As Ms. Raty and Yui walked out of the faculty wing, hand in hand, they didn't notice a pair of cold, blue eyes watching them from the shadows of a stone pillar.
Opia stood perfectly still, her breath creating a faint mist in the air. She had followed them, driven by a burning curiosity and a bruised ego. She had seen how the "Null" girl destroyed the droid, and she had seen the legendary Mr. Kradia lead her away. But what she saw now was even more interesting to her. She watched the way Ms. Raty looked at Yui—the tenderness in her eyes, the way she adjusted Yui's hoodie, and the protective embrace she gave the thirteen-year-old.
To Opia, a girl raised in a world of cold logic and high-society politics, that kind of affection didn't look like a teacher caring for a student. It looked like a secret.
"So that's it," Opia whispered, a cruel smirk spreading across her face as she pulled out her holographic communicator. "The 'Null' isn't just a scholarship student. She's the hidden disgrace of the Great Gravity Mage."
The next morning, the atmosphere at Aetheria Academy had shifted. As Yui walked through the gates in her 5-cm shoes, she felt the eyes of every student on her. It was different from the usual indifference; this was a sharp, biting gaze followed by muffled snickers and pointing fingers.
When she entered Class 1-A, the buzzing sound of whispers died down for a second, then doubled in volume.
"Look, there she is," a student whispered, loud enough for Yui to hear. "The 'Secret Daughter'."
"I heard Ms. Raty faked her documents to get her in here," another added. "No wonder she has no mana. She's probably the result of a failed mana-experiment or a forbidden affair."
Opia was sitting at the front, spinning a pen made of ice between her fingers. She looked back at Yui with a triumphant glow in her sapphire eyes. She had spent the whole night spreading the rumor through the academy's private networks: Yui Seong is the illegitimate child of Ms. Raty.
Yui sat in her usual seat at the back, clutching Reno so hard her knuckles turned white. She didn't understand why everyone was looking at her like she was something dirty. She had survived monsters and her aunt's cruelty, but the weight of a hundred judgmental eyes was a different kind of pressure.
"Hey, Null," Opia called out, her voice ringing clear across the room. "Is it true? Does 'Mommy' Raty give you extra lessons at night because you're too weak to do anything else?"
The classroom exploded in laughter. Yui stared at her desk, the empty circles she had drawn yesterday looking back at her. Her small desk began to vibrate almost imperceptibly. The air around her feet started to grow heavy—not because of Ms. Raty's shroud, but because Yui's own emotions were starting to leak through the cracks.
For the first time in her life, the wall inside Yui's mind didn't just crack—it shattered.
The air in Class 1-A didn't just become heavy; it became solid. The laughter died instantly as every student was slammed into their desks by an invisible force. The pens on the desks snapped, the holographic terminals flickered and died, and a low, guttural hum began to vibrate from the very foundations of the building.
Yui didn't scream. She didn't even stand up. She just sat there, her head lowered, her small shoulders trembling. But the "Gravity Shroud" Ms. Raty had placed on her was being torn apart like paper in a hurricane.
K-BOOM!
In a terrifying display of raw, unfiltered power, the entire reinforced ceiling of the classroom—tons of steel, mana-glass, and anti-siege plating—wasn't just damaged. It was vacuum-sucked into the sky. The roof was ripped off as if a giant hand had reached down and peeled it away, sending the debris flying thousands of feet into the air before vaporizing it into metallic dust.
The students screamed, cowering under their desks as the open sky suddenly appeared above them, the clouds swirling in a violent vortex created by Yui's presence.
Opia fell from her chair, her face turning pale as her ice magic shattered into steam. She looked at Yui and felt a fear she had never known—the fear of a rabbit looking at a god.
From the other side of the campus, Ms. Raty's heart skipped a beat. She felt the Gravity Shroud vanish, replaced by a mana-signature so massive it felt like a second sun had been born in the middle of the school.
"Yui!" Raty gasped.
She didn't take the stairs. She didn't use the elevator. She cast a high-level Gravity Leap, blurring through the corridors like a purple streak of light. She burst through the classroom doors just as the floor under Yui's feet began to disintegrate into a bottomless crater.
"Yui! Stop! Look at me!" Raty screamed, fighting against the crushing pressure to reach the girl.
The wind was howling through the roofless room, papers and chairs swirling in the air. Raty saw Yui's eyes—they weren't their usual calm dark color; they were glowing with a terrifying, pale white light.
"Yui, please!" Raty reached her, throwing her arms around the trembling girl and using every ounce of her Gravity Magic to anchor them to the ground. "It's okay! I'm here! Don't let the world break you!"
