The Forgotten Worshippers
I'd forgotten who was behind the terror attack on the Academy territory by the Forgotten Worshippers, but honestly, knowing the culprit's identity wouldn't have changed much anyway. I immediately figured out what I needed to do.
“Boss. You stay inside this building.”
“Uh, uhh?”
“There aren’t any bombs nearby, so you’ll be safe as long as you stay inside. Yuri, Aria. We’re heading back to the Academy.”
“...Straight back to the Academy? We’re not rescuing people?”
Yuri questioned my words, but I shook my head at her.
“We’re still just cadets. We haven’t been trained for rescue operations, and we don’t even know what the terrorists are after. Acting on our own in a situation like this is worse than gathering up and following the professors’ orders.”
“...Kyle.”
“What? Falling for me already?”
I grinned as I said it, and Yuri nodded with a completely straight face.
“Surprisingly, you actually think things through like this.”
“Hahaha! This much is basic common sense.”
With that, I led the two of them out of the shop.
The streets were in complete chaos from the bomb attacks. People caught in the terror were either injured and shivering in fear or had completely panicked, running around wildly.
I helped the seriously wounded while calmly guiding the panicked ones to safety as we made our way toward the Academy.
Boom—
“The situation looks pretty bad...”
Even on the way to the Academy, the sounds of explosions kept thundering in the distance. I couldn’t figure out who would dare pull something like this at the Academy. No matter how strong their secret organization was, once the imperial family got serious about investigating, they’d be torn apart completely.
Have they lost their damn minds?
If not, then the gains from this terror attack must outweigh the losses they’d suffer from the Empire stepping in.
After sorting my thoughts, I reached the Academy and immediately took Yuri and Aria to the auditorium. The professors and instructors had drilled it into us to gather there if anything happened.
Sure enough, nearly all the cadets and instructors were already assembled inside.
“This should be safe enough.”
After making sure the two of them were secure, I immediately started looking for any professor or the principal who could actually resolve this mess.
Unfortunately, both Sir Gawain and the principal were already gone, dispatched somewhere. The only ones around were the Knight Department instructors.
These instructors had only ever swung swords in their lives. This was clearly their first time dealing with a situation like this, and they were just stomping around with dazed looks on their faces.
“Instructor.”
“Oh, uh. Cadet Kyle. What is it?”
“How about we start with a headcount?”
“Ah, y-yes—a headcount. Right! Everyone, pay attention!”
Taking my advice, the instructor and the others quickly began sorting the cadets. They pulled out the attendance records and started making lists of who was present and who was missing.
It didn’t take long for them to finish. When the instructor realized how many people were unaccounted for, he bit his lip.
“Instructor? Could I see that list too?”
“Huh? No, this is for the instructors to—”
“I’d appreciate it.”
The presence of an Aura Master naturally overwhelms people. The intimidated party ends up agreeing before they even realize it.
After taking the list from the instructor, I checked the names of those who weren’t there. A surprising number were missing from the Knight, Magic, and Military Departments. In the Knight Department alone, I noticed Hundred, Arthur, Liber, and several others were absent.
This is...
As I scanned the list, I realized the common link between everyone missing from the auditorium. They were all the ones whose skills had strangely skyrocketed over the past few days.
Not just Liber from the Knight Department—the names Yuri had mentioned about cadets whose abilities had suddenly improved were all there too.
My sharp instincts as an Aura Master sounded the alarm. I filled in the missing information with imagination and reasoned through pure instinct rather than logic.
I see.
I understood now. The terrorists’ goal and the identity of the culprits.
I handed the list back to the instructor and immediately headed out of the auditorium.
Yuri blocked my path as I left.
“Kyle, where are you going?”
“I’ll be back after taking care of something quick.”
“...You’re not coming back injured again, are you?”
I let out a small laugh at Yuri’s question and pulled her into a light hug before releasing her. She frowned like she’d roughly figured out what I meant.
