The Opening banquet lasted exactly five hours, and much like the initial entrance ceremony, apart from the initial buzz was largely uneventful.

Before one could react, the sun soon set and a new day had arrived.

However, this morning sun did not bring warmth to the students of Class F, instead, it brought pain.

While the rest of the Academy slept off their wine and roasted boar, Class F was already awake.

Damien had dragged them out of their dorms at 5:00 AM sharp, marching them to Sector 4, a muddy, miserable patch of land on the Academy's perimeter, usually reserved for punishing soldiers who disobeyed orders.

"Get up, Ironheart," Mozart's voice cut through the morning mist.

"The ground is for the dead."

Alaric gasped, rolling onto his side in the mud. He coughed up bile. His body screamed in protest. Every muscle fiber felt like it had been shredded.

"I can't..." Alaric wheezed, his face pale. "My legs... they won't move."

Mozart stood over him. He was not wearing his tuxedo today.

He wore simple black training gear that hugged his frame, highlighting the lean, explosive muscle beneath. The silver mask reflected the pale dawn light.

In his hand, he held a wooden practice sword.

THWACK.

Mozart tapped Alaric's ribs with the sword. It wasn't a hard hit, but it hit a nerve cluster that sent a jolt of liquid agony through the boy's body.

"Pain is information," Mozart stated coldly.

"Your legs are cramping because your stance is too wide. Your lungs are burning because you are breathing with your chest, not your diaphragm."

He looked at the rest of the class.

Lukas was trying to do push-ups while levitating a stone with fire mana. He was trembling violently, his face a mask of misery.

Elena was meditating in the lotus position, floating an inch off the mud. She looked bored, but a sheen of sweat on her forehead betrayed her exhaustion.

"Class F!" Mozart barked. "Stop."

The students collapsed instantly. Lukas face-planted into the mud with a groan.

Mozart walked to the center of the field.

"Magic requires focus," Mozart lectured, pacing like a predator.

"But focus breaks when you get punched in the throat. Most Mages are glass cannons. If I close the distance, you die. If you run out of mana, you die."

He pointed his wooden sword at Alaric.

"Except him."

The class turned to look at the protagonist, who was struggling to his knees.

"Mr. Ironheart has no mana," Mozart said brutally. "He is not a glass cannon. He is just glass."

Lukas snickered into the mud.

"However," Mozart continued, "glass can be sharp."

He tossed the wooden sword to Alaric. The boy caught it clumsily.

"Attack me."

Alaric froze. "Sir?"

"You said you wanted to save the world," Mozart said, lowering his stance into a relaxed, open guard. "Start by hitting me."

Alaric hesitated, then grit his teeth. He charged.

It was a clumsy, desperate swing. A common brawler's strike aimed at the shoulder.

Mozart didn't even move his feet. He simply swayed his upper body a fraction of an inch. The wooden blade whizzed past his nose.

Mozart extended one finger and tapped Alaric on the forehead.

Flick.

Alaric's head snapped back. His momentum carried him forward, and he tripped over Mozart's foot, face-planting into the dirt.

"Dead," Mozart said.

Alaric scrambled up, his face red with shame and anger. He swung again. And again.

Slash. Dodge. Trip. Fall.

Slash. Dodge. Trip. Fall.

For ten minutes, it was a massacre. Alaric couldn't touch him. The Protagonist looked pathetic.

The class watched in silence. It was humiliating.

"Stop," Mozart ordered.

Alaric stood there, heaving, his uniform torn, bleeding from a scrape on his cheek. He looked ready to cry.

"Why?" Alaric shouted, his voice cracking.

"Why are you doing this? I have no talent! You said it yourself! I'm useless!"

"I said you have no mana," Mozart corrected calmly.

He walked over to Alaric. He took the wooden sword from the boy's shaking hand.

"Watch closely."

Mozart walked over to a massive boulder that sat at the edge of the training field. It was granite, roughly the size of a carriage.

He stood before it, closing his eyes.

"Listen to the stone," Mozart whispered, more to himself than the class.

