“At Creston Academy, our mission is simple: provide a premium system education without the excessive costs associated with Sol Fortune academies.

  While elite institutions may advertise exotic specialties and exclusive lineage tracks, Creston focuses on what truly matters: foundational System literacy, small cohort training, and tuition that remains accessible, typically in the five figures, not the eight.

  Because greatness isn’t defined by where you start, but by how efficiently you invest your resources.”

  — Creston Academy Prospectus, 23rd Edition

  Alice couldn’t stop asking questions.

  “So, what’s your build? You look like a brawler, but that rifle screams ranged DPS. Hybrid spec? Those are nova if you can pull it off. Oh, and your sword! Is that system-crafted or legacy gear? It’s got that old-school vibe, like old-era smithing. Wait, wait—what’s your signature skill? Come on, you gotta spill! I bet it’s something combat-focused, right? You’ve got that scrapper energy.”

  I barely had time to process one question before she fired off three more.

  We’d left the examination room and were navigating the labyrinthine corridors of SMB11, following signs toward the elevators. Cecilia walked on my other side, silent, occasionally shooting her sister looks that ranged from amused to exasperated.

  “Do you dive often?” Alice continued, undeterred by my lack of response. “You seemed like you knew what you were doing! Not your first rodeo, yeah? Where do you usually hunt? Incursions? Shards? Both? Oh! Couldn’t before today, right, right, sorry. Do you have a crew? We’re looking for a third, actually. Well, fourth and fifth, technically, but our usual group flaked—”

  “Alice,” Cecilia whispered.

  “What? I’m just asking!”

  We reached the elevator bank. Alice jabbed the call button with unnecessary force, still grinning at me like I was the most interesting thing she’d encountered all week. “So,” she said, tilting her head. “Where you schooling at, Dash?”

  I opened my mouth, wanting to say Traninum South High.

  And stopped.

  My brain caught up with my mouth just in time.

  No. Absolutely not. No system user would ever step foot in Traninum South High. That was a plebeian school… a mining school. The place where they taught you how to kill small bugs and avoid cave-ins, not how to optimize attribute builds and coordinate raid tactics.

  Alice was watching me, eyebrows raised, waiting.

  “Creston Academy,” I said smoothly.

  Not entirely a lie. I had gone to Creston System-Prep before I failed to manifest and got quietly shuffled off to the mines.

  Close enough.

  Alice blinked, surprised. “Never heard of it. Local?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “Tago city only. Not a big corpo. You?”

  She motioned to her sister with a casual wave. “We’re in Aurelia T Academy.”

  Aurelia. Not just any corpo. One of the Sol Fortune 15. Right up there with Kallum and Palistra. A company run by a goddess, who had entire city-districts named after her and enough political pull to make Alliance bills about limiting work to “only” 16h a day.

  And her academy? That was where their elite went. Future CEOs, IC commanders, people who’d never even seen the inside of a mining tunnel. Well, that cave in the shard felt like my school, so they were forced to go. I smirked, but then I kept my expression neutral and just nodded. “Sounds good.”

  Alice burst out laughing.

  Hard, doubled-over, clutching her stomach, wheezing with laughter.

  Cecilia glared at her sister, then turned that glare on me, before her expression shifted into an adorable pout. She moved her hand in dismissing gesture.

  “What?” I asked, completely lost.

  Alice was still laughing, wiping tears from her eyes. “Oh man—oh, this is preem! She—” More laughter. “She bet you’d freak out when we said Aurelia. Like, go all starry-eyed or start asking for autographs or whatever.”

  She grinned at her sister. “Told you! Now pay up! Friday’s money.”

  Cecilia’s glare intensified. Then she sighed, pulled out a credit chip from her pocket, and flicked it at Alice with obvious reluctance.

  Alice caught it mid-air, still grinning. “Thanks, sis! Always a pleasure doing business.”

  I just shrugged. “What was I supposed to say? Good job?”

  That set Alice off again, laughing as the elevator doors finally slid open. She grabbed my arm and dragged me inside, Cecilia following with an expression somewhere between amused and long-suffering.

  “I like you, Dash,” Alice said as the elevator started ascending. “You’re not a corpo kiss-ass. Refreshing, honestly. Most people hear ‘Aurelia Academy’ and start acting like we’re celebrities or something.”

  “Are you?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “Nah.” She waved dismissively. “Our parents are Lunaris’ execs, yea. We’re just the kids riding the coattails. Nothing special.”

  Cecilia made a soft noise that might’ve been disagreement, but didn’t elaborate.

  The elevator chimed.

  Floor 22-A.

  The doors opened, and we stepped out into another corridor, this one marked with signs pointing toward RESOURCE APPRAISAL.

  Alice still had her arm looped through mine, apparently deciding we were friends now whether or not I liked it. “Come on, Dash,” she said, pulling me forward. “Let’s see what loot we scored.”

