Chapter 125: Connecting With Jax...
The cool midnight air of the Ares Academy residential sector did little to soothe the thumping headache behind Zen’s temples.
He walked down the dimly lit brick pavement with his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets.
For the past two hours, Zen had simply walked. He needed an escape from the suffocating, volatile atmosphere of the townhouse... a place where four S-Rank Goddesses had nearly torn the foundation apart out of obsessive jealousy over him.
He didn’t head toward the high-end district.
Instead, his boots naturally carried him toward the eastern edge of the campus, where the neon lights faded into the familiar, weathered silhouette of the Ares Academy Scrap Dorms.
The Scrap Dorms were a collection of aging, concrete buildings where low-tier students, scrappers, and commoners lived. It was noisy, crowded, and smelled perpetually of ozone and machine oil.
To Zen, however, it smelled like sanity.
Zen climbed the narrow, rusted fire escape along the side of Dorm Block C, stopping outside Room 304. Through the thin curtains, a warm, flickering yellow light was visible, accompanied by the muffled clinking of metal tools against an anvil.
Zen knocked twice on the glass window frame, followed by a rhythmic double-tap.
Inside, the noise instantly stopped.
A moment later, the curtain was yanked aside, revealing Jax with a smudge of black motor oil across his forehead and protective goggles pushed up on his forehead.
Jax blinked, his jaw dropping so hard his brass wrench nearly slipped from his fingers.
"Zen?" Jax blurted out, quickly sliding the window open. "Bro?! What the hell are you doing hanging off my fire escape at one in the morning?!"
"Let me in, Jax," Zen said quietly.
"Right! Yeah, get in here before the floor proctor sees you!" Jax grabbed Zen’s arm, hauling him through the window frame into the cluttered room.
The dorm room was a familiar mess. Spare gear parts, half-disassembled kinetic rifles, and empty mana-drink cans covered nearly every surface. A small hologram projector in the corner was muted, displaying a news reel about the recent anomaly clear in Sector 42.
Jax closed the window, wiping his hands on a greasy rag as he stared at Zen like he was looking at a ghost.
"Man, look at you," Jax marvelled, shaking his head. "You look... clean. Like, dangerously clean. Is that a high-grade silk lining on your tactical jacket? Bro, where have you been?"
Zen walked over to the worn leather armchair in the corner and sank into it, letting out a long, heavy exhale. "It’s been a long couple of days, Jax."
"A long couple of days?!" Jax scoffed, tossing his wrench onto a workbench.
He reached into a mini-fridge under his desk, pulled out two cold cans of cheap fermented barley juice, and popped the tabs open. He handed one to Zen and sat down on his workbench stool.
"Bro, you went on a holiday with Val!" Jax exclaimed, taking a deep gulp from his can. "Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?! You leave the academy as an F-Rank scrapper, you go on some mysterious trip with the rich transfer, and then you come back carrying a D-Rank core!"
Zen took a slow sip of the cold drink. The bitter taste was wonderfully mundane. "It wasn’t much of a holiday, Jax. We were... dealing with matters."
"Matters," Jax mimicked in a high-pitched voice, rolling his eyes. "Right. ’Matters’ with the richest, scariest girl in our year who decided to take you on a holiday to one of her parents’ properties or something. But that’s not even the crazy part!"
Jax leaned forward, his eyes wide with frantic gossip energy.
"What’s the crazy part?" Zen asked, raising an eyebrow.
"The part where you come back, and suddenly Ares Academy gets hit by a tidal wave of the most absurdly elite exchange students in history!" Jax yelled, keeping his voice down to a harsh whisper. "Bro! Are you seeing what’s happening on campus?!"
Zen took another sip. "I’ve been a bit busy."
"Busy?! Zen, listen to me!" Jax gesticulated wildly with his drink. "First, this drop-dead gorgeous blonde girl shows up... Aria, right? She transfers into the Business and Logistics department. She walks into the central plaza yesterday, snaps her fingers, and her guards literally buy out the entire five-star coffee shop on the corner just so she can sit outside!"
Zen winced slightly. He remembered that exact scene from Sector 14.
"And then," Jax continued, counting on his fingers, "a girl named Selene transfers into the Healer Sanctum branch! She’s wearing a sundress that looks like it costs more than my entire family’s net worth, and everywhere she walks, dead grass literally starts growing blooming flowers! And don’t even get me started on the silver-haired girl with the floating hologram equations or the tiny gremlin girl who hacked the campus Wi-Fi and gave everyone free high-speed bandwidth!"
Jax stared at Zen, leaning in close. "And every single one of them... EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM... is constantly asking about you! They’re hovering around the freshman district like a pack of hungry wolves! Bro, what did you DO on that holiday?!"
Zen rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling another slight throb behind his eyes. "I didn’t do anything, Jax. They’re... persistent."
"Persistent?!" Jax laughed out loud, almost choking on his drink. "Zen, you’re living in a tiger den! A D-Rank guy surrounded by wealthy, hyper-elite, unhinged exchange girls who look like they’d murder anyone who steps within five feet of you! How are you even surviving?!"
"Barely," Zen muttered truthfully. He took another drink from his can. "It’s suffocating."
Jax’s expression softened slightly.
He looked at his best friend, observing the subtle shifts he hadn’t noticed at first glance.
