missnovel Chapter 154 - 153 : End of the Entrance Exam (3)
Chapter 154 - 153 : End of the Entrance Exam (3)
[ A Few Moments Ago ]
As Victor’s body shattered into motes of light, the last fragments drifted away like dying fireflies, leaving only empty air where he had stood a heartbeat ago. The battlefield felt strangely quieter without his presence.
Arthur lowered his demonic arm slowly, flexing his fingers.
Demonic energy still crawled along the twisted limb like living smoke, coiling around the black-clawed hand. The skin along his forearm was marked with faint, crawling sigils that pulsed in time with his heartbeat.
Across from him, Damian stood frozen.
His spear hung at his side, his knuckles white around the shaft. His red aura roared wildly, reacting to the surge of emotions he could not quite put into words.
He had just watched his rival—his friend in that perfect life-or-death duel—get eliminated by a sneak attack from behind.
By a pervert.
Arthur glanced at the clawed hand, then shifted his gaze to the translucent window floating before his eyes.
---
[ Bloodline Ability: Demon Lord Astaroth — Evolved ]
⟪ Primordial Daemon Form ⟫
Type: Bloodline Manifestation
Origin: Daemon — Demon of the Beginning
Rank: Unknown
Daemon Form: Incomplete
Duration: 3 minutes
Cooldown: 6 hours
Description:
One hand can transform into the clawed hand of a Daemon, a being above ordinary demons.
This is only a fragment of its true power.
Abilities:
- Primordial Crush: The hand can shatter bones, weapons, and weak barriers with a single grip.
- Blood Corrosion: Weakens anything touched.
- Black Claw Rend: Releases a short-range claw slash.
- Demon Suppression: Slightly intimidates weaker demons.
- Desire Whisper: Hypnotizes emotionally weakened targets into revealing their deepest desires.
- Null Trace: Erases the user’s presence, making them impossible to sense.
Drawback:
Consumes blood and mana. Overuse may damage the arm or affect the mind.
[ Warning: Compatibility is still low. ]
---
Arthur clicked his tongue softly.
’So this is what we got from Demon Lord Astaroth,’ he thought. ’Not bad.’
"Is that the only bloodline ability we got from Astaroth?" Arthur asked in his mind.
[ Yes, Host. ] the system replied. [ For now, this is the only ability obtained from Demon Lord Astaroth. ]
Arthur’s eyes curved faintly.
’Well,’ he thought, ’it’s pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.’
Across from him, Damian finally moved.
His chest heaved once, his aura flaring like a storm.
"Why?" Damian said, his voice rough. "Why did you do that?"
Arthur tore his gaze away from the system window and looked at him properly.
"Hm?" Arthur tilted his head. "It looked like the best chance to eliminate him. Why? Are you impressed?"
Damian’s mouth twitched violently.
He had always hated acts of cowardice more than anything else.
Ever since he was a child, stories of heroes who fought face-to-face, who never stabbed allies in the back, had shaped the way he saw the world. Sneak attacks like this—especially against someone fighting honestly—made his blood boil.
His aura surged, whipping up dust around his feet.
"Just how low can you get, you bastard?" Damian shouted. "I thought you were just a pervert, but now I know you’re a backstabber too."
He took a step forward, his eyes burning.
"I’ll never trust someone like you in my life. Even if you pass this exam, I’ll never see you as anything but a snake."
Arthur burst into laughter.
It wasn’t mocking in the loud, cackling way—just a quiet, genuinely amused laugh that only made Damian angrier.
"You really are a bigger fool than I imagined if you think like that," Arthur said. "I’m not here to make friends."
He flexed his demonic hand, black claws gleaming.
"That bastard had his chance to eliminate me, and he blew it because of his arrogance," Arthur continued. "I didn’t ask him to spare me."
His eyes narrowed slightly.
"He just paid the price for thinking I’m some weakling he could deal with whenever it was convenient."
Damian fell silent.
As much as he wanted to shout back, the words caught in his throat.
Because on some level, Arthur wasn’t wrong.
Victor had chosen to spare Arthur earlier. Victor had chosen to focus on his honorable duel with Damian instead of finishing off a potential threat. That decision had cost him everything.
Damian gritted his teeth.
"Still," he said, his voice low, "backstabbing him like that—"
Arthur cut him off with a lazy wave of his demonic hand.
