Chapter 203: Conclusion

Talks spread quickly among the higher-ups. The administrators waited anxiously for the return of the Ihes. Preparations had already been made—defenses strengthened, strategies carefully planned.

But something felt… off.

The Ihes had only been spotted a few times near the location where the portal led—the same place where Jelo, Atlas, and the others had fought. Aside from that, there had been no movement. No attacks. Nothing.

It didn’t make sense.

Could it be that the Ihes knew they weren’t strong enough to defeat humankind again?

Their decision to come to Earth in the first place was already confusing—especially after sending a peace treaty that was supposed to prevent them from ever returning. Now, their silence only deepened the mystery. Every theory raised more questions than it answered. Every answer felt incomplete. And yet decisions still had to be made—strategies still had to be formed—on the basis of nothing at all.

The general kept thinking, unable to rest. What was their next move? What should humanity do next?

He reviewed the reports again. Same conclusion each time. The Ihes had appeared near the portal site—three confirmed sightings, two unconfirmed—and then vanished completely. No pattern. No escalation. Just presence, and then absence, as though they had come only to be seen, and then retreated deliberately. Like they were measuring something. Testing a reaction without committing to one of their own.

That bothered him more than an attack would have.

An attack could be understood. Repelled. Answered. But silence? Silence was harder to fight. Silence left room for imagination, and imagination always filled the gaps with the worst possibilities. It ate at people slowly, in ways that were harder to measure than casualties.

He wasn’t the only one losing sleep.

Across the upper floors of the command structure, the same conversation was happening in different rooms with different people—all reaching the same dead end. The Ihes were out there. They knew where the portal led. They’d already engaged academy students directly. Had targeted them specifically. That suggested intelligence. Coordination. Intent. None of it pointed to an enemy that had simply lost its nerve and retreated for good.

And then nothing.

For months, preparations for war had continued. Security had tightened. Forces had trained relentlessly. And yet… nothing.

Even after targeting some of the academy students, the Ihes had completely disappeared.

Life couldn’t remain on hold forever.

The strain was showing everywhere. Families had been relocated from high-risk zones. Civilian movement near certain districts remained restricted. Resources poured into readiness drills, perimeter monitoring, contingency frameworks—all of it sustained against an enemy that simply refused to move.

There was a cost to that kind of waiting.

Not just in logistics. Not just in resources. In people.

Morale eroded quietly. Nobody announced it. But it was there—in the way faces tightened during briefings. In the way questions were asked with less certainty than before. In the silences that stretched a beat too long before someone changed the subject. How long could this go on? How long before the tension itself became the real damage? Before the waiting did what an attack hadn’t?

The answer nobody wanted to say out loud: they didn’t know.

Eventually, a meeting was called—bringing together academic staff and government authorities. After long discussions, a decision was reached:

Normal academic life would resume.

Training would continue. Classes would restart. At the same time, preparations for war would remain in place.

They were ready now.

Or at least… as ready as they could be.

The phrasing in the official statement was careful. Measured. It acknowledged the ongoing threat without feeding the fear that had settled into daily life like weather nobody could predict. It said: we have not forgotten. It said: we are not standing down. But between every line, it said something else too—that the world could not be suspended indefinitely. That life had to move, even with the weight of uncertainty pressing down on it. Stopping everything accomplished nothing. The Ihes had already taken enough from them. They wouldn’t let them take the rhythm of ordinary life as well.

Still, no one truly knew how powerful the Ihes had become. But one thing was certain—if they wanted war again, it would have already begun.

Which meant only one thing:

They were waiting.

For what, no one could say. A signal. A threshold. Some moment they were watching for that humanity hadn’t identified yet. That uncertainty sat at the center of every strategy meeting like something no one wanted to name directly. Everyone talked around it. Nobody resolved it. The best anyone could do was prepare, hold the line, and not let the quiet become complacency.

Now, the areas where the Ihes had been spotted were under heavy security. Any sudden appearance wouldn’t go unnoticed again. Monitoring systems had been upgraded. Response teams repositioned closer to the known sites. Eyes everywhere. If the Ihes tried to strike, it wouldn’t be as easy as before. The window they’d once had—the surprise, the confusion, the unpreparedness—was gone.

That much, at least, was certain.

For now, giving it time seemed like the best option.

It wasn’t a satisfying answer. But it was an honest one.

⸻

The news spread across the academy.

It moved the way things always did through that place—faster than official channels, slower than rumor, landing somewhere in between where nobody was entirely sure what was true until someone said it out loud and it finally stuck.

Classes. Next week. Back to normal—or whatever normal looked like now.

For some, that came as a relief. For others, it didn’t feel quite right—like putting on old clothes that no longer fit the same way. Too much had changed. The academy they were returning to was the same building, the same halls, the same rooms. But they weren’t the same people walking back into them anymore. That was the part nobody had a word for yet.

Months had passed under the guidance of their masters, and the students had grown stronger. The training had been relentless. Different from classroom structure. More direct. More personal. Progress showed in the way they moved, the way they thought mid-fight, the way they adjusted when something didn’t land the way they expected. They weren’t the same people who had started. That much was obvious to anyone paying attention.

But that Chapter was shifting now.

Still, classes were set to resume the following week.

Jelo, Atlas, and Mira stood in confusion as Tongen explained the situation.

A pause followed. The kind that needed a moment to settle before anyone knew how to respond to it.

“Wait… does this mean you’re no longer training us?” Jelo asked.

Tongen shook his head. “That’s not what it means. Not exactly.”

They listened closely.

“It just means fewer sessions with me. I’ll still train you—on weekends and during special sessions. You’re still my students, and you still need to improve.”

He said it plainly. Not as reassurance. As fact. The training wasn’t ending. The standard wasn’t dropping. The structure was changing, and they would change with it. Whether they liked it or not was beside the point.

The same applied to the others.

It wasn’t what anyone expected… but they understood.

It’s not like they had a choice.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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