The eastern side of the ruins was a maze of broken stone and collapsed rooftops, the remnants of what had once been a small settlement before the Descent.

Houses stood in various states of decay — some with walls still standing, others reduced to little more than foundations overgrown with moss and creeping vines.

A few buildings had managed to keep their second floors, though the staircases had long since crumbled, leaving behind hollow shells with empty windows that stared out at the forest like hollow eye sockets.

I moved down the narrow street, my boots crunching softly on scattered rubble and shattered pottery.

The sun filtered through the broken arches, casting long, geometric shadows across the dirt.

Amelia walked a few feet behind me, her staff gripped tightly, her silver-violet eyes relentlessly scanning the perimeter. Lyssaria brought up the rear, her bandaged arm tucked close to her chest, her jade-green eyes entirely calm despite the underlying pain.

I had insisted on scouting the eastern sector — searching for supplies, survivors, anything that might help us endure the coming days. Amelia refused to let me go alone. Lyssaria refused to let either of us go without her.

No one had won the argument. So we had all gone.

The distance between me and Amelia was a heavy, silent wall. Ever since her conversation by the fire, the words between us had been clipped, purely functional, and entirely stripped of former warmth.

Amelia followed me closely, trying to watch my back and prove herself, but the freezing tension remained unpatched. Lyssaria noticed the quiet friction but said nothing, acting as a silent buffer between us.

I stopped at the corner of a collapsed house and peered around the edge.

The street ahead was empty, lined with more ruined buildings, their walls cracked and blackened by fire. Some of the roofs had caved in, exposing empty rooms filled with debris and the skeletal remains of furniture.

My eyes drifting briefly to a child’s cracked porcelain doll rotting in the muck.

People actually lived here once, I thought, before instantly pushing the sentiment aside to focus on the terrain. The mana density here is fluctuating.

Something is wrong.

"Leo, wait," Amelia called out softly, her hand instantly shifting on her staff. "Up ahead. Behind that wall."

We found the first group of candidates huddled near a collapsed well. There were five of them, their faces pale and clothes torn. My Soul Perception instantly flickered over them, bright colors.

Fear and desperation, but no purple color. No active corruption.

Amelia stepped forward, her voice instinctively softening. "Are you alright?"

A young man with a bloody bandage wrapped around his forearm nodded frantically, stumbling forward. "We’ve been hiding for days! The monsters... the other candidates... they slaughtered the rest of our party! We thought we were going to die out here!"

"It’s okay," Amelia said gently, stepping closer. "We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just passing through."

The young man’s shoulders sagged with relief. "Thank you. Thank you so much. We thought, we thought we were going to die out here."

I watched from the edge of the group, my hand resting naturally near the hilt of Tempest. As a dark-haired woman from the group reached out toward Amelia with hollow, pleading eyes, my perception caught a sudden, subtle shift in the weight of her posture.

Click—!

A clean, crescent arc of black steel severed the mist.

Before the young man could finish his next frantic sob, the woman’s head cleanly detached from her shoulders, colliding with the dirt a heartbeat before her body hit the ground. Blood sprayed across the gray cobblestones.

Amelia violently gasped, stumbling backward in absolute horror. "Leo?! What are you doing?!" she screamed, her voice cracking with pure shock. "They weren’t corrupted! You said they weren’t corrupted!"

I didn’t answer.

I stepped forward into a fluid lunge. Within seconds, the other four were dead. I moved through them like a ghost — efficient, precise, and mercifully quick. None of them suffered.

When it was over, I stood in the center of the carnage, my white hair flecked with crimson, my katana dripping onto the cracked stone.

"...Why?!" Amelia’s hands shook violently as she stared at the bodies.

I turned to face her, my ocean-blue eyes completely flat. I placed my right palm against her shoulder, firmly pushing her back from the pooling blood. "I said they weren’t brainwashed. I never said they were good people."

"What—"

"Look at them. Really look at them," I interrupted, gesturing at the corpses with my blade. "Their clothes are too clean for refugees. Their wounds are too neat. And that bandage on his arm?"

I crouched down, callously ripping back the young man’s sleeve. The skin beneath was entirely unmarked.

"They were hunters," I said, wiping my blade on the dead man’s shirt. "Not monsters. Hunters. They fake distress, lure sympathetic parties in, and gut them for their points and supplies. In this exam, the real predators frequently wear human faces. Keep your eyes sharp."

Amelia’s face went entirely pale as the harsh reality of the valley set in. Her stomach turned.

Beside her, Lyssaria didn’t even blink, her expression remaining unreadable, as if she had expected nothing less from the start.

I sheathed my katana with a crisp click, but before the echo could fade, a sharp rustling sound came from a narrow alleyway between two collapsed buildings to our left.

Instinct overriding thought, I drew the blade a second time in a fraction of a second, stopping the razor-sharp edge precisely two inches away from a smooth, pale neck that had just burst through the vines.

Princess Cordelia Valerion froze, her emerald eyes wide, her rapier half-raised. Her strawberry-blonde hair was a tangled mess, her royal traveling clothes torn and stained, and there was a cut on her cheek that was still bleeding.

