Nolan watched the old man's retreating back with a strange look.
He tilted his head slightly.
"What a weird old man," he muttered.
But he wasn't interested in untangling the principal's drama. He was tired. Bone-deep tired. All he wanted now was food, maybe some hot tea, and to lie down in his dusty inn bed and sleep for a thousand years.
But he couldn't.
Nolan trudged out of the hallway and descended the academy stairs.
The sun was setting in bands of orange and violet over the grand estate of Silver Blade Academy.
Outside the building, knights in ceremonial robes—long, billowing garments of deep silver-blue—were walking around in groups.
No armor. Just the formal cloth of status.
They gave him glances as he passed, some curious, others dismissive.
He didn't pay them any attention.
But then he heard it. Murmurs.
"Are you prepared for tomorrow?"
"Is your brother really coming?"
"Yeah!"
"I thought they were on a mission."
Nolan kept his head down. A lot of knights coming to watch the assessment of Mana Specialists and Mana Knights?
A small pit had opened in his stomach.
It's tomorrow, he thought. The exhibition match. The class duels.
The system hadn't given a clear objective. Just a prompt:
Mission: Ensure all 13 students attend the Mana Knight Assessment tomorrow.
That was all.
No win condition. No "victory" required.
Just presence.
And that was exactly what Nolan planned to do.
He'd walk them into the arena, stand there, smile, pretend to be confident…
…and as soon as that mission notification appeared, he was gone.
Escape.
Nolan couldn't stay because he didn't believe in miracles. No matter how fired up the students were, no matter how much they screamed about slapping others, the truth was—the level gap was real.
They were Level 1 to 2s, going against students with awakened Knightline blood, private combat tutors, and experience in mana manipulation since infancy.
It was like putting a group of kids with sticks against adult mercenaries.
Let them learn the pain. That's part of growth too, Nolan told himself, but deep down, he knew he wasn't that heartless.
Still, the mission came first.
He walked down the gravel path toward the Academy's gate, his thoughts churning.
They're nobles, sure, they could hunt them down if their children were harmed in the assessment, sure. But I've been hunted by real nobles before…
A memory burned in the back of his mind. Flashbacks of moonlit forests, arrows raining from golden carriages, brothers screaming at each other, betrayal etched into velvet-trimmed voices. Nolan's own family. A true noble bloodline.
Compared to that?
These brat's family were nothing.
I've survived worse.
And now, he has Mana Crystals. More than enough to buy temporary protection or even hire mercenaries. The game had gifted him more than just items. He had value now. Options.
Tonight, he would plan.
Set his bag. Trace an escape path. Prepare a fake teleport marker, maybe bribe a rogue mage in the lower districts.
He wasn't going to die for this.
I just need to stay alive. That's all.
But then—
He paused.
A scent.
Faint.
Feminine.
But not gentle.
Not sweet.
It was sharp. Sweetness mixed with metal, perfume laced with something feral, almost like a predator pretending to be a flower.
He narrowed his eyes.
His instincts sparked.
A low vibration in his bones.
The same sense he felt when walking into a trap dungeon in the early tutorial stages.
A dangerous kind of attention.
He looked around but saw no one.
Still, the scent lingered in the air like a warning.
Whatever that is, Nolan thought, it's not safe.
His hand rested on his coat's inner pocket where the pathogen knife was hidden.
Just in case.
He kept walking, calmly.
The Academy gates were ahead.
The road beyond led to the merchant district, then to his old, creaky inn room.
He won't have a good sleep. And plan his escape.
…
Not far from Silver Blade City, within the outer ridge of the nearby Wyrmshade Valley, a squad of Silver Blade soldiers—freshly inducted novice knights—were engaged in a grim and unnerving confrontation.
Their silver tabards were already torn and stained, their blades dulled from relentless, fruitless strikes.
"Keep formation!" shouted one of the squad leaders, his voice trembling despite the practiced command. "Strike it down! Go for its core!"
The sound of steel slicing through flesh should have rung true.
But it didn't.
The creature before them—no, the thing—was not reacting the way anything living or magical was supposed to.
It was covered in some oozing, inky membrane of shadow, vaguely humanoid, but its limbs rippled like melted tar, sometimes bending forward, sometimes backward, and never with consistency.
The swords and spears struck it, but instead of blood or wounds, the weapons either bounced off with a wet slap or sank into its surface only to be swallowed like pebbles thrown into a swamp.
"It's not dying!" screamed one knight, falling backward, his eyes wide and mouth agape in a mix of disbelief and terror.
"No effect! No freaking effect!" another shouted, swinging a glowing saber that simply vanished into the torso of the creature, absorbed like sugar in water.
"It's getting tougher!" a younger knight howled, staggering away after his short sword cracked from the recoil of impact. "My blade—my blade snapped just touching it!"
