Webnovel's Extra: Reincarnated With a Copy Ability-Chapter 147: Review Conditions

Lucas woke before the morning bell and knew right away he wasn’t going back to sleep.

It wasn’t panic. Not exactly. Panic was hot and obvious. This felt lower than that, heavier. Like something had settled behind his ribs during the night and decided it was staying there.

He sat on the edge of the bed for a while, elbows on his knees, staring at the narrow strip of light under the door. The dorm was still mostly quiet. Somewhere down the hall, someone coughed. Pipes groaned softly in the walls. A shower turned on, then off. Ordinary sounds. They should have helped. They didn’t.

He got up, splashed cold water over his face, and stood there longer than he meant to, palms braced on the sink, watching droplets slide off his chin.

The mirror didn’t give him anything useful. Same face. Same tired eyes. Same body that had been carrying too much pressure for too long and somehow hadn’t cracked yet.

His interface chimed while he was drying his hands.

He almost ignored it. Then he looked.

HYBRID PROFICIENCY REVIEW

Attendance Mandatory

Amphitheater 2 — 09:10

That was all.

No extra notes. No explanation. Nothing to soften it. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Lucas stared at the message until it dimmed on its own.

Of course they’d call it a review. The Triangle loved names that sounded harmless. Maintenance. Adjustment. Evaluation. Review. Words built to keep everyone calm while the machine decided what to do with you.

He dressed without rushing, though his fingers fumbled once at the collar clasp. That annoyed him more than it should have. He nearly redid the whole thing just because of that one slip, then stopped himself.

Not today.

He left the room and made for the training hall, because standing still in the dorm felt worse than movement, and because if he was going to be watched later, he wanted at least an hour of doing something that still belonged to him.

The low-output hall was half empty. Good.

He rolled his shoulders, loosened his wrists, and ran through basic footwork before drawing his sword. The metal left the sheath with that familiar whisper, light and steady in his hand. He tried not to think too hard after that. Thinking too hard was how the pressure started to crowd him.

Just breathe. Move. Let the body remember.

He started with something simple, a standard opening form anyone in the academy would recognize. Then, without really meaning to, his stance shifted by half an inch. His weight settled differently. His right shoulder relaxed. The sword angle lowered.

Not Triangle form.

The other one.

He caught it immediately and stopped.

For a moment he just stood there with the blade lowered, annoyed at himself in a way that had nothing to do with technique. It would have been easier if the demonic style felt monstrous, or wrong, or visibly foreign. It didn’t. That was the problem. It fit too well now. His balance liked it. His timing liked it. His body understood it before his mind had a chance to object.

"You’re doing that thing again," Zagan said from the back of his skull.

Lucas shut his eyes. Don’t start.

The demon sounded amused, though not cruel. "You keep reaching for what works, then flinching when you notice it."

Lucas tightened his grip. "I’m not flinching."

"No? Then why did you stop?"

Because I noticed, he thought, and hated how weak the answer sounded even inside his own head.

He reset his stance and tried again. This time he forced himself into a cleaner academy pattern. The cuts were technically correct. The footwork was sharp enough. Anyone watching from a distance would’ve approved.

It still felt wrong.

He fed a little mana into the motion and felt that familiar tightening beneath his sternum. Not a spike. Not the ugly turbulence from before. This was controlled, almost patient. Pressure gathered and waited to be told where to go.

Lucas cut again.

The weight moved with him. Smooth. Too smooth. He could feel the sword wanting to commit further than he told it to, not because he was losing control, but because some part of him had started to expect more from every motion.

That scared him more than the earlier instability ever had.

The older surges had at least felt dangerous. This felt useful.

He stopped before he could push harder.

By the time he put the sword away, his shirt was damp across the back and his jaw ached from how long he’d been clenching it.

He checked the time. Enough. If he stayed, he’d start circling the same thoughts again.

The walk to Amphitheater 2 gave him too much room to think anyway.

Students had already started drifting that direction, some pretending they were just passing through, others openly curious. Nobody asked him anything. They just looked, then looked away, and that was somehow worse.

He caught fragments as he moved through the corridor.

"They called him first?"

"I heard Stella’s in the second block."

"That’s not random."

No, Lucas thought. Nothing here ever was.

