, gently petting the spider with the tip of a finger. The creature moves excitedly, even nipping his finger in what looks like a playful gesture.

“Septa is very cute,” I say, and I mean it. As much as I dislike arachnids, Septa moves in a way that actually makes her seem adorable.

The thylarin boy nods and pulls his jacket back over her, then says in a voice mimicking one of the strict professors I know, “No pets allowed in the library, Mister Tyven, unless they’re annotated with a three-part classification system.”

He lets out a soft laugh, clearly amused by his own impersonation, then glances at Septa. She peeks out from under the jacket and taps his sleeve with two of her remaining legs, as if she were playing along.

I shake my head and turn back to my mana stone. Tyven does the same, and the Library falls quiet.