As Talia flew back, Lian Feng surged to her side, while Marcus—jaw clenched—hammered his fist against the Thornmaw's hindlimb once more.

His wrist buckled. Blood erupted from splitting skin. He lurched backward, screaming.

Kaito had lunged forward despite knowing there was likely no way to wound the monstrosity. He glanced at Isolde, who took slow, trembling steps in retreat.

"Isolde! Get back here! Flank it from the other side!"

Her eyes widened. Instead of shooting toward them, she bolted—vanishing through the entanglements of tree branches like smoke through wooden fingers.

The Thornmaw reeled back from Kage, and he crumpled to the ground, vomiting blood.

Bei snarled from another angle, howling for the abomination to step away from its master—but the sound was small, unnoticed by the threat of the forest. The Thornmaw didn't even spare a glance.

Instead, it staggered, lurching like something fought to dislodge itself from its back. Only it wasn't its back.

Lian Feng's eyes narrowed.

"It's trying to throw off the sword lodged in its antlers."

He glanced at Kage.

'Did he predict this?'

No time to admire foresight. He snatched a log from the forest floor as he darted toward the Impure and hurled it toward its legs.

While the creature leaped, the log rolled across its landing—its weight shifted, and it slipped, crashing to the ground.

Kaito's pulse quickened.

'Victory.'

He could taste it in his gut—through Kage's wits, this was going to work.

'If I strike down one of its legs, there's a 60% chance that—'

"Everyone that can stand, STAND NOW!"

Lian Feng's roar yanked him from calculation. He frowned and shot forward, angling his blade to the side as he closed in on one of its legs.

Mundane weapons were useless against Impures—they all knew this. Which was why Kage had screamed for them to focus not on the cut but on the force. The aim was to cripple its legs long enough to run until rescue arrived.

'Brother Kage is brilliant.'

Not just Kaito—all of them staggered upright and converged on the Thornmaw with desperation. In the final moment before they struck, the antlers—clasped like wooden hands—suddenly *opened*, shooting outward and impaling each of them from different angles, scattering them like broken dolls.

The branch pierced Kaito's shoulder. Lian Feng's arm. Marcus's stomach. Jiro's chest. Shen's already mangled arm. All of them were flung in different directions, connected by a multi-wire lattice of wooden branches like prey caught in a monstrous web.

The sword clanged on the ground, its hollow ring fading as it fell flat before Kage, whose head had dropped.

Silence.

A tense shift in the air. The antlers coiled like wooden serpents, moving the examinees around slowly.

Cold seeped from Kage. The temperature plummeted as if winter itself had descended.

He rose—but not in any conventional manner.

He seemed to float. His black hair bled white like frost overtaking stone. His eyes became ocean blue, distant and empty, a white mist coiling around him like breath in the deep cold.

His gaze fell on the sword—tender, distant—and the blade answered, flowing into his opening grasp as though drawn by invisible threads.

Kage's feet touched ground softly. The earth within a hundred-meter radius cracked as if some invisible mountain had fallen.

He shifted one foot forward. Held the sword with both hands. Poised its edge backward, leaning forward—a stance like an avalanche about to break loose.

The white mist surrounding him swirled and vanished.

Kage did not move.

Instead, he crumbled to his knees and fainted.

I'll search for more context about the Academy, these characters, and the cultivation system to enhance the editing.

The next instant, the proxy's voice threaded into his ears.

[Your body is crumbling from hosting the Wolf of the North for three seconds]

[You have slain a Wretch Impure: Thornmaw]

[Heart Demon Influence has increased by 0.0004%]

Kage wasn't sure what he saw or heard anymore. All he knew was his consciousness bleeding away like water through split wood as he cursed the Wolf of the North for interfering with his perfectly orchestrated massacre.

***

At the Academy gate, one old man stood beneath the pavilion's shade. Another approached with sharp strides and a face like tempered iron.

The approaching elder wore an unadorned monastic robe in undyed hemp, the color of raw earth. His white hair flowed unbound past his shoulders, loose as river current.

He reached the pavilion where the other elder waited—skin the color of tarnished copper, pulled taut over sharp cheekbones like metal stretched thin.

