Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest

A thud.

A bird—some mana-sensitive hawk species, likely drawn by the spike—fell from the sky in a clean spiral. No blood. No visible wound. Its wings never closed. Its body just stopped working.

A bird—some mana-sensitive hawk species, likely drawn by the spike—fell from the sky in a clean spiral. No blood. No visible wound. Its wings never closed. Its body just stopped working.

Dead before it realized what it flew into.

Leonard lowered his hand, eyes still calm.

The mana vanished. All of it. No residue. No echo. As if the spell had never existed.

Only the bird, still falling, served as proof.

Jasmine stared at the sky, jaw slightly slack. “…That wasn’t flash. What was that spell….It looked oddly similar to Irina’s but it was way more specific…”

Jasmine exhaled slowly. “That wasn’t just power. That was… built.”

Layla nodded, eyes still fixed on the space where the spell had passed. “I swear, it looked like the spell had scaffolding. Like it was holding itself together through geometry.”

Irina didn’t speak. Her gaze lingered on the fading shimmer in the sky, her fingers brushing her own palm in thought. Recognition stirred in her—not of the spell itself, but of its density. The control. It echoed things she had seen in Emberheart vaults. In sealed grimoires that bore warnings instead of titles.

But none of that registered for Leonard.

Because his world had narrowed.

Sharply.

The artifact beneath his shirt—the one carved from lunar silver, etched with the blessed glyph of Solstice Dawn’s forgotten god—was trembling.

Not violently.

But with certainty.

‘What…?’

Leonard’s breath caught.

Because he hadn’t felt that tremor in years.

Not once since taking it from his hand.

Not even when he tested it in cursed catacombs or fragment plains where the ambient mana thinned to whispers.

But now?

Now it moved. Reacted. Shivered like a beast awakening in chains.

The Kin of the Moon.

That was the signal.

The artifact’s design was simple: a detector, a warning, a relic tied to one fate. It was not supposed to respond to false signals. It did not react to bloodlines. It didn’t respond to stories. Only the presence of that specific mana structure—Lunar Resonance.

It was impossible.

And yet—

He turned his head slowly, eyes narrowing, breath measured.

Astron.

The boy hadn’t moved.

Hadn’t blinked.

He stood just as he had before—cool, calm, deliberate. Not even watching the falling bird.

But Leonard had seen it.

Felt it.

For the briefest moment—so faint that even Irina hadn’t picked it up—a sliver of mana had escaped him. Reflexive. Like a cough in the silence of night. And if Leonard had been farther, or weaker, or more distracted by the spell’s aftermath, he might have missed it.

But he didn’t.

And now his artifact was still shaking.

He stared at Astron for a long, quiet second.

No aura flare. No tension. No flicker of guilt or confusion. Not even curiosity.

Just stillness.

A silence that did not belong to a boy.

It belonged to the moon.

‘No. That can’t be right.’

His mind raced.

Everything he knew, everything he’d studied—Astron Natusalune wasn’t even on the list. No unknown parentage, no divine interference, no recorded distortions in his entrance exam.

And yet…

That mana.

That single pulse.

That was lunar.

He reached into his coat pocket subtly, fingers brushing the edge of the artifact. It had stopped trembling—but it was warm now.

Too warm.

Sylvie was saying something beside him—lighthearted, a teasing remark about how she hadn’t seen him cast anything in years—but Leonard barely heard it.

He looked again at Astron.

And this time… he didn’t just see a boy with discipline and quiet talent.

He saw a contradiction.

Because if Astron was the Kin of the Moon—

He didn’t know it.

Or he was hiding it better than anyone Leonard had ever seen.

His mouth went dry.

For the first time in weeks, Leonard felt it.

Not certainty.

But doubt.

Leonard’s hand tightened in his pocket.

Not visibly. Not with force.

But with the slow, deliberate curl of someone making a decision they already hates themselves for.

His mind spun like gears pressed too tightly—every piece of evidence snapping into place with the clarity that only hindsight granted.

Astron had never shown dominance. Never flare. Never anything loud.

Because of course he hadn’t.

The Kin of the Moon wouldn’t shine like sunfire. He would hide. Cloaked not in shadows—but in order.

All of Leonard’s assumptions—every diagnostic spell, every search through the rankings—had been built to detect something unstable. Something unnatural.

But Astron?

He was too natural.

Controlled. Silent. Deliberate. Like the moon.

‘He’s hiding it. Either by instinct… or design.’

And if that was true—if this wasn’t a false signal—then every wasted day, every wrong lead…

It ends here.

His thumb pressed against the activation rune of the relic inside his coat.

It would take half a second.

A single chant. A flared pulse.

He could kill Astron before anyone at this table even moved.

The artifact was already primed. The internal sigils were tailored to pierce layered protections—even divine ones. If Astron was the Kin, the spell would break him open before his body hit the ground.

And if he wasn’t?

Then Leonard would vanish before the first scream.

His jaw tensed.

His breath stilled.

“Forgive me, Sylvie.”

And just as the spell was about to activate—

A presence.

It wasn’t loud. Wasn’t sudden.

But it was overwhelming.

Cold.

Not elemental—but absolute. Like law. Like a weightless pressure descending from the ceiling of the world and settling just behind his spine.

Leonard’s hand froze.

His instincts—the same instincts honed through battles against wraithkin, daemons, and false prophets—screamed at him.

Do not move.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t turn.

But every nerve in his body registered it.

There was something here.

Something watching.

It wasn’t Sylvie. Not Jasmine or Layla or even Irina. Not even Astron, who looked no different now than he had a moment ago.

The air didn’t ripple when she arrived.

It simply obeyed.

The pressure that had anchored Leonard’s spine suddenly found shape—footsteps soft but purposeful, heels striking the stone with an unnatural calm. The mana in the air didn’t bristle. It retreated. Folded. Bent.

Every head turned.

A woman approached from the far end of the street. Yellow hair pulled into a clean, high tail that didn’t sway with her steps. Pale skin. Blue eyes that didn’t glow—but cut. Her presence was not that of a hunter stepping into a scene.

It was the arrival of gravity.

“What is going on here?” she asked, her voice level—flat as a drawn blade laid on silk.