The air in the long, marble corridor outside the Hall of Mastery was still vibrating with the shockwave of Darkiel Mikado's calculated exit. The silence he had left behind was heavier, more profound, than any screaming match. It was the sound of three years of relentless, quantified effort being publicly negated by nineteen minutes of utterly effortless, casual genius.
Lyra Volkov, the academy's shining Shadow Weaver, was the first to move. Her silver aura, typically a graceful, controlled shimmer, pulsed with agitated speed, betraying her fury. Her feet, clad in specialized tactical boots, moved with an unnatural, blurring swiftness as she surged down the hallway, her target already identified.
"Mikado! Stop!" she commanded, the sharpness of her voice cutting through the thick atmosphere of the corridor.
Darkiel, already halfway to the exit doors, paused. He hadn't increased his pace; he was merely walking with the relaxed, unhurried gait of a man who had successfully finished his obligations. He took the moment to retrieve the cigarette from behind his ear and light it with a soft, almost inaudible clink of his silver lighter. He didn't turn around, simply allowing the smoke to curl into the air behind him, a mocking, fragrant invitation.
Jaxx Vane, the colossal Blademaster, arrived seconds later, his steps booming against the marble floor. His golden aura was now volatile, sparking around his shoulders like tiny, contained lightning strikes. He didn't bother with words; he simply maneuvered his massive frame to block the exit, his sheer physical presence an insurmountable barrier.
"Turn around, Mikado," Jaxx rumbled, his voice low, shaking with a carefully measured intensity. "You owe us an explanation. Not the faculty, not the System. You owe us—the students who bled for every point you simply mocked."
Finally, Darkiel turned, the cigarette hanging loosely from his lips. His amber eyes, usually lazy and unfocused, held a brief, sharp glint of annoyance. He looked at Jaxx, then at Lyra, and finally at Elara Fenix, the Aether Mage, who stood slightly behind them, her face a mask of cold, analytical condemnation.
"Owe you?" Darkiel scoffed, taking a slow puff of smoke. The exhale was slow, deliberate, aimed directly at the shimmering, agitated aura surrounding Jaxx. "The System provided a threshold for graduation. I met the threshold. The transaction is complete. Your emotional quantification of my effort is irrelevant to the objective metrics."
"Don't use the System's rhetoric against us!" Lyra snapped, her hands clenching into fists. She took two steps closer, her AGI making her movements appear as seamless as water. "Your score of 998? That wasn't minimal effort! That was a calculated insult! You demonstrated control over Tier-3 Constructs that takes Elara months of meditative practice to master, and you sustained it for the maximum required duration, stopping only to deny yourself the perfect score! You are trying to prove that our struggle is meaningless!"
Elara finally stepped forward, her serene composure broken by a palpable, chilling disappointment. "Darkiel Mikado, you are an aberration. You have zero recorded Mana Efficiency improvements, yet your control suggests a mastery Level far exceeding any student in this Academy. You must be utilizing an Unquantifiable Artifact—a pre-Fracture relic that masks your true Attributes and cheats the measurement parameters. We demand you surrender the artifact for inspection. You disrespect the sacrifice required to be a Catalyst."
Darkiel's amber eyes shifted slightly, focusing on the dark leather jacket he wore—the jacket that covered the bulk beneath. He let out a low, humorless chuckle, the sound harsh in the sterile corridor.
"An artifact? You think my lack of effort is powered by some dusty old trinket?" Darkiel's voice lowered, losing its bored tone and gaining an edge of cold, hard contempt. "Your entire existence is predicated on following the System's instructions—Level Up, spend points, learn Skill. You are so blinded by the numbers that you cannot conceive of the effort required to exist outside of them. You see only the result I present, not the mechanism I employ."
Jaxx, pushed past his limit by Darkiel's condescending indifference, roared. "I've had enough of your vague philosophical garbage! You're a liability, a walking threat to any squad you might join! I'm taking that jacket off and we're running a mandatory Full-Spectrum Mana Scan right now!"
With the devastating, sudden speed granted by his high STR and AGI scores, Jaxx lunged. His massive hand shot out, aiming for the collar of Darkiel's jacket. Jaxx wasn't using a Skill, but his Physical Aura alone was enough to generate a shockwave in the air, a display of raw kinetic power that should have instantly overwhelmed the un-Aura'd, un-Manned Darkiel.
