CHAPTER 284: EXAM (6)

The next morning, the academy buzzed with rumor.

Even though the instructors had tried to suppress talk of the "exam incident," word spread faster than mana through a conduit.

Whispers in the corridors.

Speculation in the dining halls.

Some said a monster had broken through the boundary.

Others claimed it was a secret test by the Headmistress herself.

Only Merlin and his group knew how close the truth had come to killing them.

As they sat in the cafeteria, Nathan leaned across the table, whispering low. "You think the Headmistress’ll tell us what really happened?"

Merlin stirred his drink absently. "No."

Ethan frowned. "Then what do we do? Just act like it didn’t happen?"

"Pretty much," Merlin said dryly. "That’s what the academy wants."

Liliana sighed. "I hate that he’s probably right."

Across the table, Elara watched Merlin quietly, her expression unreadable.

Finally, she said, "If they won’t tell us, we find out ourselves."

Nathan raised a brow. "You mean, investigate?"

Elara nodded. "If something that dangerous appeared inside an academy barrier, it means the wards were tampered with. That’s not something you can ignore."

Ethan grimaced. "You realize that sounds like a bad idea, right?"

Merlin looked up, meeting her gaze. "If you’re planning to dig into this, do it carefully. Whoever did this isn’t just powerful, they’re organized."

She tilted her head slightly. "You already have a name in mind, don’t you?"

He didn’t answer.

But that was enough of an answer.

Later that day, Merlin made his way toward the old archives beneath the academy’s central library.

Few students ever came here, the air smelled of dust and age, the shelves lined with faded tomes that predated the academy’s founding.

He traced his fingers along the spines of several books before pulling out a small one, "Unverified Affinity Experiments, Year 982."

Inside, the text was sparse, incomplete, a collection of research fragments.

But one paragraph caught his attention:

"The human group self-identified as The Obsidian Veil seeks to destabilize natural mana boundaries, believing the soul’s vessel can evolve beyond the Five-Layer Limitation. Early trials resulted in catastrophic resonance implosions..."

He shut the book.

That confirmed it.

The rift they encountered was one of those "implosions."

An experiment gone wrong, or maybe right, depending on what the Veil wanted.

And if the organization was active now, in this timeline, that meant events in the novel were shifting faster than they were supposed to.

His very existence had accelerated them.

That night, he sat cross-legged on the floor of his dorm room, a faint shimmer of lightning and wind mana swirling around him.

He wasn’t meditating, not really.

He was listening.

Space and wind together let him sense disturbances in the surrounding air and mana field.

And tonight, that wrong pulse he’d felt earlier was stronger.

It wasn’t in the academy itself.

It was beneath it.

A faint vibration, hidden deep in the mana network.

Someone, or something, was tapping into the academy’s main conduit from below.

His eyes opened, glowing faintly gold.

"...They’re already inside," he muttered.

He stood, reaching for his jacket, but before he could move further, his wristband buzzed.

A message blinked across the display, a secure channel, locked and sealed with Morgana’s crest.

"Everhart. Come to my office. Immediately."

He froze.

She knew.

Either she had sensed it too... or she’d been waiting for him to notice.

The summons came at midnight.

The academy’s corridors were silent, washed pale by the moonlight that streamed through tall glass windows. Merlin’s footsteps echoed faintly against the marble, each step a measured cadence that matched the rhythm of his heartbeat.

Morgana’s office was deep in the western tower, a place few students ever entered willingly. The air grew heavier the closer he got, the faint hum of mana wards pressing gently against his senses like unseen waves.

When he finally reached the door, it opened before he could knock.

A quiet voice floated from within.

"Enter."

He stepped inside.

The room was dark, lit only by the soft flicker of violet runes that lined the walls. Shelves of books rose high around the chamber, and in the center stood a desk carved from obsidian wood, smooth as glass. Behind it sat Morgana, her dark hair tied back, her violet eyes catching the lamplight like twin shards of amethyst.

"Close the door," she said.

He did.

For a moment, neither spoke. The silence stretched, deliberate, heavy, calculated. Then Morgana gestured toward the chair opposite her.

"Sit, Merlin."

He obeyed, posture straight. His golden eyes reflected faint traces of the runes flickering along the floor.

"You’ve been busy tonight," she began, her voice soft but sharp. "I felt your mana probing through the wards. You weren’t exactly subtle."

"I wasn’t trying to be," he said calmly.

Her brow arched slightly. "No? Then perhaps you wanted to be caught."

He tilted his head. "Maybe."

Morgana exhaled faintly, leaning back in her chair. "Then let’s skip the act. You’ve already realized the truth, haven’t you?"

Merlin met her gaze. "The rift wasn’t a natural occurrence."

"No."

"It was planted."

"Yes."

"And the source was human."

Her eyes flickered, not surprise, not denial, but acknowledgment. "...Correct."

Merlin folded his hands on his knee. "Then you also know who it was."

"Perhaps," Morgana said, standing slowly. Her robe moved like shadow, trailing behind her as she walked toward the window overlooking the academy’s courtyard. "But knowing and proving are different things."

She turned slightly, profile outlined by moonlight. "Tell me, Everhart. What do you know of the Obsidian Veil?"

He didn’t flinch. "Enough."

"That’s vague."

"I know they’re human extremists. I know they tamper with affinities. And I know they shouldn’t exist right now."

That made her pause. Her gaze sharpened slightly. "Shouldn’t exist?"

He smiled faintly. "You said to skip the act."

For a moment, the tension in the room shifted, subtle, but real. Morgana studied him quietly, and when she finally spoke again, her tone was slower, almost cautious.

"...You’ve seen their name before, haven’t you? Not in records."

"In a way," Merlin said. "But they were supposed to appear years later. Not now."

Morgana’s expression barely changed, but her voice grew softer. "I see."

She walked back to her desk, hands brushing the air above it. A rune shimmered, and a holographic projection flared to life, a map of the academy grounds, glowing lines marking mana conduits beneath the surface.

At the far southern corner of the map, one pulse flickered red.

"This," she said, "is where we detected the anomaly. The same energy signature from the rift. Someone’s tampered with the main conduit, using it to conduct experimental mana flow."

Merlin frowned slightly. "How long have you known?"

"Since the night before the exam."

"And you still went through with it."

Morgana smiled faintly, though there was no humor in it. "Would you have preferred I cancel the exams and alert the entire student body? Panic is an even greater enemy than ignorance."

He didn’t argue. She was right, she usually was.

"But now," she continued, "things have changed. The signature’s growing stronger. We’ve traced it to a chamber beneath the academy’s first construction layer, an old testing ground abandoned over a century ago."

Merlin’s gaze sharpened. "You mean the Veiled Archive?"

Morgana’s eyes flicked to him. "You know of it?"

"I’ve heard the name," he said carefully. He had read the name, a minor setting detail from the novel’s background Chapters, something that had never mattered before.

"That archive," Morgana said, "was once used for affinity stabilization experiments. Long before my time. Before even the Founding Council’s reforms. It was sealed off after a resonance implosion nearly destroyed half the tower."

Merlin’s mind raced.

Resonance implosion.

The same term that appeared in the book he’d read in the archives.

So the Obsidian Veil wasn’t just acting independently, they were using the remnants of the academy’s forgotten experiments.

That meant someone had fed them information.

Someone inside the academy.