Ignoring the instructors trying to stop me, I left the auditorium. Seeing a dragon flying across the distant sky, I let out a hollow laugh.
“What the hell is that now?”
Behind the dragon, the principal was flying after it, launching spells at the creature.
I forcibly stopped my feet, which had automatically started moving toward a dragon hunt. Closing my eyes, I scattered my aura across the entire Academy.
I wouldn’t mind getting the Dragon Hunter title, but...
There was something more urgent right now.
After spreading my aura throughout the Academy grounds, I began sensing the presence of every single person inside. Then I started searching for the specific aura I was looking for.
Not this one. Not that one either. Nope...
After a long time that made my head throb, I finally picked up on a very familiar energy. Not only was it pure, but the sheer quantity of aura didn’t fall behind my own.
“Found you.”
Having located Arthur, I headed straight for where he was.
Arthur had been in the middle of training inside the Academy when the sudden group of visitors made him tense up. Their condition was clearly not normal.
Their eyes were bloodshot red, and drool was dripping from the corners of their mouths. From among them, a long-haired man with locks reaching down to his waist stepped forward.
Arthur quickly glanced at the man’s chest and realized his name was Damian.
“You’re Arthur, correct?”
“...Yes?”
“I don’t recall hearing you were a man... Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re coming with us.”
Damian spoke as if it were obvious Arthur would follow.
But Arthur shook his head and gripped his sword.
“What if I refuse?”
“If you want to get hurt that badly, be my guest.”
At Damian’s light gesture, the people around him instantly charged toward Arthur.
Intense aura radiated from their bodies—power that didn’t lose out to the aura generated by Arthur’s own heart.
Arthur immediately wrapped his entire body in aura. The abnormally overflowing energy strengthened him beyond his normal limits. Even surrounded by over a dozen Aura Users, he somehow managed to hold his ground.
“Ugh—! Everyone, get a hold of yourselves—!”
“Uwooooooo—!”
But holding on was the limit.
Arthur couldn’t bring himself to kill them, while they swung their blades with complete disregard for whether he lived or died.
The wooden training sword, unreinforced by aura, couldn’t withstand the iron blades swung with aura-enhanced strength for long. Soon enough, it snapped clean in half.
“Hoo...”
The moment his wooden sword broke, Arthur tossed it aside and started beating the cadets with his bare hands. This was much better. His aura-reinforced body knocked them out one after another without issue.
When Arthur had taken down nearly ten of them, Damian approached without him noticing and smashed a fist into his jaw.
“Ugh!?”
When the jaw shakes, the head shakes. When the head shakes, balance collapses.
Arthur staggered and swung a leg, but Damian casually caught it, tripped his other foot, and slammed him to the ground.
Pressing down on Arthur’s chest with his foot, Damian looked down at him with a hand in his pocket.
“For all that overflowing aura, your technique for handling it is pathetic.”
“Khh...!”
“It’s proof that this power is too much for someone like you.”
At those words, Arthur roughly realized the man’s identity. He was exactly what the man who had sent him to the Academy had warned about—the ancient organization targeting the Dragon’s Heart.
“The... Forgotten Worshippers...”
“Knowing the name means we’ve come to the right place.”
Creak—!
Damian pressed down harder with his foot as he stared at Arthur. His eyes glittered with pure greed.
Feeling like his breath might stop from the pain, Arthur glared fiercely up at Damian. It was a look that said even if he died here, he would never forget this bastard.
“Don’t worry. I won’t kill you here. Not until we take that body back and figure out exactly how they managed to implant the Dragon’s Heart inside it—”
“After what?”
“—What!?”
Damian whipped his head toward the direction of the voice.
There stood Kyle, whose build was easily one and a half times larger than his own.
He hadn’t noticed a man this massive getting so close? Damian looked at Kyle in disbelief before leaping backward to create distance.
“...Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Kyle Meyer.”
Kyle spoke as he helped the fallen Arthur to his feet. After brushing the dirt off Arthur’s clothes, he looked back at Damian.
