The morning sun had barely cleared the spires of the Edrath capital when the Crimson Vanguard assembled in the private training courtyard. The air was crisp, carrying the scent of damp earth and the heavy, metallic tang of weapons being polished.
The preparations for the second trial had officially been released by the Academy committee. And unlike the chaotic free-for-all of the first round, the next phase was a structured, as a high-risk *DungeonExtractionTrial.*
Separate teams would be dropped into isolated, magical dungeons running deep beneath the dome. The core strategies for scoring were clear and entirely focused on three categories:
1. **Monster Core Harvesting:** Collecting high-yield cores from intermediate and high-rank beasts of the dungeon.
2. **Civilian Extraction:** Locating and safely rescuing magical phantoms acting as trapped civilians to earn points by head count.
3. **Survival Rate:** Maintaining team integrity under extreme environmental pressure.
Cassian stood on the elevated stone dais, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, and his eyes scanning his roster. He had a deep purple bruise forming on his jawline from a particular parry the night before, and his posture was stiff—defensively so.
Cassian had not looked toward the eastern pillar once since arriving, because standing by that pillar, completely ignoring his usual post three steps behind the prince's shoulder, was Sir Lucien Arden.
The Knight Commander had cleanly shaven his jaw, his pale skin looking sharp and unblemished in the morning light. And he had also left his heavy silver pauldrons off for the briefing, wearing only his dark leather vest over a white tunic. His silver hair, usually brushed back rigidly, fell slightly looser over his forehead. He was staring directly at the back of Cassian's head with a calm, predatory stillness. Enjoying his view.
"The plans for today's raid are not so strict so there's no need for all of you to tense up. We have raided dungeons at the North just a week ago and today is no different just as long as you follow command and pay attention to the strategies I'll assign to all of you." Cassian announced, his voice slightly sharper than usual as he tapped a large holographic details of the monster types and their weaknesses, revising what they already learned during classes. And in his hands rested a map of their assigned dungeon.
"Felix, your squad unit will handle the vanguard clearing. Honda, your daggers will be deployed solely for structural traps and civilian cut-aways and form route to evacuate the supposed civilians. And remember—....we are not hunting students this time, So if you waste time fighting other academies, you are throwing away efficiency."
"Understood, Commander!" Felix chirped, though his eyes kept darting between Cassian and Lucien. The atmosphere in the court was suffocatingly tense, and even the dense underclassmen could feel the strange, static electricity in the air.
"Uh... Your Highness? Is it just me, or is the tactical map upside down?"
Cassian blinked, looking down at the at the map on his hands.
"Oh, this is a spatial awareness exercise, Felix," Cassian lied instantly without a single shift in his expression. "And if you cannot read a map upside down, then your cognitive processing is lacking."
"Oh! Brilliant!" Felix nodded frantically, copying the inverted layout into his notebook.
From the shadow of the weapons rack, Sora sat quietly on a wooden bench, wearing his flawless raven-haired female glamour. His hands were resting lightly on his lap. His elven senses, highly attuned to the flow of mana, were picking up a truly bizarre frequency. Cassian's dark mana was spiking in erratic, defensive bursts every time Lucien shifted his weight.
Sora narrowed his eyes, a faint, bitter ache twisting his stomach.
'He's completely distracted today,' Sora thought, his lips tightening into a small pout.
'Is it because of what I said last night about breaking the bond? Is he already trying to detach himself from me?'
He looked down at his hands, feeling like a phantom in Cassian's world. 'Did I make a mistake by bringing that up?'
"To ensure absolute compliance with your survival," Cassian continued, clearing his throat and forcing his focus back to assigning roles, "Sir Arden will be conducting the pre-deployment inspection. He is a high-tier paladin and has vast knowledge when it comes to hunting monsters as the hero of our Empire. He will advice you on a few things he might only know that I don't, and of course his inspection of your armor is absolute."
Cassian stepped down from the dais, intending to walk straight past the knight to check the supply crates.
"Your Highness," Lucien's deep, rough voice cut through the courtyard. He didn't move from the pillar, but his ice-blue eyes locked onto Cassian's face with a devastating, slow smirk. "Your collar is slightly misaligned on the left side. Allow me."
Before Cassian could calculate a retreat, Lucien stepped directly into his personal space. The scent of fresh mint and cedar wood flooded Cassian's senses, instantly triggering the intense, vivid memory of the kiss on top of the cold cobblestones and the rigid heat he had felt against his thighs at midnight.
Lucien raised his large, calloused hand, his fingers slowly brushing against the fabric of Cassian's collar. His thumb deliberately grazed the sensitive skin of Cassian's throat, a soft, lingering pressure that was entirely unnecessary for fixing a uniform.
"There," Lucien whispered, his voice smooth and dangerously low, meant only for the prince's ears. "A Holy Knight must ensure his Crown Prince looks pristine before a grand hunt. After all... I am learning to pay very close attention to your specific advice from last night, your highness."
