"—my turn."
I vanished forward before Chase could even react, my figure streaking into a blur that swallowed the distance.
His one good eye snapped wide, panic flashing across his battered face as he stumbled back, off balance. Aura flared desperately around him—too little, too late.
The instant I closed in, I thrust my hand out, fingers aid straight for his chest—re inches from brushing against him.
And then—
BANG!
The air detonated as my fingers curled into a tight fist, striking from a breath's distance away.
The legendary One-Inch Punch.
Chase's body jerked violently as my fist connected—too fast for his eyes to even register. The faint crunch of his sternum collapsing reverberated up my knuckles, sharp and satisfying.
He let out a strangled groan, flung backward like a severed puppet, ragdolling through the air before smashing into the ground several ters away with bone-jarring force.
I remained where I was, arm still locked in the punching stance. For a mont, the silence pressed in—just , the echo of impact, and Chase crumpled in the dirt.
Slowly, I lowered my fist. My face was indifferent, unreadable. My body calm, still.
But inside? My thoughts were racing, buzzing like a kid high on adrenaline.
'Holy shi—'
That was too much. Way harder than I ant it to be. I was supposed to be holding back.
I forced my expression to stay flat, resisting the urge to grimace as I looked at Chase lying motionless on the floor.
'He's not dead, right? He's not dead?' My left eye twitched despite myself.
Chase was sprawled inside the cracked outline of a crater, his body twisted at an ugly angle. His eyes had rolled back into their whites, his lips sared with blood and saliva. The last look on his face wasn't defiance or rage—it was raw, painful anguish.
Only then did I realize how quiet the hall had beco.
The silence pressed in from all sides, suffocating. I hadn't noticed before, too caught up in the rush, too locked into the fight. But now… it was loud. Deafening.
The kind of silence where you'd swear you could hear a butterfly land two blocks away.
Slowly, I turned.
Every cadet in the hall was staring. Wide eyes, stiff postures, expressions flickering sowhere between awe, fear, and disbelief. Not a single one of them spoke. Not a single one even breathed too loud.
Awkwardly, i raised my fist to my mouth and coughed. And like throwing a hamr into a glass mirror, the hall exploded the next mont.
"Bwahahahahahaha!"
Macho Derrick's laughter tore through the silence, crashing over the hall like rolling thunder.
"That's right, you brats!" His voice bood, commanding every eye and ear. "Look on! Etch this mont into your skulls! This—right here—is what it truly ans to rise in this world!"
He slamd a fist against his chest, then flung his massive arm toward , his finger stabbing through the air like a spear.
"There's no chance for the weak. No hope for the hopeless. No excuses. You either crawl out from the mud or stay buried in it forever."
His gaze flicked to Chase's broken body sprawled across the crater, then back to , and his tone sharpened, cutting like steel.
"Those above you exist for one reason—" he paused, letting the silence tighten its grip on the room, "—to be a stepping stone. You either rise above… or you get crushed beneath."
A ripple of unease spread among the cadets, but Derrick's grin only widened, wild and feral, as if he was reveling in their fear.
---
Wow. What a speech.
Why was he suddenly making a big deal out of winning?
I stood there at the arena's center, the focus of every single pair of eyes, feeling less like a fighter and more like so kind of advertisent. A living, breathing poster boy.
And honestly? Derrick wasn't wrong. My story sold.
The type everyone loved to eat up. The kind of narrative that spread like wildfire.
An underdog.
From nothing—below nothing. The lowest-ranked cadet in the academy. A nobody. A bottom-feeder.
And now? I'd risen high enough to one-shot people like Chase.
High enough to make every single one of them wonder just how much further I could climb.
That was why most of the Cadets couldn't believe what they'd just seen do.
Well, I couldn't bla them.
And honestly, I didn't care.
Without wasting another second on performances—or Derrick's theatrics—I shoved my hands into my pockets and started back toward my seat. The noise, the eyes, the disbelief, none of it mattered.
Then Derrick's voice cut through the hall like a war drum.
"I guess it's really true after all." His grin was wide, brutal. "You may try to hide your aura, but you've Ranked Up."
The words hit like a hamr through glass.
For a heartbeat, silence—dead, suffocating silence.
Then the hall erupted.
A wave of gasps, voices crashing into each other.
"What?!"
"No way—!"
"He Ranked Up?!"
Disbelief, denial, awe—it all spiraled together. The cadets looked at as if I'd just grown another head.
Of course, it wasn't supposed to be a secret. My Rank-Up wasn't sothing I'd deliberately hidden. But Aegis was massive, a fortress-city of thousands. People moved, people fought, people lived their own dramas. Only those who mattered ever gathered real attention.
And ?
I hadn't mattered. Not until now.
The few who did notice noticed for the wrong reasons—mockery, doubt, dismissal.
