Clouds Over the Dark Side

"System? How long will the repairs take?"

The walkthrough system did not answer Lu Guan's question as usual, but it did display a progress bar on the system interface.

Judging by how quickly the progress bar was moving, Lu Guan estimated that it would take about three days for the system to be fully repaired.

"At this point, I suppose that's all I can do."

And so he returned to a campus routine that took him between five places: the dormitory, the teaching building, the cafeteria, the library, and the training grounds. It was far too normal for a student at Stardust Academy.

Dania, meanwhile, seemed to have vanished into thin air after that day. Aside from a small chance of her spawning in the cafeteria at mealtimes, Lu Guan never saw her.

It was as though she were deliberately avoiding him.

Time passed, second by second. While Lu Guan was doing his routine training in the simulation training grounds on the third day, the system woke up.

[Beep! System self-check complete. Vulnerability repaired...]

[Full upgrade complete. The walkthrough system 2.0 is at your service]

"Oh? What unfortunate timing." Lu Guan looked at the holographic Hecate that had just appeared before him. "Looks like I'll have to end this fight quickly."

During his battles with Hecate over the past few days, he had come to understand the essence of combat, and now the atmosphere reached its peak.

And so, when the moment was ripe, Lu Guan could finally shout:

"I've mastered the core of Resonance Power!"

Empowered by those words, Lu Guan launched a Hollow Technique: "Purple" at Hecate's weak point with virtually zero frames of startup.

As an artificial machine, Hecate possessed tremendous computing power. Once its ability, Future Sight, was activated, it could observe and record its enemies' attacks and evasive maneuvers within its domain.

It would calculate the attacks or evasions it had recorded, allowing it to dodge the next attack of the same kind with nearly a hundred percent probability. Likewise, its enemy would be unable to evade its next attack in the same way.

If that were all, it would have been manageable. The really underhanded part was that, after a researcher upgraded holographic Hecate, it came with an external database containing records of everyone who had ever challenged it...

In short, the next time Lu Guan challenged it, the chances of landing Pillar: Death Star Celestial Judgment, Hollow Technique: "Purple," and even some of the other skills he had used before would be greatly reduced.

And in fact, Lu Guan had already used Hollow Technique: "Purple" during a simulation two days ago!

In other words... as long as Hecate chose to evade this attack, the chance of it hitting would be extremely low!

But... Lu Guan's attack did not end there.

"I've had enough of these formalities!"

"The best way to counter a domain is with Domain Expansion!"

Domain Expansion-Unlimited Void!

After experimenting over the past few days, Lu Guan had more or less figured out the boosts a few phrases could provide.

"I've had enough of these formalities!" could cancel the recovery time of the previous move and give the next move zero frames of startup, allowing it to be unleashed without any preparation.

The effect of "The best way to counter a domain is with Domain Expansion!" was that, when an enemy used a domain-like skill, he could open any kind of domain to counter it.

The earlier "I've mastered the core of Resonance Power!" was a one-time bonus. Once used, it took permanent effect, increasing resonance efficiency by around ten percent and Echo energy recovery by ten percent.

Back to the matter at hand: when the purple-glowing Hollow Technique flew toward Hecate, Hecate, having already calculated its attack path, was about to dodge. Suddenly, a massive amount of useless information flooded in, causing it to crash on the spot.

"What the fuck! What did you stuff into my database?!"

"My graduation project! It's ruined! All ruined!"

The console controlling Hecate's holographic projection behind the scenes at the simulation training grounds had suffered terribly. Countless bizarre, surreal video clips had been saved to the database, contaminating the database the researchers had originally kept in perfect order and turning it into a tangled mess.

In particular, Hecate had activated Future Sight and was continuously reading information from outside. Having such a huge amount of useless information suddenly inserted caused the data it sent back to become extraordinarily jumbled.

It was like a holy nun being invaded by a massive amount of evil energy from unknown sources and then changing class into a fallen nun...

