"He has gotten stronger."
MidnightFire heard a ridiculous statement that she had never expected to hear.
"What did you say?" She asked.
She had never expected such words from her teacher and couldn’t help doubt that she had heard correctly.
"I said that he has gotten stronger. His swordsmanship is much more powerful than before. During his battle with Ivory, he had been barely able to keep up with her swings; now his skills are enough to suppress Jaran, whose swordsmanship is on par with Ivory," Bloodberry explained.
"If you hadn’t mentioned that it was him, and I hadn’t seen his face, I would have thought that it was a different student."
She sighed and shook her head tiredly.
First, it was Ivory who had awakened a Rank Two Trait.
Then, Milas, despite being born into a Prestigious Clan of the Mage Path and possessing defective Spirit Veins, had an unparalleled talent as a Magical Swordsman, standing head and shoulders above his peers.
Now it was Ezekiel, a talentless scorn of the Zahara Clan, who, despite having no talent in either Beastamaster or Magical Swordsman Path, had suddenly grown stronger to the extent that he could defeat an opponent like Jaran and become the Class Three Third-ranked Magical Swordsman.
In her view, Class Three was like a den of dark horses.
"How?" MidnightFire could only pose such a question in that moment.
"’Do I look like I know ’how’ he had done it?" Bloodberry folded her arms.
"It’s precisely the reason I’ve been trying to dig into as much information about him as I could. But for a scorn of the Zahara Clan, whom they claimed to cherish no longer, his information is too securely hidden."
"The only information that I could uncover about him is what we already know. I tried visiting him while he was still recuperating in the hospital, but he’s nurse had blocked anyone from seeing him."
"I heard that he’s obsessed with training and usually visits the dungeon whenever he has the chance to, so I tried waiting and watching to see if I could catch him, but somehow he always manages to slip away. I think that he’s aware that I’m searching for him, and he’s been consistently keeping his distance."
"I even tried meeting Instructor Fredric, but he’s been dodging me ever since that rumor about the three of us plotting against Ivory spread. If it weren’t for the damn rules, I’d have barged into their class already to have a word with both of them."
"Do you still suspect that Instructor Fredric was the one who spread the rumours?" She asked.
"Yes, I’m sure that it was him. Ezekiel couldn’t have been the one to spread the rumours because he’s scared of me. He doesn’t even possess the capabilities to do so, so that it could only be ’Fredric," Bloodberry responded.
"I still suspect that he’s working with the descendants of the Zahara Clan, as they are the only ones that will gain much if Ezekiel ends up getting expelled from the academy. I’ll uncover why he chose to lower himself to such despicable dealings with those noble brats."
"Okay, since that’s the case," MidnightFire replied, "Then allow me to aid you out a little. I have some connections with Ivory. If you want to, then I can arrange a meeting with her so we can finally get to the root cause of this matter once and for all."
Bloodberry shook her head, "No need. She’s only a puppet. We might not get any useful information from her, and end up alarming those behind her. We might return to square one if she chooses to reveal our conversation with them," she replied.
"I want to walk into the Magus Departments and pull out those descendants of the Zahara Clan so that I can smack them on the head. But their instructors would probably stand in my way. Tchh... I’m not strong enough to handle any of them."
MidnightFire nodded in understanding.
"Fine, I’ll see what I can do to invite the Worst One. He’s the only neutral suspect in this, so we might be able to get some information out of him," MidnightFire said.
"I know you mentioned wanting to speak with him because you confirmed Ivory framed him from the very beginning. That’s why you went to see him at the hospital in the first place."
"And you don’t want me to interfere because it won’t be easy for me. The moment our meeting becomes public, I’ll be openly standing against the Zahara Clan. That alone could ruin business, given the power they hold. Still... we don’t have the luxury to waste time anymore."
"The longer this rumour goes unaddressed, the more your reputation will suffer. If it spreads to the higher-ups, the situation could escalate beyond repair. When that happens, it will be unclear whether you’ll remain in the academy or not."
Her voice was firm and filled with resolution.
"I’m willing to help you to the very best of my capabilities to get you out of this predicament."
