The headmaster leaned over the railing, his eyes narrowing at the boy who shouldn't have survived. "Your score hasn't changed, boy. It’s still a 2.9."
He walked through the maze with his hands in his pockets. Spikes rose from the floor and retracted, never sensing his weight. High-pressure water jets fired, but the droplets simply rolled off him as if he were made of air. 2.9 / 10 Act...
Leo stared at the score until his vision blurred. In the hyper-competitive ecosystem of the Aethelgard Academy, a 2.9 out of 10 on the "Potential for Action" (Act) scale was more than a failing grade—it was a social death sentence. Most students hovered around a 7.0. The elites, the ones who would go on to command fleets or stabilize tectonic plates, were solid 9s. The headmaster leaned over the railing, his eyes
At the finish line, the proctors stared at their chronometers in silence. Leo had finished in record time, not by being the fastest, but by being the most "absent." Spikes rose from the floor and retracted, never
As a massive pendulum swung toward him, vibrating with enough force to liquefy bone, Leo did the only thing a 2.9 could do. He didn't move. He didn't fight. He accepted the stillness. And then, the world stopped.
It wasn't that Leo had moved fast; it was that his incredibly low Act score allowed him to slip through the "frequency" of reality. Because he had so little influence on the world, the world ceased to have influence on him. The pendulum didn't hit him—it passed through him like a breeze through a shadow.
Leo didn't answer. He felt the same as he always did: heavy, slow, and perpetually out of sync with the frantic rhythm of the world. While other students were practicing lightning-fast "Act-Surges"—bursts of magical or physical speed—Leo struggled to even summon the will to run for the bus.