Chapter 328: Grave of the Unawakened

The climb up the northern mountain trail was less of a march and more of a slow walk through a frozen graveyard.

Behind us, Malva and her group were already down at the village elder’s house, holding the defensive line outside the two-foot-thick stone wall Jarek had raised around the ground floor before coming up with us.

Up on the high ridge line, the sky hung heavy with a dense, freezing grey blizzard, biting into our skin with every step.

A jagged tear in space hung above the snow, roughly thirty meters wide.

It pulsed with a deep, sick purple color that bled down the mountainside. The air smelled heavy and wrong, like something rotten. Every gust of wind carried the weight of the rift, making the snow around it melt on contact and freeze into jagged sheets of black ice

Twenty-six of us formed the main attack line along the narrow, snow-covered ridge path. Behind me, the students of Class Ascendant moved in a tight, nervous formation.

I didn’t need to look back to feel their tension. Their boots crunched unevenly against the ice, their breaths came in short, shaky puffs of mist, and their hands trembled as they gripped their swords, spears, and staffs.

I kept my pace steady, Tempest resting comfortably at my hip as the cold steel hummed a low, familiar vibration against my leg.

They’re terrified, I noted quietly, watching the steady puffs of mist rising from Roan’s breath a few paces to my left. And they have every right to be. I can’t blame them.

For all the Academy’s fancy talk about simulation pods and safety locks preventing real death, the pods didn’t filter out pain.

A cut-off arm still sent the full agony screaming into the brain. You couldn’t die here, but your body didn’t know the difference. The horror of dying, choking on blood, the sudden violent tearing of flesh, was completely, terrifyingly real.

These kids weren’t total beginners. They had fought in real battles and faced death more times than most teenagers ever should.

But being used to danger didn’t make anyone immune to pain. The deep fear of having your body torn apart didn’t just disappear because you had survived it before. Knowing you would wake up in a simulation pod didn’t stop your mind from breaking if you let the pain take over.

If their focus cracked under that fear, the mental damage would drag them down just the same. That was why leaders existed. Not to look heroic from a high stage, or to collect glory, but to stand between the panic and the darkness so the people behind them didn’t have to think.

Carrying the whole fight alone would be easy for me. The thought crossed my mind, cold and objective.

With my current rank, my affinities, and the speed I could pull from Tempest, I could cut through a Grade 4 rift before most of these students even blinked. If I wanted to, I could sprint up the slope, kill the rift boss, and finish the test in five minutes.

But that defeats the entire point... I exhaled, feeling the freezing air sting my lungs.

If I protected them from everything, if I solved every problem while they watched from the sidelines, they would never grow.

A wolf doesn’t learn to hunt in a cage. This trial was their stage, their test. They needed to feel the blood, feel the weight of a real defense, and learn how to work together when their hands were shaking. My job wasn’t to fight their battles. It was to make sure they survived long enough to learn from them.

"We’re fifty meters out," I called back, raising a gloved hand to signal a stop.

The students came to a stop behind me, weapons drawn. Roan stepped up to the front, resting his spear against his shoulder, his eyes locked on the swirling purple vortex tearing open the sky above the ridge.

"The ridge is narrow," I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the howling wind. "When that rift fully breaks open, the wave won’t be neat. Grade 3 Common beasts and Grade 4 Greater threats will spill out first. Expert-rank students can handle the Commons, but if a Grade 5 Commander shows up, don’t try to play hero. You hold the line, you block, and you call for backup."

Alice stepped up on my other side, her hands tightening around the heavy, worn leather hilt of her massive longsword. "And the boss?"

"The boss is mine," I said flatly, keeping my eyes on the tear in space. "...Unless you want to kill it?

"..."

Alice didn’t answer right away.

She bared her teeth in a wild, dangerous grin, her sharp amber eyes burning with raw, hungry excitement as her crimson hair whipped in the storm. She didn’t say a word, but the fierce, heavy pulse of her Master Low aura flaring beside me spoke loud enough.

I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. "...You sure about that, Alice? I’m not saying you’re weak or that I don’t trust you. But I hope you know the difference in rank. You’re Master Low, and the boss is Grade 5. You’ve got the rank for it, but fighting a Grade 5 rift boss head-on won’t be easy."

"Don’t talk down to me, bastard," she spat, her voice laced with venom and rough excitement. "I didn’t break past my limits under that crazy old bat Morgana just to watch you steal all the kills. I need blood to feed Reave."

