Is It Wrong for an Extra to Steal the Protagonist's Harem?

Chapter 90

"Alex?!" "Is the projection broken?" "There’s no way!"

The aristocratic students were more shocked than they were angry. It fundamentally broke their worldview.

"This doesn’t make any sense!" Martin blurted out, his face turning red with indignation. "How can the ’Trash’ be the Champion? He has a defective circuit! He probably just got carried by his fiancée’s money, just like he got carried during the forest expedition!"

Martin’s remark was a spark dangerously close to a powder keg. Emma’s grip on my arm tightened like a vice, her mana instantly flaring with murderous intent. I had to press my thumb hard into her thigh to stop her from decapitating the boy on the spot.

Before I could verbally put Martin in his place, Sophie stepped forward.

"Let me stop you right there, kid," Sophie said, her voice dropping to a low, commanding timber that instantly dominated the room. "I personally oversaw the telemetry. This evaluation was absolutely fair."

The Vice-Guildmaster’s heavy aura made the murmurs die down to nervous whispers.

"Your opponent next week is Ivan Baker," Sophie continued, slowly pacing in front of the students. "His unique trait is Flash. So, the Spire evaluated you based on how you dealt with high-velocity magical ballistics."

The students nodded tentatively. They all knew the premise.

"But here’s the thing you don’t know," Sophie smirked, her sharp eyes scanning the terrified freshmen. "The Arc-Cannon you all faced had its safety limiters engaged. Because your very kind Professor Cassandra was terrified you fragile little twigs would get shattered by the real thing."

Sophie reached into her pocket and tossed a broken piece of metal onto the glass coffee table. It was the Arc-Cannon’s manual override lever. It had been completely snapped off.

"I decided I needed to measure Alex’s skills without the training wheels," Sophie grinned, a feral light in her eyes. "I disabled the safety device. And Alex handled the fourth shot flawlessly."

She held up a single finger, demanding their absolute attention.

"Keep this in mind before you start throwing the word ’Trash’ around," Sophie stated coldly. "The fourth magic bolt fired at Alex was Mach speed. It was a one-to-one simulation of Ivan Baker’s maximum acceleration. The bolts the rest of you struggled to block were playing in slow motion. Got it?"

The color drained entirely from Martin’s face. Lena covered her mouth in shock. Ren stared at the floor, his fists clenching as he realized the sheer, insurmountable gap between his performance and mine.

We couldn’t even handle the slow ones? And he caught the real thing? As the horrifying realization settled over the students, I felt a piercing gaze drilling into the side of my head.

I turned my head slightly.

Emily von Frits was staring at me. Her usual icy, emotionless mask was completely fractured. Her blue eyes were wide, swirling with a chaotic mix of wounded pride, intense frustration, and a burning, undeniable curiosity. She had declared she would take first place just an hour ago. Now, she realized she wasn’t even playing the same game.

I ignored her and looked down at my right hand, resting it on my knee so Emma couldn’t see.

The leather combat glove had been entirely incinerated. The skin across my palm and fingers was severely blistered, angry and red from the sheer thermal friction of stopping a Mach-speed projectile.

’It’s been a long time since I felt actual pain,’ I thought, flexing my stinging fingers.

The [Kinetic Resonance] trait had flawlessly absorbed the concussive force, saving my bones from turning to powder, but it didn’t completely negate surface-level thermal damage.

Still, I didn’t regret catching it.

Pain was just a biological notification. A trivial inconvenience. I could fix it with a low-tier healing potion once I was back in my dorm. What mattered was the absolute, unquestionable dominance I had just established.

I possessed a broken mana circuit, but I also possessed the System. I had the Heart of the Spellsword integrating into my core. If I kept harvesting hidden pieces and leveraging my meta-knowledge, the summit of this world wasn’t just reachable—it was inevitable.

"This Representative election is guaranteed by the Vanguard Stars Guild," Sophie declared, crossing her arms and projecting her vivid purple mana. "If anyone here still has doubts about Alex’s qualifications... come take it up with me."

No one breathed a word. The reputation of one of the Empire’s top three Guilds was absolute.

Cassandra let out a tired sigh, stepping back to the front.

"I’ll emphasize this one last time. You all worked hard, but the reality of the battlefield doesn’t care about your efforts," Cassandra said, her voice softening just a fraction. "Now, we rest. We will move to the luxury suites in the upper Spire to let your cores recover."

