Chapter 20: Before the first domino fell

Soon, the training came to an end and Kael stood in the center of the chamber, breathing heavily.

He had lost.

But he wasn’t disappointed. He looked at the results displayed on the terminal.

Combat Duration: 8 minutes, 43 seconds.

His first intermediate attempt lasted less than three minutes. He had more than doubled it. Kael stared at the number.

Then he smiled.

"Not bad, I guess."

Elias, watching from outside, shook his head.

When Kael walked out of the chamber, he said, "You really have a strange definition of success."

Kael chuckled.

"I didn’t say I won. Haha."

"Then what are you happy about?"

Kael looked toward the training chamber.

"Because I learned something new. That’s all."

That was enough. He didn’t need to defeat everyone today. He didn’t need to become stronger than Leon overnight. He didn’t even need to master the Returning Tide Sword immediately. He only needed to become slightly better than yesterday.

Then do it again tomorrow. And the day after that. Kael looked down at his hands. The path ahead was still long. But now he had something he hadn’t possessed before.

A proper combat technique.

He turned toward the chamber once more.

"I’ll try again tommorow."

Elias sighed.

"I see that coming."

Kael laughed. Then he suddenly stopped and rephrased his words.

"No. What I mean is... I’m going to beat their ass*s tomorrow."

The two left the facility together. Neither of them noticed the silver-haired girl standing farther down the corridor.

Seraphina had just arrived at the Combat Simulation Chamber.

Her long silver hair fell naturally over her shoulders, catching the light from the magical lamps and giving it a faint, almost ethereal glow. Her academy uniform was perfectly arranged, without a single wrinkle. Even after spending most of her time training, she maintained an elegance that seemed completely natural to her.

Her blue eyes followed Kael’s departing figure.

She had heard enough of their conversation to understand what he had been doing.

Training and losing.

A faint smile appeared on her lips.

"You’re really serious about improving, aren’t you, Kael Grayford?"

She glanced toward the simulation chamber. Then at the settings Kael had left on the terminal.

Intermediate.

Adaptive.

Attributes: 120%.

She glanced again at the direction where Kael and Elias were heading.

"Are you still the Kael everyone knows?" She muttered.

Then she walked into the simulation chamber. Behind her, the magical formations began to glow.

...

After parting ways with Elias, Kael continued toward his dormitory. He still had several days before the Wilderness Examination. And now he knew exactly how he intended to spend the rest of those days.

First of all, he needed to get some proper rest.

Training was important, but recovery was just as important. No matter how strong his Body Refinement and breathing technique had become, his body still had limits. The only reason he had been able to survive such intense and prolonged training was because those two techniques had dramatically improved his physical condition and recovery.

Even so, that did not mean he could keep pushing himself forever.

Kael let out a quiet sigh.

’I really need to stop treating rest like an optional feature.’

He glanced toward the sky.

Wait.

Something suddenly clicked in his mind.

"Right..."

Kael narrowed his eyes.

"Isn’t it almost time for the protagonist to show up at the academy?"

The thought made him pause.

If his memory was correct, assuming the future would not diverge from the original story, then the timeline was approaching that point.

Which meant...

The incidents, disasters, unexpected encounters, and all the ridiculous chain of events that somehow always seemed to follow the protagonist, one after another, they were about to start appearing.

Kael couldn’t help but feel a little tired just thinking about it.

He had never understood the strange relationship between protagonists and disasters. Back on Earth, he had consumed enough novels, comics, TV dramas, and games to notice a very obvious pattern.

Whenever a protagonist showed up, trouble followed. And whenever something catastrophic happened, the protagonist somehow happened to be there.

It was almost like the universe had a notification system.

Protagonist detected.

Initiating disaster sequence.

"Seriously..." Kael muttered. "Why does every protagonist come with their own disaster package?"

He rubbed his forehead.

Kael almost laughed at the thought. In his previous life, it had been entertaining, part of the plot to make the story more exciting and engaging. But now, it was an approaching threat.

After all, watching fictional characters stumble into increasingly absurd situations was one thing. Living in that world was another.

And somehow, he would then be part of it, not as a player, but as one of the casts. He stared at the sky for a few seconds. Then he sighed.

"Yeah. I’m definitely going to need more sleep."

If disasters were really about to start raining down, Kael wanted to be as prepared as possible.

Because there was one thing he had known before transmigrated to this world, something simple but extremely important.

When the protagonist arrives, normal life is officially over.

That was practically a universal law in stories.

Before the protagonist appeared, everything looked peaceful. Students went to class, nobles attended parties, merchants worried about money, and ordinary people went about their daily lives.

Then the protagonist showed up. And suddenly, ancient ruins started opening. Powerful villains appeared out of nowhere. Secret organizations began moving in the shadows. Forbidden artifacts resurfaced. World-ending monsters somehow decided that it was the perfect time to wake up.

Kael had seen enough stories to know how this worked. It was almost funny when viewed from the outside. It was significantly less funny when he was actually living inside the story.

That was also why he had been so stubborn about becoming stronger every single day. He wasn’t training because he enjoyed suffering before sunrise, nor because he had some heroic obsession with becoming the strongest person alive.

He simply wanted to survive. Preparation was the only advantage he had. He couldn’t control when the major events would begin. He couldn’t stop every disaster before it happened. And he couldn’t guarantee that his knowledge of the original story would remain accurate forever.

But he could make sure that, when trouble finally arrived, he wouldn’t be standing there completely helpless.

In the original game, the arrival of the protagonist at Astral Dominion Academy marked the official beginning of the story. Everything before that point was essentially the prologue.

Once the protagonist enrolled, the peaceful academy life that Kael currently knew would slowly disappear.

The academy would become a battlefield.

Friendships would be tested. Rivalries would escalate. Hidden factions would begin making their moves. Students who were still attending ordinary classes today could eventually become heroes, villains, or casualties of events far beyond their control.

And Kael?

He was currently living in the part of the story where everything still looked normal. That was what made it so unsettling. The ticking clock was invisible, but it was still there.

Kael looked toward the dormitory buildings in the distance and quietly sighed.

"Yeah... this is definitely the part where I should be grinding."

He almost laughed at himself. Thinking about the coming disasters like a gamer preparing for a difficult boss fight made the situation feel slightly less terrifying.

Still, jokes aside, he wasn’t going to underestimate what was coming. If the original timeline was still intact, then the protagonist would eventually arrive.

And when that happened, the world would change.

Kael intended to be ready before the first domino fell.