A few days passed and the next morning came.

There were 10 days remaining until the departure for the Vazrun Island Test.

Ruvian walked the corridor alone, the faint ache in his limbs had become a familiar companion now. Soon, he finally arrived in front of the Class E lecture hall before calmly pushing the door open.

Creak.

The familiar noisy atmosphere immediately greeted him, and Ruvian walked toward his seat without much care.

But after several steps, his brows faintly narrowed.

Something felt... off.

The atmosphere inside the classroom was strange today.

Their conversations were quiet but charged, and whispers were leaking through the room. Ruvian didn’t pay much mind at first. He had grown accustomed to the sound of inconsequence.

Noise, after all, often masks nothing of substance.

But then... he heard it.

"...Did you hear what happened yesterday?"

"Yeah... that was insane..."

"Where is she now?"

"In the infirmary, I heard."

"...Seriously?"

"Why didn’t the instructor stop the match?"

"I know, right? That’s completely messed up."

"...I was there too, yesterday."

The words, at first meaningless fragments, began to thread themselves together. Ruvian’s eyes narrowed slightly, his thoughts slowing with sudden clarity.

...She? Infirmary? Match?

A quiet alarm stirred in the back of his mind, reaching for something half-buried.

And then it clicked.

’Wait... don’t tell me.’

He closed his eyes, a bitter realization drawing its shape within the dark.

’Fuck!’

He cursed inwardly, louder than he ever did.

Full of regret.

In the original version of the story, there had been a sequence buried deep within the quieter arcs of the academy days.

The Magic Combat elective.

Zian and Vanessa had both been enrolled in it. And in that version, during a routine sparring session, she was deliberately being singled out by one of Julian’s lackeys who had challenged her.

However, before the sparring session had even properly begun, Vanessa had already been drugged by one of them beforehand.

At first, she did not realize anything was wrong.

But the moment she started circulating her mana during the fight, an unbearable dizziness suddenly assaulted her mind.

Her vision blurred violently, her body felt unnaturally heavy. Every movement she made grew slower and more disoriented as the battle continued.

And then, like a starving beast finding wounded prey, her opponent took advantage of her weakened condition.

The sparring session quickly turned into a one-sided assault.

Consecutive blows mercilessly rained down upon her body. She was even thrown across the arena floor repeatedly, beaten until bruises began covering her skin while blood slowly stained the corner of her lips.

Yet despite how obvious her condition already was, the instructor overseeing the session never once attempted to stop the match.

Instead, he merely stood there and watched coldly from the sidelines. And yes, obviously, some kind of agreement had already been made beforehand for that.

By the time the fight reached its climax, Vanessa could barely even stand anymore.

Just before she finally collapsed—

A figure suddenly stepped forward.

Zian Herga.

He had intervened and forcefully stopped the brutality unfolding before everyone’s eyes. The overwhelming pressure radiating from him instantly silenced the entire arena.

And that very moment...

Became the turning point of Vanessa’s life.

From that day onward, Vanessa slowly began to follow Zian.

But the problem was — in this timeline, Zian Herga was never even present in that elective together with her. Because as of now, he had already been taken away by Duchess and brought into Wellencrest Academy.

Which meant the person who was supposed to stop everything... simply did not exist there anymore.

And that was precisely the reason why Ruvian had deliberately enrolled himself into this elective from the very beginning.

Because he knew.

He knew exactly what would happen to Vanessa if nobody stepped in to stop it.

Unfortunately, due to his recent squad training sessions constantly overlapping with the elective classes, his schedule had become so chaotic and mentally exhausting that the matter had completely slipped out of his mind.

No... "slipped" was just an excuse.

He had outright forgotten about it entirely!

The realization struck him like a hammer crashing directly into his chest.

’Haa... damn it!’

Ruvian’s expression immediately darkened.

’That match must’ve happened yesterday...’

His fingers slowly curled into a fist so tightly that his nails nearly dug into his own palm. A heavy feeling of frustration and self-directed anger violently surged inside his chest.

He had missed it.

Despite already knowing what was going to happen beforehand...

And because of that single moment of carelessness,

Vanessa had paid the price for it instead. (+100PP)

*****

Later on, the morning lecture continued as scheduled.

The instructors spent nearly the entire session giving an intensive breakdown regarding wilderness survival methods specifically tailored for the dangers lurking across Vazrun Island.

Tracking residual Voidspawn trails. Identifying toxic bloom fauna. Basic shelter conjuration for surviving harsh environmental conditions during nighttime.

And most importantly, methods of navigating the island itself without getting lost.

Normally, Ruvian would have absorbed every single detail without issue.

But today...

Not a single word properly entered his mind.

The voices of the instructors became nothing more than distant background noise echoing meaninglessly inside the lecture hall as his thoughts continuously drifted elsewhere.

’Haa... will she be alright?’

Ruvian slowly lowered his gaze toward the desk.

If her injuries were serious enough...

Then things would become troublesome.

If her condition had deteriorated too badly from the incident, there was a genuine possibility that she might no longer be able to participate in that Vazrun Island Test at all.

And the consequences of that would not simply end with missing a single examination.

No.

The ramifications would extend far beyond that.

Her evaluation scores, academy ranking, future opportunities, and even her overall progression inside the academy would all suffer devastating setbacks because of this single incident.

Everything she had worked for until now stood upon an extremely fragile precipice.

He exhaled through his nose, barely audible.

A dozen branching possibilities tangled in his head, some realistic, others absurd, but all of them concluded the same way, with too many unknowns, and too little time.

In the end, he chose the one thing he could still do.

Ruvian stood up when the bell finally rang — the clatter of chairs and chatter of scholars fading around him.

He will go and see her himself.

──────── ✦ ────────

[Chapter 194: The Price of Carelessness]

Plot Points= 32,130