"Then what did you want me to do?" Arthur asked. "Have a nice, clean three-way fight with you two, defeat both of you fair and square, and waste who knows how long on your hero fantasies?"
He snorted.
"An absolute waste of my time. I don’t deal with people who aren’t worth my time."
Arthur’s lips curled into a sharp smile.
"And that includes you as well, redhead."
That was the last straw.
Damian moved.
One moment he was standing there, his spear at his side.
The next, he was gone.
The ground where he had stood cracked from the force of his launch.
He appeared in front of Arthur with blinding speed, his spear thrusting forward like a streak of scarlet light aimed straight at Arthur’s heart.
BAM!
The impact that rang out did not come from the spear hitting its target.
It came from something slamming into the spear from the side with tremendous force.
Damian’s eyes widened as his weapon was knocked off-line. The collision sent a shock through his arms and twisted his momentum. Instead of skewering Arthur, he was thrown sideways, his boots scraping against the ground as he was forced back, then upward, flipping through the air.
He spun once, used the momentum to stabilize himself, and landed in a low skid, dragging his spear along the ground to brake.
He dug his heels in and slid to a stop, his breath sharp.
He snapped his head up.
Standing between him and Arthur was a white-haired boy, sword drawn and resting casually at his side, as if deflecting that high-speed thrust had taken no effort at all.
Aiden.
He glanced at Damian, his eyes calm but burning with his own kind of battle hunger.
"Wait your turn, redhead," Aiden said. "I’ll be the one to eliminate that bastard."
Damian’s mouth twitched so hard it almost hurt.
"Move, you idiot!" Damian shouted. "That bastard is running away!"
"What do you—"
Aiden turned his head toward where Arthur had been standing.
There was only empty air.
Aiden blinked.
Arthur was already halfway across the field, sprinting straight toward the forest where Elizabeth had gone earlier. His demonic arm had receded to little more than a faintly darkened limb, but his legs were moving with impressive speed, pushing off the broken ground in long, efficient strides.
He didn’t forget to add insult to injury.
Without looking back, he raised a hand over his shoulder and extended his middle finger toward them, the gesture casual and infuriating.
A vein popped on both Damian’s and Aiden’s foreheads.
"Stop running and fight me like a man!" Damian roared.
"You owe me a duel, bastard!" Aiden shouted.
Arthur didn’t slow down.
He simply kept running, weaving through the shattered trees and broken streets of the shrinking forest-city.
Behind him, two auras flared in unison—red and white.
Damian and Aiden exchanged one brief, furious glance before breaking into a run together, both chasing after the same infuriating target.
---
[ Present ]
Arthur stood in the middle of the clearing with one arm wrapped around Diana, the other holding a small black blade pressed against the side of her neck.
The tip rested just above her pulse.
Everyone stared at him.
Jasmine. Evangline. Julia. Isabella. Liana. Aiden. Damian.
A ring of candidates, all frozen in place, watching the same scene—Arthur using another candidate as a shield.
"You bastard, let her go," Damian said, his voice shaking with rage.
Arthur did not answer right away.
His eyes were fixed on the translucent window floating before him.
[ Infinity has been created ]
Another window opened beneath it, lines of text unfolding.
---
[ Bloodline Ability: Distance Rejection has been successfully evolved ]
[ Infinity ]
Type: Spatial Defense
Range: 30 cm around the user’s body
Effect:
Interferes with the distance between the user and anything approaching them.
The closer an object, attack, or energy gets, the slower it becomes, as if the remaining space is being divided endlessly.
It does not erase force.
It only delays arrival.
Limitations:
- Manual Activation: Must be consciously turned on and off. Surprise attacks can land before activation.
- No Threat Sorting: Cannot automatically distinguish safe objects from dangerous ones, causing it to block allies, tools, or harmless contact.
- Brain Fatigue: Maintaining the distance calculation causes headaches, blurred vision, slower reactions, and mental exhaustion.
- Energy Drain: Continuous use rapidly consumes mana, especially against fast, heavy, or repeated attacks.
- Bypass: Spatial, soul, curse, or conceptual attacks can bypass it.
---
Arthur read every line.
His mind went blank for a second.
Not from confusion—but from the shock of possibility. The words sat before him like something ripped out of a broken game’s final patch notes.
’Infinity...’ Arthur thought. ’This is... insane.’
Then, suddenly, he burst into laughter.
It started as a low chuckle, then grew into a loud, unrestrained laugh that echoed through the scorched clearing. His shoulders shook, and the blade at Diana’s neck moved with the motion.
