"Damn you."

Even though Junior was cursing, the clones did not care. His words slid off them like water off stone.

Junior had fallen into the deepest part of the abyss.

’How... how did it come to this?’

His mind raced, grasping for answers that would not come.

One moment, he had been in control, centuries of knowledge, the heavenly book, the power to regress through death.

The next moment, four lunatics with identical voices had stripped everything away.

’Am I going to become a slave to these lunatics?’

No.

This could not be happening. Not to him. He could not accept this.

Junior gritted his teeth. His jaw ached from the pressure. His nails bit into his palms hard enough to draw blood.

"OVER MY DEAD BODY. I AM NOT SOMEONE THE LIKES OF YOU CAN STEP ON."

The words tore from his throat like a battle cry.

And something inside him shifted.

Junior’s WILL began to resonate with his class.

The imbalance between his body and soul, the very thing that had kept him weak, trapped in a frail frame, started to synchronize.

It was as if two halves of a broken whole were finally clicking back together.

Mana rushed into his body like a flood.

His rank, which had been stuck at [bronze 1] for months, began to climb.

[bronze 2]

The clones stepped back. Their eyes widened.

[bronze 3]

The air around Junior thickened. His blind eyes, sightless for so long, began to tingle. Colors he had not seen in years flickered at the edges of his vision, blurry, indistinct, but there.

Junior’s WILL was so strong that the clones were pushed back, not by mana alone, but by presence. By the weight of a soul that had lived for centuries and refused to bow.

The clones stared at him with wide eyes.

[silver 1]

Junior’s rank did not show any signs of stopping.

Not only that, but his frail body began to revitalize. His muscles, once thin and weak, filled with strength.

His spine straightened. His breathing deepened. The tremble in his hands vanished.

His demeanor changed entirely.

He slowly stood up, dust falling from his clothes like the remains of a cocoon.

An invisible force pressed down on the clones, heavy, suffocating, almost making them kneel.

Junior’s mana vision awakened.

For the first time since the loops began, he could see.

The world returned to him in fragments, shapes, colors, outlines. The clones stood before him, their forms shimmering with mana.

He was slightly surprised to find that all four of them had the exact same mana signature.

’They are extensions of the same source. Not four people. Four pieces of one.’

His rank climbed higher.

[silver 2]

His fearful expression from moments ago vanished. His face turned cold.

The amount of mana around him increased, forming a cyclone around his body.

Papers flew across the room. Curtains ripped from their rods. The bed scraped across the floor.

[silver 3]

He lifted his head slightly upward and looked down at the clones.

"Heh... to think you toyed with me."

A smile curled across his lips.

"A blessing in disguise is what they call this."

He rolled his shoulders. Rolled his neck. Flexed his fingers.

"No matter. I will take my sweet time with..."

He stopped his words midway as he stared at the clones.

’Why are they smiling?’

The clones were grinning and amused.

The Wind Clone stepped forward, his grin wide.

"Let me do it."

As soon as he said those words, he waved his hand. A simple breeze, soft, gentle, almost lazy, drifted toward the mana cyclone surrounding Junior.

Junior watched it approach.

"It’s useless."

He expected the breeze to dissolve on contact. To scatter against his overwhelming power.

But under his watchful gaze, the breeze touched the mana cyclone and nullified it.

The cyclone vanished. The mana dissipated. Junior’s advancement to [gold] stopped midair, cut off like a thread snapped by scissors.

Not only that. Junior lost all his mana senses again. His resonance halted. His body went quiet.

Every drop of mana inside him was gone. Nullified.

"N-no way."

His knees buckled. He fell to the floor with a heavy thud.

The Frostflame Clone grinned down at him.

"What did you ask earlier? The likes of us can’t step on you?"

Junior’s head hit the floor. He did not know what had just happened.

Then he felt a shoe on his face. Pressing his head against the cold floor.

The Frostflame Clone said, his voice light and casual.

"Let’s begin the arrangements to turn Blindy into a slave."

The Black Lightning Clone stretched his body, joints popping.

"Finally. I was getting bored."

The Space Clone frowned, his head tilting slightly.

"I can sense multiple rankers coming here."

Due to his space element, the Space Clone could use ’spatial awareness’ to sense everything within five hundred meters, even without using mana.

He felt them approaching. [Diamond] rankers. A [Mythril] ranker.

The Frostflame Clone lifted Junior, now completely manaless, completely helpless, then he turned and nodded at the others.

Without a word, all of them vanished from the room.

Seconds later, the door burst open with a deafening bang.

Three [diamond] rankers and one [Mythril] ranker flooded into the room.

The room was empty. The curtains were torn. The bed was askew. But there was no one there.

"What happened?"

"What was that mana eruption earlier?"

"W-wait... why can’t I sense any mana in here?"

...

Outside the Golden Scale Academy, in Arhal city.

Inside one of the hotel rooms.

The clones arrived using the teleportation skill they all shared, a seamless shift from one location to another, as if reality had simply blinked.

The Frostflame Clone dropped Junior onto the cold ground. The boy’s body hit the floor with a dull thud.

The room was dim. The windows were shuttered. The air was filled with a fresh flower scent.

Four clones stood in a loose circle around the fallen Junior.

The Frostflame Clone looked down at him and said,

"Let’s begin."

____

Author Note: Due to some errors and sudden work, the remaining bonus Chapters will be delayed by 2 days. But don’t worry, they will be released, along with the daily stack, on April 2.