Chapter 170: Saint Leo von Celestial

The broadcast began with a face the world was still learning to recognize.

Damon Draven stood behind a polished black podium, his figure sharp against the pale grey backdrop of the Astra Union’s press hall. He was twenty-four years old, lean and tall, with silver-grey hair combed back from a face that was handsome in a sharp, precise way. His dark skin stood out against the bright lights of the hall, the same warm shade as his sister Helene’s.

His grey eyes held the quiet confidence of someone who had achieved more by twenty-four than most achieved in a lifetime.

He wore a fitted black suit with silver cufflinks, his top button undone — a small break from formality designed to signal that the youngest Transcendent in the empire was modern, sharp, and entirely unbound by the old ways.

Behind him, a massive holographic display hovered over the stage, projecting the Astra Union’s emblem: a silver eye surrounded by interlocking rings.

The press hall was packed to the absolute brim. Reporters from every major outlet in the Human Domain sat in neat rows, their mana-link devices floating beside their heads to record every word as broadcasting drones zipped through the air like mechanical insects.

Damon leaned toward the microphone. His voice was deep, steady, and measured.

"Three days ago, the entrance examination for Aegis Academy came to an end. Over one hundred thousand young men and women entered the Sealed Valley. They came from every corner of the world because they believed in something greater than themselves. The exact number is still being counted. But we believe... nearly thirty thousand of them did not come back."

A low murmur moved through the reporters, but Damon’s face stayed serious, grave, and perfectly tuned to pull at the crowd’s emotions.

"The gates are opening faster. The monsters are growing stronger. When the storm comes, the world will need protectors who do not flinch. Who have already stared into the dark and refused to blink."

He gestured toward the massive screen behind him, which began rolling carefully edited clips of the exam. "These are the survivors. The ones who held the line when everything fell apart."

The screen flashed with dramatic footage. Arthur Vale’s golden light cut through the purple fog, his sword raised high to shield his comrades.

Roan Sol-Valis spun his silver spear, his laughter echoing through the ruins as he single-handedly pushed back a wave of corrupted students. Elisabeth von Noctis moved like a blade through silk, her strikes precise and merciless.

Riven Ashford melted into the shadows and reappeared behind enemy lines, his dual daggers flashing in the dim light. Lyssaria Sol-Valis stood at the edge of the battlefield, her elven staff glowing with soft green light as she wove healing mist around the wounded.

Alice Scarlet roared as she swung her massive longsword alongside Princess Cordelia, Nyra Silverfang, Julia, and Caster.

"To the families of the fallen, the Astra Union offers this promise," Damon continued, his tone smooth and perfectly controlled.

"...Your children did not die for nothing. Their names will be carved into the memorial stone at Aegis Academy. The official ranking of the top two hundred candidates will be announced during the Academy orientation ceremony, where the Primus — the highest-scoring candidate in this year’s exam — will be revealed. I look forward to introducing them to the world."

The broadcast cut to a group of analysts loudly discussing the exam’s "heroic outcome."

_

Click.

I turned off the mana-link.

The screen flickered and died, leaving the hotel room in sudden, blessed silence. Only the soft glow of the lamp on the nightstand remained, casting pale light across the wooden floor.

I lay flat on the bed, staring up at the high ceiling.

My white hair spread across the pillow like spilled milk. My black shirt was wrinkled. My boots were kicked off somewhere near the door. The Tear of the Drowned King pulsed faintly against my left ear, cold and steady.

"Fucking bastards," I muttered, tossing the mana-link slab onto the mattress beside me. "They didn’t even take one good picture of my handsome face. Not even a three-second clip."

The broadcast kept replaying in my head, not because I wanted it to, but because I couldn’t stop noticing how carefully they had edited every single frame.

Arthur’s face was everywhere — his golden light cutting through the fog, his sword raised, his jaw set in that heroic angle they probably rehearsed a hundred times. The Union was shoving their golden boy down everyone’s throats, and the worst part was that Arthur probably hated it as much as I did. He never asked to be their symbol.

Neither did I.

But at least they showed his face. Mine? Scrubbed clean. Erased. Like I had never even been there.

I understood why, of course. The Union needed hope. They needed a shiny, uncomplicated hero that the masses could cling to while the world crumbled around them. Arthur fit that role perfectly — the Goddess’s Chosen One, the boy from Oakhaven who survived against all odds, the golden light in the darkness.

And me?

I was the opposite of that. I was the white-haired demon they’d point to when they needed to scare people into line. The anomaly. The failure who came back wrong. The monster hiding behind a noble title.

I didn’t give a fuck what they called me. I really didn’t.

But watching that broadcast, seeing how desperately they framed every clip to make Arthur look like a saint while my existence was completely erased from the narrative... yeah. It stung. Just a little. I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but it stung.

