Chapter 64: SSS-Rank Gaze, The Holy Saintess

The golden system screen burned in his vision. It flashed with a harsh, jagged crimson border.

[System Alert: SSS-Rank Talent Detected!]

[Notice: Oppressive scrutiny bypassing Illusion Artifact.]

Saile froze in the empty stone corridor. He did not reach for the canvas-wrapped sword strapped to his back. He did not shift his feet into a combat stance. He kept his shoulders slumped and his spine curved, playing the role of a frightened commoner caught out of bounds.

Up on the shadowed balcony, the girl with the flowing white hair stared down at him.

She wore pristine silver armor forged with intricate sunbursts. Her eyes were not human. They burned with a piercing, golden luminescence that seemed to strip the physical world down to its bare atoms.

She looked right through the stone floor. She looked right through his cheap linen shirt.

A single drop of bright red blood leaked from the corner of her right eye. It rolled slowly down her pale cheek, staining her flawless skin.

"Don’t move," Naicul whispered sharply in Saile’s mind.

The ancient God’s voice carried no sarcasm. It was a cold, razor-thin warning.

"Can she see you?" Saile asked mentally. He forced his blue eyes to widen, painting a mask of helpless confusion across his face.

"She possesses the Eyes of Truth," Naicul explained. "It is an SSS-Rank mutation. A bastardized, mortal fragment of divine sight. She cannot see my soul, and she cannot see your true face. The elven choker hides your identity."

"Then why is she bleeding?"

"Because she is trying to measure your mana pool," the God replied. A grim, vindictive satisfaction colored his tone. "The illusion relic projects a fake Light element. But she is looking past the filter. She is looking directly into the Endless Devourer."

Saile understood. The girl was staring into a bottomless abyss.

"Her mortal brain is trying to calculate infinity," Naicul sneered. "If she stares too long, her own talent will rupture her optic nerves. She will blind herself."

Up on the balcony, the girl blinked. The golden light in her irises flickered.

She raised a silver gauntlet and wiped the blood from her cheek. She looked at the red smear on her glove. Her eyes narrowed into sharp, dangerous slits.

She vaulted over the marble railing.

She dropped twenty feet, landing on the corridor floor with silent, terrifying grace. The silver armor did not even clink.

She stood up and walked directly toward him.

Saile let his breathing turn shallow and erratic. He forced his heart rate to spike, mimicking the blind panic of a slum orphan approached by high royalty.

As she closed the distance, the air around her turned suffocating. It smelled of ozone and crushed lilies. She projected a holy pressure that rivaled the Diamond-Tier Paladins he had butchered in the desert.

She stopped just two feet away.

"Who are you?" she demanded. Her voice was smooth, carrying the unquestionable

authority of someone who had never been told no.

"Gabriel," Saile stammered. He took a clumsy half-step backward, ensuring his heel dragged against the stone. "I am just a freshman, my Lady."

She stepped into his personal space, refusing to let him retreat.

"You are the boy from Professor Erif’s history lecture," she said.

Saile swallowed hard. He kept his gaze locked on the silver sunburst engraved on

her chestplate. He acted too intimidated to look her in the eyes.

"I was just scrubbing the floors," Saile whispered.

"You humiliated a senior instructor," she corrected him. "You weaponized church

theology to trap a man who has studied the scriptures for forty years. A commoner from the southern borders does not possess that kind of rhetorical blade."

"I like to read," Saile offered weakly.

"You are lying," she stated.

She leaned closer. Her golden eyes searched his face. The piercing light in her

pupils pulsed. Saile felt a strange, scraping sensation behind his ribs, like hot needles dragging across his bones.

The Endless Devourer writhed in response. The dark core wanted to lash out. It wanted to rip the girl’s soul from her chest and feed on her SSS-Rank magic.

Saile strangled the urge. He forced the dark magic to remain dormant, pushing a pathetic, flickering yellow spark to his skin.

She stared at the fake Light aura. Her brow furrowed in deep frustration.

"My eyes show me a C-Rank Light affinity," she murmured, almost talking to herself. "They show me a weak, fractured core. You should be nothing but a peasant."

She reached out and grabbed him by the collar of his linen shirt.

Her grip was like a steel vise. She possessed physical strength far beyond

normal human limits.

"But when I look deeper," she whispered, her voice dropping to a hushed, lethal tone, "my eyes bleed. I see a shadow so dense it breaks my sight. I see an ocean of compressed mana hiding behind a dying candle. What are you?"

Saile let his knees tremble. He looked up at her, forcing tears of pure terror to pool in his bright blue eyes.

"I don’t understand," Saile cried out. His voice cracked effortlessly. "Please! I don’t know what you are talking about! I just want to go to class!"

She searched his weeping face for a long, heavy moment.

She was looking for a crack in the armor. She was looking for a smirk, a flinch, or a shift in his breathing that betrayed his true nature.

