Chapter 269: What A Joke
{Third Person POV}
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The air in the Academy’s primary medical hall was thick with the scent of sterile bandages, singed uniform fabric, and the sharp tang of concentrated healing salves.
With the mid-term practical examination in full swing within the Obsidian Woods, the teleportation failsafes were triggering at a steady, chaotic rate.
Every few minutes, another flash of white light would deposit a battered, exhausted, or thoroughly humiliated first-year student onto one of the incoming triage circles.
"Bed four needs immediate stabilization!" a senior faculty healer shouted over the chaotic din of groaning students. "Blunt force trauma and minor internal bleeding! They got caught in an earth-mage ambush!"
"I have it," a quiet, slightly raspy voice replied.
Aria stepped swiftly between the crowded rows of cots.
She wore the tailored, immaculate dark-blue and silver uniform of the Academy medical staff, her striking pale blonde hair pinned neatly back.
In her hands, she gripped her polished wooden catalyst staff, its tip already pulsing with a warm, comforting light.
She reached the injured student who looked like he had been thrown straight through a brick wall. Aria didn’t hesitate or show a flicker of panic.
She tapped the base of her staff gently against the stone floor, channeling her holy mana into a perfectly controlled, golden weave that settled over the boy’s shattered ribs. The bruised, discolored flesh almost instantly began to knit itself back together.
"Good work, Miss Aria," the senior healer sighed in relief, immediately moving on to the next emergency.
Aria simply nodded, her expression a mask of absolute, serene professionalism. But as she moved down the aisle, smoothly tending to elemental burns and deep lacerations, her bright blue eyes were constantly moving.
She wasn’t just assessing injuries; she was actively, meticulously scanning every single face that materialized on the triage circles.
She walked past a cot where Adrian Westmore was sitting perfectly upright, his clothes completely caked in foul-smelling mud, screaming at a terrified junior staff about the cost of his ruined silk jacket and threatening to have someone fired.
A few beds down, Kyle sat heavily on a reinforced stool. He was gripping his hair in pure, unadulterated frustration, muttering loudly under his breath about "stupid safety wards" and swearing.
Aria’s gaze swept past them, moving toward the heavy double doors and the newest arrivals.
I haven’t seen him since I returned, she thought, her fingers tightening slightly around the smooth wood of her staff.
The horrifying revelation from the Archbishop still echoed relentlessly in the back of her mind. The holy prophecy had been shattered. The Day of Judgment had been unnaturally accelerated to less than five years. The threads of fate had been severed by an unknown variable.
And her divine instincts, honed by years of grueling religious training, kept violently pulling her thoughts back to one specific person.
Jin Raith.
She cured a scout of a paralytic spider bite, stepping back as the girl fell into a deep, restful sleep. Aria stood at the edge of the busy ward, her crystalline eyes locked intently on the primary teleportation array.
He was a walking impossibility. A supposedly unremarkable, noble boy who had seamlessly absorbed her raw, unfiltered divine mana without suffering a single physical repercussion.
A boy whose perfectly blank, calculating eyes gave her a profound, frustrating sense of phantom familiarity that defied all logic.
Where are you? Aria thought, her brow furrowing a fraction of an inch.
She had personally reviewed the faculty deployment rosters that morning. She knew Jin had been deployed into the Obsidian Woods over ten hours ago.
Given his supposed low-tier combat capabilities on paper, he should have popped his emergency flare and been teleported back to the medical wing within the first few hours of the exam.
Yet, his cot remained completely empty.
"Lady Aria!" another staff member called out frantically from across the room, breaking her concentration. "We have a severe frost-burn case on circle two! I need an advanced stabilization barrier!"
Aria blinked, pulling herself out of her thoughts. She smoothed her pristine uniform, her face instantly returning to a mask of perfect, untroubled calm.
"Coming," she replied smoothly.
Her staff flared with a brilliant golden light as she turned back to her duties, burying the lingering, twisting unease deep in her chest.
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Adrian aggressively snatched his mud-stained silk jacket off the edge of his cot, ignoring the terrified junior staff member who was still trying to hand him a clean towel.
"Damn you, Raith," Adrian hissed under his breath, his eyes burning with absolute, humiliated fury. He gripped the ruined fabric so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"You absolute bastard... you’ll definitely pay for this."
Refusing to spend another second in a room filled with injured peasants and low-tier students, Adrian spun on his heel and stormed toward the heavy double doors of the medical hall.
He was so blinded by his own rage that he didn’t even bother looking where he was going.
He marched right past the triage circles and slammed shoulder-first into a solid wall of muscle.
Adrian stumbled backward, nearly losing his footing on the polished stone floor.
"Watch where you’re walking, you filthy commoner!" he snarled immediately, looking up.
Kyle was standing there, his arms crossed over his chest.
"Are you blind on top of being incompetent?" Adrian spat, taking a step forward and jabbing a muddy finger toward Kyle’s chest. "Get out of my way, you back-alley trash. It’s bad enough I had to breathe the same air as you in the woods, I shouldn’t have to tolerate a dirt-blooded brute blocking the door."
Kyle didn’t flinch. He didn’t yell or reach for his sword.
Instead, he took a single, step forward, narrowed his bright green eyes.
"You’re the one who bumped into me, mud-boy."
Kyle leaned in slightly, looking Adrian up and down with blatant, unapologetic pity.
"And for the record," he continued, a mocking smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, "at least this ’dirt-blooded brute’ got taken out by a territorial boss monster. You got locked in a glowing box and babied out of the woods by our support healer. If I were you, I’d walk out of this room very quietly before I told the entire hall exactly how you got that mud on your face."
Adrian’s face flushed a violent, ugly shade of magenta. He opened his mouth to scream a retort, his hands shaking with sheer rage, but looking up at the swordsman, the words completely died in his throat.
Realizing he had absolutely zero leverage, Adrian bared his teeth in a silent snarl, violently shoved past Kyle’s shoulder, and stormed out of the medical hall, the heavy double doors slamming shut behind him.
Kyle just snorted, shaking his head as he watched the noble flee.
"What a joke," he muttered, turning back toward the triage center to wait for Jin and Emma.
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