The comnts continued spreading through the crowd as more people noticed Vogue.
Nurse Gloria was positioned near the field as part of the standby dical team, ready to provide imdiate treatnt to any students who returned injured from their trials.
Ever since the Osympic Trial had descended and transported all the students away three days ago, Gloria had been consud with worry about Vogue. She cared about all her students of course, but Vogue evn more.
All ten of her fingernails had been completely chewed off due to anxiety. She hadn’t even noticed herself doing it most of the ti.
The mont she spotted movent in Vogue’s cage and saw him appear, her heart had dropped into her stomach. That initial mont of seeing him move could have gone either way—waking up as a survivor or transforming into a radiant.
But when she saw that he appeared completely normal, his eyes clear and aware rather than glowing golden, an enormous wave of relief and happiness washed over her entire body.
Gloria’s shoulders sagged as tension she’d been carrying for three straight days finally released. Tears of joy pricked at her eyes though she blinked them back quickly to maintain professional composure. A genuine smile spread across her face, the first real smile she’d managed since the trial began.
He had made it.
Gloria desperately wanted to run over to his cage imdiately, to check him over personally and confirm he truly wasn’t injured. But she forced herself to remain in position and follow proper protocols. The soldiers needed to complete their security checks first, and she would have her opportunity to examine him once the initial processing was finished.
For now, just knowing he had survived was enough. Everything else could wait.
At the sa ti, another student who was caged in a different section of the stadium heard the murmuring from the spectators above. When she caught the na "Vogue" being repeated multiple tis, her head snapped up with sudden attention.
She turned her head frantically in every direction, searching through the rows of cages scattered across the massive stadium floor. Her eyes scanned desperately until she suddenly spotted him in a cage approximately three hundred ters away from her position.
That figure was Hazel. Vogue’s ex-girlfriend who had broken up with him just two weeks before the trial.
The mont she confird it was really him, alive and well without any visible injuries, her expression changed dramatically. All color drained from her face, leaving her looking pale and shocked as though she’d just seen a ghost.
Originally, she had ended their relationship specifically because she couldn’t bear to watch soone she genuinely cared about die and transform into a radiant. The emotional pain of watching that happen would have been too much for her to handle, so she had chosen to cut ties completely before the trial began.
Since Vogue’s evolutionary progress had been so pathetically low before the trial—barely 12% when most students were at 50% or higher—she had been ninety percent certain he would die during the Osympic Trial. The survival odds for soone with his stats were basically nonexistent according to every calculation and projection.
But here he was, sitting calmly in his cage, alive and well without a single scratch visible on him. Not even injured or exhausted-looking. Just... fine. Completely normal and healthy.
This fact stunned Hazel to an extre degree she couldn’t quite process. Her mind struggled to reconcile what she was seeing with what she had been absolutely certain would happen.
She suddenly rembered sothing important. The day before the trial had descended, Claire—her best friend and the class monitor—had pulled her aside privately and told her sothing surprising. Claire had said that Vogue had really changed over the past few weeks, that he had improved dramatically and was much stronger than people realized.
At the ti, Hazel had thought Claire was either joking or being overly optimistic, trying to make her feel less guilty about the breakup. But now, seeing the evidence with her own eyes, she realized Claire had been completely serious.
Vogue had genuinely changed. He had sohow transford from the weakest student in their class into soone capable of actually surviving the Osympic Trial. But how? How was that even possible in such a short tifra?
Hazel was now a Stellar Knight herself, having successfully completed her own trial and awakened her talent. One of the abilities that ca with becoming a Stellar Knight was the capacity to sense energy fluctuations and auras from other people.
She focused her newly awakened senses and directed them toward Vogue’s position three hundred ters away, trying to get a read on his current power level and what evolution thod he had used.
But the mont her sensory perception reached Vogue’s location, it was as though there was nobody there at all.
She could visibly see him with her eyes—he was clearly sitting right there in physical form. But her energy senses detected absolutely nothing. No aura, no energy signature, no cultivation level, nothing. It was as though he existed in perfect harmony with his surroundings, completely rged with the ambient environnt to the point of being invisible to supernatural perception.
This was extrely unusual and deeply unsettling. Even normal humans who hadn’t undergone evolution had faint energy signatures that could be detected. But Vogue appeared as a complete void, which should have been impossible.
Vogue suddenly turned his head and locked his gaze directly on Hazel, as though he had sensed her trying to scan him despite her attempts at subtlety. Their eyes t across the three-hundred-ter distance.
He nodded his head once in simple acknowledgnt, a neutral gesture that carried no particular emotion or aning. Then he looked away, dismissing her from his attention as though she were no more significant than any other random person in the stadium.
That casual dismissal stung Hazel more than she expected it to.
Ti continued to pass slowly. More and more students began awakening from their trial-induced unconsciousness as they were transported back from their respective dinsions. So of them woke up as successful Stellar Knights with clear eyes, others began transforming into radiants the mont they appeared.
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