Saile gave her absolutely nothing. He was the terrified victim.

She finally let go of his shirt. Saile stumbled backward, hitting the stone wall and sliding down until he hit the floor. He pulled his knees to his chest, hiding his face in his arms.

"A masterclass in pathetic groveling," Naicul applauded dryly.

The white-haired girl stared down at him. The frustration on her face morphed into a cold, clinical obsession.

"I am Aira," she declared. "Holy Saintess of the Vanguard."

Saile kept his head down, shivering against the wall.

"You can fool the testing crystals, Gabriel," Aira said. Her boots clicked against the marble as she backed away. "You can fool the instructors. But you cannot fool the Eyes of Truth. Whatever monster is hiding inside you, I will dig it out."

She turned and walked down the corridor. Her silver armor gleamed in the dim light, fading slowly into the shadows of the academy.

Saile waited until the sound of her footsteps disappeared entirely.

He stopped shivering. The fake tears dried on his cheeks. He stood up, brushing the dust off his cheap trousers. His bright blue eyes turned flat and calculating.

"She is a liability," Saile noted in his mind.

"She is the Church’s greatest weapon," Naicul corrected. "An SSS-Rank talent is

born once in a century. She is being groomed to replace the Pope. Her intuition

is lethal."

Saile adjusted the canvas-wrapped sword on his back.

He could not kill her. If the Holy Saintess turned up dead in the school corridors, the academy would go into an apocalyptic lockdown. The Immortal Saints would descend from the high cathedrals and tear every student apart looking for the culprit.

He needed to stay off her radar. To do that, he had to operate in the shadows, which meant he needed access to the school’s restricted zones to find the Divine Fragment.

Saile left the corridor and headed for the lower dormitories.

He found Class F’s assigned living quarters in the damp basement of the academy. It was a single, large cavern filled with rusted iron bunk beds and thin wool blankets. The stone walls wept with condensation. Rats scurried along the exposed iron pipes near the ceiling.

The other misfits were already there, unpacking their meager belongings in defeated silence.

The blind runecrafter sat on a bottom bunk. He ran his fingers over a smooth wooden staff, carving invisible sigils into the grain. The beast-tamer girl lay on a top bunk, staring blankly at the dripping stone ceiling. Her translucent desert centipede crawled lazily across her knuckles.

Saile claimed an empty bed in the far corner. He tossed his wrapped sword underneath the rusted frame.

He sat on the thin mattress, listening to the quiet breathing of his classmates.

He needed to find the hidden armory. Naicul’s severed right arm was buried somewhere beneath this fortress. But the Academy was a labyrinth of locked doors

and magical wards. The lower-tier students had zero clearance.

Saile watched a group of senior students walk past the open dormitory door. They

wore pristine blue coats, laughing as they flipped small, glowing gold coins into the air.

"Merit Points," the blind boy suddenly spoke up from across the room.

Saile turned his head. The blind student was ’looking’ directly at him, his head tilted slightly to favor his good ear.

"You are wondering how to get into the upper levels," the blind boy said quietly. "You need Merit Points. The entire school operates on them. They buy better food, private rooms, and access to the Restricted Library."

Saile narrowed his eyes. The library would hold blueprints. It would hold historical records of the original foundation.

"How do you earn them?" Saile asked.

The girl with the red hair leaned over the edge of her top bunk. She offered a bitter, humorless smile.

"You fight," she answered. "The nobles hoard all the points. They use the Duel Arena to gamble them away. If a commoner wants points, they have to challenge a high-born. But the game is rigged. They just use the arena to legally beat us into the dirt."

Saile processed the information.

A rigged arena designed to crush the weak. Wealthy nobles hoarding the exact currency he needed to navigate the school.

"An arena," Naicul chuckled darkly. "How familiar."

Saile leaned back against the rusted iron frame of his bed. He stared at the flickering candle in the center of the dark room.

He didn’t want to draw attention. He wanted to remain a ghost. But Aira’s bleeding eyes proved that staying hidden forever was impossible. The Holy Saintess was already hunting him. He needed the blueprints, and he needed them before she exposed his core.

If the nobles controlled the school’s economy through violence, then Saile would

simply bankrupt them.

"Where is this Duel Arena?" Saile asked softly.

The blind boy stopped tracing the wood of his staff. He turned his head toward the door, sensing the cold, sudden shift in Saile’s tone.

"Central courtyard," the blind boy warned. "But they will butcher you, Gabriel. C-Rank Light magic won’t even scratch their armor."

Saile did not reply. He closed his blue eyes and rested his head against the cold stone wall.

He had just conquered the brutal underground fighting pits of the Lawless Zone.

He had butchered a Diamond-Tier Warlord and executed two elite Paladins. The pampered children of the Central Continent had absolutely no idea what was about to step into their ring.

The hunt for Merit Points would begin tomorrow.