As Brant flew down, dozens of eyes snapped toward him. The wind stirred dust around his boots as he landed, the tense air pricking at the skin. It was obvious he had descended to address the bizarre situation everyone had silently dreaded to hear.

He swept his gaze across the sparsely scattered instructors. Some stood stiff, faces pale as chalk; some trembled with red-rimmed eyes; others whispered frantically in panic over the seventy per cent death rate.

He took a slow breath and began.

"At first, we assumed the death rates were high because the candidates with talents other than Beast Taming couldn't withstand the beasts," Brant said, voice steady but heavy.

"But we were wrong. It was all because of the Demons."

The moment the word left his mouth, expressions across the clearing froze—like the wind had abruptly died.

"...Demons?" someone breathed out, barely above a whisper.

Demons—an old, festering wound for all races. Their cyclical invasions, their cruelty and unspeakable acts. A common enemy throughout making them an easy target for hatred.

If not for Cyrandel running on a rampage in human territories 200 years back, due to which elves thought the main culprit of Aeliryn's kidnapping was humans, the situation would have been a lot calmer with a common enemy. The truth had been only disclosed to select higher-ups, making the common populace birth hatred for each other. Elves for humans due to their lost prophecy, and Humans to Elves because of the unwanted killing that Elves did on the slightest provocation. Elves were already mad because of human lecherous behaviour towards them—so it could be said Aeliryn was just an excuse, a match to already packed gunpowder.

So when Brant spoke the word demons, it struck a sensitive nerve. Many instructors had lived long enough to know what demons did to kidnapped humans. Slavery, forced labour, rape, grotesque experiments—demons saw every other race as test subjects. And even if humans didn't always value each other, they couldn't stomach others doing the same to them. With even high-ranking people falling victim at times, the fear had been fed by years of propaganda and fiery advertisements.

Brant continued, voice deepening.

"The demons secretly planted beasts—Low 3-star, but displaying strength far beyond that. Worse, they drugged them to make them feral, hyper-aggressive, constantly prowling for candidates. Their overall low rank as other Low 3-star beasts made tracking them difficult… but now that the truth is out, we are cancelling the trial and calling all candidates back to the city. Prepare accommodations for their immediate return."

He finished with a clenched jaw.

Brant was among the few professors who knew about the mass gallows; he understood the necessity behind them, even if it bordered on sanctioned homicide. But for the greater good of humankind, such truths could never be exposed. People needed to remain blissfully ignorant if peace was to be maintained. But lying to his fellow mate didn't even sit right with him.

His gaze drifted toward the translucent leaderboard floating beside them. He glanced at the top name—

"Good that you're still aliv—"

But before he could finish, his eyes widened.

---

A few days before the trial cancellation—

"Arghhhh, sooooo boooorrrringggg…" Leo groaned, sprawled flat across Shyra's warm, stone-like obsidian back—soft fur to him—as she padded through the forest. His limbs sprawled lazily wide.

For days now, he hadn't encountered a single beast above Peak 1-star. Even those were few and disappointing—skittish, pathetically weak. He had to instruct Shyra to suppress her presence entirely and activate stealth a full hundred meters away just so the creatures wouldn't sense her and bolt or bury themselves deep underground.

As for why he wasn't walking on his own, especially since it would've been easy?

He was simply too lazy to bother.

He'd grown far too comfortable atop Shyra, and even if there was no fight, the simple thrill of dozing on a massive beast felt oddly luxurious. In his boredom, he'd started crafting a deluxe bed of vines and soft leaves on her back—an absurd replacement for scrolling a phone he didn't even have. At first, it was fun.

But now? Even that was getting boring.

Shyra had stopped reacting to his nonsense. In the beginning, she used to shake off the vines whenever the makeshift mattress grew too heavy, which amused him to no end—especially since Niri loved poking at Shyra just to annoy her further. Leo would lie back and watch the mini chaos unfold, chuckling to himself.

But when even Niri got bored and retreated into the spiritual space to tend to the treasures, everything turned painfully bland.

Once a day, he would half-empty his mana pool just to try out different attacks—that was the highlight of the entire twenty-four hours. With perfect efficiency, it took him about thirty minutes to burn through half his mana using his skills at their max proper output. That was his safe limit.

Overloading skills like [Critical Strike] or [Violet Hellbrand], however, was an entirely different beast.

Overloading didn't multiply the power—it multiplied the instances of the skill being executed. [Critical Strike], for example, normally channelled a full 100% output into a single limb (a 600% damage boost). Overloading it allowed him to output that 100% into two limbs simultaneously. Skills had a hard cap, a built-in limiter preventing them from exceeding their intended output.

But the mana cost skyrocketed for overloading.

If one limb at 100% cost 200 mana per second, then two limbs cost 200 + 400 = 600. Three limbs became 600 + 1200 = 1800. Four limbs, 1800 + 1800 per second, it doubled every time a limb was added. That is 3600 mana units just so he could power his whole body to 600%.

With his previous max reserve of 23,733 mana, he could theoretically maintain full-body 600% enhancement for about 6.5 seconds before collapsing from mana exhaustion—yet even 5 seconds at Low 4-star strength could turn the tide of a deadly fight. Unfortunately, with his current skill mastery, he could only overload two limbs at once.

He had tried it once.

He hit the ground almost immediately afterwards(~30 seconds), vision swimming, limbs refusing to move. He had to summon Niri and Shyra to guard his unresponsive body for 2 whole hours until he recovered. Technically, with his natural recovery of 132 mana per minute (half his Intelligence stat), it should've taken closer to 3 hours. But thanks to Niri's passive presence, the recovery finished faster.

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