Darkiel's reaction was terrifying in its simplicity. He didn't duck, he didn't parry, and he didn't use Mana. He simply took a single, tiny, almost invisible side-step—a movement so precise it bordered on dimensional manipulation. Jaxx's massive hand, moving at over sixty miles per hour, scraped only air, the impact shockwave slamming harmlessly into the opposite wall.
Jaxx, stunned by the absolute failure of his attack, momentarily lost his balance. He was too reliant on the brute force amplified by his System-logged stats.
"Amateur," Darkiel muttered, the word a soft, cutting whisper.
Before the situation could devolve into a full-blown, unregistered Catalyst brawl—a disciplinary nightmare that would have resulted in immediate expulsion for all involved—a new presence entered the corridor, cutting through the tension like an expertly tuned frequency.
"Stand down, Blademaster Vane. Your aggressive action against a fellow student, especially one on controlled academic grounds, is grounds for the immediate suspension of your Class Privileges and a severe deduction in your WSD score. Re-engage immediately and you'll spend your graduation ceremony scrubbing Level 1 Slime residue off the mess hall floor."
The voice was crisp, authoritative, and utterly devoid of emotion. It belonged to Dr. Carmilla Crimson, the youngest Professor and System Analyst ever appointed to the Greyhart faculty, a genius prodigy only 28 years old.
Dr. Crimson was small, almost frail-looking, but her presence was a force field of quantifiable knowledge. Her short, crimson hair was slicked back, revealing sharp, intelligent eyes that were currently focused with chilling precision on Jaxx. She wore a pristine white lab coat over her uniform, and her personal Aura, a faint, high-frequency white light, was the only one in the room that did not reflect agitation—it reflected absolute, unwavering calculation.
Jaxx froze, his golden aura slowly subsiding. Even the powerful Blademaster knew better than to cross Carmilla Crimson. Her INT score wasn't just high; it was rumored to be so astronomically advanced that she could directly interface with the System's localized diagnostic nodes.
"Doctor Crimson," Jaxx stammered, pulling his hand back. "He is concealing crucial information. He cheated the Gauntlet. He must be scanned."
Carmilla walked slowly between the two students, her eyes never leaving Darkiel for more than a second. She stopped, and the white light of her aura seemed to briefly flicker over the dark leather jacket Darkiel wore.
"Mr. Mikado is not concealing an artifact, Blademaster Vane," Carmilla stated coolly, adjusting a small, data-slate wrist monitor she wore. "And he did not cheat the Gauntlet. He met the System's requirements for the successful completion of the Level-2 Graduation Matrix, scoring exactly 998 points. His method is unorthodox, yes, but statistically validated."
Lyra stepped forward, her voice tight with confused anger. "Doctor, how can you defend him? His control is absurdly precise, yet he registers virtually no internal Mana pool. His body mass is average, yet his kinetic output exceeds Jaxx's logged STR score! He's a lie! He doesn't even train!"
Carmilla finally looked at Lyra, a hint of something that might have been pity crossing her precise features. "Your conclusion, Catalyst Volkov, is flawed. You confuse laziness with efficiency. You mistake low-profile for non-existent training. And most critically, you mistake the absence of observable Mana-flow for the absence of effort."
She turned, facing the assembled, baffled trio of top students. Darkiel remained standing behind her, silent, simply observing the drama he had created.
"Let me provide the System log that none of you have access to," Carmilla announced, and her voice took on the measured, objective tone of a scientist presenting undeniable data. "You believe Darkiel Mikado is a slacker, content to sip liquor and smoke foul tobacco while passively absorbing knowledge. You believe his agility is a casual gift. You believe his physical strength is an unexplained anomaly."
She gestured toward Darkiel's leather jacket and the loose clothing beneath. "You demand to know what artifact he is concealing. I will tell you. He is concealing nothing but raw, unquantified weight."
She tapped her wrist monitor, and a small, localized holographic projection shimmered into existence between her and the stunned students. It was an internal scan image of Darkiel's torso and limbs, overlaid with a series of pulsing red squares.
"This is an enhanced thermal and density scan of Darkiel Mikado," Carmilla explained, her voice gaining speed and clinical precision. "Note the localized high-density areas. These are not muscle mass or bone structure; they are carefully disguised, lead-infused alloys woven into the lining of his clothes. A self-imposed Power Limiter."
She began ticking off the weights on the holographic projection, her finger pointing to the specific red squares on the image.
