Chapter 51: Bloodbath

Darian Calagher’s voice trailed off into the damp, freezing air of the abandoned iron reservoir, his sky blue eyes gleaming with an absolute, unyielding arrogance. The four other first years from Class 1-A subtly shifted their feet against the wet grit, their knuckles tightening as they prepared to execute the senior’s commands.

Julian stood perfectly still, his customized gold obsidian jacket remaining entirely level as he slowly reached up to adjust his silver-rimmed glasses. The chilling insults directed at his sovereign bloodline did not provoke a loud, unrefined roar. Instead, the ambient temperature inside the stone vault instantly plummeted to absolute zero.

"You think a collection of secondary High-blood houses will dictate my positioning, Calagher?" Julian asked, his elegant voice dropping into an icy, terrifyingly calm octave that cleanly sliced through the continuous dripping of the iron pipes. "You talk about the power of your families as if it were a shield. To me, you all are nothing."

With a sudden, violent snap of his long fingers, Julian didn’t target the space around the senior. He unleashed his mana at full capacity, directly compressing the air currents right beneath Darian’s heels.

Vrk—t!

A massive, three-meter fracture line violently tore through the wet stone floorboards. The physical space directly underneath the year two senior flatlined, distorting into a bleeding pocket of dark red gravity that greedily swallowed the loose grit and stone shards before snapping shut with a hollow, suffocating pop.

Darian’s lazy smile vanished in a fraction of a second. Utilizing his advanced experience, he violently vaulted his upper torso backward, his sky blue eyes widening into circles of raw shock as his boots skidded ten meters across the pavement to evade the absolute singularity by a single inch. The kinetic feedback of the space-collapse left a deep, perfectly circular void in the bedrock where he had been standing a millisecond prior.

"Kill them!" Darian screamed, his previous aristocratic composure completely shattering into raw, venomous fury. "Kill the f**king lesser!"

Their five classmates didn’t hesitate. The leader who had previously missed his kinetic kick lunged forward once more, his fist crackling with a dense, volatile surge of raw combat mana as he aimed a bone-breaking straight punch directly toward Thomas’s throat.

Thomas didn’t pull back, his mask remaining completely hard and smooth as glass. Guided perfectly by the instant data tracking flowing beneath his eyes, Thomas dropped his shoulder, slipped effortlessly past the incoming punch, and drove a heavy, reinforced palm strike straight into the High-blood’s exposed ribs.

CRUNCH!

The impact was absolute. The sheer physical density Thomas had integrated from his match with Gerald smashed directly through the first-year’s guard, fracturing his bone structure and launching him five meters backward into the damp drainage pipes.

Simultaneously, the upper iron grates of the reservoir ceiling violently buckled under a sudden, massive surge of compressed wind.

BOOM—!!!

The metal bars exploded downward into a fine spray of iron shards as Ryan and Lina made their surprise entrance, dropping straight from the upper conduits onto the perimeter. Ryan’s eyes were flashing with an absolute, volatile green glare, his wind combat skills fully primed as a swirling vortex of high-velocity air currents gathered around his boots, while Lina instantly opened her hands, a dense, high-density green healing mana radiating from her palms to stabilize Mina’s bound, shaking form from afar.

"We’ve got the perimeter, Tom!" Ryan yelled, his voice carrying a fierce, unyielding grit as he launched a horizontal blade of compressed wind to pin two of the advancing classmates against the stone pillars.

The bloodbath inside the subterranean reservoirs had officially ignited into absolute chaos, the temporary alliance between the two rival freshman recruits violently tearing Darian’s calculated conspiracy to pieces beneath the open sky.

Thomas quickly pulled his hand back from the collapsed first-year, his face remaining hard and smooth as glass as the grey granite dust swirled around his silver-trimmed jacket. Across the damp stone vault of the reservoir, Julian’s gravity fields were still humming aggressively, keeping two of the remaining Class 1-A students completely pinned against the dripping iron infrastructure.