Zen’s posture was different. The old Zen... the weak, battered scrapper who used to stumble into this dorm bleeding after being shoved around in the hallways was gone.
This Zen sat with an effortless, terrifying calmness. His eyes held a deep, ancient weight, even while suppressing his power behind a D-Rank ring.
Yet, despite all the changes, Zen was still the guy who split his last mana-ration with Jax during their freshman orientation.
"Hey," Jax said quietly, tapping his can against Zen’s. "Seriously though... how are you holding up? With everything? How’s Maya?"
"Maya is fine," Zen said, a genuine, faint smile appearing on his face for the first time all night. "She’s staying with me at the townhouse in the residential district. She’s attending her alchemy lectures during the day. I’m keeping her safe."
"That’s good," Jax nodded warmly. "She was terrified of her own shadow after that incident in the dorms. Knowing she’s good makes me feel better."
Zen tilted his head back against the leather chair, looking at the ceiling. "Jax... what’s the word on Kaelan Thorne?"
Jax froze, his tab-can pausing halfway to his mouth. He let out a low whistle. "Man... Kaelan. I haven’t heard that name come out of your mouth in weeks."
"How is he?" Zen asked neutrally.
"Fuming," Jax chuckled, a dark grin spreading across his face. "Bro, you have no idea how satisfying it was to watch his face weeks ago. Remember how he used to strut around the scrap dorms boasting about how he owned your debt? How he was gonna force you to sell your scrapper license and make you his personal slave?"
"I remember," Zen said softly.
"Well," Jax smirked, "the day your account balance suddenly wiped out to zero, Kaelan practically threw a temper tantrum in the main hall! He went to the administration office to demand to know who cleared the debt, but the finance department told him to kick rocks because the transfer came from a high-level account!"
Zen smirked faintly. Valeria’s aggressive financial intervention had certainly served a purpose back then.
"Kaelan lost all his leverage over you," Jax continued, kicking his legs up on the desk. "He’s still walking around the upper-tier dorms acting like a big shot, bragging about how he’s gonna crush the upcoming freshman evaluation trials next week. But honestly? He’s paranoid. He knows someone powerful backed you, and he has no clue where you live now or who you’re connected to."
"He doesn’t need to know," Zen said calmly.
"Damn straight," Jax grinned. "If that arrogant prick knew you were living in a high-noble townhouse surrounded by supermodel exchange students, his brain would probably explode from pure envy."
Zen let out a soft laugh... a rare, genuine sound that felt good after hours of dealing with S-Rank possessiveness.
For the next hour, they didn’t talk about Goddesses, S-Rank anomalies, or planetary seals.
They talked about scrapper gear. Jax showed Zen a modified kinetic capacitor he was building for his workbench, and Zen smoothly pointed out three minor flaws in the energy alignment that would have blown the capacitor up on ignition.
Jax stared at him in awe, frantically writing down Zen’s corrections.
They drank their cheap barley juice, cracked stupid jokes, and remembered what it was like to just be two scrapper kids trying to make it through academy life.
By 2:30 AM, the cans were empty.
Zen stood up from the armchair, adjusting his tactical jacket. The heavy exhaustion in his mind had cleared, replaced by a steady, grounded focus.
"I should get back," Zen said, stepping toward the fire escape window.
Jax stood up, walking him to the sill. "Bro... whenever it gets too crazy over at that fancy townhouse, you know where to find me. My door is always unlocked."
Zen looked at his best friend, nodding firmly. "Thanks, Jax. I appreciate it."
"Stay safe, Zen," Jax smirked, giving him a shoulder bump. "And try not to let those exchange girls eat you alive."
"I’ll try," Zen chuckled.
He slipped out the window, dropping silently onto the metal fire escape stairs, before disappearing into the cool night air.
—
At 3:15 AM, Zen arrived back at the residential district.
The streets surrounding the townhouse were dead quiet. He walked up the stone steps to the front porch, pulling out his keycard.
He felt refreshed.
Connecting with Jax had reminded him of why he was suppressing his A-Rank core in the first place... he wanted to protect the simple, normal life he was trying to build.
Zen slid the key-card into the lock.
CLICK.
The mahogany front door swung open smoothly.
Zen stepped across the threshold into the dark foyer, expecting to quietly slip upstairs to his bedroom and get a few hours of sleep.
The moment his boots touched the marble floor, the front door behind him violently slammed shut with a deafening BANG.
THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.
Before Zen could even draw a trench knife, four massive, blinding magical seals snapped into place over the doorframe, sealing the townhouse shut with S-Rank pressure.
The lights in the foyer instantly flickered on.
Standing in a perfect, synchronised semicircle in the centre of the foyer were the four Goddesses.
Aurelia stood in the centre, wearing a golden silk lounge gown. Selene stood to her left in a pristine white robe holding a glowing holy incense burner. Valeria stood to her right in unbuckled training gear, and Lyra stood beside her, tablet in hand.
Above them on the second-floor balcony, Nyx sat cross-legged, popping a cherry lollipop out of her mouth with a slow, wicked grin.
"Welcome home, Emperor," Aurelia purred. "Your rest day has officially begun."
Zen froze in the doorway, staring at the four S-Rank predators blocking his escape. "Rest Day?"