I had scrolled through the Astra-net forums last night.

It was the usual chaos.

Thousands of threads, millions of comments, everyone arguing about the exam, the deaths, and the survivors. Buried in the noise, a growing number of threads were calling me a demon."The white-haired monster." "The Celestial failure who came back from the dead wrong." "Did you see how he moved? That’s not human. That’s something else."

A few reporters had managed to capture blurry clips of me cutting through the fog, my black lightning crackling, my face cold and empty. The comments were brutal. People were scared of me. People hated me.

People I had never met, never wronged, never even looked at.

But there were defenders too.

A small handful of voices pushing back against the tide. SilentReader was still out there, apparently, yelling at anyone who called me trash. "He killed two Grade Five monsters alone. While being Elite rank. What more do you want from him, you bastards!"I almost smiled at that.

It was strange, knowing that strangers were out there fighting for my reputation while I lay here in a hotel room, not caring enough to defend myself.

The Astra-net was a cesspool. It always had been. I didn’t care what they said about me. But I noticed. You couldn’t not notice when thousands of strangers were debating whether you were a hero or a villain, a savior or a demon, when you hadn’t even decided for yourself which one was true.

...And then there was Mario. I think. Pretty sure that was his name. Honestly, after everything, I still wasn’t entirely certain. Marcus? Darckus? Martini? No, that’s a drink. Whatever. The point is, that fool bowed.

I hadn’t expected to see him again.

Honestly, I had forgotten he existed — forgotten his face, his name, the whole embarrassing spectacle at the gala.

He was just another arrogant noble who had crossed the line and paid the price. I had beaten him within an inch of his life, humiliated him in front of the entire court, and then moved on with my day. I hadn’t thought about him since.

But then he crawled out of the dirt, looking like a corpse that had been dragged through hell, and he bowed. Not a quick dip of the head. A full bow. Forehead to the ground. Hands pressing into the ash. His sword and his bracelet laid at my feet like an offering.

He had offered me his life, and he had meant it.

I still didn’t forgive him and probably never would. He had threatened my sister and used her name to provoke me.

That wasn’t something you just apologized for and moved past. But watching him kneel there, broken and crying, his voice cracking as he admitted he was no better than the monster he had accused me of being... I realized something I hadn’t expected.

I never actually wanted to kill him.

Beat him within an inch of his life? Absolutely. Make him regret ever looking at my family? Without hesitation. Leave him bleeding on the marble floor while the nobles watched? Already did that. But killing? No. That was never the goal. Not really.

Maybe I was a saint.

A petty, violent, emotionally constipated, revenge-driven saint with anger issues and zero self-control. But a saint nonetheless.

Saint Leo von Celestial.

Patron saint of holding grudges and making bad decisions. The Church would probably declare me a saint any day now. I could already see the stained glass window — my white hair glowing, my katana raised, my face stuck in a permanent scowl while a bunch of kneeling peasants stared up at me.

They’d probably get my good side. Maybe.

I snorted at my own thought.

Who would have thought? Not me. Not anyone who knew me. But there it was. That fool was alive and broken. And I had walked away. I hadn’t taken his points. I hadn’t taken his bracelet. I hadn’t even drawn my sword.

I just turned my back and left him kneeling in the ash.

That was something. I wasn’t sure what. Mercy? Indifference? Laziness? Who knows. But it was something. And for now, that was enough.

_

I let out a long, heavy sigh and rubbed my temples. It had been three days since the exam ended, and my head was still spinning.

Three days since that academy examiner activated the mass teleport to pull us out of the valley. Honestly, no matter how many times I experienced space-affinity teleportation, the lingering spatial sickness always made me feel completely hollowed out.

I felt flat-out sick to my stomach.

When we first came out onto the main plaza, the place was pure chaos. Bright white light. Clean, sharp air.

And a wall of noise. People were crying, screaming, hugging their friends, completely broken by the nightmare they had barely escaped. Medical teams in white coats rushed past with stretchers while candidates fell to the ground, sobbing or staring blankly at the sky.

Through the frantic crowd, I had briefly spotted a few members of the main cast looking equally battered. I saw Arthur and Amelia emerge together. Arthur’s golden light was dim, almost entirely gone, but his arm was around Amelia’s shoulders, holding her steady.

Our eyes actually met for a split second across the plaza. Arthur gave me a solemn nod.

And me?

Well, being me, I didn’t nod back. I didn’t stick around for the tears, the dramatic reunions, or the guards. I just turned my back and slipped away into the shadows.

I saw Roan laughing about something with his sister Lyssaria, his silver spear resting casually on his shoulder. Elisabeth walked completely alone, her back straight and her hand resting on her sword, her violet eyes still scanning the crowd for threats that weren’t there.

