Chương 103: CHAPTER 101: THE CLASSROOM OF ARROGANCE

The subterranean air of the Royal Magic and Research Academy smelled of old damp slate, copper polish, and undisturbed dust. Deep beneath the vaulted marble walkways where high-tier battle mages cast pristine light spells, the Pathological Anatomy lecture hall sat buried in near-total silence. It was an amphitheater built of rough black basalt, designed centuries ago to contain toxic biological spills and volatile anatomical reactions.

Cold iron lamps hung from thick chain links overhead, casting long, sharp shadows across the terraced rows of stone desks. Professor Shin walked down the central spiral staircase with deliberate, measured steps. Underneath his dark, plain high-collared scholar's robe, his boots made no sound against the flagstones.

He had discarded his traveling cloaks, but his face remained completely bare, his expression locked into the flat, unreadable calm of a veteran surgeon entering an operating theater after a thirty-hour shift. Sitting on his left shoulder, rendered completely invisible to anyone without an SSS-rank detection threshold, the glowing chibi system sprite swung its tiny legs idly. [System Core: Operational] [Target Scanning: 20 biological signatures detected in Hall B-4] [Host Status: Sleep debt calculated at 48 hours. Suggesting caffeine or early termination of lecture.] Shin ignored the little glowing voice. Rudra sighed in his mind. Abe yaar, not even ten minutes in this basement and my head already aches. He stopped at the base of the lecture pit, right behind a massive dissection slab carved from a single block of cold granite. He looked up. The twenty students selected for this inaugural class were already seated. The divide in the room was as stark as an open surgical incision.

On the left side, occupying the plush velvet cushions they had brought with them, sat fifteen young men and women draped in high-noble silk, tailored tunics, and gold-trimmed cloaks. Their fingers were heavy with family crest rings—ducal houses, chancellor bloodlines, and frontier warlord lineages. They sat with their chins tilted upward, whispering among themselves with casual mockery, tossing dismissive glances down toward the empty podium.

To them, this mandatory anatomy rotation was nothing more than an eccentric elective forced by the Chancellor's office. On the far right, seated on the bare stone benches without cushions, sat the five commoner scholarship students. They wore faded gray academy robes with fraying cuffs. Their inkpots were open, their parchment rolls were pinned down with meticulous care, and their quills were already dipped. Their eyes were wide, tense, and laser-focused.

They knew that a single failing grade in an elite seminar meant losing their state stipends and returning to the mines or outer farms. In the dead center of the noble group sat Valerius. He was the premier heir of the Grand Ducal House of Ignis —tall, sharp-jawed, with fiery auburn hair slicked back and a coat embroidered with crimson phoenix filigree. He was leaning back in his chair, tapping a polished silver-plated wand against his knee, looking at Shin with unmasked disdain.

Shin did not offer a formal greeting. He did not write his name on the chalkboard. He did not formally introduce his academic credentials. Instead, he reached into his leather storage pouch and retrieved a handful of shriveled, dark-purple mountain juniper berries. He popped three of them into his mouth and bit down. The flavor was sharp, intensely bitter, and cold, flooding his tongue with a resinous pine taste that immediately cleared his sinuses and deadened his palate against what was coming.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work. Thud. Shin pulled a massive, heavy iron chest from his dimensional space and dropped it squarely onto the granite slab. The stone shuddered. The heavy latch unclipped with a sharp screech, and Shin flipped the reinforced lid open. A wave of thick, freezing mist rolled over the lip of the slab, followed immediately by a stench so vile, rancid, and acidic that it physically hit the room like a blunt hammer.

It was the smell of dead marrow, fermented monster bile, and deep viral rot. Several noble girls in the front row gagged, slapping perfumed silk handkerchiefs over their noses. Two noble boys stood up in outrage, knocking their chairs backward.

"What is the meaning of this filth?!" one of them yelled, waving his embroidered sleeve to clear the foul air.