"The bulky vest he wears beneath his jacket—the one you assume is armor or a stabilizing matrix? That is a Breast Weight of 50 kilograms. His belt, a standard Academy issue—but enhanced with high-density plates—is a Belt Weight of 50 kilograms."
Jaxx's jaw dropped slightly. A hundred kilograms was the equivalent of nearly two hundred and twenty pounds—a phenomenal, crippling weight to carry daily.
Carmilla didn't pause for their reaction, continuing her ruthless data delivery. "His ankle restraints, hidden by his pant legs, are the Anklet Weights: 30 kilograms on the left leg, and 30 kilograms on the right. That is a total of 60 kilograms concentrated on his lower limbs. Finally, his bracelets, which you might mistake for simple wrist guards, are the Bracelet Weights: 20 kilograms on the left wrist, 20 kilograms on the right wrist. That is another 40 kilograms."
She looked up, her expression utterly grave. "For those who are quick with numbers, that totals 200 kilograms of physical weight. Two hundred kilograms that he has worn, continuously, without removing, for the last five years."
The silence that followed was absolute, a stunned, gaping void. Lyra staggered back half a step, her mind racing to process the gravity of the number. Two hundred kilograms. It was a weight that would crush the spine of an average civilian. Even Jaxx, the Blademaster, whose body was engineered for extreme strength, only trained with supplemental weights exceeding 100 kg for short, intense, Mana-amplified sessions.
"Five years… he's worn two hundred kilograms for five years?" Lyra whispered, the fury draining instantly from her face, replaced by a deep, unsettling awe.
"Yes, Catalyst Volkov," Carmilla confirmed, her eyes hard. "And this, finally, is the answer to your questions. You ask why his physical prowess defies his logged STR score? Because the System registers his base strength while he is burdened with an additional 200 kilograms. You saw him move at 72 kph during the Mana-Disruptor run, yet you calculate that speed based on an unencumbered body. Imagine his speed when that weight is removed."
She fixed the students with a stare that held the weight of untold data. "You ask why his movements are so efficient, so perfectly economical, requiring no AGI point acceleration? Because every single second of his life, every step, every lift of his hand to light that cigarette, he is battling the gravitational pull of the planet, amplified by two hundred kilograms of dead weight. His AGI and STR are not high because he spent the points; they are impossibly high because he has been performing continuous, high-resistance training for every muscle fiber, every ligament, and every tendon in his body, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for five solid years."
Elara, the Mage of calculation, began trembling slightly, not from fear, but from the sudden, terrifying simplicity of the logic. "But… the Mana! The Power Limiter… it must also restrict Mana flow! Why choose such a method when the System provides a direct path?"
"Precisely," Carmilla nodded, a flash of appreciation for Elara's rapid deductive reasoning. "The weights serve a dual purpose. They force his physical self into constant training, and more importantly, the dense, lead-infused alloys passively dampen his latent Mana signature, allowing him to maintain the appearance of a low-level, unmotivated Catalyst. This is how he achieved flawless control in the Gauntlet with zero logged improvement: he is not drawing Mana from his tiny internal pool; he is drawing the massive ambient Mana he requires from the surrounding environment, and the constant struggle against the weights forces his Mana manipulation to be instant and hyper-efficient, minimizing any waste that would register a high Mana-flow score."
She paused, letting the scope of the sacrifice sink in. Darkiel, behind her, finally took the cigarette from his mouth, his expression still neutral.
Carmilla delivered the final, devastating piece of evidence. "You say he is lazy and avoids training. You believe he is entitled. Yesterday, I found him in the Level 5 Gravity Chamber—the restricted room reserved only for our absolute highest-level field Catalysts. The chamber, which generates a magnified gravitational field, was set to 100 times the Earth's standard gravity. And he collapsed."
Jaxx sucked in a sharp breath. One hundred times gravity was an environment that would instantly liquefy the internal organs of an untrained human. Even a highly-trained Catalyst would be lucky to spend five minutes in that setting at just twenty times gravity, and that would be with a fully activated VIT-Aura and numerous Endurance Skills.
"He was wearing the full 200 kilograms of weights, subjecting his body to the gravitational equivalent of over 22 metric tons of pressure," Carmilla finished, her voice dropping to a near-whisper, laced with genuine respect. "He collapsed not from laziness, but from sheer, physical exhaustion—exhaustion induced by pushing his body far beyond the statistical limits of the System. He lay there, unconscious, for two full hours before the auto-fail protocols gently lowered the chamber's settings. No one in this Academy, and I suspect very few Catalysts in the world, train with that level of dedicated, sustained, agonizing intensity."
