"These are fake," Red stated, pointing at the blood on his forehead in the picture. "Julian pushed me down the stairs. They were sleeping with each other in the lounge. I walked in on them, and they staged this while I was unconscious."

Mr. Vance crossed the room in two massive strides. He grabbed Red by the collar of his faded jacket and slammed him backward into the filing cabinet. The metal dented inward under the impact.

"You disgusting animal," Mr. Vance snarled, driving his fist directly into Red’s stomach.

Red collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath. The principal remained entirely seated behind his desk. Julian smiled from his position by the window, adjusting his expensive watch.

Mr. Vance kicked Red in the ribs, sending him sprawling across the carpet.

"You are a traitor’s son," Mr. Vance spat, stepping over Red’s curled body. "Your father sold out his own unit, and you are exactly like him. You exist in this town because my tax dollars pay for your miserable group home. You shouldn’t even be allowed in the same building as my children. We clothe you, we feed you, and you try to ruin my daughter to cover up your own sick perversions."

Red tasted blood in his mouth. He looked up at the principal, waiting for the educator to intervene or call security. The principal simply looked down at his paperwork, completely ignoring the brutal assault happening in his office.

Two police officers entered the room a few minutes later. They hauled Red off the floor, slammed his hands onto the desk, and locked handcuffs around his wrists. They paraded him through the crowded main hallway, letting the entire student body watch the orphaned outcast get dragged away.

The arrest completely destroyed his life. He spent three months locked in a juvenile detention center waiting for his trial. The Vances unleashed their expensive legal team to bury him, plastering his face across the local news as a violent predator.

Red sat in the sterile courtroom during the final hearing. His overworked public defender presented the digital forensics report. The metadata from Chloe’s phone proved the photos were extensively edited.

The lighting patterns and the timestamps completely corroborated Red’s statement about being unconscious at the bottom of the stairwell.

The judge struck the evidence from the record and dismissed all charges. Red was technically free.

He walked out of the courthouse in his oversized state-issued clothes. However, freedom offered absolutely no comfort. The Vances faced zero consequences for perjury or assault.

The school board upheld his expulsion to protect their donors. The town continued to treat him like a monster, completely ignoring the court’s verdict. The truth had set him free from a cell, leaving him trapped in a world governed entirely by wealth and influence.

That was the exact moment Red stopped seeing people and started seeing the board. The strong made the rules, crushing the weak under them.

Although one day, they removed the expulsion for some reason.

Present Day, back in the Sanctuary.

"Now that I think about it, for Julian and Julia, this world is like a paradise for them. They can keep fucking without worries. And I am sure their entire group, Tyler, Jessica, Ashley, and Brandon were also aware of their relationship."

Red focused on Tyler and Krax’s fight.

Krax slammed his boot against the stone floor, fracturing the bedrock. He launched his massive frame straight into the air, bringing the violet-charged great axe down with force.

Tyler’s mask of terror vanished the instant the blade reached his golden armor. He tapped directly into his divine authority, transmuting his physical body entirely into a torrent of bubbling green acid.

Krax’s strike cleaved straight through the liquid form and smashed into the sandstone floor. The kinetic impact excavated a massive crater, launching debris across the enclosed plaza.

Tyler reformed his upper torso ten yards away, his lower half remaining a churning pool of toxic sludge. He laughed, throwing his arms wide as his divine domain flooded the enclosed arena.

"You brute!" Tyler mocked, his voice echoing off the bedrock walls. "I am a Herald of the Fourth Continent. Mortal weapons cannot touch a god!"

The toxic sludge rapidly expanded across the floor, threatening to dissolve everything in its path. The fifty Blood-Mane Orcs and Minotaurs immediately locked their shields together to form a defensive wall around their general.

The corrosive liquid splashed against the enchanted iron, instantly melting the outer layers of their armor. Several Minotaurs roared in pain as the acid seared their exposed skin, forcing the Vanguard elite to retreat toward the edges of the dome.

Krax pulled his greataxe from the rubble and observed the expanding lake of acid.

’Physical strikes pass right through him,’ Krax analyzed, watching the Herald conjure lances of toxic sludge. ’Slicing water achieves absolutely nothing, and the Sovereign requires him alive.’

He needed to contain a fluid demigod. Krax shifted his grip on his weapon and focused entirely on the violet Ley-Crystal embedded in the iron socket. The mythic-tier catalyst pulsed with hyper-condensed mana.

Krax inverted his grip and slammed the pommel of his axe directly into the center of the fractured floor.

He channeled his entire awakened core through the crystal, completely bypassing elemental destruction to manipulate pure kinetic gravity.

A violent gravitational singularity ignited directly beneath Tyler’s liquid form. The localized force completely defied natural physics, ripping the expanding lake of acid off the floor.

Tyler stopped laughing. He tried to reform his legs and flee the epicenter, but the gravitational pull violently dragged his entire mass inward.

The concentrated force continuously compacted the liquid, folding the toxic sludge over itself until Tyler’s entire body was crushed into a perfectly spherical, floating globule of hyper-dense acid.

Tyler’s face briefly pressed against the surface of the green sphere, contorted in absolute panic. He was completely immobilized, trapped alive inside his own condensed element.

Krax walked to the edge of the crater and held his hand out. The localized gravity well stabilized, keeping the liquid demigod suspended precisely three feet above the ruined floor.

"Put him in a glass jar," Krax ordered his surviving Minotaurs. "We are moving to the next target."