The courtyard was silent again.Only the wind moved—curling through broken glass and the charred trunks that had once been a forest.
Two figures stood at the center of it all.
One, a handsome 6 foot tall boy clad in black, his arms in his pockets. His hazel hair was standing like it defied gravity and a single bang draping across his left eye. The other, a humanoid monster.
The humanoid beast grinned, fangs bared in a crescent of madness. Its purple hair hung ragged over its eyes, each strand quivering with the vibration of power leaking from its frame.Opposite it, the boy in black stood motionless. His face was calm, unreadable; only the faint violet glow in his eyes broke the stillness.
For a breath, neither moved.
Then the ground began to hum.
Pressure spilled from them in waves—soundless at first, like the air had thickened around their bodies. Stones cracked underfoot. The smell of ozone crept into the wind.Students watching from the shattered perimeter gasped as invisible weight pressed down on their chests. A few staggered back, clutching their throats.
The beast's grin widened. It leaned forward, claws flexing, aura pulsing in violent bursts of violet haze.
Asher didn't flinch. His own energy slid outward like a tide of black smoke, calm but suffocating.
Where they met, the air seemed to tear.
Some of the older third-years tried to step closer—to help, to surround the monster—but both fighters turned their heads at once.Two pairs of purple eyes, one glowing with cruelty, one flat and void.
The look alone stopped them cold.Something primal screamed inside every watching soul: stay back.
The duelists turned back to each other.
They began to walk.
Each step deepened the pressure, pressing at lungs and spines. Pebbles lifted from the ground, caught between magnetic wills. It felt like unseen hands were closing around every throat in the courtyard.
Four meters apart they stopped.The beast was taller—towering, muscles taut beneath skin that shimmered with a faint violet sheen. Asher looked up slightly, eyes meeting its own. No emotion, no fear.
For a moment that seemed to last forever, neither breathed.
Then, nothingness.
Both vanished in a blink—air imploding where they'd stood.
A thunderclap followed, echoing across the grounds.
Far off, within the ruins of the forest Lauren had conjured, a flash of black and purple split the haze. Branches shattered like brittle glass; dust and splinters filled the air as two figures collided, their daggers screeching against each other.
Metal rang again, and again—too fast for the eye to follow.Each impact scattered arcs of violet and black light, carving deep scars across tree trunks and stone.
The students watching from the ridge could only see flashes now: silhouettes appearing, disappearing, colliding with blinding sparks.
Someone whispered, "They're… moving faster than sound."
The monster drove its knee upward; Asher twisted, sliding past the strike, daggers crossing in an "X" to parry the follow-up slash.Black dust swirled around his hands, coalescing into his weapons—two serrated blades, longer than standard, edges swallowing light rather than reflecting it.
The beast's grin gleamed through the dust. Its own twin daggers pulsed with purple lines, every stroke leaving trails like comets.
They struck again.
And again.
Each contact was a miniature explosion—shockwaves shredding bark, scattering embers, throwing sparks into the fog.
Lilith and Seren crouched among the others, eyes wide, unable to tear their gaze away.
"This… this isn't human," someone breathed.
Lauren, bruised and leaning against a broken trunk, watched through the haze. She couldn't tell which blur was Asher, which was the beast. Only the colors—black and violet—told the story.
Then, suddenly, the black streak curved, vanishing into shadow.
A single flash—Dark Shadow Style: Eclipse Rend.
The attack split the air, a horizontal crescent of dark energy that bent light itself. The beast crossed its blades in defense, purple energy flaring—Abyssal Art: Dark Storm.
Asher's eyes widened in shock.
When the two waves met, the forest convulsed. Trees splintered outward; wind screamed; dust turned the world gray.
From within the storm, two shadows clashed again—steel ringing like a heartbeat.
The smoke rolled back like a torn curtain. The wind that followed carried splinters, ash, and the metallic tang of mana discharge.
Out of it, the beast erupted first—its claws dragging furrows through the earth as it twisted mid-air and landed in a crouch. Violet energy coiled around its shoulders like living flame.
A heartbeat later, Asher stepped through the haze. No dust clung to him. The ground where his foot fell cracked softly, not from weight but from pressure.
For the first time, the watchers could see him clearly. The black daggers in his hands shimmered with fine serrations, their edges misting into black dust before reforming again—a rhythm that pulsed with his breathing.
The two faced each other once more.
A moment's stillness. Then—motion.
They met in the center, the collision throwing ripples through the air. The beast's speed was raw, erratic, heavy with muscle; Asher's was linear, silent, exact. Every time the beast's blade came down, Asher's answered it at the precise point of impact, redirecting, parrying, sliding away.
The rhythm built—clang, spark, step, breath—until it became one unbroken sound.
Cracks veined the ground. The forest's ash drifted upward from the shock of each strike.
Asher pivoted back, daggers crossing behind him. The world bent in a flash of black light—Dark Shadow Style: Umbral Sever.
The arc that followed wasn't wide; it was a single line, too thin to see, but where it passed, air split open and the ground sheared clean through. The beast staggered, a shallow cut glowing across its chest before sealing under violet energy.
A roar answered it.
Asher was stunned once again.
The beast lunged, aura flaring outward, the pressure cracking what remained of the trees. From its eyes burst twin lances of purple energy—pure destruction.
Asher's silhouette blurred. Abyssal Art:Phantom Mirage Step.
He seemed to fade, reappearing half a breath later at an angle, his right blade sweeping across in a downward curve—Veil of Midnight. The swing sliced through the eye-blast itself, the beam splitting apart and diffusing into harmless sparks.
