Darius paced the training hall with his hands clasped behind his back, the heavy thuds of struggling students echoing like music to his ears. Boulders strained shoulders and bent spines. Palms shook, knees trembled, and sweat began to drop onto the cold stone floor beneath them. There were twenty students in all, each one locked in their personal hell.
And Darius enjoyed every second of it.
He didn't bother hiding the crooked smirk that tugged at his lips. To him, this was justice. This was where knights were truly forged—not through written exams or theory lessons, but in the agony of muscles pushed to the brink and beyond.
A girl near the corner collapsed to her knees, trying to hide her pain behind clenched teeth. A boy near the front grit his jaw so hard it looked like his teeth might shatter.
'Beautiful,' Darius thought. 'Just beautiful.'
But then—his eyes drifted to the back of the formation.
There stood two figures, unmoved and unshaken.
Both boys held their boulders like they were bags of flour. Barely a sheen of sweat touched their skin. Asher looked like he could've been waiting for a cab, and Liam—cold, unreadable, silent as ever—might as well have been holding nothing at all. They were statues in a room full of the dying.
Darius' smirk vanished.
His eyes narrowed, jaw twitching slightly.
'Tch. Of course,' he thought bitterly. 'I'd nearly forgotten…'
They were the standouts from last semester's final exam. Liam, with his unnervingly clinical combat instincts, and Asher, reckless but ruthlessly efficient. Together, they racked a great kill count and had fought together to fight a Berserker Demon in their battered states which stunned even Sir Vance.
'I wonder if that bastard passed his genes to them when they were under in wings,' Darius thought. 'They are so calm it gets on my nerves just like that arrogant bastard.'
"Oi," Garrick's voice snapped him out of his thoughts, low and casual, as he leaned in beside Darius. "That's enough of your 'welcome gift.' Time to get to business."
Darius didn't reply. He simply raised a hand and tapped the interface rune again. With a flash of blue light, the boulders vanished, leaving most students gasping for air, arms hanging limp at their sides.
"Back on your feet," Darius barked. "Stand up straight. That—" he gestured to where the boulders once were, "—was nothing worth getting tired over."
Most of the students obeyed, some wobbling, others still catching their breath. A few glared at the floor in shame, but no one dared speak.
Darius stepped forward, arms behind his back, and stared them all down.
"All of you," he began coldly, "were pathetic in the final simulation last semester."
"I mean every last one of you," he added, louder this time. "Some of you may have killed two, three, maybe five demons. Good for you. Gold stars and empty victories. Because by the time most of you got that one kill, you had already racked up injuries—cuts, gashes, sprained wrists, torn muscles. Minor or major, it doesn't matter. You were bleeding, and you were weak."
He paused to let the words land like hammers.
"Tell me," he continued, pacing slowly across the line of students, "if you fight a Feral-class demon and come out with even a scratch, what happens when you face the next? Or the next? What happens when you reach the final boss of the battlefield and your limbs are already trembling?"
He turned sharply, gaze like a blade. "You die. That's what happens."
"You won the battle," he growled, "but you lost the war. You're too soft. All of you. Your bodies are too fragile. It makes me sick."
No one dared look at him.
"So here's what we're going to do." His voice dropped to a deathly calm. "This semester, in this class… forget magic. It's done. I don't want to see a single flame or shard of ice. You won't be casting a damn thing."
There was a shift—panic among the students, unspoken but palpable.
Darius stepped back, allowing Garrick to take center.
Garrick's tone was firm, but not nearly as cruel. "He's right. Your bodies are liabilities. If I tapped most of your ribs right now, they'd snap. So we're going to change that. For the next six months, we're going to forge those useless meatbags you walk around in into something unbreakable.
"This won't be about lifting weights. This will be living weights."
He tapped the interface.
A loud hum vibrated through the hall, and in a blinding instant, full-body weighted gear materialized onto every student. From shoulders to ankles, it was as if they'd been clad in a second skin of dense, unrelenting pressure.
Almost everyone dropped to their knees.
Some gasped. Others cried out. One kid puked immediately, collapsing face-first onto the floor.
Liam and Asher still stood.
"That's more like it," Darius said coldly from behind.
Garrick folded his arms. "From this day forward, you'll fight holographic demons every single class. And you'll do it with those weights on. You'll fall. You'll bleed. Some of you will faint. Many of you will want to quit."
