The plaza became deathly quiet.
Another instructor stepped up beside him, her hand resting on the pommel of her sword.
“The faculty will continue attempting to breach the boundary and establish a long-range signal. Until then… your sole priority is no longer passing a test.”
She looked at every single one of them.
“Your priority is survival.”
The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocation inducing.
The students looked at one another in utter silence.
Some were already weeping quietly, huddled together in small groups.
Others clenched their fists so hard their knuckles turned bone-white.
A few simply stared blankly into space, completely broken by the sudden collapse of their bright futures.
DING.
Suddenly, the crystal bracelets on everyone’s wrists flashed in unison, emitting a faint, flickering silver light.
Lyra instinctively looked down at her arm.
Her score of 15 was still glowing faintly on the crystal interface, but new, corrupted lines of system text slowly carved themselves beneath it.
Survival Status: Active.
Points Preserved.
Await Further Instructions.
“…So the system still works?” Mira whispered, staring down at her own wrist with wide eyes.
“Partially,” Mason corrected quietly, his eyes narrowed behind his cracked glasses.
“Look at the runes. The local interface is running on whatever latent mana remains in the plaza, but the main administrative network is showing its offline.”
The glowing runes flickered repeatedly, fighting to stabilize against the environmental pressure before settling into a dim, constant pulse.
Whatever ancient core supported the academy’s wristbands had clearly suffered severe damage.
Near the front of the plaza, Kael Draven remained remarkably composed.
While others panicked, his icy blue eyes slowly surveyed the dire surroundings.
The shattered, bleeding sky.
The terrified, leaderless students.
The oppressive silence of the endless forest.
The failure of the instructors’ high-tier magic.
His Dragon Emperor’s warning still reverberated within the depths of his soul: “Something… has… awakened.”
Then another.
Moving with a magnetic grace that made all eyes turn to him as if he was a beacon of ray, he climbed onto one of the raised stone platforms formerly used for beast demonstrations.
His clear, icy voice carried effortlessly across the quiet plaza.
“Everyone.”
The whole crowd went silent, their attention focused only on him.
“I don’t believe the instructors are lying to us,” Kael stated, his tone devoid of panic, radiating absolute logic.
“They are just as trapped in this realm as we are.”
No one argued.
Everyone had witnessed the high-ranking instructors fail to open a single portal.
“Look at the treeline,” Kael continued, pointing toward the dark canopy surrounding the plaza.
“The wild beasts ran away. Which means whatever just woke up inside this realm frightened creatures that…. Well consider us as food..”
He glanced back at the pale, shaken crowd.
“If we remain standing here in the open, waiting for help that cannot reach us, whatever scared those beasts will eventually find us.”
A heavy, uneasy silence followed his words.
“…He’s right,” someone near the front muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead.
Another student raised his voice, desperate for guidance.
“So what do we do, Kael? Where do we go?!”
Kael answered without a second of hesitation.
“We have to stop panicking and start planning, and the best plan right now is. We move. Together.”
He looked over the hundreds of stranded candidates.
“There is safety in numbers. If we travel as a consolidated force, our chances of surviving an ambush are far higher than if we scatter into the woods like prey.”
Many students immediately began nodding, grasping onto his words like a lifeline in a storm.
“That makes sense!”
“He’s the strongest candidate here afterall!”
“His Dragon wiped out three mutated beasts with one attack… sticking with him is our best shot!”
“I’m following Kael!”
Even several proud noble heirs, who would normally never bow their heads to a rival family, quietly moved toward his platform.
In a realm stripped of rules and safety nets, raw power was the only currency that mattered. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Within minutes, dozens of students began gathering around Kael’s position.
Then dozens turned into over a hundred.
Before leaving home, almost every noble and commoner child had been drilled on one fundamental rule of survival: ‘When chaos erupts and you don’t know what to do… follow the strongest person in the room.’
Kael didn’t celebrate his sudden command.
He simply watched the crowd gather with a stern, serious expression.
He knew better than anyone that leadership in a death zone wasn’t a privilege—it was a heavy burden.
Still, not everyone moved to join him.
A few extremely arrogant noble heirs remained where they stood, their pride refusing to let them take orders from the Draven family.
Others preferred the safety of smaller, tighter groups, choosing to rely only on friends they already trusted rather than a noisy crowd, where it’s easy to be stabbed in the back
Slowly, the once-unified mass of students began fracturing into distinct factions across the stone plaza.
Standing near the eastern pillars, Lyra watched the division unfold quietly.
“…He really is a natural leader,” Mira admitted softly, her eyes following Kael as he began assigning vanguard roles to the stronger students.
Mason gave a single, firm nod.
“Indubitably. In times of existential panic, charismatic authority acts as a powerful sedative.”
Lyra didn’t join their commentary.
Instead, her eyes drifted back toward the distant, shadowy treeline of the ancient forest.
The trees were strangely quiet now.
Too quiet.
The beasts roars had stopped, the wind had died down, and not even the chirping of birds could be heard.
Swoosh.
A cold, unnerving breeze drifted lazily across the stone plaza, carrying the faint, sweet scent of decaying wood and ancient dust.
For some reason… it made the tiny hairs on the back of Lyra’s neck stand straight up.
She couldn’t explain the sudden knot tightening in her stomach, only that the silence felt fake.
She stared into the dark green canopy, feeling a sudden, chilling certainty.
Something deep inside those ancient woods… was definitely staring right at them.