Back in the forest, at the exact spot where Raizal had disappeared beneath the fallen rock, thick black-and-white mist began to swirl again.
It rose from the ground like a dying breath. A figure stepped out of it — Raizal.
He glanced around, eyes sharp and cold. His gaze landed on the massive boulder and the crushed mutant beneath it. Black blood still oozed slowly from under the stone. A victorious, bitter grin split Raizal's face for a moment — ugly and tired.
Without wasting another second, he started running. His footsteps were nearly silent, barely disturbing the dead leaves.
He passed the place where they had first seen the mutant. Leo's blood still stained the forest floor in dark, dried patches. A few scattered bones could be seen there. He confirmed his direction and pushed forward
toward the hill.
As he moved deeper, the forest grew even more haunting.
Bodies lay everywhere.
Mutants of all shapes — each one different, each one twisted in death. Some were half-buried in mud, others impaled on broken branches. The stench of blood and ruptured organs hung thick in the air. But it
wasn't only mutants.
Human bodies were scattered among them — participants from the test. Most were in far worse condition. One girl's corpse hung from a tree, her leg torn completely off, intestines dangling from a gaping stomach wound like wet ropes. Her eyes had been gouged out, one still hanging from the socket by a thin thread.
Raizal didn't even glance at them. He kept running straight, jaw clenched, breath steady. In this world, stopping to feel anything was a luxury he couldn't afford.
Then he heard it — the low mechanical hum of something flying overhead.
He looked up. Several drones were cutting through the night sky, their red scanning lights sweeping the ground.
The trees began to thin. In front of him rose the large hill. The night had deepened here, the air colder and heavier. Raizal pulled out his pistol and fired two quick shots into the
air.
The drones immediately swarmed toward him, circling above his head.
From the top of the hill, a long wooden ladder descended with a heavy thud. It was stained dark with blood — handprints smeared across every rung from the injured participants who had climbed before him.
Raizal grabbed the blood-slick ladder and began to climb. The height was punishing, his arms burning with every pull. After several long minutes, he finally reached the top.
A group of people stood waiting, staring down at him. One man stepped forward —This was Trainer Diego. Rock-solid face, military uniform, eyes like chipped stone. He held a tablet in one hand.
Diego offered his hand. Raizal grabbed it and was pulled up onto the hill.
The trainer looked him up and down, scanning every inch of his battered form. Then he glanced at the tablet and spoke in a strict, emotionless voice.
"Raizal Break, student of Batch 4. You have successfully qualified. Now go and take a rest."
Raizal stood there for a moment, chest heaving, the weight of the night still clinging to him like wet blood.
The cold night wind carried the distant stench of blood and rot from the forest below.
He looked at the others gathered there.
All of them were the same age — fifteen years old — wearing the same ragged black clothes as him. Their faces were pale, bodies battered and exhausted. Some had deep gashes still bleeding through makeshift bandages. Others stared blankly at the ground, hands trembling. The fear had not left their eyes. It had only settled deeper.
Raizal's gaze moved across the small group until he spotted Axel sitting on a jagged rock, hugging his knees. When Axel saw him approaching, a weak spark of relief crossed his face.
As soon as Raizal reached him, Axel leaned forward and whispered quickly, voice low so the others wouldn't hear,
"Are you alright…? Man, you really scared me back there."
His words were shaky, barely holding together.
Raizal gave a small nod.
"Yeah… I'm good."
He looked around at the survivors. More than fifty participants had entered that cursed forest. Now only eighteen remained on this hill. The rest — boys and girls he had seen every day in Batch 4 — were gone. Torn apart, devoured, or left rotting somewhere in the darkness below.
He didn't know all of them personally. But it didn't matter. They had all shared the same hell — the same Restricted Sector, the same daily fear of mutating, the same test that treated them like disposable meat.
What could he do? Nothing.
Raizal sat down heavily beside Axel. For a moment he closed his eyes and let the cold night breeze brush against his dirt-streaked face. The wind smelled of blood and wet earth.
"I should be happy." he thought bitterly. "Me and Axel are still alive. We survived. We'll finally return to the sector."
This thought brought no warmth. Only a heavy, empty feeling in his chest.
Three days. Nearly three full days of running, hiding, and listening to screams echo through the trees. Eighteen left out of fifty. The mutants had been different every time — each one more twisted than the last. And the drones above had simply watched, recording every death like it was just another number.
