Skylar arrived at the battlefield and immediately felt how serious things had been. The ground around her was littered with Abyssal remains, torn apart and scattered across the field. Near Rhys, another body lay that looked different from the rest. Her eyes narrowed as she studied it more carefully. This was not an ordinary Abyssal. A Common class was the bare minimum strength required to cause destruction on this scale, but even then something felt off. There were signs of unnatural growth, something that did not belong to a standard Abyssal. Her thoughts tightened. A mutant? If that was true, then the situation was far beyond what she had expected. Mutants were unpredictable and far more dangerous than normal Abyssals. Skylar turned her attention to Rhys. His clothes were stained with blood, and although he was no longer injured, exhaustion clung to him. For someone his level to deal with a Common class mutant… he must have relied on strategy rather than raw strength. After a

“Kh! Aaah!” Cade pushed himself up, unsteady as he rose. His ears rang sharply and his head felt like it was splitting apart from the force of the last impact. “Cade!” the gnome called out in alarm. Even the dwarf turned for a split second, concern breaking through his focus. “You are distracted.” Sasha let out a sharp breath as she raked her claws across the dwarf’s arm. “!!!” The dwarf did not react at first to the pain itself, but to the strange sensation that followed it. His eyes widened. “Poison?!” Without hesitation, he struck his own arm with his axe, carving away the darkening flesh before it could spread further. Sasha stepped in front of him immediately, cutting off any chance of him assisting Cade. At the same time, Maeve broke into a sprint toward Cade, clearly intent on ending the match. The gnome tried to summon another wall of stone, but two blood-like tornadoes came rushing in his direction. Forced to defend himself, he raised a pillar around his own body inst

“To think he managed all that during a single mission. Are you sure you didn’t step in to help him?” Grace narrowed her eyes slightly, studying Skylar’s expression.“No,” Skylar replied calmly. “If anything, he carried most of it. I only dealt with the Elite class Abyssal at the end. If he hadn’t handled that Common class mutant, things could have gone a lot worse.” She gave a small shrug, as if it were obvious.“I see.” Grace’s lips curved into a faint smile. “So he’s not just capable in combat. He also has the temperament of someone who can lead.”Skylar frowned. “What are you thinking?”Grace waved the question away lightly. “Nothing immediate. I just have a clearer picture of who he is now. For the time being, I’ll observe him. When he runs into a problem he can’t solve on his own, he’ll eventually come to the student council. Especially with Wyndia guiding him the way she does. She calls it independence, but it’s really just tough love dressed up nicely.”Skylar considered that f

“I got you!” The words came out through clenched teeth, almost like a dare thrown at death itself. For a split second, Anubis and Gaelion could only stare, both of them realizing just how far Rhys had gone with this plan. It wasn’t just risky anymore. It crossed into something reckless, something that could have easily gotten him killed if even a single step went wrong. The alien reacted immediately, trying to jerk its blade free. It twisted and forced the weapon up and down, then tried to pull it back altogether, but Rhys held on with everything he had. His hands refused to loosen their grip, even as the strain tore through his body. Seeing that it couldn’t free the blade, the alien made a quick decision. Its other arm shifted, forming a second blade meant to finish Rhys off in one clean strike. Before it could act, Gaelion lunged forward without hesitation and clamped his jaws down on that arm. The alien hadn’t expected that kind of interference. Gaelion tore into it with brutal

“So you felt that much pain…” Wyndia nodded slowly, as if the result matched something she had already expected. She looked at him for a moment before asking, “How long did it take before you passed out?”“I didn’t,” Rhys replied, shaking his head. “I stayed conscious the whole time.”Inside, he couldn’t help but think about all those cultivation stories he had read. In those, losing consciousness usually meant failure, sometimes even death. That idea had stuck with him, so he forced himself to endure everything without letting go, no matter how bad it got.Wyndia’s reaction caught him off guard. She actually looked surprised. “You didn’t pass out?”“Yeah. Is that a problem?” Rhys frowned slightly.Instead of answering right away, Wyndia walked over to the blackboard and picked up a diagram of the human body. She tapped the illustration near the mouth with her pointer.“When you swallow a core, it dissolves and turns into Mana,” she began. “That Mana flows into your body. As you alrea