Staring at those yellow eyes of his, Eyneir suddenly shivered for a moment, followed by a great fit of rage. His face literally collapsed from the anger he felt. Biting his teeth to the point he felt dizzy, one of his skills was activated.
‘Nature’s Melody, huh?’
“I don’t mind if you're still underestimating me.”
He ran forward, dodging all of the incoming sharp grass blades that stretched out from the ground. It was as though Eyneir was hitting air, all of the thin strands of near-metallic grass were being dodged gracefully, even with the injuries he sustained.
The elf looked shocked as Conall got through the literal wall of greenery he sent after him. Taking out another dagger since the first one was already thrown away and he couldn’t use the bow with just one arm, he tried to block the slash coming at him.
Yet, when the blade touched the small, knife-like dagger, the force behind differed from before drastically. Breaking his stance apart, he closed the distance further before swinging diagonally.
Unable to block, the elf felt the brunt of the attack, as well as a searing pain stretching across his torso.
‘Heart of the Forest!’
Eyneir screamed in his head, ready to activate his strongest skill, however, the thrust of the sword covered in aura was just about to pierce through his heart. The medallion on his chest broke apart as it summoned him back to the academy.
As he was being sent back, the surprise on his face screamed. He didn’t believe what just happened, not a single bit. For the second time already, he would have lost his life to a Grade C human.
Both the body and the severed arm were called back, leaving Conall alone. Despite the pain he was feeling from overusing his aura, he kept on moving through the trees.
In front of him, there stood a large wolf, waiting to feast on its wounded prey. Its growling face drooled as it looked at the juicy bank of flesh.
A slow, yet swift swing. The sword’s image was left behind while Conall performed the attack. The beautifully curved line flowed through the fabrics of the world, woven with blood and spirit.
The wolf stopped moving its body as if it had become stuck in time, revering the strike.
His longsword soon stopped, and he went on his way, another five points added to his medallion.
…
The dean was busy working in his office, as always. Although there was an event for the first years, he would only go out to announce the rankings after it ended.
All of a sudden, however, the doors to his office in the tower were knocked onto, as though hurriedly.
“Come in.”
The doors opened abruptly and an elf with blue hair appeared inside the office.
“Vice-dean? What’s the matter?”
She looked distraught and her hair was messy, disturbed by the wind. Her reactions said all he needed to know, but he still listened.
“The order has attacked the students from the inside. They have measures that omit the medallions. A few of the students had already been killed.”
“Did they do something to the barrier?”
“Yes, they inscribed it from the interior. Even I wasn’t able to penetrate through it. However, after a few minutes, the barrier somehow weakened, allowing the professors to intervene.”
“Alright, let’s move.”
Startling the girl by taking her by the waist, he started moving. In the blink of an eye, they appeared beside the forest boundary, where countless students were waiting in fright for any news about the situation.
“Everyone, please calm down, everything is under control now.”
The dean assured the first years, however, it didn’t help in any way.
Instead, he simply went inside the forest with the vice-dean.
“Do we know how they got here?”
“There were twenty portals scattered throughout the forest, however, they already closed all of them.”
She was clearly referring to the order. The dean pondered for a second before turning to her.
“So there are moles in the new year already, huh?”
The elf nodded. She, along with the professor, also came up with the idea.
“Yes, however, we can’t avoid the possibility that older years or professors set up the portals while some of the students here opened them.”
“Wait a second.”
Lurius spotted something in the distance, a figure with a ripped-apart dark hood on it. Closing the distance, he crouched near the person.
It was a male student with brown hair, demonic mana lingering around him.
“They somehow got rid of his medallion. No wonder he turned.”
To her mutter, he added.
“Well, at least we have the first suspect.”
Breaking into his inventory ring, the dean took out the medallion before crushing it. Unless he woke up, however, he blocked off his mana veins.
Immediately, the body was sent back to the academy grounds.
“Dean, can you hear that?”
After nodding, they moved towards the sounds of people fighting. As they saw the tall, grotesque demon fighting against two professors, Lurius immediately unsheathed his sword before slashing the air in front of him.
A second later, the struggling professors could finally breathe again, as the head of the demon was severed.
“Dean!”
The two of them quickly bowed down, but the head of the academy quickly reprimanded them.
“Go and help students that might still be fighting with the order.”
Immediately, they followed his orders. Moving across the forest like lightning, the two of them cleared it out of any vermin that plagued it. Unfortunately, they weren’t omnipotent. In the time that it took for the barrier to break down and to inform the dean, many of the students fell to the attack of the order.
After counting all the casualties, one hundred and four students passed away.
When they defeated all of the invaders, the dean announced an early end of this year’s point hunt.
Gathered in the arena were all of the first years. After calming all of them down, he revealed the situation on hand, as well as ten of the potential culprits they found.
Although almost every student dreaded the situation, they eventually accepted the gruesome things that happened today.
In the end, as every year, Lurius revealed the scores. Although the event ended prematurely, they couldn’t just renew it. The medallions on their chests were carefully crafted throughout the year, taking a lot of time.
When the leaderboards lit up above the arena, however, many of the students looked at them dumbfounded.
