The Author's Extra: My SSS Skill Turns Souls into Anything!

Alden twisted his wrist.

Nathan’s arm knocked sideways and the locked position broke.

Nathan stepped back instinctively to recover his balance.

That was all Alden needed.

The lightning blade swept across the space between them.

KRAAAK.

The bolt hit Nathan square in the chest by full force. His body launched backward, boots leaving the ground, the impact carrying him across the arena in a single violent motion.

The crowd tried to react and didn’t quite manage it in time.

Nathan gritted his teeth in the air, forcing mana through his limbs to regain control of his own body. His feet found the ground and he tried to set himself.

A shadow crossed his face from above.

He looked up.

Alden was above him in the mid-air.

He’d moved the moment the bolt connected, using its momentum the way you use a door — push it and walk through. His body came down with the lightning blade raised, and Nathan had about half a second to see it coming.

"WAIT—"

BOOM.

Alden came down like a dropped hammer.

The impact drove Nathan straight into the arena floor. Cracks shot outward from the point of contact in every direction. Dust erupted upward in a thick cloud and the sound of it echoed off every wall of the arena.

Before Nathan could move, Alden planted one foot beside him and lowered the crackling blade until its edge touched the side of his neck.

It was all silent, only the sound of the dust settling and Alden’s breathing exactly the same as it had been before the fight started.

He looked down at Nathan.

"H-He won?"

The words moved through the crowd in fragments, person to person, each one needing to hear it from someone else before they could accept it. Nathan. Ranked ninth in the entire academy. Four-year student, was down in under three minutes.

The announcer’s voice broke the stunned silence.

"What an incredible match! Alden has secured a remarkable victory against an opponent ranked significantly above him! Considering the enormous gap in their rankings and accumulated points, this result is extraordinary!"

Then the cheering found its way through.

"ALDEN WON!"

"HE BEAT SENIOR NATHAN!"

"THAT WAS INSANE—"

The younger students hit their volume first, loud and immediate, the kind of cheering that doesn’t calculate whether it’s appropriate. Some of the upper-year students stayed seated and quiet, staring at the arena floor. Nathan’s supporters in particular seemed to have temporarily lost the ability to do anything except sit there.

The system notification materialized above the arena.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[Updating Rankings and Points...]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"Because Alden defeated an opponent whose ranking and combat power were significantly higher than his own," the announcer continued, "he will receive 400 bonus points for this victory!"

The scoreboard shifted.

[162. Alden — 942 pts — II Year]

Alden looked at it.

’248th to 162nd in one match.

And 400 bonus points on top of the standard win.’

The grin came out before he could do anything about it.

’Fighting people above my rank is the fastest possible way to climb this thing.’

He dispersed the lightning blade. The crackling energy broke apart into small sparks that drifted and went out, and he rolled his wrist once to make sure everything was working normally.

Then he turned and walked toward the edge of the arena.

"Just who are you, Alden?"

He stopped.

Nathan was still on the ground, which was where Alden had left him.

Alden looked over his shoulder.

"My name is Alden. I literally just told you."

Nathan’s eyebrow twitched. "That’s not what I meant."

"Oh." Alden turned around fully. He pointed at himself with what appeared to be a genuine look of confusion. "Then I’m not sure what you’re asking. I’m Alden. Alden is Alden."

Nathan’s expression went through several things at once.

"You know exactly what I meant." He pushed himself to one elbow. "If you were this strong, where have you been hiding it for two years?"

Alden blinked.

"Hiding it?" He looked at the arena around him. At the cracks in the floor. At the several hundred people staring at both of them. "I walked into the arena, fought you, and beat you in front of everyone. At which exact point did I hide anything?"

Nathan’s face twitched.

He clicked his tongue and shoved himself upright.

"Never mind."

Alden shrugged and turned away.

’Strange guy.’

He walked off the field as the audience kept talking, their voices layering into a wall of noise behind him.

Up in the council section, Augustus watched Alden’s retreating back with the expression of someone revising a number upward.

"He beat Nathan." He said it the way you say something you already know but are confirming for your own benefit. "Damn."

His eyes followed Alden back up the stairs.

Nicholas was quiet. Roselle beside him, also quiet, both of them watching Alden’s back and thinking something they hadn’t finished thinking yet.

Seris rested her cheek against one hand.

The examinations kept moving.

One battle followed the next without pause, the arena functioned as well as a machine when it had a purpose, students cycling in and out, the scoreboard shifting with each result, positions climbing and falling as hundreds of individual fights added up into something larger.

Alden came back down four more times.

His next matches were nowhere near as dramatic as the first. Both opponents sat close to his ranking after the Nathan win, and he handled them without pulling anything he didn’t need to pull. The crowd watched expecting something spectacular after the Nathan match, and mostly got clean efficient wins that told them less than they were hoping for.

Which was the point.

Show enough to win. No more.

By the time his fifth additional match finished, his position on the board had climbed further still.

Match after match filled the hours. Upper-years who had spent four years building their rankings watched single losses drop them three or four spots. First-years who landed upsets rocketed past students twice their age. The board changed so frequently that tracking individual names became a task rather than a glance.

Then:

"The 502nd match has concluded!"

The announcer’s voice carried across every seat in the building.

"With that, the first round of the Final Examinations has officially come to an end! Congratulations to everyone who secured a victory today. And to those who didn’t, the examinations are far from finished."

The arena released its breath all at once. Cheers from some sections. Sighs from others. Dozens of conversations starting simultaneously.

"I can’t believe I lost to that matchup—"

"Did you see how far Alden’s ranking jumped today?"

"What’s the second round?"

"I’m exhausted and that wasn’t even a combat round for me—"

Darius stepped forward and the noise dropped the way it always dropped when he moved with purpose.

"Victory and defeat today, that’s what these examinations test. Your ability to adapt. To face stronger opponents. To keep moving after a loss." He looked across the arena at several hundred faces that were various combinations of tired, relieved, and nervous. "That is what the Upper Academy requires."

He paused.

"Now that the first round has concluded—"

His eyes moved across the arena one more time.

"Let us move on to the second."

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