Chapter 70: Chapter 70: Imitated monster attack Liane sat alone in her domain, a living forest shaped by her will.
The trees around her were wide, firm, and older than anything near the academy.
Flowers bloomed freely across the grass, and the air smelled of clean soil and damp leaves.
This place didn’t have guards or artificial gates. It was hers, down to the roots.
She sat barefoot on the soft grass, her back straight and her hand resting over her knee. She didn’t move much, didn’t need to.
The quiet reached her better here.
Her fingers brushed the ground, and the grass stretched outward in response, shifting in rhythm with her breath.
This was the same place she brought Rhian to awaken his core. Technically, she had helped him.
Realistically, it was more of a psychological beatdown.
But it worked, and she had to admit, watching him panic had been a little funny.
A good kind of funny. He got stronger. That was the point.
Today, she couldn’t enjoy any of it.
Five students had died.
She’d lost others before. She knew the job. Most instructors had scars from the years, graves they remembered by name, some more than others.
The evolved students were always the hardest to keep alive. The world didn’t want them to survive. The academy pretended it did, but the numbers said otherwise.
Other evolved students still remained in the school, mostly in the upper years, some from her old classes.
But these five, this time, it didn’t feel like normal loss. It felt intentional.
Only students had been in the portal, so it couldn’t have been the instructors or staff. That meant the only possible attackers were other students.
She didn’t have proof, just instinct. But it was loud, and it didn’t go away, no matter how long she sat in the quiet.
It could’ve been monsters, she knew she was a paranoid person, but at least one should have made it, for all to die they must have met a D rank, there was no higher monster, with exceptions and she refused to believe in those exceptions.
Other than that, in the 5, some had been E Rank, so they could have ran away, but then that also contradicted her blaming students as again most students were F Rank. With some being E Rank and a very few being D rank.
She stayed seated, eyes open but unfocused, her hand still resting on the grass that kept reaching back for her touch. Until the report came in, she would stay here.
But it seemed she wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
A sharp beep echoed from her watch, and her eyes opened as the message came through.
She had told one of the staff to notify her the moment the retrieval team returned.
A gust of wind swept through the clearing, rustling the trees.
Liane was no longer sitting.
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In the academy’s hospital building, deep on one of the lower floors, a pair of staff stood near the observation corridor.
The lighting here was dim, the walls silent except for the occasional beep of machines and quiet murmurs from the forensic team inside.
One of them sighed, arms folded tight across his chest. "Still hits different when they’re this young."
His colleague, a woman in a grey coat, nodded as she glanced through the glass. "Most of them probably didn’t even get to rank up."
"Some didn’t get the chance to defend themselves," he muttered. "That’s the worst part."
Both fell quiet. Then a chill crept over them.
They turned instinctively—neither had heard footsteps.
White, misted eyes stared back at them from the end of the corridor.
They tensed for a second, but quickly relaxed when they recognized her. They bowed slightly, their voices shifting with practiced respect.
"Instructor Liane. The forensic team’s wrapping up. They’re almost done cataloguing everything."
Liane gave a small nod and stepped forward. Her eyes moved past them without a word as she approached the reinforced glass wall and looked in.
Liane didn’t wait for permission. When one of the forensic members inside gave a simple thumbs-up through the glass, she stepped in.
The lights were brighter in here. Sterile. The smell of dried blood and medical-grade cleanser clung to the walls.
Rows of bodies lay on metal slabs, each one draped in dark sheets. Some were fully intact.
Others weren’t. A few had nothing beneath the covers at all—just bags filled with what could be found.
Liane stopped in front of the team, her face unreadable as she stood still, hands loose at her sides.
"Tell me what I need to know."
One of the techs stepped forward, a tired man in a black coat with rolled-up sleeves.
He pulled the zip of one body bag down and revealed what remained of a student. The skin was pale.
The limbs twisted. The flesh around the chest and abdomen was torn open in jagged patterns.
Liane didn’t flinch.
She stared at the mutilated corpse, eyes moving across the damage. The wounds looked torn, not sliced. She frowned. "So it was a monster," she said, but her voice lacked certainty.
There was something almost bitter in the way she said it—disappointment laced with quiet sadness.
The man shook his head. "No... Well, yes. It looks like a monster. And I would’ve believed it too—if not for one thing."
She turned her head slightly. "What?"
"We have records," he said, gesturing vaguely toward a terminal. "Every portal used for first-year trials is logged and categorized. That one didn’t include anything capable of doing this. Nothing with claws like these. Nothing that tears flesh like this. Whoever did this wanted it to look like a monster attack, and they were good at it."
There was a pause.
Then he cleared his throat, realizing how close he was to sounding impressed. Liane’s white eyes hadn’t blinked once. They stared straight through him.
He quickly looked back down. "A-anyway, there’s more. Look at this."
He reached down and carefully turned the body to expose the midsection. The torso had been cut open with surgical precision. The core cavity was empty.
"Someone harvested their cores," he said flatly. "This wasn’t just an attack. This was planned."
Liane’s silence deepened. She didn’t ask for clarification.
The man continued, his voice dropping. "This wasn’t done by some scared student lashing out, either. Whoever did this was strong. I’d bet on a B-rank or higher. Maybe even someone trained."
That made Liane narrow her eyes for the first time.
Someone had faked monster wounds.
Someone had stolen cores.
Liane stared down at the body.
She wanted to say she was surprised—but she wasn’t. Not really.
She was surprised it had happened here, inside the academy, under their watch, and that whoever did it had gotten away with it. But the act itself—core harvesting—that didn’t shock her.
The further they strayed from what society called normal, the less human people treated them.
And there were groups out there, who believed that evolved cores held more power than any others. Cults, mostly. Some old, some new. All obsessed with the same thing: strength.
According to them, evolved cores could push you past your natural ceiling.
A person who was stuck at Rank E might experice a jump of potential to rank C. Some claimed it could even take them to B or higher.
Others talked about new abilities gained overnight. Liane didn’t believe all of it—especially the last part.
That sounded more like fantasy than fact. But she did believe people would kill for the chance to try.
The government worked hard to keep it buried. If the public ever accepted those rumors as truth, it would be chaos.
𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂 A civil war between carriers and evolved wasn’t something anyone wanted, it could potentially put the city to danger.
The evolved might be fewer in number now, but they grew fast. And Liane knew firsthand there were more hiding in the city than anyone liked to admit.
She looked at the student’s body one more time, as she pressed her lips together and gave the man beside her a quiet nod.
"Thank you," she said, voice level. Then she turned and left the room.