Chapter 70: The Apex

The recommendation students were already seated in their designated places. His eyes found Elysia first. The moment she noticed him, she gave him a small wink.

Caelus immediately looked away.

The department heads occupied the central section of the stage, while several student council members stood behind them. His gaze passed over them until it found his sister among the council members.

Their eyes met.

Azrael was absent, which came as no surprise. He had little patience for formal occasions that existed mostly for appearances, and Caelus couldn’t blame him for that.

Then Caelus noticed the Headmaster.

Dover stood at the center of the stage in his true form, towering over almost everyone surrounding him.

Caelus gave him a small nod.

Dover smiled in response.

Whispers spread through the hall.

A Primordial was standing among them.

To the people of this world, Primordials were revered almost as beings adjacent to divinity. They represented the highest level of power an awakened could hope to reach, a realm so distant that most people could spend their entire lives without ever meeting one.

And here was one serving as their Headmaster.

Caelus looked toward the section reserved for the five highest-ranked students.

Eve was there.

Lucian sat beside her, along with two girls Caelus only half recognized. One of them seemed strangely familiar, while the other was someone he knew from the novel.

Caelus gave them a small nod before taking his assigned seat. ℴℴ𝘮

The doors of the auditorium closed.

The conversations gradually faded into murmurs, and the room settled into silence when Selene stepped forward.

Her speech was precisely what Caelus expected.

She explained the structure of the Academy, the departments, the ranking system and the consequences attached to breaking the rules. She reminded everyone that ranked students could challenge someone above them and that the challenged student had three chances to reject a duel.

A rejected challenge consumed one of those chances.

Accepting and winning restored the number to three.

Accepting and losing meant losing the rank.

It was simple enough.

The entire ranking system existed to make sure that students couldn’t hide behind status forever.

The department heads followed with their own speeches, each offering some variation of the same message: work hard, respect the Academy, become stronger and make the coming academic year worthwhile.

Several of them described the current generation as exceptional for surviving the hardest entrance examination in the Academy’s recent history.

Caelus suspected they would say the same thing next year.

Then Dover stepped forward.

Students who had been slouching in their seats straightened. Conversations stopped. Even those who had spent the earlier speeches looking bored were suddenly attentive.

Dover’s voice carried effortlessly across the entire hall.

"There was a time when humanity built walls."

The room became completely still.

"Those walls were built against things that came from beyond them. Monsters came through Corrupt Gates, disasters swallowed settlements overnight, and entire regions disappeared beneath the hands of creatures humanity had no means of fighting."

His gaze moved across the students.

"Humanity survived those years because people stronger than everyone who came before them appeared when the world needed them most."

His words reverberated through the hall.

"The Primordials and those who followed them pushed back against the corruption. They closed Gates, destroyed monsters, reclaimed lands and gave humanity something it had nearly forgotten how to possess."

Hope.

"Every generation that followed was built upon the sacrifices of the one before it. The streets beneath your feet exist because someone died defending them. The cities you call home stand because people stronger than you chose to fight creatures that could have ended everything."

Dover paused.

"The Academy was created for the same reason."

His expression hardened.

"It exists because peace is never permanent."

Caelus stopped listening somewhere around there.

He had heard most of this before.

The Academy had been designed as the world’s answer to the Corrupt. The students needed the story, the purpose, the weight behind the institution.

Caelus already knew all of it.

He had more important problems.

While Dover continued speaking about generations, sacrifice and the responsibility carried by those who would become humanity’s next champions, Caelus was thinking about something else entirely.

What was he supposed to say?

He had barely spoken to anyone outside his immediate circle since his Awakening. Whatever social instincts Lark had possessed had slowly rusted away during years of isolation, and Caelus had spent the last several months compensating for that deficiency with observation and calculation.

A speech was different.

There was nothing to calculate from.

Then he heard his name.

"Caelus Vespera, Rank One. Please come forward."

His thoughts stopped.

Caelus rose.

Every eye in the auditorium turned toward him.

He walked to the stage without changing his pace, though he could feel the hostility gathering from different corners of the room. Some were resentful. Others were envious. A few watched with open curiosity. A few students looked openly offended that the person standing above them was someone they had already decided didn’t deserve the position.

Caelus reached the podium and looked over the crowd.

He hadn’t prepared anything.

But his mouth moved before he could stop it.

"I had nothing to say at first. Partly because everyone here did their best to survive, and for a while, I thought that was worth acknowledging. But now that I’m standing before you as the Apex, I understand just how severely lacking all of you are."

The entire auditorium fell silent.

Caelus looked over the crowd.

"Look at yourselves. You’re already talking as though passing the entrance examination meant you had accomplished something, as though surviving was proof that you were special. It wasn’t. You barely survived."

His gaze moved across the rows of students.

"You were chosen because you met the minimum requirements to stand here, yet some of you are already complaining about why someone else was placed above you. For me, that doesn’t matter. I’ve seen what I needed to see, and I know that nothing will change simply because you’re dissatisfied with where you stand."

He rested a hand against the podium.

"It doesn’t matter whether you stand among the highest ranks or entered through a special admission. It doesn’t matter whether you stand alone or surround yourself with a group. None of it matters."

His eyes swept across the auditorium.

"Show me what you have."

His voice remained calm.

"Work harder. Keep climbing. Rise from whatever pit of disappointment you’ve buried yourselves in. The moment I stand before you, whatever talent, bloodline, recommendation, or advantage you thought made you special will mean nothing."

His eyes glowed dark as he looked down at the cadets.

"You will fall back where you belong, reduced to nothing more than a stepping stone for me."