In the procession, the kids stared at each other, shell-shocked. Whispers started, slithering through the group.

  What could a Warden have done to get a bounty put on his head like that? To be executed, right there on the spot?

  They could barely cobble together a theory. Most of them barely knew what had happened back in the Orchard.

  Only Pandora was quiet, her mind racing.

  Dulles... he’d been brought back by Faye, she was sure of it. The resurrected Dulles had been doing his Warden duties, loyal as a dog. But he knew nothing of his own crazed advancement pn, or of Pandora, the enemy who’d killed him.

  Faye must have wiped his memory.

  If that was the case... the sudden appearance of the Discipline Hall, this whole scene with Dulles… was it possible that this was also Faye’s handiwork?

  From the perspective of the ultimate beneficiary… wasn’t it… her?

  This terrifying thought surfaced in Pandora’s mind. She flipped it over and over, examining it from every angle. Dulles’s death, in front of everyone—it conveniently buried everything that had happened in the Orchard. From now on, for those events, dead men tell no tales.

  This… wasn’t this immensely beneficial to her?

  Before, she’d been worried that the commotion at the Warden’s base might be discovered by the Demon Hunter Academy, earning her a one-way ticket to a punishment cell.

  Now… that wasn’t such a big concern anymore.

  She was almost amazed by her own audacious, almost insane, conjecture. But on second thought, there was nothing unreasonable about it. In fact… it was perfectly logical.

  ………………

  Not long after the man from the Discipline Hall left, the procession, in a heavy and strange silence, set off once more.

  Along the way, they saw no one else like the grim, cold apprentice from before. It was even difficult to spot any of the older, more serious-looking senior apprentices.

  The hushed whispers, born from witnessing the brutal execution, continued to spread until Poppy’s emotionless voice cut through them again.

  “Actually, it’s rare to see senior apprentices on the campus grounds themselves.”

  Poppy led from the front, her tone matter-of-fact, like she was reading a report.

  “That’s because the time any batch of freshmen can spend here is limited.”

  She paused, letting that little bombshell sink in.

  “The time limit is three months.”

  “For those three months, you’re on campus. You’ll learn the fundamentals. You’ll master how to fight with your body, with tools.”

  “After that… you’re out.”

  Her gaze swept over the new faces that had clearly grown tense upon hearing this.

  “‘Outside’… in that city of ruins… is where your much, much longer apprenticeship truly begins.”

  “On campus, it’s retively safe. The learning process is tense and exhausting, yeah, but at least there are basic guarantees. It’s safe.”

  “You’ll have a much deeper understanding of this once you get ‘outside’.”

  Poppy reminded them, her tone as calm and chilling as falling icicles.

  In truth, she didn’t need to say a word. They already understood what that deadline meant. They’d seen it on the walk over. They’d seen a group get jumped, their supplies hard-won from a derelict store snatched away. They’d seen people curled up in corners, clothes in tatters, their eyes unnervingly numb. They’d even seen the desiccated corpses of the ones who’d starved on the roadside, left where they fell.

  Life out here was a zero-sum game.

  Therefore, they had to spend these three months desperately mastering everything they could. Otherwise, once they left the Academy’s protection, they would… be unable to take a single step.

  Perhaps because everyone felt that immense pressure, the kind that could crush them, the procession, moving through the vast industrial zone, fell silent.

  Everyone tried their best to memorize every pce name, every rule that Poppy introduced.

  Poppy offered no words of comfort. She merely, coldly, led everyone through the main areas of the campus, mentioning some unwritten, yet universally observed, hidden rules.

  Among them, the teaching district, the dorms, and the mess hall were naturally the most important, the pces they’d frequent the most in the coming months.

  However, what interested Pandora the most was the library.

  It was an enormous, uniquely shaped, triangur building. Apprentices came and went through its heavy iron doors in a constant stream. It seemed many people shared her line of thought.

  But that was normal. The theoretical instruction for Demon Hunter apprentices was scarce, to the point where it could be described as “cking.” So, to master the necessary knowledge, apprentices had to learn to study on their own, learning to find what they needed in a sea of materials, and to read, understand, and digest it on their own. And the library, naturally, was an indispensable part of that.

  In the afternoon, Poppy had given them a cursory tour of most of the locations.

  But there were still some areas she didn’t take them to, didn’t even mention, because they weren’t generally accessible to apprentices like them. Only by obtaining permission from the person in charge of those areas—usually, a powerful Demon Hunter mentor—could they be granted entry. Therefore, to a certain extent, these areas became forbidden zones for apprentices. Trespass without permission, and you might be killed on the spot—and the Academy wouldn’t be held responsible!

  “That one, for example, is the Discipline Hall… if you can help it, it’s best not to have any dealings with the Discipline Hall.”

  Poppy raised a hand, pointing to a distance, at a somber, oppressive bck structure built entirely from some kind of bck rock. Its style was completely at odds with the industrial feel of the surrounding buildings.

  “The Discipline Hall is responsible for maintaining order within the Academy.”

  Her voice dropped a few notes.

  “Their methods of punishment are cruel and filled with torment... they are feared by many apprentices.”

  “However, the Academy doesn’s have many rules. So as long as you don’t do anything stupid, it’s not that easy to run into someone from the Discipline Hall.”

  Having just witnessed the bloody and efficient methods of the Discipline Hall with their own eyes, their understanding of Poppy’s warning was, naturally, visceral.

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