Chapter 50: Gratitude I thought you died, Alfred’s voice cracked like an ancient bell under the weight of emotion as he surged toward Kael, his arms wrapping around him with a desperation that left no room for pretense, tears streaking unashamedly down his face, soaking the air with grief and relief tangled into a single, suffocating intensity. Come on, do not get my white robe dirty, Kael said, voice dry, yet the observation fell flat against the raw humanity pressing against him, the sight of Alfred trembling in his grasp like a man who had stared death in the eye and had been given a reprieve. It was then that Kael noticed the bottom hem of his robe had been dyed a grotesque red, a silent testament to the horrors of the previous trials, the echoes of carnage staining even the sacred fabric. Gross, he thought, the word tasting faintly bitter on his tongue as the habitual exposure to gore, the endless immersion in violenc

Chapter 52: Flow Core Are you alright? “Does it look like I’m fucking alright?” Kael was sprawled across the cold marble floor, chest heaving like a dying bellows. Every muscle screamed mutiny. His lungs burned with the ghost of mana that no longer existed in his veins. He had squeezed himself dry, emptied his soul into the ritual until not even the echo of power remained. “Good enough,” Fafnir muttered, voice rolling like molten stone. He grabbed Kael by the shoulder as if he weighed nothing and sat him upright. “I will start.” The words were a trigger. The moment they left the dragon’s mouth, Kael’s body froze. He couldn’t move, couldn’t twitch, couldn’t even curse. All he could do was feel — and what he felt was pressure. Alien and absolute, pressing into every pore, every nerve, every whisper of mana still clinging to his flesh. The pressure crawled through him lik

Chapter 54: Party of Lunatics The classroom door exploded open like a kicked confession, and every single head snapped toward the noise. Kael stepped in, hair unkempt, eyes alive, aura whispering the kind of trouble that classrooms weren’t built to contain. For a heartbeat, silence hung in the air. Then came the disbelief. Some looked terrified, others looked like they’d seen a ghost. Technically, they had. “You are late,” said Maren from the podium, her tone as sharp as a sermon delivered at gunpoint. A thin scar traced her chin, one Kael was sure hadn’t existed before. It suited her. A reminder that even teachers bled here. “Sorry,” Kael muttered, sliding into his seat before divine wrath could take physical form. He’d been in enough trouble with authority figures that he could smell leniency like a predator smells fear. He looked around the class and frowned, a quie

Chapter 56: Bad Party Kael stood in the shadowed back of the dungeon corridor, arms folded, face carved into a sculpture of disbelief. “What the actual fuck am I looking at?” he muttered under his breath. In front of him, three supposed “elites” were hacking at a pack of lizard monsters with all the grace of drunk toddlers trying to murder a piñata. Seris was slashing wildly, Jace was elbow-deep in his own shadows trying to outpace her, and Chloe—the only one with half a brain cell—was flickering in and out of existence, reappearing in random corners of the cavern like a spatially confused ghost. Their teamwork was a fever dream. Their coordination was a war crime. Kael watched Jace and Seris almost decapitate each other while competing for the same kill. He sighed and muttered, “Unbelievable.” He’d already healed Seris twice because she was too busy chasing a kill to notice her arte

Chapter 58: The Mountain of Eyes The armored van rattled through silence thick enough to choke on. For two straight hours, no one spoke. Even Seris, who could talk a river into exhaustion, sat uncharacteristically quiet. Only Jace kept moving, thumb swiping across his phone as though none of this mattered, as though they weren’t sitting beside four chained monsters pretending to be human. Then the silence cracked. “So how’d you kids land this gig anyway?” The man who wasn’t mind-controlled finally broke the stillness. His voice was rough, smoke and gravel. Kael glanced up from the mana patterns glowing faintly in his palm. “Assignment from the academy,” he answered. “Direct order.” “Is that so?” The guard’s gaze flicked toward the inmates. They stared forward, eyes glassy, faces slack, the subtle twitch of puppets without strings. “Do you even know who these people are?” Kael shook h