Read Novel Full Chapter 407: Homecoming [I]
Chapter 407: Homecoming [I]
The vast compound outside the docking area was chaotically crowded.
Loud was too simple a word to describe it. The cacophony was deafening to the point it was now on the verge of being compressed noise.
Casey had grown up relatively sheltered, so she hadn’t visited the streets even during the harvest festivals up North.
But judging by this mire of people, a literal swarm of bodies where everyone was furiously elbowing and pushing and clawing one another for a better view...
This had to be worse.
"What is wrong with these people?!" Casey fretted, nearly losing her balance as someone shoved past her shoulder.
"They’re excited!" Myra yelled back, already getting swept forward like a leaf in a flood, dragging her friend along.
Excitement...
That would be one way to describe this craze.
All around, for as clearly and as far as Casey could see in that mess of a human tsunami, she could spot only a handful of upperclassmen and first-year transfers.
There must be a lot more, but not in her view.
Still, it meant that the majority of the crowd was made up of the original first-years.
With hundreds of bodies pressing against them, the two girls waded through the mob until they reached the front-adjacent row.
’This place wasn’t designed for a moshpit,’ was Casey’s first thought. While her second was, ’There’s no way the legends are true. Everyone has to be coping... right?’
Because there was no way so many people were losing their minds like this over three kids in the same age brackets as themselves!
Yes, the three kids in question were returning from surviving a Death Zone, but maybe they were just stranded close to the exit. Maybe they were lucky.
They had to be, right?
Surely they didn’t survive an entire venture across a nightmarish region full of eldritch horrors and abominable monstrosities, right?
Casey planted her feet harder, bracing herself against the constant tide of shoulders and elbows. Her fingers curled on their own, nails biting into her palm to ground herself.
This was hysteria.
Collective mass hysteria.
There was no other explanation.
"They’re acting like royalty just landed," she muttered under her breath.
No, actually. Not even royalty.
Not even Alice or Willem gets this kind of fanfare.
...If this could even be called that.
No, no.
Until she saw it with her own eyes, she wasn’t ready to accept the truth. Or whatever version of it these people had decided to believe.
"Move! I can’t see!" someone yelled from behind, jostling to get a better viewpoint at the very front.
Casey didn’t push back since she was too busy staring at the massive reinforced glass doors of the primary docking bay. The red light above the frame blinked a couple of times, then turned a steady green.
Hiss—!
The sharp sound of equalizing pressure cut through the chanting like a knife. The roar of the crowd died down instantly, replaced by a silence so sudden it was jarring.
It seemed like everyone was holding their breath when, from the mist of the decompressing dock, a few silhouettes emerged.
At that moment, for some inexplicable reason, Casey’s mind went back to how her father, the late Duke Eamon Torr Snowrite, used to recite to her his war stories.
In all his stories, one thing was constant.
He used to describe particularly strong opponents that he had faced over the years as having this unique kind of presence that wasn’t just physical weight or visual intimidation.
It was something different from Spirit Force, something different from a mere gap in ranks.
He said you could only feel it if you were somewhere around their level, but still not strong enough to bridge the gap.
It was a gap between a predator and its prey.
Casey never understood it back then, or even after she grew up. That was because she never crossed someone better than her in her rank.
Sure, there were people stronger than her, there were people with better abilities than her, and a few times there were even people with more grit than her — those ones were rare, of course.
But there was never anyone whom she could look at and say, "Yeah, I can’t compare to them."
...Not until those three figures walked out of that swirling mist.
Her eyes were first drawn to the boy in the center. Even among the sea of faces, he stood out as the most commanding.
Tall and lean and dressed in dark brown bottoms paired with a beige turtleneck that brought out the soft gold of his combed-back hair, he looked nothing short of a modern-day prince.
Casey remembered seeing him from afar once a very long time ago. Then she heard rumors about his antics, because nothing nobles liked more than gossiping about each other.
However, this Samael Theosbane was different from the young man she had heard about.
He carried himself with such unyielding confidence that told you he really believed the very ground he stepped on belonged to him, that every room he entered belonged to him, that every person who existed in his vicinity... belonged to him.
