Chapter 149: Chapter 149: Academy’s Entrance Phase One [3]
Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the biscuit.
"One more thing," Laila said, spinning the gold piece across her fingers like a coin that had learned arrogance.
"No powers inside my hall. Only techniques."
The mood dropped in a single collective exhale.
"What?"
"Then why is this an option?"
"Such a waste."
Shoulders sagged.
A few people swore under their breath.
Someone in the five-and-two cluster muttered about wasted preparation.
"SILENCE!"
The word cracked harder than the earlier speaker’s screech. The hall snapped quiet again.
"I am giving you a chance."
Laila’s blue eyes moved across guild-polished Vanguards and half-trained hopefuls alike.
"Regardless of your background, this is a test that can define your future. What use is it if the only tool you reach for here is the same power you already trained?"
She let the question hang.
"Use your damn minds. Figure out a way to outsmart them. You cannot rely on power alone inside the dungeons anymore. Monsters had become wiser now. The bosses have started speaking our language. Gone are the days when hunters could exit anytime they wanted. Now the dungeons guide you."
Faces went pale in patches across the floor.
Even the hulk-built support shifted his weight like the words had weight.
"You don’t get to stop once you are inside," Laila continued.
"You either win, or you die trying."
A beat passed.
"Now..."
She raised the biscuit.
"Once you catch it, hold it for five seconds."
Snap.
The hall went silent in a different way, coiled, not cowed.
Second snap.
Bodies crouched. Boots ground into marked stone. Gianna’s fingers brushed my sleeve once, a question without words.
I answered by not moving.
Snap.
The biscuit vanished from Laila’s hand and reappeared high above, stuck to the ceiling like a taunt welded into the architecture.
"Move."
The floor detonated into motion.
Students surged in a broken wave, some straight for the pillars, some for each other, some already climbing anything vertical that would take weight.
The first collisions sounded like a market riot given combat training.
I caught Gianna’s wrist and Rei’s sleeve and pulled both of them a half-step back from the initial crush.
"Hey-!"
"Let’s wait."
Gianna’s eyes stayed on the ceiling.
"You’re not rushing?"
"No need."
"Well, I do."
Rei twisted free with a little laugh and broke for a service pipe running up the nearest support column.
"I love shits like these."
She hit it running, boots finding seams like the metal had been installed for her personally.
I watched her climb.
"I told you she’s a monkey."
Gianna’s mouth twitched despite the chaos.
"Kinda agree on that."
The dogpile under the biscuit turned ugly fast.
One student, long-limbed, academy-fit, took a running leap that should have been impossible without enhancement and still somehow read as technique rather than open power.
His fingers closed on the gold.
"FUCK YES—!"
An elongated arm snapped out of the crowd like a thrown rope.
The woman’s body stretched in a grotesque, controlled line, palm wrapping the jumper’s waist.
She slammed him into a pillar hard enough that the impact rang through the floor. The biscuit popped free of his grip and tumbled.
"Hehe."
She snatched it mid-fall, stretched joints folding back toward human proportion—
—and the hulk support hit her like a moving wall.
BAM!
He didn’t bother with elegance.
One massive hand closed around her extended forearm and threw.
"AHH"
She left the ground in a wide arc and crashed into a knot of cadets, bowling three of them down.
The biscuit spun in the open air.
Multiple women from the bubblegum team launched onto the hulk’s back at once, climbing him like a mobile cliff, fists and elbows hunting eyes and throat without quite crossing into lethal.
One of the collared supports tried to interpose and got an accidental knee for the trouble.
"This is a mess," Gianna said.
I nodded, tracking trajectories.
"Techniques are allowed. Full class output isn’t. She’s sorting for people who can still think when the floor becomes a mosh pit."
[Environmental rule: Active power projection restricted]
[Technique-level applications: Tolerated under observation]
[Objective: Secure and retain target — 5.0 seconds]
[Host status: Non-engaged]
Rei reached the upper pipe span, kicked off, and dropped onto the hulk’s shoulders from above like a second bad decision.
Her fingers jabbed at him in precise, ugly motion.
"Shit—!"
The big man’s hands flew toward his face as the biscuit slipped.
It fell to the ground.
Bodies lunged.
Rei was already moving with the drop, hit the floor in a roll, came up with gold flashing between her fingers, and ran.
"She... got it," I said.
Gianna’s anchor spiked once, sharp.
"Fuck. She really took that."
The hunt pivoted.
A woman spat something slick onto the stone ahead of Rei.
The patch spread fast, glossy and treacherous.
Rei didn’t brake; she jumped, cleared the smear, and kept going as three more cadets lunged from a blind angle.
Hands closed on her wrists, her braid, the edge of her jacket.
They forced her palms open.
"Open it..."
Empty.
For a frozen half-second, the whole local scrum stared at nothing.
Then every head turned.
The biscuit sat quietly on the floor under the edge of my boot, as if it had decided the chaos was exhausting and chosen the least dramatic person in range.
[Target proximity: Critical]
[Retention window available]
[Warning: Multiple hostile vectors converging]
"Revien... It has been a wonderful journey," Gianna said, very calmly.
"Gianna... about the passionate night..."
"I wish you the best."
Shit.
Too late for advice.
The nearest cluster had already recalculated. The stretched woman, one shoulder wrong from the throw, was dragging herself toward us.
Bubblegum blonde’s eyes lit with fresh interest.
The hulk was blinking tears and blood out of his vision and turning our direction by sound alone.
Rei skidded to a stop three meters away, hands still open, expression caught between triumph and the sudden math of having led the entire riot to my feet.
I didn’t look down again.
Looking down was how people telegraphed.
"Five seconds," I said under my breath.
Gianna stepped half in front of me without making it look like protection.
"Then stop talking and hold."
Rei’s voice cut across the closing space, bright and vicious.
"Touch him, and I start taking eyes for real!"
"No powers," someone yelled back, already reaching.
"Technique," Rei answered, and smiled like a blade.
I settled my weight just enough to keep the biscuit pinned without grinding it into the stone, felt the cold edge of Laila’s rule set against the heat of a hundred greedy intentions, and started counting in my head while Sector 1’s first "equal chance" tried to become a riot with a prize.
One.
Two.
The first hand lunged for my ankle.
Gianna’s heel met a wrist with a sound like a lesson.
[Retention: 3.1 / 5.0]
[Local aggression: Escalating]
I threw the biscuit to the other end.
Everyone’s face screamed, ’What the fuck?’