Chapter 84: Responsibility

The heavy iron door of the isolated administrative stone building swung open with a slow creak.

Thomas walked straight out into the freezing night air of the campsite, his posture perfectly upright and his clothes entirely unchanged. The deacons did not follow him out of the darkness of the bleak room. He left the structure behind and began his walk across the open dirt paths of the camp, heading directly back toward the Class 1A sector.

As he moved through the perimeter, the few students and instructors who were still wandering near the barracks stopped completely in their tracks. Everyone just looked at him. A heavy, absolute silence fell over the surrounding grounds as Thomas passed by. Not a single person said a single word. The alternative classes watched him with expressions of intense discomfort, keeping their distance as if his very presence carried a physical rot. The senior instructors standing near the stone administrative doors watched his approach from afar, but they too kept their mouths shut, offering zero interference and keeping their eyes fixed on the dirt.

Thomas ignored the staring eyes completely. He walked cleanly past the rows of canvas tents until he reached their assigned group area.

Julian was already standing outside his tent, his polished silver armour catching the dim light of the afternoon sun. He had his steel sword buckled securely to his waist, and his emerald cape was wrapped tightly around his shoulders. Ryan was sitting nearby on a rotted log, checking the leather straps on his chest guard, while Mina and Lina stood close by, their hunting gear completely primed.

The moment Thomas stepped into the clearing, Julian looked up from his tactical map. His bare ebony eyes narrowed slightly behind his silver-rimmed glasses, taking in the small drop of dried copper blood near Thomas’s collarbone. The noble did not ask about what had happened inside the stone building, nor did he mention the deacons at all.

“Change of plans,” Julian said cleanly, his aristocratic voice breaking the heavy quiet of their grounds. “We are going after the Swamp Thallophyte.”

Ryan paused his movements, his eyes widening slightly as he looked up from his blade. “Now?”

Julian offered a single, firm nod of his head.

Mina adjusted the light leather guards on her forearms, a sharp expression of determination appearing on her face as she stepped forward. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

They did not waste another second posturing or discussing the social fallout of the camp. The five of them quickly gathered the remaining pieces of their gear, checked the hilts of their swords, and immediately turned on their heels to leave the sector. They marched in a tight formation straight toward the outer edge of the camp, passing directly through the shimmering energy boundary of the safe dome without looking back at the instructors who were still watching them from afar.

The moment their boots hit the wet, dark muck of the known marshland foliage, the suffocating sulfur smell of the wetland hit their noses. The atmosphere outside the shield was incredibly thick, the afternoon sun failing to pierce through the heavy canopy of the ancient trees. A perpetual gray twilight covered the entire western sector, making visibility exceptionally poor as they began their march into the dense woods.

“We need to keep a high pace,” Thomas spoke levelly as he took the vanguard position. He was dressed in his simple linen shirt, dark trousers, and the worn-out shoes he always wore during their hunts. “The further we get from the dome, the less likely we are to be tracked by anyone inside the camp.”

Julian walked right alongside his flank, his boots making soft squelching sounds against the damp soil. “The logic is sound. We are intentionally entering the westernmost borders of the hunting blocks. The alternative classes are too terrified to wander this far from the safe zone, which means we will not have to deal with any external interference while we track our target.”

They began their long journey through the deep muck, their eyes wide open as they scanned the gray mist closing in around their flanks. To reach the secluded territory where they had first encountered the apex plant-beast hybrid, they had to navigate through a series of rotted cypress thickets and deep water ridges that were completely uncharted by the lower classes. The further they walked, the denser the gray fog became, the dark silhouettes of the twisting trees twisting like giant serpents in the distance.

“Are you feeling any lingering effects from that viper venom, Ryan?” Thomas asked flatly, not breaking his forward stride as he watched the ground.

Ryan forced a confident grin, though his shoulder muscles were still slightly stiff under his cheap leather armour. “Julian’s antidote worked perfectly, Tom. My wind core is back to full capacity. If that leopard thing shows its face again, I am more than ready to cut through its calcified bones this time.”

Lina walked near the center of their formation, her cheap healer’s cloak pulled tightly around her shoulders to shield herself from the freezing moisture of the swamp. “We need to remember how fast it moves. When we fought it on the fifth day, its velocity was completely law-defying. It doesn’t move like a normal animal; it shifts through the gray fog without making a single vibration in the mud.”

