Kael caught Sage’s eye across the Silver common room and winked.

Her golden irises narrowed. One tail flicked—sharp, deliberate, the fox-kin equivalent of a middle finger. Rue, seated beside her sister, turned pink and looked away.

He smiled and returned his attention to the front.

Professor Locke stood at the center of the stage flanked by seven instructors. Kael had spent six months cataloguing the faculty of Section 3, and this was the first time he’d seen all of them assembled in one room. The power radiating from the platform was suffocating.

Locke himself sat at Spirit Soul realm Rank 3. To his left, Professor Venna Ashwood—Combat Applications instructor, Spirit Soul realm Rank 2, Blade Intent so sharp Kael’s skin prickled when she looked at him. To his right, old Professor Mors who taught Dungeon Ecology and never revealed his cultivation but had once killed a Foundation Establishment Rank 9 beast during a demonstration without moving from his chair.

The others were weaker—Spirit Soul rank to mana heart realm cultivation base range, useful for corralling students, nothing more.

But behind them all, standing motionless with hands clasped behind her back, was Vice Principal Harlow Dubois.

Kael’s Mana Skin flickered.

Her cultivation was unreadable. Not suppressed—unreadable. His gravity sense couldn’t parse her. His lightning resonance couldn’t touch her. She existed in his perception as a hole in the world shaped like a woman.

Do not attempt to analyze her, the System warned. Your current perception threshold is insufficient. Pushing further may cause soul strain.

"Understood."

"Silence," Locke said.

The murmuring died.

"The end-of-year practical examination will begin in six hours," he announced. "Written examinations will follow upon your return. Those who survive the practical will be tested on six months of instructed material. Those who do not survive will not need to worry about written examinations."

Someone in the back made a sound like a choked laugh.

Locke continued without acknowledgment. "Each tier has been assigned a distinct mission profile based on demonstrated capability."

A holographic display flickered to life behind him—three columns of text.

"Rust and Bronze tiers will deploy to the Greymarch Frontier. Mission: beast herd culling. A migratory surge of Rank 1 through Rank 3 Mana Gathering creatures has been disrupting civilian infrastructure. Students will eliminate targets and document kills via issued equipment. This mission carries minimal lethality risk for properly prepared students."

Minimal. Not zero. But some of you still die, said Locke with a weird expression.

Kael scanned the Rust and Bronze sections. The Bronze girl from yesterday—the one who’d looked ready to vomit—had gone pale again. A few of the smarter Rust survivors who’d clawed their way up during the six months sat rigid with determination.

They’d probably be fine. Probably.

"Silver and Gold tiers," Locke said, and the temperature in the room shifted, "will deploy to active dungeon break sites."

The holographic display updated. A map of Athelas appeared—four pulsing red markers scattered across the continent of Veridas.

"Over the past seventy-two hours, four simultaneous dungeon breaches have occurred in civilian population centers. These are not controlled incursions. Rifts have stabilized. Beast populations have established territorial dominance. Local military forces are occupied with higher-priority breaches and cannot spare resources for evacuation or extermination."

Locke’s voice stayed flat, clinical, as if reading a grocery list.

"Your mission is two-fold. One: rescue surviving civilians and escort them to designated extraction points. Two: eliminate all hostile creatures within the designated operation zone. Points will be awarded via wristband telemetry."

He gestured, and small devices materialized on the table before him—instructor assistants began distributing them into sorted piles.

"Scoring is as follows. Civilian rescue: five points per individual. Mana Gathering beast kill: one point. Core Formation beast kill: two to five points, scaled by rank—Rank 1 earns two, Rank 9 earns five. Foundation Establishment beast kill: ten to thirty points, similarly scaled."

Murmurs erupted.

Thirty points for a single kill. A Foundation Establishment Rank 9 beast would be worth more than sixty Mana Gathering creatures. The scaling was aggressive—clearly designed to separate those who could hunt real threats from those who padded their scores with easy targets.

