Chapter 100: Mia’s Revelation

It was still early in the school day, with today’s test scheduled to begin right after class break. That left students with a short stretch of free time to review material, chat, and mentally prepare before the examination resumed.

The classroom carried a noticeably calmer energy compared to how things had felt during the competition period.

No chaotic excitement buzzed through the room, no loud celebrating over recent victories, no heated discussion about match outcomes. Students stayed considerably more aware of what still waited for them once break ended.

A test.

Because of that, most of them were taking their prep seriously enough.

Some reviewed notes quietly.

Others murmured through questions with friends nearby.

A few simply rested their heads flat against their desks, trying to scrape together enough energy to survive yet another academic stretch.

Where Mia sat, though, her thoughts were clearly somewhere else entirely, nowhere near the upcoming test.

She sat quietly beside Victor, fingers resting idly against the edge of her desk, eyes drifting slowly across the room.

Eventually, her gaze landed on Jack’s still empty seat.

Again.

His continued absence had started feeling genuinely unsettling by this point.

She’d grown used to having two people around her consistently, not just one.

Jack’s presence, however irritating it could admittedly get sometimes, had become part of the normal rhythm of her everyday school life. His absence now left behind a strange, noticeable gap she couldn’t fully shake off.

Still, Jack wasn’t the only thing weighing on her mind.

Her thoughts kept circling back to that strange encounter with Carlo, the school’s seemingly tireless, multitasking staff member.

The revelation of exactly how powerful that man genuinely was had left Mia struggling, even now, to fully process what she’d witnessed.

She’d always prided herself on being able to read people accurately.

Observe them closely.

Analyze their behavior.

Understand what drove them.

That particular skill had let her gather all sorts of useful information plenty of others simply overlooked entirely.

But whatever she’d uncovered about Carlo had genuinely shaken her confidence in that ability.

And now she found herself carrying another secret altogether.

A far heavier one this time.

She’d been explicitly instructed to keep it to herself.

She understood exactly why.

Still, holding onto it alone felt almost physically unbearable.

Like carrying a slowly ticking bomb lodged somewhere inside her own chest.

Every passing second seemed to add just a little more invisible weight to it.

Mia was normally the type who could sit on information indefinitely, provided doing so actually benefited her in some way. She could bury thoughts, plans, suspicions, and quiet observations without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt over it.

She could even be fairly ruthless when the situation called for it.

This, though, felt entirely different.

This involved someone she’d genuinely distrusted, someone she’d actively treated with open hostility in the past.

The revelation had forced her to reconsider practically everything she thought she already understood.

She couldn’t just keep pretending none of it had happened.

Eventually, she settled on exactly who she’d actually tell.

Not Kai.

Not anyone from his circle either.

She’d rather let them keep playing their own little game, blissfully unaware of what was actually unfolding beneath the surface.

Instead, she’d confide in the person closest to her currently available.

Victor.

Mia turned slightly in her seat toward him.

"Victor."

Her voice came out uncertain, reaching his ears.

Victor glanced toward her.

He noticed the restrained, careful expression on her face almost immediately. Mia usually carried herself with confident, controlled composure, but something about her right now read noticeably different.

Her eyes carried genuine seriousness.

Her expression sat visibly tense.

Even her voice had lost some of its usual sharp certainty.

Victor’s first assumption was that she was finally bringing up Jack’s continued absence.

A flicker of concern crossed his face.

But then Mia spoke instead.

"I might be a pretty bad leader for not telling you about this sooner. Or maybe not, honestly, not sure."

She paused.

Her eyes dropped toward her desk.

For several long seconds, she seemed genuinely torn over whether to keep going.

Then she finally let out a breath.

"So, yesterday, when you escorted me and took my bag and handkerchief back to class while I stepped away to the bathroom, something happened. I ran into something I genuinely couldn’t believe."

Victor’s eyebrows shot upward.

"Wait, really? What happened? Damn it, I should’ve stuck around to keep an eye out for you."

Genuine concern crept immediately into his voice.

He pressed his lips together, studying her expression closely.

