The freezing air hit my lungs with a sharp, biting sting.
Around me, thirty-seven figures formed out of shimmering light into the white blizzard.
The howling wind came at once, throwing fine snow across the stone ledge and stinging any exposed skin. Almost instantly, low groans, chattering teeth, and sharp breaths broke out through the ranks as the real weight of the below-freezing cold set in.
"God, where are we? It’s so cold," Roan muttered, wrapping both arms tight against his chest and stomping his boots into the packed snow. "They weren’t kidding about ninety-five percent sensory transfer."
"Yeah. It feels real enough," Alice said smoothly. Her crimson hair whipped wildly around her face in the wind, but her posture stayed straight.
Before Roan could pull his collar up higher, Alice reached out with two fingers, grabbed the back of his forearm where his sleeve had slipped up, and pinched the bare skin with a hard, deliberate twist.
"Ow! What the hell, Alice?!" Roan yelped, jumping sideways in the deep snow and slapping his hand over his arm with a furious glare. "What was that for?!"
"I was checking if the pain feels real too," she replied without looking away, her voice completely flat. "Looks real to me."
"Tch! You couldn’t test it on yourself?!"
A few nearby students let out small, quiet snorts at Roan’s expense. But the laughter died fast as another freezing gust of wind swept over the ridge.
I watched them for a second before turning my attention inward.
While the others were visibly shaking and trying to tuck their chins into their collars, the bitter cold barely touched me. My passive Cold Resistance took the edge off the freezing air before it could even slow my pulse. My body adjusted on its own, keeping my core warm and my mana flowing smoothly without a single shiver.
I raised my right hand to my face, pulled off my glove, and dragged the sharp edge of my fingernail along the tip of my index finger until a thin red line opened.
The sting was immediate, sharp, and precise. A tiny drop of blood welled up, froze almost instantly in the air, and then, within seconds, the cut closed under my bloodline’s passive healing.
The pain is real. Almost flawless, I thought, pulling the glove back on. Pain, healing, the drain from the environment... it’s copying everything down to the smallest detail.
If the pod was copying my physical condition down to the smallest detail, I wondered how far that accuracy went. Did it copy my affinities just as cleanly?
Before stepping into the pod, I had glanced at the small blue screen lighting up on the inside of the glass. It had logged my rank as Master Mid and listed my affinities as Lightning, Space, and Flame. But when it came to my third element, it simply said Flame.
Just Flame.
Not Soul Flame.
I focused on the anchor point inside my soul and reached out toward my Void Pocket.
The connection was there, but it felt slightly dulled, like trying to reach through a thin sheet of glass. It still worked, but because this was a fake reality and not true space, pulling items out of a soul-tied pocket dimension felt a little wrong. It was missing its usual natural weight.
I let out a quiet breath through my nose, watching the white mist vanish into the storm.
The academy system, or whatever core ran this simulation, couldn’t properly sort the Soul Flame. To the pods, it was just an unusual fire affinity. It was missing the cold, deep weight of consumption that the Oldest Watcher had tied to my soul.
It made sense. The Soul Flame didn’t burn physical things. It burned existence, memory, and spiritual threads. A fake world built on normal mana circuits couldn’t measure a deep force that existed outside the world’s normal rules.
That worked in my favor anyway. The less this simulation recorded about my core, the better.
I walked up to the edge of the cliff and shook my head slightly, clearing my thoughts as the freezing wind brushed against my face.
Down in the valley below, half-buried under drifting snow and broken wood, lay the ruined mountain village. The roofs were caved in. Stone chimneys stood like hollow teeth against the sky. The narrow streets were completely choked with snowdrifts.
I expanded my Spatial Awareness, letting my senses spread out across the cliff face and into the upper treeline.
Nothing.
There were no tears in space nearby. No familiar pulse of corrupted mana. No monster signatures within a half-mile.
That doesn’t make sense, I thought, my brows pulling together as I scanned the white valley. Shouldn’t we be dropped near a Gate? Or is the Gate already open, and we have to kill the monsters and save people and help our teammates? But the space here is completely stable. There’s nothing. I can’t sense anything.
"Leo," Roan said, stepping up beside me and squinting into the storm. "What should we do? We just march down there?"
"...Not all at once, and not without preparation," I replied, my voice carrying clearly over the howling wind.
I turned back to face the students gathered behind us.
"Listen up!" I called out.
"First things first, everyone push a thin layer of mana through your core and move it to your limbs. Surely you all don’t need me to teach you how to do it. You all had Vance’s Mana Theory class. Don’t waste mana. Just keep a steady flow. If you let the cold freeze your body, you’ll be useless when something actually attacks."
"You heard him!" Roan called out, turning back to the class and raising his voice over the wind. "Move your mana! Keep your bodies moving! Don’t stand still!"
The students didn’t argue.
Right away, soft hums of mana rippled, as everyone coated their bodies to keep out the freezing chill. They weren’t soft, pampered nobles anymore. Every single person standing here had survived the bloody nightmare of the Gate attack three months ago and pushed through brutal field tests.
Even the lowest-ranked members of Class Ascendant sat comfortably at Expert Low, while our front line pushed into Master rank.
They knew how to fight. They knew what real danger smelled like, and they knew how fast one mistake could cost a life. They didn’t need a lecture on how to draw a weapon or move mana. All they needed was clear direction to survive whatever this test was about to throw at them.
I looked over our formation, taking in the full line. Honestly, if this was just a normal Gate clear, I wouldn’t even need to plan.
