Chapter 242: Results

The distribution didn’t take long.

Every item that came in got assessed, categorized, and divided. Mana stones in equal portions. Blood essence was measured by volume and split into prepared vials.

Scale fragments were divided by size and quality.

Guardian materials were assessed individually and matched as evenly as their varying properties allowed.

Nobody argued or tried to quietly pocket something extra.

They were tired, satisfied, and operating on the particular goodwill that came from having just watched their leader cut a King Realm serpent in half with one swing, which had a remarkably positive effect on group cooperation.

The serpent’s core stayed in Gray’s pocket.

Nobody brought it up.

When the last item had been distributed and every pouch and container had been sealed and stored, Cassandra looked across the chamber once, confirming nothing remained on the floor, and nodded.

“We’re done.”

They headed towards the return portal.

One by one, the girls stepped through until Gray stepped through last.

“Phew… we’re finally back!”

“Yeah… I was getting dizzy from the dungeon’s air.”

The girls sighed in relief as soon as the beautiful blue sky returned all at once, carrying actual wind, real wind that moved and had temperature and didn’t taste of iron and condensed mana.

In front of them stood Ellen.

Standing at the center of the platform exactly where she had been when they departed, hands folded behind her back, coat settling in the breeze.

But something was different about her expression.

She was actually smiling warmly at them. Of course, she always smiled sincerely, but this smile of hers looked very proud.

Her eyes moved across the returning class, counting, assessing, reading the state of them.

They were tired.

Several of them were carrying the particular loose-limbed quality of people who had spent their last reserves some time ago and were running on completion and momentum alone.

They were all there.

Every single one.

Her smile deepened even more.

“Welcome back, Phoenix Class,” she said.

Her voice carried across the battleground cleanly.

“You are the first class to complete the dungeon.”

The reaction was immediate.

Several girls who had been quietly wilting straightened back up.

Others grabbed the nearest person’s arm. Darya made a sound that was not quite a word. Vivienne pressed both hands over her mouth.

Reinette laughed, full of happiness, her lips curling up into a wide grin.

“First?!” Sola said.

“First,” Ellen confirmed, nodding her head.

“The other three classes are still active in their respective instances.”

“What happened to them?” Orin asked, barely maintaining her composure intractably. Words could not explain how happy they actually were.

At those words, Ellen frowned lightly.

“As it turns out, the dungeon’s core instability was not limited to your instance. All three Mirror duplicates experienced the same early breakthrough phenomenon.” She paused.

“The other classes are currently dealing with an early King Realm serpent, having not cleared the guardian layer first.”

A beat of silence.

“…Oh,” Thessaly said.

“Oh,” Wren agreed.

“That’s…” Darya started.

“Unfortunate,” Cassandra finished, in a tone that indicated she found it somewhat less than unfortunate.

“Indeed,” Ellen said pleasantly. “Would any of you like to observe their progress? The Mirror array allows viewing access from this platform.”

A ripple of consideration moved through the group.

Then, collectively and without much deliberation, approximately thirty girls arrived at the same answer.

“I need to sit down,” Vivienne was the first one to speak.

“I need food,” Darya exclaimed, rubbing her belly.

“I need to not look at another serpent for at least a week,” Reinette uttered with the face of someone who almost got a trauma of snakes.

“I need all three of those things,” Sola added.

The general consensus was clear and immediate and delivered with the warm, uncomplicated honesty of people who had earned the right to be done.

One voice didn’t join it.

“I’ll watch.”

Ellen’s eyes moved to Gray.

He stood slightly apart from the group, hands in his pockets, his expression carrying its usual calmness.

The dungeon had left nothing visible on him.

He looked, with mild aggravation to anyone paying attention, almost exactly as he had looked stepping into the portal.

Before the girls began dispersing, the group shifted in the small natural ways that happened when people were tired and ready to move.

Maelis drifted toward Gray instantly.

“Chuu~!”

She stopped beside him, and stood on her toes, and quickly pressed a kiss against his cheek, and just before she pulled back, her tongue traced a small, brief line across the same spot.

“Mhm~”

She dropped back to her heels and looked up at him with bright, mischievous eyes and a smile that held absolutely no apology whatsoever.

“Bye-bye, big brother~,” she said sweetly.

Then she turned and walked away with perfect composure.

Gray touched his cheek once and wiped the spot instantly.

Cassandra, standing two paces away, had seen the entire thing.

Her mouth opened slightly, wanting to speak of Gray, but remembering the nature of their relationship, she closed her mouth and simply moved away.

Seraph, already several steps toward the academy entrance, glanced back once.

Her eyes met Gray’s briefly.

She nodded.

Then she was gone.

As for the rest of the class, tired as they were, departure apparently did not preclude enthusiasm.

