Chapter 54: Easy Clearing

Arthur stopped conserving face.

The outer layer of the dungeon stretched ahead of him in a series of broken terraces and half-collapsed dream-structures. Nightmare constructs continued to form from the cracked ground and from the residual fear leaking off struggling students.

Most of the first wave had been generic — claws, teeth, and hunger. The second wave was starting to adapt. Some of the new constructs carried distorted echoes of real weapons. Others had learned to feint.

It did not matter.

Frost Sovereign answered the moment he called it. A thin, perfect layer of absolute cold sheathed his right hand and forearm. He drove the hand through the chest of a lunging construct and watched the entire upper body crystallize and shatter. Before the pieces hit the ground he was already moving.

A second construct tried to flank him. Arthur layered Mana Skin with a frost shell, absorbed the impact without losing stride, and answered with three dense ice needles that punched through its core in a tight triangle.

He did not slow down.

The remaining duration on Heavenfall Cyclone still sat in the second slot like a loaded weapon. He refused to touch it yet. Frost Sovereign at forty-three percent mastery, backed by an early Level 3 pool and months of brutal efficiency training, was already more than enough for the outer layer.

Every movement stayed economical. Every kill cost the minimum possible mana. When a cluster of six constructs rose together he drew a single horizontal line through the air with two fingers. A razor-thin crescent of compressed cold followed the gesture and cut all six in half at the waist.

Above him the broadcast crystals adjusted their angles.

Outside the dungeon, in the observation halls and on every major screen across the academy, the feed following Arthur Vance had begun to attract attention.

"That’s still the first-year?"

"Rewind that. Did he just cut six of them with one motion?"

"Check the mana expenditure readings. He’s barely spending anything."

A third-year evaluation instructor leaned closer to the main crystal display, frowning.

"His cold density is too high for the recorded mastery level of a basic magic. That’s high level affinity control."

Selene Frost stood at the back of the primary observation room with her arms folded. She said nothing. The faint satisfaction in her eyes was visible only to someone who knew her well. Talia Vane, watching from a different angle, let out a short, impressed breath through her nose and muttered, "About time the rest of them noticed."

Inside the fragment Arthur reached the edge of a wide, sunken basin. Dozens of students were trapped at the bottom, pinned down by a continuous spawn of constructs that reformed almost as quickly as they were killed.

Wide-area attacks only bought seconds. A second-year girl with a powerful flame Grimoire was burning through her mana pool at an unsustainable rate trying to keep a defensive circle alive.

Arthur did not enter the basin.

He stopped at the rim, raised both hands, and wrote a complex freezing array in the air with rapid, precise gestures. Frost Sovereign answered cleanly. A lattice of ultra-dense cold spread across the entire basin floor in less than three seconds.

Every construct touching the ground flash-froze from the feet up. The students inside the circle stared as their enemies became brittle statues.

Arthur closed his fist.

The statues shattered into uniform shards.

He was already running along the rim before the last pieces finished falling. The trapped students scrambled for the newly opened exits. A few shouted thanks. Most simply fled toward the next safe path. Arthur ignored both reactions. The broadcast crystals tracked him without pause.

Deeper into the outer layer the terrain began to shift. Walls rose and sank. Corridors that had existed a moment earlier folded into solid rock. The dungeon was testing adaptability now. Arthur frost-coated his boots and used short ice platforms to cross gaps that opened without warning.

When a distorted nightmare version of a heavy knight formed in front of him — complete with echo-plate armor and a blade longer than Arthur was tall — he finally allowed a fraction more power into Frost Sovereign.

The temperature in a five-meter radius plummeted. Moisture in the air became glittering dust.

Arthur stepped inside the knight’s guard during the fractional delay caused by the sudden cold, placed one palm against the echo-armor, and released a focused spike of absolute zero directly into the construct’s core. The knight froze solid from the point of contact outward. A single follow-up strike reduced it to rubble.

Mana expenditure remained well inside comfortable limits.

Outside, the commentary had changed tone.

"He’s not fighting like someone trying to survive the outer layer. He’s hunting."

"Final-year students clear this section at roughly that pace. Some of them slower."

"Where did a first-year get high-density frost control?"

Julian’s feed, displayed on a secondary screen, showed the lightning user carving his own efficient path through a different sector. Ragna’s gravity techniques crushed entire groups at once. Celian’s analytical style produced clean, methodical progress.

All three were performing at a level that justified their captain positions. None of them were matching Arthur’s combination of speed and low expenditure.

Iris’s feed remained one of the most closely watched. She moved like a ghost through her sector, applying micro-dreams that made monsters hesitate, misjudge distances, or briefly forget they were supposed to be attacking. Her pace was nearly as fast as Arthur’s. The unstable pressure around her Grimoire continued to build, but she was still containing it.

Arthur felt the dungeon’s attention shift again.

The outer layer was beginning to thin. Stronger students were converging on the major paths that led to the middle strata. Monsters were no longer spawning in random waves; they were being directed. Arthur killed a final pack of adaptive constructs with a spinning burst of ice needles, then paused on a high fragment of broken stairway to reassess.

His mana pool sat at roughly seventy percent. Frost Sovereign remained responsive and clean. No injuries. No wasted motion. The first major branch point lay ahead — a yawning archway of fused bone and crystal that pulsed with deeper nightmare light. Beyond it the real filtering would begin.

Mimi finally spoke, sounding almost satisfied.

"Outer layer complete. You’re running ahead of nearly everyone who isn’t a captain or a dedicated climber. The people outside have officially stopped laughing about the Tier 1."

Arthur glanced upward at the nearest broadcast crystal. It hovered silently, recording everything.

Let them watch.

He adjusted the frost layer across his hands, checked the path one last time, and descended toward the archway at a steady run. Behind him the outer layer continued to claim the careless and the exhausted. Ahead of him the dungeon grew darker, denser, and more intelligent.

The easy part was over.

Arthur crossed the threshold into the middle strata without looking back.