Novel Full Chapter 86: What Nearly Dying Was Worth
The dorm room was dark, quiet, and smelled faintly of Felix’s boot polish.
Felix was currently face-down on his bunk, snoring loudly enough to rattle the wooden bedframe. Arthur sat on the edge of his own mattress, leaning back against the cold stone wall. He was still shirtless, his chest tightly wrapped in Matron Beatrice’s clean white bandages.
His ribs throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache every time he breathed, but Arthur ignored it. He stared straight ahead into the empty air.
A crisp blue interface hovered in the darkness.
[Status Records Updated.]
[Recent Combat Experience Processed.]
[Attribute Review Available.]
[Party Analysis Available.]
The interface offered no congratulations. It simply displayed the results of the past few weeks in clean rows of numbers, skill records, and combat notes.
Arthur expanded the [Attribute Review].
[Arthur Vance]
[Class: Phantom Sniper — Unique]
[Level: 27]
[Strength: 44]
[INT: 30]
[Dexterity: 115]
[Perception: 108]
[Mana: 320]
[Stamina: 38]
He didn’t obsess over the individual values. He looked for the trends. His strongest areas were exactly what he expected: [Dexterity] and [Perception]. His mobility, tactical awareness, and weapon-switching speed had all improved since the last time he checked, helped by the crawler dives, combat drills, and the midterm’s cramped terrain. His proficiency with the Silver Bow and his twin daggers was climbing rapidly.
Then he checked the warnings.
The numbers made the problem painfully obvious. His physical resilience and [Stamina] were lagging dangerously behind his tactical strengths. The interface flagged heavy strain from repeated use of Shadow Step, along with poor impact recovery.
The problem was simple. His plans assumed his body could keep up with them. The Stalker had proved otherwise by introducing his ribs to a tree root.
Arthur sighed. His mind was faster than his bones. Morwenna was going to enjoy fixing that far too much.
The heavy wooden door to the dorm room clicked open.
Arthur didn’t reach for a weapon. He already knew the heavy, confident footsteps.
Emily slipped into the room, closing the door quietly behind her. She was wearing loose sweatpants and a training tank top, carrying a napkin wrapped around a massive, leftover slab of roasted meat from The Gilded Griffin.
She looked at Arthur sitting in the dark, staring at numbers.
"I knew you’d still be awake," Emily whispered, walking over to his bunk. "You’re doing that thing where you stare at numbers until your eyes bleed."
"The numbers are educational," Arthur replied quietly.
Before she could sit in the desk chair, Arthur reached out, caught her by the waist, and pulled her down.
Emily let out a short squeak of surprise as she landed squarely on his lap. She immediately tensed, trying to lift her weight off him. "Arthur, your ribs—"
"Are fine," Arthur interrupted, resting his hands casually on her hips to keep her in place. "Stop moving. You’ll actually crack them if you try to stand up."
Emily glared at him in the dark, but she settled her weight carefully across his thighs, leaning her back against his uninjured shoulder. She didn’t complain about the proximity. Instead, she tore off a piece of the roasted meat and popped it into her mouth.
Arthur looked over her shoulder at the blue screen, opening the [Party Analysis] tab.
"Let’s see how much you broke the scaling," Arthur murmured.
[Emily Thorne — Level 30 | Class: Brawler]
[Felix — Level 23 | Class: Shieldbearer]
[Chloe — Level 22 | Class: Combat Healer]
Emily’s status was exactly as unreasonable as expected. Her [Strength] and [Endurance] were both near the top of the first-year cohort. Her proficiency with the Titan Knuckles had risen sharply across the evaluation, with the Guardian fight accounting for most of the gain. But what caught Arthur’s eye was a secondary metric.
"Your defensive contribution went up," Arthur noted. "By a lot."
Emily chewed her meat. "My what?"
"You gained almost as much experience from protecting the back line as you did from hitting the Guardian."
Emily swallowed, looking away casually. "Obviously. I was doing that on purpose."
Arthur smirked in the dark. "You definitely weren’t. Nice to know your protective instincts are finally catching up to your violence."
Emily elbowed him lightly in the stomach, just low enough to avoid his bruised ribs.
Arthur switched the screen to Felix. The vanguard’s direct damage output was abysmal—almost nonexistent. But his shield proficiency had risen sharply, along with his defensive rating and formation skill. Felix’s true value wasn’t in hitting things; it was his absolute refusal to die when most first-years would have panicked and broken formation.
Then Arthur pulled up Chloe’s data.
She had gained two levels through support progression. Her physical defense was still terrible, but her [Mana Control] and [Healing Proficiency] had risen sharply. Her growth was not tied to kills. The support breakdown measured successful healing, light-magic control, battlefield stabilization, and how long she kept the squad combat-capable.
"Chloe gained a lot," Arthur said quietly.
"She didn’t freeze when the Stalker rushed her," Emily agreed, leaning her head back against his collarbone. "She’s getting harder to scare."
Arthur dismissed the private party screen and opened the academy’s updated first-year records. He couldn’t see the exact numerical stats for Leon’s squad, but the public role assessments were fully updated for the cohort.
Leon led the entire first-year class in raw burst damage. Alicia held the highest score in formal weapon technique. Cedric was the undisputed leader in defensive bulk, and Elara’s mana refinement was unusually high.
But Squad 7 held the weird, practical metrics. Emily led the cohort in raw physical force. Chloe had climbed into the upper end of the cohort’s support rankings, with the highest stabilization score among the students who entered Composite Block C. And Arthur ranked first in adaptive strategy and route exploitation.
Arthur lingered on the individual rankings. He studied Leon’s burst damage rating, his mind already calculating the exact spacing he would need to counter a fully charged Holy Strike in a one-on-one fight. He started analyzing Alicia’s sword metrics, looking for the physical stamina drop-off.
Emily watched the faint blue light of the screen reflecting in Arthur’s eyes. She knew exactly what he was doing.
She reached up, resting her hand over his, pulling his fingers away from the interface controls.
Arthur blinked, looking down at her.
"You’re looking at the wrong part," Emily said.
Arthur glanced down at her.
"You didn’t beat Leon’s damage score. You’re not suddenly a better swordsman than Alicia either." She tapped the squad summary. "We tied because you actually used the rest of us properly. Felix held the line. Chloe kept everyone moving. I broke whatever you pointed at."
"A highly technical summary."
"You listened," Emily said. "That was the important part."
She tore off another piece of meat and held it up to his mouth.
Arthur looked at the meat, then at her. He opened his mouth and ate it.
He considered arguing, mostly out of habit. Instead, he closed the individual rankings and returned to the squad summary.
"Fair enough," he said quietly.
Emily smiled, leaning her weight fully against him, content to sit in the dark while he finished reading the squad’s progression.
Ten minutes later, a soft hum broke the silence.
The delivery rune beside the dorm door flashed once. A sheet of heavy official parchment slid through the gap and came to rest on the stone floor.
Emily climbed off Arthur’s lap and picked it up, holding it up to the faint moonlight filtering through the window.
"Both joint-first squads report to the Evaluation Office at eight tomorrow morning," she read. "Reward selection and post-exam debriefing."
From the other bunk, Felix shifted without waking.
"Take the voucher," he mumbled heavily into his pillow.
Emily stared at him. "Was he listening?"
"Felix can sense financial opportunities in his sleep," Arthur noted.
Arthur closed the interface and let his head fall back against the cold stone wall.
"Joint first, cracked ribs, and mandatory paperwork," he sighed. "Academy life was a scam."