Chapter 71: A Ball

The auditorium fell silent.

Not even the restless movement that usually followed a long speech remained. Hundreds of students sat frozen in their seats, staring toward the podium while Caelus stood there with one hand resting loosely against its edge.

He waited.

He had expected someone to object, perhaps some student with enough pride to forget that he was standing in front of the entire Academy. Instead, the silence dragged on until Caelus finally let a faint smile reach his lips.

"That concludes my speech."

The words broke the silence more effectively than anything else could have.

Caelus stepped away from the podium and walked back toward his seat.

Several department heads were still staring at him, some with their mouths slightly open, others exchanging brief looks that suggested none of them had prepared for this particular interpretation of an Apex speech. A few seemed annoyed. One had already pinched the bridge of his nose.

Eve was smiling.

Elysia was smiling as well, though for an entirely different reason.

His sister watched him return with a look Caelus rarely saw directed at him.

Pride.

He ignored all three reactions and sat down as though he had done nothing more remarkable than read from a prepared script.

The students below the stage were less restrained.

Whispers erupted from different sections of the auditorium, spreading rapidly through the crowd as people leaned toward one another.

"Did he seriously just say that?"

"He’s got some nerve."

"A D-potential talking to us like that?"

"I thought House Vespera said he wouldn’t amount to anything."

"Then how did he become the Apex?"

"Maybe the Vesperas knew he had more potential than they claimed."

"Or maybe they were wrong."

A voice from somewhere in the commoner section lowered itself to a whisper.

"I still think he’s a Contractor. There isn’t another explanation for what he did."

Someone beside him turned.

"If Contractors could casually walk into an Academy in the presence of Primordials, we wouldn’t be having this conversation."

The student fell silent.

The whispers continued around them, but the accusation did not return.

Yet beneath the anger, disbelief and speculation, many of the students carried another feeling that they were less willing to admit.

They remembered the way Caelus had looked at them.

There had been no laughter in his voice and no theatrical pause meant to make the insult land harder. He had simply looked across the auditorium as though he were assessing hundreds of people one by one, deciding where they stood and how much they were worth.

Then he had dismissed them.

The worst part was that he had seemed completely sincere.

Selene eventually stepped forward and cleared her throat, pulling the room’s attention back toward the stage.

"That concludes the award ceremony."

Her voice carried evenly through the hall.

"Official classes will begin tomorrow. Until then, the Academy will be holding a formal ball this evening in honor of the graduating fourth-year students."

Excited murmurs immediately rose among the younger students.

"All first through third-year students are expected to attend," Selene continued. "The event begins at sunset, and attendance will be recorded at the entrance."

Caelus listened without much interest until the word ball caught up with his memory.

Right.

The fourth-years were leaving the Academy.

The event had technically appeared in the original story, but barely. Caelus had mentioned it in passing when writing the Academy arc, treating it as a piece of background chronology rather than an event worth developing.

He had never written enough to know what actually happened there.

Now he was expected to attend with almost no information.

Caelus resisted the urge to sigh.

Of all the things his unfinished manuscript had failed to prepare him for, apparently formal social events were among the more dangerous.

He could deal with that later.

His attention shifted toward the faculty seating area.

Veyra was nowhere in sight.

She might have been moving through the Academy in disguise, or she might still have been carrying out whatever assignment Dover had sent her on. Either way, Caelus wanted to find her before the day became any busier.

He had barely turned toward one of the side exits when a voice came from beside him.

"Searching for someone?"

Caelus turned.

Dover stood there.

Caelus had heard nothing. Felt nothing. Even with the Eclipse Ring quietly sharpening his perception, there had been no trace of mana approaching, no pressure in the air, no movement entering the edge of his senses.

Caelus kept his expression controlled, though his attention sharpened.

If Dover had wanted to kill him, there would have been no warning.

If he had wanted to kill everyone in the auditorium, Caelus wasn’t certain the first student would even have realized something was wrong before it was over.

Primordials were just that different. Every aspect of their existence stood on another level, from their strength and speed to their perception and command over mana. The gap wasn’t something that could be measured simply by ranks.

Dover smiled.

"Your master is waiting for you in the Martial Artist Department Head Office."

Caelus nodded.

Dover watched him leave with the same amused expression he’d worn throughout the ceremony.

Caelus made his way toward the auditorium’s main exit, passing through the rows of students who were still gathering their things and talking among themselves. Conversations followed him, some stopping entirely as he passed.

Glyphs flickered as large doors opened onto the Academy grounds, and Caelus stepped outside.

The noise of the auditorium faded behind him as the open air replaced it. Broad stone paths stretched between the Academy’s buildings, crowded with students heading toward their next destinations.

His black uniform made him impossible to overlook among the sea of silver blazers.

Several upper-year students noticed him almost immediately.

"Another Vespera this year?"

"Wait, that’s Caelus Vespera."

"The bastard son?"

"Wasn’t he D-potential?"

"That’s what I heard."

"Then why is he wearing the Apex uniform?"

"You haven’t heard?"

"He came first in the entrance examination."

The conversation followed him for several more steps, joined by whispers from other groups.

"There were fewer survivors than expected..."

"He killed the S-rank."

Caelus continued walking.

He had already heard enough versions of the same question to stop caring about it.

The Martial Artist Department occupied one of the larger buildings on the Academy grounds. The atmosphere changed as soon as he entered.

This place had been designed to produce fighters.

Training equipment filled the open areas, practice weapons lined the walls, and the air carried the faint smell of sweat, leather and treated metal. Students moved between training rooms with loosened collars and damp hair, their muscles already strained from morning drills.

Caelus passed through the entrance without stopping.

A few instructors glanced at him as he went by, recognition flickering when they noticed the black uniform.

He continued deeper into the building until the noise gradually thinned.

The department head’s office stood at the end of a quiet corridor.

Caelus stopped before the door.

He knocked twice, waited briefly, then opened it.

He stepped inside and froze.

Veyra sat behind the desk.

Caelus had seen her countless times before, but never like this.

Her dark-purple hair, normally secured in a practical ponytail, had been released. It fell freely over her shoulders and down her back in thick, loose waves, its dark strands carrying faint violet hues that seemed to shift beneath the light. The air around her looked still, yet the mana within it was constantly shifting, flowing around her in patterns Caelus could neither follow nor fully perceive. Her presence reached him before he fully understood what he was sensing.

Her posture was relaxed, yet something about the room made it difficult to look away from her.

Caelus was reminded that the woman he knew was only the version of Veyra she allowed the world to see.

Caelus nearly forgot to breathe, but he caught himself almost immediately and forced his expression back into place.

Veyra lifted her eyes.

The familiar violet gaze met his.

There was none of the playful warmth she sometimes allowed herself while disguised.

She simply watched him.

Then she gestured toward the chair opposite the desk.

"Sit."