" No, I am sure this is just another trial of the system is seemed different from before. Adam laid down vertically floating in the air like the fighting didn't concern him. Before the discussion could continue everyone heard an alert.

  " System Prompt"

  “Since all trial members are now present, the trial can commence. There will be a thirty-minute intermission to get familiar with your trial mates. After the intermission, a new stage of trial will begin.”

  “ Hey, new guy, what’s your name. A golden coin whisked through the air. The silver tree branches of the metal grew and began to twist in odd angles, stretching for the coin.

  “I’ll go first, my name is Adam. I have the Metal Atomizer class. I can manipulate the atomic structure of any metallic element I see. Unless it’s a sentient, moving living being. ” He pointed to the metal tree, now I realize was probably a normal tree. His voice was calm, disinterested,and almost bored. The coin hovered just above his palm, and the silvery branches of twisted metal coiled around it like curious snakes, uncoiling and recurling in rhythmic pulses.

  The others watched in varying degrees of awe and suspicion.

  “I don’t just bend metal,” Adam added lazily, still floating horizontally like gravity had given up on him. “I rewrite it. Change its properties. Density, weight, shape, even function... if I feel like it.”

  The coin’s golden sheen dimmed as silvery filaments crawled over it, turning it into a warped flower of gold and mercury. Then, in a breath, it crumbled into dust.

  “Okay, okay, damn.” One of the others—a lean boy with storm-gray eyes—tilted his head, arms crossed. “That’s not terrifying at all. I’m k-k Keon. summoner-class, monster Specialist. I can, um, summon lesser creatures like lesser spirits. I guess his mentioning of his abilities did a lot more than their repeated failures in killing him. They stop attempting to kill Adam at this point.

  They’re already afraid.

  Adam didn’t move, not really. He let the silver branches keep dancing around the coin, a kind of hypnotic clockwork gesture that held their attention so he wouldn’t have to speak again. He hated speaking. Words were like blunt tools in a world of precision. Too loud. Too slow. Too easy to misunderstand or twist. No one ever listened to what was, only what they feared it meant.

  That was fine.

  Let them make assumptions. Fear was better than curiosity—it kept them at a distance.

  He could feel the way the metal tree responded to him even now, even without direct command. It wasn’t alive, not in the traditional sense, but the structure he’d rewritten held memory. Every atom in it was a soldier waiting for its next order. Static, but not powerless. And he could shape that stillness into anything he wanted.

  Then there was the redhead in the corner. She hadn’t moved once during the demonstration. Her eyes didn’t follow the coin. They stayed locked on him. Studying. Not afraid, not impressed. Just… waiting.

  She’s the one I’ll have to kill first, Adam thought, then blinked once, slow.

  Not now. Maybe not ever. But if it came down to it—if the system forced them to turn on each other, if this “trial” descended into the kind of chaos it always did—then yes. Her first. Not because she was the strongest. But because she was the most dangerous kind of presence: the quiet type who didn’t blink at power.

  The coin drifted lower, finally landing in his palm without a sound. The metal branches stopped moving. He closed his fist around it and felt the structure of it whisper to him—density, shape, flaw lines. Imperfect gold. Cheap alloy beneath a glossy sheen. Someone had tried to show off.

  The tension in the room was starting to settle into silence again—that awkward lull after someone shows off a bit too well. Most were still digesting Adam’s intro, piecing together theories or quietly adjusting their personal threat meters.

  But not Jalen.

  Jalen’s eyes weren’t on the metal tree. Or the coin. Or the twisting silver branches that still occasionally rippled, responding to commands too subtle for the rest to catch.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  He was looking up.

  Right at Adam.

  More specifically, at the fact that Adam was still floating. Completely vertical. Arms behind his head like he was napping mid-air. No wings. No platform. No glowing aura. No visible spell matrix. No signs of propulsion. No effort.

  Jalen tilted his head and squinted.

  Then, before anyone could stop him, he just said what everyone was pretending not to wonder.

  “Okay but like… how the hell are you flying?”

  Everyone turned toward him.

  Jalen didn’t stop.

