The cavern was quiet, but not in the way of peace. It was the silence left behind after chaos, the still air of a battlefield where even the monsters knew not to tread. The rescue team moved cautiously, boots crunching over broken stone, a simple spell of fire to eluminate their surroundings.
"Careful," said one of the senior proctors, a grizzled man named Serath. His voice was low, but the warning was sharp enough to keep the group alert. "The scrying detected a spike here. Mana density is unnatural."
They had been searching for survivors all morning. The exam had gone on long enough that the weaker candidates should have been eliminated, escaped or, in darker cases, dead.
Everyone in the kingdom knew that life of a mage, especially the ones deployed in dungeons or wars was often short. Even though the anomaly of A rank monsters appearing happened, it wasn't unprecedented. Serath and his team had been dispatched for one reason: to confirm who had survived, and to collect the remains of those who had not.
No one expected what they found. The cavern looked like a slaughterhouse, with limbs and heads of students scattered around.
As they took notes and evidences for administrative purposes later on, Serath sensed the source of the mana spike that the scrying tablet picked up moments a go.
It came from a narrow passage in an unsuspecting part of the cave.
With a whistle, he gathered the antention of the group and pointed at the passage. He signed and nodded.
With spells ready to burst out of their hand, they traversed the passage. Surprisingly, all they found was an opened chamber door.
The chamber ahead was scorched. The walls themselves were charred black, great cracks running across the stone as though lightning had struck from within. The ground was littered with debris, shattered boulders, torn fragments of stone, and the rough husks of monsters.
One of the younger proctors knelt by a carcass. It had once been an ant, its carapace thick as steel, but its body was twisted and burned, half of it melted as though it had been doused in molten fire. His eyes widened. "An A-rank…?"
Serath's frown deepened. He crouched by the corpse, running a hand along the ruined shell. "Yes. An A-rank soldier ant. What in the abyss was it doing here?"
"It shouldn't have been possible," another muttered. "No student could fight this. Even the top students would have been torn apart."
They all looked around at the destruction. The walls were clawed. The ground was cracked into trenches, as if two titans had fought here. And yet, there was only one corpse. The ant's. No other monsters, no partner, no team. Just one overwhelming clash.
"This wasn't a battle," Serath said finally. "This was a duel."
The silence that followed carried its own weight. They all knew what that implied: one person had stood here, alone, and fought something no students should have survived.
They moved deeper into the chamber. The traces of power only grew stronger. Loose stones shimmered faintly, humming with the aftershock of mana so dense it lingered even after the fight had ended. It crawled across the skin of the rescuers like static, a suffocating reminder of the force unleashed here.
"Look!" someone called.
At the far side of the cavern, amid the rubble, lay a figure.
Alexander.
He was crumpled against the stone, his chest rising shallowly. His hair was matted with sweat and dirt, his clothes torn and scorched, blood dried in streaks across his arms. He looked half-dead, but alive nonetheless.
The rescuers rushed forward. One knelt, pressing fingers to his neck. "He has a pulse. Weak, but steady."
Another leaned close, eyes narrowing. "His mana reserves… they're nearly gone. Drained to nothing."
"Drained?" Serath echoed. "Impossible. No orange core has this much mana to begin with."
The younger proctor looked shaken. "It's worse than that. His pathways… they're scorched. Burned raw. I've seen this before, but only in blue mana core mages above who overdraw in battle. This boy fought far above his limit."
The group exchanged uneasy glances. By all accounts and the result of scry, Alexander had been listed as one of the weakest in the bunch. An orange core with a frail core, a student who had barely scraped by. And yet, here he was, alive in a battlefield that should have been his grave.
"What do we tell the Academy?" one finally asked. "If this gets out..."
"That he survived," Serath cut him off. "Nothing more."
The younger proctor's brow furrowed. "But… sir, look around. This wasn't survival. This was victory."
"Doesn't matter," Serath said, his voice harder. "The Academy wants results, not stories. And stories like this attract the wrong kind of attention."
Still, as he looked down at the boy, even Serath couldn't fully hide his unease. The chamber still thrummed with something he couldn't explain. And when he leaned closer, he swore he saw it. Faint, almost invisible, but there: a lingering glow beneath Alexander's skin. Not the soft shimmer of regular mana, but something more.
He pulled back quickly, jaw tightening. "Get him stabilized. We're taking him out."
The rescuers began their work. One casted a healing spell just enough so he doesn't die from exhaustion. Another wrapped quick bandages over his worst wounds, the kind that stopped blood loss long enough to move. It turned out that his bones are too broken for a simple healing spell to mend.
As they worked, their whispers carried through the room.
"He was that red core examinee years ago, isn't he? Barely an orange now."
"No one that low could fight like this."
"Maybe someone else saved him and left him here."
"Then where are they?"
"…and why does all the mana trace back to him?"
The questions piled up, but no answers came. The battlefield itself testified to only one truth: the boy had done the impossible.
They lifted him carefully, draping his limp body across a stretcher conjured from mana-light. His head lolled to the side, eyes shut tight, breath shallow but steady.
As they began the trek back through the cave, one of the younger proctors cast a final look over his shoulder. The cavern seemed to watch them, the broken stone and melted corpses a silent witness to what had happened here.
He shivered. "Whatever this kid is… the Academy won't overlook him."
Serath didn't reply. He just marched forward, his fire spell flickering over Alexander's still form. But in his mind, he was already thinking of the reports, the questions, the scrutiny this boy would bring.
The cavern swallowed their footsteps as they carried Alexander out, leaving behind the ruins of a fight no one would believe.
And for the first time since the trial began, whispers of a new kind of talent began to stir.