Yui moved. To the human eye, she didn't walk—she simply shifted from one point of reality to another. In a heartbeat, she was standing in front of Opia. Her small, pale hand reached out and clamped around Opia's throat, lifting the older girl off the floor as if she weighed nothing.
"You want me to be rough?" Yui asked. Her voice was flat, devoid of any emotion, which made it a thousand times more terrifying than a scream. "I have always held back. But this time... I don't care if you die."
The air around Yui's fist distorted, warping the light itself. With a casual flick of her wrist, she hurled Opia upward. The girl shot through the now-missing roof like a cannonball, her body breaking the sound barrier with a violent crack.
"Opia!" Rick shouted. Using his [Speed Magic], he blurred into a streak of light, leaping from the debris to catch Opia's limp body before she could be lost in the clouds. When he landed back on the shattered floor, his arms were trembling from the momentum.
Klein immediately rushed over, his hands glowing with a frantic green light. "She's not breathing! Her neck... the vertebrae are cracked just from the grip!" He poured every ounce of his [Infinite Heal] into her, his face sweating as he fought to knit her shattered bones back together. Opia had been seconds away from a cold, silent death.
"Stop her!" Roi screamed, his palms glowing with a massive Mana Beam. Alongside him, Yoki focused her [One-Spot] magic on Yui's chest, trying to find a single point of weakness.
They both unleashed their full power. The beam of pure energy struck Yui squarely, and Yoki's pinpoint strike hit with the force of a diamond drill. But Yui didn't even blink. The attacks hit her skin and simply... vanished. It was like throwing pebbles at a black hole. She ignored them completely, walking forward as the ground beneath her 5-cm shoes turned to powder.
High above, on a balcony overlooking the training area, Mr. Kradia stood frozen. In his hand, he held a military-grade power-scouter, a device meant to measure the mana-output of God-Tier Hunters.
The digital screen was flickering violently. It went from 1,000,000 to 99,000,000, and then, with a sharp beep, the numbers disappeared. A single symbol flashed on the glass: [∞].
"Infinite..." Kradia whispered, his hand shaking so hard the device fell and shattered on the floor. "She's not a Hunter. She's a fundamental force of the universe."
The air didn't just vibrate; it shrieked. As Yui pulled her fist back, a vacuum was created, sucking all the oxygen out of the room. The target was clear: Opia, Rick, and Klein.
"Wait, Yui! Stop!" Roi and Yoki screamed, their voices thin and desperate. They threw themselves in front of their friends, their mana-shields flickering like candlelight in a hurricane. But they knew it was useless. Against the coming storm, they were nothing more than ants.
Yui's eyes were cold, fixed on the group. "Running away?" she asked, her voice a ghostly whisper.
Just as her muscles tensed to release the blow, a blur of golden light intercepted the path. Mr. Kradia had arrived. He didn't hesitate; he activated [Fearless] at its absolute maximum capacity. His body bulked up, his veins glowing with a frantic, pulsing energy as his instant-healing fought to keep his cells from exploding under the strain of his own power.
"MOVE!" Kradia roared. Using every ounce of his boosted speed, he scooped up Opia, Rick, and Klein in one massive sweep, throwing them out of the blast zone just as Yui's fist lunged forward.
BOOM.
The punch didn't even connect with a solid object, but the sheer air pressure it generated was cataclysmic. A pillar of white force erupted from her knuckles, tearing through the classroom, the hallway, and the outer fortress walls of the academy as if they were made of paper. The shockwave traveled for miles, carving a deep, jagged canyon into the earth that stretched toward the horizon.
When the dust began to settle, a massive, bottomless crater remained where the floor used to be. The entire wing of the school had been hollowed out.
Kradia stood at the edge of the destruction, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his skin smoking from the friction of his movement. He looked at the miles-long scar in the landscape and felt a chill go down his spine. If he had been a second later, there wouldn't even be ashes left of the students.
Yui stood in the center of the ruin, her fist still extended, her chest heaving. She looked ready to strike again, her gaze searching for the targets that had escaped.
"Yui! That's enough!"
Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped firmly around her small waist. Ms. Raty had dove through the settling debris, ignoring the residual mana that burned her skin. She held Yui tight, pressing her cheek against the girl's back.
"Stop, Yui... please. It's me. It's Raty," she sobbed, her voice breaking the silence of the ruins. "Don't let the anger take you. You're not a monster. You're my Yui. Please, come back to me."
The glowing white light in Yui's eyes flickered. The suffocating pressure in the air began to lift, and the violent wind died down into a soft breeze. Yui's small fist slowly unclenched, and her shoulders began to shake, but this time, it wasn't from rage.