It had been one and a half months since Alex last spoke with Tessa — an absence he was both grateful for and troubled by.
He had expected his behavior to push her away, but feeling the empty space she left behind stung far more than he liked to admit. Still, there was nothing he could do now. He had chosen this path, and he had to walk it to the end.
Three months remained before the end-of-year test. The academy had already revealed the format: no monsters this time. Instead, it would be a direct clash between students, with the theoretical exam still in place.
The combat portion would take place behind closed doors—private arenas where only fellow students could watch each match. Alex could see the intention clearly. Private fights meant nobles could apply pressure, manipulate results, or hide certain abuses more easily. Yet he didn't mind. Nobles having advantages was just the natural state of this world.
What mattered to him was that this confirmed one thing: He couldn't kill the noble before the test. If he did, he'd lose any chance of blending back into academy life long enough to collect his certification. So the assassination had to come after—but not too long after.
When Alex opened the door to his room, chaos greeted him. Sheets of paper, half-dried plants, alchemical containers, and circles drawn on scraps of parchment were scattered everywhere.
It wasn't pretty, but it was efficient. After finishing the Spiked Water Arrow, he had refused to allow even a single hour of idleness between classes, so he threw himself into enhancing his other beginner spells—Wind Slicer and Water Shield.
He had successfully pushed both into the Novice tier. Wind Slicer's mana cost jumped to seventy per cast, and Water Shield now drained fifteen mana per second. But the added elemental substance inside the circles and the careful rebalancing of nodes made them noticeably stronger.
He lost about twenty percent mastery in the process—a painful setback, but one he could recover with enough training.
The real consequence was that his training schedule bloated even further.
He had rearranged his entire day to accommodate the new workload: stealing the longest gap between classes for mana gathering, then rushing straight to the gym afterward to train the spells.
After packing his bag, he headed to the gym. With four skills now demanding mastery, he would be there until nearly dinnertime. He drank stamina potions whenever exhaustion set in, aware of the addiction risk—and aware he was already too deep in it to turn back. Withdrawal symptoms were milder than Mana Leakage Syndrome, so in his mind, this was still the better option.
Hours later, drenched in sweat and drained almost to zero mana, Alex finally left. On his way back through the academy corridors, he caught whispers drifting in the air.
"He's been training like this for months. How is he still alive?" "I'd have collapsed weeks ago."
His self-destructive dedication had become a spectacle—another strange tale students passed around.
On the other hand, Tessa was still keeping an eye on him, though she no longer approached him often. Sometimes she gathered the courage to try and talk him out of the madness he had embraced, but Alex gently brushed her aside whenever he could. Other times, when he was particularly on edge, he responded less kindly than he meant to. It wasn't fair to her. He knew that. But fairness had long stopped being a luxury he could afford.
Once home, he returned to practice Senturion Control until his body could barely stand.
And just recently, he had also begun selling potions during his brief morning breaks, which brought in far more gold than he expected.
'I have to say, selling to nobles is ridiculously profitable,' Alex thought, recalling today's earnings—two hundred gold coins for a single hour of work.
The nobles were decent negotiators, but utterly clueless about potion prices. Likely a side effect of having servants buy everything for them. So Alex overpriced his goods heavily, then let them "haggle" him down to a price that was still absurdly inflated. They walked away believing they had secured a bargain and bought even more.
Social engineering, he realized, was far easier than expected.
When he finally became able to stand properly, he ate quickly and turned immediately to alchemy. His poison stockpile had grown into something impressive: paralytics, sedatives, sleeping agents, slow-kill venoms, and fast-acting toxins.
If he needed it, he likely had it. Mana potions were also in constant rotation—he brewed them for himself daily and sold the rest. His supply dwindled fast thanks to his reliance on them, so he had to replenish constantly.
The only thing he lacked was an artifact. Even the cheapest were priced in the thousands of gold, an amount that made even Alex—with his growing fortune—seem poor. But he still had a few months left before he would need to head to Elarion. If he saved aggressively, he might secure a defensive artifact before then.
Water Scape, while powerful, came with sharp limitations. In his region, rain was rare, and terrain almost never favored him. He needed additional protection—something he could rely on even without water nearby.
Late into the night, Alex forced himself into bed. He didn't sleep long—couldn't afford to—but even the few hours he snatched were torment. As always, the dream came: the poisoned dagger stabbing into his chest, again and again, lodging itself deeper and deeper. Some nights, he wished to still be stuck on the second dream. But every night the same one returned, merciless and vivid.
'Only three months left,' Alex reminded himself as he lay on his back, breath slowly easing. 'Three months, and if I have to flee afterward… I'll ask Tessa to come with me.'
It was a fragile wish, bittersweet and almost painful to imagine. But in the brief, gentle moments where his mind drifted away from training, from revenge, from obsession… he could see a life with her. Not one stained by blood and guilt. Not one haunted by promises to the dead.
A simple life. A quiet life.
And for just a heartbeat, before sleep finally claimed him, that vision was warm enough to make the world feel less cruel.