She pulled out a stack of enchanted keycards.

"The male students will be on the 24th floor. The female students are assigned to the 23rd floor. The wards on the stairwells are absolute, so don’t even think about trying to sneak into each other’s rooms," Cassandra warned, her cat-like eyes sweeping over the exhausted elite students. "Take your keys and head to the portals."

We moved as a group toward the grand, glowing teleportation array at the back of the Spire lobby.

But there was a bottleneck in front of the portal.

"What? What do you mean I can’t bring it up?!"

Maya’s frustrated scream echoed across the marble floor. She was standing in front of a hulking, heavily armored Spire Security Golem, her blue eyes wide with indignation.

"Security Protocol 4-A," the golem intoned with a mechanical, buzzing voice. "Personal belongings, external artifacts, and unverified magical items are strictly prohibited inside the high-density mana recovery suites. Please deposit them in the subterranean storage vault."

"It’s a wooden box!" Maya argued, waving the rectangular Luminous Puzzle she had brought earlier. "It doesn’t even have a mana core! You’re confiscating a puzzle?!"

"All external items must be deposited," the golem repeated flawlessly, completely immune to her delinquent glare.

"No way..." Despair spread across Maya’s face. Her entire excuse to get me alone in the dark had just been thwarted by an automated bouncer.

I watched the exchange with a sigh. I had luggage too.

Under my arm, I was carrying a heavy stack of advanced, restricted texts I had ’borrowed’ from the library earlier that day. [On the Friction Thresholds of Condensed Aether], [Kinetic Displacement in Closed Environments], and [The Anatomical Limits of the Human Mana Circuit].

I had carefully selected them to research exactly how far I could push my new Kinetic Resonance trait before my bones gave out. Since Cassandra had called us here so suddenly, I had no choice but to bring them with me.

"Student Edelhart," the golem’s glowing eyes locked onto my books. "External media detected. Please deposit the items in the subterranean storage vault."

All the students stopped and looked at me.

Cassandra, standing near the portal controls, rubbed her temples. "Just leave them in the storage vault, Alex. You’re supposed to be resting your core tonight, not reading."

I looked at the heavy, ancient tomes in my hands. I had zero intention of leaving extremely valuable, restricted knowledge sitting in a public locker overnight.

I thought about it for a second, then quickly made a decision.

I walked right past the golem and approached Cassandra. Without a word, I dumped the heavy stack of books directly into her arms.

Cassandra staggered slightly under the weight, her pipe nearly falling from her lips. She glared up at me, her purple eyes twitching. "Alex. Are you seriously asking a Tower Professor to run an errand for you?"

"No," I replied smoothly, adjusting my cuffs. "I’m telling you to put these safely in my room."

"I just said, luggage is not allowed past the scanner!" Cassandra hissed, her voice rising in sheer frustration. "Wait... where are you going?"

"If the books can’t go up, then I’ll just go down," I stated, turning around and walking toward the descending portal reserved for the storage vaults. "I’ve slept on hard ground before. Sleeping in the storage room won’t kill me. Consider it endurance training."

"What... what did you just say? Hey! Alex!"

I completely ignored the Professor’s sputtering and stepped onto the descending portal. The magical light flashed, instantly teleporting me to the subterranean levels of the Spire.

The storage vault was massive, cool, and incredibly quiet. The ambient mana down here was thick and undisturbed, completely isolated from the noisy, panicked thoughts of the other students. Honestly, with my monstrous Stamina, sleeping on a velvet sofa up in the suites or sleeping on a wooden crate down here made absolutely no difference to me.

"Well, this is peaceful," I muttered, walking down an aisle of glowing magical lockers.

Click. Clack.

I suddenly felt a presence behind me. I stopped, turning around slowly.

Stepping out of the shadows of the descending portal was Maya. She had her uniform blazer tied around her waist, and she was clutching the wooden rectangular box tightly to her chest. She took a few cautious steps toward me and stopped.

Our eyes met in the dim, blue light of the vault.

"What are you doing down here?" I asked, a lazy smirk touching my lips. I knew exactly what she was doing.

Maya grinned, holding up the wooden box triumphantly.

"Plan B," she whispered, her blue eyes sparkling with a mischievous, highly dangerous thrill. "If they wouldn’t let me take the puzzle up to the 24th floor... I figured we could just fit the pieces together down here in the dark."