I tilted my head, my Soul Perception pulsing over her. Bright colors. Exhaustion, deep irritation, and a massive spike of panic. No purple.

I lowered my blade. "Are you corrupted?"

"What? No!" Cordelia took a sharp, frantic step back, her hand flying to her chest as she tried to force her heart back down. "Are... are you completely mad?! You almost killed me! You would have actually killed a high princess of the realm!"

"You walked into a blind corner during an active engagement," I replied seamlessly, sheathing my sword. "Be grateful."

"You’re completely unhinged," Cordelia hissed, her eye twitching violently as her royal composure fractured.

"So I’ve been told," I muttered with a grin.

Amelia stepped forward, her staff lowering. "Cordelia? Are you hurt?"

"I’m fine." Cordelia wiped the blood from her cheek. "I’ve been worse."

Lyssaria nodded. "Where are the others?"

Cordelia opened her mouth to answer, but before she could speak, two more figures emerged from the alley behind her.

Alice Scarlet strode out first, her heavy longsword resting carelessly on her shoulder, her crimson hair wild. She stopped, her amber eyes locking onto me, and a massive, cocky grin instantly spread across her face.

"You again, bastard," Alice chuckled. "I thought you’d be dead by now. Still alive, huh?"

I clicked my tongue. "You sound disappointed?"

"Surprised. Not disappointed."

Julia Moss crept out right behind her, her magic staff clutched tightly to her chest, her pink hair sticking out in every direction. She spotted me and flinched, her eyes widening with profound relief. "L-Lord Leo! You’re alive!"

I blinked, my stoic mask slipping for a fraction of a second. "...Julia?"

Instantly, Princess Cordelia’s head snapped toward Julia. She looked at my blood-stained coat, then at the five dead bodies on the street, and her protective instincts went into absolute overdrive.

With a dramatic flourish, Cordelia lunged forward, physically planting herself directly between me and Julia, her arms spread wide to shield the timid support mage.

"Do not move a single inch, you brute!"

Cordelia ordered, her rapier pointed defiantly at my chest. "Even... even if you are terrifyingly strong, I will not let you lay a single hand on Julia! I don’t care how many rogue candidates you’ve slaughtered!"

My left eyebrow twitched violently. "Who exactly do you think I am?"

"I know exactly who you are!" Cordelia snapped, her face flushing crimson. "You’re the — you’re the arrogant man who demanded a... a kiss from me! In front of the entire court! And.... and you cut off those nobles’ arms! You’re a dangerous, bloodthirsty person!"

Alice snorted loudly from the side, intentionally fueling the fire. "Ooh, tough words, Princess Porcelain. Though, to be fair, he does look like a dark, brooding villain who murders people for breakfast. And haha. I absolutely didn’t expect him to be this bold. Asking a princess for a kiss?"

"Julia works for me," I interrupted, completely ignoring Alice. "My uncle supports her academy fees. She signed a contract, and she’s under my protection."

Cordelia blinked, her dramatic posture suddenly stiffening. She slowly lowered her arms, her head turning tightly to look back at Julia. "He... he pays your bills?"

"...Yes," Julia whispered, her face bright red as she desperately tugged the princess’s sleeve. "Lord Leo... he saved my life. He sponsored me when no one else would. He’s my employer."

Cordelia froze. Her face went from furious red to entirely pale. "...Oh."

"Yeah." My eye twitched. "Oh."

Alice burst into a fit of unrefined laughter, slapping Cordelia’s back. "Oh, this is absolutely funny! You tried to protect the employee from her own boss! Relax, Your Highness. If the big bad wolf wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead."

"That’s not comforting!" Cordelia snapped.

Amelia pinched the bridge of her nose in pure exasperation, while Lyssaria watched the sudden chaos with quiet amusement.

I ran a hand over my face, trying to bring the conversation back to actual survival. "Anyway. How did the three of you even manage to get here? The outer areas are crawling with brainwashed squads."

Cordelia cleared her throat, trying to piece her royal dignity back together. "Well... we encountered a heavy ambush, and we were forced to navigate through the eastern valleys to—"

"We ran like cowards because Alice blew up our escape route!" a voice suddenly roared from the thick foliage behind them.

Everyone turned.

Riven Ashford burst through the vines, his steel-red eyes scanning the courtyard, looking thoroughly irritated. Directly behind him, Caster Ironwell came stumbling out, completely out of breath, frantically keeping his glowing holographic map low to avoid drawing attention.

Riven stopped dead in his tracks.

"Didn’t I explicitly tell you not to run off into random areas, princess?!" he snapped, before pausing as his eyes darted from me, to Amelia, to the dead bodies, and finally to the rest of the gathering crowd.

I stood in the center of the ruined street.

I looked at the dramatic princess, the chaotic crimson-haired swordswoman, my own terrified employee, the furious dual-dagger elite, and the half-dwarf engineer currently wiping his nose on his sleeve.

A collective group of the absolute weirdest, loudest elites in the entire Academy had somehow managed to gravitate entirely into my exact coordinates.

I slowly raised my right palm, pressing it firmly against my face, letting out a long, deeply exhausted groan.

"...Fuck."