翁公和媛媛在厨房里猛烈进出

"uhh, Alya, which path do we take?"

"My spirits can\'t see where the paths end up, so I\'m not sure..."

For a short second, Alya threw a glance at me, but I just shrugged my shoulders, leading her to turn back to Irene.

"Well... I guess we have to pick one randomly."

"OH! I\'m feeling lucky."

After saying that, Irene immediately ran towards the right cave, forcing Alya and I to follow after her.

Preparing for the upcoming fight with the boss, I grabbed my two daggers and trailed behind the two girls.

After a minute of walking, Alya stopped and asked.

"...Why are there no more monsters?"

"I knew I was lucky! The boss room must be just ahead of us then."

She wasn\'t wrong; the lack of monsters spawning was due to the boss\'s influence, and Alya seemed to agree with Irene as she nodded happily.

Spacing out, I continued walking forward while playing with my daggers by tossing them up and down and catching them on the tip.

After the tip landed on my finger, a small hole in my skin would be made, and some blood would ooze out. I learned that instead of making one deep wound on your hands to gather mana faster, you could create multiple small wounds, and it would have the same effect.

After some tiny bubbles of blood began to pop out of the small wounds on my hand, I put my daggers back in my jacket and caught up to the girls.

Finally, looking upwards, I saw that both Irene and Alya had stopped in front of a wall.

Wait, a wall?

After closing and opening my eyes for a second, I realized that there was, in fact, a wall blocking our path to the boss room.

Not only 5 minutes ago, the path led straight to the boss room.

The wall just appeared?

" *tsk* Guess I really was unlucky."

"Alright, we\'ve wasted enough time; others could already be fighting the boss. Let\'s head back."

Ignoring the two turning around, I walked past them and put my hand on the wall. After tracing my hand on the wall for a minute and feeling the cold surface, I confirmed that it was actually a cave wall and not something made out of mana.

My eyes far exceeded human capabilities, but they still had limitations. One thing I couldn\'t do with my extraordinary eyes was see through walls.

Maybe Liam and Kevin starting the boss fight caused all the paths to the boss room to close down?

It was abnormal that in the book, Liam and Kevin fought the boss alone for the majority of the battle despite the abundance of people within the dungeon.

Turning back around, I suddenly realized.

"Those idiots left me!"

Alya and Irene were nowhere to be seen, even with my enhanced eyesight. That meant they had already entered the second path, so the cave walls were blocking my vision of them.

Didn\'t they really realize I wasn\'t with them? Was my presence that unnoticeable?

Well, there really was no reason for me to stick with them anymore, as we had already killed a considerable number of monsters.

Left with the unexplainable wall in front of me, I decided to experiment out of curiosity.

Well, I also had already wounded my hands, so it would be a waste for me not to use my mana.

Using Corruption of the Night was far too dangerous, as if the corruption wasn\'t able to erode the wall... things would probably get messy.

Analyzing the entire wall with my eyes, I quickly found the 3 most unstable spots.

Injecting some mana into the daggers, only the tip of my daggers glimmered night-black while the rest remained normal.

In quick succession, I swung my dagger 3 times, releasing 3 elemental slashes that all went in different directions.

Having perfectly timed the slashes with my eyes, all the 3 of them hit the weakest point of the wall at the same time.

Surprisingly, the wall didn\'t even budge or show any signs of cracking despite its greatest weaknesses being attacked.

Reanalyzing the wall, I noticed something peculiar.

"The 3 most unstable positions of the wall have shifted..."

In fact, every time I reanalyzed the wall, the 3 weakest spots shifted, making it impossible for me to pinpoint and hit them.

Maybe, if I used my time-slowing ability, I could hit the 3 weakest points with my slashes before they shifted, but then, I would be completely out of mana and unable to fight the boss monster that was behind the wall.

Sighing, I accepted my fate and slumped down on the mystery wall, waiting for the practical training to be over.

I had plans after, so this would be the perfect time to rest!

As I started to close my eyes, the sound of footsteps started echoing through the path, heading nearer to me.

Irene and Alya, probably.

Not bothering to look up, I relaxed my body even more, resting my head on a nearby rock.

Only after the footsteps got a bit closer did I realize that there was only 1 set of footsteps, not 2.

Confused, I turned around, with my head still on the rock, and peered through the darkness of the cave.