She’s not wrong, I thought silently.

Her Reave Affinity was a terrifying thing, it needed death and violence to harvest power and push her growth forward.

But more than that, I knew what was sleeping under her skin. In the original game, Alice had an unawakened half-dragon bloodline, the source of her unnatural physical endurance and terrifying strength.

Right now, she had no idea that bloodline even existed inside her, and I didn’t know the exact trigger that would wake it in this timeline.

If she takes on a Master Low boss directly, the sheer pressure of a Grade 5 fight might be the exact spark her dragon blood needs to wake up, I analyzed, weighing the risks. I’m not sure about that. But I have a guess that she needs a life-or-death fight, and her Reave will keep absorbing bits of its mana as the fight drags on, and her sheer stubbornness won’t let her fall easily.

"...Fine," I said, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. "The boss is yours. But if you start getting pushed back, Roan and I step in. No arguments."

"Alright, alright, bastard. But you will step in when I can no longer stand up," she grunted, shifting her blade into a low guard.

Before anyone else could speak, the air over the ridge suddenly pressed inward.

Crack!

It sounded like a glacier splitting in half. The jagged tear in the sky stretched wider, throwing a sick, pulsing violet light across the snow-covered rocks.

Then the first wave poured out.

They didn’t come out neatly. They tumbled down the steep slope in a wild, shrieking mass of fur, scales, and hard shell.

At the front were Frost-Crag Stalkers — Grade 3 Common beasts that looked like huge, skinless wolves with three jointed legs on each side and bare bone ridges running down their spines.

Mixed in among them were Spine-Back Crawlers, fat, armor-plated centipede-like creatures the length of a carriage, their jaws clicking violently as they dragged their heavy bodies across the snow. Screaming above them were razor-winged Drakes, their leathery wings catching the mountain wind as their yellow eyes locked onto our line.

"Monsters!" a student yelled, his voice rising as he stumbled back a step. "There are too many of them!"

"Shut up and hold your ground!" I barked, my voice snapping like a whip. "Hold your positions! Front line, stay anchored! Do not fall back!"

I didn’t move from my spot at the head of the path. I knew how fear worked. If I gave them a long speech right now, it would fly straight past their panicked brains. They needed to see how simple it was. They needed a demonstration.

"Roan. Alice. Front line," I commanded. "Show them how to clear a wave."

"Heh. Thought you’d never ask," Roan grinned, his expression shifting from bored to cold and focused.

He didn’t wait for a countdown. With a huge burst of aura, Roan launched himself forward, kicking up a spray of white snow. Alice rushed straight past him, her smaller body moving with scary speed as she dragged her massive longsword behind her across the snow.

Roan’s spear swept out in a wide, crushing arc, crashing into the skull of a leading Stalker with enough force to shatter its bone plating into red dust. Right beside him, Alice didn’t bother dodging. As two Spine-Back Crawlers lunged toward Roan’s open left side, Alice swung her massive blade upward in a hard, two-handed arc.

The heavy steel caught the first centipede mid-air, splitting its armored shell cleanly in half with a wet, heavy crunch. Without stopping, she spun on her heel and drove the flat end of her blade straight into the second crawler’s head, pinning its neck into the frozen dirt and snapping its neck instantly.

The two of them moved like a pair of butchers, Roan stabbing and shattering armor with quick spear thrusts, Alice crushing bone and tearing through shell with endless swings. Within ten seconds, seven Grade 3 beasts lay dead in the snow, their dark blood steaming against the white drifts.

The students standing behind us froze, watching with wide, disbelieving eyes. I watched their expressions shift. The blind, frozen panic in their eyes faded, replaced by the realization that these monsters weren’t unbeatable.

Now was the time.

"Form lines!" I shouted, pointing sharply to the left and right. "Front line, move up! Support mages, close the gaps! If a single beast slips past you, it dies on my blade!"

"Jarek! Set your feet! Raise stone pillars on the left side, push their charge into the center!"

Jarek blinked, snapping out of his daze, and slammed his fists into the frozen earth. "Understood!" A row of three-foot-thick stone pillars burst from the snow, blocking off the wide snowdrift and forcing the charging Stalkers into a narrow five-meter gap.

"Damon, take the right side!" I shouted. "Plant that shield and lock down the sky! Sera, aim for their wing joints when Damon pins them!"

