Chapter 206: Entrance Exam [5]
Chapter 206:
Entrance Exam: 5
As Cassian leaned against the massive tree and slowly raised his head, every instinct in Felix’s body screamed at him to turn around and run without looking back.
Despite his trembling legs, Felix forced his lips into one of his bright smiles. He swallowed hard. "H-hi..." he said, his voice coming out a bit raspy.
Cassian pushed off the tree and walked directly toward them with heavy, silent steps.
Layla’s eyes widened in horror. She wasn’t as optimistic as Felix. She could feel the deadly aura swirling around the being in front of them right on her skin. Panicking, she grabbed Felix’s arm and tugged it hard. "Felix, are you crazy?! We need to run! We have to run right now!" she whispered tensely, her voice on the verge of tears.
But Felix hesitated. He was afraid that if they ran, this boy would catch them instantly. Maybe they could talk it out and come to an agreement. Felix slipped out of Layla’s grasp and, with his heart pounding as if it would burst from his chest, extended his right hand toward Cassian.
"U-um... Hello. I’m Felix," he said nervously, his voice trembling slightly. "I know everyone in this forest is an enemy, but... I was wondering... do you want to team up? If we join forces, we could get a higher rank."
Cassian stopped a step away from Felix. He slowly lowered his empty eyes to look at Felix’s trembling, friendly outstretched hand. One second, two seconds... Time seemed to stand still. And then, Cassian slowly reached his right hand toward Felix’s.
The tension on Felix’s face instantly vanished, replaced by immense relief. His smile widened. He thought he had managed to make a friend, that he had reached the ’good’ inside this terrifying boy.
But the moment Cassian’s hand gripped Felix’s, everything changed.
*CRACK!*
A horrific pain exploded, shattering Felix’s mind and plunging his world into darkness. Cassian had squeezed Felix’s hand with such ruthless, superhuman strength that all the bones in Felix’s palm and fingers were crushed to dust and mangled together in seconds.
"AAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Felix let out a shrill, deafening scream, his eyes bulging as if they were going to pop out of their sockets. He tried to drop to his knees, but Cassian kept a firm grip on his broken hand.
"LET HIM GO!" Layla screamed. She raised her staff and lunged forward to attack Cassian directly.
Holding onto Felix’s shattered hand, Cassian lifted him into the air like a ragdoll and threw him straight at the charging Layla.
Layla panicked the moment she saw the person falling towards her was her best friend, Felix. Afraid of hurting him, she abruptly stopped her attack and opened her arms to catch him.
Before Felix’s body even hit Layla, Cassian slipped past them like a shadow. Before Layla could even catch Felix, Cassian’s fist smashed right into her nose.
*THUD!*
Layla’s nose broke, and her head snapped back. They both tumbled to the ground in a tangled mess.
Cassian slowly wiped Layla’s blood from his face with his thumb and leaned down next to the dazed girl. He ruthlessly tangled his fingers into her long brown hair, grabbed her by the scalp, and started dragging her across the dirt.
Despite the blood pouring from her nose, Layla groaned in pain and tried to resist. She grabbed Cassian’s cloak with her hands, digging her nails fiercely into his arms and skin, trying to tear his flesh.
As she was dragged, Layla realized she couldn’t break free from this grip. Enduring the pain, she drew a small, hidden defense knife from her belt with her left hand and quickly sliced through the roots of her own hair.
The moment she broke free, Layla swung her knife fiercely upward, aiming for Cassian’s neck.
Cassian merely leaned his head and shoulders back slightly, dodging the tip of the blade by millimeters.
At the same time, Felix, writhing from his broken hand, suppressed his pain and got to his feet. Holding his sword in his good hand, he attacked Cassian’s back, right in his blind spot.
Cassian didn’t even bother to turn around. A thick, spiked layer of ice formed in his right palm. Thrusting his hand backward, he stopped Felix’s rapidly descending sword.
The sharp tip of the blade got stuck in the ice, unable to harm Cassian’s hand by even a millimeter.
Cassian quickly pushed back the hand holding Felix’s sword, shoving the boy away, and took a few steps back.
