Chapter 184: Time for the Great Leo to Shine

I didn’t move immediately.

My eyes remained locked on Professor Morgana, watching the casual, almost relaxed stance she was taking in the middle of the dark grey stone floor. A low-rank Transcendent telling the top freshman to step forward in front of a class full of troublemakers — there was no way this was just a friendly test.

"What’s the matter, Primus?" Morgana chuckled, her dark purple eyes flashing with a dangerous, lazy amusement. "The beating from last night left you too stiff to move, or are you just realizing that a platinum badge doesn’t mean shit down here?"

My eyes widened slightly. What the fuck? How did she know about that?

Did Zephyr tell her? No, the old man would rather eat glass than talk to school staff. Then who? Headmaster Vega?

Whispers instantly broke out behind me as the rest of the outcasts lost their minds.

"A beating last night?"

"Wait, someone actually managed to beat the Primus?"

"Is he already injured?"

Shut up, you background extras, I grumbled internally.

I didn’t give them the satisfaction of a real answer. Ignoring the noise, I took a calm step forward, running a hand through my hair to hide a small wince. I stopped ten steps away from her, my left hand resting near my sword.

"...I’m moving just fine, Professor," I said, keeping my voice flat and sarcastic. "What’s the test?"

"Simple," Morgana said, pulling her hands out of her jacket pockets.

She didn’t draw a weapon or drop into a fighting stance. She just stood there, wild and loose, her black ponytail swaying over her shoulder.

"You have exactly three minutes to land a single, clean strike on me. You can use your sword, your affinities, your fists, or whatever cheap tricks you brought from home. If you succeed, Class Ascendant starts the semester with 500 Class Points, and I’ll personally hand you five thousand Credit Points."

Five hundred Class Points. Five thousand Credit Points.

The whole room went dead quiet. Behind me, forty-nine pairs of greedy eyes lit up. For a class of trouble makers starting at zero, fifty points was a dream. But five hundred? That was a big lead against the students in Veritas and Fortis and Audax

And five thousand personal credits? That’s an extra jackpot, not that I cared. I already have enough Credit points to enjoy, but hey that doesn’t mean I don’t want more

"...And if I fail?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"Then you lose five hundred Class Points," Morgana said, her aura suddenly getting heavier. "Your class starts at negative five hundred before the first day is over. Oh, and I’ll make you run laps around the training ground until you collapse. Fair?"

"Hey, wait a minute!" Alice yelled from the back, her face twisting in anger as she violently cracked her knuckles. "Why does our class score depend on him? If he loses, we all suffer because of his arrogance!"

"Because he’s the Primus, little girl," Morgana snapped, her dark purple eyes cutting toward Alice like a blade, instantly shutting her up. "He took the top spot, which means his back is the one that carries the weight. If you don’t like it, challenge him next month and take it. Until then, shut up and watch."

Morgana looked back at me, her expression turning incredibly sharp. "Your three minutes start... now."

_

[Morgana’s POV]

Watching the white-haired boy adjust his stance, Morgana suppressed a tired sigh.

Vega, you fucking bastard. You lied to me.

When the Headmaster had pulled her out of her easy, lawless retirement for a "special job" at the academy, he had promised easy money. Instead, she got stuck watching over fifty troublemaking nobles and dangerous outcasts.

A total headache. But Vega had saved her neck once, years ago. She owed him. That was the only reason she was here.

But as her eyes lingered on Leo von Celestial, her complaining quieted down a little.

She had looked at his data before coming to the stage today. The boy was a complete anomaly. He didn’t just pass the valley test; he had smashed the academy’s scoring record, getting numbers that shouldn’t even be possible for a first-year.

More than that, the reports said he had spent seven months in his Path Awakening trial, something no one had done before.

....And then there was his lineage. The grandson of Zephyr von Celestial.

Morgana knew the old monster was around the campus. She had felt the huge power from their private fight last night. She did not go to watch — she was not stupid enough to get in Zephyr’s way, but seeing Leo standing before her with sore ribs and a steady look told her everything she needed to know.

The kid was broken. He had put himself back together through pure stubbornness, powerful bloodline, and the ability to take pain that would drop anyone else. He was a hunter pretending to be a student.

Let us see what a record-breaker can do, Morgana thought, a crazy grin on her face. Show me why Vega cares so much about you, kid.

_

[Leo’s POV]

The air in the big room changed at once.

I did not wait. Flash Instinct was off the table unless I wanted my brain to break from yesterday, but my normal reflexes were already screaming. My right hand moved, pulling my sword from its sheath.

Instead of running straight at her, I used my bloodline and affinities. Black lightning burst from my boots, crackling against the dark grey stone floor.

Volt Step.

With a tearing sound, I disappeared. I closed the ten-step gap in a flash, leaving three afterimages of dark lightning behind to mess with her senses. I appeared at her left side, swinging my blade at her waist.

Swif!

The blade cut through nothing but empty air. Morgana hadn’t even shifted her feet. She had simply leaned her upper body back at a easy angle, letting the sharp edge of my sword pass a hair above her nose.

"Too slow, Primus," her voice drifted up, entirely bored.

Before I could change my swing, her body twisted with smooth grace. Her boot snapped up like a hidden whip.

Bam!

I did not try to block with my bare arms. Instead, I used my Space power, folding the space in front of my arm to make a hidden shield.

