Chapter 82: Beyond the Curriculum

Caelus sat near the back of the classroom, his head tilted toward the ceiling, while Mira sat quietly beside him.

The instructor’s voice continued from the front, explaining the basic classifications of Corrupt creatures and the warning signs used to identify them before an encounter became dangerous.

Caelus heard most of it; his attention simply wasn’t on the lesson.

The wooden sword flying toward Mira’s head had stayed with him.

More specifically, he couldn’t stop thinking about why someone had chosen her.

He had spent the entire class turning the incident over in his mind, and the more he considered it, the more obvious the pattern became.

Adrian.

Caelus hadn’t seen the order given and had no proof the prince himself had arranged the attack, but he knew Adrian better than almost anyone else in the Academy.

In the original novel, Adrian had a habit of treating talented women as things to be acquired.

Elysia had only been one of many.

Aelirya, the Elven Princess, had caught his attention because of her bloodline and potential. Nyra, the Beast Princess, had interested him for much the same reason. Seraphina, the Saintess, was another valuable connection he had tried to bring under imperial influence. Eve’s talent made her an obvious target, and even Selene Vespera had drawn his attention once her strength became impossible to ignore.

There had been others as well.

The pattern never changed.

Talent attracted Adrian, and once his interest settled on someone, their existing relationships became obstacles to be removed rather than boundaries to be respected.

His expression tightened.

Lucian had eventually come to despise the prince for exactly that reason.

Adrian’s interference had gone far enough that Lucian had openly opposed him, and doing so had been considerably harder than it should have been. Adrian was still royalty, and the authority behind that title carried enough weight that even the Hero couldn’t simply challenge him without consequences.

Their conflict had consumed attention.

The Contractors exploited the distraction.

While the Academy and its strongest students were occupied with the political struggle surrounding the prince, the Contractors made their move and raided the school. The upper-year students had stopped most of them from reaching the deeper parts of the Academy, but the attack still became one of the turning points of the original story.

That was where Lucian’s priorities changed.

He had already hated the Corrupt creatures for what they represented, but after that attack and the deaths that followed, hatred became something more personal.

Kyla had been one of the reasons for that.

Caelus remembered what came after.

Lucian stopped treating the Corrupts as a problem that needed to be solved someday. They had taken someone from him, and from that point onward, destroying them became one of the central motivations behind the Hero’s growth.

Caelus’s fingers tightened against the edge of his desk.

That future had taken too much from too many people.

And now Adrian had reached into his life.

Mira had been standing beside him when the attack came. She had almost died because someone had decided that testing Caelus through her was worth the risk.

He wouldn’t allow the chain to reach that point again.

The Prince could try whatever he wanted with the others.

Elysia could handle herself, and so could most of the women he’d targeted.

But Mira was different.

She wasn’t simply his attendant.

She had been the one beside him throughout his life, the one who prepared his meals, brought his medicine, kept track of his clothes and schedule, and stayed close even when his condition had been at its worst. She had quietly become part of his life before he’d even realized it.

Watching that sword fly toward her had made something very simple clear to him.

He wasn’t willing to lose her.

Mira was under his protection.

Adrian had touched something he shouldn’t have.

Caelus would take him out of the equation before the larger events involving the Contractors had the opportunity to unfold.

A light tug pulled at his sleeve.

Caelus blinked and turned his head.

Mira was looking at him.

"Young Master."

He followed her gaze.

The entire classroom was staring at him.

The instructor stood at the front of the room with his arms folded, waiting.

Caelus glanced around once more.

Apparently, he had missed something.

The man teaching the class looked nothing like the instructors from the previous two lessons. He was short and broadly built, with a rounded face and a noticeable bald spot near the crown of his head. His compact, rounded frame suggested someone who had trained seriously, though little about the way he carried himself suggested a seasoned fighter.

He was a Knight, according to the Academy’s records.

He simply seemed far more comfortable behind a lectern than on a battlefield.

His combat ability had never made him remarkable, but his knowledge of Corrupt creatures had earned him a place in the department.

He looked directly at Caelus.

"Is there perhaps something more interesting on the ceiling, Young Master Caelus?"

The room went quiet.

"Or has your Apex title finally fogged your mind with enough arrogance that you no longer feel the need to listen?"

Caelus met his eyes.

His expression remained unchanged.

"With all due respect, Instructor, I listen with my ears, not my eyes. I wasn’t aware staring at you was part of the curriculum, unless studying Corrupt creature anatomy has started affecting your head."

The silence that followed was immediate.

Several students stared at him like he had just walked into the royal palace and insulted the Emperor to his face.

Mira looked equally horrified.

Even Lucian’s jaw tightened.

Caelus frowned slightly.

Why were they reacting like that?

He wasn’t lying.

He had been listening.

Mostly.

He’d probably followed the lecture for the first half before his thoughts drifted, but the material wasn’t difficult enough to require his full attention.