But he was no prince.
He may have been a heartthrob, possessing dashing looks that left every maiden smitten and every gentleman either green with envy or gaping in awe, but... he was no prince.
Because the look in his eyes was so utterly demeaning and dismissive that he may as well have been surrounded by pests instead of humans.
He had no reaction to the gathered crowd at all, as if he were someone who had a habit of being in the spotlight and complaining about the brightness since birth.
To his left was another young man with raven-black curls and a ghostly fair complexion.
The baggy dark circles under his eyes, the chiseled jawline, and the way he hunched a little despite being so tall made for an appearance that was equally, if not more, striking compared to Samael... only in a much more emo, gloomy aesthetic.
His half-lidded gaze was sharp and pointed, regarding the crowd with a splash of surprise on his otherwise jaded face.
And behind them, a girl with hair as white as a winter moon walked with a feline grace. Though she wore shades and kept her face down, looking at her phone as her fingers continued swiping up the screen...
There was something about her... something undeniably raw and magnetic, an inexplicable pull that drew surrounding gazes to her.
’T-These guys...’
Casey’s expression hardened.
’They are monsters...’
For the first time in forever, she understood what her father meant.
A gap that you could perceive but could not bridge.
Someone who exists in the same world as yours but in a league far above your own.
An instinctual feeling that whatever you do, you may never be their match.
That white-haired girl...
If Casey tried, she guessed she could at least put up a fight with her. But those two boys were a whole different story.
Even though their posture seemed relaxed, Casey couldn’t perceive a single opening. She gritted her teeth and focused, imagining a scenario where she drew her blade and lunged.
In her mind’s eye, she was faster than the fastest B-rank she had ever faced.
And yet she didn’t even make it halfway.
Before her foot could even leave the pavement, the blond one would have ended her. It wasn’t a guess as much as it was a mathematical certainty.
’What the hell...?’
The sound of the trio’s footfall was all that resounded in the silence that had greeted their emergence. Then it was no more.
Casey felt a sudden roar reverberating from beneath her boots before the sound of hundreds of people cheering and chanting all at once hit the air, shaking the very ground.
—"SA-MAEL! SA-MAEL! SA-MAEL!"
—"Ace! You’re our Ace!"
—"Michael! Look over here, Michael! You saved my sister!"
—"Where is Alexia?!"
—"Can you guys please spare a moment!"
If not for their personal guards and knights and the armored line of Academy security, the trio would have been swallowed whole by the longing horde.
Casey watched, both mesmerized and repulsed, as the boy in the center slowly raised a hand. Instead of waving, he made a slight pressing motion with his palm.
It was a gesture so inherently authoritative that it felt like he was commanding the crowd to tone down the volume.
The chanting didn’t outright stop, but it still stifled into a low hum of whispers and camera shutters.
The three of them came to a halt just a few meters from where Casey stood.
Up close, their presence was truly smothering.
Samael turned his head slightly, his golden gaze sweeping over the front row. And for a terrifying heartbeat, his eyes met Casey’s.
She felt a cold jolt of electricity shoot down her spine. He saw her. He really saw her.
And in that microsecond, Casey felt her entire skill set, her lineage, even her pride being weighed... and found wanting.
Then, as quickly as it had landed, his gaze turned away as his knights urged him to keep moving. He did.
She was left standing there, humbled, just another face in the crowd. Another pest in his vicinity.
The noise dulled in her ears. She looked down at her hands and realized what it meant to be... outclassed.
Tearing herself away from her friend Myra, Casey whirled and started pushing through the wall of bodies.
She didn’t care who she elbowed, or about the indignant yelps of the people she shoved aside, or the way Myra was calling out her name in confusion.
She just needed to get away from... that.
"Propaganda," she spat out the word that felt far too bitter on her tongue now.
She said it was propaganda, an exaggeration born of trauma.
But as she looked down, she saw that her hands were still shaking. It wasn’t the tremor of fear— or at least, she refused to label it as such.
No, it was the physiological reaction of a supposed genius realizing that the top of the food chain had just been redefined.