CHAPTER 41: INSIDE THE NEXUS

Mira paused, considering how to explain it properly. "It doesn’t exactly make you a better fighter by itself," she clarified, her tone becoming more thoughtful. "But it gives you something just as valuable—maybe even more valuable in the short term."

Jelo looked at her, waiting for her to continue.

"A safe place to polish every move you have," Mira said. "Think about it. In the Arena Nexus, you can practice your skills without worrying about breaking bones, tearing muscles, bleeding out, or dying. You can experiment with techniques you’d never risk in real combat. You can make mistakes—stupid, dangerous mistakes—and the only consequence is respawning and trying again."

She gestured as she spoke, her enthusiasm for the topic becoming evident. "You can refine your timing, test different combinations of abilities, learn how to read opponents’ movements and predict their attacks. And you can repeat the same scenario over and over until you get it perfect. If you fight enough simulated opponents, study enough combat patterns, and drill your abilities inside the Nexus consistently, your combat style will sharpen far faster than it ever could in the real world."

"Because in the real world," she continued, "every training session carries risk. Every sparring match could result in injury that sets you back days or weeks. But in the Nexus? You can train for hours without consequence. Your body and mind learn the patterns, build the muscle memory, develop the instincts—all without the danger."

Jelo stared at her, his mind racing as he processed the implications. The possibilities were staggering.

He could practice his Dragon Claw attacks without worrying about accidentally killing someone. He could experiment with his Scaled Guard, testing its limits against different types of attacks. He could work on his new Wingburst Dash ability, figuring out the optimal timing and distance. He could fight opponent after opponent, learning from each encounter, refining his technique with every iteration.

And he could do all of this without attracting attention, without teachers watching, without revealing the true extent of his abilities to people who might ask uncomfortable questions.

A stunned realization hit him: he couldn’t understand how he’d never known this existed. Why had nobody mentioned it to him? Not Atlas, not Ken, not any of his instructors during the orientation or the weeks since he’d arrived at the academy.

Then another thought followed, darker and more frustrating: their classmates must have been using it. They must have been training inside the Arena Nexus for days—maybe weeks—since arriving at the academy. Which meant many of them were probably far more polished than he was, their combat abilities honed through countless virtual battles while he’d been stumbling through real fights with inadequate preparation.

The thought annoyed him deeply. He’d been at a disadvantage this entire time without even knowing it. While he’d been struggling to figure out his abilities through dangerous trial and error, his peers had been safely practicing in a risk-free environment.

But that annoyance quickly transformed into something else: determination. Hunger, even. The desire to step into the Arena Nexus, to start closing that gap as quickly as possible, burned in his chest with an intensity that surprised him.

"Take me there," Jelo said suddenly, his voice urgent. "Take me to the Arena Nexus. Now."

Mira blinked at the abrupt shift in his demeanor, but she smiled slightly, recognizing the look in his eyes. "Alright," she agreed. "Follow me."

She led him down a corridor he’d never passed through before—one of the many sections of the academy he hadn’t yet explored. They walked for several minutes, passing fewer and fewer students, until they reached a more isolated area of the building.

Finally, Mira stopped in front of a door marked simply with a glowing blue symbol that looked like two crossed swords inside a circle.

"This is it," she said, pushing the door open.

The room beyond was compact but impressively organized and maintained. Every surface was neat and shiny, reflecting the soft blue ambient lighting that filled the space. The walls were lined with machines—lots of them, arranged in neat rows.

At first glance, they resembled typical arcade games. Each station had a large screen mounted in front of a comfortable-looking seat that was slightly reclined, almost like a pilot’s chair. But as Jelo looked closer, he noticed something unusual: there were no buttons or joysticks or control panels. No keyboards or controllers or any of the typical gaming interfaces he might have expected.

Instead, each station had only a single piece of equipment—a pair of what looked like headphones, connected to the chair by a thick, flexible tube that pulsed with faint light.

There were already people in the room, occupying about half the available stations. They sat in the chairs with the headphone-like devices placed over their heads, their eyes closed, their bodies completely still. Yet the screens in front of them were active, displaying intense combat scenarios—characters fighting with various weapons and abilities, moving with fluid precision through elaborately designed arenas.

It was surreal to watch. The players’ physical bodies were motionless, but their virtual avatars were in constant motion, fighting, dodging, attacking with remarkable skill.

"This is how you enter the virtual world to play the game," Mira explained quietly, so as not to disturb the other players. "You sit in the chair, put on the neural interface device, and it connects directly to your consciousness."

"Neural interface?" Jelo repeated, looking at the headphone-like devices with new wariness.

"Yeah," Mira confirmed. "Those aren’t really headphones, even though they’re shaped like them. They’re transmitting and receiving devices. The shape is designed to fit properly over your head and establish connection points with your brain’s neural pathways. Once connected, your consciousness is transferred into the virtual environment while your physical body remains safely in the chair."

Jelo stared at the devices, a mixture of fascination and slight unease running through him. Direct brain interface technology. It made sense that the academy would have access to such advanced systems, but actually seeing it in use was something else entirely.

He looked around the room, counting the available stations. Every single one was occupied. The space felt cramped with all the chairs filled, and he felt a pang of disappointment. They’d come all this way, his anticipation building, only to find no available spots.

"It’s full," he said, unable to hide his frustration.

"For now," Mira replied calmly. "But we won’t have to wait long. See, there’s a set maximum time that every player can use daily. The academy enforces it to prevent people from spending their entire lives in the virtual world and neglecting their actual studies and physical health."

She pointed to a digital display on the wall that showed a list of station numbers with countdown timers next to each one. "Those timers show how much time each player has left before they’re automatically logged out. Once someone hits their daily limit, they have to leave the Arena Nexus. They can’t log back in until the next day."