Raisel was waiting outside the amphitheater, leaning against a pillar with that same unreadable calm he carried into everything. He didn’t wave. He didn’t have to. Lucas changed course without deciding to.

"You’re early," Lucas said.

"So are you."

Lucas glanced at the doors. "You know what this is?"

Raisel looked toward the flow of students entering. "A stage."

"Helpful."

Raisel’s mouth twitched, barely. "They don’t need another drill. They need everyone to watch the right people under pressure and decide what the result means."

Lucas folded his arms. "And what do you think it means?"

"That depends how cleanly you handle it."

Lucas let out a dry breath.

Raisel pushed off the pillar. "Listen carefully. If you try to dominate the room, they’ll mark you as unstable. If you hesitate too much, they’ll mark you as weak. So don’t do either."

"That’s very comforting."

"It’s not meant to be." Raisel looked him over once, quick and sharp. "They’ll probably give you a bad mix on purpose. Someone nervous, someone proud, someone who wants to prove they’re better than being assigned to you. Don’t waste time correcting personalities. Correct timing."

Lucas studied him for a second.

"You sound like Dreyden."

That earned him an annoyed look. "No. I sound right."

Before Lucas could answer, the doors slid open wider and a staff member called his name.

He walked in without looking back.

Amphitheater 2 was fuller than he expected. The lower seats were crowded with students, but what caught his eye was the front. Faculty. Administrative staff. A few family liaisons. The people who liked to sit close enough to claim they were only observing, not shaping.

The stage lights were bright enough to flatten faces. At the center stood the gray-haired administrator from earlier sessions, one hand resting lightly on the podium as if none of this required any effort from him.

Lucas took his place in the marked staging area below the stage and waited.

The administrator let the room settle before speaking.

"Today is a proficiency review," he said. "Not disciplinary. Not corrective. We are evaluating performance under mixed-pressure conditions with incomplete familiarity between assigned members."

His tone was calm, but not soft. He spoke like a man who knew the room would listen because it had no choice.

"In recent weeks, the academy has shifted greater responsibility onto students during formation response. Some of you have adapted well. Some of you have adapted unevenly. Today is not meant to punish either condition. It is meant to clarify them."

The woman beside him brought up the grid.

A rotating formation simulation. Four anchors. Two suppressors. One lead. Variable delays, shifting hazard lanes, no instructor intervention mid-run.

Lucas had expected something ugly.

This was uglier because it looked reasonable.

The administrator looked down toward him. "Lucas."

Lucas lifted his head.

"You will lead the first demonstration."

There was no point asking why. The room already knew why.

Names flashed onto the screen one after another.

A Tier C anchor Lucas recognized from the cafeteria, all nerves and too-fast talking.

A suppressor from A-3 who had lost to Lucas once and had hated him since.

Another suppressor with a reputation for overcommitting because he confused aggression with confidence.

And one unknown anchor from B-tier, face unreadable, posture quiet.

Bad mix. Exactly like Raisel said.

The group joined him on the floor, each carrying their own tension differently. The nervous one kept swallowing. The A-3 suppressor didn’t bother hiding her annoyance. The reckless one looked almost eager, which usually meant trouble. The quiet anchor was the only one watching the grid instead of the audience.

Lucas stepped closer.

He didn’t try to sound inspiring. He didn’t have it in him, and they’d smell fake confidence instantly.

"You don’t have to trust me," he said. "You just have to move when I call it. If you freeze, somebody gets hit. If you freelance, somebody gets hit. That’s all."

The reckless suppressor snorted. "Simple."

"Yes," Lucas said, looking right at him. "So don’t make it harder."

That shut him up.

Lucas turned to the nervous Tier C. "What’s your best job?"

The boy blinked. "Barrier stabilization."

"Can you do it without me repeating myself?"

The boy swallowed again, then nodded.

"Good. Then when I say stabilize, you do it fast and you don’t look at the audience."

That got a flush out of him, but also a sharper nod.

Lucas faced the A-3 suppressor next. "You like clear lanes?"

She crossed her arms. "I like not compensating for bad calls."

"Then you’ll love this," Lucas said. "I’ll give you clean lines. You hold them. No hero moves."

She looked like she wanted to argue, then didn’t.

