The black-blooded swarm pressed harder, their snarls deafening.
A bone-spiked wolf lunged straight for a distracted spear-user's throat—
Crack.
Its skull flattened mid-air, crushed by a force no one could see. The body hit the dirt with a dull thud, eyes still wide open.
Lucas froze for a split second, spear raised. "Did you see—"
Marcus, still fighting, muttered under his breath, "Yeah. Wasn't you or me."
It kept happening.
A horned ape swung its claws down toward Sylphie's neck—its arm bent the wrong way before contact, the bone snapping like dry twigs. She stumbled back, eyes wide, but the rest of the line thought the beast had simply slipped.
Kaelith didn't miss it either. His gaze flicked past the chaos—past the falling bodies—to where Irene stood, far behind the front. She hadn't moved from her spot since the battle started.
But she was smiling.
Not the kind of smile that comforted.
The kind of smile that said she already knew the outcome.
Eren and Ryan caught it next—when a tusked boar nearly gored a wounded student lying in the mud, its head suddenly twisted all the way around, neck snapping so cleanly it looked almost surgical. Ryan's grin faltered for the first time all fight.
One by one, the main cast understood.
Whenever a beast was about to land a fatal blow—whenever the situation was about to cross the line—something invisible crushed it into silence.
Irene's eyes scanned the battlefield, calm and unhurried.
It wasn't intervention.
It was… a test.
She was letting them fight, letting them bleed, but never letting them die.
And the smile stayed on her face.
_______
The battlefield reeked of iron and rot.
The sky above had darkened to a bruised purple, and the trees loomed like silent witnesses to the carnage.
The main cast wasn't the only group locked in the bloodbath.
Dozens of first-years were spread across the clearing, fighting in desperate clusters.
One student with twin axes swung wildly, cleaving through an E-rank beast's ribcage—only to have his arm torn open by another from behind. His partner, a girl with wind affinity, blasted the attacker away, her hands shaking as she dragged him out of reach. Blood soaked the leaves beneath them.
Another trio struggled to bring down a six-legged reptile, their weapons bouncing uselessly off its scaled hide until a fireball from an unseen classmate exploded against its side. The explosion burned the scales, but also caught one of their own in the blast—his scream rising above the roars of the beasts.
And then came the breach.
From the east flank, a massive wave of them surged through—a mix of black-eyed, black-blooded wolves, apes, and antlered deer that had gone rabid. The line of students there buckled, several already down.
Kaelith barked orders, pulling some forward while sending others to shield the injured. Lucas and Marcus slammed into the breach together—Lucas's lightning-wreathed spear striking fast, Marcus's shadows pulling beasts off balance before cutting them down.
Eren and Ryan fought just behind them, setting up their own rhythm.
Eren's barriers popped into place exactly where Ryan's echo bursts would slam beasts back, crushing them between invisible walls and soundwaves. One by one, they folded under the combined pressure.
But even they couldn't be everywhere.
A stag-like beast vaulted over Marcus's shadow snare, antlers aiming straight for a student's heart—
Crack. Its spine folded backwards, like a puppet's strings yanked too hard. It dropped without a sound.
Another wolf managed to slip behind Lucas—
Pop. Its chest collapsed inward, ribs shattering as if the air itself had punched through.
The pressure was building now.
Those close to Irene could feel it in their bones—a heavy, suffocating weight, as though the forest itself bowed to her will. The air vibrated faintly, each heartbeat syncing with an unseen force that decided life or death in an instant.
The main cast understood:
She wasn't just stopping fatal blows. She was controlling the entire battlefield without moving from her spot.
Her smile widened just slightly as another beast crumpled mid-leap.
It was protective.
It was absolute.
And it was terrifying.
---
Only fifty beasts remained.
Their black blood painted the grass and seeped into the dirt, the air thick with the stench of death.
Kaelith stepped forward. Until now, he had been directing, holding back—but the moment he moved into the fray, the atmosphere shifted.
Light flared around him, not the warm kind that comforted, but a cold, surgical brightness that cut through the shadows. He wove it together with his blood affinity—thin crimson threads shooting from his fingertips, wrapping around the beasts' limbs. With a twist of his wrist, the threads ignited with searing light, burning through flesh while the beasts' screams split the air.
Lucas and Marcus, locked into their own deadly rhythm, barely noticed him at first.
Lucas's spear was a blur of crackling gold, each thrust sending arcs of lightning into clusters of beasts. His weapon adapted on the fly—lengthening for sweeping arcs, then condensing into a short spear for tight, brutal stabs.
