The Auxiliary Logistics wing of the Aegis Preparatory Academy was exactly as Same had calculated it would be: a forgotten, dusty graveyard of information. While the Combat and Tactical Divisions boasted state-of-the-art training arenas, gravity chambers, and high-density Qi-gathering formations, the Archives were situated in the damp, subterranean levels of the academy.
The air down here smelled of ozone, old parchment, and the distinct, metallic tang of decaying holographic storage drives. Towering shelves stretched into the gloom, holding a chaotic mix of physical books, crystal data-slates, and encrypted Vanguard field reports dating back to the inception of the 49th race's defense force.
Overseeing this graveyard was Archivist Thorne. He was an old, embittered man confined to a mechanized wheelchair, his lower half having been pulverized decades ago in a skirmish on the Second Sector borders. When Same first reported to him, Thorne had barely looked up from his rot-gut whiskey, waving a dismissive hand and telling the "crippled Linley boy" to go sit in a corner and not touch anything fragile.
It was the perfect environment.
For the next six months, while his peers ran physical gauntlets and practiced crude methods of absorbing ambient atmospheric Qi, Same engaged in a terrifying, silent consumption of human knowledge.
His routine was meticulously structured. He would arrive at the Archives at 0800 hours. Finding an isolated alcove hidden behind rows of obsolete logistical manifests, he would begin. His third wish—perfect comprehension—and his first wish—photographic memory—synergized into an intellectual weapon of mass destruction.
Same didn't read; he downloaded reality. He would walk down an aisle, his eyes tracking over the spines of physical books and the digital summaries of holographic drives. He would absorb entire encyclopedias on interdimensional geography in seconds. He processed centuries of Vanguard combat footage, analyzing every sword swing, every barrier deployment, and every monstrous anomaly that had ever breached the rifts, mapping it all in his mind like a grand, universal chessboard.
By his third month in the dark, he had effectively exhausted the entire sum of public and classified human knowledge available in the Aegis Academy.
Sitting cross-legged in his dusty alcove one afternoon, Same closed his eyes and began to synthesize the colossal amount of data he had devoured. The picture it painted of the universe was bleak, validating the warnings of the chaotic voice from the day of his birth.
The universe was governed by a strict, brutal hierarchy known as the Cosmic Ladder. The "Top Ten Races"—beings forged of pure celestial energy, ancient dragons, and primordial deities—resided in the Apex Realms, places overflowing with pure Origin Qi. Earth, and humanity as a whole, sat at the miserable 49th rank. They were situated in a cosmic dead zone, a buffer territory separating the Apex Realms from the chaotic, expanding void of the Outer Hells.
The "rifts" his father fought so desperately to close were not natural disasters. They were deliberate incursions. The Vanguard believed they were fighting to protect humanity from mindless monsters. But Same, with his perfect comprehension synthesizing millions of disparate battle reports, saw the terrifying truth: the Vanguard was simply pest control.
The monsters invading Earth were the cast-offs, the rejected beasts of the Higher Races, driven into Earth's dimension to thin their numbers. Humanity was fighting a desperate war of survival against the universe's garbage disposal.
More concerning was humanity's complete misunderstanding of power. The Vanguard utilized "Mana-tech"—weapons and bodies cultivated using the heavily diluted, fractured energy of their dead zone. They filtered the energy through complex, inefficient bodily meridians, wasting ninety percent of its potential just to cast a fireball or swing a glowing sword.
Same, however, commanded Origin Qi. Because he had shattered his biological limits through the agonizing cycle of destruction and rebirth fueled by his immortal soul, his body was no longer a crude filter. He was a perfect conduit. He didn't just use the energy; he was the energy.
He raised his right hand in the dim light of the alcove. With a mere thought, a microscopic vortex of Origin Qi materialized inches above his palm. It was completely silent, emitting no light and no outward pressure, perfectly contained by his terrifying mental control. Yet, the gravitational pull within that marble-sized vortex was enough to fold a Vanguard battleship in half.
He crushed the vortex, the energy dissipating harmlessly back into the atmosphere.
Knowledge was power, but unapplied knowledge was entirely useless. He knew the Vanguard's tactics were flawed. He knew their enemies were merely the vanguard of a much larger, cosmic joke orchestrated by entities like the Giant Eye. But he could not simply walk up to his father, a battle-hardened commander, and explain that a seven-year-old had solved the universe's physics engine. To do so would draw the gaze of the ancient fossils hiding on Earth, and worse, the entities beyond.
He needed a testing ground. He needed to see how the beings from the Higher Realms reacted to true, unfiltered Origin Qi, rather than the diluted Mana the Vanguard fought with. He needed an opportunity to act without being seen, to strike from the shadows while maintaining his perfect disguise as the Linley family's crippled null.
Fate, it seemed, had a twisted sense of humor, because his opportunity arrived exactly three days later, disguised as a catastrophic academy failure.