He looked at the long, brown lock of hair left in his left palm. Then, he slowly raised his head and turned to Layla, who was holding her bleeding nose and looking at him with anger and fear.
The girl cutting her own hair to break his grip, then attacking without hesitation... Cassian hadn’t expected such resolve. She had shown a different kind of willpower than the crybaby baron’s daughter in his notes who constantly hid behind Felix.
Cassian opened his left palm. The moment the brown strands of hair caught the wind and scattered into the air, Cassian’s body blurred and vanished from sight. Not a sound, not a trace of mana was left.
Felix and Layla looked around, completely bewildered.
"Where did he go...?" Layla whispered.
"I don’t know, stay alert—"
Felix’s sentence was cut short as the air suddenly filled with a freezing cold. An ice sledgehammer crashed into the center of Felix’s armor, right on his ribcage.
*BOOM!*
With his chest crushed, Felix slammed into a tree.
"FELIX!" Layla screamed.
But Cassian quickly reached out and grabbed Layla’s wrist.
Trembling with despair and fear, the girl’s green eyes locked onto Cassian’s red ones. Cassian slowly raised his index finger and pointed it directly at the center of the girl’s forehead.
As tears streamed down her face, Layla squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the pain.
But the pain never came.
Instead, an indescribable peace spread into her mind from the cold finger touching her forehead. Before Layla could understand what was happening or why her body suddenly felt so light, the bracelet on her arm flashed with a red light. Her body broke apart into specks of light within seconds, completely eliminating her from the exam.
Cassian slowly turned his head. Felix, holding his chest and coughing up blood non-stop, was struggling to stand on trembling legs at the base of the massive tree.
Cassian began walking toward Felix with heavy steps. As he walked, the damp air in his right hand rapidly condensed, reshaping the ice sledgehammer.
When Cassian reached Felix, he didn’t hesitate for a second. He ruthlessly swung the massive ice sledgehammer right at Felix’s kneeling right foot.
*CRACK!*
The bones in his ankle shattered, tearing through the skin. Felix’s scream echoed.
Without reacting to the scream in the slightest, Cassian raised the hammer into the air again and brought it down on Felix’s left foot this time.
*CRACK!*
With both of his feet completely pulverized, Felix writhed in a small pool of his own blood. He couldn’t breathe; his vision was going dark from the pain. With trembling, teary eyes, he looked up at Cassian pleadingly.
"W... Why...?" Felix sobbed, blood pouring from his mouth. "Why are you doing this...?"
Cassian didn’t answer. He simply brought the ice sledgehammer down on the boy’s right kneecap.
A crack. A scream.
Then, he swung the hammer to the left, bringing it down on the left kneecap.
A crack. Blood. A scream.
Following that, he brought the hammer down on the boy’s thigh bones, one by one. Felix’s legs no longer resembled human legs; they had been reduced to a crushed mass of flesh and bone beneath the skin.
Because Felix stubbornly maintained his consciousness and the wounds weren’t technically life-threatening, the system hadn’t removed him from the exam area yet. Cassian knew this perfectly well and was pushing the limits to the very millimeter.
Despite his legs, fueled by a sheer will to live, Felix used his only remaining good arm—his left one—to claw at the dirt and try to crawl away.
Two thin, long, razor-sharp ice spears appeared in Cassian’s palms. Without a second thought, Cassian drove the spears into both of Felix’s crushed legs, pinning his calves straight into the dirt.
Cassian slowly stepped in front of Felix’s crawling head and planted his black boot directly on top of Felix’s good hand as it clawed at the dirt.
Felix’s bloodshot eyes rolled upward. His face was covered in mud and blood. In absolute despair, with lips trembling from the pain, he began to beg. "Please... stop... I’m begging you, stop... it hurts so much..."
There was no pity, no sense of satisfaction on Cassian’s face. He raised the massive, blood-stained ice sledgehammer in his right hand to bring it down once more.
But just as he tensed his muscles to swing the hammer...
*FIZZ!*
Cassian’s own body was suddenly enveloped in a bright, blinding light.
Surprised, Cassian lowered his hammer-wielding hand and quickly looked at his own body. His body was slowly fading away, scattering specks of light around him.
