Chapter 823: Assessment Announcement (2)
Chapter 823: Assessment Announcement (2)
For a moment, Beacon Hall seemed to forget how to breathe.Fourteen days.
The words hung over the second-years with a weight that took longer to settle than most announcements did. A full-year cooperation assessment had been expected by many of them, or at least suspected. The hints had been there in the academy’s recent behavior, in the increased pressure around leadership, in the way instructors had begun emphasizing communication, shared decision-making, and battlefield adaptability. After Nalim, it made sense that the next practical exam would move beyond individual survival and force them to function together.
But fourteen days was different.
Fourteen days meant the academy was not thinking of a simple field exercise. It meant sleep cycles, food management, fatigue, injury, internal conflict, mistakes that lasted longer than one afternoon, and leadership decisions that could not be corrected by an instructor stepping in with a warning after an hour. It meant they would have to live inside the assessment long enough for habits to show, for tempers to fray, for weak structures to crack, and for whatever false unity they had built since Nalim to be tested until it either became real or collapsed.
The hall filled with murmurs almost instantly.
"Two weeks?"
"Is she serious?"
"In another realm for fourteen days?"
"That is longer than Nalim."
"Full-year cooperation means all of us together?"
"What kind of realm needs two weeks?"
Liam remained silent, his gaze fixed on the stage. Beside him, Dylan no longer looked amused. Maxwell had leaned forward slightly, elbows resting near his knees, his face set in the expression he wore when he was already trying to understand the structure of a problem before the full shape had been shown.
Across the hall, other second-years shifted in their seats, some nervous, some excited, some already looking toward ranked students as if leadership had become an immediate question rather than a future detail.
Then Sir Regulus moved.
He did not raise his voice at first. He only stepped forward once, the sound of his boot striking the stage carrying through the hall with unnatural clarity. The murmurs continued for half a second longer.
"Silence."
The word struck with enough force to end every whisper at once.
No threat followed. None was needed. Sir Regulus’s voice carried the heavy authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed on battlefields, not classrooms. The hall stilled beneath him immediately, students straightening as though their bodies had understood before their minds finished reacting.
Lucia glanced toward him and gave a small nod. "Thank you, Sir Regulus."
Regulus stepped back without another word.
Lucia turned her attention to the students again. Her expression had not changed much, but there was a firmness beneath her calm now, a clear sign that the part they were entering required more than surprise.