She looked directly at Lyra, Jaxx, and Elara, her gaze unflinching. "Darkiel Mikado does not seek your attention. He does not seek your validation. He masters the curriculum in days or weeks because he has achieved an absolute physical and mental purity that the System's complex, fragmented path can never replicate. He wears those weights to force efficiency, to prevent attention, and to ensure that when he is finally called upon to perform in the field, his unquantified, unrestricted power will be overwhelming and instantaneous. He is not a slacker. He is a genius who understood that in a world obsessed with quantifiable advancement, the greatest advantage is to cultivate absolute, unquantifiable superiority."
The three top students stood paralyzed, their auras now completely subdued. They looked at Darkiel, no longer with contempt, but with a dawning, fearful comprehension of the sheer, terrifying discipline he possessed. The man they dismissed as a drunken bum was, in reality, a singular force of nature, forged in constant, agonizing resistance to the very world they accepted.
Darkiel, having allowed the brilliant Doctor to perfectly articulate his philosophy, simply exhaled another lazy plume of smoke. He gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod to Carmilla, a subtle sign of thanks for her unwanted but necessary defense. He then turned, stepping around the still-frozen Jaxx Vane, his heavily weighted limbs moving with the same deliberate, unhurried ease.
He did not look back. He simply continued his slow, grinding walk toward the exit, the two hundred kilograms of hidden weight a silent, ever-present scream of effort that only Dr. Carmilla Crimson, the System Analyst, had been perceptive enough to hear. His graduation was secured, and the true journey, the reason for the five years of ceaseless agony, was about to begin. The weight, however, remained.
The heavy, polished doors of the Hall of Mastery had hissed shut, swallowing the last trace of Darkiel Mikado's cigarette smoke. He was gone, taking his 200 kilograms of silent defiance with him, but the void he left was immense.
In the sterile corridor, the three elite graduates—Lyra Volkov, Jaxx Vane, and Elara Fenix—remained frozen, their minds reeling from the devastating clarity of Dr. Carmilla Crimson's revelation. The shock was not merely academic; it was existential. Everything they had achieved, every point gained through painful, Mana-amplified struggle, suddenly felt flimsy, theatrical, and inefficient compared to the sheer, unyielding endurance of their despised peer.
Jaxx Vane, the colossal Blademaster, was the most visibly affected. He slowly raised his hand, flexing his fingers that could effortlessly crush metal, and then lowered them, staring at his palm as if it belonged to a stranger.
"Two hundred kilograms… for five years," Jaxx finally muttered, the golden aura around his shoulders flickering weakly. His massive frame seemed to shrink under the psychological weight of the number. "I train with 150 kilograms in the Strength Chamber, using my [Ironclad Skin] Skill to prevent ligament tear, and I can sustain it for thirty minutes before my VIT crashes. He carried fifty more, twenty-four hours a day, sleeping, eating, walking… without a single Skill or Mana cushion."
Lyra, ever the analytical Shadow Weaver, was focused on the technical impossibility. She paced the distance where Jaxx's strike had failed to connect with Darkiel. "The AGI score is a lie, then. The System must be calculating his movement efficiency based on the current load. If he removes the weights, his speed… it wouldn't just double. The exponential release of that constant resistance would grant him movement that is effectively teleportation. The sheer muscular memory required to execute that single, perfect side-step against your charge, Jaxx, while carrying 200 kilograms… it's a form of physical enlightenment. We wasted time chasing the System's metrics; he was building his foundation in pure, agonizing reality."
Elara Fenix, the Aether Mage, approached Dr. Carmilla Crimson, her features strained with the effort of reconciling the data. "Doctor, why? Why the secrecy? Why the refusal to be quantified? If he is this powerful—if he has endured this much—he should be leading the Catalyst Corps, not scraping by with the minimum passing points. This is not just discipline; it's an act of deliberate self-sabotage against the System's gifts."
Carmilla adjusted the collar of her lab coat, her intense, intelligent eyes fixed on the three shaken students. She had known the depth of the secret, but articulating it always brought a cold, heavy sadness.
