The rain poured heavily, washing away some of the mud and blood that stained my uniform along the journey back to the dormitory. My steps led me to the western edge of the academy, to an old wooden building with a leaking roof and walls overgrown with black moss.
The Outcast Dormitory. A dumping ground for commoner cadets, bastards, or those whose reputations had been utterly destroyed. People like me.
Upon pushing open the pitifully creaking room door, the musty stench of rotting wood and wet straw immediately assaulted my nose. The room was cramped, only fitting two rusted iron beds and a wooden wardrobe with a slanted door. However, to someone who had spent ten years sleeping in muddy trenches blanketed by the corpses of comrades, this rotting room felt like a king's palace.
I stripped off my soaking wet cadet uniform and threw it to the floor. Walking to the corner of the room, I stood before a cracked mirror clinging to the wall.
The reflection staring back at me made me fall silent for quite a while.
I saw an eighteen-year-old youth. His shoulders were narrow, his collarbones prominent, and his skin deathly pale without a single scar. There were no tough muscles forged by starvation and war. This was a weak and fragile body. The body of the Kael Draven who had always been a joke and a living punching bag for the nobles.
Yet, as I stared into the eyes in that mirror's reflection, I knew the old Kael Draven was dead. Those brown eyes were too dark, too calm. They were the deadly eyes of a predator accustomed to viewing the world through the prism of survival.
My attention shifted to the scratch on my cheekbone from the graze of Cedric's fist, and the bluish bruise on my stomach from his kick.
By all rights, that bruise should have taken weeks to heal, and that scratch should have continued to throb painfully. But what I saw now was an anomaly.
From beneath the bruise and scratch, a thin reddish vapor billowed. Very thin, nearly invisible if one did not focus their attention. The scratch on my cheek began to knit itself together, leaving behind smooth new skin tissue without a trace. Meanwhile, the bruise on my stomach slowly faded from deep blue to reddish-yellow, then disappeared completely. The pain evaporated, replaced by a comforting heat.
I narrowed my eyes. On the battlefield, ignorance was the fastest way to die. I could not simply guess at what was happening to my body. Therefore, I had to know exactly what weapon I was wielding.
Without hesitation, I stepped to the small table in the corner of the room and picked up a rusted folding razor.
I sat on the edge of the bed. I let out a long breath, calming my heartbeat, then pressed the rusted blade against my left palm. I pressed the blade deep and pulled it across.
The skin of my palm tore. Fresh, dark red blood immediately seeped out, dripping onto the wooden floor. A sharp sting bit into my nerves, but I did not wince. I simply closed my eyes and focused my entire consciousness inward.
Come forth. Show your true form.
One second. Two seconds. Suddenly, my heart pounded violently.
That sensation returned. The blood in my palm boiled. I could feel the reddish vapor beginning to billow from my wound. My heart beat in a strange rhythm, as if synchronizing with the flow of mana floating in the air of this room.
My eyes snapped wide open as I realized what was happening. This crazy mechanism... my blood was not merely healing wounds.
My blood consumed pain!
Every throb of pain from the cut on my hand was converted into a sort of fuel. My blood siphoned mana from the air, mixed it with the pain and iron in my veins, then pumped it back out as ferocious pure energy. That energy forced its way into the muscle fibers of my arms and chest, forcibly strengthening them.
This was not holy magic or an ordinary healing spell. This was something far darker, more primal, and still shrouded in thick mystery. I did not know whether this was a mutation from the future battlefield or a strange curse attached to my soul when General Kaelzor beheaded me.
Whatever it was, its power was real. I would name it the Sanguine Core. A combustion furnace within my heart ignited by pain.
However, right as I felt that intoxicating surge of power, the veins in my left arm suddenly bulged and twitched violently. A horrific pain, far deadlier than the knife cut, pierced straight into my bone marrow. My vision swam with dark spots, and my chest felt as if it were being crushed by a slab of steel.
I hurriedly released my focus, taking a deep breath to extinguish the Sanguine Core.
My body collapsed onto the mattress, panting heavily, bathed in cold sweat. The red vapor on my hand vanished, leaving a cut that slowly closed but had not fully healed.
A bitter realization struck me as hard as a boulder. This power came with a steep price.
This eighteen-year-old body of mine was too weak. It was like a cracked glass forced to hold boiling lava. If I activated the Sanguine Core for too long, my muscles and blood vessels would explode from within.
I needed hellish physical training to fortify this "cracked glass." More importantly, I could not continually use my own blood to trigger this power. The Sanguine Core reacted to the blood and pain of enemies around me. I needed prey to destroy so I could absorb the residual mana from their agony.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Loud pounding on the wooden door shattered my daydream. With a reflex motion, I folded my razor and slipped it beneath my pillow. I grabbed a dirty cloth from the floor, wrapped my still slightly bleeding palm, and stepped over to open the door.
The figure standing in the doorway was Finn, my roommate. A plump youth with thick glasses who was always the victim of extortion by the second-year students.
Finn's face was as pale as a walking corpse. His breathing was ragged, his uniform a mess, and his entire body trembled violently as if he had just seen a ghost.
"Kael!" Finn screamed in a hushed tone, charging into the room and immediately locking the door behind him. "Kael, by the God of Light, have you gone mad?! What did you do behind the dormitory just now?!"