"I can't see its face!"
"Does it have a face?!"
"Back! BACK!"
But there was no back to go to. They had surrounded it. Or rather—it had let them surround it.
And now, as the knights encircled it with panic mounting and formation breaking, the creature seemed to breathe. Not through lungs or chest, but through its very being.
A low hum escaped it.
And then—it exhaled.
A black miasma burst forth, not in a single blast, but in a spreading fog—slow, steady, coiling like tendrils of death. It didn't billow like smoke.
It crawled along the grass and earth, slinking up boots, curling around blades, caressing exposed necks and cheeks like a lover whispering promises of despair.
The knights began to stagger.
One dropped his sword.
Another dropped to one knee, coughing violently.
"My mana… my mana's draining!"
"I can't move—what is this?!"
"My heart is—too fast—too fast—!!"
The closer they were to the miasma's center, the more their limbs grew heavy. Their knees buckled. Their vision blurred.
Even the bravest of them began to retreat, but it was too late.
The miasma wasn't just weakening them—it was devouring their stamina, their essence, their will.
And then, the creature grew.
At first, they didn't notice.
But then—
Its shadow stretched wider.
Its back arched taller.
Its head, or what resembled one, began to elongate upward like a plant reaching for sunlight, even though no sun would ever touch its form.
Its body thickened, like muscle inflating beneath a layer of sludge.
And then came the sound.
Squick. Squorp. Glup-glup.
Its form pulsed, bones cracking not from within itself, but as if absorbing them. Its arms thickened like liquid muscle, and as they grew, the slapping sound of its gooey limbs thudded louder against the earth.
"R-run…" one soldier muttered.
But someone wasn't moving.
A knight, barely more than a boy, paralyzed mid-step.
His eyes were wide, sweat dripping down his face, sword still clutched tightly.
But he couldn't move.
Terror. Raw, complete terror had claimed him.
And then the creature reached him.
Slowly.
It did not rush.
It simply walked, a slick, undulating shuffle, step by step, each foot leaving behind a viscous puddle that hissed into the grass like acid.
The soldier's lips parted, but no sound escaped.
Then, it leaned down.
Its face, if it could be called one, opened—not like a mouth but like a flower of nightmares. Petals of slime peeled back to reveal a tubular, pulsating proboscis, thin at first but widening with each second, glistening with strands of dripping fluid that sizzled where it touched metal.
Shlrrrkk.
The tube stabbed into the knight's shoulder with an unspeakable sound, like a straw being shoved into wet sand.
"NO!!!" someone screamed.
But it was already happening.
The creature began to drink.
With a sickening gulp gulp gulp, its mouth-tube contracted rhythmically.
The knight's body twitched violently as black veins exploded from beneath his skin, bulging and writhing, crawling toward the wound.
His mouth opened wide in a silent scream, eyes rolling backward as the area around the injection point began to bulge grotesquely.
First his shoulder swelled.
Then his neck.
Then his chest.
Each gulp was echoed by a pulsing expansion of his body, as though something inside was pumping air or fluid out of him.
The creature leaned in closer, holding him with sludge-like hands that molded around the boy's arms like manacles.
"STOP IT!"
"DON'T LOOK—"
"I CAN'T—I CAN'T MOVE—"
But none could look away.
The skin stretched.
The veins darkened.
The color drained.
The knight's armor plates popped off from the swelling.
His fingers twitched and then went limp.
His body began to deflate.
Literally.
Like a bag with the air sucked out, his limbs shrank, muscles disappearing as though digested from within.
The creature drank him, slowly and methodically, slurping the life essence like some kind of thick broth.
The arms caved inward.
The chest flattened.
The cheeks hollowed.
The eyes sank.
The creature continued its obscene feast.
Soon, all that remained was a hollowed figure.
Skin.
Bones.
Nothing more.
The creature pulled its feeding tube back slowly, and the shriveled corpse collapsed to the dirt with a brittle thud. What had once been a human being now looked like an ancient mummy, left in a desert for a thousand years.
Silence fell.
All the knights stood frozen.
Some had vomited.
Others simply wept.
The creature turned toward the next one.
And then—
Shing—SLASH!
A blade moved faster than thought, faster than eyes could follow.
A silver line gleamed through the evening gloom.
And in one swift motion, the sword carved a clean arc through the creature's neck.
Shhhp—THUNK.
The upper body of the goo-like humanoid wobbled once, then split, its top half sliding downward with a glorp before collapsing into itself.
Steam hissed.
The shadow-like ooze sizzled as if exposed to sunlight.
The creature's neck stump oozed in confusion, wriggling as if uncertain of what had happened.
The knights blinked.
None of them had moved.
And in front of the collapsed monster—
Stood a figure.
"This is the one we are going to use, right?"