"That is precisely why you must not bother him again," Carmilla stated, her voice returning to its calm, clinical authority, yet laced with a deeper, protective timbre. "Not for the sake of his ego, which is remarkably resilient to your scrutiny, but for the sake of your understanding, which is fundamentally incomplete. You never question the 'how' or the 'why' of the System; you merely follow the numerical path it lays out. Darkiel Mikado's path is not about numbers. It is about control and trauma."
Lyra's silver eyes narrowed with confusion. "Trauma? What does a two hundred-kilogram training regimen have to do with trauma, Doctor? It's extreme training, yes, but Catalysts are defined by our resilience."
"Your resilience is earned through measured, quantified risks," Carmilla countered gently, yet firmly. "Darkiel's resilience was forged in absolute, unquantifiable horror. I told you, you do not know his true origin. And until you understand the wellspring of his intensity, you cannot grasp the danger of provoking him."
Jaxx stepped closer, his heavy gaze pleading for clarity. "Doctor, we are about to enter the field. We need to know who our contemporaries are. The System tells us everything, yet he remains a ghost. How is it that you—a System Analyst who deals solely in quantifiable data—are the only one who knows the truth? What is your connection to him?"
Carmilla paused, her gaze distant, as if viewing a cold, dark place in her memory. The white aura around her pulsed faintly, like a sigh. "My full name is Dr. Carmilla Arista Crimson. My father was the Head of the Pre-System Field-Reclamation Corps during the initial waves of The Fracture. He was a man obsessed with documentation, even as the world collapsed into chaos. And Darkiel Mikado… he was my best friend when we were children. He was, briefly, my ward."
Elara gasped softly. "Ward? The Mikado name… I remember cross-referencing that name during my historical Mana-Event studies. Mikado… wasn't that the clan associated with the Fall of District Seven? The highest-density Overlord outbreak in the eastern territories, approximately fifteen years ago?"
Carmilla nodded slowly, the motion heavy with confirmation. "Fifteen years ago, yes. The Mikado Clan was not merely a group of Catalysts; they were one of the oldest, most powerful bloodlines in the pre-Fracture magical society. They refused to fully integrate into the System's Grid after The Fracture, believing their ancestral, arcane methods offered a superior path. They retreated to their fortified manor—District Seven—which soon became tragically adjacent to a newly forming, high-level Gate. A Gate that eventually spawned a Dungeon Overlord."
She looked at the concerned faces before her, preparing to deliver a history lesson that felt less like data and more like a wound.
"The Overlord was a Void Eater—a truly devastating Class of monster that specializes in dimensional instability and the complete, instantaneous absorption of ambient Mana. When the Dungeon Erupted, the entire Mikado compound became the epicenter. My father's Corps was dispatched hours later, a full, heavily-armed task force, tasked with securing the perimeter and locating survivors before the military deployed the Mass-Disruption Bomb—the last-resort option."
Carmilla walked over to the nearest wall panel, her delicate fingers tapping a pattern on the smooth surface. A localized, low-resolution projection materialized: a faded, grainy photograph of a sprawling, magnificent Japanese-style manor, now half-consumed by a shimmering, purple Gate.
"When my father's team arrived, the Mana-signature of the entire sector was chaos. The Overlord's influence had already caused massive dimensional shifts—buildings were folding in on themselves, the earth was turning to glass. The Mikado Clan had a hundred registered, high-level Catalysts defending the area. Yet, they were scattered, dead, or desperately fleeing the Void Eater's power. My father ordered the team to proceed with extreme caution, ready for a final, suicidal confrontation with the Overlord itself."
She paused, taking a long, steadying breath. "And this is where the System's records fail, and only my father's eyewitness account remains. The team breached the central courtyard. They found not a battle, but a slaughter—a devastating scene of magical warfare that had gone horribly wrong. High-level Aetheric runes had failed, physical weapons were bent and broken, and the entire courtyard was littered with the bodies of the Mikado Catalysts, their Mana Cores violently extinguished."
"And the Overlord?" Jaxx asked, his voice barely a rasp. The image of the Void Eater, a creature of pure, devastating power, silenced his warrior's heart.
"The Overlord was there, Jaxx," Carmilla confirmed, her voice now flat and chilling, like an ancient gravestone. "A massive, obsidian-black entity, bristling with parasitic Mana-spikes. It was a beast of unparalleled power—the kind of monster that defines an Eruption. But it was not moving. It was slumped against the central shrine, completely inert, its massive, spiked head tipped back, revealing a clean, surgical incision at the base of the neck—a severance of the entire spinal structure."