Seeing his frontline assets systematically dismantled in less than a minute, Darian Calagher didn’t panic. Instead, the year two senior began to laugh, a low, echoing sound that bounced off the rusted drainage pipes.

"Well done, vermin," Darian laughed, his eyes gleaming with an absolute, unyielding malice beneath the flickering torchlight. "But those first-years were merely the first step to my entire plan tonight. Did you truly think I wouldn’t prepare a fallback trajectory for you? Let’s see how you handle a senior."

As his laughter grew louder, a thick, unnatural grey smoke began to rapidly rise from the wet grit of the floorboards, completely blinding the sightlines of the central vault.

BEEP.

Deep inside the dark of his conscious mind, the cold, translucent blue text of his system interface violently flared to life beneath his eyelids, shattering his focus with an emergency vector warning.

[ CRITICAL SYSTEM ALERT: REAR SECTOR APPROACH ]

* Vector: Direct Posterior Quadrant / 0.1 Seconds to Impact

* Threat Signature: High-Density Physical Strike

* Directive: Execute Immediate Low-Angle Duck / Realign Center of Gravity

Thomas didn’t waste a single microsecond questioning the mechanical alert. Guided perfectly by the instant data tracking flowing beneath his eyes, he quickly ducked his upper torso forward, dropping his weight flat onto his heels.

SHLICK!

A sleek, silver-etched dagger swiped horizontally through the empty space where his throat had been a millisecond prior, missing his neck by an absolute breath. The sheer wind pressure of the missed slice cut a clean line through the rising grey smoke, revealing the slender silhouette of a girl stepping out from the darkness. She was wearing an immaculate white uniform with gold trim, her long crimson hair falling wildly over her shoulders, and her deep red eyes gleaming with an intense, playful cruelty. A light scattering of freckles ran across her sharp nose.

She smoothly rotated the dagger in her fingers, looking down at Thomas with a twisted smirk. "Whoa, you look way better up close, lesser," the red-haired girl said, her beautiful voice carrying a sharp, aristocratic arrogance. "It is an absolute pity that I will have to end your pathetic life right here tonight."

Thomas rose slowly from his low duck, resetting his stance as his dark eyes locked onto her position. A dangerous, low chuckle finally broke through his unreadable mask.

"Lesser this, lesser that," Thomas said flatly, his voice dripping with an unrefined, razor-sharp grit. "Just shut up already. You wanna kill me? That’s fine, but get in line, lady."

He focused his thoughts deep onto the system, mentally addressing the silent interface floating beneath his eyes. System, can I adapt to and learn an opponent’s physical fighting style?

The mechanical blue text immediately crackled with a rapid stream of system logs, responding with its signature cold efficiency.

[ SYSTEM CONFIRMATION: COMBAT ARCHIVE LOGGED ]

* Status: Internal memory core has successfully stored the precise fighting styles, muscle-memory loops, and tactical forms of all enemies fought and defeated.

[ INITIATING COMBAT STYLE INTEGRATION ]

* Protocol: Uploading historical motor-skill configurations directly to host brain...

* Target: Seamless interchangeability between combat forms achieved.

* Progress: 15% (Data Streaming Influx Active)

A sudden, sharp wave of intense physical clarity flooded Thomas’s nervous system. As the integration bar hit fifteen percent, the distinct, fluid agility of Raymond’s form, the crushing positioning of Gerald’s fighting style, allowing him to perfectly interchange between different fighting forms with a single thought.

A dark, unshakeable smirk finally broke across Thomas’s bloody features.

The girl with the red hair and red eyes frowns deeply as she tracks his sudden change in presence, the freckles across her nose tightening in pure irritation. "Now you’ve made me mad, lesser," she hissed.

Thomas shifted his weight onto his newly aligned stance, his dark eyes wide open. "Yeah. Less talking and more fighting then."

[ COMBAT LOG: ALLIANCE EFFICIENCY ]

* Thomas Integration Phase: 15% and Climbing

* Support Unit Status: Ryan (Active) / Lina (Sustaining Mina)