"WHAT?"
Everyone thought in unison.
"Yes. Exactly as you heard. I want to enroll in the Academy."
It felt as though the ground beneath Eric’s feet was sliding away.
"We have nothing worthy of teaching soone as great as you. I think there may be a misconception about what this Academy is."
"No. I don’t want to enroll in order to learn."
"....Then."
Necrotize glanced around at his surroundings for a mont.
"I want to enroll to experience it. Academy life. Tasks. Assignnts. The beauty of living alongside classmates."
He looked at Elizabeth before adding.
"And so spicy stuff."
Silence.
Eric had no words. What could he possibly say? He could make an excuse — find so way to refuse. But if he refused and Necrotize took offence, he didn’t want to imagine what kind of horror he and the rest of the empire would have to face. The man could destroy the planet if he got upset.
"....If that is what you wish, then..."
Eric offered a small smile.
"We welco you to Silvercast Academy."
The smile was genuine enough. But the unease inside him didn’t fade for even a second.
Necrotize heard every word Eric was thinking. He said nothing about it.
"Good. Now proceed with whatever you were doing before I arrived. Resu the entrance exam."
"But my Lord, you don’t need to take the entrance exam. You may begin attending once classes start."
"No. I don’t want special treatnt. I want to enroll like everyone else."
He then looked around at the crowd.
Most of them looked like they were ready to prostrate and begin worshipping at any given mont.
That needed to be addressed.
"Before anything else, I have sothing to say to all of you." His voice was calm but carried without effort. "From this point forward, everyone is forbidden from prostrating before in worship. You are all to treat as an ordinary student — that applies to the professors as well. You are also forbidden from calling the Great One. Use my na. Consider it a request, or an order — whichever you prefer. Are we clear?"
"YES." Everyone answered in unison.
With that settled, the pre-exam ceremony continued.
Several professors took to the stage one after another to give their speeches. But every single one of them trembled while they spoke. Their voices wavered. Their hands shook. They could barely get through their words.
Necrotize and Catherine stood at the back, watching.
Necrotize, for his part, was quietly excited about the entrance exam.
Then a professor in a dark trench coat stepped onto the stage. He had long black hair and a slightly gloomy face. But unlike everyone before him, he wasn’t trembling. Not even a little. He stepped up and began his speech without so much as a stutter.
"Hello, fellow participants. I am Nicholas Joldick, head of the Magic Departnt, and I am in charge of this year’s entrance exam. Allow to explain how the exam will proceed. There will first be a practical exam, followed by a theoretical exam. The practical portion will be the primary focus, as it will determine which departnt you are placed into. Best of luck to all of you."
Necrotize watched him with quiet curiosity.
"Catherine."
"Yes, my Lord?"
"That man just now. He carries the blessing of Death."
Catherine’s eyes widened slightly.
"Lord Morthos’s blessing?" She kept her voice low.
"But from what you have told , Lord Morthos only grants his blessing when he is truly impressed. And to impress him, one would have to offer an extraordinarily large number of sacrifices."
She paused for a mont before adding.
"Should I take care of him, my Lord?"
"No. Leave him." Necrotize’s gaze drifted back toward the stage. "I have a feeling sothing interesting is about to unfold. Let’s not ruin it."
"As you wish."
........
After all the speeches were done, the participants were led to the practical exam training ground.
Necrotize followed quietly from the back.
The training ground was vast. At its centre stood a single training dummy, reinforced by layers of magic. Under normal circumstances, only the professors overseeing the exam would be present. But this year, every professor in the Academy had found a reason to be there.
The reason was obvious.
Nicholas addressed the participants.
"The practical exam is simple. Destroy the training dummy. That is all."
A murmur ran through the crowd.
"Just destroy the dummy? That’s it? I thought it would be harder than that."
But the confidence faded quickly.
The first participant stepped forward and launched his attack. It didn’t even graze the surface. He stared at the dummy in disbelief. So did everyone watching.