The instructor’s bald spot slowly turned red.

His hands tightened against the desk.

"Then perhaps," he said through his teeth, "you’d like to repeat everything I’ve just said."

Caelus sighed.

He supposed he could do that.

"Corrupt creatures are fundamentally different from ordinary monsters because corruption alters both their bodies and their mana structures. Their physical strength increases as their rank rises, but that isn’t the only change. Once a creature reaches a sufficiently advanced stage, particularly around B-rank and above, the corruption begins producing more specialized adaptations."

The instructor went still.

Caelus continued.

"Regeneration is one example. The corrupted mana doesn’t simply accelerate healing. It allows the creature to redistribute its own vitality and reconstruct damaged tissue, which is why destroying the limb isn’t always enough. The regeneration source has to be identified and disrupted. An example is the S-rank creature I fought."

A few students leaned forward.

"Affinity-like abilities are another development. Corrupt creatures do not awaken true affinities in the same way humans do. Their bodies instead retain properties from the mana they’ve absorbed, allowing higher-ranked individuals to reproduce effects similar to elemental manipulation."

The room had become completely still, but Caelus barely noticed.

"When a Corrupt creature consumes a human core, it absorbs part of what that human had accumulated. The principle is similar to humans consuming monster cores for strength; Corrupt creatures consume human cores for the same basic reason."

The instructor’s eyes narrowed.

Caelus continued speaking.

"The difference is what happens afterward. Humans refine the mana through their own core and body before incorporating it. Corrupt creatures don’t possess the same refinement process, so the corruption remains mixed with whatever properties they’ve consumed. The more cores they absorb, the more complex their internal structure becomes."

One student hurriedly began writing.

Another noticed and followed.

Soon, several students were taking notes.

Caelus continued.

"This is also why corruption can become more dangerous after a Corrupt creature starts hunting humans regularly. Every human core it consumes gives the corruption another structure to work with. That accumulation can produce traits the creature didn’t possess before, especially when it has already crossed into the higher ranks."

He paused briefly.

"There are limits, though. A creature doesn’t simply gain every ability contained within a core it consumes. Compatibility matters, and unstable combinations usually damage the creature before they can become permanent."

Several of those details hadn’t been part of the lecture.

Most of it hadn’t been in the lecture.

He had gone beyond the material he’d been asked to repeat.

He looked toward the instructor.

"In most recorded cases, the more successful adaptations are the ones that reinforce traits the creature already possesses. Regeneration tends to become stronger in creatures whose bodies are already structured for rapid cellular reconstruction, while affinity-like properties appear more consistently in creatures whose cores can retain foreign mana patterns without collapsing."

The instructor no longer looked angry.

He was listening. Carefully.

Caelus continued for another few moments, explaining how corruption accumulated within a core, why certain physical mutations appeared repeatedly among similar species, and why destroying a Corrupt creature’s core was usually the safest way to prevent abnormal regeneration.

When he finally stopped, the classroom remained silent.

A number of students were still writing.

Some had stopped only because their hands were no longer keeping up with the explanation.

The instructor stared at Caelus.

Several of the things he had said were far beyond what a first-year was expected to know.

More concerning was how naturally he had explained them.

There had been no hesitation, no searching for terminology, no uncertainty over the parts that required the most specialized knowledge.

He spoke like someone who had studied the subject for years, or someone who already knew the answers.

Caelus tilted his head slightly.

"Anything else?"

Mira looked like she wanted to disappear beneath the desk.

The instructor opened his mouth, then closed it.

For several seconds, he simply looked at Caelus.

He could continue challenging him and risk exposing how little he could answer in front of the students, or he could end the exchange.

His expression tightened.

"That’s enough for now."

Caelus smiled faintly and leaned back into his seat.

The instructor turned toward the board.

The lesson continued, though the atmosphere had changed. Several students kept glancing toward Caelus between notes, while others whispered among themselves, careful not to draw attention.

Across the room, Lucian watched him with a hard expression.

Elysia, on the other hand, looked amused.

She had been watching him for most of the exchange with the same faint curiosity she’d shown whenever Caelus did something that didn’t fit the reputation attached to his name.

Caelus ignored the attention.

The lesson finally ended when the Academy’s magic siren reverberated through the building.

The instructor immediately gathered his materials.

A few students stood, clearly preparing to approach him.

He left without acknowledging them.

Caelus stood and stretched.

Two days of beef jerky had been a mistake.

He’d eaten worse, but the Academy had an entire cafeteria filled with meals far more suitable for someone who had spent the weekend abusing his body through training.

He turned toward the door.

Mira immediately followed.

Caelus had barely stepped into the corridor when footsteps approached from behind.

He glanced over his shoulder.

Elysia caught up easily, matching his pace as though she’d already decided where she was going.

Caelus looked ahead again.

Apparently, lunch was going to be less quiet than he’d hoped.