Chapter 80: An Awakened Is A Killer

As Caelus and Mira reached the lecture hall, the chatter of students was already audible through the doors. Most of the class had arrived.

The room was enormous compared with the ordinary classrooms Caelus imagined from the novel’s description. Despite holding one-third of the entrance-exam survivors, it had been designed with enough space for every student to clearly observe the lecturer while remaining visible from the front.

The arrangement also made finding familiar faces easy.

Lucian, the Hero, sat near the front, with the Saintess behind him and the Beast Tribe Princess beside him.

The Saintess had not attended the ball.

Caelus had a fairly good idea why.

The Church could hardly have been pleased with their Hero sitting at Rank Three beneath a commoner and a cripple from House Vespera. The Saintess might have wanted to avoid drawing attention to the matter, or perhaps the Church had wanted her nearby for exactly that reason.

Either way, her absence from the ball had amused him.

People really do whimper when things stop going their way.

Caelus looked toward the front again.

The Saintess turned at almost the same moment.

Their eyes met and neither of them looked away.

After several seconds, the Saintess abruptly turned back toward the lecturer’s desk.

Caelus did the same and continued toward the back rows.

Leon wasn’t there.

He probably had been placed in another section.

Caelus scanned the room again, identifying the other familiar faces. Cale sat several rows ahead beside Ben. Elysia noticed him almost immediately and waved her hand.

Caelus returned the greeting.

The small exchange drew a handful of curious glances from the students nearby.

Further across the room sat the Elven Princess, surrounded by several elves whose expressions made their opinion of the rest of humanity fairly obvious.

Caelus looked around once more.

Every seat was occupied except one.

He walked toward it.

The student sitting beside the empty seat looked up when Caelus stopped in front of him.

"Stand up."

The student blinked.

"Huh?"

Caelus regarded him.

"What’s your name?"

The student frowned, clearly unsure where the question was going.

"Why?"

Caelus smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

"My father will be interested in it once I talk to him."

The color drained from the student’s face.

He stood so quickly that his chair scraped against the floor.

Caelus sat down.

He watched the student retreat toward another row.

Power really does corrupt.

Days into holding the Academy’s highest rank and being a noble, he was already abusing his family name to steal seats.

He turned toward Mira.

"Sit."

Mira stared at him, her mouth slightly open.

Caelus raised an eyebrow.

She quickly sat.

He settled into his own seat and looked toward the front.

The lecture hall doors closed.

A man entered and Caelus recognized him immediately.

Byzed von Maleyhem.

One of the Academy’s renowned S-rank Martial Artists.

From a distance, his physical build looked almost ordinary. He wasn’t unusually large, and his frame lacked the exaggerated proportions of some high-level Martial Artists.

Up close, that impression disappeared.

Every muscle was defined with unnerving clarity, compact and deliberate, the result of years spent refining his body rather than simply enlarging it. There was a contained density to him that reminded Caelus of pressure held inside a sealed vessel.

Byzed placed his teaching materials on the desk and looked across the room for a while. When he spoke, his voice didn’t come out as soft at all.

"What does it mean to be an Awakened?"

A student near the center stood.

"An Awakened is someone who protects people from Corrupt creatures and closes Gates."

Byzed nodded.

"Textbook answer."

The student remained standing.

"It is correct," Byzed continued. "But that’s not the point."

The student sat.

Byzed looked over the class.

"Anyone else?"

Nobody answered.

The first response had been perfectly valid. Most of the students simply didn’t understand what else he expected from them.

Byzed folded his arms.

"An Awakened closes Gates. An Awakened protects people from Corrupt creatures. Fine. How do you do that?"

The room remained silent, waiting for the answer.

"You kill."

The word landed without drama.

"You kill the Corrupt creature. That’s how you protect the people behind you. That’s how you close the Gate. If the creature leaves behind something useful, you collect it. If someone needs to be rescued, you rescue them."

His gaze moved across the students.

"The circumstances may change. The purpose doesn’t."

Byzed tapped his fingers lightly against the desk.

"Every spell you learn here, every technique you train, every potion you study, every piece of information you gather serves the same practical purpose."

He paused.

"To keep you alive long enough to kill what comes through the Gate."

Several students had stopped moving altogether.

"Remember that before you start romanticizing the profession."

Byzed turned toward the board.

"What you do with that power afterward is your responsibility. The Academy only needs to know that you can use it when it matters."

Caelus leaned back slightly.

That was a considerably better answer than the one he’d expected from an introductory lecture.

Byzed continued.

"Next question. What are the Awakened paths?"

A student answered from the front.

"Knight, Mage, Martial Artist, and Special Path."

"Textbook again."

A few nervous laughs passed through the room.

Byzed didn’t mind.

"Those are the standard classifications. There are exceptions."

He raised one finger.

"Anomalies."

The students listened.

"Awakened capable of properly wielding two paths."

His gaze briefly shifted across the room.

"Rank Two, Eve, is one such anomaly. She’s capable of both Mage and Martial Artist paths."

A few students immediately murmured at the mention of her.

"Fortunately for you, she isn’t in this class."

The room quieted again.

"Then there are the Blessed."

Byzed looked toward Lucian.

"Those who possess Sacred Affinities."

Lucian’s expression remained unchanged.

"Our Hero has Sacred Light."

Several students glanced at him.

Byzed ignored the reaction.

"Other Sacred Affinity users cannot normally be identified until they recognize their own awakening. The Church can also determine them through a direct examination by the Pope. Beyond that, there is no convenient list waiting in the Academy’s records."

He lowered his hand.

"Then there are geniuses."

This time, his tone carried more weight.

"A genius can possess only one path and still produce results that seem to belong to another. They understand their own path so deeply that they can reproduce functions normally associated with a different one."

A student raised a hand.

"How is that different from an anomaly?"

"An anomaly possesses more than one path. A genius doesn’t."

The answer came immediately.

"Take the Headmaster."

A few students straightened.

"His classification is Mage. Yet there are Knights in this Academy who couldn’t follow his movement if he decided to take it seriously."

Byzed’s expression became slightly more serious.

"That doesn’t mean the Headmaster secretly possesses a Knight path. His control over mana, reinforcement, and movement is simply beyond what most Mages can achieve. At his level, the usual boundaries between what a path is supposed to do and what it can actually accomplish become very different things."

Caelus remained quiet.

That description was still incomplete.

The Headmaster was a Primordial.

Comparing him to ordinary Awakened was like comparing an apprentice architect to the building itself.

Byzed finally looked toward Caelus.

Several students turned with him.

"And, unfortunately for you, your Apex is one of those geniuses."