Chapter 83: A Quiet Before the Bloodbath
There were a total of twenty groups formed to hunt the terrifying monster of the deep woods, all led by the top twenty first-year students chosen directly from the academy’s official rank list.
Each primary group had at least a thousand people packed into its ranks.
Kenji was currently standing near the back of the twentieth group, which was led by the twentieth-ranked student of the first-year tier, a remarkably arrogant young man named Brandon Cole.
Brandon possessed a high-level soul power rating, and his primary contracted beast was a Bronze-ranked aerial summon known as a Razor-Feathered Hawk.
The large, predatory bird was currently perched on an iron gauntlet over his shoulder, its sharp black beak snapping at the air as its master glared at the crowd.
Brandon was deeply dissatisfied because the individual members he had received for his tracking unit were all the lowest-level trash of the first-year department.
To make his irritation significantly worse, he had even received a literal cripple with a perfect zero-soul rating and absolutely no contracted summon to speak of.
He was grunting and cursing under his breath the entire time while they grouped together on the grand stone plaza and waited for the official arrival and greeting of the department dean.
His group was the one with the most total people assigned to it, containing more than two thousand low-tier students as the massive, uncoordinated group occupied double the physical space of the elite units up front.
Yet, despite their sheer numbers, the raw confidence in his group was sitting at the absolute rock bottom.
If not for the heavy resource rewards promised by the administration, and also the mandatory practical credits they absolutely needed if they ever wanted to graduate from the academy, no single one of them would have accepted the academy’s emergency call today.
Also, they had never expected the local situation would turn so completely grievous when they initially signed their joining papers.
According to the frantic morning rumors, the forest monster had even dared to actively hunt inside the safe city walls during the dark hours of the night.
Now, they couldn’t simply walk away or withdraw their applications since doing so would instantly grant them hefty administrative fines and permanent expulsion.
Kenji stood silently in the dense crowd, his hands tucked inside his uniform pockets as his advanced perception effortlessly caught all their nervous talking.
Everywhere around him, students were whispering in high-pitched, panicked tones.
"I heard it didn’t even leave the children or the elders alive in that lower sector," a short boy next to him muttered, his knees visibly shaking. "It completely dissolved an entire city block into a pool of green sludge."
"How can we fight something that can slip past the inner defensive wards?" a girl with a low-tier rabbit summon whispered back, clutching her beast tightly against her chest.
"If it can slaughter thousands of people inside the city walls without the guards even noticing, our whole group will just be an easy breakfast for it."
Kenji’s brows furrowed deeply as he analyzed the data streams of their conversation.
Ayla had been completely with him inside the locked room the entire day and night. There was absolutely no physical way for her to be the specific entity that had killed the innocent baseline people inside the lower city block.
That single fact meant someone or something else entirely was actively using her unique, shape-shifting identity to harm other people and cause a massive administrative panic.
He had no clear idea why they would go to such extreme lengths to do it.
Since whoever committed those targeted murders possessed the raw strength to bypass the city’s spatial wards without anyone noticing, they clearly didn’t have to go to that extent just to hide their tracks from the public eye.
No one currently active in the academy could ever hope to find or trace them anyway, unless the high-level teachers of the second-year and third-year departments came back from their distant training grounds.
But those powerful, high-tier figures currently sitting in the central academy structures couldn’t simply come down to investigate a common residential slaughter.
They needed to remain inside the inner sanctum at all times to protect the core infrastructure, just in case everything occurring right now was a coordinated plan orchestrated by external enemies to lure the heavy powerhouses out of their defensive positions.
So why go to this massive extent to intentionally blame everything on Ayla’s forest form? Was this the deliberate work of the Enders?
If that was truly the case, then the upcoming events in this Spire timeline would become infinitely more intense.
The Enders wanted nothing more than to completely destroy the academy from the inside out and cause the overall mission of the Preservers to fail.
But if the Supreme Beast Academy was truly going to be destroyed by an internal plot, the hidden old powerhouses would eventually have to come out to defend the foundation.
Kenji was absolutely sure that with the full, unmitigated strength of the academy’s grand masters, it wasn’t easy to destroy this place by force.
Destroying an ancient institution required highly complex plans, perfect timing, and a massive amount of high-grade bait.
Then what exactly was going on in the background of this simulation?
While he was deeply thinking about the strategic layers of the event, a sudden hush fell over the two thousand students in the plaza.
The first-year department dean, Alistair Vance, finally arrived at the central podium.
The old man looked incredibly stern, his heavily scarred hands resting flat on the wooden railing as his deep, administrative voice boomed across the stone tiles through a mana-amplified speaker.
He didn’t waste any time with pleasantries. He started speaking directly about their mandatory duties to defend the borders of the academy while the senior students and high-tier instructors were not currently present in the outer perimeter.
He spoke about sacrifice, about the glory of a Beast Master, and about the harsh penalties for cowardice in the face of an invasive threat.
Within ten minutes, the grim orientation speech officially ended.
All twenty groups were immediately dispatched to completely different sectors of the perimeter map based on their leader’s ranking.
Because Brandon’s group was ranked the absolute twentieth, their assigned duty was simply to defend the main southern city gates, a secondary defensive position far away from the main line.
Hearing this announcement, almost all the low-level students surrounding Kenji let out a massive, synchronized sigh of deep relief.
They wouldn’t have to step a single foot into the terrifying woods.
"Thank the heavens," Amran’s voice sounded from a few yards away, though the boy deliberately avoided making any eye contact with Kenji, still keeping his distance after their hostile argument in the room.
It was a surprise to Kenji that Amran had even registered. But, it didn’t matter to him.
Brandon Cole, however, looked like he wanted to spit on the floor. He glared back at his massive army of two thousand low-tier scouts with a look of pure disgust.
"Listen up, you useless bunch of trash," Brandon shouted, his voice carrying the sharp edge of his high-level soul power as his Razor-Feathered Hawk let out a piercing screech.
"Just because we are stationed at the city gates doesn’t mean you get to slack off. If any single one of you spots a shadow moving weirdly near the ditches, you report it to me instantly.
If a cripple or a low-level rat ruins my chance to impress the Head Dean today, I will personally feed them to my beast. Move out!"
The massive crowd began to shuffle forward in a highly disorganized line, moving down the wide stone steps toward the heavy iron structures of the southern gatehouse.
Kenji walked near the edge of the column, his eyes scanning the massive defensive walls that towered hundreds of feet above their heads.
He adjusted his high collar slightly to completely hide the prominent crimson scratch marks Ayla had left near his throat, his mind completely ignoring Brandon’s loud shouting.
He didn’t care about the twentieth group’s low morale, nor did he care about Brandon’s posturing.
His focus was entirely locked on the hidden variable.
Whoever was framing Ayla had a specific goal, and Kenji had a hunch that this defensive post was about to become a bloodbath.
He loosened his fists inside his pockets, ready to see exactly what kind of entity was trying to manipulate his woman’s hunting grounds.
