After solving the problem of food and warmth, the group set off again to look for the other students.

Vinny walked at the very front. He wiped his lips with a big leaf he had no idea where he’d picked up, then tossed it away like it was nothing.

He rubbed his stomach, let out a relieved breath, then tipped back some water to wet his throat.

“You two, are you full?” Vinny asked Fennia and Amisha.

“We’re both full,” Fennia replied.

But the fullest one was probably Vinny. He’d eaten several huge fish. Fennia had eaten quite a bit too, but nowhere near as much as Vinny.

The one who ate the least was Amisha. She didn’t even finish a single fish. Maybe it really didn’t taste that good. Or maybe her appetite was just small to begin with.

Vinny withdrew his gaze and swaggered at the head of the group. Fennia walked in the middle with her sword in hand. At the very back was Amisha, hugging her pearl-glow staff with both arms, taking small steps as she followed.

“Amisha, when you got attacked by the bud-head monsters earlier, did you see any other students?” Vinny asked.

“No. It was only me the whole time.” Amisha shook her small head as she answered. “But the terrain here... roughly speaking, most of it is jungle and scrubland. In the center there’s a ruin altar.”

“Oh? A ruin altar? Then I think we should go take a look.” Based on Vinny’s experience with three map changes already, places like that were usually the entrances that led from one map to the next.

Amisha nodded. Fennia had no objections either. The three continued through the jungle—then suddenly heard the clanging of metal and the sounds of combat.

At that, the three exchanged a look.

They all understood. The only ones likely to be treated as enemies by the local creatures here—and attacked—were the Carillian students, the outsiders.

“Let’s go take a look. It might be another student who got separated,” Fennia said as she changed direction and quickened her pace toward the fighting. Vinny and Amisha followed right behind her.

Vinny stayed close on Fennia’s heels, thinking to himself that he didn’t know if his luck would finally be good for once—maybe he’d run into one of the Destiny Heroines this time. If that happened, the team’s safety would be basically guaranteed.

Of course, even if it was someone else, that was fine too. More people meant a stronger team. If they could tie themselves into one rope, more people would avoid injuries and death.

The three quickly approached the site of the fight. As they drew near, Vinny motioned for Fennia to hide behind the bushes and not rush out.

Fennia understood what Vinny meant. She slipped into the brush to observe first. While the two watched, Amisha obediently crouched behind them, hugging her staff.

“Clang, clang!”

Fangs slammed into a gold-hilted sharp blade, spraying violent sparks. A sturdy young man in the Carillian Academy uniform was locked in battle with a giant beast shaped like a rhinoceros.

The beast had a horn like a rhinoceros’s—only far longer. Its body was at least twice the size of a rhinoceros. Beyond that, its entire body was draped in flowering branches and vines, and at the top of its head bloomed an enormous, fully opened flower.

This flower-beast colossus was covered in sword scars and charred wounds. It was obvious it had been enduring constant slashes and magic. It wanted desperately to finish its opponent quickly, yet it had no way to do it. Its condition was awful. It was already at the end of its rope, able only to bluff with a few roars.

Vinny could tell this flowering-branch colossus was extremely strong—on a completely different level from those bud-head monsters earlier. With a body that huge, if it charged and smashed into you, you’d go flying, and no matter how thick your armor was, your organs would still be shattered.

Not only that—off in the distance, Vinny also saw the colossus’s companions. But they were already dead, sprawled on the ground. Flower-juice-like fluid had spilled everywhere, and the big flowers on their heads had withered.

That was how strong this young man was.

This should have been something to celebrate. They’d found a teammate with serious combat power. But Vinny couldn’t bring himself to be happy.

Why?

Because he knew this person. In a sense, you could even call him an old acquaintance.

He’d watched him grow up. Every time Vinny got bullied, this guy’s shadow was in it. How could he not be an old acquaintance??

That’s right.

He was Vinny’s mortal enemy from childhood to now—the son of the current Dragon-Knights commander, a young man who’d become an official member of the Dragon-Knights at a very early age, an idol in the eyes of many young nobles of the Kingdom of Camella.

Caron.

