The fog stayed quiet after that.

The growls stopped, and the blurry shapes that had been hiding in the distance vanished. The surviving hounds retreated into the fog, disappearing so quickly it felt like the fog had simply eaten them up.

Students stood around with their weapons raised, waiting for an attack that wasn’t coming.

Slowly, the tension broke.

"We did it," someone whispered.

Then the cheering started. Relief flooded through the temple as teams lowered their guards and clapped each other on the back.

Renna was still staring at Holden.

"No seriously," she said. "How? One second there were twelve hounds about to eat my spine and the next they’re all just... dead. All of them. Before I even finished turning around."

Emric pushed his glasses up his nose. The motion was shaky.

"Statistically, your reaction time was impossible, Holden. Human neural processing alone cannot account for that speed. Even at peak Rank 1 conditioning, the delay between visual stimulus and motor response should have been at least point-two seconds. You cleared twelve targets in approximately point-eight. That implies either pre-cognition or a neural processing rate that defies biological limits."

Holden made his sword vanish to his inventory.

"I swung fast."

"That’s not an explanation!" Renna threw her hands up. "That’s just stating the obvious! You swung fast? Yeah, I saw! I want to know HOW you swung that fast!"

Lyra walked over. Her expression was calm, but her eyes held that knowing look again.

"The hounds are gone," she said simply. " We need to stay in one group and make sure everyone is okay."

Renna opened her mouth to argue more, then closed it. She glanced at the dead beasts, then back at Holden, then finally sighed.

"Fine. But we’re coming back to this. I have so many questions."

She bounced off toward the supply bag, already chattering to Emric about her arrow count and accuracy rates.

Across the temple, Draven’s voice rose above the noise.

"We tactically repositioned! It was a strategic fallback to bait the hounds into a tight spot where they’d be easy targets!"

His team stood around him in a loose half-circle. None of them looked convinced.

"Staying in that spot would have gotten us wiped out," Draven argued, speaking so quickly he could barely breathe. "I had to make a call in the middle of all that chaos. It’s not important that Voss happened to be there to take advantage of the opening I made. It was a gamble, but it paid off for all of us."

One of his teammates, a heavyset boy with a mace, frowned.

"But you didn’t say anything about a kill zone. You just yelled fall back and then we were running."

"That’s because there wasn’t time for a full briefing!" Draven’s voice cracked higher. "Real combat doesn’t wait for committee meetings, Marcus! You have to adapt or die! I adapted!"

Marcus looked at the pile of dead hounds. Then at Holden. Then back at Draven.

"Right," he said slowly. "Sure."

Draven’s jaw tightened. He looked like he wanted to say more, but his eyes drifted toward Holden and something in his expression crumpled.

He turned away sharply.

"Team, we’re relocating to the north wall. Better sightlines. Move out."

His team shuffled after him, casting uncertain glances over their shoulders. Draven didn’t look back once. He walked with stiff, rapid steps, putting as much distance between himself and Holden as the temple would allow.

For the rest of day two, Draven stayed on the far side of the temple.

He sat with his back against the north wall, surrounded by his team, and refused to move. Whenever Holden’s gaze drifted in that direction, Draven would suddenly find something fascinating to look at on the floor.

Night fell.

The magic circle’s glow stabilized after the swarm attack, and the fog settled back into its usual slow drift. The remaining students eventually went back to sleep, though they were too tense to truly relax.

Holden lay still on his bedroll, listening.

Renna’s breathing evened out within minutes. Emric followed soon after, his soft snoring a steady rhythm. Lyra took first watch, standing like a statue as she kept watch over the entrance.

An hour passed.

Then another.

Holden sat up silently.

He reached into his inventory with a thought. The Gold Chest appeared in his hands, heavy and ornate.

He focused on the chest and willed it open.

Click.

Inside, resting on faded velvet, was a thin manual bound in dark iron-colored leather. The title was stamped into the cover in faded gold letters.

[Rank 2 Iron-Body Tempering Manual]

Holden pulled it free. The pages were old but preserved, filled with dense diagrams of muscle groups, bone structures, and energy flow patterns. The text described a method of compressing and hardening the body’s physical framework using astra energy.

He didn’t need to read it word by word.

His 1,000x multiplier was always running. Always active. The moment his eyes touched the first page, the system drank in the information like a sponge soaking up water.

[Ding!]

[Iron-Body Tempering Manual detected.]

[Comprehension beginning.]

[Multiplier active: 1,000x]

He didn’t get all the knowledge in a sudden rush. Instead, it moved into his mind slowly and steadily. Every diagram, every instruction, every technique for condensing muscle fiber and reinforcing bone density filled his mind.

Then his body responded.

It started deep inside his bones. A light pressure built up slowly and spread through his whole body. His bones didn’t change their shape, but they became much stronger and heavier. All the tiny holes inside his bones filled up until they were completely solid.

His muscles followed. The fibers twisted tighter, layering over each other in more efficient patterns. The loose, soft tissue that even a trained fighter carried hardened into something more resilient. More durable.

[Iron-Body Tempering: Complete.]

[Physical defense has been optimized.]

[Your body’s durability now matches your 8-Star attack power.]

Holden flexed his hand silently. The motion felt different. Smoother. More solid. Like the difference between a wooden practice blade and real steel.

He closed the manual and returned it to his inventory. The Gold Chest vanished with a thought.

He lay back down and closed his eyes.

His body continued to hum faintly, the last traces of the tempering process finishing their work in the darkness.

Morning came.

The change in the fog was visible before anything else. The toxic fog that had pressed against the Safe Zone for two days was thinning. Pulling back.

Students woke to find they could see farther than they had since arriving. The ruins beyond the magic circle emerged from the gloom. Crumbled walls. Collapsed towers. The skeletal remains of what must have been a once-great city.

Renna sat up and rubbed her eyes.

"Is it... clearing?"

"The fog cycle is ending," Emric confirmed. He checked his compass and nodded. "We’ve reached the seventy-two hour mark. The exam should be concluding."

As if on cue, the air in the center of the temple began to shimmer.

It started as a faint distortion. Heat haze style ripples that didn’t match the cool morning air. Then the ripples intensified, pulling inward, compressing.

The space itself tore open.

Crack.

A vertical line of pure white light split the air from floor to ceiling. It hung there for a moment, then widened into a proper portal. Through it, Holden could see the familiar gray stone of the academy’s arrival chamber.

The spatial rift pulsed once with soft golden light.

"It’s open!" someone shouted. "The exit is open!"

"We made it!"

"Thank the stars, I thought I was going to die in this fog!"

Cheering erupted across the temple. Students jumped to their feet, grabbing their gear, hugging each other, laughing with the desperate joy of people who had survived something terrible.

Renna pumped both fists in the air.

"Yes! Yes yes yes! We did it! We actually survived the Ruins! This is going on my permanent record!"

Emric allowed himself a small smile.

"A satisfactory outcome. Our team suffered zero casualties and contributed meaningfully to the defense. This will reflect well in our evaluation."

Lyra stood and slung her spear over her shoulder. She looked at the portal, then at Holden.

"Ready to go home?"

Holden pushed himself to his feet.

"Yeah."

Across the temple, Draven’s team was already moving toward the portal. Draven walked in the middle of his group, head down, shoulders hunched. He still hadn’t looked in Holden’s direction once.

Marcus leaned close to Draven and muttered something.

Draven’s voice was too low to catch, but his body language made his feelings clear. He looked defeated. The arrogant guy who had shown up so confidently had disappeared, leaving behind someone who looked weak and terrified.

Holden didn’t spare him another glance.

The portal waited, shimmering with promise.