Lo and behold, there was Lily walking right towards me and the mystery wall.

The odds of her heading on this accident, especially after taking a completely different route, were close to 0.

So, there was only one other way she could have come to find this path.

She was spying on our group.

Well, not our group, specifically me. If she had wanted the entire group, she would have come earlier, but instead, she came right when I was isolated.

It wasn\'t very shocking to me that she was spying on me after the Alya incident.

She must have been suspicious of the changes I made to Alya\'s kidnapping, so she probably started investigating.

Due to me not originally being in the academy this time, I was a "variable" in her eyes and, therefore, a prime suspect for the changes in Alya\'s kidnapping.

Keeping calm, I turned around and pretended not to notice her while I scraped my daggers against the wall.

If I was just sitting here doing nothing, her suspicions would only increase, so I pretended that I was trying to break down the wall.

Of course, anyone with a brain wouldn\'t do this, as cave walls can\'t break, but I was a third-rate villain! My actions could be the stupidest in the world, and no one would even think to question them.

Finally, I felt a gaze stop on my back as I continued to scrape away at the wall with my daggers.

As I turned around, I pretended to stagger back in shock as I saw Lily standing only a few feet away from me.

Instead of suppressing the previous Ren\'s emotions, I let them run wild as a blush appeared on my cheeks.

"L-long t-time n-no see, Lily!"

If I could feel Ren\'s previous emotions, there was a high chance that Lily could feel them as well, so she would 100% be disgusted just by talking to me.

All I had to do was stall until the disgust reached Lily\'s limit, and she left.

Proving my theory right, Lily\'s face scrunched up in disgust for a moment before returning to neutral.

"What are you doing?"

Letting Ren\'s emotions free even more, I got up and felt my body subconsciously moving towards Lily.

"a-ah, I was kicked from the group, so I stayed here. W-wait, you were kicked too; we can team up!"

Though Lily turned her head away, I could still see the disgust swelling up inside her. Her fists were clenched, and her shoulder was shaking with anger.

"This is a competition, we can\'t team up!"

Walking even closer to Lily, I continued.

"Oh, come on, who cares about the rules? Let\'s just go."

Stepping back in revulsion, Lily clenched her teeth while responding.

"I don\'t want to. Just go already; I was wrong. You\'re the same disgusting, old Ren."

Paying no mind to Lily\'s attempts to distance herself, I said.

"Come on, rules are meant to be broken. Let\'s just have a nice time during the remaining duration of the practical."

"Just leave now! The professor didn\'t prohibit attacking other teams, so I will attack you otherwise."

"If that\'s what you want... I\'ll leave."

I couldn\'t even hold back the sad expression on my face from forming as Ren\'s feelings ran wild.

As I walked away from Lily and the mysterious wall in an awkward silence, the sound of footsteps once again echoed throughout the cave.

Both Irene and Alya had returned here for some reason.

Paying them no heed, I walked past them with a sullen expression, heading back to the area where the two wolves were.

*CRASH*

Only after I heard the sound of something collapsing did I turn around.

The mysterious wall was no longer there as it had shattered into pieces. And behind the remains of the mysterious wall was a very pissed-off minotaur alongside two exhausted figures.

Kevin and Liam.

Oh, I could have just broken the wall by hitting every spot on it, couldn\'t I...?

As I scrutinized the minotaur, I could easily deduce that it only had a few minutes left as there were cuts and wounds all over its body, and heaps of blood oozed out.

The thing about minotaurs, though, is that they do NOT go out without a fight. Once reaching the end of its life, the minotaur will temporarily enter a berserker mode, where it loses all sense of reason and gains a lot of strength.

In this state, the minotaur just tries to kill anything in sight without any regard for its own life or safety.

All the book had said about this practical training was that Liam and Kelvin had played a significant role in killing the minotaur, so I didn\'t really care about this current situation.

Although... how much Night aura would I gain from corrupting it and stealing its lifespan..?

Alya, Irene, and Lily immediately sprung into action, attacking the minotaur with various spells while Liam and Kevin continued to swing at it.

So far, I had only absorbed the lifespan of those two wolves from earlier, so stealing the minotaur\'s lifespan was too tempting for me.

Following their lead, I grabbed my daggers, activated the Dash\'s grace period, and ran toward the minotaur.

All I would need is one hit.

[125 Powerstones = +1 Chap]