"We are third-year elite mages! We are not butcher boys!" Shin ignored the outburst. With bare hands, completely unbothered by the toxic frost coating the meat, he hoisted the contents out of the chest and slammed it onto the center of the table. It was the severed torso of a juvenile Shadow-Stalker Drake. The flesh was black, swollen with necrotic fluids, and covered in cracked, weeping scales. Beneath the translucent, rotting skin of the beast's ribcage, a faint, sickly violet glow pulsed irregularly.

A fragile web of glowing purple mana-capillaries ran across the main heart cavity, thinned to the width of a hair and dangerously pressurized by trapped viral gas. Shin wiped his hands with a dry linen cloth and turned his cold, dark eyes to the amphitheater.

"This is a stage-three necrotic specimen," Shin said. His voice was not loud, but it cut through the murmurs and protests with razor-sharp authority.

"Inside this chest wall, running directly over the left ventricle, is the primary mana-conduit. It is currently swollen with toxic, pressurized bile. If it tears, the acidic spray will melt the stone table and permanently dissolve the vocal cords of anyone within four meters." He laid three simple iron tools on the edge of the stone: a fine scalpel, a blunt probe, and a pair of spring forceps.

"Your assignment is simple," Shin continued, looking across all twenty faces.

"You will step forward one by one. You will isolate the main mana-capillary without tearing the outer wall. You will drain the necrotic gas without releasing a single drop of poison into this room. You have forty minutes." Silence descended upon the hall. The five commoner scholars leaned forward, studying the pulsing purple veins with nervous calculation, their quills scratching rapid sketches on their parchment. They recognized the extreme danger.

They were already running mental formulas to stabilize the tissue using low-output mana threads. The nobles, however, looked insulted.

"Is this a joke?" Valerius scoffed, standing up from his velvet seat and dusting off his gold-trimmed coat. He walked down the stone stairs with an arrogant swagger, his heavy leather boots clicking loudly against the basalt.

"You drag a piece of rotting woodland garbage into the sacred halls of the Academy and expect us to poke at it with cheap blacksmith knives? We are mages, not meat packers." Valerius stopped at the edge of the granite slab, looking down at the Drake's carcass with sheer disgust.

"In the Grand Duchy of Ignis, we do not waste time scraping rot with butter knives," Valerius declared loudly, raising his chin so the entire cohort could hear him.

"When tissue becomes corrupt, it is purged. True high-tier magic cleanses through overwhelming elemental power." Shin stood completely still, his hands resting lightly in the wide sleeves of his robe, chewing the bitter juniper berries in slow, rhythmic silence. Rudra watched the noble boy with dry amusement. Abe saale, this idiot thinks he is on a battlefield rather than in an operating theater.

"Do not touch it with blunt elemental force," Shin said calmly.

"The wall thickness is under half a millimeter. The inner pressure is rising. If you use heat, the gas inside will expand and rupture." Valerius gave a short, condescending laugh.

"Watch and learn, commoner tutor," the noble heir sneered, completely disregarding the warning.

"Let me show you how a true noble heir solves a blockage." Valerius raised both hands, spreading his fingers wide over the delicate, swollen Drake heart. Instantly, the air in the lecture hall grew searing hot. Massive rings of crimson fire mana erupted around Valerius's wrists, blazing with raw, uncontrolled Tier 4 destructive magic. The roaring heat hit the frozen, necrotic carcass instantly, causing the frost on the black scales to flash-boil into white steam.

The trapped viral core inside the beast turned from dull purple to a blinding, violent magenta. The fragile capillary wall bulged outward like an overfilled balloon, stretching to its absolute tearing point. Rudra's focus snapped into absolute emergency precision. Iska dimaag kharab ho gaya hai. Ye pagal ladka pure hall ko acid se uda dega. (This idiot has lost his mind. This crazy kid is going to blow up the entire hall with acid.) Valerius smiled with absolute pride, pouring even more raw flames into his hands.

"Purge!" Valerius roared. Directly beneath his blazing palms, the necrotic core gave a loud, wet CRACK.