Chapter 15: The Breaking Point

  The first thing Jessica felt was the earth trembling beneath her feet.

  The second was the slow, creeping realization that she was alone.

  Her classmates had already vanished into the trees, their retreat swift and absolute. They had left without hesitation, without looking back. No parting glance, no shouted warning—just the distant echoes of their panicked footsteps.

  She didn’t blame them.

  She understood.

  She simply wished she had been given the same luxury.

  A sharp exhale. Her grip on her rapier tightened, the leather pressing firm against her palm. Her body was still strong—her muscles steady, her stance solid. She wasn’t exhausted yet, wasn’t on the verge of collapse.

  But that would change soon.

  The monsters were still coming.

  They encircled her in a shifting, sinewy mass of fangs and malformed limbs, their hunger tangible in the air. They were wrong, their bodies stretched unnaturally, their movements jittery and disjointed, as if they had been forced into shapes they weren’t meant to take.

  And she was alone.

  Her pulse pounded against her ribs. Run. Move. Do something.

  Jessica’s breath came sharp as she took a step back, then another. No openings. No exits. The forest had become a closed ring of fangs and muscle, the monstrous things tightening their circle with each moment she hesitated.

  Then, the first one lunged.

  —

  The fight began in silence, broken only by breath and blood.

  Jessica moved.

  Not instinctively—not yet. This wasn’t battle-honed muscle memory. This was desperation.

  She barely twisted in time, the creature’s claws raking across empty air where her throat had been. Her pivot came sharp, precise—her feet shifting on uneven ground, her weight adjusting for the next attack.

  Her blade met flesh.

  A thrust—short, brutal, straight through the soft tissue beneath its jaw. The creature spasmed, and she twisted the hilt violently, feeling the cartilage tear apart beneath her grip.

  No time to breathe. No time to celebrate.

  She yanked the sword free, pivoting hard just as another beast lunged.

  She barely managed to get her weapon up. The force of impact drove her backwards, her knees buckling, her heels skidding through dirt and broken stone. The sheer mass of the thing slammed against her guard, her arms straining, the pressure nearly forcing her blade against her own shoulder.

  Her muscles screamed.

  She couldn’t hold it.

  So she didn’t.

  Jessica collapsed on purpose—falling with the momentum, her body rolling as the monster crashed down where she had just been.

  The instant she hit the ground, she forced her body to move before it was ready.

  Her sword shot forward. A stab through the ribs. Deep. Precise. Not enough to kill it instantly, but enough to cripple its movement.

  The monster howled.

  Jessica kicked off the ground, launching herself into a crouch just as another beast slammed down where she had just been.

  There were too many.

  They were too fast.

  And she was alone.

  Her breathing came too quick, her vision tilting as her body tried to keep up. Her muscles were already burning, strained beyond comfort.

  Not yet.

  Not yet.

  A snarl. Another attack. Her body moved before she could think.

  The rapier met its mark again—a thrust straight through an eye socket.

  Another monster leapt for her flank. She twisted—her arm jerked at an impossible angle as she wrenched her blade free, barely catching the beast’s throat before it could land on her.

  A misstep. Her ankle buckled, the ground shifting beneath her weight.

  And in that split second, her urgency turned to terror.

  She wasn’t going to last.

  Her body wasn’t enough.

  She needed to be faster. Stronger. More.

  More.

  The creatures surrounded her, their movements turning cautious as they recognized that she wasn’t easy prey. They weren’t just driven by hunger anymore.

  They were watching her. Studying her.

  Her heartbeat slammed against her ribs. She was outnumbered. Her body was failing. She was going to die.

  And then—

  Something snapped.

  —

  The moment broke like glass—sharpened and blinding.

  Her vision sharpened.

  The exhaustion in her limbs vanished, drowned beneath something sharper, something worse. The world slowed, her mind hyper-focusing on every movement, every shift of muscle beneath fur, every twitch of claw and jaw.

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  Jessica’s breathing evened.

  The monsters lunged.

  And she met them.

  There was no hesitation. No more fear.

  Just stabbing.

