Silence. The tension in front of the black military tent was so suffocating that the sound of swamp water dripping from the mangrove leaves felt like the ticking of a death clock. Instructor Boris remained frozen with his arms folded across his chest. The corners of his eyelids twitched imperceptibly, while Selena Vance had already shifted her footing forward, ready to draw her ice rapier the moment the middle-aged man before her made a suspicious movement. "Your words are highly insolent, Carter," Boris finally broke the silence, his voice suppressed as low as possible to hide a panicky tremor. "Accusing a senior instructor of being part of a banned organization based solely on the 'smell of a robe' is a severe act of insubordination! Selena, as the Student Council President, are you going to allow this support faction farce to ruin the authority of the exam overseer?!" Selena didn't answer immediately. Her sharp eyes shifted to look at the right edge

Plop. The blue-striped sleeping pillow that had just shattered Instructor Boris’s jaw fell with supreme grace, landing upon the surface of the mud completely unstained, thanks to an invisible layer of system protection. Meanwhile, the grey swamp fog that had been parted by the earlier supersonic shockwave slowly began to close back in, shrouding the trench of destruction that stretched across dozens of meters. Hundreds of students from various factions remained frozen like wax statues. Not a single one of them dared to breathe too loudly. The silence over The Whispering Swamps at this moment felt far more ominous than when the pack of Shadow Crocodiles had surrounded them last night. Everyone’s gaze centered on a single point: the figure of the pajama-clad youth walking forward with dragging, lazy steps. Austin Carter walked closer. His left arm tightly cradled his backup grey sleeping pillow, while his right hand was slipped inside the pocket of his lo

BZZZZT! The titanic spatial portal in the Main Square of the Tower Academy spat back the hundreds of first and second-year students who had survived The Whispering Swamps. In stark contrast to the arrogance of silver armor during their departure, this return was shrouded in a deeply heavy atmosphere of trauma. The combat faction students walked with their heads hanging low, while the academy's medical guards ran around carrying magical stretchers to evacuate the unconscious, dying body of Instructor Boris. In the midst of the crowd buzzing with terrified whispers about the "mysterious rampage of the swamp monsters" and "the failure of an instructor's magic," the figure of Austin Carter walked at the absolute rear. He completely ignored Selena Vance, who kept staring at his back from afar with a gaze filled with a million questions. To Austin, this three-day, two-night expedition had been the worst kind of physical torture because he had to waste his precious ener

[System Warning! Host is entering an area with a passive external killing intent density of 45%.] [Sources of pressure: 24 B-Rank Entities, 6 A-Rank Entities.] [Host's emotional disturbance level: 0%. Status: Completely Indifferent.] Austin Carter ignored the rows of golden digital text flickering in his field of vision. Under the glares of dozens of veteran generals from the Vanguard faction—which were enough to make an ordinary student's knees go weak—Austin was instead busy adjusting the position of the grey pillow in his embrace so it wouldn't slip from his left arm. To him, the mana pressure of these military higher-ups was nothing more than an annoying gust of night wind. The formal commendation ceremony in the main hall proceeded at a pace that was a relief to Austin. Because the military assumed the entire achievement in the Whispering Swamps was the result of Selena Vance’s hard work, Austin merely stood at the absolute rear like a mi

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR—! The one-meter-diameter pillar of purplish-red plasma light continued its brutal roar, radiating a destructive surge that eroded the black granite surface of the arena into molten ash. The heat was so extreme that the air within the Grand Arena of the Vanguard distorted severely, creating a deadly mirage that absolutely swallowed Austin Carter's form. Hundreds of pairs of eyes in the spectator stands froze, staring at that high-caste pillar of energy with bated breath. Everyone was certain that within these milliseconds, the youth from the support faction had vanished from the face of the earth without leaving behind even a single shard of bone. "Austin—!!!" Selena Vance screamed hysterically, her beautiful body leaning forward well past the boundary railing, while her hands trembled violently because her mana circulation refused to accept that the lazy youth who had saved her just yesterday had now evaporated into dust. Right at t