At the start of his thirteenth lap,
Ashok crossed the line with the same quiet pace he had been keeping from the beginning.
Nothing flashy, no sudden burst of speed — just the same steady jog.
But this time, as he moved ahead, he found himself among students who had once sped far ahead of him.
They had been chasing after the main characters — Leon, Gideon, Mira — trying to stay in the top ten.
But now their feet dragged more than they ran. Their steps uneven, as if they were walking through knee-deep mud.
Their speed no different from undead skeletons or zombies.
Ashok, however, kept going like a slow cog in a clockwork machine — not fast, but not slowing either.
Looking around, he realized that he'd quietly moved past almost half the class.
Out of forty-five students, he was now somewhere around twentieth place, and even that was creeping upward. Behind him, many were still stuck trying to finish their twelfth lap, some even slipping into their eleventh.
He hadn't sped up — they had slowed down.
At the beginning of the session, he had been the object of quiet mockery.
They gave him sideways glances, amused by his relaxed running.
Some might've even thought he would give up before reaching halfway.
But now, those same faces were twisted with exhaustion. Their smiles were long gone.
The only thing on their faces now was fatigue — and maybe a little disbelief.
Their breaths came out like wheezes.
Their legs shook. Some even clutched their sides while running, fighting to stay upright.
They were so focused on keeping themselves from falling over, they didn't even notice when Ashok began overtaking them — one by one.
Now they were the ones staring at his back.
Their earlier smug expressions were replaced with something like quiet panic — the way someone looks when they realize they're being passed in a race they thought they had already won.
And Ashok? He kept his eyes forward.
But in his heart, he was smiling.
A few brave fools seeing Adlet moving forward tried to increase their speed through by sheer will, only to stumble again seconds later.
By the time the fifteenth lap arrived, a grim rhythm had settled over the training field.
The sound of Robert's stick slamming into flesh no longer sent shivers down every spine—it had become part of the background noise.
A cruel, consistent beat of discipline.
WHACK!
WHACK!
On the third hit, his eyes fluttered open, glazed and unfocused, mouth opening in a strangled gasp.
WHACK!
The fourth returned him to pain.
WHACK!
The fifth sent him back into unconsciousness.
Only after the fifth blow did Robert stop, his expression unreadable—not angry, not regretful, just blank, like a butcher inspecting meat.
Grabbing the limp student by the ankle, Robert dragged him across the dirt like a sack of grain, and with a single heave, tossed him unceremoniously out of the training field as if throwing away a broken tool.
Griselda didn't speak a word. Her arms remained folded, her gaze unchanged—as if everything that just happened was routine.
And to her, it was.
The rest of the students, panting and drained, cast glances at the unconscious body that now lay just outside the field.
His training suit was torn, and the skin on his calves was all but gone—ripped open from repeated strikes.
Blood oozed under the harsh sunlight, pooling slowly around the exposed flesh and torn muscle.
Some feared the student might have died—but a few minutes later, a pair of individuals arrived, wearing long white coats marked with the insignia of the Academy infirmary.
Without a word, they lifted the limp student onto a stretcher and carried him away.
And just like that, the run resumed as if nothing had happened.
Seeing the unconscious student get carted away, a strange glimmer of hope flickered in the eyes of many who were still running—barely.
The idea of collapsing and being removed from the field, even at the cost of a few bruised ribs or busted calves, was starting to look more and more appealing.
Their minds, dulled by heat and exhaustion, had begun whispering temptations:
'Maybe I should just fall… just once… take the hit, black out, and it'll all be over.'
It was a pitiful logic born not from cowardice, but from absolute depletion.
Their bodies were past the point of fatigue—lungs burned, legs trembled, and joints felt like rusted hinges grinding with every step.
And for those poor souls wearing the metal bracers, the suffering was on an entirely different level.
Some couldn't even lift their arms anymore.
Their limbs dangled limply, like overcooked noodles hanging from their shoulders.
As they ran—or rather, stumbled forward—they looked less like students and more like puppets whose strings were being yanked by a drunken hand.
It was comical in the most tragic way possible.
From a distance, it seemed like a bizarre parade of the damned.
Ten Minutes Later…
By the time the sixteenth lap began, the number of students still running had thinned significantly.
Ten had already been shipped off to the infirmary, their bodies too battered to continue—or simply deemed no longer amusing enough to beat.
The field, once full of thunderous footsteps, now echoed with uneven paces and strained groans.
Ashok, still maintaining his slow but consistent jog, glanced around at the new distribution.
His position had changed again.
Now, after keeping the same speed this entire time, he found himself just behind Varnok.
'One-fifth of the class thrown into the infirmary like sacks of bruised potatoes,' Ashok mused, letting a thin smile tug at his lips. 'I really did choose the right class… This is premium entertainment.'
Where else in the entire Academy would you witness your classmates getting swatted like flies, knocked out cold, and then quietly whisked away by medics like it was part of the lesson plan?
All while a sadistic Teaching Assistant grinned ear to ear with a stick thicker than most students' thighs?
He almost applauded the curriculum.
And now, with twenty percent of the students lying in cots somewhere inside the infirmary, wheezing into bandages, Ashok's steady pace had paid off.
From the last spot—forty-fifth place—he now found himself pacing steadily just behind the main characters.
Leon still held the lead, but Ashok had silently crept up to the sixth position.
From being the slowest to standing just outside the top five, it was no minor feat.
Behind him lay a trail of wheezing, wobbling, and half-conscious students, while ahead of him stood the pillars of the Academy's so-called prodigies.
And the one just in front of him was none other than Varnok—the very same muscle-bound gorilla who had once shouted "SLOW!" in Ashok's face.
The worst part for Varnok wasn't the pain in his arms or the burn in his thighs.
No—it was the creeping presence behind him.
The one he mocked.
Varnok wasn't alone in this realization.
Every one of the main characters—Leon, Gideon, Zog, Mira, even Elara—was painfully aware of the presence quietly gaining ground behind them.
Unlike them, who were visibly worn—faces flushed with heat, breath rattling like dying bellows, arms swinging low as if they weighed a ton—
Adlet looked untouched.
Not a hair out of place, not a wheeze.
His breathing was steady, calm, rhythmic.
His form, straight and controlled, which was quite hard to believe considering the fact that he had run the same distance as them.
If someone saw him now for the first time, they'd never believe he'd already completed sixteen laps.
They might even accuse him of cheating, or slacking, or skipping a few rounds when no one was watching.
That's how absurdly normal he looked on the outside as he ran.
Even Griselda, standing near the center with her arms crossed, couldn't hide the brief flicker of confusion in her eyes as she observed him.