Chapter 8: Trials(1)
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The March to Class C
The mood on the way to the Class C dorms was a strange blend of tension and denial—a mixed bag, if there ever was one. On one side, you had the low-ranking nobles puffing up their chests, already trying to assert some fake sense of dominance. They were loud, boastful, calling the whole placement "temporary," claiming they'd climb to Class A within a month. A few others kept repeating the same hollow consolation: "Well, at least we're not in Class D."
Kai didn't say anything. He barely even listened.
The other side of the group quieter, tighter was made up of those who still couldn't believe they were here. Kids with expensive haircuts and tailor-made uniforms. Kids whose entire identities were built on being better than others. They moved like their bones were made of glass—confused.
Ironically, they were the ones who broke the fastest.
The truth, as revealed at the end of the first-year arc in the novel, was that this year's Class C would've been considered Class B in any other generation. A statistical fluke, the result of an unusually powerful Class A batch. The administration quietly admitted it in the epilogue of the third arc, just to add insult to injury.
But for Kai, that tidbit didn't matter.
It was trivia.
Even if he bombed every class, failed every test, and kept to himself the entire year, it wouldn't matter. The truth was harsh but freeing: most of the so-called "top performers" from the academy never did anything important in the later arcs. They were footnotes. Side characters. Cannon fodder.
Kai wouldn't be one of them. Not with the Lightless Inheritance in his possession even just with the tiny portion of of one of them let alone all 7 but just the part he already had acquired