Unlike probably any other, my Rank Up held more weight as well, since i was evaluated as being unable to evolve far as an Awakened, but here i was.
But Derrick had just changed everything.
With one sentence, he'd thrown my na into the fire in front of the entire First Year.
***
With a sickening crunch, my fist smashed into the cadet's face. His head snapped back violently, his body lifted clean off his feet, and he crashed across the hall like a ragged doll.
"Hah…" I exhaled, a deep, tired breath scraping out of my chest.
"How many is that now…?" My arm dropped heavy at my side. I pulled out a rag, slowly wiping my knuckles clean, saring the dark sheen of blood across the fabric under dozens of eyes fixed on .
Around lay the aftermath—cadets sprawled across the hall, broken and scattered. So lay unconscious in limp heaps, others clutched shattered arms or twisted legs, their cries bleeding into the tense silence.
And then there was him.
The last one standing—or rather, the only one still alive. He pressed himself against the ground, trembling like he'd stared into a nightmare. Tears streaked his cheeks, snot dripped from his lips, and he inched backward, inch by inch, as if the air itself had turned poisonous around .
"Well…" I sighed, fixing my gaze on him. "One more to go—"
"Yield! N-no, I yield! Please—stop!"
His voice cracked through the hall like a desperate prayer.
I froze mid-step, studying him. My brow arched slowly. His fear slled stronger than blood.
"Are you serious right now?" I muttered.
After all of Derrick's loud hype, I'd still had to deal with a parade of idiots thinking I was easy prey.
They'd heard Derrick announce my status. They knew. Yet one after another, they threw themselves at like moths into fla.
It wasn't strategy—it was desperation. Numbers against . Hoping to burn out.
But in the end, I took them all down. All ten of them.
Well—nine. The last one was still alive.
"I yield! I—I don't want to fight you anymore!"
My brow furrowed. Lips curled into sothing between disbelief and disdain.
"What the hell?" I muttered, staring at him.
Then, slowly, I advanced. One step forward—deliberate, heavy, calculated.
"You yield?" My voice dropped low, almost a growl. "You know you can't do that… right?"
Another step. Intentional. Direct. Each one made him shrink further into himself.
"You started this," I pressed forward, voice low, steady. "You're the one who challenged . You know the rules. You know what happens."
Honestly, everything I said was smoke—performance, nothing more. I didn't care. If anything, it was all annoyance.
Things had spiraled further than I expected. Fighting a line of naless cadets wasn't on my agenda. I could have let this one go—he was already finished anyway.
But I didn't. I wouldn't.
The sight of the sprawled bodies around made sothing click. This wasn't an isolated event. More wannabe tough guys would keep coming. More cadets with sothing to prove.
That's why I made sure these last few learned their lesson. And now, this one… this one was the perfect scapegoat.
"D-dammit!" the cadet spat, stumbling back. Desperation lit his eyes as he gritted his teeth and thrust out a hand. A weak magic circle flickered against his palm—his last, pitiful attempt.
So he was a mage. Figures. He had no way out, ready to bite the gun.
But—
"Don't even think about it," I hissed, voice low and sharp as steel.
The hall cracked with the sickening wrench of bone and tendon as I seized his wrist and twisted. His scream ripped loose, echoing across the silence.
I mounted him, pinning him beneath my weight. My fist rose—and then crashed down. Once. Twice. Again.
His nose and teeth gave way under the weight of my blows, bone shattering like brittle glass. Blood spattered warm across my knuckles. His face folded grotesquely, skin tearing until he was a mangled, blood-soaked ss.
A tooth flew free. His lips split. His nose twisted beyond recognition.
I finally retracted my fist, slick with crimson, a grin carving across my face.
"Let help you with that."
My hand shot out, clamping onto his shattered nose. I wrenched it back into place with a sickening crunch. His scream tore through the hall, raw and broken.
I didn't care. I stared down at his writhing form with cold, detached apathy—as if he were nothing more than an insect crushed underfoot.
Then a heavy voice cut through the chaos.
"That's enough."
Derrick.
I exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. Finally. About ti. I had begun to wonder how long I'd have to drag out this performance.
"Cadet 846—no. Cadet 579," Derrick corrected himself, voice a steel command. "Step away from the challenger."
I rose without argunt, stepping back from the bloodied wreck beneath .
"I believe everyone here has gotten your ssage," Derrick said, his grin twisting into sothing wild and feral.
I wiped my fists with my rag, though it didn't matter. With a slow nod toward Derrick, I started back to my seat. The air pressed down from a hundred gazes pinned on .
Behind , Derrick's booming voice rolled across the hall.
"Does anyone else wish to challenge the new champion?"
The silence that followed was thicker than blood.
And that was how I beca Rank 579.
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