Chapter 168: The Betrayal of Julia

The area outside the Sealed Valley was a barren wasteland of grey, cracked earth. No grass grew here; no trees broke the horizon.

There was only dust and dead stone that crunched loudly under every heavy step, a grim buffer zone between civilization and the nightmares locked behind the barrier.

On the northern ridge, the ground was uneven, covered in loose gravel and sharp rocks that had broken off the cliffside over the years. Behind the ridge, the forest started — a wall of dark green trees with thick trunks and low branches pressed so close together they looked like they were trying to keep the valley’s rot from spreading.

The wind carried a heavy smell of pine and decay.

In front of the ridge, the valley stretched out like an old scar across the world. The massive barrier itself was invisible to the naked eye, but you could see where it was by the way the air shimmered, bending the weak grey light like heat rising from hot stone.

Far beyond that, the ruins sat in the distance.

Broken walls, collapsed towers, and the dark, silent shape of the inner temple where purple fog still clung lazily to the base.

The sky above was the color of old skin. Thin clouds stretched so tight they barely let the weak sunlight through.

Headmaster Vega stood perfectly still at the edge of the ridge. His short silver hair caught the faint light, and his shoulders were straight and broad, completely free of the frailty that usually came with age. His movements, when he chose to make them, were precise and fluid — carrying the presence of a man in the prime of his life.

But beneath that flawless human skin was a being nearly nine hundred years old.

A dragon.

With his hands clasped firmly behind his back, his gold eyes stayed fixed on the distant temple doors. His expression was entirely unreadable, a cold stone mask that gave away nothing to the world. He had been standing there for hours.

The quiet crunch of boots on loose gravel broke the silence behind him. The footsteps were deliberate, heavy with exhaustion that had nothing to do with physical movement.

Without turning his head, Vega spoke. His smooth voice cut through the wind. "What do you want, Helene?"

Professor Helene Draven stopped a few feet away. Her dark skin looked warm against the grey wasteland, but her face was drawn and tired. She held a glowing tablet against her black jacket. Her grey eyes reflected the light from the screen.

She didn’t answer immediately. She simply stood there, looking at the back of the man who had shaped her entire career.

"...You saw the reports," Helene said. Her voice was low, tight. "You heard what came in from the monitoring stations."

Vega said nothing. He didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He just stood there, looking at the valley.

"..."

Helene clenched her teeth. A muscle twitched in her jaw. She let out a short, bitter laugh that had no real humor in it. She shook her head and looked down at the red numbers on her screen.

"Well... I expected that much," she muttered, her fingers tightening around the tablet. "I guess a thousand years teaches you how to look through people instead of at them."

She stepped closer, the gravel grinding under her boots, but she kept her eyes on the valley below instead of his face. Unlike their argument before the gates opened — where she had focused on the academy’s failures — this silence felt different.

It felt like a reckoning.

"Out of the one hundred thousand who walked in," Helene began. Her voice was cold, trying to hide the weight of what she was saying.

"...Twenty-seven thousand and ninety-six are dead. Killed by monsters, and by the corrupted candidates. Not all of them died in battle. Some were crushed in collapsing ruins. Some just... broke. Their minds couldn’t take it, and their bodies gave out."

She paused, letting the numbers hang in the heavy air between them.

"Another twenty-three thousand managed to trigger their emergency teleport. They got out, but barely. Most of them are in no shape to fight. Their bodies are wrecked. Their cores are burned out. Some won’t wake up for weeks. Some might never wake up at all."

She looked down at the tablet, her grey eyes scanning the lines of red text.

"That leaves just under fifty thousand still standing, breathing, and able to hold a weapon. But even among them, many are broken. Not in body — in here." She tapped her temple. "The fog got inside their heads. Showed them things they can’t forget. Some of them will recover. Some of them won’t."

She looked back at the valley.

"The exam isn’t over yet. There are still candidates scattered across the zone. Some are hiding. Some are fighting. Some are just waiting for the clock to run out. But the main monster is dead. The statue is gone. The fog is clearing."

She paused.

"Twelve hours left on the official clock. That’s all."

Vega didn’t move. His golden eyes stayed on the distant temple. His face gave nothing away. Helene’s jaw tightened. She stepped closer, forcing herself into his line of sight.

"Less than half are coming out whole," she said, her voice rising. "The rest are dead or shattered. Tell me, Headmaster... is this what the Astra Union wanted? A slaughterhouse disguised as a test?"

"The Union wants survivors who can face what is coming from the abyss," he replied calmly. "The world outside our borders does not ask nicely."

