The atmosphere inside the Supreme Beast Academy was incredibly tense.

Everywhere across the campus grounds, groups of students talked in hushed, nervous voices like something truly terrible was looming over their heads. The constant anxiety had a surprising side effect on the first years.

The number of arrogant students who bothered Kenji had dwindled a lot over the past twenty-four hours, as most of the senior bullies were far too preoccupied with the looming emergency to care about a slum-born cripple.

"Kenji, are you fine?"

Kenji glanced up from his thin mattress, his hazel eyes locking onto the bespectacled boy standing near his bed.

The boy’s name was Amran. He was a first-year student just like him. With a similarly low level of soul power, both of them had been the primary targets of the academy bullies since the very first day of the orientation ceremony.

Kenji slightly tilted his shoulder, wincing as the movement pulled against a large, jagged laceration that had been crudely stitched together with medical thread.

"What do you think?" Kenji asked, his voice rough and dry. Amran bit his lower lip tightly.

A mixture of deep shame and helpless anger burned in his eyes for a brief moment before the expression slowly dissolved into a numb, hollow acceptance of their reality.

"I am sorry," Amran finally said, looking down at the stone floor. "If you hadn’t stepped in behind the training grounds, the senior enforcers wouldn’t have targeted you like this."

Kenji shook his head slowly to dismiss the boy’s guilt. Although the primary reason the second-year students had begun targeting him so brutally was because he had actively defended Amran from a senior’s extortion, Kenji had not done it out of pure human charity.

He did it only to train himself under extreme pressure.

The continuous, painful deaths within these walls had allowed him to systematically find the hidden flaws in his current physical fighting style. With each brutal death he experienced in the mud pits, those exact flaws were meticulously corrected by him during the subsequent loops.

He was using the academy’s hostility as a harsh whetstone to sharpen his restricted martial arts against real baseline opponents.

And it showed results when he defeated second year seniors.

It had taken him almost fifty deaths though. He wasn’t bothered about deaths. In fact, he enjoyed them.

It was just that the system notifications had definitely informed Ayla of his frequent failures. With her always rejecting his regression, the time he wasted in loops was nonexistent.

Kenji stared blankly at the ceiling, wondering what her expression would be right now.

Would she completely disdain him for his apparent physical weakness?

Would her primitive liking of him decrease over time because he kept getting crushed by other people?

After all, she was still in a highly fluid, exploring state of her existence. She was a monster that valued absolute strength and survival above all else.

If she decided that he was too fragile to bother with, his position in her heart might fall apart completely. Amran sat down on a wooden stool near the bed, breaking Kenji out of his internal spiraling thoughts.

"You should stay inside the medical wing for the rest of the week," Amran murmured, his voice trembling slightly as he glanced toward the window. "The whole academy is going into lockdown mode anyway. No one is safe outside the inner barriers right now."

"Why is everyone so tense?" Kenji asked, leaning back against the wooden frame. Amran leaned closer, lowering his voice to a faint whisper.

"The wilderness outer rings are completely dead. Someone or something is systematically slaughtering every single monster population right outside our borders.

It started with the common slimes in the lower valley, then a massive spider wiped out the boars, and yesterday, an entire colony of stealthy Shadow Cats was completely devoured in the western trees.

The research teams found a bizarre pattern. The monster that gets hunted in the previous sector somehow becomes the active hunter for the next species.

It is like a single, changing apex predator is climbing the food chain by changing its shape."

Kenji sat perfectly still, his face remaining entirely blank while his mind ran through the information. He did not need to ask any further questions. He instantly understood that the terrifying culprit behind this ecological devastation was Ayla.

That crazy girl was currently eating her way through the Spire’s local monster matrix. The thought of her running around the forest changing shapes like a chaotic chain caused a wave of relief to wash over him, mixed with a healthy dose of worry for whatever poor creature stepped into her path next.

Imagining her bulged cheeks while eating those fresh brains, he couldn’t help but smile a bit. That would be so cute...

Right?

"The Head Dean of the first-year department, Alistair Vance, just issued a mandatory directive," Amran continued, pulling a piece of official parchment from his pocket.

"The academy is sending out multiple teams to find and eliminate the culprit before it breaches the inner walls. They are desperate for numbers because second and third years are currently in their tests, so they are letting the first-year students register to go along with the professional teams as auxiliary scouts. It is supposed to count as our mandatory practical hunting credits."

Amran looked at the parchment, then looked back at Kenji’s stitched shoulder. "Obviously, we shouldn’t go. It is way too dangerous for people with our soul ratings. But I wanted to ask if you had seen the notice."

Kenji’s eyes narrowed slightly as a sharp, calculated smile touched his lips. If everyone was going behind Ayla, who would he train with?

It wasn’t absolutely because he was worried about his woman.

"Do you want to register?" Kenji asked. Amran blinked in surprise, his glasses sliding down his nose.

"Are you insane? We don’t even have contracted beasts that can fight a high-tier predator!"

"I am going to register with a team," Kenji said firmly, his voice brooking no argument as he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress.

"Go fetch the application form from the main office, Amran."

Meanwhile, the majestic white walls of the Supreme Beast Academy were reflecting the bright morning light, completely oblivious to the shadow gliding across the sky.

Ayla was currently flying over the outer mountain range, her core vibrating with a deep, purring happiness. Her new form was that of a massive Wind-Rider Falcon, a high-tier avian predator she had successfully intercepted and dissolved at the edge of the rocky cliffs.

Her sleek feathers were a metallic, dark blue color, and her massive wingspan allowed her to ride the warm updrafts without making a single sound.

Her large, dark golden pupils zoomed downward, effortlessly mapping the tactical layout of the human city below. She opened her status display to log her progress.

[Current Status]

Identity: Mimic Slime (Matriarch Faction)

Role: Bystander

Rank: Bronze (12.1%)

Active Traits: Perfect Assimilation, Corrosive Abyssal Fluid (Rare-A), Abyssal Shadow Blink (Rare-A), Earth Armor (Rare-C+), Gale Acceleration (Rare-C)

Her rank had finally broken past the ten percent threshold, and she had acquired a useful wind-type movement trait from her latest meal.

Her hunger was temporarily satisfied, which allowed her logical processors to focus entirely on the human settlement. She could feel the faint, distinct signature of Kenji’s soul pulsating near the lower medical barracks.

He was alive again. Ayla let out a sharp, happy screech that echoed faintly against the clouds. She didn’t go down to check on him, determined to continue her policy of distancing herself from him to make him understand her true value as a mate.

But as she came this near, it wouldn’t be a problem if she peeked at him a bit, right?