No one dared to stop them.
As Kael walked behind Orik, the gazes of a thousand disciples followed him like invisible arrows. Those looks no longer carried disgust or contempt; instead, they were a complex mix of primal terror, deadly curiosity, and absolute awe. The boy they had mocked for his smell and ragged clothes just hours ago was now walking away with absolute composure after crushing the Eclipse Cult's elite assassins with a worn-out cleaning broom.
Kael stepped over the corpse of an assassin, glancing from the corner of his eye at Cyril, who was still kneeling in a pool of the enemies' blood, trembling violently with his eyes glued to the ground. Kael didn't say a word; he didn't need to. The silence in that moment was heavier than a thousand insults.
Trailing behind, Lyra ruthlessly dragged the white-robed spy by his collar, hauling him across the cobblestones like a sack of garbage. A few elders' eyes darted toward them, tempted to intervene and save the traitorous disciple, but a single, ice-cold glare from Orik was enough to freeze the blood in their veins.
Grand Elder Thorne stood watching them retreat toward the abandoned wing, his diamond-encrusted staff trembling in his hand from pent-up rage. He gritted his teeth until they nearly cracked. Orik's disciple? Since when does the 'Puppet Master' accept peasant trash as students? Thorne thought, his eyes narrowing with calculating malice. That boy harbors a secret. His strike wasn't magic, nor was it a conventional martial art. There was a trace of pure, terrifying energy radiating from him. If I can extract that secret... I won't just remain an elder in this crumbling academy; I will sit upon the White Throne.
"Clean up this mess!" Thorne bellowed at the shell-shocked disciples, hastily donning his usual mask of authority. "And we shall see just how long Orik can protect his new pet."
Inside the abandoned wing, the air was cold and suffocating.
The moment the heavy wooden door shut behind them, Lyra hurled the spy onto the rotting floorboards with brutal force. The white-robed youth groaned in pain, scrambling backward in a desperate attempt to crawl away, but Kael's heavy boot firmly planted onto his chest, pinning him down like an insect.
In the corner of the room, Faren sat in his chair, coughing lightly, though his complexion was remarkably better than the previous night. The old man looked at the trembling spy, then shifted his gaze to Kael.
"It seems you couldn't stay quiet for a single day, blacksmith boy," Faren rasped, though the ghost of a proud smile danced in his eyes.
"They attacked first," Kael replied simply, shrugging his shoulders. "Besides, I only used a single drop of that cursed core's energy you planted in my chest. If I really wanted to draw attention, I would have leveled that entire courtyard."
"And that is exactly what terrifies me," Orik interjected, shrugging off his frayed grey coat and tossing it onto the table. He stepped closer to Kael, fixing him with a piercing, analytical stare. "Your energy is brutal, chaotic, and completely unrefined. You are like a toddler holding two raging dragons in his hands. Your strike today tore through reinforced steel, yes, but it also destroyed its vessel. That broom turned to dust because you have absolutely no idea how to control the flow."
Orik raised his index finger. Suddenly, impossibly thin, silver threads of mana materialized around his digit, dancing in perfect harmony like living serpents. "In our world, true power does not lie in the explosion; it lies in control. If you continue to release Azura's energy in this raw, unfiltered state, your own body will crack and crumble into dust—just like that wooden broom."
A sudden chill ran down Kael's spine. He had, in fact, noticed a searing pain coursing through the veins of his right arm immediately after delivering that strike, as if his blood was literally boiling beneath his skin.
"So, what do you expect me to do?" Kael asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "I'm only here because you said this Academy holds the answers to wiping this core from my chest, or at least taming it."
Faren sighed and stood up slowly, leaning heavily on a wooden cane. He limped toward the pinned spy, looking down at him with undisguised disdain. "The answers you seek lie within the library of the 'Forbidden Peak,' a heavily guarded zone restricted solely to the Dean of the Academy... or the victor of the 'Celestial Dragon Tournament'."
"The tournament?" Lyra asked, speaking up for the first time, her silver eyes gleaming with sudden interest.
"Indeed," Orik nodded. "It is held exactly one month from now. It is the only official path for disciples to rise in rank. If Kael enters and wins, not even greedy leeches like Elder Thorne can stop him from entering the Forbidden Peak. It is an ancient, absolute law of the Academy that they wouldn't dare break in public."
"But to participate as an official disciple, he needs a valid identity," Faren said, flashing a sly, knowing smile at Orik. "Fortunately for us, our old friend Orik here just publicly adopted him as his sole personal disciple."
Kael finally grasped the entire chess match. Orik's intervention in the courtyard wasn't just a rescue mission; it was a meticulously calculated move to legally bind him to the Academy's system.
"I see..." Kael muttered, a dangerous, confident grin forming on his lips. "So, you want me to join a tournament packed with arrogant nobles, crush them one by one, and steal your Academy's greatest treasure right from under the elders' noses."
"That is an accurate summary," Orik stated coldly. "But before we begin your hellish training..." He shifted his cold gaze to the trembling spy pinned beneath Kael's boot. "We have a guest who urgently needs to tell us exactly how the Eclipse Cult managed to breach the magical barrier."
Lyra slowly unsheathed her dagger, the blade glinting menacingly in the dim light of the room. She leaned down toward the spy, whispering in a voice that resembled the hiss of a viper: "Don't worry... I am far better at dissecting than I am at fighting."
In that exact moment, the spy realized that true hell wasn't out there on the battlefield—it was right here, in this forgotten room