Lyra stared at the image, her face pale. "Impossible. An Overlord of that level would require a concentrated, sustained Mana-barrage from an entire brigade to even scratch its carapace. How could a single, exhausted Catalyst manage a clean kill?"
"The answer is not a Catalyst," Carmilla said, her amber eyes clouding with the memory. "The answer was a child. Standing atop the massive, twitching body of the Void Eater, barely visible in the ruins, was Darkiel Mikado."
She closed her eyes briefly, the image clearly burned into her mind's eye as much as her father's. "He was six years old, Elara. Not a day older. He was smeared with gore, his clothing torn, and his eyes… my father described his eyes as being the color of burned-out ash. He had no Aura, no Mana-signature. The System, in its final, chaotic attempt to quantify the carnage, could only log him as a terrified, low-level civilian child."
"But he wasn't terrified," Carmilla continued, her voice gaining a sharp, powerful edge. "My father's team, all veteran Catalysts with hundreds of kills to their names, approached the inert Overlord. And they saw him. The six-year-old child was still holding a piece of the Overlord's body—a thick, serrated spike, used as a makeshift weapon—but his other small hand was tightly, possessively wrapped around the base of the Overlord's neck."
She paused, letting the true, gruesome image settle on the students.
"He was holding the dead Dungeon Overlord by the neck, Jaxx. A six-year-old child. His clan was wiped out, the world was ending around him, and instead of fleeing, instead of crying, he had killed the monster that killed his family, and he was holding onto its corpse with the grip of a drowning man. When my father tried to gently pry the Overlord's neck away, Darkiel let out a scream that wasn't fear, but a raw, animalistic territorial warning."
The realization hit them with the force of a physical blow. The intense resistance, the cold calculation, the disdain for life and death.
"He killed it without Mana, didn't he?" Lyra whispered, her voice barely audible. "Pure physical force, honed by pre-Fracture methods, channeled through that absolute, terrifying focus."
"That is my father's conclusion," Carmilla affirmed. "The Mikado Clan were masters of Ki—a pre-System concept of internal, physical energy that is the antithesis of Mana. They viewed Mana as an external, quantifiable, and therefore controllable weakness. Their strength was born purely from within. Darkiel, at six, in a moment of unimaginable stress, activated a level of physical perfection that transcended the nascent System's measurement parameters, executing a final, fatal attack that the Overlord, attuned only to massive Mana threats, never even saw coming."
Elara's eyes were wide with genuine fear. "But why the weights? Why the Power Limiter? Why the agony?"
"Because that level of raw, unquantifiable power is not a blessing; it is a curse," Carmilla explained, stepping away from the unsettling projection. "When my father brought him into our care—into the System's care—Darkiel was a time bomb. His internal Ki was constantly fluctuating, violently interacting with the ambient Mana. The sheer power required to kill the Overlord had damaged his internal structure, leaving him teetering on the edge of a self-induced Mana Eruption—a physical implosion that would have vaporized our entire district."
"The weights," she revealed, gesturing to the spot where Darkiel had stood, "are a necessary evil. The dense lead alloys are not just for physical training; they act as a Physical and Mana Dampener. The constant, crushing pressure forces his internal Ki—that hidden source of phenomenal strength—to remain compressed, to remain controlled, preventing it from reacting violently with the environment. He has worn them continuously for five years, not as a choice of discipline, but as a form of survival."
"He is not training to get stronger, Jaxx. He is training to be able to contain the strength he already possesses," Carmilla concluded, her voice heavy with the depth of his sacrifice. "He scrapes by with the minimum academic score because he views the System as a flawed, necessary nuisance. He refuses to use Mana because every time he does, he risks triggering an internal chain reaction. He is not a slacker. He is a child survivor who, at six, killed a god-level monster with his bare hands and now spends every waking moment in agony simply to ensure he doesn't accidentally kill everyone around him. So, I repeat: do not bother him. For his entire life since that day, control has been the only goal, and the weights are the only measure of success."
The three students stood in silence, the truth of Darkiel Mikado—not the lazy graduate, but the walking monument to a childhood tragedy—finally sinking into their hearts. Their contempt was gone, replaced by a profound, sobering fear and a deep, unsettling respect for the immense, solitary war he waged beneath his stained leather jacket.