I watched Professor Brhaisse walk away, her words about the library lingering in my mind. Something felt off.
"No…"
Everything had been feeling off since I'd stepped onto Shyveon's grounds as if there was something I'd been forgetting.
The timeline was flowing too fast. Too simply.
Too straightforward.
Where were the twists and turns? For one, I shouldn't have passed with flying colours if not for the sheer convenience of it all.
In conclusion.
The entrance exams... they'd been too easy.
I frowned, scanning the arena where the remaining students continued their matches. No one had failed. Not a single student had been asked to leave.
That wasn't right.
In my novel, the entrance exams were brutal, designed to weed out the weak. Students should have been crying, bleeding, begging for mercy. Some should have been carried out on stretchers.
My fight with Vex replayed in my mind. The way she'd moved, the way I'd countered—it had all been too clean, too... predictable. Even with my Gift active, the battle shouldn't have flowed so smoothly.
The real Vex I'd written would have had hidden weapons, dirty tricks, something unexpected.
The exams I had written weren't this… petty and sad.
I was still so obsessed with suffering at that time, after all. I wanted to suffer, make others suffer, and watch the world burn.
So, my thoughts drifted. They drifted to the soft bed I had enjoyed that night.
"Wait…
The dormitories...
"Ah," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a bucket of ice water.
The ceiling of stars. That detail hadn't been in my novel, and I did have the habit of creating illusions with celestial bodies, so obsessed with the lie of the sky.
Originally, the dormitories I'd written had plain ceilings, not magical displays of constellations which I usually attributed to illusions against the soul.
In a way, it was a hint.
No, it was the hint.
This wasn't real. None of it was real.
I was still in the exam — the true exam. However, this was all an illusion, a test to see if we could recognize reality from fantasy and to test our behaviors in simulated environments.
A test to be humble in spite of the glorious future set ahead of us.
I closed my eyes and focused on breaking free. The world around me shimmered, then cracked like glass.
When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on a cold stone floor, surrounded by other students in various states of consciousness.
Some were still trapped in the illusion, their eyes moving rapidly behind closed lids. Others were already awake, their expressions grim and exhausted.
These were the faces I'd expected to see—students who had fought their way through a genuine challenge, not the smiling, energetic crowd from the illusion.
I pushed myself up, muscles aching from what must have been hours of lying motionless. The real entrance exam was about to begin, and I needed to be ready.
* * *
I sat up, my head throbbing with the sudden shift from illusion to reality.
Around me, other students were waking, their faces etched with confusion and disbelief. Majority remained trapped in whatever fantasy the exam had conjured for them.
A slow, deliberate clapping echoed through the chamber.
"Well, well, well."
The voice cut through the air like a blade. I turned to see Professor Brhaisse — most likely the real one this time — standing at the edge of the room. Her lips curled into a sadistic grin that never reached her eyes.
"Look at the little heroes, finally waking up from their dreams of grandeur."
She checked her watch with exaggerated care, tapping its face before addressing us again.
"Three... two... one... And time's up for the first round."
The first round? My stomach dropped.
"For those of you conscious enough to comprehend basic mathematics," she continued, pacing slowly before us, almost cackling in our faces.
"Let me enlighten you about your current standing. The passing rate for this first round is precisely 0.7%."
A collective gasp rippled through the awakened students. At least, that's what they tried to do. However, their throats were beyond parched, having been left on the stone floor for hours, maybe days?
I had to check.
Either way, they could barely eek out a coherent syllable!
And still…
While I was momentarily distracted, Brhaisse continued speaking.
"That's right," she smiled, clearly enjoying our shock to an abnormal degree. "Among the tens of thousands of applicants spread across campus, only a fraction of a fraction have managed to break free from the illusion."
My mind raced. Tens of thousands? That definitely wasn't the number I'd seen moving to the dormitories.
'No! Wait!' My mind was screaming at me.
A chill poured down my spine like an arctic shower. Every joint in my body froze, and a shiver caused a tremble throughout every single muscle I had.
Tens of thousands of applicants.
That would mean—
"Yes," Brhaisse was truly laughing at us now.
"For those of you feeling smug about waking up," she added, "You should know that the illusion didn't begin where you think it did."
She paused for dramatic effect. Eyeing perhaps the first one who realized the true, truth.
Me.
"Indeed, children. It started the moment you stepped near Obelisk."
The Obelisk?
Fuck.
Shit.
I let out a wry laugh. I'd been had.
Everything since then, from the opening speech to the eventual trip back out the Obelisk and to the dormitories…
Fake.
My thoughts, which had been clearer during the speech had slowly deteriorated as the illusion progressed. Up until the point I believed I could best a true prodigy in assassination simply because my stats went up.
However!
I glanced down at my left hand, where the golden eye of the Headmaster's Insignia still gleamed against my skin.
The Headmaster's Insignia was indeed still on my hand...
'Don't tell me… had Lux pulled me out of the illusion to talk to me?'
Ah, no… that makes more sense.
If I had gone through the portal as a Shadow Demon or even strayed too close to the obselisk, of all people, it would be Avida Lux who would realize it the instant I arrived.
Perhaps this was a change caused by the Aura of Depth. Lux's powers had clearly grown exponentially since I last described her, and now, she truly stood just a level beneath the Gods.
Furthermore…
'That premonition I had… Didn't it vanish when I walked through the portal?'
Yes… Everything made sense.
From my thoughts, which would be the narration of a book on my life, would've deteriorated the moment I was engulfed in an illusion.
To the pacing of events and its seeming depth. Everything moved too fast.
Too abnormally.
Too robotic.
As if everything had been built by an inferior intellect.
"Hahahaha," I had no choice but to laugh.
Otherwise, I'd experience an existential breakdown. Right here, right now.
'…Is my entire transmigration, fake?'
—Crack.
The moment I had that thought, I felt something inside me shatter.