[1. Conall Agael - 300 Points]
[2. Ogulu Terant - 251 Points]
[3. Sayner Coh - 239 Points]
[4. …]
They were especially astonished looking at the first place. Truthfully, even the dean was surprised while looking at it. He was apparently labeled as the worst knight, yet he came out first, beating all of the Grade Bs.
Also, to the further surprise of the crowd, Eyneir wasn’t even in the top 100. For a second, they feared that he might be dead, however, he was seen arguing with a student beside him the next moment, clutching onto his shoulder.
“Conall Agael, please come onto the stage.”
Lurius invited him in order to congratulate him in person, but there was no answer.
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He didn’t see him when he collected the dead bodies, however, no one also saw him when the hunt ended, which was quite perplexing.
‘He isn’t one of them, is he?’
…
Silvana stood in her bright lab, staring at the bone floating in a pool of green fluid. Standing there for at least a few minutes, she had no idea where to go next. The healing liquid the femur was in had zero effects. It was supposed to be slowly rejuvenating the bone into its prime state, but it was all for naught.
The only thing it was doing was preserving it from further decomposition.
‘Do the healing liquid not work on giants? I guess that could be the case. After all, the body composition of the giants is different because of their heightened regeneration. The healing liquid was also created after the extinction of giants, so it’s no wonder.’
Though she thought that, to confirm her thoughts, she took some of the vitae in a flask before nicking her fingertip.
Drowning the small cut in the glass, all she felt was a slight sting, nothing else.
‘I guess that can be the case.’
Suddenly, she heard a sound coming from the shut doors of the lab. Summoning the screen, she saw who stood behind the doors of her classroom.
‘Conall? Wasn’t there supposed to be an event going on?’
Although she felt confused seeing his face, he most likely lost already before coming here. It was Friday, after all. They were meant to do further examinations today.
She opened the doors leading up to her lab before cleaning up the equipment she used for the giant femur.
The doors soon opened, revealing the tattered body of the student. She was stunned, not knowing what to do when she saw all of the holes in his body. Silvana could see through each and every one of them, which made goosebumps appear on her body.
There was no way a normal human could withstand what he was going through right now.
Looking at how weakly he was taking steps, she was surprised he hadn’t yet lost consciousness. Moving closer, she quickly supported his body.
‘Why did he come here instead of the sanctuary? Is he delirious right now?’
That was the only reason she could come up with. However, she would still do something. Taking the flask full of vitae, the healing liquid, she carried him to her bed in the corner before slowly pouring it over his wounds.
Though, another surprise awaited her.
The fluid did nothing to him, simply flowing down to the bed sheets.
“What the hell?”
Taking out a potent healing potion, she opened the mouth of the red-haired man, but he opposed.
“It won’t work. Potions don’t work on me.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
She was awaiting answers, however, her test subject immediately fell asleep. His pulse was excessively strong and his body was warm, so she didn’t worry about him going away to the afterlife, though.
The witch uncorked the potion before releasing some of it in his mouth. Yet, just like he said, it didn’t work.
“You’re not gonna like this, but you leave me no choice.”
Taking out a black feather from her inventory, mana flooded the insides and a blue droplet began to form at its tip.
Before engraving the magic circle, she used her mana to cut apart the uniform jacket on his torso, which caught her slightly off-guard.
He was surprisingly muscular, especially whenever she saw his small body. In spite of that, what caught most of her attention was his abundance of scars, riddled all across his stomach, sides, and chest. Without even realizing it, she traced the scars across his defined abs but quickly refrained from doing that and going back to the magic circles.
Ashamed of what she just did, she shook her head before focusing on the task at hand.
Silvana touched the black quill against his skin, red blood mixing together with the blue ink. A large outline was quickly engraved on the surface of his skin, to hold all of the remaining lines in unity.
Precisely, with her eyes closely inspecting his body, she drew the lines carefully. What she was inscribing right now was a magical circle on the human body. Despite it being entirely possible, witches didn’t normally perform such things, at least not willingly.
It was a harsh craftsmanship. One wrong line was all it was needed to scar, even cripple the body for the rest of one’s life. Nonetheless, she was confident in her abilities. After five minutes of meticulous inscription, she was completely done.
Immediately after she did the job, the witch poured in some of her mana and started the process. The blue ink from the quill quickly changed hues. A bright, shining green replaced it as healing mana supported the red-haired knight.
To her once again surprise, the girl watched as the holes slowly mended back up together, starting from small specks of bone, not just becoming a scar as she meant it to. Observing the blood spurt from the sudden movement of his wounds, an idea suddenly struck her.
Leaving him alone to heal completely, she walked towards the glass in the middle of her lab. Many thoughts were clouding her head, though one was the most prominent.
‘Do we even need this thing anymore?’
She had many questions she wanted to ask Conall all of a sudden, but that would have to wait until he was healed up completely, or at least until he woke up.
...
After a while, Conall's eyelids twitched a few times before he begrudgingly opened them. Staring at the bright ceiling, the first thing he felt was the pain that scattered across his body. It was the consequence of overusing both his body and aura to catch up with the points.
