Zephyr, no longer intending to listen to any stupid reasons, walked right up to the table.

He grabbed the front of Azrael’s uniform shirt, his knuckles turning pale from his tight grip.

"What the fuck happened to you in the cave?" Zephyr demanded, his voice filled with anger.

A few senior students sitting around the crowded cafeteria stopped eating their morning meals.

They looked over at the sudden commotion, murmuring among themselves about the freshmen causing trouble again.

Azrael did not react to the physical threat.

He just looked down at the hands holding his shirt, feeling nothing but mild boredom.

"Nothing happened," Azrael stated, his voice entirely flat and devoid of warmth.

"Bullshit," Zephyr growled.

His hand suddenly glowed with a piercing light as he moved his grip directly to Azrael’s throat.

He activated his unique core trait, attempting to rapidly drain the mana right out of the vessel and force his opponent into submission.

But Azrael simply stood there in his tight grasp.

The mana was draining from the surface of his skin, flowing into Zephyr’s hand, but Azrael did not show a single emotion to indicate pain or fatigue.

He did not flinch, gasp, or struggle to breathe.

He did not react at all like the desperate human boy would have when they first battled in the training hall.

’He truly believes he is draining a simple puddle,’ Azrael thought to himself, staring deeply into Zephyr’s eyes.

Zephyr felt the endless energy pouring into his own veins.

A sweat broke out across his forehead as his lungs tightened.

He quickly realised the person he had fought before was not this patient, and certainly not this terrifyingly still.

"Wha... What the hell are you?" Zephyr stammered. His hand started shaking violently against Azrael’s neck, the holy light flickering under the overwhelming pressure of the dark mana.

Azrael looked down at him with his red eyes. His own fingers twitched by his side. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

He prepared to reach forward, pierce the mortal’s chest, and crush his heart into a bloody pulp right in front of the whole school.

But before his fingers could even raise an inch, someone else’s hand clamped down hard on Zephyr’s wrist, stopping the deadly confrontation.

"That is enough," Arthur said, yawning loudly as if he had just woken up from a very long nap.

The red-haired senior easily pulled Zephyr’s hand away from the throat, stepping firmly between the two students.

"It is way too early in the morning for you guys to fight like this," Arthur warned, his tone lazy but carrying a hidden threat.

Then, his gaze moved over to Azrael.

Azrael was unknowingly emitting an aura of dark mana into the surrounding air.

He was different.

Even Arthur, who barely knew the freshman, could easily find the harsh change in his posture and energy.

Zephyr rubbed his aching wrist, giving one last terrified glare.

He and Kiara quickly turned around and walked away from the table, wanting to put distance between themselves and the unnatural pressure.

Melissa stepped closer to the exact moment they left.

She gently smoothed out the wrinkles on Azrael’s uniform shirt with her soft hands.

"You are too lenient on them, my lord," she whispered, a devoted smile resting on her face.

"They could not even touch my true core," Azrael replied, waving off the encounter.

"What could they possibly do to hurt me? A tiny bug biting a mountain does not wound the stone."

The morning bells rang across the campus, signalling the start of the daily academic lectures.

The classes went on exactly as they always did.

Azrael changed his usual seating arrangement to sit right next to Melissa in the back row.

As the boring mortal teachers droned on about simple magical theory, she leaned close and quietly explained whatever the instructor said, translating the useless human concepts for her king.

A few rows ahead, Zephyr’s eyes were constantly fixed on him. He was pretending to read his textbook, but his mind was racing.

After Zephyr finally escaped his mental trance in the village last night, he walked down into the cave, expecting a brutal fight to save his classmate.

Instead, he found decapitated cultist bodies covering the bloody stone floor, along with complex, ancient drawings painted all over the walls.

’Is this some sort of demonic possession?’ Zephyr thought, biting the end of his pen nervously.

Azrael easily sensed the stare resting on his back.

He slowly turned his head, his red eyes locking directly with Zephyr’s for a brief second.

A mocking smirk tugged at the corner of Azrael’s lips, forcing the frightened hero to quickly look down at his desk.

A few minutes later, the door to the classroom opened.

Principal Boros entered the room, his long robes dragging across the polished floor.

His sudden appearance made every single student stand up at strict attention.

"Take your seats," Boros commanded, his deep voice echoing off the walls.

"You all must have heard the sad rumours already. It is unfortunately true. One of your classmates, Ray Evenheart, was killed last night while bravely defending a local village from a cultist attack."

Loud murmurs of shock and fake pity spread quickly across the classroom.

Boros let the noise happen for a short moment, but his gaze bypassed the whispering crowd and landed directly on Shane.

Boros did not know how to explain the shift to the rest of the faculty, but the change was highly visible to him.

Boros possessed a very rare sensory trait called the Soul Scale.

It allowed him to weigh the spiritual gravity of anyone standing in his presence.

A normal human, even a highly skilled Master rank, only ever possesses one single core beating inside their chest.

But looking at the quiet boy sitting in the back row, Boros saw a terrifying anomaly.

He saw two distinct cores overlapping inside the same vessel.

One core was small, fragile, and utterly crushed, looking like a dying ember buried under ash.

It was the original soul of the boy. The second core, wrapped tightly around the first, was a bottomless black sun. It brimmed with an energy that Boros had only ever read about in religious texts.

He knew what kind of monster was hiding inside his academy walls.

And Boros knew exactly what he had to do now.

Shane had already informed him of this predicament.