The unknown anchor met his gaze without flinching. "And me?"

Lucas studied him for a beat. "You watch spacing. If you see collapse pressure before I call it, speak."

The anchor’s brows lifted. "You want me to check your blind side."

"I want you to keep us standing."

That answer seemed to satisfy him.

The synthetic voice counted down.

The barrier lifted around the grid.

The first wave came in light, almost insultingly manageable. A simple bait pass. The sort of opening designed to make people rush.

Lucas ignored the bait.

"Stabilize," he called.

The Tier C anchor got the barrier up in time.

"Left suppressor, hold lane. Right suppressor, don’t chase."

They moved. Not perfectly, but fast enough.

Lucas stayed in the center and let the pressure gather under his ribs without reaching for it too hard. That was the trick now. Not pushing. Not panicking. Just carrying.

The second wave shifted timing halfway through and one of the suppressors nearly stepped across the other’s arc.

"Separate," Lucas snapped.

They corrected just before the projections overlapped.

Good.

By the third exchange, something changed. Not in the grid. In the group.

They started listening to the rhythm instead of to their own nerves. Calls landed cleaner. Adjustments happened with less resistance.

The audience went quiet in that particular way crowds do when something works after they expected it not to.

Then the system increased variance.

Of course it did.

The floor markings blurred for a split second and reappeared half a step off. The nervous anchor saw it and almost looked up toward the seats.

"Stay with me," Lucas said sharply.

The boy flinched, then recovered.

A lane collapsed on the right. The reckless suppressor moved too early. The A-3 girl compensated instinctively, which would have caused a feedback flare if Lucas had hesitated.

"Reset your line," he said. "You don’t save each other by colliding."

That landed.

The heat in his chest swelled, wanting to close the entire formation down into something tighter, safer, smaller.

He didn’t let it.

He widened his stance instead and spread the pressure across the line. Not much. Just enough to keep them from folding inward.

The unknown anchor caught it.

"Center’s holding too hard," he warned.

Lucas adjusted immediately. "Then breathe it wider. Two steps. Now."

They did.

The wave broke clean.

He heard movement in the audience then, not applause, not approval. Just people shifting because they’d been leaning forward and didn’t realize it.

The simulation ended a few minutes later without anyone hitting the wall.

The barrier fell.

For a second no one moved.

Then the nervous boy let out an awkward laugh that sounded close to tears. The reckless suppressor rubbed the back of his neck like he didn’t know what to do with his hands. The A-3 girl looked at Lucas with something like reluctant respect, though she’d probably deny it if asked.

"You made decent calls," she said.

Lucas was too tired to enjoy the compliment. "You held your lane."

She gave a single nod, which for her was practically gratitude.

The administrator stepped forward again.

"Acceptable," he said.

That was all.

No praise. No lesson. Just a verdict.

Lucas almost smiled at the cruelty of it. "Acceptable" was how this place disguised value. If they were disappointed, they’d say more. If they were pleased, they said less.

He walked off the floor on tired legs and found Dreyden waiting near the side corridor.

Dreyden took one look at him and said, "You didn’t force it."

"No."

"How close."

Lucas considered lying. "Close enough."

Dreyden nodded once.

"They’ll use that."

"I know," Lucas said.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and looked back toward the stage where staff were resetting the grid. "You’re next."

"Yes."

Lucas hesitated.

Dreyden noticed. He always did.

"What."

Lucas exhaled. "If you go up there and do exactly what they expect, they’ll package it. They’ll make it look clean."

"And if I don’t?"

Lucas met his eyes. "Then they’ll make it look dangerous."

Dreyden’s expression barely shifted, but Lucas saw the thought land.

"Then I’ll have to give them something that resists both readings," Dreyden said.

Lucas laughed once, tired and real. "That sounds impossible."

"Most useful things do."

A staff member called Dreyden’s name.

The room quieted again.

Dreyden adjusted his gloves once, not because he needed to, but because he was buying half a second to think. Then he stepped toward the stage with that same steady pace that always made Lucas feel like the floor itself was making room for him.

Lucas watched him go and, for the first time that day, felt the pressure in his own chest settle.

Not because things were better.

Because the next move wouldn’t belong to the institution alone.