He tried moving his body, but all it replied with was atrocious pain. Even moving up his arm was like moving around a broken, flabby bone.
Moving his head to the side, he looked at the girl with long, purple hair. Although it didn’t shine like Juliette’s, there was a certain, blue tint to it that he couldn’t unsee. He looked at the deep blue eyes staring back at him.
Finally, after staring at each other for a while, Silvana spoke up.
“You up?”
“Yes. How long was I unconscious for?”
“About two hours. Not bad, If I had to be honest. With the injuries you had, I thought you would be sleeping for a whole week.”
‘Harmis really did me a favor, huh?’
Complimenting his new heart, he glanced at her one more time.
“Can you help me get up?”
“Sure.”
Slowly making him sit up on the bed, she then pulled on him, causing him to forcefully stand on his own. Although it hurt like hell, he needed that little jumpstart.
Stretching lightly, he could somewhat move again, though much slower and weaker than usual.
“Now, how about you tell me what the hell happened? Those aren’t normal wounds. Especially when the medallion should have healed you when you were summoned back. Also, your suit wasn’t sewn back up properly.”
“Heavenly Order. They had weapons on them that negated the effects of the medallion.”
“You were attacked by those guys?”
He nodded while looking at her.
“Not only me. The whole event was stopped because of so many casualties. A big portion of the first years died today thanks to them.”
“How, though? The medallion is one of the most advanced technologies in the world. There is no safer precaution.”
“I don’t know, but they must have prepared for this for a long time.”
While she pondered, he kept to himself. He couldn’t reveal that they wanted to corrupt the forest, nor that the goldens were with the Heavenly Order. At least, not now.
“Is that why you came here?”
After a brief moment, she suddenly asked. She must have thought that Conall was worried the Order might attack him in the infirmary. Well, she wasn’t wrong entirely.
“You seemed trustworthy, professor, and I didn’t want to faint in front of the academy nurses. Also, we have some tests scheduled today, don’t we?”
“We do, but I don’t think your body can handle them currently. You were literally a walking corpse two hours ago.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit much, professor? Besides, I can handle whatever you give me. I may not be the tallest, but I’m the toughest in my whole year.”
“Is that so? I guess we can put that attitude of yours to the test.”
Seeing the sudden, invisible mischievousness in her eyes, he thought that his flaunting may have been unnecessary.
A few minutes later, he looked down as he saw Silvana strapping him to a hard, wooden chair.
“Professor, you’re sure you aren’t going to electrocute me?”
“It might be worse, depending on how your body handles foreign mana.”
“Is that the test?”
“Yes and no. With a mana core, the instance of acquiring foreign mana inside one’s bloodstream isn’t an issue. The mana is quickly sucked into the mana veins before being filtered out of the body. However, you don’t have a core, so we don’t truly know what will happen as such experiments weren’t written down before.”
‘The heart will simply filter it out. Even better than a mediocre core, probably.’
He kept those thoughts to himself. Mainly because she would soon see for herself, but also because he wanted to prepare himself for the inevitable in the near future.
Feeling a slight prick on his arm, he saw a dilated blue liquid being poured into him.
“This is a filtered-out blood of from a goblin. The mana composition is relatively sparse, but it is still almost purely mana.”
As Silvana was explaining, Conall felt a rush to his head. His heart started beating faster while the liquid filled the veins on his arm. He felt hot, but that was it. The mana was quickly filtered out, however, instead of flowing out of his body, it went directly inside his mana veins.
The witch let out a surprised look, unusual to her indifferent self. Yet, in her eyes, he also saw... expectance?
She was closely observing the readings from the chair and straps, so she could easily tell what happened. In contrast to Conall’s guess, it was even better. The heart purified the mana before letting it out to the mana veins. The leftover liquid, on the other hand, was used as its fuel.
‘Hmm, the muscle soreness also eased somewhat.’
He confirmed in his head, but Silvana cut him off.
“Alright, let’s try something stronger.”
This time, she prepared a syringe with a light-gray undertone. It was the blood of a gray wolf.
Immediately, he felt the effects of the foreign blood mana. As though thousands of ants were crawling around his arm, biting, he experienced an uncomfortable needle-like pain from the inside. The hotness coming from his heart was also completely different.
As though he stuffed himself with hot stones, he clenched his feet and arms while trying to overcome the unbearing temperature. The veins around his body convulsed and protruded, his skin releasing buckets of sweat.
After a few minutes, the heart finally purified all the mana and Conall felt like he was about to explode with it. His veins were practically leaking from being so over-filled. Also, from the pain that came with the stronger blood, his body recovered significantly, only slight soreness remained when he moved his limbs.
As he exhaled heavily a few times, he heard her speak up again. This time, about something he didn't expect to reveal so quickly, though he didn't mind it.
The witch was sure of it. Ever since two hours ago, but the thoughts were confirmed just now. All the cuts that the special blood was giving him were quickly being regenerated, while the bone marrow the blood attacked withstood it without issues.
“That should do it. Now, please enlighten me, shouldn't a giant like you be in the afterlife?"