  Her rapier lashed out, piercing through the soft tissue of a beast’s mouth before it could snap down on her shoulder. She ripped it sideways before the body had even collapsed, pivoting hard—her knees twisting at an angle that sent a fresh spasm of pain lancing through her tendons.

  Another attack from behind.

  She flicker-stepped—no, she just moved too fast, her body jerking forward, her feet barely skimming the ground.

  A short thrust—her blade punched through a creature’s eye socket like paper, straight into its brain.

  Something crunched in her wrist.

  She didn’t care.

  Her free hand shot up, fingers catching a lunging beast by the throat mid-air. Her grip was too strong, her thumb digging into the pulse beneath its fur. Its muscles spasmed beneath her hold, but she was already driving her sword into its gut.

  One. Two. Three. Ripping the steel free with every puncture.

  She couldn’t even feel the blood spraying against her skin.

  She wasn’t fighting anymore.

  She was butchering.

  Her body was tearing itself apart to keep up with the sheer speed she was forcing on it.

  Hyperextension. Overuse. Bruises deepening with every flicker-step, every impossible dodge. The delicate balance of her footwork began to wobble, her ankles taking too much pressure, her shoulders locking too tight.

  But she kept going.

  Because if she stopped—

  She would never move again.

  —

  The aftermath came slowly.

  By the time the last creature fell, Jessica was barely standing.

  Her vision swam. Her muscles were quaking beneath her own weight.

  Her body had turned into a mass of black and blue, her skin marred with deep bruising from the relentless, impossible movements she had forced it through.

  Her wrist—possibly sprained.

  Her ankle—strained to its limit.

  Her shoulders—numb from the overuse of stabbing, stabbing, stabbing.

  Yet, despite everything—

  She was laughing.

  Soft. Breathless.

  Not from amusement.

  Not from relief.

  From the knowledge that she was still alive.

  She took a slow step forward, her leg screaming in protest. The pain felt far away, like it belonged to someone else.

  Jessica looked down at her ruined body.

  She couldn’t remember when she had stopped caring about the pain.

  Maybe it had always been like this.

  Maybe she had just forgotten.

  Her fingers flexed around the rapier’s hilt.

  And then, just as the first sound of returning footsteps reached her ears—

  She smiled.

  Chapter 16: The Elite Class’ Struggles

  The moment the mana surge hit, the battlefield turned into a nightmare. The students, once confident in their superior magic, now found themselves struggling as even the simplest spells fizzled or backfired violently. Several lesser nobles had already been injured by mana recoil—painful whiplashes of magic violently rejecting their control, sending them sprawling and leaving them vulnerable. Others had abandoned trying to cast altogether, forced into using their swords and spears like common foot soldiers.

  It didn’t take long for panic to set in.

  Lucien von Hohenfeld stood at the center of one group, his crimson eyes scanning the battlefield with cold calculation. He had been prepared to command the battlefield with his overwhelming fire magic—but now? Now, he was forced to rely on his sword. It wasn’t a problem for him, personally—his training as a knight was top-tier—but for the others?

  They were suffering.

  Gareth Aldermann, the hulking son of a duke, was among the first to realize the gravity of their situation. His signature earth magic was sluggish, barely responding, and when he did manage to cast, the resulting tremors were pathetically weak. He cursed under his breath, gripping his massive greatsword tighter as he prepared to hold the line against an approaching wave of monstrous beasts.

  “This is insane,” snarled Reynard Falkenrath, a viscount’s son whose wind magic had completely abandoned him. “How the hell are we supposed to fight like this?!”

  “With our damn swords,” Magnus Reinhardt snapped, driving his blade through the skull of a monstrous wolf with a single, brutal motion. Unlike the others, Magnus had barely hesitated to switch to close combat—his years of fighting as a commoner-born warrior had hardened him for moments like these.

  But most of the nobles? They were floundering.

  Across the field, the trainees—those barely above squires in skill—were suffering the worst. Deprived of magic and lacking the refined swordsmanship of their noble-born peers, they became easy prey. A group of three trainees had already been torn apart by a pack of beasts, their bodies lying in a broken heap.

  A nearby trainee, a boy whose name no one had bothered to remember, screamed as a monstrous feline twice his size pounced on him, its claws raking across his torso. His desperate attempt at a defensive spell failed, the mana backlash striking his own body instead. He collapsed, gurgling on his own blood.