  We walked into the appraisal office together, and I tried very hard not to think about how two corpo academy students, who could probably buy my house with their allowance, accidentally befriended me.

  The appraisal office was nothing like I expected.

  A long counter stretched across the room, its surface covered with devices of every size and description. Some I recognized, like precision scales for measuring weight, spectrometers for analyzing composition. I’d seen Eddy use it when he was trying to figure out if something was worth buying or just expensive garbage.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  But there were so many more I didn’t recognize. Crystalline arrays that pulsed with soft light. Scanning platforms with floating holographic displays. What looked like a containment field generator, miniaturized and mounted directly into the counter.

  Behind the counter stood a woman in a classic Scavantis coat, with the company logo embroidered over her heart. Well, looking like a person who’d processed a thousand bags of loot and had zero patience for small talk.

  Behind her, the wall opened into a walk-in storage space. Through the gap in the middle, I could see shelves packed with containers, bins, cases, all carefully labeled and organized.

  Alice slipped in front of me with a smirk before I could even step forward.

  “Hello!” she called out, waving the sealed bag enthusiastically. She slapped it down on the counter along with her paper slip, practically vibrating with excitement.

  The woman nodded, taking both without comment. She examined the bag’s seal first, checking the runes, verifying the enchantment hadn’t been tampered with, then placed the entire thing onto one of the scanning platform.

  The bag vanished.

  Not slowly with any dramatic effect. Just... gone.

  And in its place, the contents plopped out onto the platform in a scattered pile.

  Minerals. Dozens of them. Different sizes, different grades, but all variations of the same thing. Glowing pebbles. Crystalline fragments that caught the light.

  “Why is it always minerals...” I muttered to myself.

  I’d always wondered about that. Why did mines form on Earth 2.0 in the first place? Why did bugs spawn, dropping Traninum like clockwork? Was it connected to chaos somehow? Did the System defeat chaos and... what? Convert it into resources? Stabilize it into minerals?

  The reward could be anything, theoretically. But except for that ring, everything I’d found was just... rocks.

  Fancy rocks, like valuable rocks. But rocks.

  The woman worked quickly, sorting the minerals into categories. Each went onto a different scanner, readings flickering across her terminal.

  “You two?” she asked, glancing up at Alice.

  Alice was loud in confirming. “Yep! Just the two of us!” She gestured at Cecilia, who nodded silently beside her.

  The woman tapped her terminal and numbers scrolled past. “￠257 per person. That’s a pass.” She printed two tickets with a soft mechanical whir and handed them to Alice. “Vending machine near the entrance will dispense your licenses. Do not lose them, hardware keys are impossible to replace. Welcome to Scavantis.”

  Alice took the tickets with a grin, practically bouncing. “Nova! Thanks, girl!” She grabbed Cecilia’s arm, and they shifted to the side, giving me space at the counter. Alice leaned against the wall, watching me. “Your turn, Dash. Let’s see what you scored.”

  I did the same, stepping up to the counter and placing my sealed bag and paper slip down.

  The woman took them with the same efficient motions she’d used for Alice. Checked the seal. Verified the glyps. Placed the bag onto the scanning platform.

  It vanished.

  The contents clinked down onto the platform in a cascade that was noticeably louder than Alice’s haul. More rocks. A lot more rocks. They scattered across the surface, piling up in a small mountain of fluxstone chunks and glowing pebbles.

  Alice whistled low. “Damn, Dash. You weren’t lazy!”

  The woman started sorting through the pile with speed, scanning each piece, categorizing, logging values. Her fingers moved automatically, as if she’d done this thousands of times.

  Then she stopped.

  Her hand closed around something that wasn’t a rock.

  She blinked and glanced up at me. “Ring?”

  “Yes,” I said, trying to sound confident. “It dropped?”

  “Rare.” She turned it over in her fingers, examining the silver band. “Out of 100 people, only 6 are that lucky.” She set it aside on a specialized scanning pad. “You need to sell it to me at the market rate. Standard 33% handling fee, plus 10% storage fee, 7% identification fee, and 5% processing surcharge.”

  She said it as if it wasn’t optional. Like I’d already agreed and she was already moving back to the stones before I could even process what half those fees meant.

  Alice whistled again, louder this time.

  The woman’s head snapped up, glare sharp enough to cut. “Sorry,” Alice said quickly, a slight blush coloring her cheeks. She made a zipping motion across her lips.

  The appraiser went back to measuring the rocks, her terminal chiming softly with each scan. When she finished, she pulled out a jeweler’s loupe, this funny-looking magnifying glass that she fitted over one eye, and picked up the ring with a pair of precision tweezers.

  She examined the runes with a needle-thin probe, rotating the band slowly under the magnification.

