Madam Veridia did not lead Arthur toward the sterile black room of the judicial hearing. Instead she guided him down a heavily carpeted, gilded hallway that felt less like a school and more like the private wing of a fortified bank. Every door was sealed, every camera hidden.
The air here sat heavy on the tongue — not the stale grit of the sparring hall but the suffocating pressure of concentrated authority. The molding glinted with careful gold; the carpet drank sound. Veridia moved like a shadow with purpose, her hand gliding over a scanner that hummed and sighed under her palm.
She stopped before a massive door of dark wood, the academy's sigil—lion devouring sword—carved into it like a threat. She didn't knock. She pressed her palm, and the lock accepted her touch. The door hissed open.
"Good luck, Young Master," she said, voice flat as stone. "You will need it."
Arthur stepped in and the room swallowed light. It was enormous, furnished in the arrogant, expensive way of people who can afford to silence questions. At the center, behind a desk of black obsidian, sat a man who was less human and more decree.
This was Demos Hunt. He did not sit as a host; he sat as verdict incarnate — pale-eyed, enormous, and patient as a glacier. When his gaze landed on Arthur, the pressure in the room thickened until breathing felt like wading through smoke.
Only Arthur's private shimmered System bar blinked with the room's reaction — a cold, intelligent pulse of words and perception.
> [QUEST:SURVIVE IN HEADMASTER OFFICE]
Demos' smile was slow, like ice spreading.
"You know," he said, voice smooth as lacquer, "all this mess could have died. After all, you're a Hunt." He set a tablet on the obsidian with a dull thud. "You have the shares, the accounts, the money. But you are weak."
A short, contemptuous laugh left him. "Sign the papers. Let us handle the courtroom. I'm tired of sending Benny and Danny as messengers."
He rose the way a tide rises — inevitable and heavy. "So I stepped down myself to finish the job."
He pushed a sheaf of papers toward Arthur. They fluttered, landing like a judicial snowfall. Arthur's eyes slid past the legalese to the bottom line, the obscene certainty of numbers:
100 TONS OF GOLD.
Entirety of Kyle Hunt's inheritance, to be transferred to a Hunt family account.
Something hot and ancient woke in Arthur. He had been a king in another life; the memory wasn't whole but the muscle of authority remembered. He felt his lips split into a grin that was almost farce.
Demos' patience fractured into a blade. "You find this amusing?" he asked.
The temperature dropped. Demos' palms lifted, and the air bent to obey. A white-blue vortex burst from his hands — not a roar but a scalpel. Crystal formed in the air and then constricted around Arthur, a sheath of pressurized shards that did not simply freeze — they compressed, crushing the ribs like a vise. Pain carved new language through his breath.
Arthur's vision flashed System prompts, but the voice this time was not flat words. It spoke like something older than courts, something with memory — intelligence that considered not only numbers but honor, consequence, pattern.
> [ATTENTION: HOST UNDER EXTERNAL COMPULSION]
[ACTION: PRESERVE HOST LIFE]
[CHOOSE:]
[1. AUTO-REGENERATION — COST 1000 MANA. ]
[2. TEMPORARY STAT CONVERSION — CONVERT MANA INTO ATTRIBUTES. HOST MOVES.]
Arthur could taste iron and old regrets. He did not know the true pain of Mana yet, only that it could buy him seconds. He had been forced to bend to survival choices plenty of times — kings and soldiers learn to spend breath like currency. The System's tone was not tech; it was counsel, a library speaking through a modern mouth.
He need to think fast,Arthur don't have time to react to any emotion
I hate just regenerating while they always praise themselves as doing the best therapy as some surgical doctors
He picked option two in the blink of a thought.
> [OPTION 2 SELECTED]
[ALLOCATE: −100 MANA → +10 AGILITY TEMPORARY]
[ALLOCATE: −50 MANA → +5 ENDURANCE TEMPORARY]
A cold flame crawled through his limbs — not warmth, but a crystalline hardening that re-tuned muscles to snap and twist. The shards around him cracked, falling away as his new agility let him torse and wrench free. He crashed onto the obsidian carpet, lungs burning, smelling his own blood.
> [REMAINING MANA: 7850]
Demos watched, disappointment carved on his face. "Resourceful," he said, as if evaluating a toy that had surprised him.
He moved then — not with the blare of a brawler but with the certainty of a man comfortable with ruin. He punched. The blow hit Arthur's jaw like a falling tree. Stars swam. A new prompt blinked.
> [IMPACT WARNING: HOST SACRIFICING BODY FOR DEFENSE]
[SUGGESTED: CONVERT −500 MANA → +50 DEXTERITY (TEMP)]
[ESCAPE: RUN]
The System demanded a movement; its voice was an oracle. Arthur let the thought slide through his mind like a blade. He'd spent Mana as a promise before; he would do so again. Survival demanded choices that smelled like blood and debt.
He threw himself up, Dexterity blooming like borrowed wings. He surged for the door, a phantom among gilt reflections. For a half-second he tasted the sweet false air of escape.
Then Demos' hand closed on his leg — a clamp of raw, monstrous strength — and the world swung. Metal struck bone as Arthur was jerked back. He slammed against the wall. Demos produced four obsidian-black spikes — short, cruel, and humming with cold Mana.
This was not a fight. This was methodical anatomy. The first spike punched through the right palm; he felt the sear, the mind-shock. The second drove into the left. Searing agony tore through wrists and hands. The third hammered into his right ankle, twisting it into an unnatural angle. The fourth rammed into his gut, folding him and exploding pain into the mouth.
He hung there, spread-eagled on the wall, the spikes a brutal crucifix. Blood seeped to the expensive carpet and then spread like a dark, accusing tide.
The System's voice — patient, older than empires — announced the cost.
> [CRITICAL SYSTEM ALERT: REGENERATION PROTOCOL ONLINE]
[MANA COST: −1000]
[REMAINING MANA: 6350]
[NOTICE: NEW HOST IS NOT ORIGINAL DRAGON-SOUL OWNER. NATURAL MANA REGENERATION INEFFECTIVE.]
The words landed like a slap. The implication burned hotter than puncture wounds: this body would not refill naturally. Mana was not a blade to be swung without counting the days it could buy.
Demos stepped forward, calm as a judge, and the room smelled of cold ash.
"I hate politeness," he said, adjusting his suit like a man putting a coin in a slot.
He leaned close, breath hot with decades of cultivated cruelty. "You know your mother is alive."
It hit Arthur like a thunderclap. He felt memory like a ghost, a fragment he did not own but that lodged in him as absolute truth. The family had leverage. The family always held what mattered behind bars of gold.
Demos' voice was a slow saw. "She's why you won't sign the papers, isn't she? She lives because we say she lives. We keep her there as leverage." He smiled, and it was the most terrible thing in the room. "My patience grows thin, Kyle."
Arthur hung between blood and air, the System's ancient dialect whispering tactical options. He was half-mad with pain, every nerve singing, but thought — cool and surgical — still threaded through the scream.
A new prompt unfurled, softer, like a priest offering a choice of damnation.
Demos' gaze fixed on him like a verdict. "If you do not sign these papers and surrender your shares to the Hunt account," he said, each syllable a measured hammer, "I will kill her."