Snow coughed blood as he watched Jon split from his summon. Jon glanced at Lucy, who was at the end of the street, then looked at Snow coldly.

"I gave an order to bring down the members of the Shadow Club, but you ignored one and went ahead to fight a Wandering Lord-tier. You expect to beat a Lord-tier with a mid-level High-tier summon? Have you forgotten your strength?!"

Snow frowned. "That's the word, know your strength, the same thing I tried to shove in Godfrey's head repeatedly but failed."

Jon narrowed his eyes. "You're a disappointment. You were supposed to be the next King."

The moment he said that, the White Dearth Weasel lunged toward Lucy. In the blink of an eye, it had traversed the space that once stood between them.

Lucy's Crimson Dreadclaw lifted its huge claws, swinging them at the weasel as it unleashed great heat five meters around it. But the weasel, which was before the crab, suddenly appeared beside it, cutting through its thick exoskeleton.

The crab slammed against the asphalt road, and magma blasted outwardly. But the weasel was already before its head, the crab saw those merciless black blades inching closer to its eyes.

Just then, the water on the street rushed toward them, rising up and forming a giant water dome with the crab, Lucy, and others within.

The weasel stabbed through the water dome, and water coiled around its black-bladed arms, splashing on the white-furred creature's face.

It suddenly spread out, but before the weasel's face was confined in a water helmet, it became gray smoke.

The water dome, much bigger than a building, opened, and a blue-haired teenager who wore a white nose mask walked out, both hands in his pockets.

"Percival." Hard lines formed on Jon's forehead. As they both stared at each other, Snow's butterfly took him and flew out of the street.

"You usually let your hounds do the dirty work. Are they not available anymore?" Percival tilted his head as a blue portal appeared beside him, and a huge, one-hundred-feet-long beast emerged.

The Blue Horned Leviathan, an aquatic beast known for having dense scales even harder than dragons. It had stubby limbs and great fin-like structures along its back and tail.

Despite being an aquatic beast, the Leviathan was equally dangerous on land, as it was also an 8.5 Lord-tier at its peak.

But Blue Horned Leviathans were known to evolve and gain the King/Queen-tier potential. However, Percival was too silent and avoided so many fights that only a handful knew he was actually the Nexus Ace, meaning his strength was on par with, and might even exceed, Jon's!

"I'll make you pay for betraying me," Jon spoke through clenched teeth as he activated Fusion, a skill only performed by Lord-tiers, and then also activated Resonance.

This skill allowed the summoner to see what the summon could see, feel what it could feel, and sense what it sensed by syncing their hearts and emotions. It worked perfectly with Fusion.

"I am fed up with your self-entitlement," Percival declared boldly. "I let you become king, you didn't deserve it!"

The White Dearth Weasel roared, baring its fangs as a cyclone of gray smoke manifested around it, hiding it from sight but not its glowing white eyes.

Percival fused with his Blue Horned Leviathan, and it unleashed a roar that echoed far, even people dozens of miles away could hear it. It slammed one forelimb into the pavement blocks, and they shattered, unable to bear such weight. A large amount of water rushed into the street from other roads as the weasel dashed toward it.

***

A huge twenty-feet-tall door was pushed open as Lilith, Edric, and Yuan walked into a mini boss' den. It was a hall bigger than a cathedral, with high-rising windows of purple and other odd colors.

The brick walls were pitch black, and the pillars attached to them rose to the lofty dark ceiling.

What caught their attention more than the structure was the nearly eighty-meters-long purple snake lying headless. Its head lay separately, eyes wide, with two enormous fangs, each the length from the knee to the sole of an adult's foot.

A great amount of blood ran down the grand staircase, right through the door they had just opened. Seated at the top of the staircase was a sophomore caressing her white wyvern.

Isolde crossed one leg over the other, her face filled with warmth as she slid her palm across Grace's cold scales.

"So… the princess has killed one of the mini bosses. Why am I not surprised?" Lilith chuckled.

"Get out," Isolde said, glancing at them from the corner of her left eye.

"There's the Pendragon attitude," Lilith smirked. "I wonder where it went all this time."

"The rules are that we can take a good portion of your points if we defeat you. Though I never thought I'd be facing a charmer as a dungeon mini boss in my life," Edric shrugged with a soft smile.

