Chapter 107: A Monster Among Monsters

"Just what the hell happened here...?"

Jonathan’s eyes widened until they were practically as large as saucers. He stared at the devastated battlefield before him, struggling to comprehend the sight.

The ground was littered with goblin corpses. Some lay sprawled across the blood-soaked earth, while others had been thrown against tree trunks or buried beneath heaps of broken branches. The stench of blood hung heavily in the air, mingling with the foul odor of dead monsters. Even the surrounding trees had suffered, their trunks scarred and their branches shattered by the fierce battles that had taken place.

From a single glance, Jonathan estimated that at least a hundred goblins had fallen here.

A hundred!

Just what kind of monster did someone have to be to slaughter so many enemies alone?

Even if a person possessed more than two hands, fighting against such overwhelming numbers would be a nightmare. The slightest mistake could leave them surrounded, and once their enemies began attacking from every direction, even a powerful Awakened would struggle to survive.

Yet Jackson had somehow accomplished precisely that.

Jonathan’s gaze slowly shifted toward the young man standing ahead of the goblin tower. Jackson appeared completely indifferent to the carnage surrounding him. There was no excitement on his face, no trace of exhaustion in his posture, and certainly no pride in his accomplishments. He simply stood there as though the hundreds of goblins he had slaughtered were nothing more than an obstacle he had cleared from his path.

Jonathan couldn’t help swallowing.

He had known Jackson for some time now, and although he had always considered his friend somewhat mysterious, he had never imagined the gap between them could be this enormous.

Meanwhile, Angela Northwind’s usually composed expression finally showed a slight ripple.

As the heiress of one of the most powerful families in the world, she had witnessed more than her fair share of extraordinary geniuses. She had grown up surrounded by talented individuals, each possessing exceptional abilities and backgrounds that ordinary people could only dream of. To her, encountering someone with astonishing talent was hardly unusual.

But meeting two such individuals in succession was another matter entirely.

First, there had been Bitter Rain, the mysterious figure whose combat abilities had left even her hidden protectors struggling to understand him. And now there was Jackson, a young man she had barely considered worth her attention until recently.

The contrast was almost absurd.

Not long ago, she had regarded Jackson as little more than an insignificant bumpkin who happened to possess a few unexpected tricks. She had never imagined he could become someone capable of standing among the academy’s most exceptional students.

Yet the battlefield before her made it impossible to maintain that judgment.

In Angela’s eyes, Jackson was like a pile of discarded iron scrap lying beside a street, something everyone had ignored for years, only for it to suddenly reveal itself as a legendary sword worth more than an entire kingdom.

The most unsettling part was that she still couldn’t determine just how much of his strength he had revealed.

Alexander Drag’s emotions were equally turbulent.

He had only recently begun recovering from the humiliation of his defeat at Bitter Rain’s hands. For someone who had spent years being regarded as a genius, that encounter had been a harsh reminder that there were always people standing above him.

He had been trying to accept that reality and regain his confidence.

Now, before he could even fully recover, another monster had appeared.

Alexander’s gaze swept across the battlefield, taking in the countless goblin corpses scattered around Jackson. He studied the broken ground, the bloodstained trees, and the devastation extending across the forest.

A question suddenly surfaced in his mind.

If I had been surrounded by this many goblins, would the outcome have been any different?

He had barely finished the thought when the answer emerged.

No.

Even if he used every ability at his disposal, Alexander couldn’t confidently claim that he would have survived, much less emerged victorious after slaughtering so many enemies.

His expression immediately darkened.

The realization felt like swallowing a fly. He had barely managed to accept that Bitter Rain was stronger than him, and now Jackson had appeared to remind him that the world contained yet another person he couldn’t easily measure himself against.

For a moment, Alexander felt as though his position among the academy’s geniuses was slipping further away with every passing second.

However, the person experiencing the greatest shock was undoubtedly Grace White.

To be completely honest, she had almost forgotten that Jackson existed.

After the awakening results, she had deliberately erased him from her thoughts. In her eyes, the boy she had once dated was nothing more than an insignificant failure who had been left behind by the world. His weak talent had determined his future, and she had seen no reason to waste another thought on someone whose path was destined to end in mediocrity.

She had moved on without hesitation, convinced that she had made the correct decision.

Yet now, like a resentful ghost rising from a grave, Jackson had appeared before her again.

And the worst part was that he hadn’t returned as the pathetic figure she remembered.

He stood amid a battlefield littered with goblin corpses, looking as though he had casually walked through a slaughterhouse and found nothing worth mentioning.

Grace’s face stiffened.

How is this possible?

Didn’t he awaken a lowly Fire Resonance Talent? His fate should have been to die forgotten in some random ditch. How did he become this strong?

Her fingers curled tightly.

And more importantly, how dare he steal my thunder?

In Grace’s mind, this era should have belonged to her.

She had the talent, the ambition, and the confidence to rise above the countless ordinary Awakened struggling to survive in this cruel world. She had always believed that her name would eventually spread far beyond the academy, becoming one that people would speak with admiration and envy.

This month-end assessment was supposed to be the beginning.