Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest-Chapter 999 - 234.1 - After

The air crackled with tension, thin streams of mana flickering through the crags like lightning in slow motion. Reina stood atop a jagged outcrop overlooking the impact zone—what had once been a stable, Class-5 gate now dissolved into a warped, glassy crater seething with reversed polarity. The terrain no longer followed any known mana distribution. Snow melted upward. Shadows stretched in the wrong direction. Runes etched themselves into stone without being cast.

Reina's coat flared around her as the wind pulsed unnaturally—like breath exhaled by a sleeping god suddenly stirring.

Then it happened.

The sky fractured.

Not with sound—but with structure.

Lines formed where no lines should exist. Geometric impossibilities folded inward on themselves, equations rewriting in real-time. Across the sky, glyphs spiraled in a cascade too vast and too intricate to decipher—unless you had the eyes to see them.

And Reina did.

Her pupils dilated violently as her trait triggered.

The transformation was immediate.

Her irises fractured into mirrored spirals, layered with sigils, flowing characters, and recursive patterns that scrolled faster than light. Each second stretched into eternity as her vision was hijacked—force-fed an impossible stream of arcane information.

Time.

Coordinates.

Dimensional overlap.

Core variance values from over a dozen closed loops in known dungeons.

She staggered, teeth clenched, hand flying to her temple as the pressure lanced through her skull like molten wire.

"Aaaarghk—!"

The scream was torn from her lungs as her knees hit the stone, her other hand clawing the ground. Mana bled from her fingertips in wild, uncontrolled pulses.

And then—silence.

The information stream cut.

Her eyes dulled slightly, the spirals slowing their rotation before fading back into layered complexity. Her breathing came in short, shuddering waves. A trickle of blood dripped from her nose.

But she was calm now.

Panting.

Sweating.

But calm.

Her voice was quiet, hoarse, but clear.

"…So," she whispered, staring at the warped sky as the clouds rearranged themselves into impossible formations.

A mana stream flowed backward across the horizon.

"…It finally happened."

She wiped the blood from her lip, still kneeling in the frost-burned grass.

Reina's eyes rose again to the sky—though "sky" was no longer the right word for it.

Above her, the atmosphere convulsed with patterns too vast for the eye to track. It wasn't just clouds that moved—it was the heavens themselves, folding, contracting, recalibrating. Great spirals of glyphs, invisible to the untrained, began to stabilize into alignments—coordinates not of place, but of possibility. The kind she'd only seen on pre-collapse dimensional diagrams or the Watchers' oldest core theories.

Then—she saw it.

The mana pulse. Thin, surgical, unlike any explosive fluctuation she'd observed in the past.

It rose from far beneath the earth like a needle threading through layers of space-time, slipping between boundaries without friction. Reina's eyes tracked its path instinctively—not just the motion, but the intent behind it. A system's hand adjusting its axis. A correction.

And she felt the echo.

Like a whisper brushing across the back of her mind:

The final core has been activated.

Her gaze dropped toward the crater below, where the warping glasslike terrain rippled gently with residual mana. And though the distortion was quiet now, her perception—still resonating with the afterimage of that catastrophic alignment—allowed her to see what others would miss.

The fundamental logic of the world had changed.

Gate classifications, stability thresholds, the logic of entry—all rewritten.

She saw flashes of the sequence from her own perspective—Chapter 233.2's anomaly, now fully registered. The pulsing orb of rewritten mana. The gates flickering out of sync with their own timelines. The spiral beneath the snow, melted not by heat but by intentional design. Not a dungeon.

A device.

"So that's what they meant by reactivation…" she thought grimly, her jaw tightening.

She exhaled slowly, her breath fogging in the reverse-flowing wind.

A pivotal moment.

She knew this would come eventually—the Watchers of Arcane had been preparing for it for decades. Not publicly. Not even in meetings. But in the shadows, beneath layers of deniable logistics and impossible funding. Projects. Cadet hunts. Quiet adoptions. Forced awakenings.

And why?

Because he had reminded them.

The man who once walked among the highest council rooms and left behind more unanswered questions than orders. The one who had vanished with a knowing smile and a cryptic warning of a future that couldn't be prevented—only prepared for.

"You'll need them," he had said. "When the system tries to correct itself."

Reina let the words echo in her head as she stood slowly, wiping the blood from her lip with the back of her gloved hand. Her gaze remained distant, locked onto that sky—a sky now rewritten, re-scripted.

Then, softly, she murmured.

"…I guess your little vacation is over."

Her voice barely rose above the wind, but the sentiment settled like frost across her chest.

That serious young man. The one who never smiled unless it was for precision. The one who internalized everything—questions, doubts, brilliance. The one she had trained personally, not because protocol demanded it, but because her instincts had.

Astron.

'Your talents are going to be needed now.'

****

The midday sun hung low in the sky, casting long rays over the smooth stone roadways that stretched from Arcadia's outer gate to the Academy's western reception hall. Spring wind stirred faintly across the fielded pathways, catching banners that bore the sigils of arriving guilds—tigers, owls, flames, swords—all symbols of strength and ambition.

Among the arriving scouts, a new name walked with measured steps.

Leonard Gracewind.

His guild's insignia—a golden sun partially veiled by rays crossing a horizon—was stitched crisply onto the shoulder of his cloak. The badge of the Solstice Dawn, a reputable recruitment and heritage-tracing guild operating across the eastern Federation.

A perfectly legitimate front.

Solstice Dawn was known for its spiritual heritage work, specializing in the identification of latent bloodlines, forgotten rites, and young hunters marked by extraordinary potential. Their agents were discreet, tactful, and widely regarded as arbiters of prophetic awakenings and lineage convergence.

Leonard's fabricated persona had been built brick by brick into that image—backed by templar clearance, temple-sanctioned credentials, and appearances in several outposts across the Human Domain.

Everything was ready.

He walked past the gate checkpoint with ease.

The guards, already briefed on the expected arrivals, simply nodded.

"Solstice Dawn, correct? Talent recruitment. Papers check out."

Leonard offered a polite, disarming smile. "That's right. I'm hoping your academy lives up to its reputation."

The guard gave a stiff grin, waving him through. "You and the rest. Good luck finding anyone not already claimed."

Leonard's smile didn't falter. But in his chest, the artifact pulsed—quietly. Faintly. A heartbeat muffled under layers of stone and noise.

Still here.

He stepped into the campus proper.

And for a moment, he paused—not to gawk, not to admire—but to orient. Tall towers rose like monuments to knowledge and pride. Training fields sprawled beyond the courtyards, their wards humming with subtle restraint. Dozens of students moved across the grounds—some in uniform, others mid-spar, some just laughing beneath shaded awnings.

It was all so open.

So peaceful.

And yet, he knew better.

Behind the casual chatter and rehearsed routines, something else stirred. Fate. Omen. Prophecy.

"You're here somewhere." His thoughts sharpened. "And this time, I won't need walls or secondhand files. I'll watch you myself."

He resumed walking, blending into the slow stream of other arriving scouts—some older, some sharp-eyed, all visibly eager to weigh the Academy's rising stars.

A courier approached him near the observation tower's outer corridor.

"Name?"

"Leonard Gracewind."

Scroll unrolled. Name found. Papers rechecked.

"Solstice Dawn," the courier confirmed. "You're cleared for all general mentorship observance, Zone B. Interviews and recommendations to be forwarded to Administrative Oversight. Room key and campus permissions are encoded here." They handed him a slim badge, mana-sealed and bound to his temporary identity. "Try not to interfere."

Leonard accepted it with a respectful nod.

The courier left. And with that, Leonard headed forward.