The waving started with Reinette and spread down the line with the unstoppable momentum of people who had just survived something together and felt warmly about it.

“Bye, Gray!”

“Get some rest after!”

“You were amazing in there!”

“Best leader ever, just saying!”

“Come find us when you’re done!”

“We’re getting food, come after!”

When they disappeared from their view, Ellen looked at Gray.

Then, at the spot where thirty-some girls had just been waving at him with the collective energy of people who had forgotten they were exhausted.

The corner of her mouth rose slighly.

“You’re quite popular, eh?”

Gray rolled his eyes at her words.

She turned toward the Mirror array’s viewing platform without further comment, and Gray followed.

The array activated with a quiet pulse, three separate viewing windows opening in the air above the platform’s surface like panes of glass, each one showing a different instance of the same dungeon in real time.

The resolution was clear enough to read expressions.

Ellen folded her hands behind her back and observed.

Gray looked at the windows.

The first instance…

Selene, Selina, and Lira occupied the right side of their chamber in a loose triangular formation that had clearly started as something more structured and evolved under pressure into its current shape.

The foundation of it was still visible, the original intent readable in how they moved relative to each other, but the execution had gaps that the serpent was finding with the patient, unhurried intelligence of something that had been studying them.

That said.

They were doing quite a good amount of damage.

Selene’s output was striking, wide and forceful, hitting the serpent across its body in overlapping waves that kept its attention fractured between multiple threat sources.

Lira worked the angles Selene’s strikes opened, finding the weak points with a consistency that suggested she had memorized her teacher’s briefing more thoroughly than most.

Selina anchored them from the rear, her support magic running clean and efficient, keeping both of them operational at a pace that would have been impressive under normal conditions and was genuinely remarkable inside a King Realm aura.

The coordination wasn’t seamless.

There were moments where Selene’s wide techniques forced Lira to abort a strike she had already committed to.

Moments where Selina’s positioning lagged a half-second behind the formation’s movement and left a brief gap in coverage.

But the serpent had visible damage across four separate scale segments.

’Not too shabby… they certainly need to improve a bit more. Maybe, I’ll really need to groom them to make them useful,’ Gray added inwardly.

Then, Gray turned to the next instance, which was Ronan’s.

Leon stood at the front of the class’s formation.

The serpent stood across from him.

The dynamic between them was immediately readable even through the viewing window.

The rest of Leon’s class, Ronan included, were operating in a supporting capacity that had less to do with coordinated planning and more to do with the simple, practical reality that Leon’s output was occupying the serpent’s complete attention and everything else in the room was peripheral to both of them.

Ronan, to his credit, was working the serpent’s flanks with sharp, focused effort, and the other boys in the class were performing solidly, rotating the frontline with decent discipline and covering each other’s withdrawals.

CRACK. BOOM!!!

Leon’s spatial strike hit the serpent across the primary scale segment with a force that drove the creature’s head sideways by a full meter, a sound rolling out from the impact that reached the viewing window’s audio clearly enough to make the platform vibrate faintly beneath their feet.

The serpent recovered and swung back its tail at him.

Leon met it.

THRUUM!

By meeting it, absorbing the force through his spatial magic. His feet didn’t move a single inch from the spot.

KRAAAACK!!!

The floor around him fractured outward in a ring.

’…He’s getting better with Spatial Magic. As for Ronan… mhm. He’s holding back his power for some reason…’ his eyes narrowed slighly in thought.

’Maybe… I’ll need to kill him, after all.’

He turned to the last instance.

Lyra stood near the center of it.

More than holding her own, her power was clearly the highest in the room, and the serpent had fixed its attention almost entirely on her because of it, which meant that the coordinated approach her class needed was functioning as more of a concept than a reality.

BOOM!!!

The serpent’s tail came down three meters from her position, and she was already moving before it landed, her golden lightning trailing behind her.

But the displacement put her out of her formation’s support range, and two of her classmates scrambled to reposition in response, bumping into each other’s technique ranges in the process.

Beside her, Katia was fighting with the particular focused intensity of someone who was technically performing well and contextually performing slightly worse than that.

Her strikes were strong, and her timing was quite good as well, since she was a curse user, and they were probably the worst type without the necessary resources.

But something in the coordination between her and Lyra wasn’t finding its rhythm; the two of them occasionally arriving at the same target from angles that interfered rather than compounded.

Not badly enough to be dangerous, badly enough to be frustrating.

Katia took a glancing hit from the serpent’s tail sweep and slid back six meters across the chamber floor, catching herself before she hit the wall with visible effort.

Lyra was already turning toward her.

The serpent used the opening and rushed with its mouth wide.

SKREEEEE!!!

’…..’

Gray’s eyes remained solely on Lyra’s figure.

’She’s still only using one authority out of five.’

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