He glanced at the nearest student, who was already shaking violently. "And some of you will pray to be transferred out of our class."
He shrugged. "Too bad."
Darius stepped forward again, his voice sharp as steel. "You will keep fighting until you can take down a Feral-class demon in one blow—without magic. And when you do that, we'll raise the bar."
"Next will be Horror-class," Garrick added with a cold smile. "And if you survive that… maybe then, we'll talk about letting you use magic again."
The room was silent—except for the sound of labored breathing and the weighted creak of strained bones.
Of the twenty students groaning under the crushing weight of their new full-body weighted suits, one boy—tall, wiry, with veins bulging at his temples—gritted his teeth and raised his voice, shaky but respectful.
"H-How... how can someone one-shot a demon with just human strength? That doesn't sound… logically believable, sir."
The hall fell into silence, broken only by a few gasps and grunts from those still adjusting to the burden on their limbs. A low chuckle echoed, sharp and venomous.
Darius turned, his smirk stretching like a blade across his face. He looked at the boy like a hungry predator spotting an easy kill. "Are you implying," he began, voice smooth with mock amusement, "that Garrick and I are lunatics for the training we're presenting?"
"Don't answer," Darius snapped, his eyes gleaming. With a flick of his hand, he added twenty more pounds to the poor student's weights. The boy collapsed to one knee with a cry, his arms trembling violently.
Darius turned from him with theatrical flair, now addressing the entire room.
"If anyone feels the urge to question our methods again," he said coldly, "speak now, so I can kindly give you your extra weights in advance. Because next time it happens...
"It won't just be twenty pounds. It'll be more. Much more."
Silence gripped the room like a vice. No one dared to move, let alone speak.
That's when Garrick stepped forward.
"Enough of the bark," he said, his deep voice calm but firm. "Let's show them what the bite looks like."
He unfastened his long trench coat and shrugged it off, folding it neatly over one arm. The room saw then the cut, scarred arms beneath his rolled-up sleeves—testaments of his experience and survival.
"Darius," Garrick said simply, "generate an Advanced Horror-class. Let's make it a malgath."
Darius gave a bored sigh and rolled his eyes, muttering, "Always trying to show off…" But he complied. With a swift motion, the Hall's holographic system activated. Light shimmered mid-air before taking shape—a tall, hulking beast, grotesque and terrifying.
The malgath towered with a muscular build, its gray skin covered in pulsating white veins. It had no eyes, only deep sockets that burned with invisible rage. Two jagged horns spiraled from the sides of its skull, and a thick tail lashed behind it like a whip.
Liam's breath hitched as he remembered. Vlardia. The fight he barely survived against a similar malgath.
The air pulsed with tension.
Without warning, the Malgath let out a guttural roar and launched itself at Garrick, claws outstretched. It moved with terrifying speed—faster than any human could react.
But Garrick didn't flinch.
With a subtle pivot of his right foot, he smoothly avoided the incoming strike. His fist clenched, knuckles cracking like dry twigs. Then he drove his fist with surgical precision into the side of the Malgath's skull.
The impact released a shockwave that rippled through the air and cracked the nearby training mats. The thunderous echo rang across the hall—and just like that, the Malgath's head caved in. The holographic system shimmered, dissolving the monster's form into thousands of blinking particles.
Silence followed, thick and suffocating.
Garrick straightened, dusted his knuckles, and glanced over his shoulder at the stunned students.
"Everything is possible," he said simply. "Whether it makes sense logically, theoretically, or magically. If you commit, if you endure, and if you break your limits... the impossible becomes routine."
He slipped his coat back on with quiet elegance as he walked past the line of speechless students.
"Now," he continued, "grab your weapons."
Darius, grinning like a devil, activated the Hall system once more. Multiple demons shimmered into existence, forming a half-circle around the students—Feral-class, Horror-class, and a few Titanborne-class demons.
"They will respawn each time you kill them," Garrick said flatly, "so don't celebrate after a single win. Stay sharp, or stay broken. That's your only choice."
He crossed his arms. "This is what we'll be doing for the rest of the time today."
"And tomorrow," Darius added, smiling wickedly. "And the day after. Welcome to your real semester, children."