  “You’re not flapping anything, you’re not glowing, you’re not even twitching a toe to make it look dramatic. You’re just—” he waved a hand vaguely, “there. Like you’re lying on an invisible bed while gravity files a missing person report.”

  Adam blinked. Slowly.

  The coin still rested in his palm. The silver-metal tendrils stopped moving entirely now, recoiling into the ground and vanishing like they had never been. The floating didn’t change. He didn’t fall. Didn’t wobble. Still as a statue. Still as death.

  A heartbeat passed.

  Then another.

  Adam spoke. Calm. Flat. Like he was commenting on the weather.

  “It’s not flying.”

  Jalen raised an eyebrow. “Then what the hell is it?”

  Adam exhaled softly through his nose. Not a laugh. Not quite annoyance either. If anything, he sounded… mildly entertained.

  “I’m just… not falling.”

  “…that’s the same thing.”

  “It’s not,” Adam replied, and for the first time, he sat up in the air—still hovering, but now cross-legged, facing Jalen like he might actually give him a real answer. “Flying implies propulsion. Lift. Magic, tech, or energy. I’m not using any of that. I’m just… telling the metal in my blood not to obey gravity.”

  Jalen blinked. “Wait—you can do that?”

  “I can manipulate metallic atoms,” Adam said, as if Jalen had just asked him to repeat himself. “There’s iron in my blood. Traces of copper, zinc. Magnesium, if I’m hungry. I isolate the atomic structure, separate it from its organic anchors, and deny it mass relative to the gravitational pull of the planet.”

  Jalen just stared. “You’re gaslighting gravity.”

  “…Sure.”

  The others were listening now too. One of them muttered, “That’s not how physics works…”

  Adam turned his gaze lazily toward them, and they shut up immediately.

  Jalen, unfazed, folded his arms and leaned back.

  “That’s the dumbest, coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Adam nodded once. “It works.”

  “But like—how do you train for that? Did you just wake up one day and say, ‘Yo, screw gravity’?”

  Adam didn’t answer right away. His eyes went distant for a moment, like he was remembering something. Something cold. Something not meant to be shared in a room like this.

  “No,” he said finally, quietly. “I was already falling. I just… never stopped.”

  Jalen didn’t know how to respond to that.

  No one did.

  The silence came back, but this time it was thicker. Heavier. Like the air itself had stopped trusting gravity too.

  Adam turned back to his reclined floating posture, coin vanishing in his palm.

  “Next,” he said again, and closed his eyes.

  Jalen looked around and whispered under his breath, “Yeah, okay. Dude’s definitely not right.”

  But a grin was pulling at the corner of his mouth.

  Because damn, was that kind of not-right cool.

  Adam’s body tilted again, barely, like something had nudged him in a direction no one else could feel. His eyes didn’t open. He didn’t flinch. Another voice firm but not loud spoke out. “ He’s lying a man in a black cloak that wasn’t very effective since it was tattered and didn’t cover much. I’m jacob I have a class that tells me when someone lies. If they lie to me their gravity is increased significantly.

  “He’s lying,” Jacob said again, voice firmer now, a little colder. “Or maybe not exactly. But he twisted the truth. Made it sound prettier than it is.”

  The weight of his words rippled out like sound underwater—muted, but deep. The others shifted uneasily. A few looked back up at Adam, who still hadn’t responded, still hovering like some ancient, unknowable sculpture of a saint mid-ascension. Except this one had no halo. Just danger.

  “My class doesn't care about your clever wording,” he said, his eyes fixed on Adam now, voice low but unwavering. “I don’t have to believe you. The world just gets heavier when you lie. That's all.”

  And as if on cue—Adam’s floating posture shifted.

  Slight. Almost imperceptible.

  His spine curved forward. The air around him shimmered faintly, like heat rising off sun-baked metal. The silver branches embedded in the ground twitched, ever so faintly, as if recoiling from an invisible pressure.

  Jalen frowned. “Hey… are you—?”

  “I’m fine,” Adam interrupted, eyes still shut, voice clipped. “Just annoyed.”

  He slowly cracked one eye open and fixed it on Jacob. Not anger. Not fear. Just mild irritation. Like someone had set an alarm clock five minutes too early.

  “So what did I lie about?” he asked, tone flat.