Everyone gawked at him as if he had finally gone insane.
"Hey, you crazy asshole," Diana muttered through clenched teeth, her body stiff. "Don’t move around so much when you’ve got a blade at my neck."
Arthur’s laughter gradually slowed.
He took a long breath, his eyes gleaming.
"You guys wanted a fight, right?" he said, raising his voice so everyone could hear. "I’ll give you one... one you’ll never forget."
Dark aura exploded from his body.
It wasn’t the same as Damian’s radiant red or Victor’s demonic shadows. Arthur’s aura felt like condensed pressure, a heavy distortion that shoved at everything around it.
The shockwave pushed everyone a step back, rustling trees and kicking up dust.
Inside, Arthur felt something click into place.
’Now I understand why I love stealing other people’s abilities,’ he thought. ’It’s moments like this that make me feel alive.’
He turned his attention inward again.
’System,’ Arthur said in his mind. ’Be a dear and activate Omnicognition.’
He had already read Infinity’s drawbacks—the strain on the brain, the mental exhaustion, the risk of damage. It would fry a normal mind if used recklessly.
That was why he had something to counter that drawback.
[ Omnicognition has been activated. ]
A cold clarity washed through his head.
Arthur felt it immediately—his thoughts sharpening, branching, running in parallel. Information from his senses slotted into place with frightening speed. Angles, distances, mana flows, trajectories—his brain processed all of it at once, effortlessly.
It was like someone had turned his mind into a supercomputer.
Voices around him, the rustle of leaves, the faint crackle of residual mana in the air—even the rhythm of everyone’s breathing—entered his awareness and arranged themselves automatically.
Arthur smiled.
"Perfect," he whispered.
The blade in his hand moved.
SCHLK.
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Diana’s eyes widened.
Then her head separated from her body.
It fell silently, bouncing once as it hit the ground before rolling to a stop. A moment later, both head and body broke apart into countless glowing fragments, dissolving into the air like scattered stars.
Diana Stromborn was eliminated from the exam.
Everyone’s blood ran cold.
Julia’s eyes widened. Liana’s mouth dropped open. Jasmine’s hands clenched into fists. Evangline’s expression froze mid-smirk. Aiden’s fingers tightened around his sword.
Damian did not move.
His gaze was locked on the spot where his sister had stood a heartbeat ago.
Blood had splashed across Arthur’s face when he swung the blade. A crimson streak ran down his cheek, cutting through the faint smile on his lips.
He turned his head toward Damian slowly.
"Now come," Arthur said softly. "I’ll fulfill your wish."
For a moment, Damian did not answer.
Then rage swallowed everything.
His aura exploded outward in a pillar of red, his eyes turning almost feral. All the anger from Victor’s death, all the frustration, all the guilt of not stopping Arthur sooner—everything culminated in a single burning point.
"You..." Damian breathed. "I’ll kill you."
He didn’t charge.
He threw.
Damian’s arm snapped back, then forward, with all his strength and killing intent behind it. The spear left his hand like a lightning bolt, tearing through the air with a sonic crack, aimed straight at Arthur’s chest.
Everyone tensed, fully expecting Arthur to be skewered before he could react.
Arthur did not move.
He simply thought, and Infinity activated like an invisible wall surrounding him.
The world shifted.
To everyone else, the spear raced forward at impossible speed.
But just as it entered the invisible space around Arthur’s body—no more than an arm’s length away—it slowed.
The deadly, whistling projectile suddenly crawled through the air as if it had slammed into an invisible wall. The distance between its tip and Arthur’s chest warped, stretching into an endless fraction.
From Arthur’s perspective, he watched the spear inch closer in slow motion.
It crossed half of that remaining space.
Then half of that.
Then half of that again.
Distance divided.
Over and over.
It never quite reached him.
Finally, the momentum bled away completely. The spear hovered uselessly in front of him for a fraction of a second before dropping and clattering to the ground at his feet.
Silence crashed down upon the clearing.
Jasmine’s eyes widened.
Evangline’s pupils shrank.
Even Isabella, who had been grinning as though she enjoyed every bit of chaos, felt a shiver run down her spine.
Damian stared.
His thrown spear lay on the dirt between them, harmless.
Arthur looked at the fallen weapon, then raised his gaze to meet Damian’s.
"Is that it?" he asked calmly.