I walked back to my bed, sat calmly, and began wiping the remaining blood on my arm. "Taking out the trash. Why?"
"T-Trash?!" Finn's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. "That was Cedric Valen! The heir of Baron Valen! He was just taken to the high-level Healing Ward! His nose is crushed down to the cartilage, and his right hand is broken! The healers say he is practically permanently maimed!"
"Disappointing," I mumbled flatly. "I should have twisted his wrist a little further."
Finn pulled at his own hair, frustrated and terrified seeing my emotionless reaction. "Kael, you do not understand! Cedric swore in front of everyone... as soon as he recovers tomorrow morning thanks to high-level potions, he is going to kill you! He will challenge you in Weapon Practice Class tomorrow and finish you off in the arena!"
Finn rushed to his wardrobe, pulled out a worn bag, and began throwing his belongings inside. "We have to run, Kael. Or at the very least, you have to run! Pack up. If you escape tonight through the forest north of the academy, you might survive the pursuit of the Duke's hounds. You will die if you show up to the arena tomorrow!"
I stared at the panicking Finn. In the past, if I heard a threat like this, I would have sobbed uncontrollably and hidden under the bed, cursing my fate. Finn probably expected to see that frightened reaction from me again.
Instead, I tossed the bloody cloth into the corner of the room. I laid my body back on the mattress, crossed my arms behind my head, and stared at the moldy ceiling through half-closed eyes.
"Good," my voice shattered Finn's panic. Cold, flat, and deadly. "Tell him to get in line."
Finn's movements halted instantly. He turned to look at me. There was something in my tone that made the temperature in the room feel as though it dropped several degrees. Finn swallowed hard, goosebumps rising on his skin. He stared at me as if he had just realized that the young man lying on the mattress was not the Kael Draven he knew, but a nameless monster wearing his friend's skin.
That night, Finn could not sleep, while I slumbered as soundly as the dead.
Morning arrived with a bone-piercing chill. The sky was still gray when I stepped into the Sand Training Arena. It was a large-scale circular arena surrounded by stone tribunes, where the first-year Weapon Practice Class was held. Frost still clung to the wooden swords neatly arranged on the weapon racks.
The moment my shoes stepped onto the arena sand, the chatter of hundreds of academy cadets died abruptly.
The cold morning air felt increasingly gripping. Hundreds of pairs of eyes turned toward me in unison. They all stared at me with a mixture of horror, disgust, and awe. News of Cedric's destruction had spread like a plague overnight.
Across the arena, the noble group stood in a tight formation. In their center, Cedric Valen stood with a heavily bandaged face and a right hand cast using medical magic. Though he had been healed, traces of pain and terror still lingered in his eyes as he looked at me.
From the center of the sand ring, the heavy clomp of iron boots could be heard.
The Practice Class Instructor, Sir Vance. A mid-ranking knight with a thick handlebar mustache and a belly beginning to bulge beneath his armor. Sir Vance was renowned as a sycophant of the Duke Nightbane family. It was an open secret that he often gave poor grades or physical punishments to commoners who dared to meet the eyes of the nobles.
Sir Vance's eyes stared at me full of hatred. He knew what I had done to Cedric, and he intended to punish me this morning under the guise of an "official academy lesson."
"Draven!" Sir Vance's baritone voice thundered across the entire arena, bouncing off the stone walls. "I heard that last night, you fancied yourself a grand knight for breaking a fellow cadet's bones outside of class hours?"
Several noble students began to laugh mockingly, their courage returning now that the instructor was taking their side.
Sir Vance walked to the weapon rack, retrieving a sparring wooden sword whose edges were heavily chipped and cracked. He threw the sword roughly, sending it sliding across the sand to stop right at the tips of my shoes.
"Since you feel you are already so great," Sir Vance's smirk widened, revealing his yellowish teeth. "Let us witness your greatness. Step into the ring, Draven. You will be my sparring opponent today. Show us what kind of swordsmanship you learned from that mud puddle of yours."
The arena went silent once more. Everyone awaited my reaction. They were expecting the cowardly Kael to kneel, beg for forgiveness, and end up being whipped for insubordination.
I stared at the worn wooden sword at my feet. Cheap oak, a dreadful balance, and a hilt slippery with the dried blood of past cadets.
However, to me, who had once slain an Orc using a helmet shard I had sharpened at the tip, this piece of wood felt more than adequate.
I bent down, my fingers closing around the hilt of the sword. The moment the wood made contact with my skin, the dormant instincts from ten years of slaughter fully awakened. The sensation in my palm triggered the circulation within my Sanguine Core, causing my heart to beat with a ferocious rhythm of war.
Slowly, I stepped past the sand boundary line, entering the ring.
I lifted my face, looking at Sir Vance, looking at Cedric, looking at the line of nobles smiling condescendingly. Yet, my eyes did not see a respected instructor or heirs to thrones. Through the lens of a veteran soldier, they were all nothing more than piles of raw meat waiting to be carved.
Unconsciously, a thin, cold smirk fraught with bloodlust etched itself onto my face.
"Very well, Instructor," I said softly, yet my voice sliced through the silence like a scalpel. "Let us begin the lesson."