2026-03-16 16:17:10John's anger transformed into triumph. He threw his head back and laughed. "You hear that, cousin? Oh wait—you're not my cousin anymore, are you? You're just... nobody. Nobody going nowhere with nothing."
"The academy exam is tomorrow," Victor added, his voice heavy with satisfaction. "John will pass with flying colors. And you? You won't even be allowed through the gate. They have standards, after all. They don't let sewer rats into paradise."
The crowd murmured agreement. Several people were already congratulating John, praising the Klein family's good fortune.
But Harry's expression remained eerily calm. The system panel still floated in his vision, invisible to everyone else. The words "IMMORTAL RANK" seemed to pulse with each heartbeat.
"I'll be taking the exam," Harry said quietly.
The plaza fell silent.
"What?" John sputtered.
"Tomorrow's entrance exam," Harry repeated, louder this time. "I'll be there. I'm going to enter the Imperial Royal Beast Academy."
For a moment, nobody spoke. Then the laughter started—first John, then Victor, then the entire crowd. It rolled over Harry in waves, mocking and cruel.
"You?!" John could barely breathe through his laughter. "You're going to take the exam?! With that?!" He pointed at Rose, wiping tears from his eyes. "Oh god, this is perfect! Please do! Please show up! I want to watch them throw you out on your ass! I want to see your face when they tell you to stop wasting their time!"
"The boy's delusional," someone in the crowd said.
"Brain damaged from all those years in the cellar," another agreed.
Elder Margaret just smiled, cold and confident. "By all means, attend. Humiliate yourself one final time. It'll be a fitting end to your pathetic story."
Harry didn't respond. He simply turned, taking Rose's hand gently. "Come on. We need to go."
"W-where?" she whispered, confused and frightened by the crowd's reaction.
"Shopping," Harry said simply.
He walked through the parting crowd, ignoring the jeers and laughter. Rose hurried beside him, her small legs struggling to keep pace. Behind them, John's voice rang out, basking in praise and congratulations.
"Did you see his face?!"
"John, my boy, you'll make us so proud at the academy!"
"The Klein family's star is rising!"
Their voices faded as Harry and Rose left the plaza. The girl looked up at him, confusion written across her tear-stained face.
"Master, why did you tell them you'd take the exam? I don't understand. I'm... I'm not strong enough to help you pass. I can't even fly. I don't have any powers. They're right—I'm useless. You'll fail because of me, and then everyone will laugh even more."
"You're not useless," Harry said firmly. They turned down a narrow street, away from the main thoroughfare. "Trust me, Rose. By tomorrow, everything changes."
"But how? I don't—"
"Do you trust me?"
She blinked up at him, startled by the question. Nobody had ever asked her that before. In her short existence, nobody had asked her anything.
"I... yes," she whispered. "Yes, I trust you, Master."
"Good. Then just hold on a little longer."
They walked through the winding streets of the city's merchant quarter. Most of the shops here catered to beast tamers—selling equipment, food supplements, training manuals, and herbs. Harry had passed these shops countless times during his years of servitude, running errands for the Klein family. He'd never been allowed to enter.
Now, he pushed open the door of "Morrison's Beast Emporium," a modest shop with dusty windows and faded paint.
A bell chimed overhead. The interior smelled of dried herbs and old leather. Shelves lined every wall, crammed with bottles, pouches, and mysterious containers. Behind the counter stood an elderly man with wild gray hair and spectacles that magnified his eyes to comical proportions.
"Help you?" the man—Morrison, presumably—asked without much interest.
"Holy Light Grass," Harry said. "Do you have any?"
Morrison snorted. "Holy Light Grass? That basic stuff? Got plenty. Nobody buys it anymore—too common, too weak. Most tamers want the exotic imports, the rare finds." He shuffled to a back shelf and returned with a small pouch containing dried yellow-white grass that glowed faintly. "Five denars."
Five denars. Practically nothing. The "compensation" Elder Margaret had given him was ten thousand—he could buy two thousand bundles of this grass if he wanted.
Harry pulled out a handful of coins from his pocket—the small wages he'd secretly saved over years of servitude, hidden from the Klein family. Barely fifty denars total.
"I'll take it," Harry said, counting out five coins.
Morrison bagged the herb without ceremony. "You're wasting your money, kid. This stuff is only good for minor light-affinity beasts at Common rank or below. If you're trying to boost anything decent, you need at least Silver Moon Petals, and those run five hundred denars minimum."
"This will do," Harry said, taking the pouch.
Morrison shrugged. "Your money to waste."
They left the shop. Evening was falling now, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. Rose walked silently beside Harry, her eyes fixed on the small pouch he carried.
"Master," she said hesitantly. "That herb... it won't help me. I'm too... too broken. My power is all wrong. Dark and light fighting inside me. A simple herb can't—"
"It's exactly what you need," Harry interrupted gently. He led her to a small, quiet alley away from prying eyes. Kneeling down to her level, he opened the pouch. "The system showed me, Rose. Your problem isn't that you're weak—it's that you're unbalanced. Too much darkness, not enough light. This herb will fix that."
