The restored sky above the Academy looked peaceful again, but the combat district beneath it still carried the weight of everything that had happened before the Principal repaired the fracture overhead. Smoke drifted through broken arena walls and collapsed suppression pillars while healers moved across the shattered training grounds with stretchers, sealing crystals, and emergency formation plates balanced between trembling hands. The ruined field still clicked and groaned in places where damaged mana circuits misfired beneath fractured stone, and every few moments a broken barrier node released a spray of pale sparks that scattered through the smoke before dying against the blood-streaked ground. Wounded enforcers were being dragged or carried toward temporary treatment zones near the outer walkways, the mutilated Vajra instructor remained surrounded by healers and regeneration arrays where his six severed limbs lay nearby under containment seals, and Valdred stood near the center of the damage with one hand still raised toward a flickering support formation while Academy workers shouted over one another trying to keep leaning structures from collapsing farther into the training sector.
Noctis remained in full Sovereign Genesis Apex Transformation near the center of the ruined field while Sanguinastra rested in his hand and the Trinity Dao Wheels rotated behind his upper back, each slow revolution pushing blood, holy, and abyssal pressure through the air around him. Crimson-black sovereign armor still covered his body where his trench coat had been, its vein-like blood channels pulsing beneath the surface while holy radiance moved along the edges of the plating and abyssal darkness settled through the joints like a second shadow. His wings shifted in the unstable wind coming off the damaged battlefield, blood feathers dissolving at the edges whenever they brushed against drifting smoke, holy feathers casting pale light across broken stone, and abyssal wings bending the air behind him enough that loose grit and ash curved around his silhouette instead of passing straight through. Students who had managed to rise from the earlier pressure kept their distance along the shattered walkways, some holding onto cracked railings, others bracing against each other while trying to watch him without looking directly at the dao wheels for too long.
Valdred continued issuing orders across the field while reinforcing a damaged barrier node with one hand and pointing with the other toward a group of elders who had regained enough strength to stand but not enough composure to speak back immediately. "Move the wounded away from the unstable formations before you argue with me," he snapped while a group of healers carried an enforcer with a shattered shoulder past him, and when one elder opened his mouth as if to justify the earlier intervention, Valdred cut him off by driving another stabilization seal into the broken field array beside his boot hard enough to make the cracked stone flare beneath his gauntlet. The Vice Principal's armor scraped softly as he turned, his cape dragging through dust and blood residue while his gaze moved over the enforcers, the elders, the Vajra teacher, and then briefly toward Noctis.
Noctis noticed that glance, and his attention remained on Valdred for a few breaths longer than it should have while the dao wheels continued rotating behind him and pressure pulsed through Sanguinastra's blade. The thought did not arrive like anger. It slipped in colder than anger, so smooth and immediate that for one moment it felt like a practical assessment rather than something foreign. Valdred stood close enough. The elders were weakened. The enforcers were injured. The students had no defenses worth considering. The field was already broken, the crowd already scattered, and the blade in his hand already carried enough power to finish what the previous clash had left undone. His fingers tightened around Sanguinastra's grip while blood pressure moved unevenly through the armor covering his forearm, and the air around the blade sharpened enough that loose sparks from a nearby barrier node bent toward its edge.
A beastkin student supporting an injured classmate stopped moving halfway across a cracked walkway when the pressure around Noctis shifted, her ears flattening instinctively while the wounded student beside her gripped her sleeve harder. One healer near the Vajra's regeneration field looked up because the sealing arrays around the instructor's stumps flickered under a sudden fluctuation of blood and abyssal pressure. Valdred's voice continued in the background, still reprimanding an elder about reckless escalation, but Noctis's gaze moved from the Vice Principal to the elders behind him, then across the enforcers kneeling near the outer barriers, then toward the students pressed into broken walkways. They all looked fragile beneath the restored sky and ruined structures, and the urge to cut through them settled into his muscles before his mind fully rejected it.
Sanguinastra lowered slightly.
The Trinity Dao Wheels pulsed unevenly behind his back, blood and abyssal currents briefly overpowering the holy ring's stabilizing radiance while smoke drifting through the battlefield changed direction around him. Several students shifted backward without understanding why, their boots scraping across loose stone. A cracked formation pillar nearby vibrated hard enough to shake dust from its surface, and one wounded enforcer who had just been lifted by two healers choked suddenly when the pressure near Noctis thickened again.
Both the Blood Dominion Core and the Blood Grid pulsed inside him at the same time.
The response passed through Noctis's body with enough force that his eyes widened and his grip on Sanguinastra loosened immediately, the predatory clarity vanishing so abruptly that the battlefield sounds returned all at once: Valdred's voice cutting across the damaged field, healers shouting for more sealing crystals, students whispering from the broken walkways, rubble shifting somewhere near a collapsed tower, blood dripping from the Vajra's containment seals. The dao wheels behind him stuttered once in their rotation before stabilizing, and Noctis stared at his own hand for a moment while the realization settled beneath his skin. He had almost moved. There had been no reason, no enemy pressure forcing him into survival, no immediate threat requiring slaughter. The impulse had simply appeared while the transformation remained active.