The key was that she had not completely fallen. She was the kind who could be solemnly explaining doctrine one second and leaking it out the next...

To sort through the data, the first priority would be to examine every piece of it over and over, making sure none contained the massive payloads Lu Guan had mixed in, such as "Star-Crossed Lovers," "Yuan Shen Qi Dong," and "Old Jiang and Zhaoming."

Otherwise, the next time Hecate was projected, they could just wait for it to drop to its knees halfway through a fight and shout "All that has passed!" in its mechanical voice!

After Lu Guan finished the simulation, the red-eyed researchers who had long been waiting outside seized him on the spot.

"You brat, you did that on purpose, didn't you?"

"Come on! You're coming with me to see Principal Lacerta!"

The principal's office.

"All right, all right... I know what happened." Lacerta held her forehead as she looked at the indignant researchers before her and Lu Guan, who sat on the sofa to one side with an innocent look on his face. Her feelings were complicated.

"Principal Lacerta, Lu Guan went too far!" a male researcher said. "Connecting an external database to Hecate for data retrieval was my graduation project, and he just ruined it!"

"Let's be honest, wasn't it a problem with your program design?" Lu Guan retorted. "If you'd added a filtering step to Hecate's data-reading process, the database wouldn't have been contaminated."

"You... you...!"

"What about me? I thought I'd done something against the rules," Lu Guan said mercilessly. "So after all that... you want me to pay for your sloppy approach to your experiment?"

"Even we preparatory students wouldn't make a basic mistake like that. Spend a few more years learning properly before you think about graduating!"

Seeing that the two were about to start arguing, Lacerta hurriedly stood up and called a stop to it.

"Everyone, quiet down. I'll handle this matter later."

"Lu Guan, stay behind for a moment!"

Now that the principal had spoken, the male researcher could only glare angrily at Lu Guan before leading the others straight out.

After making sure the man had gone far enough away, Lacerta sat back down in her office chair and sighed repeatedly. "I really didn't expect the Academy Dark Side's influence to have become this severe..."

"The Academy Dark Side?"

"You can think of it simply as the academy's shadow. It's a special collective Sonoro formed from the emotions accumulated by the students."

"It and the academy are one and the same, so it cannot be eliminated. It's like a refracting mirror, able to refract the students' thoughts. The shadow it reflects... let's call it 'youth.'"

"'Youth' is an interesting word. It contains ideals, passion, and... anxiety and sorrow."

"The Academy Dark Side takes in all those emotions. It can reflect everyone's truest thoughts, but it does more than that."

"Think about it. If the Dark Side were a vortex, and feelings of anxiety and sorrow were its eye..."

Lu Guan said coldly, "Those emotions would press against one another and swell, eventually affecting the students' thoughts, and then the academy itself."

"And the rumors lately, as well as those people's anxiety just now, all came from the Dark Side's influence on them..."

"Exactly right." Lacerta nodded approvingly. "To stop those emotions from spreading, the people at the research institute confined the Dark Side within individual 'puzzles,' containing it harmlessly as a game the students look forward to every year."

"By solving the puzzles and confronting their own confusion, they could ultimately dispel and release the emotions accumulated by the Dark Side. That was the original purpose of the puzzle game."

"...Minerva's Treasure?"

"That's only one of them," Lacerta explained. "And the event wasn't supposed to begin at this time of year..."

"The unusual activity in the Dark Side may very well be due to a change in its internal structure... though what's even more likely is..."

Lu Guan picked up where she left off. "Someone is controlling it."

"That's right. Dr. Lu discovered that many students' mental states are cause for concern. It's as if something has been influencing them." Lacerta stood and looked through the window at the students walking below in twos and threes.

"At the same time, I discovered a trace of a frequency in the Dark Side that doesn't belong to the academy. It can't be located, much less analyzed."

"Is there anything you need me to do?" Lu Guan asked.

"No... I'm telling you this only because I want you to know the cause of the strange occurrences lately." Lacerta shook her head. "As for the Academy Dark Side, leave that to us adults."