Squinting, he looked at the bright yellow viewing sphere hovering above the treetops, broadcasting his every move. The sphere’s light had turned red, flashing an emergency signal. Someone had interfered with the exam and was forcibly pulling him from the field.
*So the academy intervened,* Cassian thought to himself. A slight look of dissatisfaction crossed his face, but he didn’t resist it.
The light completely engulfed his body, and within seconds, Cassian’s silhouette vanished from the forest, leaving the Child of Dawn writhing in broken bones, pinned to the dirt.
---
**The Academy Infirmary**
When Cassian opened his eyes, he found himself in the middle of a massive, pure white room filled with dozens of beds.
The area was packed with groaning, blood-soaked students missing limbs.
One of the white-robed healers rushing frantically around the area saw Cassian teleport in and quickly approached him with a glowing sphere of green mana in her hand.
"Hold on! Please lie down, where are you injured?!" the female healer shouted urgently. But when she reached him, she was stunned to see he didn’t have a single scratch or drop of blood on him. Her green mana hovered uselessly in the air. "You... where is your injury?"
Cassian completely ignored her. Without even glancing at the woman with his indifferent eyes, he started walking toward the door.
Right at that moment, the infirmary doors burst open with a loud crash.
A man stormed inside. He wore a black academy uniform and thick-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. Sweat dripped from his temples, and his face was beet red with anger. This was one of the proctoring professors from the exam committee.
The man quickly scanned the infirmary, and the moment he spotted Cassian, he marched straight toward him.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!" the man roared, his voice loud enough to drown out all the groans in the room. He pointed a trembling finger right in Cassian’s face.
Cassian merely stood there and looked at the man.
Realizing they were in the infirmary and that the other injured students and healers were staring at them, the man tried to rein in his anger for a moment. "Come with me. Follow me outside right now," he hissed, turning and stepping out the door.
Cassian slowly followed the man outside.
The moment the corridor doors closed, the man couldn’t hold it in any longer and exploded.
"You are in a damn exam! This is an academy entrance test, not a slaughterhouse! Millions of people, nobles, and kings are watching you! So why, instead of showing your opponent respect and eliminating him, did you torture him, tearing him apart like a bug and breaking his bones one by one?! This is nothing but pure barbarism!"
Cassian leaned against the wall, feeling absolutely no need to respond to the man’s hysterical fit. His eyes stared blankly into space.
Cassian’s silence and apathy drove the man even crazier. Spitting as he spoke, he continued to yell.
"Do you think that just because you gathered a high score, you can do whatever you want and join this academy without a problem?! You are wrong! In this sacred academy where nobles are raised, there is no place for a bloodthirsty, sadistic psychopath like you!"
"Participant 1867! Cassian! You are officially disqualified from the exam, and your academy application is REJECTED! Now, leave this building immediately!"
After delivering his final words, the man turned around and took a step to storm off, but...
Dozens of arms wrapped around the man’s legs in seconds.
"Wha—!" the man yelled. Just as he reflexively tried to channel his mana to summon his weapon, a massive purple coffin glowing with cursed runes appeared right behind him.
The arms pulled the man violently backward, dragging him straight into the open coffin.
"HELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!" the man began to scream in a panic. His eyes bulged as his hands clawed desperately at the marble floor of the corridor.
But when he raised his head and looked at the other professors and passing students walking in the corridor, his eyes widened in terror.
No one in the corridor... was looking at them. No one heard his screams, and no one saw the giant black coffin. It was as if he and Cassian had been completely isolated from the rest of the world, trapped in a different dimension cast entirely outside of time.
"Pleeeease!" the man cried out one last time.
The dark interior of the coffin swallowed the man completely, and the massive dark lids slammed shut, locking him inside.
The corridor remained silent for several seconds. Cassian leaned against the wall, showing no expression, simply waiting.
A few seconds later, the coffin lids creaked open once again.
The man stepped out. However, he was no longer angry. His face was like a soulless, dull, and obedient mask.
Like a zombie, he slowly stood in front of Cassian and slightly bowed his head, greeting his master.
Cassian took his hands out of his pockets. Staring at the man’s face with his red eyes, he spoke in a quiet voice that carried absolute authority:
"Go."
Comments