The forest floor cratered under the rebound.
Far above, students shielded their faces from the sudden rush of wind. Lauren clenched her fists; Ziriah, bleeding but standing, could only stare.
'That's… Asher?' Seren thought to herself. At this point, only she and Lilith knew who this was.
Lilith couldn't think about anything. Her eyes were fixed on him, unblinking.
Below, Asher advanced again. The beast met him halfway, the grin on its face tightening, cracks of violet light crawling across its skin.
They struck together—blade to blade, again and again.
The tempo shifted.
Asher began pressing forward, each step timed to a strike, the weight of his aura increasing with every movement. The beast's laughter faded; its grin broke, replaced by a snarl.
And then, something changed.
For the first time in the history of this book, Asher's calm face twisted—not in anger, not in effort, but in exhilaration. A wild grin stretched across his lips, sharp and alive. His eyes, once steady violet, flared brighter, the light dancing like fire inside them.
The beast faltered. Its movements turned desperate, each attack heavier, less precise. Fear, faint but real, rippled through its aura.
The watchers felt it too—the shift in dominance.
Asher's grin widened further as he moved. His blades left trails of black light, carving patterns into the air that hung there a heartbeat before vanishing. The beast roared, driving itself forward in reckless fury.
Their auras collided, forming a vortex around them. Stones lifted, wood splintered, everything inside the ring was drawn toward the pressure point between their daggers.
For an instant, it looked like they were frozen—one black, one violet, locked at the center of the world.
Then came the final strike.
Both surged at once, power compressing to the breaking point. Black and violet merged into a single blinding pulse, light folding inward before bursting outward in silence.
The explosion followed a second later.
A wave of force tore through the forest, flattening everything in a perfect circle. Dust and shattered bark filled the air, the shock rolling outward across the academy grounds. Windows cracked, banners tore from walls, and the air hummed like the after-ring of a massive bell.
When it ended, there was nothing but smoke.
A dense, swirling wall of gray hung over the crater where the forest had been. No one could see through it—no movement, no sound, only the slow drift of ash falling like rain.
Lauren took a step forward, her hand trembling. Ziriah caught her arm.
"Wait."
She hesitated. The only thing that reached them from inside was the echo of cooling metal and the low hiss of mana fading away.
Then, silence.
The smoke thickened, rolling lazily in the breeze, hiding the two figures from view.
Lilith's breath caught in her throat.
In that silence, with every eye fixed on the smoke-covered battlefield, no one dared to speak.
Smoke lingered over the battlefield like a living thing—coiling, clinging, refusing to let go. The students could barely see the crater through the haze. All they heard was the slow crumble of what was left of the trees and the soft hiss of burning mana fading into stillness.
Then, a shadow moved.
A shape emerged from within the gray.
The students watching all hoped that the new arrival had won against the beast. They all hoped...
But...
The humanoid beast stepped forward, dragging its foot through the broken earth. Blood ran down its arm, pooling at its fingertips. Its skin was marked with long cuts that glowed faintly violet, closing slower than before. The once-sinister grin was gone—replaced by a twisted, feral snarl. Its purple eyes had dulled, the glow fading to a faint, cold shimmer.
Still, when it lifted its gaze toward the students, the air froze.
The pressure that came with its stare felt heavier than before—not a wave of power, but something colder, emptier.
Lauren stiffened. Ziriah's jaw locked tight. Even Seren's composure faltered for a breath.
The beast's head turned, scanning them all one by one, as if deciding which to kill first. Its chest heaved, muscles twitching, claws flexing. Then—without warning—it crouched, mana rippling through its legs, ready to leap away.
But it didn't get far.
Something stopped it.
A hand.
Fingers like steel clamped around its ankle mid-jump. The impact cracked the ground, dust rising in a violent gust. The beast's eyes widened, confusion flashing across its face as it looked down—
Asher.
He stood beneath it, half-kneeling, his hand clamped around its leg like a vice. His head was bowed, the shadows hiding his expression. Then, slowly, he pulled.
The earth shattered.
The beast crashed down, hitting the ground hard enough to shake the ruins. Before it could even raise its head, Asher moved—fluid, silent, merciless. His dagger traced a black arc across the air and sank cleanly into the creature's neck.
A single motion. A clean kill.
The beast convulsed once, the purple in its eyes flickering out like dying light. Then it went still.
Silence reclaimed the field.
Asher stayed there for a moment longer, kneeling over the fallen monster. The black mist that had formed his daggers began to fade, dust streaming away into the air until nothing remained.
He rose slowly.
When he looked up at the students, the grin was gone. His face was calm again—empty, unreadable—but something about his eyes made everyone instinctively step back.
It wasn't hostility. It was weight.
They could all see it now—the quiet, unshakable truth that hung in the space between them:He had killed the monster that Ziriah and Lauren couldn't defeat.And he didn't have a single scratch on him.
The air itself seemed to pull away from him.
Then—without a sound—he turned.
A step, a blur, a streak of black dust—and he was gone, leaping into the distance before anyone could call out. The smoke scattered in his wake, leaving only the corpse of the beast lying twisted in the dirt.
For a long moment, no one moved.
Then, from across the field, new mana signatures burst into the air—sharp and powerful.
Figures appeared atop the shattered walls, cloaks fluttering in the wind.
The Academy Instructors.
Their eyes swept over the ruined forest, the battered students, and the dead monster at the center of it all.
But of the one who killed it—there was no trace.
Only the faint, dissolving mist of black dust drifting where he had stood.
The Instructors, especially the Academy Master, were glad that the students were safe, even though the Academy would need some time to recover from the event.