  “Shit—shit—!” Another trainee, a girl wielding a spear, turned to flee, only for a monstrous boar to ram into her side, snapping bones like twigs.

  The battlefield was devouring the weakest first. And there was no mercy.

  Unlike the trainees, the junior knights and squires managed to hold their own—barely. They had at least been trained to fight without magic, but without the overwhelming advantage elemental magic usually provided, they were reduced to desperate melee skirmishes.

  Elias von Riefenstahl, a junior knight and one of the better swordsmen in the class, had taken command of a small group, barking orders as they tried to form a defensive formation.

  “Stick together! Stop panicking—aim for the vitals! Magic isn’t going to save you now!”

  His words helped stabilize his team, and together they fought back against the monsters, albeit with heavy injuries.

  A squire, drenched in blood, slashed wildly at an approaching monster but overextended—before he could recover, a beast lunged and tore into his throat, dragging him down.

  Elias gritted his teeth. Another one down.

  They were losing people at an alarming rate.

  While the lesser nobles and commoners struggled, the true elite of the class began to prove why they were at the top.

  Lucien von Hohenfeld moved like a dancer through the battlefield, his blade cutting through monsters with brutal efficiency. Even without magic, his physical prowess was terrifying. Every strike was deliberate, every movement honed to perfection. He fought without hesitation, his red eyes burning with an intensity that sent shivers down the spines of those who saw him.

  Magnus Reinhardt, by contrast, fought like a berserker. His dual-elemental magic may have been out of commission, but his sheer battle experience put him leagues above the rest. He crushed skulls, shattered ribs, and tore through enemies with a relentless brutality that made it clear—he didn’t just fight for sport. He fought to kill.

  Seraphina von Aurelius, the princess herself, was no slouch either. While she had relied heavily on her magic in past fights, her training as a royal knight had not been neglected. Her rapier flashed as she danced through the battlefield, striking weak points with deadly precision.

  Yet even she was struggling—without magic, she lacked the overwhelming force she usually commanded.

  “We’re pushing through,” she called out to her allies, slicing through a beast’s neck with a flourish. “Keep formation—we can’t afford any more losses!”

  But it wasn’t enough. The monsters kept coming.

  As the battle dragged on, exhaustion set in. Their numbers were dwindling. Some of the nobles had collapsed from sheer overexertion, their bodies unable to keep up with prolonged physical combat.

  Gareth, panting and covered in blood, wiped his face and groaned, “This is a disaster.”

  “We’re making progress,” Seraphina insisted, though she, too, was struggling to hide her fatigue.

  Reynard spat blood onto the ground and let out a bitter laugh. “You know who would’ve been perfect for this kind of fight?”

  There was a pause.

  Lucien’s eyes flickered with something unreadable. Magnus clicked his tongue, but said nothing.

  Reynard continued, “That useless gutter rat—Jessica. That freak barely uses magic, and we left her behind.”

  Silence fell over the group.

  The realization was bitter. The one person who had no reliance on magic—the one person who fought like a possessed demon even under normal circumstances—had been abandoned in the middle of a monster-infested battlefield.

  “...She’s probably dead,” Gareth muttered after a moment.

  Reynard scoffed, but there was no humor in it. “Wouldn’t surprise me. And wouldn’t that just be perfect? She finally gets a situation she’d thrive in, and we’re the ones stuck here struggling.”

  Magnus, standing nearby, exhaled sharply but kept his thoughts to himself. Unlike the others, he wasn’t so sure she was dead.

  If anyone could survive a fight like this alone—it was her.

  By the time the students finally cleared the battlefield, they were down to 24 students. Six dead. Most of them trainees. A few commoner-born squires. One lesser noble.

  Their bodies were left behind, mangled and broken.

  The class, battered and bloodied, was in no condition to continue fighting. The mana surge had begun to fade, and magic was starting to return—but it didn’t matter.

  The damage had already been done.

  They had survived, barely.

  But Jessica?

  No one knew.

  And as they stood among the bodies of their fallen classmates, a gnawing feeling settled deep in their chests.

  Maybe we shouldn’t have left her behind.