"This wasn’t a test," Helene hissed, gesturing toward the valley with her tablet.

"It was a slaughter. Those weren’t just numbers. Those were kids. Kids with families. Kids who spent years training just to get a glimpse of these gates. Kids who trusted us. Who believed the broadcasts were an invitation to glory, not a death sentence."

She stepped directly into his view, forcing him to look at her.

"They... trusted us. They believed the Astra Network’s broadcast was an invitation to glory, not a death warrant signed in a closed boardroom. We took their futures from them before they even learned what they were fighting for."

Vega slowly turned his head. His golden eyes pinned her to the spot. The air around them grew heavy, pressed down by the weight of something ancient. The wind died. The silence was loud.

He looked at the woman standing before him — at her fierce stance, her silver hair, and the familiar spark of defiance in her eyes.

"...It has been a very long time since you spoke to me with such raw conviction," Vega said softly, the harsh edge of his voice softening into something older, almost paternal. "Not since the days when I found you and your brother in the ruins of the southern region."

Helene’s breath hitched. Her shoulders tensed.

She still remembered that day — two shivering, blood-soaked orphans clutching broken training swords in a world that had abandoned them, and the silver-haired man who had extended his hand to pull them out of the dirt.

"What about you... Master?"

Helene asked, the title slipping past her lips before she could stop it. It was a word she hadn’t used in over a decade, not since she had climbed the ranks of Aegis Academy to become its Vice President.

"Do you truly believe this? Does this... does any of this match what you taught us about honor? About protecting the weak?"

Vega looked back toward the Sealed Valley, letting out a long, slow sigh that seemed to carry the weight of centuries. The gold in his eyes dimmed slightly, replaced by a deep, ancient weariness.

"...I know the things happening right now aren’t justifiable, Helene," he said quietly, his hands remaining clasped behind his back.

"I know the cost is too high. But when the foundations of the world begin to crack, the structures we built to protect the weak will always be the first to crumble. I did not create this trial to break them; I allowed it so we would know exactly who can stand when the sky falls."

He paused, the wind whipping his silver hair across his unreadable face as he glanced down at the shifting light of the barrier. "...How much time is left?"

Helene checked her tablet. "Twelve hours."

Vega nodded once. "The monster is dead. The fog is clearing. We could end it now. But we’ll let the clock run for the ones still out there."

He turned from the ridge and walked toward the forest. His boots crunched on the dead earth. He did not look back.

"Get everything ready, Helene. When those twelve hours are up, the students will come back."

Without looking back, his figure disappeared into the dark shadows of the trees, leaving Helene alone on the ridge as the countdown on her screen kept ticking down.

_

[Leo’s POV]

"I need to check on the others."

I turned and ran toward the big stone archway that led back to the side rooms. I tore through the dark corridor, eager to make sure others had survived the fog. The stone walls blurred past me. The heavy boom that had just shaken the entire dungeon was still echoing through the stone, leaving a sharp, ringing silence behind.

When I burst through the final threshold into the side chamber, I skidded to a halt, my boots throwing up thick grey ash from the floor. My hand was still tight around Tempest’s hilt, my heart hammering as my eyes swept the dim room, looking for any sign of the purple rot.

The fog was entirely gone.

In its place, the raw exhaustion of the fight hung heavy in the air.

They weren’t screaming or breaking down anymore, but they looked like they had been dragged through hell.

Arthur was sitting down, his back against a cracked stone pillar. His face was pale, his breathing shallow, but the empty look in his eyes had vanished — replaced by a clear, steady gold light. Amelia was right beside him, leaning on his shoulder for support as she tried to catch her breath, her fingers still loosely holding the fabric of his torn shirt.

A few feet away, Roan was sitting flat on a stone block, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His silver spear rested against his knee, and he was using his sleeve to wipe a line of dark blood from his mouth.

Elisabeth stood a little further back, her back straight but her shoulders heaving as she leaned her weight against her sheathed sword like a crutch.

I let out a slow, silent breath, my shoulders dropping as the tension left my body.

They were alive.

I walked forward, the crunch of my boots drawing their attention. I looked at the absolute mess they were in, from the soot covering Arthur’s torn shirt to the split skin on Roan’s knuckles.

"...You look like shit," I said.

Arthur blinked, his head snapping up at the sound of my voice.

The moment his gold eyes locked onto me, the usual serious expression of the Holy Kingdom’s savior completely melted away. Instead, his eyes started to shine with this intense, almost ridiculous amount of admiration.