With me and Roan at Master Mid, Alice at Master Low, and Malva backing us up, we had enough raw power to tear through a Grade 4 instance on our own. A Master Low boss wouldn’t last long against us if we just charged straight for the core.
But Morgana’s words kept ringing in my head.
This isn’t a race to kill the boss. It’s a test of teamwork and protection.
If we rushed ahead and left the main group behind, or if a surprise attack wiped out our teammates, some of whom were only Expert Low, while we were busy hunting beasts, the score would crash.
"Sera," I called out.
Sera Vex, the half-elf archer, stepped forward. Her movements were smooth, her light boots barely making a sound against the snow.
"Yes, I’m here," she said, her voice calm and steady despite the wind.
"Take two agile scouts and move along the upper left ridge," I ordered, pointing toward the rocky line of trees overlooking the valley path. "Stay high. Do not engage anything. If you spot tracks, movement, or mana signatures, signal us immediately."
"Understood." Sera nodded. She gestured with two fingers toward two quick students behind her. The three of them left the main group and moved up the snow-covered rocks like grey shadows.
"Damon, Garret, you two take the front line with Roan," I continued, setting the main group’s structure. "Alice, cover our left side. Malva, take the right."
I turned my eyes toward the rest of the students, speaking directly to the middle and back ranks.
"The rest of you, split into pairs and line the outer edge of our march. Support mages, stay in the dead center around Lena. Keep your weapons ready and your eyes on our sides, not on the path ahead. Mages, keep your cast times short. If we get ambushed in these narrow passes, I need quick suppression, not long spells."
I locked eyes with the group, letting my voice cut through the howling wind with authority.
"Keep your eyes open and your shields up. I don’t care if a path looks clear, stay sharp, watch each other’s blind spots, and cover the person next to you. If someone loses their footing or takes a hit, the nearest pair steps in immediately. We move down this trail as one group, and nobody wanders off."
A sea of quiet, firm nods met my words across the ranks.
"Got it," Garret grunted, slinging his axe onto his shoulder with a fierce grin. "Lead the way, boss."
_
We began our descent down the narrow stone trail that wound around the cliff face toward the valley floor.
The snow was deep, reaching past our ankles in some spots, but the class moved with quiet discipline. The loss of twelve classmates over the last three months had stripped away any room for arrogance. Those who remained knew how quickly things could go wrong.
As our boots hit the flat, stone-paved entry of the ruined village, the mountain walls blocked off the worst of the blizzard. The howling wind suddenly died down into an eerie, hollow whistle.
The silence that settled over the village was suffocating.
Shattered wooden wagons lay buried under fresh snow. Abandoned iron tools, frozen leather blankets, and overturned stone pots were scattered outside the doorways. The village looked like it had been left in the middle of the day, in a desperate hurry.
I stopped at the entrance of the main street, my hand resting lightly on the hilt of Tempest.
Still no sign of monsters, huh.
"Is it just me..." Roan muttered quietly, his eyes darting between the ruined rooftops, "or is this place way too quiet for a Grade 4 scenario? Where are the monsters? A Grade 4 Gate is supposed to be full of beasts."
"You’re right. I didn’t sense any beasts nearby either," Alice observed quietly, her gaze sweeping the main street.
"Because the Gate hasn’t opened yet," I said, stopping near an archway at the village entrance.
"What?" Roan turned to look at me, surprised.
"Morgana didn’t drop us into an active battle zone," I explained, looking down the empty, snow-covered street. "She most likely dropped us into the setup phase. The threat hasn’t arrived yet."
Before he could respond, a soft, dry crunch echoed through the quiet street, the clear sound of snow being pressed down by a heavy, slow step inside a half-collapsed stone building twenty yards ahead.
Instantly, Roan’s eyes narrowed. Moving on pure instinct, he rushed forward across the snow, sweeping his spear into a low, ready strike straight toward the dark doorway.
As the tip hovered at the threshold, Roan caught the movement below. He stopped his thrust mid-motion, planting his back foot hard into the deep snow and dragging the spear tip downward before it could enter the doorway.
He froze, his chest heaving as he stared into the dark.
Huddled inside an ice-covered cellar pit beneath the broken floorboards was a child — a small, terrified boy wrapped in filthy, oversized woolen rags, holding a wooden bowl to his chest. His small body was shaking hard. Tear streaks were frozen white on his thin cheeks as he stared up at the spearhead in silent terror.
Roan’s breath caught in his throat. The tension left his shoulders, and he slowly pulled the spear back, the iron tip dropping all the way to the snow.
"A... a kid?" Roan whispered, his face going pale as he looked back over his shoulder at me. "There are civilians here?!"
I stepped up beside him, my eyes narrowing as I looked down into the cellar pit. Behind the boy, tucked deep into the shadows of the stone foundation, were six more figures — thin, freezing villagers, shaking in silence, staring up at us with wide, empty eyes.
I looked back toward the village entrance, where the rest of my classmates stood in combat positions. The whole picture finally locked into place.
Morgana had warned us that protecting civilians was part of the score. But seeing them here, hidden in broken cellars, changed everything. This wasn’t a search-and-rescue at the end of a dungeon. It wasn’t a race to kill a boss.
The simulation hadn’t dropped us near an active Gate because this test was forcing us into a defensive holdout.
Before a single monster even stepped through the rift, thirty-eight fighters had to stop thinking like attackers, turn these open ruins into a fortress, and become a wall for people who couldn’t fight back.