Chapter 4: Class Code · E3 "You've got an Armament now, so you're being assigned to a class."
The man in charge wore gold-rimmed glasses and looked like the administrative type. He flipped through Nie Shi's file, page by page.
"But considering your situation, we're not putting you in a regular class."
"Where am I going?" Nie Shi asked.
The man adjusted his glasses and said a code that sounded unfamiliar: "Class E3. Remember it." 
Class E3 was on the top floor of an older building on the west side of the academy. When Nie Shi walked in, the ceiling lights were flickering, and a faded warning sign hung by the door: "Internal Testing Classroom — Authorized Entry Only."
He pushed the door open.
There were about seven or eight students inside. A few looked up at him, then returned to what they were doing.
The air smelled faintly of machine oil and burnt circuits. One person was tweaking their Armament, another was reciting combat codes to a wall, and a boy stared blankly out the window.
Today's instructor stood at the podium. She was sharp-eyed with a cropped haircut.
"New kid?" She glanced at him. "Sit by the window. It's already the third week. No need to introduce yourself—you're already famous in the system."
Nie Shi headed for the seat. That same stare followed him.
"Yo, black-spear guy."
Lu Jingxing was half-slouched in his chair, one foot resting on the seat in front of him, looking smug.
He was in his training uniform today, with his name "Lu" stitched onto it. His sleeves were lazily rolled up. He looked like he didn't care about anything.
"Glad you made it." Lu Jingxing smirked. "We'll definitely get a proper fight someday."
Nie Shi ignored him.

This was Class E3.
Rumor had it the class was made for students the system couldn't evaluate properly. Everyone here was a bit… off.
—A girl in the corner wore headphones, her hair covering half her face. She didn't say a word the entire class. When the teacher asked her something, she replied in a whisper so soft the teacher had to lean in to hear it.
—By the window sat a flashy-looking girl whose lipstick changed color daily. Her eyeliner was sharp and bold. Her Armament, people said, was a mirror that could copy someone's "other self" from their memory.
—Then there was the always-smiling boy. He greeted everyone, even helped smooth things over when the instructor yelled at people. Seemed like a cheerful type—but word was, during training, he nearly "absorbed" a teammate's Armament.
—And of course, there was Lu Jingxing, who proudly called himself the strongest Trace-Class in the academy. Arrogant, dramatic—but his fight footage was undeniably insane.
And now, Nie Shi was sitting among them.
 The first class was a system lecture.
The screen displayed the five Armament classes, binding protocols, safety levels, and sync boundaries.
Then suddenly, it glitched. The audio cut.
"System packet delay. Current version experiencing sync deviation."
The instructor frowned.
"What's going on?"
The system resumed like nothing had happened.
No one paid attention. But Nie Shi felt something.
For just a moment, he thought he heard a voice from deep inside the black spear: "…Not here…" He turned toward the window. Wind blew in. The sunlight was bright.
But the air… felt wrong.  After class, the sunny-looking boy walked up to him. "You're the one with the black spear, right? I'm Xie Ping. We're in the same group. System paired me right after you."
He smiled warmly, eyes curved like crescents. He didn't seem scared of Nie Shi's "dangerous reputation" at all.
"We're supposed to be a four-person team. Still missing one." Xie Ping waved to someone across the room.
A clean-cut boy walked over, wearing a polite smile. "Hi, I'm Meng Yao."
"Looking forward to working with you." He offered his hand.
Nie Shi shook it, but didn't feel at ease.
There was something too clean about this guy.
The smile was too perfect. The tone too calm. And the eyes—those eyes were memorizing every detail of him.
There was something in Meng Yao's gaze that Nie Shi knew too well.
Not kindness.
But the cold of a locked-on target.
He suddenly remembered something from an old evaluation report. A mentor had once sat across from him and said softly, "Being Memoryless isn't amnesia. You didn't forget—you never had anything to begin with."
"You have knowledge, language, life experience. But you don't have a 'self-tag.' No memory fragment that belongs to you. No emotional anchor."
"You're like a container born empty—recording everyone else's voice, but unable to write down your own name."
Nie Shi hadn't said anything back then. Just lowered his head.
Thinking about it now—it hadn't been cold outside. But his brain had felt cold.
He knew how to live, but not where he came from.
He knew the world had warmth, but not who had once given it to him.
He could understand everyone else's Armament—but couldn't summon even a flicker of his own.
Until the spear came.
That was the first time he'd ever held something that felt… heavy.
Even if the memory wasn't his.