The stench of ozone and recycled ambition clung to the air of the Orazian Conservatory’s Grand Hall. Below the towering, lead-stained archways, a hundred graduating seniors, myself included, stood in a nervous, shifting mass, their projected capture rates glowing like digital halos above their heads. Mine, a stark, mocking '0%', sputtered with all the enthusiasm of a dying fuse. I, Galderos Muntaz, just wanted to clear this final evaluation, snag a desk job away from the perpetual smog of Oraz, and fade into glorious, bureaucratic anonymity. “Begin Phase One: Specimen Acclimation!” the automated voice of the Apex Ledger boomed, devoid of any genuine warmth. The floor beneath us shuddered, the ornate, gilded tiles parting to reveal the jagged, synthetic terrain of the Grimfang Mire, a bog biome designed to test our mettle against low-tier, territorial beasts. Zinon Castra, the academy’s golden-boy, his holographic '98.7%—Exemplary' casting green light across the flagstones, flashed a smirk my way. He’d be ensnaring some iridescent crawler in thirty seconds flat. My own strategy involved finding a suitably damp rock, blending in, and waiting for the ten-minute timer to expire. Apathy was a shield, and I wielded it with professional detachment. Then, the ceiling exploded. Not the holographic sky, but the actual, riveted steel of the outer dome. A shower of concrete dust and severed ventilation ducts rained down, followed by a human body. He struck the marsh floor with a wet thud, spraying brackish water. He was a courier, judging by the tattered uniform, and bleeding profusely from multiple puncture wounds. His eyes, wide with a final, desperate plea, fixed on me. “Take this… it’s for… the… Master…” he gasped, his voice a ragged wheeze. With a final, spasming effort, he shoved a blood-soaked, leather-bound folio into my hands before his body went slack, his gaze fixing blankly on the flickering 0% above my head. [Notification: Unsolicited Delivery. Sub-optimal behavior detected. +5 seconds to graduation timer. Enjoy the wait.] “Oh, perfect,” I muttered, glancing at the gore-splattered parchment. “Just what I needed. More attention.” The volume felt oddly heavy, resonating with a faint, metallic hum. Before I could even process the sheer absurdity of the situation, a shadow fell over the whole chamber, thick and suffocating. The roar that followed was no sound-stage playback. This was raw, world-shaking vibration, tearing through the iron framework of the complex. “A trench-scourge!” someone shrieked, voice cracking. “It’s breached the outer wall!” The air turned frigid. A mountain of bruised, obsidian scale ripped through the remaining section of the dome. Twin ocular orbs, the size of carriage wheels, burned amber under iron plates. Feeders, thick as city pipelines, writhed from its gaping maw, each tipped with barbed bone. This wasn't an overgrown bog pest; this was a dread-class monstrosity rarely cited outside of quarantine archives, swinging its jaw across the ranks of frozen cadets. “Stand fast!” Master Hectas shouted from the high gallery. His aristocratic poise slipped into taut, white-knuckled rigidity. “Tamers, ready your tether coils! Formation Delta-Seven!” Delta-Seven? Against a world-eater? That was like brandishing a pen against an avalanche. Cadets scrambled in all directions, halos blinking erratic amber warnings. Zinon, however, stood his ground, a crackling lash of blue plasma coiled in his gauntlet. “Back, you dolts!” he bellowed, chin high. “I’ll handle this!” He lashed out, sending a ribbon of pure force toward one of the beast's facial tendrils. The strike slapped impotently against the creature’s hide, leaving nothing more than a faint trace of ash. The beast let out another percussive bellow, snout plunging inward. The displacement of air tore floor plates loose, sending stragglers sprawling across the mire. I was cornered, spine pressed against a fractured concrete buttress, the gore-caked pages clutched against my ribs. The creature's stench—brimstone and rotting tallow—choked my lungs as rows of serrated tusks yawned wide. I looked down at the folio, then up at the descending gullet. “Well, this is a truly pathetic end,” I muttered through dry lips. “Killed by a glorified worm while holding someone else’s mail.” A sticky smear of the courier's blood darkened the exposed parchment. A reckless impulse, sharpened by pure spite, took hold. What if this dormant 0% rating held a loophole? It had never subjugated so much as a cellar rat in the sparring cells. I dragged my thumb through the puddle on my sleeve and pressed it into the virgin fiber. The sheet drank the crimson fluid instantly, fibers drinking it like parched soil. I channeled my focus—not toward standard subjugation protocols, but into pure, cold disgust at this entire academy, at the smug hierarchy, and at the zero burning over my scalp. “Tame,” I whispered, the word feeling foreign on my tongue, like a curse. The codex shuddered. A sound like shearing steel ripped from its binding. The red smear fractured into intricate geometric runes, violently bleeding black pigment over the margins. From the paper tore a shape of raw, distilled void—a serpentine titan of liquid shadow, glistening like wet lacquer, its hollow eye-sockets blazing with cobalt furnace-glow. It lunged without a sound. The ink-serpent, spanning twice the girth of the invader, snapped its needle-toothed jaws around the monster's jugular. No struggle followed. Just one clean, hydraulic snap of crushed vertebrae. The dread-class invader collapsed instantly, dead weight flattening the fake bog with a sickening splash. Silence dropped like lead. The sharp tang of copper returned over the stench of viscera. Instructors, surviving classmates, and overhead surveillance optics hung motionless, fixed on the shadow wyrm coiled atop the carcass. Then, like spilled dye drawn into cloth, the entity melted backwards, seeping in wisps back between the covers in my hands. [Notification: Unauthorized Demonic Exploits detected. Subversion of established binding protocols. Student status revoked. Immediate disciplinary action required.] “Demonic exploits?” A rasping laugh broke from my throat. “I just kept your pedigree roster from getting digested, and you cite me for protocol?” Before Hectas could shout an order from his perch, the remainder of the ruined roof was cut open by searing plasma-cutters. Through the breaches plunged strike operatives in lacquered crimson and sable plate, their mag-boots locking onto the masonry in unison. Inquisition sigils gleamed upon their pauldrons. Their mana-nullifying staves snapped forward on instinct. Aimed dead between my eyes.

Zero Percent Hero