Raizal opened his eyes again. The other survivors sat in silence, some staring at the dark forest below as if expecting more monsters to climb up the bloody ladder. No one spoke much. There was nothing left to say.
The test was over.
They had "qualified."
Yet sitting there under the indifferent stars, surrounded by the wounded and the broken, Raizal felt no victory.
A sharp voice cut through the heavy silence on the hill, slicing into everyone's ears.
"Listen up, all of you. The final test ends here. All eighteen of you have passed. You know what that means."
Trainer Diego's voice was strict and cold, carrying no warmth.
At his words, something shifted on the survivors' faces. The deep trauma of the forest — the mutants, the screams, the blood — still lingered in their eyes, but now faint, broken smiles appeared. Smiles of exhausted relief. All their suffering, all the pain of the last three days, had finally paid off. They knew exactly what passing this test meant.
Diego continued, his tone flat and heavy.
"As you all know, the first red rain fell on the Day of Wrath. And since then, the red rain has continued to fall every six to eight months, year after year."
He paused, scanning their faces. No one reacted much. This was common knowledge, something everyone grew up hearing. Still, they listened closely.
"And because of those repeated red rains, Lakes of that red liquid began forming across the world. The crimson liquid that pooled in those lakes carries a strange, unnatural energy. An energy that leaked into our world along with the rain. We call that energy Astron. It is the root cause behind the birth of both Distors and Defects.
For those who could fully accept it, Astron granted supernatural abilities — turning them into Distors.
For those whose bodies rejected it… they became Defects. Unstable. Broken. One wrong moment away from mutating into mindless monsters."
For Distors, it was a fuel for their power.
For Defects like them, it was a ticking time bomb. One moment of instability and their bodies would twist into mindless mutants.
Diego kept speaking.
"The governments of the world have been working on this situation for years. And finally, their efforts have paid off. All of you Defects who passed this test now have a bright future ahead. The tag of 'Defect' will finally be removed from your heads."
A few participants let out quiet, shaky laughs of happiness. Their eyes shone with fragile hope.
But Raizal's face remained completely blank. No smile.
"You sound like removing the Defect tag is some great gift" he thought bitterly, eyes fixed on Diego. "It doesn't mean we'll be treated equally. We'll still be at the bottom of society. Distors, humans, or ex-Defects — in the end, only power matters."
Diego continued without pause.
"This will only happen when you become either a complete human or a complete Distor. Turning back into a normal human is impossible for you. But thanks to the brilliant minds working on the Defect problem, you can become Distors through the process of Awakening. All eighteen of you have qualified for it."
He took a short pause, then finished coldly,
"For now Stay here. I'm going to make one final round in the forest to check if any other participants made it."
Trainer Diego turned around. With two soldiers following him, he jumped off the edge of the hill and disappeared into the dark forest below.
Now only the eighteen participants remained on the hill.
Slowly, quiet murmurs started spreading among them.
"I still can't believe it… We finished three years of training. We passed the final test. Now we can finally become Distors," Axel said with a genuine smile, looking up at the night sky. Real happiness shone on his face.
To become a Distor, a Defect had to undergo Awakening. Their bodies had to be trained and strengthened enough to handle Astron without mutating. All Defects below fifteen were recruited and trained by the military inside the Restricted Sector. Three long, brutal years. Today had been their final test — three days in the forest to prove what they had learned.
Raizal stared into the darkness. Even though he hated the Restricted Sector, after these three days in the forest, that rotting prison almost felt like home. At least there you knew what kind of hell you were in.
Before he could reply to Axel, a swirling vortex of light suddenly appeared on the hill — a portal glowing in a strange greenish color.
The entire hill fell silent.
Three figures stepped out of the portal.
Raizal's eyes turned ice-cold, filled with pure hate as he looked at them.
In the middle stood a girl, beautifully dressed, a sword hanging at her waist. She carried herself with open arrogance, her lips curled in clear disgust as she scanned the ragged, blood-stained participants and their miserable state.
Then her eyes landed on Raizal, who was sitting quietly on a rock. A boy standing beside that girl who was wearing a leather jacket and had red hair looks at Raizal sitting on rock you could not contain himself and with mocking grin said
"Look at this, Elara. The trash actually learned how to crawl. I thought the mutants would have done us a favor and swallowed you whole, Raizal. How does it feel to be the only 'Break' who is still just a pathetic Defect?"