Chapter 214: A New Target
Most students enrolled in the academy at the age of sixteen, and by the time they reached their second year, almost all of them had turned seventeen, with some being a few months older and others already close to eighteen.
Being newly seventeen was common enough among first-years nearing the end of the school year, but rare among second-years.
For Selena, however, that was the case not because she had skipped a year, but because of the incident a year ago.
She was the same age she had been a year ago, and that was because the time she had spent inside that dimension had barely affected her age.
The public had never been given the full picture of what happened to her and the others who vanished alongside her, but a few details had leaked out. Among them, the strange discrepancy in time.
Everyone knew that, for her, barely more than two weeks had passed.
And that was precisely why everyone was so shocked. It meant that she had advanced from the Early Stage to the Advanced Stage in just over two weeks, a feat that would normally take an ordinary person more than a year, while even someone with considerable talent would need at least five or six months.
She had done it in a little over two weeks.
Many refused to believe it, and several students from her own class who had envied her talent in the past had tried to challenge her over the last few weeks, thinking that the year-long gap had finally allowed them to surpass her in strength.
They were in for a nasty surprise, though. Selena crushed them without much effort, and Lirien had done the same, making enormous progress of her own.
Naturally, this shocked many people.
What they didn’t know, however, was that although only a short amount of time had passed for the two girls inside that dimension, they had gotten their hands on a unique source of energy that the others didn’t have, the cores of those creatures.
They had not only consumed many of them while inside the dimension, but had also brought plenty more back with them, and neither had hesitated to use those cores over the past few weeks to grow even stronger.
Currently, as far as everyone else knew, they were both D-Rank. Lirien was at the Early Stage, already a good level for a second year student, while Selena was at the Advanced Stage, a level considered exceptional for someone in their second year.
No one would have guessed that their true strength had climbed even further in the weeks since, and by no small margin.
"The journey will take at least several hours. I hope you’ve prepared everything you need before departure, because you won’t have the chance to do so once we arrive," said the male instructor.
He was a tall, middle-aged man with blue hair tied into a ponytail. Despite his age, his face had aged remarkably well, with features well above average.
He was also the same instructor who had discovered Selena’s talent and recruited her into the academy back then.
He’d been assigned to lead her group on the rescue mission they were about to undertake.
Everyone nodded along, and seeing no objections, the instructor nodded back.
"Good. Since you’re all ready, we leave immediately." With those words, everyone began walking toward the academy’s open grounds.
Several carriages waited there, harnessed to beasts of various kinds.
Normally, they would have used flying mounts, but given the current situation throughout the kingdom, it had quickly become clear that flying was more dangerous than ever.
There were several corrupted flying beasts that could attack at the slightest sign of movement, and being in the sky would make it much harder to defend against every possible attack.
The academy wasn’t willing to take that risk, which was how they’d ended up here.
Slower, but safer, though these days, nothing was ever truly safe.
Selena followed the group, her expression as unreadable as always.
Behind that calm mask, something far more turbulent was waiting to break loose.
The revelations she’d uncovered, both inside that dimension and out, about her family, had hit her hard enough that for a while she’d been little more than an empty shell. But it hadn’t lasted. The hollowness had been filled soon enough, by a fury sharper than anything she’d felt before.
She was furious at the Langthons. Furious at Victor, the man who had brought her into the academy and given the order to get rid of her family. Furious at fate itself, for dangling hope in front of her only to tear it away without mercy.
The news about the person who could very likely be her brother had hit her especially hard, far harder than the revelation of how her mother had actually died.
Lirien had told her that person was stronger than the two of them combined, but she didn’t know if he’d survived.
She had seen what happened in that place before they were expelled from it, and she had no idea whether that man, if he really was her brother, had been thrown out along with them, or if he was still trapped there.
Because if he had been expelled, then maybe, someday, she could find him. But she didn’t let herself hope for that. She didn’t dare.
At this point she didn’t know what to believe anymore. Part of her wanted to believe he really was her brother, and that he’d made it out of that place alive. Another part refused to entertain the thought at all, because if he really was her brother, and he hadn’t survived, the news would break her worse than anything had so far.
She wasn’t sure she could take another blow like that. So she stopped thinking about it entirely, and turned her focus elsewhere.
Getting stronger.
That much, at least, was certain. She intended to see her vengeance against the Langthons through to the end.
And now that this instructor had been added to her list of targets, she realized that she needed to become even stronger.
She had already reached C-Rank, early-stage, something only she and Lirien knew. With her talent, she could hold her own against an Advanced-stage C-Rank opponent, and maybe stand a chance against an Early-stage B-Rank.
But an A-Rank like Victor?
As she was now, she was certain she couldn’t fight him, not through conventional means, at least.
Her gaze settled on the man’s back as they headed toward the carriages.
For a brief moment, a faint murderous intent flashed through her eyes before disappearing almost instantly.
She couldn’t wait to find the perfect opportunity to kill the bastard, and with all her heart, she hoped that opportunity would come soon.
Victor, who was about to step into the carriage, suddenly stopped.
His head turned almost instantly, his eyes narrowing as he tried to locate something.
The students behind him had no idea what he was doing and stared at him in confusion, but he paid them no attention.
He swept his gaze across the area for several seconds before finally calming down, though his expression couldn’t help but change into one of doubt.
’Am I imagining things?’ he wondered, unsure he’d really felt what he thought he’d felt.
For an instant it had been like some fierce beast had fixed its eyes on him, but the sensation had lasted less than a second, making him wonder if it had simply been his imagination.
Eventually, he calmed down and continued forward, putting the matter aside for the time being.
He then entered the carriage after the other students, one by one.
Once everyone was inside, the carriage finally set off.