Mia frowned sharply.

"Don’t you dare start acting like some idiot over this. Seriously? You think I’d actually want some guy tailing me all the way to the bathroom like some kind of freaking creep?"

She caught herself the instant the words left her mouth, letting out a short, frustrated breath.

Victor blinked, caught off guard.

For a moment, he genuinely couldn’t figure out what exactly he’d said wrong.

Then he raised both hands in quick surrender.

"Okay, okay, fair enough, I hear you."

Mia shot him one more irritated look before continuing.

"What I actually saw made me seriously question everything I’ve done to claw my way to the top here."

Her voice dropped noticeably quieter.

"Honestly, it’s probably the most unsettling thing I’ve ever gotten tangled up in. You know how I usually go around putting people back in their proper place, especially that one particular person you’ve been looking down on with that weirdly intense hatred of yours."

Victor’s expression shifted instantly.

He already knew exactly who she meant.

Mia pressed on.

"And thinking back now, over everything I’ve actually done to that same person, only to find out he’s apparently something completely beyond what any of us imagined, it’s honestly been haunting me."

Victor stared at her, caught completely off guard.

Whatever lingering worry he’d been carrying over Jack’s absence slipped momentarily out of focus.

Mia glanced toward the front of the classroom before dropping her voice further still.

"Who even knows if the school’s actually aware of this or not? But I saw it myself. Firsthand. No doubt about it."

She swallowed hard.

Her fingers tightened visibly against the edge of her desk.

"It was a Monarch tier reading."

Victor’s eyes went wide.

The words settled heavily between them.

Monarch tier.

A level of power genuinely feared, respected, and actively sought after across the entire region.

It wasn’t just some casual rank students tossed around in passing conversation. It represented a level of raw strength capable of completely reshaping how people viewed someone. A person carrying power like that simply couldn’t be dismissed as just another ordinary student any longer.

Mia’s voice dropped down to barely a whisper.

"And that hidden gem turned out to be..."

She paused.

Victor’s heart pounded harder, waiting on the name.

Mia finally looked him dead in the eyes.

"Mark Moulow."

Silence followed immediately after.

The classroom carried on steadily around them.

Students flipped through pages.

Pens scratched quietly across notebooks.

Someone laughed softly somewhere across the room.

A chair shifted lightly against the floor.

Yet for Mia and Victor, every bit of that background noise felt distant, almost entirely unreal.

Victor sat perfectly still.

For several long seconds, he genuinely couldn’t decide whether to believe a single word of it.

Then he straightened up sharply.

A defiant scoff slipped out of him.

"Mark? Seriously?"

The name came out thick with disbelief.

His chest felt tight despite the dismissive tone he’d forced into his voice.

Victor stared at her, half expecting her to burst out laughing, to admit she’d just been testing him the whole time.

She didn’t.

Her expression stayed completely serious.

That alone made his own disbelief sit considerably more uncomfortably than before.

Victor leaned in closer.

"You’re telling me Mark Moulow is actually a Monarch?"

Mia didn’t answer right away.

Her eyes stayed fixed on him.

The revelation itself had already left her buried under more questions than she knew what to do with.

She’d spent so long looking down on Mark, judging him, provoking him, treating him exactly according to the image she’d convinced herself he’d deliberately built around himself.

That entire image had just cracked wide open.

And what sat underneath it was something she’d never once seen coming.

Hidden power.

A hidden identity entirely.

A level of strength genuinely capable of placing him among the most formidable individuals in the entire region.

Victor’s earlier scoff faded away completely.

His expression shifted into something far less certain.

He glanced toward Mark’s seat.

Mark wasn’t there at the moment.

Still, simply knowing that the same student they’d both treated as just another ordinary troublemaker might sec

retly carry Monarch tier power made that empty space feel strangely, genuinely significant.

Mia followed his gaze.

Neither of them said anything further for several long seconds.

The test itself hadn’t even started yet.

But for Mia, the real examination had already begun, somewhere deep inside her own head.

She was only just beginning to question everything she thought she’d ever actually understood about Mark Moulow.