Alice was already loudly arguing with Riven about who had killed more monsters, while Cordelia helped a pale but alive Julia walk, with Nyra moving silently beside them.

I left them all behind.

Lyra found me within an hour. She appeared at my side like she had always been there, her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun. When she finally burst into my temporary quarters, she had massive dark circles under her eyes.

She looked completely pale, acting like a protective shadow and looking so genuinely worried that I hadn’t made it out alive. It was a bizarre feeling, but a few quiet words were enough to calm her down, and she hadn’t left my side since.

Because the official exam results hadn’t been publicly released yet, the Academy City was still packed.

Every hotel in the city was packed with rich nobles and merchants waiting for the big announcement. I used some of my money to book this private room for three days, tucked between a potion shop and a weapon smith.

It was a nice room — a mix of dark wood furniture and modern mana-powered lights. Lyra had taken the chair by the door, sleeping there every night with her short swords leaning against the wall within reach.

My Mana-Link slab had practically melted from the sheer volume of missed calls and urgent messages from home over the past few days. I eventually had to call my mother twice. Her voice was calm on the surface, but I could hear the shaking underneath as she flooded me with too many questions.

Are you eating? Are you hurt?I lied smoothly and told her I was fine.

Mia cried, her voice cracking through the mana-link as she loudly yelled at me for scaring her, for not coming home sooner, and for being a stupid big brother who almost died. I just held the slab away from my ear and let her yell.

I honestly deserved it.

My father didn’t call at all, which was completely fine by me. I wouldn’t know what to say to him anyway. But knowing that old man, that’s just like him.

The streets outside were still a circus, and no one in the public knew the rankings yet. The Academy had kept them strictly sealed.

But I knew.

Because earlier this morning, a special package had been delivered to my room.

A suit.

I pushed myself up from the bed and walked over to the wooden garment rack standing near the window, my eyes drifting over the fabric.

The standard Aegis Academy uniform was simple and stripped away any sign of rank. It came with a black high-collared coat with silver trim, a plain white shirt, black pants, a black tie, and solid black boots.

Whether a student was a duke’s heir or a commoner’s prodigy, they were forced to look exactly the same standing side by side. But the suit hanging in the corner of my room was a completely different story.

Because the Primus possessed the ultimate privilege of choosing their own color scheme. They could customize their coat, shirt, pants, tie, and even their cloak however they wanted to stand out.

A slow grin spread across my face as I ran my fingers along the smooth, heavy fabric.

"Heh... I am the fucking Primus."

I beat the hero Arthur. I beat the false protagonist Roan. I stood at the top while everyone else fought for scraps below me. I was the anomaly. The one who wasn’t supposed to exist. I am the number one. The Primus.

And I had won.

While other top candidates might choose bright colors to show off their new elite status, I had gone in the exact opposite direction.

All black.

I chose a midnight-black coat tailored to perfection, a matching black button-up shirt instead of the white one, black trousers, a black tie, and black boots. Attached to the shoulders with silver clasps shaped like wolf heads was a sweeping, heavy black cloak that hung down the back, the fabric so dark it practically swallowed the light around it.

The only piece of silver left was the Academy insignia pinned to the left chest — the silver crest shaped like an open book with a crossed sword, surrounded by stars. It gave off an incredibly imposing, cold silhouette.

I let out another breath, a mix of excitement and leftover tension in my chest.

Today was the official Orientation Day.

Today, the Academy would finally release the global rankings to the public, and we would officially cross the threshold from mere candidates to actual Academy students.

The real Aegis Academy arc was finally beginning. In the original game, this place was an absolute meat grinder of hidden plots, faction wars, and secret dungeons. If I wanted to survive what was coming, I needed to get stronger.

"Well. Time to get moving," I murmured.

But just as I reached for the black coat, a sudden thought struck me.

Right. The rewards.

I had been so busy for the past few days — settling into my new rank, dealing with everything after the test — that I completely forgot to check the system notifications from the moment I killed the knight.

The breakthrough wasn’t the only thing I had gained from killing the Statue of Unforgotten Sorrow. The system had explicitly mentioned a reward. And more importantly... it was related toThe Forgotten One.

That name again.

My jaw tightened, and a cold chill crept up my spine.

It felt like no matter where I went or how hard I fought, I was merely dancing in the palm of that entity.

Everything I did, every strange power I unlocked, seemed connected to that being. And the worst part? I had played the original game for thousands of hours, and I had never heard a single whisper of its existence in any forum or hidden lore guide.

I took a deep breath and cleared my mind.

"...Status screen."

A sharp, mechanical chime vibrated through my head, and the familiar blue and black status screen materialized before my eyes.