In that instant, Vinny’s mood turned... delicate.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the situation. In a moment like this, he wasn’t going to drag out old scores with Caron.

What Vinny was afraid of was Caron not understanding the situation—Caron deciding he had to make things hard for him anyway. Because even though the guy gave off the impression of a grand, upright young knight...

His taste...

“That upperclassman... he looks like Caron, the son of the Dragon-Knights commander?” Fennia recognized Caron. As one of the “faces” among the kingdom-background students, he was fairly well-known on campus. A lot of people recognized him.

But not everyone knew about the grudges between Vinny and Caron.

Under Caron’s flawless assault, no matter how stubbornly the flowering-branch colossus resisted, it could only be worn down bit by bit—until it was finally drained to death.

The colossus also understood: even when they had surrounded him and attacked together, they hadn’t been able to bring this human down. Now that it was badly injured, it was even less possible to avenge its kin. All it could do was struggle one last time.

Countless flower-vines shot out from the enormous bloom atop its head, spreading from every direction toward Caron.

Caron didn’t panic in the slightest. He calmly drove the gold-hilted blade in his hand into the earth. A half-spherical barrier of flame formed, blocking all the creeping vines.

【Flame Guard】

The moment the vines touched that barrier of surging fire, they caught flame. The blaze climbed along them, spreading toward the giant bloom on the colossus’s head.

That spot seemed to be the beast’s weakness. The flowering-branch colossus hurriedly abandoned those vines to keep itself from being set alight.

Fire was a massive weakness for them. Vinny glanced at the corpses of the other vine-colossi lying nearby. The huge flowers on their heads had all withered. Clearly, that bloom was the symbol of their vitality.

These flowering-branch colossi had probably tried many ways to deal with Caron before this, but none of them worked.

Vinny remembered that Caron’s fire affinity was supposedly very high. This was a perfect matchup. And Caron himself was one of the representative powerhouses among the kingdom-background students. These flower-monster colossi were simply not his opponents.

After neutralizing the attack, Caron charged again. One sword swing sliced off a section of petals from the bloom on the colossus’s head.

This guy...

Seeing that, Vinny couldn’t help frowning.

With a body that big, you could throw out a simple fireball and it couldn’t dodge. If he blasted the flower on its head, even if it didn’t die, it’d be skinned alive.

So why did he insist on running in to chop it?

That beast’s hide was thick. How long did he think he’d have to hack to kill it?

On the other side, the flowering-branch colossus went berserk after losing half a petal section. It stomped the ground, shaking the earth. At the same time, countless sharp leaf-blades flew from the giant bloom atop its head, sweeping toward Caron like a storm.

Fennia was about to step in and help Caron—only to be stunned by what he did next.

She had assumed Caron would respond the same way as before, releasing 【Flame Guard】 to burn the leaf-blades away.

Instead, Caron simply stood there, with no intention of casting magic at all.

What was he trying to do?

None of the three could figure it out.

And then, at that moment, Caron raised his hand. The gold-hilted broadsword in his grip blossomed into a dazzling storm of sword-flowers, too fast for the eyes.

“Clang clang clang...!”

The metallic impacts were nonstop—dense like torrential rain hammering on a glass window. Even without looking, just hearing it was enough to imagine how many leaf-knives that golden arched-hilt broadsword was smashing out of the air every second, and how much force was packed into each strike.

Just watching made Vinny’s eyes hurt, so he looked down instead. The ground was already piled with shredded leaves.

Ridiculous. A full-direction interception?

Vinny stared at Caron in shock. He was surrounded on all sides by a storm of countless leaf-blades, yet not a single one touched him. None could even get close.

He had to admit it—Caron’s attainment and talent in swordsmanship were genuinely enviable.

As one of the leading figures among the kingdom-background students, he clearly had something real.

But... if that was the case, then when the vines flew at him earlier, why didn’t he use this to cut them ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) apart? Why use magic instead??

Vinny suddenly thought.

What, was the earlier magic a numbers display, and now the swordplay was a “mechanics showcase”??

That also explained why Caron didn’t just lob a fireball at the bloom on the beast’s head.