He stared at me like a lost puppy that had just found its way home.

A shiver ran straight down my spine. My face twisted in pure disgust, and I instinctively took a step backward.

"Eww. Stop it, you bastard," I barked, glaring at him.

Arthur tilted his head, his gaze still shimmering with that weird gratitude. "...Huh? What?"

"The way you are looking at me right now is giving me literal goosebumps," I hissed, rubbing my arms as if I could physically brush the look off myself. "Seriously, keep that face away from me. It’s creepy. I liked you a lot better when you were losing your mind and trying to kill us."

Roan let out a dry laugh from his stone block, shaking his head. "Don’t bother, Leo. I think our Golden Boy had some kind of awakening while we were pinning him down. You might have a permanent shadow from now on."

"I’d rather walk back into the inner sanctum and fight another Grade 5 monster," I muttered, my lips twitching as I looked away from Arthur’s terrifyingly earnest stare.

Amelia shifted slightly, her face flushing a light pink as she realized how tightly she was still holding onto Arthur’s shirt. She cleared her throat softly, giving me a small, tired nod of relief. "We heard the explosion from the main hall. The pressure... it was completely different from the statue’s aura."

Before I could answer, Elisabeth stepped out from the shadows of the pillar. Her sharp violet eyes didn’t look at my clothes or my sword; she stared straight into my eyes, her gaze narrowing with a sudden, rare trace of genuine shock.

"Your mana," Elisabeth said, her voice low and focused. "The flow is completely different. Leo... did you break through?"

At her words, the playful mood vanished.

Roan and Arthur both froze, their attention shifting instantly to me. As high-ranking candidates, they could feel it now — the subtle, crushing change in the atmospheric pressure surrounding my body. The mana in the room wasn’t just swirling around me anymore. It was naturally moving toward my core.

"...Expert Low," Roan whistled softly, a mixture of awe and sheer disbelief in his tone. He looked at his spear, then back at me. "You actually pulled off a breakthrough while dealing with a high-level mental trap from a monster? What kind of monster are you? I wanna fight you."

"Things happened," I said shortly, shrugging my shoulders. I had absolutely no intention of explaining the voices from my past, the fight with my own fear, or the black flames that had devoured the statue’s core.

"The statue is dead. The fog is clearing. Let’s just get out of this room."

Arthur slowly pushed himself up from the pillar, helping Amelia to her feet as he gave me a slow, quiet nod.

There was a new kind of respect in his eyes now — not just the creepy admiration from before, but a deep, unspoken understanding between two people who had both looked into the dark and refused to break.

"...Yeah," Arthur said quietly, his voice steady. "Let’s go."

_

The scene outside the temple ruins was a mess.

The thick purple mist was pulling back rapidly, curling away like a dying shadow in the pale sunlight. Across the grey, cracked earth, thousands of candidates were scattered in the dirt.

Some were entirely unconscious, their faces pale as they slowly blinked away the lingering tears of their nightmares; others were just staring blankly at the sky, their weapons slipped from their numb fingers.

But right in the middle of the clearing, near the defensive lines, a loud argument was already ruining the peace.

"I cut down thirty-two of those corrupted bastards, you arrogant shadow-crawler!"

Alice Scarlet’s voice boomed across the wasteland. She was leaning heavily on the hilt of her massive longsword, her face completely smeared with black grime, but her teeth were bared in a fierce, aggressive grin. "Thirty-two! Your pathetic little butter knives couldn’t even match half that weight!"

"Quality over quantity, you loudmouthed brute,"

Riven Ashford sneered back, standing a few feet away with his arms crossed tightly over his chest. His dual daggers had already vanished back into his shadow, but a sharp vein was still visibly throbbing in his temple. "I took out the vanguard elites that were actually going to break the line. If I hadn’t cleared the path, your oversized piece of scrap metal would have been stuck chopping wood."

I walked up to the command center where Julia and Caster were standing. Julia was still visibly trembling, her knuckles white around her staff, while Caster was rubbing the back of his neck, his heavy hammer resting against his shield.

I raised an eyebrow, looking at the shouting match. "What the hell are they doing?"

Julia jumped slightly at my voice, turning around with her eyes wide. "L-Lord Leo! Um... they’ve been arguing like this for twenty minutes. They’re trying to figure out who stopped more corrupted students and monsters from breaching the lines."

"It’s a nightmare," Caster sighed, shaking his head as he tapped his device. "They won’t stop until someone gives them a number, and my device’s trackers are fried from the final blast."

