No! I don't want to be a Super Necromancer!

"Drop your rifles," Professor Wu said coolly, his voice carrying with effortless authority across the field. "Switch to long-distance elemental attacks. Stop them from reaching the top."

There was a beat of stunned silence, then rifles clattered to the ground like hail.

Immediately, chants and mana incantations filled the air as six hundred second and third year students began to draw on their elements, hands glowing with fire, water, lightning, and all the deadly forces they had mastered over the years.

It might've seemed absurd.

Unfair, even.

Six hundred trained, combat-hardened seniors, unleashing everything they had… against a single first year.

But then again, what kind of school would Pearl Institute be if one terrifying junior could not be stopped even by six hundred seniors?

Among the upper years were mages who specialized in devastating combination spells. There were those who trained daily in battlefield synergy. Wind mages buffed the fire users, water mages soaked terrain for sudden freeze traps, and earth mages churned the field into shifting death traps. The air exploded with overlapping spells.

Blazing geysers of steam erupted as water and fire collided.

Boiling swamps formed where the softened terrain sizzled with unstable mana.

Searing ash spiraled into the sky, forming crimson tornadoes of flame and grit.

The mountain trembled beneath the weight of six hundred powerful youths, working in unison to bring down a single boy.

Professor Bai Lian frowned. "This is overkill."

"Yes." Professor Kong Hu agreed grimly. "But a necessary one. Today's training was for the first years to experience defeat. There can be no exceptions."

But even then… the absurdity did not lie in the six hundred attacking.

No.

The absurdity was in the fact that they still couldn't stop him.

Because for Damien Bloodbane, who had once massacred millions of Zerg Champions in simulations so brutal they blurred the line between game and war, six hundred upper-year mages were not a threat.

They were an opportunity.

He didn't just dodge the spells—they were too chaotic, too poorly coordinated, too overlapping. He read their patterns with terrifying ease and began to move through them like water slipping through cracked stone. But more than that, he began to use them.

Damien Bloodbane's feet barely touched the ground as he darted between blasts of lightning, jets of flame, and lances of sharpened stone. His mind was clear. His breath was steady.

"Messy. Too messy." he thought, narrowing his eyes as three overlapping spells collided ahead of him in a crackling burst of heat and wind.

"Those idiots are stepping on each other's spells. Six hundred of them, and not one proper command formation?"

A blast of water surged from his left.

A fireball from the right.

He twisted his body and let them meet behind his back, creating a curtain of hissing steam that blinded a group of second years crouched behind a slope.

"They're not even aiming. They're just blasting my general area." His eyes scanned the terrain, picking out elevation shifts, cover points, and exposed flanks.

A shard of ice whistled past his cheek. He ducked low, rolled beneath a vine whip, then pivoted sharply behind a boulder just before it exploded into dirt from an earth spike.

He emerged on the other side like liquid shadow.

"No coordination. No discipline. Just raw power tossed into the wind." He grinned slightly. "Perfect."

A gust of air hurled him upward, but instead of resisting it, he angled his body into the lift and landed mid-sprint on a ledge a meter above. Around him, mages tried to recalibrate.

Too late.

He had already slipped between the gaps they'd created themselves.

"Use their strength against them. Let them burn each other out. I just need to move."

Another bolt of fire screamed toward him. He darted left, and it struck a patch of oil from a failed combustion spell. The resulting flare lit up the hill like a beacon.

Behind him, she followed.

Damien Bloodbane didn't look back, but he could sense her there. Her rhythm matched his perfectly. No words, no signals, no wasted motion.

He turned sharply to avoid a barrage of falling stones, leapt sideways through a curtain of ash, and slid beneath a curtain of wind-charged arrows.

Damien Bloodbane ducked beneath a scything blade of wind and vaulted over a burst of rising flames. The battlefield had become a chaotic storm of elemental power—raging, wild, and barely controlled.

Spells clashed against spells. Explosions ripped through the hillside.

The screams of first years still echoing from below were nothing compared to the raw symphony of six hundred seniors throwing everything they had.

And amidst it all, the mysterious girl kept pace.

She didn't say a word. Didn't falter. Every time he pivoted, she was there. Every time he changed directions mid-stride, she adjusted without hesitation. There was a grace to her movements—no wasted energy, no unnecessary flair. Just pure, fluid movement.

But Damien Bloodbane's eyes narrowed.

A hundred meters ahead, three separate spell formations were forming from opposite flanks.

Wind, fire, and wood. He recognized the intent instantly. A convergence technique. Fire Ash Tornado.

Wind would give it shape. Wood would fuel the burn. And fire would detonate it into a hellish vortex of blazing embers and splinters sharp enough to shred bone.

Most elemental attacks cancelled each other out when misaligned. But this one? This one would enhance. Amplify.

She didn't see it.

Her path, which was perfect a moment ago,was about to lead her directly into the storm.

"She'll hesitate." Damien thought coldly. "She'll step wrong. Half a second of doubt is all it'll take."

And just as he predicted, it happened.

The moment she sensed the converging mana, her body stiffened.

Not from fear, but from calculation. Too many possibilities. Too many angles. And not enough time.

Her momentum wavered. Just slightly.

But slightly was enough.

The vortex erupted in front of her with a roar, a cyclone of flaming death that howled across the hill. Embers rained down like razors. The wind screamed in her ears.

Then Damien Bloodbane was there.

A blur of motion.

He cut across the blast radius like a storm himself, grabbing her waist mid-stride and pulling her tightly against his side.

With a burst of raw speed, he twisted them out of the kill zone, angling into a downhill slide behind a massive slab of cracked stone just as the vortex tore through the space they had occupied.

The heat licked at their backs. Shrapnel pinged off the stone. The explosion howled past.

Then… silence.

Damien Bloodbane crouched behind the cover, body low, heartbeat steady. The girl was pressed against him, her breath caught somewhere between panic and awe.

Slowly, she looked up.

Their eyes met.

For the first time since he had seen her, the calm mask she wore so carefully… cracked.

Her mouth parted. Her eyes wide—not in fear, but in stunned gratitude. And then, before she could stop herself, a small, radiant smile bloomed across her lips.

Not icy. Not mysterious.

Just… beautiful.

Damien Bloodbane blinked.

"Great." he thought dryly. "Now she's smiling at me like I just pulled her out of a fairytale."

He pulled back slightly, letting her stand. She didn't say thank you. Didn't gush. But her eyes lingered a beat longer than necessary.

Then, silently, she turned and resumed the run.

"Damn it. " Damien Bloodbane exhaled sharply and muttered under his breath. "Now even she's looking at me weird. I hope she won't touch me like Professor Bai Lian."

But he followed right after.

Together, they slipped back into the storm.