He ended the transformation without waiting to see whether the urge would return. The blood wings folded inward first while feathers separated into red particles and dissolved into the smoky air around him, followed by the holy wings dimming as pale radiance streamed back toward his upper back. The abyssal wings drew inward last, dragging a thin current of dark pressure across the broken field before collapsing into his body. The Trinity Dao Wheels shrank behind him in uneven rotations while streams of blood, holy, and abyssal energy flowed back through his armor, and the crimson-black plating covering his body softened into moving blood particles that spiraled around his torso, shoulders, and arms before reforming as his familiar trench coat. As the sovereign pressure receded, the surrounding field loosened with it: students exhaled without realizing they had been holding their breath, wounded enforcers slumped more heavily into the arms of healers, and the barrier node near Valdred steadied enough that its sparks stopped spraying across the ground.
Noctis remained still for several moments after returning to his normal form, watching the last traces of Sanguinastra dissolve into blood particles that slipped back into storage while smoke drifted past his face and the restored sky above remained almost offensively calm. He flexed his fingers once, then lowered his hand and glanced down when the absence beneath his coat finally registered. The holsters were empty. The memory of Valdred's fist striking the back of his head returned with the dull ache still lingering there, and Noctis looked across the broken field where Nocturne and Ruin had fallen earlier among scattered shell casings, cracked stone, and armor fragments. Rather than search through the rubble, he allowed blood particles to gather beneath the coat at both holsters, the dark metal of Nocturne forming first from condensed crimson energy before Ruin took shape beside it with a faint pressure pulse that made two students nearest the walkway stop whispering and stare openly.
A vampire student with cracked spectacles watched the pistols settle into Noctis's hands while a repair crew behind him dragged a broken suppression pillar across the ground, its metal frame scraping loudly over fractured stone. "Can vampires normally make weapons like that?" he whispered toward another vampire standing beside him, his voice low enough that he clearly hoped Noctis would not answer, and the second vampire shook his head quickly while still staring at the guns. "No," he said while adjusting his torn uniform sleeve with unsteady fingers. "Absolutely not." Noctis gave no sign of reacting to the exchange and simply holstered both pistols beneath the trench coat before turning toward the student cluster gathered near the collapsed walkway.
Valdred's reprimand sharpened behind him while Noctis crossed the field, each step carrying him through drifting smoke, shattered stone, discarded weapons, and the remains of broken suppression chains. "Do not look at me like you were following orders," the Vice Principal snapped at the dragonkin enforcement leader, who stood with damaged armor and one hand pressed against the wound near his shoulder while a healer tried to examine it. "You saw what happened in the sovereign district, I gave specific instructions not to provoke him, and you still ordered a capture operation in the middle of an occupied training ground." He turned before the dragonkin could answer, his boots grinding into the dust as he pointed toward the elders. "And you decided releasing aura pressure onto him was the correct follow-up while students were still in range."
One elder lowered his gaze while another tried to straighten his robe despite blood and dust marking one sleeve. Farther beside the regeneration arrays, the Vajra instructor groaned when a healing formation tightened around one severed shoulder. Valdred turned toward him without mercy, his armor shifting sharply with the motion while smoke rolled between them. "And you," he said, making two healers flinch away from the path of his pointing hand, "started all of this because a student yawned during combat class."
The Vajra's voice came out weak beneath the hum of regeneration arrays and the wet sound of blood being drawn back into sealing patterns. "He disrespected the lesson…"
Valdred stared at him while the nearby elders looked anywhere else. "So you tried to kill him in front of students and then transformed when you were embarrassed by being beaten up?"
The Vajra closed his eyes, and one healer near his side muttered something under her breath while tightening another regeneration seal. Valdred continued speaking, but Noctis was already approaching the students, and the Vice Principal's voice became part of the broader battlefield sound: repair carts rattling over cracked stone, injured enforcers groaning as they were moved, instructors calling student names across damaged walkways, and barrier stabilizers humming overhead.
The students nearest Noctis shifted as he approached, not as one group but in different instinctive reactions that told him more than their expressions did. A demon boy with soot across his cheek stepped backward and bumped into a broken railing before stopping himself. The fox demon girl from earlier moved half a step forward before remembering herself and gripping the strap of her satchel. An ice witch stood very still with pale mist leaking faintly from her sleeves as her control fluctuated under nerves. Several vampires watched him with the conflicted look of people who recognized his race but not the thing he had become. The air still smelled of smoke, blood, hot stone, and healing herbs from the emergency treatment stations behind them.
Noctis stopped beside the collapsed section of walkway where barrier fragments embedded in the rubble continued flickering with weak sparks, and he brushed dust from one sleeve while a pair of Academy workers pushed a damaged suppression cart past the group, the wheels clattering loudly over uneven stone. "Sorry about the chaos," he said while glancing back toward the destroyed field where Valdred was still tearing into the elders and healers were trying to keep the Vajra from losing consciousness during regeneration stabilization. "This got a little out of hand."