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CHAPTER 79 PART 2
The first was a young woman standing near the window with her arms crossed and her weight balanced on her back foot, the posture of someone who assessed threats before she assessed people. Sienna Reyes. Her hair was cut short, practical, and her eyes carried the patient stillness of deep water. Behind her, barely visible in the room's dim light, a shape shimmered, her contracted beast, a Frost Ice Phoenix called Frostwing, whose aura radiated cold so controlled that it never quite reached the furniture but made the air taste like winter.The second was a young man sprawled across two chairs with his boots on the table and his hands behind his head, radiating the kind of confidence that usually preceded a spectacular failure. Damon Ellery. Tall, broad shouldered, with the build of someone whose beast did most of the fighting while he did most of the talking. His War Treant stood behind him like a living fortress, bark skinned and massive, its root system curling across the stone floor.
CHAPTER 79 PART 1
Harry had not finished folding his second shirt when the knock came.It was not a knock that waited for permission. The door opened three seconds later, and Elias Cho stood in the frame looking like a man who had slept exactly zero hours and made peace with that fact."General Cole is outside. You leave in four minutes."Harry looked at the half packed bag on his bed, then at Rose, who was already standing with the hammer materialized and her posture perfectly composed, as if she had known this was coming before the door opened."Four minutes," Harry repeated."Three now," Elias corrected, and disappeared.They were in the air before Harry's brain fully caught up with his body.General Cole's guardian beast defied every reference point Harry possessed. The system panel flickered when he tried to scan it, returning fragmented data that amounted to almost nothing, a name, Skyrender, and a classification so heavily redacted that the display looked like a page of blacked out text. The cre
CHAPTER 78
Red markers highlighted completed sections, forming an almost continuous line across the map. Almost."Every other section has been conquered. Military forces cleared them over the past decade at significant cost in lives and resources. But one section remains open." Cole enlarged a single point on the map, a pulsing gray marker surrounded by red. "This node sits at the most critical junction in the entire defense network. Without it, the barrier has a gap. And through that gap, Outer Domain demons enter our territory every single day."Harry studied the marker. "Why hasn't the military closed it?""Because the Land of Trial at this node is classified as Abyssal difficulty. The highest tier recognized." Cole's voice carried the weight of someone who had lost people to those words. "And because Abyssal Trials impose entry restrictions that no amount of military force can circumvent. Specifically, this one requires a team of exactly three Beast Masters, all at Awakening Tier Five or belo
CHAPTER 77
The Southern Command Mansion corridors smelled like polished stone and authority. Elias Cho walked two steps ahead of Harry, his posture so rigid that it looked painful, as if the man's spine had been replaced with an iron rod somewhere between the plaza and the front entrance. He had not spoken a single word since they left the ceremony grounds.Harry followed in silence, Rose walking beside him with the hammer dismissed and her hands folded behind her back. She had sensed the shift in atmosphere the moment they crossed the mansion's threshold and adjusted accordingly, pulling her aura inward until she radiated nothing more threatening than a well dressed young woman with unusual eyes.Elias stopped before a set of heavy oak doors, knocked twice, and stepped aside."Through here, Mr. Klein. They're expecting you."Harry pushed the doors open and read the room in two seconds.City Lord Marcus White stood near the window, hands clasped behind his back, occupying the kind of position a m
CHAPTER 76 PART 2
Beside him, Seraphiel had gone very still. While everyone else had been watching the rankings climb from the bottom, she had been scanning the entire list from top to bottom, searching for one specific name. She had checked every position from last place to second.Harry Klein's name was not on the list.Which meant it could only be in one place.The screen resolved its final line.First Place: Harry Klein. 42,600 points. Potential Evaluation: SSS.The plaza did not erupt. It detonated.Noise crashed from every direction at once as hundreds of voices collided in shock and disbelief. Students grabbed each other's arms and pointed at the screen. Spectators who had been leaning against walls pushed forward to get a closer look. Someone near the front dropped their drink, and the glass shattered on the stone without anyone noticing."Forty two thousand?""That's five figures. That's a five figure score.""Count the digits again. Count them again!""Is that real? Is that actually real?""S
CHAPTER 76 PART 1
The white light spat them back into the city plaza like the Trial Space was glad to be rid of them.Harry blinked against the sudden brightness of open sky after hours of fog and crimson shadow. Rose materialized beside him, hammer resting casually on her shoulder, looking no worse than someone returning from an afternoon stroll. The plaza was already crowded, hundreds of students and spectators milling around the massive display screen mounted above the registration platform, waiting for results to populate.Harry barely had time to orient himself before a figure cut through the crowd toward him with the kind of urgency that turned heads.Elias Cho looked like a man who had sprinted from the monitoring station to the plaza without stopping to catch his breath. His uniform was rumpled, his hair disheveled, and a coffee stain darkened the left toe of his boot. But his eyes were electric, burning with the kind of energy that bureaucrats were not supposed to possess."Harry Klein." Elias
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