Cassian's entire body went rigid. His eyes dilated with an erratic, manic flash of pure panic. His heart did that strange leap against his ribs again, his chest heaving as he violently slapped Lucien's hand away from his neck.
"That is sufficient, Sir Arden!" Cassian snapped, his voice a little too loud, causing Honda and Helena to pause their spell-craft calibrations to look over.
"Is something wrong, Commander?" Honda asked, blinking in confusion. "Your face is... kind of red. Did you catch a fever?"
"I am fine," Cassian deadpanned, his fists clenching at his sides as he stepped three paces back from Lucien. "Honda, return to your drills. Sir Arden was merely... identifying a flaw in my dressing."
"Indeed," Lucien chuckled softly, folding his arms across his broad chest, his eyes dripping with amusement as he watched the prince lose his absolute composure. "A very severe flaw. One that leaves the commander entirely exposed if handled incorrectly."
Cassian glared at the paladin, his mind frantically running simulations on how to legally execute a guard without causing a diplomatic crisis with the Holy See.
'Lucien, you are an absolute anomaly. I am erasing you from my system the moment this tournament concludes,' he thought fiercely, his teeth grinding.
"Vanguard! Pack your gear!" Cassian shouted, turning his back on the smug knight and marching toward the transport gates with an uncharacteristically hurried stride. "The portals to the intermediate dungeons open in exactly twenty minutes. If anyone is late, I will personally use you as monster bait for the high-rank extraction!"
As the students scrambled to gather their supplies, Sora stood up from the bench, his quiet glare shifting from Cassian's retreating back straight to the silver-haired paladin. His feminine glamour masked his expression, but his ancient Moonborn instincts were screaming.
Something had completely changed between his mate and the shadow protector during the dark hours of the night—and for the first time, the forbidden elf felt a cold, terrifying dread that he wasn't the only one capable of destabilizing the Crown Prince's perfect logic. But so was Lucien Arden.
*****
The transition from the sunny training grounds to the deep, damp staging area of the intermediate dungeons' entrance was swift. The massive stone arena was filled with all the academies at maximum capacity, but the chatter in the stands was entirely different from the day before.
Just before the gates were set to unlock the assigned dungeons, a sudden, booming decree echoed from the highest royal box, commanding for everyone's attention at once. One of the high-tier foreign spectators—a powerful, retired war hero from the Western Marches—had loudly demanded a brand-new form of entertainment for the second trial. They claimed that watching simple academy students hunt was a waste of resources and rather seemed to simple, predictable and lousy. Instead, they proposed a structural change to the trial, each institution would now be required to deploy two of their respective veterans or national heroes directly into the raid along with their students. The stated goal was to ignite competition even among the most legendary figures of the continent.
But in all honesty, the political maneuver was transparent. The foreign factions simply wanted to see Crown Prince Cassian's hidden strength for themselves and test his combat limits before the upcoming war seasons and Cassian could see right through them, after all they have been on his case with the Crimson Vanguard.
And rather than Cassian taking offense, he heeded the suggestion without a single moment of hesitation. After all, his dark mana had been humming restlessly inside his veins all morning; he was thoroughly itching to train his magic and test his personal spell trajectories under real pressure. And since the decree required the nation's absolute best, Sir Lucien Arden, the renowned Hero of the Empire, was naturally chosen to participate alongside him.
"Seemingly the tides of the second trial have shifted," Lucien smirked sparing a glance towards Cassian.
"Nonetheless the objective still remains unchanged Sir Arden we'll drag those westerners doubts to the mud," Cassian deadpanned as he stood on forefront of his assembled squad as the heavy iron portal gates began to glow with blue teleportation mana.
"Now my children as you have heard, Sir Arden and I will be entering the rift along with you but do not rely on our presence to clear your sectors. Maintain your formations and follow through with the plan."
"Whoa, we get to fight alongside the Commander *and* the Knight Commander?!" Felix cheered, adjusting his leather gauntlets. "This is going to be a complete slaughterhouse!"
Sora stood near the back of the group, he stood firmly in place, he had no idea why he tagged along while lacking knowledge about combat and dungeon raids. He just found himself already part of the team.
And beneath his simple academy female-tunic, his hands tightly clutched his stomach. He felt a deep, twisting ache in his core. The sudden changes to the trial meant he would be under Cassian's direct observation the entire time, making it infinitely harder to hide the heavy toll the pregnancy was already taking on his mana reserves.
With a loud, magical crack, the team was instantly deployed into the depths of the assigned high-tier dungeon. The environment was a cramped, suffocating network of dark stone caverns, the air freezing and thick with the stench of moss and ancient beasts.
To keep Lucien as far away from him as physically possible, Cassian immediately assigned himself to the absolute tip of the vanguard, leaving Lucien to guard the rear with the fragile "civilian phantoms" they were tasked to rescue.
"Felix, advance ten paces. Honda, clear the left flank," Cassian ordered, his voice echoing off the damp cave walls. His hands glowed with a sharp, chilling golden-blue mana as he systematically blasted through a minor pack of intermediate cave wolves, his movements precise and entirely robotic. The other students gathered the monster cores behind him.