Bloodberry fell silent.
Then, she sighed, "Fine, I’ll accept your help only this time around."
MidnightFire clapped her hands together.
"That’s great," she sighed deeply. "I was worried you wouldn’t accept my help just now. I would have had to handle the entire issue on my own."
Bloodberry got up, opening her arms wide and pulling her into a hug.
MidnightFire met her halfway, returning the embrace.
"You know what. I don’t regret making you my most favourite student," Bloodberry said with a chuckle.
MidnightFire chuckled lightly in response. However, she didn’t utter a word.
Although she knew that it might be a much longer week than she had planned, still, she still looked forward to it as long as it helped her teacher resolve her current dilemma.
The only issue she now faced was how to contact the Worst One.
The last time she checked, she didn’t know his VR server name, nor did she know anyone who did.
MidnightFire couldn’t help but wonder what he was doing right at this very moment.
Training Dungeon Hall, Zone 2
I pushed myself in training until my body could no longer go on
Just as in my previous training, I gained some significant improvements.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ Name: Ezekiel Zahara ]
◆ Talent: Cybernetic Evolution (Semi-sealed)
┗ Path Traits: Beast Cybernetic Enhancement, Fusion Synchronisation.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◇ Primary Path: Beastmaster Path
┗ Path Traits: Beast Affinity, Beastmaster’s Contract.
┗ Rank: First Rank (1%)
◇ Secondary Path: Magical Swordsman Path
┗ Path Traits: Blade Synchronisation.
┗ Rank: First Rank (70%)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
┗ Metal: Supreme-Tier
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
┗ Overclocked Mode - Active
┗ Aura Mastery: Apprentice (13%)
┗ Weapon Mastery - Sword: Apprentice(59%)
┗ Mountain Snow Dragon Art - Sky Grade - Beginner (20%)
┗ Fire Spark - Basic Spell (30%)
┗ Wind Rush - Basic Spell (66%)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
┗ Swift-Horned Panther → [Cybernetic Swift-Horned Panther Form]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I finally completely refined the beast core that I had gotten from the Silver-tongued Serpent using my Beastmaster Path rune.
Maybe it’s because I had gotten used to the system offering me a significant increase in strength, that I felt the changes were a bit minuscule.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ Name: Ezekiel Zahara ]
◆ Talent: Cybernetic Evolution (???)
◆ Fusion Compatibility (Felix): 100%
◆[ Cybernetic Body Armour. ]
◆[ Combat Module: Full Body Armour. ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I had increased the fusion compatibility between Felix and me to 100 per cent, fulling unlocking the Cybernetic Integration skill.
The Cybernetic gauntlet felt like an extension of my arm, rather than an external, heavy cybernetic armour.
In total, I had spent six hours in the dungeon, and by the time I was done, the sun had already risen from the east.
It was the weekend, so I didn’t have any classes today or tomorrow.
"Are you ready?" I looked at Felix.
I swiftly decided to try out the full-body cybernetic armour.
"I’m ready when you’re, master," Felix replied with a nod.
"Good. Activate Cybernetic Integration: Full body armour."
Felix leapt onto me, his body transforming into liquid mercury that stuck to my body like glue.
[ Please select a Trigger Word.
Note: Pick any word or sentence of your choice to activate complete Cybernetic Integration between you and your Cybernetic Beasts. You may set one unique trigger per Cybernetic Beast or a universal trigger for all. ]
A system alert appeared before me as Felix merged with my body.
I could activate or deactivate our cybernetic integration with either my mind or my voice, but using a trigger word made it faster and more convenient.
I already had the perfect word in mind.
[Trigger Word Confirmed [ Suit On. ]
Linked Cybernetic Beast: Cybernetic Swift-Horned Panther (Felix).
Note: Can be used to automatically summon and activate Cybernetic Integration with Cybernetic Swift Horned Panther. ]
Meanwhile, the Cybernetic Swift Horned Panther’s full body armour had began to solidify.
Dark alloy plating encased both of my forearms, extending to the wrists like an exoskeletal gauntlet, its surface etched with glowing blue circuits that pulsed faintly along my arms.