“That is because of its biological structure,” Julian explained, his tone dropping into a serious octave as they climbed over a massive fallen trunk. “The Swamp Thallophyte is a parasitic hybrid entity. Its muscles are composed entirely of dense moss and stringy plant fibers that absorb the moisture currents of the swamp, allowing it to completely nullify the kinetic friction of its movements. It feeds directly on the ambient spiritual energy of the land, which is why its wind-compression claws can slice through solid stone blocks so easily.”

Thomas quietly listened to the explanation, his sharp intellect logging the parameters. He kept his right arm relaxed, the faint, weightless hum of his Gaseous Shift talent remaining perfectly primed beneath his skin. He knew that this hunt was their toughest challenge yet, but securing the carcass of a Grade B territory guardian would solidify their placement on the academy ledger beyond any doubt.

After an hour of intense, non-stop marching through the deep muck, the environment around them began to change noticeably. The wet dirt gave way to an area filled with ancient, shattered stone blocks that were completely covered in thick black moss. The air here was entirely stagnant, the wind currents dropping to absolute zero as a heavy, unnatural quiet locked down the perimeter.

“We are entering its primary feeding grounds,” Thomas whispered, his voice cutting through the stillness.

He stopped his stride, his dark eyes scanning the massive layouts of rotted pillars before them. Under his breath, his right eye began to pulse with a hidden heat as he looked for any anomalies in the fog.

CRACK.

A sharp, distinct sound echoed from the dark canopy above them. Before anyone could draw a breath, a massive silhouette violently dropped down from the high branches, crashing onto a stone block twenty feet ahead with a sickening, wet splash.

The Swamp Thallophyte had returned.

The beast was an absolute nightmare to look at, its multi-jointed frame holding the terrifying shape of a massive leopard. Its flesh was made entirely of semi-translucent, calcified green bone that shimmered weirdly in the gray twilight, wrapped tightly in thick cords of pulsating black moss and stringy plant tissue. It had no true eyes, only a flat, armored skull that twitched rhythmically as it tracked the spatial vibrations of their group. Around its heavy claws, a thick layer of localized wind compression was actively humming, distorting the air currents with a low, whistling shriek.

The moment its flat head locked onto Thomas, the apex predator did not hesitate. It aggressively tensed its plant-fiber limbs and launched itself forward with an impossible, blinding velocity.

BOOM!

The beast blitzed through the gray fog so fast it completely disappeared from normal vision. Thomas reacted instantly, utilizing the fluid agility he had integrated from Raymond to smoothly twist his torso to the left. The heavy green claws sliced through empty space, missing his linen shirt by an absolute millimeter and smashing into the mud behind him with a loud explosion that sent black soil flying ten feet into the air.

“Scatter!” Julian shouted.

Julian moved with instantaneous efficiency, his steel sword flashing with a bright purple light as he unleashed his spatial talent. He swung his blade downward, forcing a localized gravity fracture right over the beast’s hind legs to pin it to the earth. But the Swamp Thallophyte was entirely too agile. It violently twisted its calcified torso mid-air, its plant muscles expanding to absorb the gravitational pressure as it skidded across the stone blocks, completely resetting its stance in a fraction of a second.

Ryan lunged forward from the right flank, his short sword infused with a swirling current of blue wind mana. He targeted the creature’s exposed shoulder joints, driving his blade downward with all his physical weight.

CLANG!

The steel hit the calcified green bone with a deafening metallic ring, failing to pierce the dense, wooden hide. The predator didn’t even flinch; it violently whipped its heavy tail outward, the kinetic impact slamming directly into Ryan’s cheap leather armour and sending him skidding five yards across the wet dirt.

Mina stepped into the vanguard line immediately, her sword drawn as she created a defensive perimeter to shield Ryan from a follow-up strike. Meanwhile, Lina closed her eyes, her fingers twitching as she began channeling her warm green healing sparks directly toward Thomas and Julian to keep their nodes stable.

Thomas stabilized his footing on the grit, his dark eyes wide open as he watched the beast scramble up the side of a rotted stone pillar. The plant-beast hybrid turned its flat head toward them, the wind compression around its claws growing increasingly louder as it prepared to launch its next high-speed ambush from the heights.

Ryan struggled back to his feet, wiping a layer of black grime from his jaw as he looked up at the terrifying green silhouette balancing on the stone column. He gripped his short sword tightly, his breath coming in short gasps as he realized the sheer scale of the nightmare they had intentionally chosen to hunt.

“Oh shit, here we go again,” Ryan said