He was confident, the reason being that there were three of them, without restrictions or limits on unleashing their summons. And no one really knew Isolde's current tier.

It was mysterious. She awakened really early, they all knew that, but everyone just assumed she was all-powerful when her wyvern wasn't much of a threat.

As for her second summon, Edric believed all three of them should be able to deal with it.

Just then, Isolde rose to her feet with a raised eyebrow. Seeing this, Lilith opened a portal and her red wyvern came out. Edric's summon was a huge eight-feet-tall gray lion with a white mane and two huge blades chained to its forelimbs, while Yuan summoned his Asura Wolf, which was in a powerful state due to the mini boss' blood.

Flames roared all around Lilith, but the moment Isolde's golden-orange eyes gleamed and she activated Dominion, the suppression of her 9.9 Lord-tier Giant Null Butterfly fell on all of them.

'This weight! I-I can't move!' Lilith squinted. Not even her 7.5 Wyvern, Edric's 7.5 Ferocious White-Maned Lion, or Yuan's 7.6 Asura Wolf could take a step.

As Isolde elegantly took one step after another, descending the staircase, Yuan's eyes slowly grew wide. 'She walks like a queen.'

He had to admit it, Yuan had never seen this part of Isolde, and it magnetized him as much as it terrified him.

The moment Isolde's feet touched the last staircase, they lost all connection to mana. Their summons were automatically retrieved to their soul space, and they were disconnected from them.

It was a horrible feeling for a summoner, they had just become ordinary humans with slightly stronger bodies due to the usual gym training.

Lilith trembled, falling to her knees as the feeling of complete powerlessness dawned on her. The others were also forced to their knees the closer Isolde got, and by the time she stood before them, their bodies were pressed against the ground as they struggled to breathe.

Their grunts of struggle were meaningless.

"Your last words?" Isolde asked, her condescending gaze filled with distaste.

'I see. This is what a true Pendragon looks like. Proud and detached. She didn't come to Manhattan to get stronger, she came to learn how to exercise restraint.' Yuan sighed as Isolde took one more step, and they blacked out.

Isolde turned back, her eyes on Grace. She had purchased every dungeon core in the fountain at the top of the staircase and given it to Grace. Finally, after several years, her wyvern was undergoing its transformation into a dragon.

"I hope you weren't disturbed, Grace."

Grace made a weak response, and Isolde smiled softly before turning to the huge snake. Her eyes flashed, and it vanished from the hall.

"She's a monster amongst monsters," Gregory, the third-year teacher, said in acceptance. "Before the end of this tournament, her wyvern will become a dragon capable of reaching Queen-tier. Her dragonfly is just half a step away from Queen-tier, and her mysterious first summon is said to be beyond our world, so it is frozen in the unknown part of her soul. I'm afraid to say no student in Manhattan is up to par with Isolde in terms of summons."

Evangeline nodded. "She is, after all, a Pendragon. From past reports from her previous school, she's mostly alone, often ignoring others despite their many approaches. She's technically the cold type, and what we've seen here proves it."

Edwin raised an eyebrow. "Are we talking about Isolde, the same girl who I've seen flirt with Godfrey several times, even before my eyes?!"

"What?!" The faces of everyone in the room changed as they stared at Edwin in disbelief. Some thought he was mad.

Sebastian cleared his throat. "Their emotions have nothing to do with us. Where is Godfrey? He's currently ranked last among the two hundred students in there."

The scene in the portal changed, and everyone was shocked when they saw Godfrey standing in the heart of a graveyard with thirty 5.5 High-tier Scarecrows lying dead around the yard.

Seeing the three brilliant cores in his hands, Gregory squinted.

"You wasted an opportunity to remain in the top ten for dungeon cores right at the start?! Is he foolish? It would take a while for his summon to properly assimilate it. Isolde chose the mini boss' den for a reason, what does he—?!"

The rest of the words hooked in his throat as Tempest absorbed the core, immediately rising from 6.7 to 7.0!

As if that wasn't enough, Godfrey gave him another core, and the Chief Knight rose to 7.2!

"Just what is going on?!" Gregory asked in shock.

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