The silence in the plaza was thicker than blood.
Hundreds of cadets stood shoulder to shoulder under the gray morning sky, packed tight into formation, but no one dared to speak. The runes carved into the courtyard beneath their feet pulsed gently with mana, like a heartbeat waiting to quicken.
I stood alone near the rear edge, scanning the crowd.
Most of them looked nervous. Some excited. Others already sizing each other up like wolves in a cage.
I didn't care.
Up on the stage, professors were already in place—men and women who had survived the world outside and returned to teach others how to fight it. Their presence was heavy, controlled, like weapons sealed in flesh.
Then the air shifted.
An electric gong echoed through the grounds, and the main gate at the tower creaked open with a metallic groan that sounded like a blade being drawn from bone.
Four new figures stepped out, each one radiating command.
They weren't professors. That much was clear.
They were older. Sharper. Their gazes didn't observe—they calculated. Tactical uniforms marked with command stripes and enchanted insignias identified them as academy field commanders—leaders of elite response squads. People who issued orders, not lectures.
And between them, a shadow taller than the rest moved forward.
He was massive.
Broad shoulders wrapped in a reinforced black command coat, its right sleeve neatly folded and pinned—because the arm wasn't there. Where his limb should've been, there was only a thick steel strap crossed over his torso, lined with arcane glyphs. The stump was old, scarred, and hard as stone.
His face was brutal. Chiseled jaw, square nose, a long scar that crossed from brow to cheek like a war brand. His short gray hair was swept back, and his eyes—dead pale—carried the weight of every life he'd taken.
When he spoke, it wasn't loud. It didn't have to be.
His voice was gravel wrapped in iron.
"Welcome to Vanguard Academy."
"You are not here to be safe. You are here to become dangerous."
A few cadets flinched. Most stood straighter.
"This academy is not a school. It is a forge. We break what is weak. We sharpen what can be saved. The rest is discarded."
He paced slowly in front of the crowd. Every bootstep echoed like a hammer strike.
"Out there—some of you were elites. Talented. Respected. Doesn't matter here."
"In here, only one thing matters."
He stopped.
"Results."
He held up his left hand. A scarred, calloused fist with more battle in it than some armies.
"Some of you will bleed. Some of you will break. If you're lucky, you'll survive. If you're better than that—you'll become what this world actually needs."
"Every week, you will enter live dungeons. You will kill real monsters. No simulations. No do-overs. You earn experience or you die trying."
"We do not produce graduates. We produce weapons."
His dead eyes swept across the courtyard and locked onto mine—just for a second. Then kept going.
"You want to play hero? Wrong place.
You want to be a survivor? Maybe.
But if you want to become a predator—"
He smiled. Just a little. Cold. Calculated.
"—then we might just make something out of you."
He stepped back, then raised his voice one last time.
"I am Commander Draeven. You answer to me. Disobey the instructors, you answer to me. Fail a mission, you answer to me."
"Fail yourselves—"
His expression darkened.
"—and you won't get the chance to try again."
Then he turned sharply, and without another word, disappeared into the tower. The four commanders followed him, silent as shadows.
Just like that—it began.
And I couldn't help but smile.
This was it. This was why I came.
No politics. No speeches about unity or balance or redemption.
Just truth. Pure, unfiltered survival.
He wasn't wrong.
This wasn't a school.
This was a battlefield waiting to happen.
And I was going to become its apex predator.
Not a graduate. Not a hero.
Just one thing.
A killer.
Kill them all.