Ronan stepped through the final line of trees with the node still pressed against his side.
The river base ca into view through the darkness ahead. Several makeshift lanterns glowed between the tents and defensive barriers Class B had assembled earlier that morning.
Students moved around the camp carrying water, reinforcing runes, or tending to injuries from the previous battles.
Then soone noticed his ergence.
And more importantly...
"The node!"
Heads turned.
Relief spread through the camp almost instantly as students rushed toward the edge of the base. The pressure hanging over class B loosened for the first ti all day.
"They got it back!"
"We still have it!"
"Holy shit..."
Ronan slowed near the center of the camp while Mira erged behind him through the trees.
His plan had worked. It went a lot smoother than expected.
The class S students split up like they had thought they would, but then soon realized that chasing them was pointless and returned back to class S.
Ronan looked at Mira.
She looked exhausted.
Smoke stains covered her uniform, and ash covered her hair. Her breathing was still erratic and unstable as well.
Several students crowded around them imdiately.
Then soone noticed who wasn’t there.
"Where’s Cole?"
Another student looked past Ronan toward the forest where he had just erged from.
"Where’s Darius?"
Ronan answered before anyone else could.
"Darius is still in Class S custody," he said calmly. "Cole was captured during the retreat."
"What?"
"You left them there?!"
"Then what the hell was the point?!"
A select few in class B that Darius had trusted expressed their anger all at once.
Ronan didn’t even have to say anything before other students ca to his defense.
"The point is right there!" one student said, pointing at the node in Ronan’s hand.
"If Class S took that thing, we would’ve lost on the spot!"
"You abandoned Darius!"
"You weren’t even there, how would you know!?"
The camp quickly descended into overlapping argunts.
This was expected.
They had just lost their leader.
Ronan stood in the center of the chaos without reacting.
That only made so of the students angrier.
One of the older boys stepped forward aggressively. "You seriously ca back holding the node while our leader’s still captured?"
Mira flinched slightly beside Ronan before stepping forward herself.
"You don’t understand what happened," she said angrily, shooting the boy a weak glare.
Several students turned toward her instead.
Mira swallowed once before continuing.
"Class S already had Darius locked down before we got there. The node was powering the trap around the statue." Her voice shook slightly from exhaustion, but she kept speaking anyway. "Ronan said recovering the node mattered first because trying to break Darius out directly would’ve gotten all of us captured."
"He actually said that?" soone asked.
Mira nodded imdiately.
"They were prepared for us already. There were too many Class S students around the clearing."
"And Cole?"
Mira hesitated.
"I..." She frowned slightly. "Everything got ssy after the fire spread. I lost sight of them inside the smoke."
That answer left enough uncertainty hanging in the air to keep the argunts alive.
Ronan noticed Elara watching him from near the riverbank.
Her eyes narrowed as she listened to Mira’s story. She caught the gaps in them, it seed.
That didn’t an she thought Ronan did sothing wrong, but it was probably more along the lines of "there’s more to this than Mira knows about."
Good.
That ant she was thinking clearly.
Several students started arguing again near the center of camp.
So bla Ronan, surprisingly, even more, defending him and his retrieval of the node.
Ronan watched the scene uninterestedly. What they were accusing him of didn’t matter. Right now, what mattered was what Elara would do.
And sure enough, she stepped forward.
"Enough."
Her voice cut through the camp sharply enough to stop several conversations imdiately.
She looked furious.
Not composed like Darius.
Not calm like Irene.
Actually angry.
"We lost people," Elara said bluntly. "Nobody here is pretending otherwise."
Her voice rose as she addressed the camp.
"But we still have our base. We still have water access. We still have the node."And unless everyone suddenly forgot," Elara continued, "we still have one of the best damn runesmiths in the first year, Sapphire!"
All heads turned to the ridiculously shy girl, who shrank back.
"Class S built a trap specifically to cripple us," Elara said. "And they still failed to take everything."
Her breathing remained uneven from anger.
It was sloppy, and the words weren’t particularly creative or inspiring, but they were authentic.
And that had an effect on the class.
Ronan watched the students carefully as the atmosphere shifted.
Darius was gone.
Elara had stepped into leadership.
The node remained secured.
And Mira’s incomplete version of events gave him enough cover to avoid imdiate suspicion.
The outco had stabilized almost exactly the way he wanted.
[Main Quest: Escape Artist]
[Status – Completed]
[Reward granted]
[Skill acquired: Fla Mirage LVL 1]
[Fla Mirage LVL 1]
Create a temporary fla afterimage while displacing the real body a short distance. The mirage carries heat, visual presence, and faint mana fluctuation before collapsing into a weak fla burst when struck or dismissed.
Another fla-based skill.
But this one was different. Unlike the others, this was centered around deception.
Ronan would have liked a skill that provided him with a ans to brute force his opponents, but he wasn’t complaining.
No, he wasn’t complaining at all.
This skill could be even better than a purely attack-based skill.
He would have to test it out later.
But before he could take a second to breathe, another voice shouted from the distance.
"Elara!"
Every head turned toward him.
The scout bent forward slightly, trying to catch his breath.
"Class A..." He swallowed hard. "Their representatives are here already."
The camp froze again.
Several students exchanged nervous looks imdiately.
Now?
After everything that happened?
Elara’s jaw tightened slightly.
Ronan watched her expression carefully.
She understood the problem instantly.
Class B hadn’t recovered yet. Darius was gone. Cole was captured. Half the camp still looked ready to start blaming each other again.
And now they had to negotiate with another class while looking weak.
Elara exhaled slowly.
"Get everyone under control," she said.
And students listened.
Her place as the new leader, acting or not, was already set in stone.
Ronan stood near the edge of the camp with the node still in his hand while the river flowed quietly behind him.
Then he looked toward Elara.
He smiled appreciatively.
Getting rid of Darius was the right option.
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