The kick hit the folded space like a cannon shot. Her Transcendent strength broke the shield at once, but the leftover force only pushed me back. I slid twenty feet across the dark grey stone floor, my boots scraping before I stopped.

My forearm was completely numb, and bloodline was already working, taking in the shock to keep my bones from breaking.

"Holy shit..." a student in the front row said, stepping back.

"Did you see that? He literally vanished, and she didn’t even blink!" Another one whispered.

Roan’s lazy smile was gone. His body was stiff, his sharp eyes locked on Morgana’s easy stance. He knew how fast my Volt Step was, and seeing it treated like a slow walk was a big wake-up call.

Morgana stood in the center of the arena, casually rolling her shoulder. "One minute down, Primus. Is that all the record-breaker has to offer?"

A cold smirk pulled at the corner of my lips, though my lungs felt like they were on fire. "We’re just getting warmed up, Professor."

Pushing ahead with speed or lightning copies was not going to work against a Transcendent who could read my every move. I needed a trick that went past normal sight. I started to circle her, my boots sliding over the dark grey stone floor.

I did not put power into my blade. Instead, I reached out to the space around her.

Eclipse of the Singularity — First Form.

I thrust my katana straight ahead into empty air, thirty feet away from her.

"What is he doing? He missed by a mile!" a noble brat scoffed from the back.

But the moment the tip of my blade moved, the space in front of it folded completely. The middle of my blade vanished into a hidden tear, and the razor-sharp tip came out instantly out of thin air right behind Morgana’s neck, driving forward from a completely blind angle.

It was a flawless strike.

Clang!

The sound of steel against something harder than steel rang through the room.

Without even turning around, Morgana had raised two fingers behind her head, pinching the very tip of my katana between them. The spatial distortion around the blade groaned under the sheer weight of her Transcendent aura.

"Moving space in the middle of a swing? Beautiful trick, kid," Morgana purred, her dark purple eyes gleaming with genuine amusement as she finally turned her head to look at me. "But you forgot one thing. I don’t need my eyes to see your attacks. Your mana signature is as loud as a thunderclap in an empty room, no matter where you try to hide it in."

Before I could pull the weapon back through the folded space, she lightly flicked the flat of the blade.

A small, focused shockwave ran up the steel, hitting my hands like a hammer. The strong shake tore my grip away and sent my sword spinning across the floor.

"Two minutes down," Morgana said, crossing her arms. "You have no sword, and you have sixty seconds left to touch me."

I stepped back, rubbing my sore hands. My weapon was thirty feet away. Behind me, the forty-nine outcasts were dead quiet. Some were already hanging their heads, ready to start the semester with negative points.

Alice was gritting her teeth so hard I could hear it from here, her fierce rage bubbling over as she glared at the scene. "Get up, you arrogant noble bastard..." she muttered under her breath.

But I wasn’t done.

"Who said I needed the sword?" I muttered, a sharp, grin breaking across my face.

I did not reach for my katana. Instead, I put my hands in my coat pockets and took a deep breath. If she was tracking me through my power in the air, then the only way to trick a Transcendent was to make the space around me lie to her.

I ignored the pain in my chest and pushed my bloodline to send power through my body, turning the air around me into fuel for a big, risky move

But just having that hungry fire made my power feel wild and scary.

...Space, I thought. I’ve been using it like a cheap trick. Teleporting my blade. Folding paths. Storing things. But that’s not all it can do. It’s not just about moving myself or my sword. It’s about breaking the rules of where things exist.

I had ignored this affinity for too long. In the trial, I barely touched it. In the exam, I used it for quick strikes and movement. But I never tried to push it beyond that.

If space is a fabric... then I don’t have to just fold it. I can tear it. I can scatter myself across it.

Then, I pushed my Space power to its limit. Instead of folding a path to her, I folded the space around my own power. I broke my own mana into many small, broken pieces, sending them out in every direction at once.

It was not easy. My head pounded. Keeping the pieces separate while still moving my body felt like trying to hold water in my bare hands. A sharp sting built behind my eyes, and my mana channels burned from the effort.

"What the hell is he doing?" Roan said from the side, his eyes going wide. To his sharp eyes, the air around me was bending, sending out wild echoes.

To anyone tracking my power, it now looked like fifty different versions of me were coming from fifty different angles at once.

Morgana’s eyes narrowed a little. Her lazy posture got a bit straighter as the strange space echoes made her think. "Oh? Now that is a clever way to mess with my senses."

With a sudden burst of speed, I ran straight at her, bare-handed. The space echoes broke around me, leaving a trail of twisted air. For a split second, Morgana’s perfect tracking broke. Her purple eyes blinked.

It was the only opening I needed.

I lunged forward, throwing a heavy, straight right punch directly at her face. As expected of a Transcendent, even with her tracking broken, her body moved on its own. She effortlessly raised her left hand, her palm catching my fist like a brick wall.

"Nice try, Primus," Morgana smirked, her fingers closing tightly around my right fist as the timer on our mana-link watches ticked down to the final five seconds. "But a fake-out only works if you have the speed to back it up. Time’s—"

"I wasn’t aiming for a knockout," I interrupted, a smirk matching hers.

Using her tight grip on my right hand as a hook, I threw my whole body forward. My left hand, which had been hiding in my coat pocket — shot out like a snake. I did not use a fist. I did not use a spell.

My fingers opened, reaching past her guard toward the open collar of her grey jacket.