He placed his palm against the rock.

He didn't channel mana. He didn't use an aura. Instead, he adjusted the frequency of his own body.

He aligned his breathing, his heartbeat, and his muscle tension into a single, devastating rhythm.

It was a technique his father, Theron Voss, had once shown him in a memory crystal. A forbidden technique of the Voss family, stripped of its name.

[Unnamed Art: Structural Resonance]

Mozart simply pushed.

A sharp, high-pitched ping echoed through the air.

CRACK.

A spiderweb fracture appeared on the granite. It spread rapidly, groaning under the internal stress.

A second later, the massive boulder split cleanly in half, the two pieces falling away with a heavy thud.

This was just one of the many moves that Theron had learned over the years to gain the title of the world's strongest man.

Be it with mana or no mana, a was still the strongest

A move Damien had long since thought was suitable for the protagonist, especially considering he had stolen some of his opportunities already

The class gasped.

Lukas's jaw dropped. "No mana... he didn't use any mana..."

Elena leaned forward, her emerald eyes narrowing. '

That wasn't brute force. That was... vibration? How can a human body generate that kind of frequency?'

Mozart turned back to Alaric.

"Everything in this world has a rhythm," Mozart explained, dusting off his hands.

"Stone. Steel. Flesh. If you can find that rhythm and disrupt it, you don't need a fireball."

He looked at Alaric's trembling hands.

"This is not magic. This is Physics. It is the art of breaking things efficiently."

Making up a reason for it, Damien continued to explain

He pointed to a pile of smaller rocks nearby.

"Pick up a rock, Ironheart. Don't try to crush it. Feel it. Find the flaw."

Alaric looked at the split boulder, then at his own hands. The despair in his eyes vanished, replaced by a terrifying hunger.

"Yes, Professor," Alaric whispered.

"Good," Mozart nodded. "Now, give me five hundred squats. If your form breaks, we start over."

He turned away from Alaric and walked toward the mages.

He stopped in front of Elena.

The High Elf Princess stood up. She dusted off her pristine uniform.

Unlike the humans, she wasn't covered in mud. She had used subtle wind magic to keep the dirt away.

"You are holding back," Mozart said.

Elena looked him in the eye. "Human magic is crude. I do not wish to pollute my core with it."

"And yet," Mozart pointed to her shoes. "You used wind mana to keep your boots clean while your classmates suffered in the mud."

Elena flushed slightly.

"The World Tree teaches us that mana is sacred," she defended.

"It should be used for life, not... whatever this is."

Mozart stepped closer.

Suddenly, Elena felt it again.

The Celestial Life Physique.

Up close, Mozart's aura wasn't just warm. It was overwhelming.

To her elven senses, he smelled like a sun-drenched forest after a rainstorm. It triggered a primal, biological memory of safety.

'Is this really Godfather?' Elena thought, her heart racing. 'if so, why is the resonance so strong?'

"Mana is not sacred, Princess," Mozart whispered, leaning down to her ear.

"Mana is a resource."

He pulled back.

"Tomorrow," Mozart announced to the class, "we are leaving the Academy."

The students looked up, confused.

"Leaving?" Lukas asked. "Where are we going? A field trip?"

Mozart smiled behind his mask.

"Something like that."

He pulled a scroll from his pocket. It was a requisition form for the Beginner's Dungeon – Sector 1.

But Mozart had already modified the runes on the back.

He wasn't taking them to Sector 1. He was taking them to the Restricted Zone.

"Time to start the main plot!"

Recalling the information from the original novel, Damien planned to take the class to get one of the protagonist's first boosts

Not only that, but he had told Lyra and Leona to meet him there, so after sixteen years, they were finally going to meet face to face!

"Pack your bags," Mozart said, his voice dripping with anticipation. "We're going hunting."

.....

[Author's note]

Thank you all for following over the past two months; words are not enough to describe my gratitude.

As such, a Christmas special chapter is currently in development. I hope you all like it!

Merry Christmas in advance!!!

P.S. Something big is about to happen!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.