Chapter 317: Blood Teaches Best II

Words : 1226 Updated : Oct 5th, 2025

Chapter 317: Blood Teaches Best II The students didn’t hesitate. Noor stepped in first, attacking with gravity, trying to send him crashing to the ground. Two noble kids followed, their spells clumsy, trying to trap him in their elements. Again, Malik barely moved. He only ducked, slid, and stepped around. His movement was always quiet, making it seem as if sound couldn’t catch up, even though he was barely using any of his strength. Running over those hit by their fellow students’ attacks, Zafar joined in as well. His runic attacks were the clumsiest, but due to his luck... Boom! Were the most accurate. Malik stepped back, glancing at his shoulder where he had taken a direct hit. A direct hit. The fireball had missed by at least ten feet, but then, when Malik’s attention left it, the fireball suddenly hit the ground, bounced into a wall, and another, until it beelined it into him. ’...Ridiculous.’ Only now did Malik realize just how broken this lucky bastard was. If he were to ensure this... loss never repeated, he’d need to prepare for his attack in at least ten different ways. Shaking his head, he shrugged it off and looked at them. They came all at once. Roya vanished into the shadow of a student, stabbing low, her blade nearly slicing through the afterimage of Malik’s thigh. Noor raised her hand, and gravity twisted around it. Malik’s feet dug into the ground from the invisible weight, but he slid back, letting it crash into where he’d just stood. From the side, Zafar fired off a rune. One that glowed purple, was scribbled on the ground, and launched like a drunk arrow. It ricocheted off one watchtower, missed another, curved toward a rock, and— BOOM! —exploded two inches from Malik’s ribs. "...Tch." He actually had to fend that one off. It was annoying. Malik almost felt like grabbing the kid’s face and smashing it through to the bottom of this hill, but held himself back. Good thing he did, because three more joined in from the back, one summoning a stone golem, another launching small bolts of fire that wobbled like bees mid-flight, while the third summoned water, hurling it towards him like it were deadly. It wasn’t. Malik barely acknowledged them; instead, he waved a hand towards, sending a burst of fire that protected them from their own attacks. He then tilted his head and jumped up, above Roya’s daggers. She followed, agile, her strikes wilder now. In all honesty, the girl looked good, clean footwork and tight rotations. Plenty of blood and tears had been spent to reach this level, but unfortunately for her, she was attacking someone untouchable... at least for someone in her rank and skill level. She needed more, something beyond anything she could ever expect. Noor caught on to that impossibility and switched tactics. She didn’t aim at Malik anymore; she aimed around him. The stone around his feet started crumbling as she tried to shift his center of balance. Tried. Malik stepped off one collapsing part of the platform and landed on another, dodging her attempts before they could even begin to affect him in any way. Zafar attacked again, this time closer. His body was covered in wind now, and that rune spell of his clung to the air. The moment he drew another rune, Malik was already looking at it. There was no doubt that it was Crude. Sloppy. But that luck... It triggered anyway. The rune shot sideways and curved into Roya’s hidden shadow blade, sparking a chain reaction. The shadow exploded. Noor’s gravity flux misfired. Everyone’s attacks went off prematurely. Malik’s internal calculations were messed up completely, but still, he glanced at what was coming and then simply walked straight through it all. Just a single step, head low, sword still unsheathed. And yes, he didn’t draw it. Didn’t need to. It was a sword used only against the worthy. As the explosions died down, his eyes darted across each of them. Zafar’s luck. Noor’s gravity. Roya’s shadow. He was learning. Learning more about them. Their weaknesses, their strengths. One breath later, they were back on him again. Noor raised her hand, downward force meant to pin him mid-step. He ducked. Roya leapt over Noor’s shoulder, blades spinning. She swiped— Malik leaned sideways. It missed. Zafar tried to flank, his wind now tethered to his arms. "Stand! DOWN!" He screamed as he swung a half-formed lance of air down at him. Malik caught it with his palm. The spell malfunctioned, exploding against him— Whoosh! But Malik was gone before the explosion could reach him, stepping sideways, slipping past the light, the heat, the gust— "No talking back." Right behind Zafar. Then, before the pitiful boy could even process what happened— CRACK. A single punch had come. The arena shook, and Zafar flew like a sack of rocks, bouncing off the stone, over and over until his body skidded to a stop with a wheezing grunt. "ZAFAR!" Some girl screamed for him. The others looked at Malik like he had lost his mind, but he didn’t seem to care; rather, he was going to double down. Flames erupted, three, four, five in a row, all above his left hand. Malik waved it forward, hurling them at Zafar’s downed body, each one barely missing skin but close enough to char him good. "STOP!" Another student ran forward to shield him with their earth, and the rest piled in a second later, shields and spells raised. Roya dashed between the fireballs with a snarl. "He’s had enough! What the Hell is wrong with you!?" Malik raised a hand, and the fire died. Just like that. "..." "..." "..." Silence resounded for one very long and tense moment. He spoke only when it reached its end, when their faces showed maximum fear: "...You aim bloodlust at someone, you better be ready when it comes back." They stared at him. Zafar coughed, lying in a half-burned crater, half-conscious. "Lesson one." Malik looked down at all of them. "Don’t provoke something you can’t kill." Roya’s hands shook. "Stomp your ego." Noor’s eyes narrowed. "Don’t rely on what’s not yours." Zafar... scoffed, or at least tried to, blood dripping down his lips. "Bastard..." Malik turned away. "I’m Malik, a man who did nothing but kill and lead men into war... Now, I’ll be your professor... call me that." The fight was over. "I don’t need students. If you think clearing a field is beneath you, then you wouldn’t last a moment in a battlefield soaked in your friend’s blood. Go back to the palace. Pretend you know something. Play noble. If not, stay; I’ll be teaching you all how to be true Magi..." But the lesson? "Expect a lot of pain." It had only just begun. "Blood teaches best." Malik began to walk away, his back to them, eyes watching the clear sky. He gave no words of praise. No "good job" or applause. And yet... something had shifted inside his students. Noor looked at her staff. Roya stared at her bent blade. Zafar wiped blood off his lips. They didn’t say it aloud, but they felt it. They were no longer students in an Academy. They were warriors on borrowed time. If they didn’t keep up, his fire was ready to consume them.

Chapter 317: Blood Teaches Best II

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