"Elder Himura… why do you walk as though racing time itself?"

Elder Himura fixed the older man with a steel-edged gaze.

"Grand Master Aldwyn Emberforge! What have you done?"

Lord Aldwyn merely stroked his beard, his expression unchanged—unmoved as mountain stone.

"And what would that be, Elder Himura?"

The old man's calm only stoked Elder Himura's fury.

"Aldwyn! You're crossing the border of moralism!"

Aldwyn Emberforge regarded him, eyes glowing softly like molten light restrained beneath iron.

"Boy. Watch your mouth when you address me. Everything I've done—everything I *continue* to do—I do for the sake of the future generation. You and Zera cling to pacifism, convinced that the value of peace will teach the young responsibility. But it's a lie. You wish to bind and weaken them with endless lectures of morality, defining even the word responsibility according to terms that suit your agenda, your experiences, your lens."

He jabbed his finger toward Elder Himura's face like a blade thrust.

"You two are permitted your Harmonious teachings, yet I am forbidden from turning my gaze away from the wickedness of the students themselves? I didn't set them up—I merely ordered the instructors to stand down.

"What good to the world are children who cannot escape a Wretch Impure? How will they protect against the disaster that rumbles toward us?"

"And letting an Impure attack a group of examinees who don't even know how to properly slay beasts ?! Is the correct way to do this!!"

Elder Himura pointed back at the Grand Master like he was nagging an elder son.

"If the world is to operate on your philosophy and definition of process, then we would've lost half our population by now to the very Impures we want to protect them from!"

Grand Master Aldwyn clicked his tongue and stroked his beards.

"Elder Himura, you're too short sighted. Pacifism is not a way to teach the world to be strong. I wonder if you intend to breed cowards or actual fighters. Because of people like you, every generation is getting weaker compared to the last."

Elder Himura's pale blue eyes remained still as an unmoving river, but every other feature shifted—brow furrowed, jaw tight—conveying his displeasure with Grand Master Aldwyn like fault lines beneath stone.

At that moment, Elder Himura's still eyes suddenly dilated. He whipped his head toward the mountain's slope, toward the canopy of the Silent Grove.

Grand Master Aldwyn snapped into an alerted state, glaring with hostility like a blade half-drawn.

Yet the next moment, the pressure vanished—like frost retreating before dawn.

Elder Himura stared at the forest with confusion etched into his features, then turned to Grand Master Aldwyn.

"Did you not feel that just now?"

The Grand Master narrowed his eyes.

"Powerful. Cold. Dangerous. I've never felt anything like it in my life. Was it an Impure?"

Elder Himura shook his head.

"No. That was certainly Qi—but heavier and more terrifying than any I've encountered. Something is in that forest."

Grand Master Aldwyn's eyes got dark.

"We must investigate the cause of this strange phenomenon…"

Just at that moment, someone appeared and bowed his head.

Elder Himura looked at the man with circular glasses and copper-red hair.

"Renzo…"

Instructor Renzo smiled, he tried to suppress most of it but it just couldn't help but leak. He lowered his head.

"The Wretch rank Impure has been slain and the survivors are being extracted."

The two elders turned their heads towards Renzo, exclaiming at the same time.

"What?"

Elder Himura frowned.

"You mean to say that the instructors slay the Impure and are extracting the examinees?"

Renzo's gaze was indifferent, but in his mind.

'These oldies, don't put words in my mouth damnit!'

He lowered his head tenderly and respectfully.

"No, no, elders. I mean to say, someone of the examinees managed to slay a Wretch rank Impure. But right now, we do not know who and all of them are unconscious at the moment. Do we transport them to the Infirmary or put them somewhere they can recover enough to continue their journey?"

Elder Himura and Grand Master Aldwyn were too shaken by the news to pay attention to what Renzo was saying. They probably stopped listening from 'managed to slay a Wretch rank Impure'

Renka was silent for a moment, then he tilted his head slightly and bowed again, as if enjoying himself.

"Oh, I also have to mention, while some examinees are gravely injured, like losing an arm, being struck in vital points, we have also lost three examinees."

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