"Point totals determine individual ranking," Locke continued. "Group composition is based on wristband color assignment. You will not choose your teammates. Wristbands are pre-linked. Attempts to tamper with, remove, or exchange wristbands will result in immediate disqualification and disciplinary action."

The instructor assistants began moving through the rows, handing out bands. Kael received his—a slender black circlet that tightened around his wrist the moment he touched it, warm then cold then neutral.

Black band.

He glanced around. Sage held a black band. Across the room, there were a total of five colors. Black, crimson, silver, white, gold. Roughly even distribution across the Silver and Gold sections.

"You will be teleported to your assigned zones via formation array in four hours," Locke said. "Use the intervening time to prepare. Equipment, supplies, techniques—whatever you believe necessary. The academy armory will extend emergency credit to Silver and Gold students for this examination only. Do not waste it."

He paused. The holographic map behind him zoomed into the four red markers, expanding each into a local view—cities, streets, buildings marked with hazard indicators.

"I will be direct," Locke said. "These are active crisis zones. The beasts inside have killed. They will continue killing. Some of you will encounter creatures beyond your capacity to defeat. Some of you will be injured. Some of you will die."

The room was deathly silent.

"This is not a simulation. This is not a controlled environment with instructors ready to intervene. The formation arrays placing you at these sites are one-way. Extraction will only occur at designated rally points, and only after the forty-eight-hour examination window closes. If you are incapacitated and unable to reach a rally point, you will remain where you fall until recovery teams sweep the zone after the examination concludes."

Locke’s gaze swept the room.

"If recovery teams find you before the forty-eight-hour mark, you will be medically evacuated and automatically failed. If recovery teams do not find you at all..." He let the silence stretch. "Then you will have answered a different question entirely."

Vice Principal Dubois presence behind the instructors felt like staring into a void that stared back.

"One final matter," Locke said. "Individual rankings will determine reward allocation. The top ten scoring students will receive prizes drawn from the academy’s upper reserve vaults."

The hologram shifted to a list.

First place: One Heaven Grade technique of choice from the restricted archive, one Mystic Grade weapon, three Cultivation Pills.

Second place: One Heaven Grade technique, one Tier 3 weapon, two Cultivation pills.

Third through fifth: One Heaven Grade technique each, one Tier 3 weapon each, Cultivation Pill each.

Sixth through tenth: Access to the intermediate restricted archive for one selection each—techniques up to Earth Grade, or one Tier 3 weapon.

"Additionally," Locke added, "the top three scorers will receive a private cultivation session with an instructor of their choosing from the available faculty. This session will be tailored to the student’s specific cultivation needs."

A Heaven Grade technique. Kael’s Gravity Blade was Heaven Grade, and he’d stolen the knowledge from the Shadow Shop. But the restricted archive would contain techniques he hadn’t seen—fusion methods, advanced elemental applications, possibly even conceptual fragments.

The private cultivation session was the real prize. An hour with someone at Spirit Soul could unlock comprehension that would take months to achieve alone.

"Review your wristband displays for group assignments and deployment coordinates," Locke said. "Disperse."

The room exploded into motion—students clustering by wristband color, voices rising in panic and calculation, a few already heading for the armory.

Kael checked his wristband. A small holographic interface flickered to life.

GROUP BLACK-3

Deployment: Thornwick City — Sector 7

Mission: Civilian Rescue & Beast Extermination

Group Leader: Byron Field

Members: Byron Field, Sage Fox-kin, Kael Vorn, Zane Ashford, Mira Chen

Byron Field. The name surfaced from Kael’s intelligence files—Gold Tier, Foundation Establishment Rank 6 peak, scion of the Field family, one of the minor noble houses with enough military backing to matter. He is known to be quite arrogant and aggressive. Reportedly excellent at following orders and terrible at giving them.

Zane Ashford and Mira Chen were also students at the Silver Tier like him.

Sage caught his eye again and tilted her head toward her own wristband display.

Kael closed the interface and walked toward the armory, ignoring the chaos around him.