Heroes, by nature, lived long lives. The soul stigmata granted them bodies with characteristics far beyond normal human limits. Thus, they aged slowly and lived far longer than ordinary people did. Headmaster Ryu, sitting right in front of me, was already close to 150 years old.

However, that didn’t mean heroes were beings who lived forever unless they died from an accident. Depending on the hero’s level, no matter how talented they were, the moment they passed a hundred years old, they would start aging rapidly. Most of them died before reaching the age of two hundred. Even among the so-called Masters, the top five heroes on the entire continent, only a few had lived beyond the age of two hundred, and that too by an extra thirty or forty years at best.

In over five hundred years of recorded hero history, the oldest to ever live was aged 262. It was Anton Padsha, the emperor of the Empire two generations ago. Even an emperor, ruling a nation with near-limitless wealth and power, could not live to three hundred years old.

And yet...

“You’re saying a graduate from the Hero Academy three hundred years ago was still alive until a few days ago?” I asked.

Professor Baldwin gave a heavy nod. “Based on the information we have so far, yes.”

“Could the wolf-masked man simply be his descendant?”

“That’s what I first thought as well. Their appearance is far too similar, after all.” But then she let out a small sigh and shook her head. “When we compared the residual mana pattern left on the recovered wolf-masked man’s soul stigmata with the mana pattern from the cadet records belonging to James Jin, they matched perfectly.”

Like fingerprints, mana patterns were unique to each hero. The Hero Watch’s lock system was built on that principle. While a mage at the pinnacle could mimic another’s mana pattern intentionally, they could not do that to a corpse. The wolf-masked man wouldn’t be able to fake someone else’s mana pattern after dying.

“Which means the wolf-masked man is at least three hundred years old,” I muttered.

If he graduated three hundred years ago, he should actually be at least twenty years older than that. That was impossible. Unless he had something like my Blessing of Resurrection, there was no way a normal hero could live over three centuries.

I had a sudden realization as something Laneige once told me flashed across my mind.

“His wounds healed incredibly fast.”

According to her, he had been impaled by an ice spear and had a fist-sized hole torn through his abdomen, but the wound had closed almost instantly. Even when he fought Yurina, his wounds were healing unnaturally fast. Of course, the final strike, Moonlight, was so powerful that he died before he could regenerate, but during the battle, all the minor injuries closed almost immediately.

One more thing stood out about him: the overwhelming number of scars covering his body. Those countless marks, as if someone had stitched a person back together, alone were undeniable proof he possessed some kind of regenerative ability. A normal person would’ve died long before accumulating scars like that.

I narrowed my eyes at Professor Baldwin. “Could the wolf-masked man have a regeneration-related blessing?”

She nodded slowly, holding my gaze. “That’s a reasonable assumption. If he did have such a blessing, a long lifespan wouldn’t be strange.”

She knew, far better than anyone, that because of the Blessing of Resurrection, I had lived not just three hundred years, but thousands. It only made my hypothesis more convincing.

However, it turned out to be a wrong assumption, as she let out a deep sigh and shook her head. “Unfortunately, the situation isn’t that simple.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you another photo.”

A new face appeared in the hologram. It was a woman with short brown hair and blue eyes. She was the person behind the fox mask, one of the wolf-masked man’s subordinates.

“Annika Deva. She, too, was once a cadet at the Hero Academy.”

“No way!”

“She graduated 132 years ago.”

“Graduated 132 years ago?”

Since cadets graduated at the age of around 21, that meant she had to be roughly 153 years old now. It was an age still within reason for a hero.

“But when we examined her corpse, she looked remarkably young. At most, she appeared to be in her early thirties.”

I kept quiet, pondering this information.

“To maintain an appearance that youthful at 150 years old, she would need to be at least Master-level. But tell me, Dale, did the fox-masked woman fight at anything close to Master-level?”

“No.”

It was not even close. She would barely qualify as mid-to-low tier among Rankers.

“And as you know, Blessings are unique. No two people can share the same blessing.”

That could only mean one thing.

“The cause isn’t a blessing,” I muttered.

“Correct. And whatever is causing it, we currently have no idea.”

Professor Baldwin instinctively reached for a cigarette in her coat, but froze when she noticed Headmaster Ryu quietly seated at the table, listening to us.

“Thank you for the explanation, Professor Baldwin.” Headmaster Ryu’s gaze settled on me. “That’s why I called you here, Dale.”

