Chapter 235: The Uncultured Toad?! (Kofi Donation Bonus)

[Special Thanks To AshWyvern776 for the $100 Ko-fi Donation! As promised, here’s the ten Chapter Mass Release!]

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Nicholas Grey did not blink.

He stood beside the polished marble pillar, his datapad hanging loosely at his side, his sharp, aristocratic eyes dissecting Creed Walden with the cold precision of a surgeon.

Nicholas had spent his entire life surrounded by the so-called "monsters" of the Four Great Families. He knew what breakthrough looked like.

He knew the signs of someone who had consumed high-grade elixir pills, who had bathed in dragon marrow, or who had expanded their meridian pathways through expensive ancestral arts.

This wasn’t that.

Creed smelled of dried copper and old stone. His dark blue uniform was torn at the shoulder, stained with rust-brown patches of dried blood, and the simple navy headband was tied so tight across his brow it pressed against the bridge of his nose.

Yet, as Creed took a single step forward, the subtle displacement of the ambient air didn’t just ripple—it parted.

The slight, frantic edge Creed had carried yesterday after failing the simulation was entirely wiped clean.

His presence had sunken inward, coiled and dense, like an iron anchor resting at the bottom of a frozen sea.

Nicholas felt a prickle of cold heat crawl up the back of his neck. It was jealousy, pure and sharp.

Nicholas had placed second in the Pyramid of Dominion. He had spent his evening analyzing runic logs, calculating political leverage, and nursing the bruises from the Gravity Basin.

When they first met, he had told himself that Creed was merely an unpolished brute who had stumbled upon an SSS-rank talent. But looking at the terrifying stillness now radiating from Creed’s frame, Nicholas knew better.

The gap hadn’t shrunk. In twenty-four hours, the bastard had pulled further ahead.

Nicholas didn’t sneer. He didn’t drop a sarcastic remark to mask his inadequacy. His jaw tightened, his fingers digging into the edge of his datapad until his knuckles turned ivory.

A cold, stubborn fire lit behind his gray eyes.

’If an orphan from Section 7 can climb this fast on scraps, I have no excuse,’ Nicholas thought coldly. ’I won’t be left behind. Not by him. Not by anyone.’

"You look like you wrestled an industrial trash compactor," Nicholas said smoothly, tucking the datapad into his coat and masking his inner turbulence behind his usual refined smile.

"Though I assume you didn’t spend twenty-four hours in Private Chamber Prime just to redesign your wardrobe."

Creed paused, leaning lazily against the wall, crossing his arms. "The air in there has a kick. Better than the cheap tea you probably sip from your family’s porcelain sets."

Nicholas stepped forward, his voice dropping so low it barely traveled an inch beyond the collar of his coat. "And the mark? Did it act up?"

Creed’s lips curled into a faint, knowing smirk. He glanced at the high stiff collar of Nicholas’s uniform, where the obsidian fractal burn remained hidden against the silver-haired boy’s skin.

"Let’s just say," Creed murmured, his tone infuriatingly casual, "the mark isn’t just an ugly tattoo. It has an appetite. When you push your comprehension to the breaking point... it doesn’t just watch. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

It shows you who held the leash before you. If you want to survive when it wakes up, Grey, don’t try to build a dam. Give the flood a mouth."

Nicholas froze. His gray pupils contracted violently.

’Give the flood a mouth?’

Before Nicholas could demand an explanation, Creed tapped two fingers against the side of his headband in a mock salute, pushed off the wall, and strolled past him down the polished corridor.

"See you tonight at eight, partner," Creed’s voice floated back, carrying that maddening, lazy confidence.

"Don’t forget your camera."

Nicholas stood in the empty concourse, staring at Creed’s retreating back. He slowly reached up, his fingertips pressing through his uniform against the jagged scar on his collarbone.

It throbbed faintly, as if reacting to the words.

Nicholas exhaled a long, steady breath, his posture snapping straight.

"A mouth, huh?" Nicholas muttered, a razor-thin smile returning to his face. "Fine. Let’s see who bites harder."

Creed took the high glass-paneled skyway toward the central campus, breathing in the fresh morning breeze that drifted up from the outer clouds.

His body felt light. Not just physically light, but unburdened. With his Path of Freedom sitting firmly in the Profound Realm, every stride felt like gliding.

The heavy dimensional spear strapped across his back felt like a feather.

He rounded the corner near the lower plaza of the Central Hub—an open-air terrace paved in white stone and surrounded by floating crystalline hedges.

Normally, this area was populated by disciplined students hurrying toward morning lectures.

Today, however, an absurd, chaotic commotion was unfolding right in front of the ornamental koi pond.

"I demand justice! I demand adherence to the ancient laws of wager!" a shrill, ridiculously dramatic voice wailed from the center of the terrace.

Creed stopped in his tracks, blinking.

Standing beside a decorative marble lantern was a small, round, bald-headed boy whose scalp reflected the morning sun like a freshly polished brass pot. He was wearing the basic-class dark blue uniform, completely unadorned, his short arms flailing wildly.

Pascal.

Surrounding him were three towering upperclassmen. Two of them were broad-shouldered second-years in heavy combat vests, crossing their arms with amused, predatory smirks.

The third was a tall, strikingly beautiful second-year girl with short-cropped crimson hair, wearing a tight leather dueling corset and high boots.

A massive, two-handed battle hammer rested casually against her shoulder, its head crackling with tiny static sparks.

"You lost the bet, little melon," the crimson-haired girl said, her voice dripping with dangerous amusement as she tapped the hammer’s shaft against her boot.

"The rules were simple. You claimed you could endure ten seconds inside my localized lightning field without flinching, and if you did, I had to give you my comms frequency and let you ’accompany me to the starlight banquet’."

Pascal puffed his chest out, though his knees were visibly knocking together inside his trousers. "A noble pursuit of romance! A clash of destinies between a rising dragon and a fiery phoenix!"

"And," the girl continued, her amber eyes narrowing into slits, "if you failed, you had to strip to your boxers, paint ’I am an uncultured toad’ across your chest in permanent runic dye, and run three laps around the perimeter of the Elite Quad."

"You cheated!" Pascal squawked, jumping an inch off the ground. "You didn’t say the lightning field would have a static attraction pulse that pulled on my trousers! That was an unprovoked assault on my modesty! The heavens will not tolerate such deceit!"

"You lasted exactly two seconds before you shrieked like a boiled kettle and fell face-first into the flowerbed, kid," one of the broad-shouldered cronies laughed, cracking his knuckles. "Pay up. Strip, or we peel the uniform off you ourselves."

"Do not lay your filthy hands upon the garment of destiny!" Pascal shouted, backing away toward the koi pond, his heel slipping on the wet edge.

Then, Pascal’s eyes darted past the cronies’ shoulders.

He saw Creed.

Pascal froze. His eyes widened to the size of saucers. A look of absolute, shameless, desperate salvation washed over his chubby face.