Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest novel Chapter 1057

Eleanor stood at the edge of the courtyard still.

The mist had long since faded into night air, the last lanterns flickering with soft psionic rhythm, but her thoughts had not quieted.

They were louder now. Sharper. Threaded with tension.

She hadn't meant to come here. Not originally. She had been returning to her quarters after a long day—paperwork, observation summaries, and more than forty individual practical exam evaluations. Her mind had been full. Focused on preparing recommendation drafts for placements, preparing the scoring curves, and cross-checking the scouts' access logs to ensure no one had overstepped.

But then—

That mana flare.

The first one had been bold. Refined. Impressive by technical standards, yes—but not alarming. The structure was complex, the framework elegant. Something designed for exact intent.

It had caught her attention.

But not her concern.

Until the second mana ripple.

She had felt it like a wire tightening around her ribcage.

A compression. A density that didn't belong to this academy. Didn't belong to any cadet, period. Not even upperclassmen.

It wasn't size that alarmed her.

It was weight.

The kind of weight that realigned the air, made her breath catch for half a second before her training kicked in. The kind of resonance that her instincts couldn't ignore—even if her mind wanted to.

And the strangest thing?

She hadn't seen it with her eyes.

She had felt it. Just for a moment.

Then it vanished.

But not cleanly. Not fully.

Something about the mana had left a trace—a curvature in space, as if reality itself had bent around it and hadn't yet snapped back into place.

And now, standing here with the students still shaken, her eyes scanning the space where Leonard had been, Eleanor could feel her thoughts accelerating into dangerous clarity.

Too much is happening at once.

Too many threads.

The scouts arriving early. The sudden elevation of cadets like Ethan and Astron. Amelia's sly maneuvering. The Hunter Association's proposed Inter-Academy Tournament—uncirculated to even her contacts. And now… this.

She exhaled, slow and steady.

That mana from earlier… wasn't normal.

She could say that with certainty. It wasn't shadow. It wasn't celestial. It wasn't any of the psionic-imbued elemental schools she'd trained herself to counter.

It was denser. Quieter. Colder. Like it hadn't flared out of impulse or aggression, but necessity. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

And it didn't emit. It drew.

Her skin still had the faint tremble of the moment it passed. Not fear. Not pain.

Resonance.

Whatever that second mana had been—it had called something in her. Not a spell. Not an instinct.

A warning.

She rubbed her temple lightly, her other hand resting behind her back in a practiced posture of restraint. The day had already been long. She'd spent hours cross-checking rune synchronizations for tests and reviewing motion-capture recordings of combat forms. She had graded over twenty-seven exams personally and corrected six cadet incident reports.

Eleanor's heel shifted half an inch against the stone, and she let the cold night air press deeper into her lungs.

She had tried, at first, to rationalize it. The flare. The echo. That unnatural pull in the mana field. Maybe it had been fatigue. She hadn't rested in days, hadn't slept a full night in longer. Her mental strain from back-to-back practical reviews and the pressure of impending placement reports—it could have blurred her perception.

But no.

Not with mana.

Eleanor White didn't make mistakes when it came to mana.

Not in analysis. Not in presence. And definitely not in instinct.

Her commandment over it—her reputation as Invoker—wasn't born from talent alone. It was from certainty. From the fact that when she felt something shift in the fabric of energy around her, she could name it. Predict it. Counter it.

But what she felt tonight—she couldn't name.

She hadn't planned to investigate. Not directly. But the moment that second pulse hit her like frost-lined pressure on her spine, she had moved. Her steps sharpened, her breath stilled, and her focus narrowed to a single path. Something was happening.

And the closer she had gotten, the more the distortion sharpened.

At first, the flare had been technical. Controlled. Refined—like a demonstration, not an attack. Nothing in it was reckless. But there had been another current underneath it. A second presence. One she hadn't expected.

Leonard.

She'd seen the name stamped neatly on his credentials, the embroidered label just below the fold of his scout-issued coat.

The man had been exuding calm.

But calm was not quiet.

He had been humming with something. Something veiled just beneath the surface. Not full killing intent—nothing that would trigger the wards outright—but close. Sharpened restraint. The kind that pressed in like a blade sheathed in velvet.

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