I looked at him. “Even if you say that’s why, I’m not sure I understand.”

He replied, “This unidentified group of masked beings... Ah, we can’t keep calling them that every time. It’s better to give them an official name. Let’s see.”

Headmaster Ryu stroked his beard thoughtfully. Then, as if a good idea had just struck him, he snapped his fingers. “The Beast Skin Group. We’ll call them that.”

“The Beast Skin Group?”

“Yes. Each of them wears an animal mask, and their actions are no different from those of beasts. A fitting name, don’t you think?”

“I like it. Let’s call them that from now on,” I replied.

“Good. In any case, I’d like to ask you, Dale, to track down this Beast Skin Group and uncover the identity of their leader.”

“You want me to do that?”

They wanted to assign a task this dangerous and unpredictable not to a professor, but to a regular cadet? And not just any cadet, but the lowest-ranked and the so-called problem child of the entire academy?

“Are you sure it’s okay to entrust something like this to me?”

Headmaster Ryu smiled faintly. “It’s precisely because it’s you. I already know that you possess a very special power, Dale. Personally, I believe that you might be stronger than any professor in this academy. Perhaps even stronger than Professor Baldwin.”

“Why do you rate me that highly?”

Did he hear something about my true identity from Professor Baldwin? Without thinking, my eyes drifted toward her.

He answered, “Haha! Professor Baldwin has nothing to do with it. In fact, because I couldn’t quite figure out the extent of your abilities, I asked her, since she’s closest to you. But she absolutely refused to answer.”

“Then...?”

Headmaster Ryu shrugged with a smile, wrinkling the corners of his eyes. “Well, this is just an old man’s intuition.”

From the way he changed the subject so smoothly, it felt like he had some other means of gauging my abilities. But that was something to think about later. Right now, what mattered was the proposal in front of me.

“I don’t intend to ask you for such a favor for nothing. If you help with this matter, I’ll compensate you properly. Plenty of gold, of course, and if you want, I can provide artifacts, elixirs, or high-grade mana stones.”

His words reminded me of something my party and I discussed earlier in the day.

“A party training hall,” I muttered.

“Oh? A party training hall, you say.”

“Is that something you could arrange?”

“Of course. And not just a regular training hall. Among the unused buildings on the academy grounds, I can lend one entire building exclusively to your party.”

“Excuse me?”

“Haha. As it happens, the academy has been constructing a new facility for party training because the old one is worn out. It was originally scheduled to open sometime next year, but if you want it, I’ll let your party use it exclusively until you graduate.”

A massive amount of gold, artifacts, elixirs, high-grade mana stones, and on top of that, a brand-new training facility, all for ourselves—these conditions were crazy. It only proved how seriously Headmaster Ryu was taking this Beast Skin Group.

I didn’t bother pretending to hesitate. “I’ll do it.”

I already wanted to learn more about them, anyway. If I was going to investigate them, having the full support of the academy’s headmaster was a bonus.

Headmaster Ryu smiled broadly, deep wrinkles forming at the corners of his mouth. “Thank you. Then from this moment on, I hereby appoint you as a ‘Special Operations Cadet.’”

“A Special Operations Cadet?”

“A cadet given a special mission deserves a title befitting that role, no?” 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Headmaster Ryu pulled open a drawer and took out a black badge engraved with seven stars. It was not the Seven Stars Golden Badge given to the top cadet, but a Seven Stars Black Badge.

“If you sync the mana code in this black badge with your Hero Watch, you’ll gain full freedom to go out or stay off-campus even as a cadet. You’ll also have the authority to take any party member you deem necessary outside the academy for your mission.”

A breathy chuckle slipped out before I could stop it. “Hah!”

In simple terms, this meant I could issue my own permits, permissions normally granted only by professors.

“With all this, am I not basically being treated like a professor rather than a cadet?” I said.

“Well, the only difference is that we can’t officially announce your position.”

“Ah.”

True, no matter how broad the headmaster’s authority was, he couldn’t publicly declare that an undergraduate cadet had been granted what were effectively professor privileges.

Wait. Hold on. If my position as a Special Operations Cadet couldn’t be publicly announced...

“Then officially, I remain the lowest-ranked cadet, right?” I asked, stunned.

“Well, yes. That’s what it amounts to.”

And that was how the first Special Operations Cadet, who was also the academy’s lowest-ranked cadet, was created in the Hero Academy’s five-hundred-year-old history.