The rest of our group quickly gathered around.

Roan walked over to his sister, Lyssaria, who immediately began emitting a soft, soothing green mist from her elven staff to mend his cracked ribs. Nyra Silverfang stood silently nearby, giving me a quiet, respectful nod as she cleaned the ash from her short blades.

Princess Cordelia Valerion stepped directly into my path, her rapier sheathed but her royal pride fully intact. She crossed her arms, looking me up and down with a sharp eye.

"...You took your sweet time inside that temple, Leo. Do you have any idea how many times I almost died holding this line while you were gone?"

"You look perfectly fine to me, Princess," I replied dryly, my tone entirely unbothered. "Not a single scratch on the dress."

Cordelia’s eye twitched. "...Shut up," she muttered, looking away.

I looked around at the chaotic, noisy gathering.

I saw Alice still screaming at Riven, who was deliberately ignoring her by staring at the sky; I saw Roan laughing with Lyssaria; I saw Arthur trying to hide a soft smile as Amelia lectured him about his recklessness; and I saw Julia finally calming down.

Just a few months ago, back on Earth, these people were nothing more than characters in a text—names on a page, abstract concepts of a fantasy world. But now, I was living among them. I had bled for them, and they had shattered themselves to hold a line for me.

Deep inside my mind, a familiar, formal voice resonated.

[Yes, but now this world is real to you. ]

...Nova, I thought, a genuine sense of relief washing over me.You’re back. You went quiet back there. And also we need to talk later.

[Okay. Also... Host, you are doing something strange with your face.]

What...?I frowned internally.

[ You are smiling, Host. A genuine, non-sarcastic smile. It is an incredibly rare phenomenon. Did you hit your head or something?]

I blinked. My hand instinctively touched my cheek.

I hadn’t even realized it.

After overcoming the intense fear of my past life inside the inner sanctum, a sudden, weightless feeling had settled into my chest. The cold, suffocating paranoia that had driven me since my transmigration felt a little lighter.

This feeling... wasn’t entirely bad.

A short, quiet chuckle escaped my lips as I looked at my bickering team.

Instantly, all the noise in the clearing died.

The shouting stopped. Alice froze mid-sentence. Riven’s eyes snapped toward me. Cordelia blinked in absolute silence. Even Roan and Arthur went entirely still, staring at me as if I had grown a second head.

My chuckle died in my throat. I frowned, looking around at the wide, unblinking eyes fixed on my face. "Huh? What? Why the hell are you all looking at me like that?"

Roan’s hand instinctively gripped his silver spear, his expression turning deathly serious. He took a slow step back. "Arthur... get ready."

Arthur’s eyes narrowed, his light affinity flaring slightly around his palms. "...I see it."

"Who the fuck are you?" Alice shouted, her longsword instantly lifting off the ground. "What did you do to the real Leo, you body-snatching bastard?!"

My brow furrowed into a deep, irritated scowl. "What the fuck are you all talking about? It’s me, you idiots. It’s Leo."

"No way in hell!" Alice yelled, pointing a dirty finger at him. "Since the literal day I met that bastard, he has never smiled! Wait... can he actually smile? Is that physically possible for his face?!"

"Did the real Leo get left inside the inner sanctum?" Roan asked, his voice entirely deadpan but his eyes dancing with mischief. "Maybe the statue swapped his soul with a friendly spirit. This is dangerous. We should contain him."

"Shut up!" I shouted, my face instantly flushing a violent, furious red. "I am real! And what do you mean I never smile?! Of course I can smile! What the hell do you all even think of me?!"

The whole group gave each other some deeply strange, skeptical looks.

"Yeah, definitely a fake," Riven muttered from the side, a rare smirk playing on his lips. "Maybe he hit his head on a stone pillar during the breakthrough."

I felt a vein throbbing in my temple. I turned my glare toward Alice. "Okay, fine. If I don’t smile, what kind of expression do I usually have, huh?"

Alice’s face immediately split into a massive, mocking grin. She shifted her weight, pulled her shoulders up, lowered her brows into a ridiculously exaggerated, angry scowl, and narrowed her eyes until she looked cross-eyed and thoroughly miserable.

"That bastard Leo always has that grumpy type of expression," Alice mocked, deepening her voice to a harsh, funny growl.

"He always walks around with a massive frown on his face, looking like someone stole his favorite bottle of liquor. He looks so stupid trying to act all tough and brooding! ’Uh, don’t look at me, I’m the dark and edgy Celestial boy, argh!’"