The students looked at him differently after the apology, not because the fear disappeared, but because the shape of it changed. The fox demon's tail twitched once behind her before she forced it still. The vampire with cracked spectacles adjusted them even though they were already sitting correctly on his face. A horned demon girl opened her mouth, closed it, then glanced toward the ruined field where smoke still coiled around broken formations. "A little," she repeated quietly, and another student behind her gave a strained laugh that died when a nearby support pillar groaned and released a fresh fall of dust.
A male student stepped forward after a few seconds, his boots crunching over small fragments of barrier glass while he kept his hands visible at his sides as if approaching a wild predator that had chosen not to attack. "How are you that strong?" he asked, and once the question left him, others began speaking around it while the environment kept moving behind them, voices overlapping with the scrape of repair crews and the hum of healing arrays. "How did you use holy power?" someone else asked from the left as two wounded enforcers were carried past on a stretcher. "What were those rings behind your back?" another student asked while looking toward the space where the Trinity Dao Wheels had been. "Was that sword the same one that cut the Principal's hand?"
"Can all vampires reach that level?"
"How did you move before Instructor Seraphine could start her circle?" The questions came with hesitation at first, then more quickly as students found courage in the fact that Noctis answered none of them with irritation.
"No," the vampire with cracked spectacles said when the question about vampires repeated from farther back, and he pushed his glasses higher while smoke drifted across his face. "All vampires definitely cannot do that." A few other vampire students nodded too quickly, and Noctis looked toward them with faint amusement before leaning one shoulder lightly against the fractured railing, careful not to put enough weight on it to break it completely.
"Most of it came from fighting things stronger than me and surviving long enough to learn from it," Noctis said while a maintenance worker nearby hammered a stabilizing spike into cracked stone and made several students flinch at the sudden metallic sound. "The movement technique takes timing, pressure control, and not wasting motion. The holy and abyssal powers are more complicated, so do not try forcing incompatible energies into your body unless you want to explode." Several students swallowed at that, and Noctis watched one beastkin boy who had been leaning closer slowly straighten again. "As for the dao wheels and transformation, that is not something I can teach casually."
The fox demon girl shifted around a chunk of broken stone near her foot while her tail moved faster despite her attempts to keep it still. "Can you teach anything we could actually use?" she asked, brushing soot from one sleeve where it had smeared against the collapsed railing as another repair crew dragged a broken barrier frame behind the group. "Like movement, battlefield control, or how you knew Instructor Seraphine's circle was useless in direct combat?"
Noctis looked across the students while Valdred's voice rose again behind him after one elder apparently tried to justify the aura suppression. "That part, yes," he said, and the students nearest him reacted physically before anyone spoke, several leaning in slightly, one boy tightening his grip on his notebook, another girl glancing toward her friend with widened eyes while trying not to smile too openly. "If you actually want to learn, I can teach you."
The fox demon took another half-step forward without seeming to notice until the broken stone shifted under her boot. "You'll teach us?" she asked while dust drifted down from a cracked barrier above and a healing team carried another enforcer past the rear of the group. Her voice wavered at the end despite her effort to steady it, and two students behind her started whispering over each other loudly enough that the ice witch beside them turned and hushed them without taking her eyes off Noctis.
"I accepted a mission earlier today," Noctis said while adjusting one glove and looking briefly toward the distant direction of the mission district beyond the damaged combat grounds. "So I cannot start now. When I come back, come to Kaeltharion's mansion."
The name of the mansion caused several students to exchange quick looks while the repair cart behind them jolted over a larger crack and sent a sharp rattle through the walkway. A beastkin student near the back craned his neck forward. "The upper district mansion with the forest walls?"
"The Vice Principal already gave it to me," Noctis said, and farther across the battlefield Valdred, as if hearing his title through the noise, turned briefly toward the group before returning to his reprimand with even sharper irritation. Noctis gave the students a faint smile. "If you show up after I return, I'll teach you how to become stronger."
The group did not erupt into noise all at once; it compressed inward first, caution and excitement tangling through small movements as students looked at one another, shifted closer, adjusted books and damaged uniforms, whispered questions about whether they were actually allowed to enter the mansion, and glanced toward Valdred as if expecting the Vice Principal to ban the idea immediately. The fox demon's tail moved so quickly behind her that the ice witch beside her finally noticed and looked away with a faint blush. The vampire with cracked spectacles started muttering possible training notes to himself while searching for an unburned page in his notebook. A horned demon girl who had been standing near the rear stepped closer until she was no longer hiding behind the others.
Noctis watched them for a moment while smoke moved across the shattered district and the restored sky remained calm overhead, then pushed away from the broken railing. To him, the arrangement was practical. The Academy instructors were not strong enough to teach him, but the students still had potential if they learned how actual combat worked before pride, theory, or slow formations got them killed. Behind him, Valdred continued yelling at the elders beside the damaged healing arrays, the Vajra survived beneath layers of regeneration seals, and Academy workers kept dragging pieces of the ruined combat district into organized piles as if order could be rebuilt one broken structure at a time.