“This guy’s friend.”
“Friend? So you’re a first-year.”
“That’s right. You’re a second-year? Guess that makes you my senior.”
“K-Kyle... Be careful. That guy—he’s not nor—”
Before Arthur could finish his warning, Damian rushed in and swung his sword.
Among Arthur’s classmates, there was only one person who could cross blades with him, and that person wasn’t supposed to be Kyle Meyer.
But contrary to Damian’s expectations, Kyle blocked the strike without any difficulty.
The only ones who could block an aura-infused sword so easily were fellow Aura Experts. Damian’s eyes flashed with shock.
“How?”
Even Arthur, watching from behind Kyle, let out a surprised gasp.
Kyle continued parrying before counterattacking, thrusting his sword at Damian.
Struck in a gap he couldn’t have imagined, Damian took a cut across the chest and immediately clutched the wound as he retreated.
“...That level of skill at your age. You must have received the blessing of incredible talent.”
Damian glared at Kyle as he spoke. Kyle simply shrugged as if asking what he planned to do about it.
Seeing that, Damian chuckled and reached into his coat. When his hand emerged, it held a glass bottle filled with red fruits.
“However, the times are changing. This is no longer an era where talent alone can let you surpass others.”
With those words, Damian popped the cork with a loud pop! and dumped the fruits straight into his mouth.
I tilted my head, wondering what he was doing. Soon after, red aura began surging violently from Damian’s body.
It was so intense it was visible to the naked eye.
Kyle’s expression hardened as he watched the aura pouring out of Damian.
Seeing that reaction, Damian burst into loud, maniacal laughter.
“Uahaha—! Yes! That’s the exact face I wanted to see!”
Still laughing, Damian focused the aura flowing from his body onto his sword. The red energy covered the blade, forming the ultimate cutting edge that could slice through anything.
“Aura Blade?”
Arthur gasped in horror at the sight.
The man who had been an Aura Expert just moments ago had now manifested his aura externally.
Kyle, who had watched the entire process from start to finish, roughly understood the secret but asked anyway.
“How did you do it?”
“Fine. I’ll give you this knowledge as a parting gift for the afterlife. This fruit of life. Eating Scarlet grants anyone powerful vitality. And that overflowing life force gets converted directly into aura and bursts forth.”
“But doesn’t that kill you if it lasts too long?”
The method Damian described was the same as drawing out one’s innate life force like in martial arts novels. Converting a person’s very life into aura—a technique that would kill a normal person in seconds. I didn’t know how they’d made it, but Damian had solved the problem by consuming fruits packed with life energy.
Of course, it was still insanely dangerous.
“It would if it goes on too long. But—who exactly is going to stop me here? The principal who went to deal with the dragon? The retired hero who went to stop the terrorists?”
Only another Master could stop an Aura Master. And there were only two Masters in the Academy. Both of them had gone off to handle other incidents, so there was no way they could be here.
In other words, Damian could kill Kyle in an instant and kidnap Arthur without any interference whatsoever.
“Hm. I’ve wasted too many words. Time to die.”
Damian slowly approached with his sword writhing with Aura Blade. Drunk on the overflowing life force, his movements were extremely inefficient.
Kyle let out a sigh as he watched Damian approach. After confirming there was no one else around except Arthur, he turned to his friend.
“Hey, Arthur.”
“K-Kyle. Forget about me, just run quic—”
“Don’t tell anyone you saw this.”
“Huh?”
Sigh. I really didn’t want to use it in a place like this.
Kyle drew his sword and stepped forward. A blue Aura Blade had already formed along its edge.
“—That’s.”
“You said it’s an era where talent alone can’t let you get ahead?”
With the Aura Blade covering half his face, Kyle smiled as he glared at Damian.
“That just means your talent is lacking.”
“You— You— Just how much of a blessing do you need before you’re satisfied?!”
“Who knows.”
I’d never even thought about it.
Muttering those words, Kyle charged straight at Damian.