"What? Why is it so durable?"
"The dummy is reinforced with high-tier durability magic," Nicholas said flatly. "Destroying it will be considerably harder than it looks."
One by one the participants stepped forward. One by one they failed. So managed to scratch the surface. Most didn’t even get that far. The mood among the crowd grew heavier with each failed attempt.
Then a girl with silver hair stepped forward. She was slender, almost delicate-looking, with sharp eyes that gave away nothing. The third daughter of House Leonheart — Lyra Leonheart.
She raised her hand.
Thin threads of lightning gathered at her fingertips, crackling quietly. Then she released them.
The lightning struck the dummy in several precise points simultaneously. Cracks spread across its surface like a web. The dummy didn’t shatter — but it was visibly damaged in a way that most participants hadn’t managed at all.
The crowd stirred.
"That’s Lyra Leonheart. House Leonheart’s third daughter. They say she has almost no raw power but her precision and control are sothing else entirely."
"She cracked it. Not many people today even managed that much."
Lyra returned to her place without expression. She didn’t look satisfied. She looked like she was already thinking about what she should have done differently.
The exam continued.
A few more noble heirs stepped forward. A daughter of House Varren conjured a blade of compressed wind that tore a long gash across the dummy’s torso. A twin from House Aldric hit it with a chain of ice spikes that cracked one of its arms clean off. The crowd reacted to each one. But none of them finished it.
Then a young man with red hair and broad shoulders stepped forward.
He didn’t say anything. He just stretched out one arm toward the dummy.
A fireball ford in his palm — enormous, dense, burning so hot the air around it wavered. He released it.
The dummy was obliterated instantly.
The crowd erupted.
"That’s Carlos Hilbert. Heir to Duke Hilbert’s household. They said he was among the strongest of this generation — looks like the rumours were true."
Several professors watched with visible pride. Necrotize observed quietly from the back.
*Pretty strong. For a human his age. Catherine wasn’t even that powerful when she was young.*
The exam moved on. Most participants continued to fail. Only the heirs of the great noble households were consistently able to damage it. Only the very best among them could destroy it outright.
Then Elizabeth stepped forward.
She drew her sword.
One strike.
The dummy split clean in half and collapsed to the ground.
The silence that followed lasted a full second before the crowd found its voice.
"That’s Lady Elizabeth for you. One strike. No hesitation."
"No wonder she’s the Chosen One."
"The one who will serve a God."
And then everyone seed to rember sothing at the sa ti.
The God they were talking about was standing directly behind them.
Heads turned slowly. Eyes landed on Necrotize. The reality of the situation settled over the crowd like a cold wave. A literal god was standing among them. Watching the entrance exam. And he was going to be their classmate.
The weight of that fact had not fully registered until this mont.
Necrotize paid no attention to any of it.
After all the participants had finished, it was his turn.
He walked forward from the back. The crowd parted without thinking. Nobody spoke. The professors straightened instinctively even though they had been told not to treat him differently. Every eye on the training ground was fixed on him.
He stopped a few tres from the dummy.
Hands in his pockets.
The professors trembled. But underneath the trembling was sothing else — a quiet, barely contained excitent. They were about to witness an attack from a god. Whatever it was, it would be sothing beyond imagination. Sothing that would be spoken about for generations.
What ca next disappointed everyone.
Including the professors.
Necrotize raised one finger.
A small fireball ford at the tip. A simple, ordinary fireball. The kind a first-year student might attempt. It floated lazily through the air toward the dummy, slow enough that several participants almost laughed.
A fireball. That’s it? I thought we were going to see sothing world-ending.
The fireball touched the dummy.
Then.
Doom.
The explosion swallowed the training ground.
When the dust and light cleared, the dummy was gone. The ground where it had stood was gone. The forest behind the training ground was gone. Thirty kilotres of land — trees, hills, everything — had been erased from the map as if it had never existed.
Every professor’s legs gave out simultaneously.