  “Ah.” She set it down. “Standard [Ring of Regeneration]. Market price is ￠1000. After fees, it's ￠450 for you.” She tapped her terminal. “But it doesn’t count toward your minimum requirement. Which is...” Her eyes scanned the screen. “￠1035 from minerals. How many are in your group?”

  I blinked. “Solo?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “The limit was ￠250. You aren’t compensated beyond that. Did you know?”

  “Haha!” I laughed nervously, rubbing the back of my neck. “I saw a wall with minerals, so I mined ‘em? Kind of lost in it...”

  Alice burst out laughing, with Cecilia also giggling. The woman’s glare could’ve melted steel. Alice stopped immediately, pressing her lips together, but her shoulders still shook with suppressed laughter.

  The appraiser sighed and printed a ticket with a soft mechanical whir. “You passed. Here’s your ticket.” She slid it across the counter. “You’re already in our system as a license holder. Congratulations.”

  [Received: ￠450]

  “Thanks,” I managed, taking the ticket.

  The woman was already gathering the minerals, scooping them into standardized containers and carrying them through the gap in the wall toward the storage shelves.

  I turned away from the counter, still processing the fact that I’d just made over two thousand sols in one dive and barely noticed. Well… theorecially made.

  Alice immediately stole my arm again, looping hers through mine with the same confident energy. “Let’s get licenses,” she declared, grinning widely, “and then eat! I’m starving. You like noodles? There’s this preem place on Floor 72. Best synth-pork in the district. Or so Ceci heard!”

  Before I could protest, she was already dragging me toward the door, Cecilia falling into step on my other side.

  We headed back down toward the entrance, following the same confusing maze of corridors that somehow felt less intimidating with Alice dragging me along and chattering nonstop about food.

  “So there’s this place on 72, right? Totally underground! Well, not literally, obviously we’re in a MegaBuilding, but like, underground scene-wise. Not corpo-approved. Real chefs, not algae-paste dispensers, stalls, thousands of peeps. The synth-pork is preem, I swear—”

  We emerged into the main lobby, and Alice made a beeline for the machine mounted against the wall near the entrance.

  The ticket dispenser.

  It was... dated. Definitely older tech. But compared to the rusted Exchange Machine at my school, the one that looked like it had been kicked down every stair on Earth 2.0, this thing was probably ten generations newer. The casing was intact, at least. The screen wasn’t cracked. The paint was mostly faded instead of completely gone.

  Still old, though. Scavantis didn’t waste money on cosmetics.

  I stepped up first, pulling out the ticket the appraiser had given me. The paper was still warm from the printer, edges crisp and clean.

  I slotted it into the machine.

  After scanning my biometrics, the machine whirred to life with a grinding sound that suggested decades of use, pulling the ticket inside. Processing bars flickered across the screen in that classic corporate Scavantis orange.

  A few seconds passed.

  Then, with a soft chime, something dropped into the collection tray at the bottom.

  I reached in and pulled out my license.

  Holographic card, maybe the size of a credit chip, but thicker. Reinforced. The surface shimmered when I tilted it, text and images shifting with the viewing angle. My picture stared back at me, older photo, probably pulled from my school records when I’d registered. I looked younger. Less tired. Pre-mining-shift exhaustion.

  Below the photo:

  NAME: DASH KALLUM

  STATUS: GRAY SYSTEM LICENSE HOLDER

  That was it, no additional information. Just my name and the fact that I was authorized to hunt gray-tier threats.

  Simple and probably impossible to forge, not that Eddy hadn’t tried. I pocketed it quickly, before Alice could lean over and read the surname too closely.

  She was already pushing her ticket into the machine with eager energy, bouncing on her heels as it processed. Her license popped out a second later, and she snatched it up with a grin, holding it up to the light to admire the holographic shimmer.

  “Nova! Official now!” She pocketed it and gestured at the machine. “This is where you come when you lose your old one, by the way. Just ten thousand fee!”

  She glanced back at Cecilia with a knowing smirk.

  Cecilia’s face immediately flushed red. “That was one time!” she protested, voice quiet but indignant.

  Alice burst out laughing. “You left it in your jacket, and maid washed it! The thing came out of the dryer looking like melted plastic!”

  “It still worked,” Cecilia muttered, crossing her arms.

  “Barely! You had to squint at it sideways just to read your name!”

  I couldn’t help but grin at that mental image.

  After getting her sisters’, Alice looped her arm through mine again before I could even think about escaping. “Alright, Dash! Enough standing around. Let’s jet to Floor 72 and get some real food in our stomachs.”

  She dragged me toward the elevator bank with Cecilia trailing behind, still blushing. “Food!” Alice declared as the elevator doors opened, and she pulled me inside.

  I was starting to think escaping wasn’t really an option anymore.

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