Chapter 127: Dragon.

The darkened sky did not clear.

It deepened, stretched, and pressed down over the Academy until the lights across the roofs flickered like it was fighting for breath. Students were already running by the time the second crack sounded overhead. Instructors shouted for formation and failed to get it. The free-day calm of the intermediate class collapsed into pure noise, bags abandoned on benches, cups overturned, a girl screaming as the protective lines along the outer path sparked and died one after another.

Kai remained still for half a second longer than he should have, eyes locked on the blackening stretch above the towers.

[Mission active.]

[Save the Academy.]

[Immediate environmental threat confirmed.]

[Source classification: external force.]

External.

This wasn’t a training accident or a student experiment gone wrong and worse of all an internal force that could be repaired in a jiffy. Something had come from outside the barrier and put its weight on the school like it intended to test whether the place deserved to remain standing, someone with real power, someone who could break through the all powerful barrier the school had maintained for centuries unend.

Kai gulped a huge ball of spit as he gazed at the sky frozen in absolute fear.

This is insane, how can i deal with someone so powerful as that. It’s illogical.

Rolf grabbed his arm.

"Kai. Move."

That broke the freeze. They ran with the nearest cluster of students toward the inner path, where two intermediate instructors were trying to push people behind the still-stable court wards. A third crack split the air, closer this time, and a section of the eastern barrier shimmered hard before a tear opened in it like wet cloth under strain. Through that tear came the first wave of pressure, a cold dense force that made weaker students drop to their knees and forced even Kai to brace through his mana channels.

He hated the helplessness that rose with it.

Save the Academy.

The words uttered by the system itself were simple and short but it landed absurd in his body and psyche. How was he going to do it?.

If he were a divine-class mage already, if he had full control of denser spells, if perhaps the dragon, sealed bloodline had opened into something usable, maybe the mission would have sounded like a path instead of a bad joke. He was intermediate. He had a regulation wand, fifteen spells with one true A-rank spearhead, flight, and a set of tools that had kept him alive through ugly days. That still did not sound like enough to hold up a whole institution and save a century old academy. He could not meet whatever had attacked with his strength alone,that he was absolutely hundred percent sure of, it was out of reach, he would be lucky to even come within a Fifty meter raidus of it before getting vapourised by a blast attack.

"System," he said under his breath as they ran,

[Yes] the system answered casually as if it hadn’t just dumped the responsibility of a thousand mages on him.

"how exactly am I supposed to save this place? What do you expect me to do with what I have?"

[Calculating Position of attack using Host’s stats]

There was scilence for a while then it came again.

[Analysis Complete, Considering the scale of the incoming threat it is accepted that Host would die immediately if he is to approach it with force]

Kai’s breath hitched

"Exactly now how am i meant to take care of it?" He frowned

The system was quiet and then chimes again.

[There is an Update Host]

Kai was confused. "An update? From who?"

[Negative, Query Revoked. Not enough Authority]

Kai immediately understood, The answer was as bright as day, the fucking developers were playing in his face again, since they were offering an update...

"Let’s hear it"

[Host role is not total annihilation of the invading force.]

[Host role is interaction with the primary threat.]

[Direct contact, identification, and response will determine survival route.]

Kai almost laughed, and there was no humor in it.

"Interact with the threat. That is your guidance?"

[Correct.]

"What is the threat?"

The System paused, which was never comforting.

[Ascending.]

Kai’s head snapped up.

Something colossal moved through the darkened cloud layer above the Academy, first as a shape too large to accept, then as a body breaking through the gloom on wings that spanned wider than the lecture halls, it came with an intense pressure, so raw and strong that the air itself seemed to ripple around it, like heat as the creature dropped lower until it’s figure became undeniable.

A dragon, a huge Colossal dragon bigger than the tall school buildings, a quick flap of it’s wings and a few of them would topple downwards.

Black-scaled through the chest and throat, with ridges of deep green catching what little light remained, it cut across the Academy skyline with terrifying ease, seamless flight for something so big. One downward beat of its wings sent a visible shock through the floor and knocked a line of barrier crystals into cascading failure. Students screamed. An instructor on the far court threw up a wide defense screen that held for all of three seconds before cracking like thin ice.

Nothing here stood in comparison to its immense power.

Rolf stared upward, face drained, they had stopped running too, the spectacle was too great to miss.

"That is not possible."

"Well wake up sunshine because it’s happening right now, a possibility right in front of you"

The dragon did not land at once. It circled, enormous and deliberate, as if inspecting the Academy’s structure for the weakest place to drive its weight. Every pass made the barrier worse. The external force behind the attack was no longer an abstract System label. It had wings, mass, and the kind of presence that made intermediate ranking feel like children’s paper.

Kole arrived from the dormitory direction at a full run, already half-shifted around the shoulders, green eyes locked on the sky. Mira was with a cluster of girls being pushed toward the inner halls by Pan, while Pen tried and failed to look like class leadership meant anything against a creature that could blot out the towers by turning its head.

Another section of the east barrier gave way.

From the tear, lesser shapes spilled after the dragon’s pressure, winged beasts and dense corrupted forms that hit the outer courts in a messy first wave. That, at least, was a scale Kai could understand. Instructors moved to intercept. Older intermediates followed. The garden path became a broken line of defense and retreat.

Kai drew his wand because bare-handed pride was useless here.

"System. Primary target is the dragon?"

[Primary threat confirmed: adult external dragon-class entity.]

[Lesser wave units are secondary.]

[Host interaction requirement remains tied to the primary entity.]

"Of course it does."

A corrupted flyer slammed down near the fountain and shrieked through a mouthful of split teeth. Rolf was the first to move, no transfer paperwork required for the instinct, and put his body between the nearest younger students and the thing’s path. Kai snapped a Water Bind around its limbs hard enough to drag it sideways, then followed with Shock Lock before it could tear free. Kole hit it from the other side in partial panther mass and finished the collapse with brutal efficiency.

One lesser kill changed nothing about the shape in the sky.

The dragon banked again, lower, and this time its chest expanded with a deep light that made the System flare hard across Kai’s vision.

[Warning.]

[Breath preparation detected.]

[Evacuation priority: immediate.]

"Everybody off the open court!" Kai shouted, already grabbing the nearest frozen student and shoving them toward the inner colonnade. Rolf copied the motion without needing explanation. Kole shifted fuller, black panther mass exploding outward as he herded two boys out of the blast line with sheer size and force. The dragon’s breath ripped down a second later in a dense beam of darkened flame that erased a practice canopy, a stretch of garden stone, and the last fantasy that this was containable through ordinary classroom magic.

Heat slammed the survivors backward. Wards screamed. Somewhere an emergency academy bell finally began to ring, far too late to sound official.

Kai pushed up on one knee, ears ringing, wand still in hand, and stared at the creature climbing back through the smoke above the ruined garden line. The mission text remained fixed in the corner of his sight, patient and merciless.

Save the Academy.

Interact with the threat.

He still did not fully know what that meant in practical terms, whether he was meant to communicate, mark, bind, provoke, or survive long enough to matter. He only knew the threat had shown its face, and it was not a metaphor.

It was a dragon above his school, tearing the barrier open from the outside, and every person he knew inside these walls was now living on the same countdown.