Eric stood at the edge of the training ground staring at the horizon where the forest used to be. His mouth was open. No words were coming out.
And then, unexpectedly, the person who panicked most was Necrotize himself.
He stared at the empty horizon with wide eyes.
"I swear I did not want this to happen." He turned to the professors, visibly distressed. "I have no idea a simple attack would cause this much damage. I barely used anything. I didn’t even use the power of destruction — just basic mana. I held back almost everything." He paused. "I think I used 0.01 percent."
Silence.
"Please don’t worry. I will fix it."
He turned to face the destruction, stretched out one arm, and slowly twisted his wrist.
Ti reversed.
Every tree that had been vaporised pulled itself back from nothing. The hills reassembled. The earth stitched itself closed. Within seconds, the forest stood exactly as it had before. Untouched. Unchanged. As if nothing had happened at all.
Except for the training dummy, which remained destroyed.
Necrotize lowered his arm. He looked relieved.
The professors did not look relieved.
He reversed ti itself. He just reversed ti. As an apology. Oh my god. What is he.
Necrotize caught the thought but there was nothing he could do about it. He’d had to fix what he broke. That was simply the right thing to do.
Carlos stood silently among the crowd, staring at the rebuilt forest.
His fists were clenched so tightly his nails dug into his palms.
Just monts ago, he had destroyed the training dummy in a single attack. The crowd had praised him. The professors had looked proud. For a brief mont, he had stood at the centre of everyone’s attention.
Then Necrotize had stepped forward.
And suddenly Carlos’s greatest achievent looked like a child playing with sparks.
He hated that feeling.
More than fear, more than awe — humiliation.
He forced himself to look away.
So this is the gap between monsters and n.
For the first ti in years, Carlos felt small.
And he hated it.
Elizabeth had not moved from where she was standing. She was staring at the empty space where the forest had just rebuilt itself.
So this is Necrotize. The strongest being in existence.
She hated the idea of serving him. That hadn’t changed. But she couldn’t deny what she had just seen.
"You didn’t have to apologise, Lord Necrotize." Eric’s voice was barely holding together. "We would have handled it."
"I caused the damage. It was my responsibility to fix it." Necrotize shrugged. "It’s fine."
No one moved for several long seconds.
The training ground was silent.
Not the ordinary silence of an exam ending, but the heavy, suffocating silence of people trying to process sothing their minds refused to accept.
A few looked like they were reconsidering every life decision that had led them to this mont.
Even the professors needed ti to recover.
Nicholas adjusted his glasses, stared at the completely destroyed training dummy, and let out a quiet sigh.
"...Practical exam concluded."
No one applauded.
No one spoke.
Everyone simply obeyed.
And in that silence, they followed the professors toward the examination hall for the theoretical exam.
Necrotize sat down at his desk and stared at the sheet of paper in front of him. He read it once. Then again.
Sothing shifted in his expression.
He picked up his pen and started writing.
......
In Necrotize’s manor.
Necrotize sat in his chair with a grim expression. A faint shadow of disappointnt had settled over his face. Catherine stood nearby, watching him carefully.
"Is sothing wrong, Master?"
Necrotize let out a long sigh.
"I think I might not be accepted into Silvercast Academy."
Catherine blinked. "...May I ask why?"
"I didn’t understand a single thing written on that paper." He stared at the ceiling. "What in the world is Magic Hexagon Synchronisation. I just wrote random nonsense. I had absolutely no idea what any of it was asking."
Catherine stared at him for a mont.
Then she laughed.
It was quiet at first. Then less quiet.
"You don’t have to worry about that," she said, composing herself. "You will be accepted. I’m certain of it."
"You think so?"
"Yes."
Necrotize looked at her for a mont. Then he leaned back in his chair.
"...Alright."
......
An ergency eting was called by Eric that sa evening.
Every senior professor sat around the conference table. Every face in the room was grim.
The room was silent for a long mont before anyone spoke.
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