Marcus's shadows moved with equal precision, tendrils forming spears that pierced eyes, or flat walls that boxed in prey before collapsing inward like a vice. His face was calm, but there was a hunger in his eyes—one Lucas mirrored.
They weren't just killing—they were evolving.
Every movement was cleaner, every dodge tighter, every strike deadlier. The beasts fell faster than they could snarl, collapsing into twitching heaps as the two carved through them like they were made of paper.
Kaelith's voice cut through the chaos, low but sharp.
"Left flank—now!"
Lucas spun, lightning surging down his spear, blasting a hulking ape into Marcus's shadows where it was crushed like brittle glass. Another beast lunged for Kaelith, but the blood-threads coiled around its neck and yanked, snapping bone before the light burned its head clean off.
In the corner of their vision, Irene was still smiling faintly, unseen pressure crushing any beast that slipped too close to a student's vital points.
Within minutes, the fifty had become thirty… twenty… ten…
By the end, the clearing was silent save for the hiss of lightning fading from Lucas's weapon and the drip of blood from Kaelith's glowing threads.
The main cast stood in the middle of a slaughterhouse, their breathing heavy but their eyes sharper than before.
The battlefield still reeked of black blood.
Steam rose from the mangled corpses of the beasts, their eyes still faintly glowing with that unnatural darkness before finally going still.
Irene stepped forward, her heels crunching over blood-soaked grass. The smile she had worn during the fight was gone, replaced by a cool, unreadable gaze.
"You did well," she said, her voice carrying over the clearing. "But don't fool yourselves—" she let the words hang, scanning each of them in turn, "—this was only the beginning. What you fought today were scraps. Strays. Whatever's causing this corruption… hasn't even shown its face."
A shiver rippled through the group despite the warmth of the dying light.
Lucas tightened his grip on his spear, the electricity still faintly dancing over its edge. Marcus met her eyes, shadows flickering at his feet. Ruby, her rapier still slick with blood, clicked her tongue but said nothing. Aria leaned on her staff, sweat dripping from her brow, while Sylphie knelt beside an injured first-year, using gentle wind magic to soothe his breathing.
"Help the wounded," Irene ordered. "Even those who didn't fight well today deserve to return to camp alive."
The main cast moved without complaint.
Eren and Ryan immediately formed a small healing station—Eren conjuring shimmering barriers to block the cold wind while Ryan fetched bandages and applied pressure to wounds with surprising gentleness.
Lucas and Marcus carried injured students in pairs, their earlier competition forgotten in the face of torn limbs and bleeding chests. Ruby and Aria argued briefly over treatment methods before working side by side, the former cutting away blood-stiffened cloth while the latter sealed cuts with mana-infused warmth.
Kaelith silently disinfected a student's deep gash, his blood threads thin and precise, pulling debris from the wound before closing it with a faint glow of light. Even in this, he was methodical—coldly efficient, yet effective.
By the time the last bandage was tied, the sky was dark and the forest's sounds had shifted to the restless hum of nocturnal predators.
The students moved as one back to camp, some limping, some leaning on their classmates. Fires were already lit, casting long shadows against the tents. The metallic scent of black blood still clung to everyone's clothes.
Irene lingered at the camp's edge, where three of the A-rank guards stood in the torchlight. They didn't speak until the last group of students disappeared into their tents.
"Well?" one of them asked, folding his arms. "You saw it too, right? They're not ordinary first-years."
Irene's gaze drifted to the camp where the main cast was settling in.
"They're beyond that," she murmured. "Lucas and Marcus in particular… they're adapting faster than they should. Their rhythm in combat—it was like they'd been fighting together for years."
"And the others?" another guard prompted.
"Ruby and Aria… their rivalry pushes them to excel, but they're still reckless. Kaelith…" she paused, almost smiling, "…is dangerous. His creativity with dual affinities is wasted on holding back."
"And Eren?"
Irene's tone softened slightly. "Reliable. Protective. The kind you want guarding the flank. Ryan… he's rough around the edges, but his instincts are sharp. With the right guidance, he could be… something else entirely."
The first guard grunted. "And Nex?"
Irene's eyes flicked toward the forest's shadowy depths. "He's not here. But when he returns… we'll see."
She turned toward the camp, her gaze lingering on the flickering torchlight.
"This was a test," she said quietly. "The next one won't be."
The guards exchanged looks, but none challenged her.
Somewhere deep in the forest, a howl echoed—low, guttural, and not entirely beastlike.