X01: MY PERFECTLY ABNORMAL LIFE

PRELIMINARY DOMAIN

X01: My Perfectly Abnormal Life

Chapter 2: PRELIMINARY DOMAIN

Kitarah stared for exactly one second too long.

The boy on the floor pushed his thick black glasses up, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. Dull. Shy. Trying so hard to be invisible.

Something about those blue eyes tugged at her — familiar, irritatingly familiar — but she crushed the thought instantly.

She stood up, smoothed her uniform, and walked away like she was never there in the first place.

By the time she reached her seat, her face was already cold again.

Onix slid into the chair beside her, siding her skirt neatly as she sat down.

"You certainly overdid that," Onix murmured.

Kitarah raised one eyebrow. "Did I? Or did he deserve that?"

"He has a f*****g lump on his cheek and you're asking me did you?" Onix was holding back from screaming.

Kitarah let her fingers run through her straight black hair and looked Onix dead in the eye. "I'd do it a hundred times, if it were you on that ground."

Onix paused. Whether it was the way she said it or the seriousness in her voice, she couldn't tell. But she was flustered. Her cheeks turned red. She couldn't even look at Kitarah.

"Why... why are you saying it like that?" she whispered.

Kitarah tilted her head, genuinely confused. "Like how?"

"Like... like that," Onix responded, her whole face now burning.

"Like how exactly? I meant what I said. And why is your face turning red all of a sudden? Are you sick?" Kitarah asked, seriously confused.

Onix bit her lip, her original color slowly coming back. "Nevermind." She stood up from the chair and left.

Kitarah chuckled a bit and pulled out her tablet, scrolling through the *School Requirements of the Golden Heights Competition.*

Around them, Harrington College hummed with its usual impossible grandeur.

It wasn't a normal university. It was a city.

Magic existed here — but not from thin air. Every student channeled it through personal artifacts and tools: rings, gloves, blades, pens, even boots. Without your artifact, you were powerless. With it, you were a weapon.

And everyone was ranked.

At the top stood the Phantom Domain — monsters. The highest combo of power, control, and artifact mastery. Their names lit up the central tower in holograms.

At the very bottom were the Preliminary Domain — the starters. The Echelon Class. That's where Kitarah and Onix were. New, unproven, watched.

The school provided everything: luxury dorm accommodations, a separate training zone for each domain, a huge high-tech manufacturing center where students built and upgraded their artifacts, special classes for top students, a Music Hall, Art Hall, Linguistics Hall, a massive Sports Building, a Virtual Reality Game Room, and a cafeteria that looked like a five-star restaurant.

Results? They weren't posted. They were handed to you in sealed envelopes. Four colors.

Red — danger. You're on the edge.

Green— safe. Average.

Silver — excellent.

Golden — you’re touching the next domain.

Modern. Clean. Rich. Easy to dream about, impossible to survive in if you were weak.

Which was exactly why Xyan Cross was known as the school's most famous loser.

Everyone knew his story: scholarship kid. Barely made it in. Since day one, he'd kept the lowest profile humanly possible. He never entered contests. Never showed his artifact — if he even had a good one. Anything that gave him attention, he avoided like poison.

No friends. After lectures, straight to his dorm.

His grades? Not bad. But never good enough to be noticed. Just safe enough not to be last. A perfect, calculated mediocrity.

A known loser.

Xyan quietly picked up his torn sleeve from the floor, head down, and slipped back into his seat as the lecturer began.

Kitarah didn't look at him again.

Not once.

Until — just once — her eyes flicked to the back row as he pulled his hood up to hide the bruises.

Weird, she thought. For a second, he didn't look like a loser at all. He looked... tired of pretending to be one.

She looked away.

The lecturer clapped. "Alright, Echelons. As Preliminary Domain colleagues, your first qualifier for the Golden Heights Competition starts tomorrow in the Training Zone. Artifact check is mandatory."

A groan rippled through the class.

Xyan's hand tightened under his desk.

He had already decided not to go. Like always.

But then the classroom screen lit up with the auto-generated participant list —

And his name was on it.

XYAN CROSS – PRELIMINARY DOMAIN – ARTIFACT STATUS: [UNREGISTERED] – ATTENDANCE: MANDATORY.

The whole class turned to stare at him.

Kitarah finally looked at him again — just once.

And Xyan thought, s**t! They found me.

....

"Is this how in just a split second my normal low profile life is about to end?"

Xyan thought, staring back at the eyes all gazing at him like something was wrong. He froze.

The participation list wasn't just on the big screen. It had pinged directly to everybody's desks — names, performance levels, power flex, enhancement percentages, recharge levels, and full details of the competition.

But they weren't looking at that.

They were looking behind him.

What they were actually staring at was a mimic version of the professor standing at the back of the class — just a step away from Xyan.

The mimic was doing the exact same thing as the real teacher. Same gestures. Same pacing. It even had the same voice.

Slowly... very slowly, Xyan turned.

It was alive. Breathing. Just an arm's stretch from his seat. Its eyes were fixed on him, smiling that too-perfect professor smile.

Xyan's blood went cold. A Mimic Artifact... in a Preliminary classroom?

"So... give it all you've got, okay?" the real professor concluded at the front, and the mimic mouthed the exact words a half-second late behind Xyan's ear.

Then the professor left.

The mimic dissolved into blue particles.

Silence.

Then chaos.

"Yo, did you see that? The prof used a Mimic Tool just to watch Xyan?" Theo laughed loudly from the back. "Bro's so useless they need to babysit him!"

Laughter erupted. Gaiz, cheek still red from Kitarah's kick, smirked. "Unregistered artifact, mandatory attendance... he's gonna get crushed in the Training Zone tomorrow."

Xyan pulled his torn uniform tighter around him and said nothing. His glasses had slipped down his nose. He pushed them up with a shaky hand.

On the desk screen in front of him, his stats glowed in dull green:

XYAN CROSS

Domain: Preliminary

Performance Level: 12% [LOW]

Power Flex: Unstable

Enhancement: 3%

Recharge Level: 11%

Artifact: [UNREGISTERED]

Fake numbers. Carefully maintained for two years. Just high enough to stay green. Just low enough to stay invisible.

He'd built this loser life brick by brick.

And now one mandatory qualifier was about to tear it down.

Across the room, Kitarah wasn't laughing. She was watching him — just once, like she promised herself she wouldn't again.

She noticed the way his fingers didn't shake when he closed the screen. The way his eyes, behind those thick glasses, didn't look scared.

They looked... annoyed. Like a king disturbed from sleep.

Weird, she thought again, then looked away.

The bell rang.

Students flooded out, chattering about artifacts, about the Manufacturing Center upgrades they'd get tonight, about who would get a Silver or Golden envelope after tomorrow.

Xyan waited until everyone left. Then he walked alone toward the dorms, head down.

But in the empty hallway, the lights flickered.

A second professor — the mimic — stepped out from the wall in front of him, smiling.

"Xyan Cross," it said in the professor's voice, but colder. "Artifact check tomorrow is mandatory. Please present your real artifact."

Xyan froze.

His dull, shy mask cracked for just a second. His blue eyes turned sharp, dangerous.

"...Who sent you?" he whispered.

The mimic smiled wider. "Someone who remembers Milton High."