Roan burst out laughing, nodding hard as he copied the same tight, grumpy scowl. "Right! Right! Since the first day of the exam, he’s been exactly like that! He looks like he’s chewing on a sour lemon."

My ears burned with shame. I looked toward Arthur and Amelia for help, but Amelia was already hiding her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with laughter. Even Arthur was biting his lip, trying hard not to grin.

Cordelia was snickering behind her hand, clearly enjoying the show. "This is the best thing I’ve seen all day," she said between laughs.

"You... you all... ugh!" I growled and turned my desperate gaze toward my loyal follower. "Julia! Tell them! Tell them I can smile too! I never have that stupid face!"

Julia jumped, her face turning pale as she looked between me and the grinning crowd. She tried to move her face into a serious expression, but her lips were twitching uncontrollably as she fought a massive giggle. "Umm... L-Lord Leo... well... the frown is very consistent..."

"You’re a traitor too!" I yelled, throwing my hands up in despair.

Alice laughed loudly, slapping her knee. "Pffft! Look at him! That was hilarious! The fake is definitely cracking!"

These bastards....

But, the rare, peaceful environment of laughter and absolute shame didn’t last long.

BZZZZZZ—

A sharp, loud buzz rang through the air. Every candidate’s bracelet vibrated at the same time.

The laughter died. The playful looks vanished, replaced by sharp focus as everyone exchanged heavy looks. My hand dropped back to Tempest, my embarrassment gone as the air turned cold.

A loud voice boomed from the speakers across the Sealed Valley.

[ ATTENTION ALL CANDIDATES. ]

[ EXACTLY TWELVE HOURS REMAIN ON THE OFFICIAL EXAM CLOCK. ]

[ CURRENT SURVIVOR COUNT: 49,904. ]

The number hit the clearing like a physical blow. Out of the one hundred thousand elite youths who had proudly marched through the gates, more than half were completely gone — dead or broken.

[ REMINDER: ONLY THE TOP 200 CANDIDATES WILL QUALIFY FOR ADMISSION INTO AEGIS ACADEMY. ]

[THE PORTAL GATE WILL OPEN IN TWELVE HOURS. TO GET A HIGHER RANK, REMEMBER THAT POINTS CAN BE TAKEN BY FIGHTING. IF YOU KNOCK OUT SOMEONE OR TAKE THEIR BRACER, YOU GET ALL THEIR POINTS.]

Click.

The broadcast cut off, leaving behind a deep, suffocating silence that fell over the entire valley like a heavy shroud.

My mind raced.

Right. The test.

They didn’t just drop that last line as a reminder.

They intentionally stated the exact number of survivors and the rule about stealing points to ignite an immediate, desperate panic among the remaining candidates. With nearly fifty thousand kids left alive, but only two hundred slots available, the numbers were brutal.

We have twelve hours left.

Knowing that thousands of candidates from all over the world were desperate to pass, they couldn’t possibly find enough monsters to gather points in a cleared valley. The fastest way left to secure a top two hundred spot was to hunt down the people who already held the highest scores.

I slowly lowered my eyes, glancing at my own team.

Right now, Arthur, Roan, Elisabeth, and our core group held the absolute highest points in the entire exam zone.

And what was worse? We were all completely exhausted from fighting.

I looked toward the edges of the clearing. I could already feel the heavy, predatory weight of hundreds of shifting gazes on us.

Beside me, Arthur’s jaw tightened, his hand gripping his sword as he instinctively moved in front of Amelia. Roan shifted his stance, his silver spear slanting forward as his tired smirk turned completely cold.

Elisabeth didn’t say a word, but her hand rested firmly on her hilt once more.

As expected, everyone understood exactly what that announcement meant. To the desperate peoples, our exhausted team wasn’t a group of heroes who had saved their minds from the fog — we were a massive jackpot of points waiting to be claimed.

Slowly, the surrounding candidates began to stir.

From the edges of the ruined pillars and the ash-covered trenches, figures began to stand up. Their muscles were visibly tensed, their weapons drawn, their eyes locked onto me and Arthur with a mixture of fear, greed, and desperation.

First a dozen. Then fifty. Then a hundred.

Within moments, nearly three hundred candidates had formed a tight half-circle around our team, blocking the way out of the ruins. Farther back in the mist, thousands more were watching, waiting for the first strike so they could join the slaughter.

I let out a long, slow breath, my fingers wrapping around the handle of Tempest as a cold, dangerous spark returned to my eyes.

The exam wasn’t over.

The final twelve hours had just begun.