Chapter 225: The Hunt Had Begun. (1)
The morning air in the academy grounds carried the faint, synthetic scent of blooming gardenias and recycled ozone, but to Creed Walden, it tasted entirely of copper and burning hair.
Beneath the thick, pitch black fabric of the headband he had hastily tied around his brow, the brand throbbed.
It was not a physical headache—not the dull, pulsing ache of a bruised temple or the sharp pinch of a ruptured blood vessel.
It was an unnatural, multi-dimensional itch. The geometric scar carved into his skull felt like an open doorway suspended over a void, leaking absolute zero straight into his cerebrospinal fluid.
Every step was a quiet exercise in agony.
His lungs expanded, contracted, but felt permanently hollow.
Deep within the core of his chest, where three bright, pulsing nexuses of consciousness had lived, there was nothing. Only an eerie, vast emptiness that felt like a plucked tooth, leaving an exposed nerve dangling in a cavernous grave.
’They’re gone,’ a panicked voice screamed from the darkest corner of his mind. ’You burned them out. You dragged them into a suicide assessment, the circle broke, and you let a cosmic nightmare swallow them whole. You’re nothing now. Just a broke kid from Section 7 playing dress-up in an elite’s robe.’
Creed didn’t flinch.
Externally, his posture was immaculate. He kept his spine straight, his hands tucked loosely into the pockets of his dark blue uniform, his jaw slack and relaxed.
When you are drowning in ten leagues of freezing water, thrashing only makes the lungs burn faster.
He had survived the blood-slick cavern of the Trial of Self, starved in the slums under the debt collectors of Section 7, and crawled on broken knees through the scorching sand of the Pyramid.
Panicking in public was a luxury for people whose parents paid their tuition. For Creed, composure wasn’t a personality trait; it was armor.
"Look at him," a voice drifted from the terrace of a nearby floating pavilion, not bothering to lower its pitch.
"The Hope Candidate. Out in under sixty minutes. Record-setting prodigy, alright."
"He looks half-dead. What’s with the headband? Did the Greater Beast King scalp him through the VR link?"
Creed walked past them without a sideways glance. His boots struck the polished crystalline tiles with an even, rhythmic cadence.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He didn’t speed up. He didn’t clench his fists. To react to gnats was to admit their bites drew blood.
Inside, however, his fingers were twitching against his thighs. Every three seconds, his mind reflexively barked a command: Status. Open System.
Nothing.
No translucent blue window. No numerical comfort of strength, agility, or constitution.
The interface that had guided his every breath since awakening in this foreign world was completely dead, wiped as clean as a scrubbed hard drive.
He wasn’t just blind; he had been stripped naked and thrown onto a frozen highway.
He veered off the main boulevard, cutting through the perimeter gardens of the residential quad where the towering, crystalline weeping willows cast heavy, blue-tinted shadows over the stone benches.
It was secluded, quiet, and out of sight of the upper-floor balconies.
Creed stopped, leaning back against the cold trunk of a petrified tree, closing his eyes to let out a single, measured breath.
Just one second of weakness. Just one moment to press the heels of his palms against his eyelids and swallow down the nausea threatening to choke him.
"You’re breathing too shallowly through your nose," a smooth, cultured voice observed from ten feet to his left.
"The autonomic nervous system interprets that as an ongoing predator pursuit. It spikes your cortisol. If you intend to throw up, at least aim for the shrubs; the cleaning golems are notoriously spiteful about bodily fluids on the flagstones."
Creed didn’t jump. He forced his eyelids to open with agonizing slowness.
Stepping out from beneath the canopy of an adjacent archway was Nicholas Grey.
The silver-haired youth looked pristine, as always. His uniform bore the silver and gold filigree of the academy’s upper echelon, sharply pressed without a single wrinkle.
Yet, if anyone looked closely—if anyone possessed the hyper-refined danger senses Creed had forged through the Path of Killing—the cracks were glaring.
Nicholas’s immaculate silver hair had two stray strands falling over his right ear. His eyes, usually gleaming with the cool, mocking arrogance of an apex predator playing chess, had faint lavender bruises pooling beneath their lower lids.
More telling, his right thumb was rhythmically tapping against the side of his index finger—a rapid, nervous tick entirely uncharacteristic of the boy who had calmly manipulated entire battlefields in the Pyramid of Dominion.
Creed let his head tilt slightly back against the tree bark, offering a razor-thin, bloodless smirk.
"And here I thought you only stalked me when there was an honorary Student Union title to extort," Creed said, his voice gravelly and dry, but completely devoid of tremor.
"Come to gloat, Grey? I’d invite you to sit, but my hospitality died somewhere around hour zero of that lovely planetary simulation."
Nicholas stopped three paces away. He didn’t smile. He didn’t drop a sarcastic one-liner.
Instead, he slowly raised his right hand and tapped his own temple, his gaze drilling straight through the black fabric wrapped around Creed’s skull.
"How hot is it?" Nicholas asked quietly.
The world seemed to pause. The distant hum of academy shuttles and student chatter vanished under a sudden, suffocating pressure.
Creed didn’t move a muscle. "I don’t know what you’re talking about."
"Save the performance for the hyenas on the walkway, Walden," Nicholas said, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper that barely carried beyond the leaves.
"You aren’t wearing that headband because you’re starting a retro fashion trend. And you aren’t hiding behind an ornamental tree because you’re enjoying the botanical aesthetics. Your energy signature is leaking ambient radiation like a cracked reactor core."
Nicholas reached into his pocket. Creed’s weight shifted instantly, his heels digging into the dirt, his right shoulder dropping half an inch into a primed stance for a lunging spear strike.
Nicholas paused, his gray eyes flicking down to Creed’s feet, then up to his eyes. A ghost of a bitter, approving smirk touched the silver-haired boy’s lips.
"Still got your reflexes, even while your soul is bleeding out," Nicholas murmured. He slowly withdrew a sleek, hexagonal disc—a localized privacy dampener—and tossed it to the ground between them.
A faint, translucent sphere of gray energy expanded, enclosing them in a dome that warped sound, light, and magical tracking.
Inside the perimeter, the ambient academy noise was replaced by total, dead silence.
Nicholas unbuttoned the high, stiff collar of his academy tunic.
He pulled the fabric down past his left collarbone.
Creed’s breath caught in his throat.
________
[A/N]
To My Loyal Readers
First, I owe every single one of you a sincere apology.
I know it has been more than a year since I last updated this book, and I know many of you were left waiting, wondering if the story would ever continue.
I have no excuse that would make that wait feel any less frustrating. I stepped away from this story for far too long, and I’m truly sorry to everyone who invested their time, emotions, and support into it.
Some of you probably moved on. Some may have forgotten about the story entirely. And honestly, I can’t blame you.
But despite all that, there were still readers who stayed. Those of you who continued to support the book, left comments, sent gifts, or simply kept it in your library—you have no idea how much that means to me.
Thank you for not giving up on me completely.
I’m finally back, and this time, I’m coming back with a renewed passion for the story, a clearer direction, and a determination to give this book the ending and journey it deserves.
I know saying "I’m back" isn’t enough. I want to prove it through the Chapters.
And to celebrate this new beginning, I’m holding a 3-DAY WELCOME BACK EVENT!
For the next three days, every Super Gift—whether it’s a Castle, Spaceship, or Golden Gachapon—will reward the book with:
10 BONUS ChapterS instead of the usual 5!
It’s my small way of saying thank you for welcoming me back.
So, to everyone who is still here...
Thank you for waiting. Thank you for supporting me. And most importantly, thank you for giving Creed’s story another chance.
I’m back.
Let’s finish this journey together.