But the dungeon's internal environment were brutal and as they descended into a massive, hollow stone cavern, the ground violently trembled. A sudden structural collapse blocked the path they had just walked through, and a massive, high-rank Obsidian Golem dropped straight from the ceiling, landing right between the vanguard and the rear guard.
The massive beast roared, its stone body pulsing with a heavy earth-element shield.
"Maintain your formations!" Cassian shouted, his analytical mind immediately processing the situation. "The outer armor is completely immune to basic physical strikes. It requires two high-tier mages to simultaneously strike the core from opposite vertical angles to open its weak point!"
"I've got your back, My Prince," Lucien's deep voice boomed through the darkness.
Before Cassian could even object him to avoid working together, he was forced to leap into the fray side by side with the paladin. The cavern was cramped and pitch black, forcing their combat trajectories to overlap either way.
Cassian leaped into the air, channeling a massive lance of his blue hued vortex, but the golem swung its massive stone arm in a sweeping, horizontal trajectory that would have swatted the prince out of the air.
*THUD!*
Suddenly, Lucien lunged from behind. His massive, broad frame pressed flush against Cassian's back, his strong arms wrapping firmly around Cassian's waist to physically lift him over the sweeping strike and the sheer physical weight of the knight's chest pressed against his shoulder blades, completely locking their bodies together mid-air as they cleared from the danger.
"Sir Arden!"
"Still scared of me, My Prince?" Lucien smugly whispered straight into Cassian's ear, his hot breath brushing against the prince's neck.
Cassian flinched. His heart racing straight to 180 BPM, a frantic surge of panic blinding his senses. "Unhand me, you dirty paladin!" Cassian hissed, but he was forced to maintain the stance away from the golem's perimeters.
Using the vertical height Lucien provided, Cassian unleashed his vortex magic while Lucien drove his holy-infused blade straight into the golem's lower joint. The dual combination of a destructive and holy mana violently disrupted the monster's core to pieces, causing the massive stone beast to explode into a shower of heavy pebbles.
Cassian immediately scrambled out of Lucien's grip the second his boots hit the floor, his face bright red as he tried to stabilize his breathing.
But the chaos wasn't over. The explosion of the golem had triggered an immediate, secondary wave of the dungeon's defense mechanism. A massive, hyper-aggressive horde of intermediate cave spiders flooded out of the rocky walls, rushing straight toward the underclassmen in the dead centre.
Sora, watching the intense, suffocating physical interaction between Cassian and Lucien from the shadows, felt a sudden, toxic wave of burning jealousy hijack his system.
'Why is the Crown Prince letting that knight touch him like that?!' Sora thought, his eyes unmoving from Cassian and Lucien. Totally oblivious to the approaching monster horde. Just then a sudden, blinding agony erupted in his lower belly. The imperial child within him, sensing the relentlessness in his energy and the chaotic surge of his emotions, violently began draining his remaining reserves dry. Sora's vision went completely blurry, his female glamour flickering dangerously as he stumbled over a rock trying to cover his face, completely exposed to a massive spider lunging straight for his throat.
"Sora!!" Cassian shouted, his crimson eyes dilating in sheer panic as he turned to run toward him, too far away to bridge the distance in time.
*BANG!*
A blinding flash of pure, pristine holy light cut through the darkness.
Lucien arrived first. Moving with the impossible, explosive speed of a legendary hero, the Knight Commander thrusted his massive holy great sword directly into the cave spider, completely crushing the beast into a paste against the cavern wall.
Before Sora could hit the damp ground, Lucien reached down with one powerful arm, scooping him up and pulling him safely against his broad chest. He unleashed a small wave of his own dense mana to stabilize the surrounding air in a form of barrier, ensuring his glamour didn't completely collapse in front of the other students.
Cassian skidded to a halt right in front of them, his breath ragged, his chest heaving as he stared at the scene.
Lucien slowly turned, his ice-blue eyes locking onto the prince's frantic face. With a slow, deliberate movement, he handed the trembling, exhausted elf back into Cassian's waiting arms. The look the paladin gave the prince was incredibly intense, heavy, and dripping with a silent, cautious glance.
Sora clutched Cassian's uniform, his breath hitching as his highly sensitive elven senses finally picked up the residual, overlapping mana frequencies between the two men. The static electricity, the defensive spikes, the unhinged possessiveness—it was all identical to the energy he had felt during their brief meeting in the morning. Sora looked up at Cassian's flustered face, a cold, terrifying dread settling deep within his heart, and now he was certain, Cassian and Lucien had definitely done something behind his back. Something intimate and irreversible that had changed their dynamics.
As Felix and Honda ran over to check on them, Sora finally calmed down and his mana stabalized once again maintaining his glamour.
'What's the point of dwelling on it all when our bond will be broken in the end?....I was not supposed to be here from the beginning.'
*****