"On it!" Damon grunted, slamming his heavy tower shield deep into the frozen dirt. A see-through, six-sided dome of mana burst outward from his steel wall, taking the brutal impact of two diving Drakes.

Beside him, Sera pulled back her longbow with smooth, practiced speed. Her wind-charged arrows flashed through the storm in whistling arcs, cutting cleanly through the Drakes’ wing joints before they could recover.

With the beasts forced into the narrow gap Jarek had built, Class Ascendant began fighting like a real unit.

Spears thrust through the spaces between the stone pillars. Ice mages froze the feet of the Stalkers, letting the front line step in and finish them with clean, quick strikes. Whenever a student reached too far or lost their balance, I was there, not killing the beast for them, but shouting corrections.

"Cole, pull your shoulder back! Your guard is wide open on the left!" I barked as a Stalker lunged toward him. Cole snapped his shield up just in time, blocking the claw strike before thrusting his spear straight through the creature’s chest.

"Lydia, stop dumping mana into heavy spells! Target the slope under those centipedes, melt the snow into slush so they lose their footing!"

Lydia snapped her focus toward the slope and swept her hands down. A stream of intense heat washed over the hill, turning the packed snow into a muddy, boiling mess that made the Spine-Back Crawlers slide and flip on top of each other, exposing their soft undersides to the front line.

The students moved as I gave them orders, while I stood still at the center of the line, my eyes scanning every inch of the chaotic battlefield. My hands stayed loose at my sides, my fingers hovering near Tempest’s hilt.

A pair of quick Stalkers managed to jump over the students’ left line, ignoring the fight entirely as they bolted down the trail toward the lower village, straight toward Malva’s guard group.

Too slow.

My vision blurred.

There was no sound, just the sudden push of air. In the space of a single heartbeat, I was twenty paces down the trail. Tempest cleared its sheath with a crisp, singing snap, flashing twice in a blinding curve of black light.

Before the monsters even realized their path was blocked, their momentum carried their upper bodies sliding cleanly off their legs, hitting the snow in a spray of dark blood.

I didn’t even look back as I put the blade away with a soft click and walked back to my spot at the center line. The snow around the fallen beasts melted from the leftover heat of my flames. Behind me, the students stared, their breaths catching in their throats at the sheer, unbelievable speed they had just seen.

"Keep your eyes on the front!" I shouted over the howling wind, pulling their attention back to the ridge.

_

For twenty minutes, the ridge rang with the clash of steel, the roar of magic, and the dying screams of monsters. Wave one was heavy. But through strict positioning, controlled gaps, and constant direction, we held the line without a single student taking a serious injury

Slowly, the screams died down. The snow on the ridge trail was painted in dark, steaming blood and littered with the bodies of over forty beasts. The students stood behind the stone walls, breathing hard. Their clothes were splattered with blood, their lungs burning from the freezing air.

But as they looked around at each other and saw that everyone was still standing, a wave of real relief washed over their pale faces.

They had survived a wave. They had actually held.

"We... we cleared them?" a student breathed, lowering his shield as he wiped sweat and melted snow from his forehead.

"Look at that," another one said, leaning on his staff with shaking hands. "We actually crushed the first wave!"

I stood at the front of the line and looked over the squad. My eyes narrowed as I noticed several students leaning carelessly on their weapons, dropping their guards, and slumping their shoulders in celebration.

"Pick your weapons up, idiots!" I snapped, my voice hitting them like a splash of freezing water. "You killed the monsters, but that doesn’t mean you can let your guard down!"

The students flinched and quickly pulled themselves back into stance, their expressions turning serious instantly. I turned my back on them, stepped up to the edge of the stone wall, and stared toward the pulsing tear in the sky above the ridge.

They actually did well, I admitted internally, watching them. Their movement was clumsy, their mana use was terrible, and they relied completely on my calls... but they held.

Before the students could fully catch their breath, the air above the ridge violently collapsed.

High above, the jagged crack in the sky didn’t close. Instead, it pulsed, deeper, darker, and far heavier. The mana pressing down from the vortex doubled in thickness, turning the air so heavy it felt like breathing water.

The mountain shook right under our feet. I gripped the hilt of Tempest, my eyes narrowing as a massive, armored claw, easily four times the size of a Stalker’s, hooked around the edge of the tear, shattering the air like glass.

"End of the warmup," I said, my voice dropping into a cold, deadly calm as I looked back over my shoulder. "Second wave is here. And this time, it’s worse. Be ready!"