Because the flowers on the dead colossi nearby had been sliced off—not blown apart.

Caron had so many ways to fight, and he picked the hardest one.

Vinny didn’t believe it was because Caron hadn’t realized the bloom was their weakness. He was doing it for one reason only.

He just wanted to show off.

To Caron, the vine-colossus’s counterattacks were basically no different from acting cute. After firing off the leaf storm, the vine-colossus seemed to fall into a helpless, out-of-options despair.

And then Caron started showing off again. He clearly knew where the weakness was, but he refused to strike it. Instead, he insisted on chopping at the hardest parts of the beast’s body.

Even with hide as thick as armor, Caron’s exquisite swordsmanship somehow carved through it. After a few strikes, the vine-colossus buckled from pain, its eyes filling with bloodshot threads.

A beast like that only became harder to handle the more it was hurt.

The vine-colossus ignored Caron’s chopping altogether and thrust its horn straight at him.

Caron didn’t panic. He calmly assumed a guarding stance.

And right then, an ice chain whipped in and latched onto the tip of the horn.

After freezing the beast’s snout, another ice chain came down from above, slamming hard into the beast’s head.

The ice chains weren’t particularly strong in raw power, and the elemental damage wasn’t high either.

But the vine-colossus was weak to ice—and the strike landed on the giant bloom atop its head, that weak point.

The bloom froze, and in an instant the beast lost all sense of direction.

Caron frowned and looked back.

When he saw the three people behind him—and the Vinny among them—his brow knit even deeper, and something unreadable entered his gaze.

He glanced at the vine-colossus, now so rattled its mind was unclear. Caron also knew there was no point dragging this out. With one sword swing, he sliced the flower clean off the beast’s head and ended its life.

“Truly disappointing. Even without deliberately targeting that foolishly exposed weak point, this is all it amounts to?” Caron said coldly as he watched the beast sway twice before crashing heavily to the ground.

He sheathed his sword, then looked toward the three walking over.

“Vinny, you really chose a good moment to step in,” Caron said, and smiled out of nowhere.

“Oh?” Vinny, walking toward Caron, raised an eyebrow.

That was dripping with sarcasm.

Meaning what—Vinny stole his kill?

But he’d come to help, hadn’t he? This wasn’t some hunting tournament where killing a monster gave you points. Was there even such a thing as “kill-stealing” here??

Fine, then. He’d taken the initiative for the big picture, but apparently the other side wasn’t grateful at all.

Vinny pursed his lips.

“Upperclassman Caron flatters me. I meant to help, but it looks like you didn’t really need it.” Even so, the surface-level politeness still had to be maintained. Vinny didn’t want the boat they’d barely managed to gather together to start leaking.

What mattered most right now was escaping this strange world, not nursing private grudges.

Caron didn’t respond. Vinny wore a grin as if nothing bothered him. The two stood there looking calm, but whether they were truly as calm as they looked—no one could know.

And who knew if, in that moment, they both remembered the many grudges from childhood to now.

When they were little, Caron hadn’t been much taller than Vinny. Now, Caron stood a full head and a half above him.

“So, upperclassman Caron is here too. Looks like the entire faculty and student body got swept into this absurd disaster. No idea which bastard is behind it,” Vinny said with a shrug.

“I heard you recently reached the Magus realm,” Caron said, narrowing his eyes at Vinny.

“Just luck. My foundation isn’t stable. Honestly, I never expected I’d ever reach that height. I’m still far behind you, upperclassman Caron.” Vinny smiled.

“I never expected you’d amount to anything either,” Caron said as he tipped his chin up, his tone heavy with meaning. “No matter who it is, when they recall that ignorant little brat from back then, no one would believe he’d have anything to do with the Magus realm in his lifetime.”

“Haha. I’ll take that as praise from upperclassman Caron, then—gladly?” Vinny listened to Caron’s words like a dead pig that wasn’t afraid of boiling water, taking an obvious insult and hearing it as a compliment. It was so shameless it left Caron with no way to deal with him.

Caron seemed unwilling to waste words with Vinny here. His gaze passed over Vinny and drifted between Fennia and Amisha.