Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest-Chapter 1033 - 245.1 - They

A boy.

Not seated.

Walking.

White hair like wind-silver thread. Not soft. Not aged. Sharp—cut clean, deliberate, and somehow too still as he moved through the corridor's filtered sunlight.

His steps were slow, unhurried.

But they carried weight.

And that face—

Handsome. Angular. Chiseled like sculpture, but not cold. Not vain. A face that held the kind of balance that made the eye linger.

Even from this distance, Leonard could make out the clarity in those glacier-blue eyes, the perfectly tailored uniform, the way his coat barely shifted with his stride—as if he moved through the world without letting it touch him.

Lucas Middleton.

Leonard's recognition was immediate. Inevitable.

He didn't need to check the slate.

He didn't need to confirm the crest on his collar.

Everyone knew that face.

The heir of the Middleton Family. The so-called "Twin Star."

One of the most talented bloodlines in the modern magical world.

Leonard, who had studied nearly every major family history, knew exactly who Lucas was.

More importantly—

He knew who he wasn't.

Lucas Middleton could not be the Kin of the Moon.

His lineage was known.

Registered.

Examined.

Scrutinized.

He was a twin—and every record verified him as the elder by three minutes. The family's rightful successor. Baptized in Middleton rites. Given the mark of sun-aspect mana at birth, just like his sister.

Everything about him screamed clarity.

Too known. Too complete. Too clean.

And yet…

Leonard's eyes narrowed.

His artifact didn't stir.

But something else did.

There was a faint ripple—not in Lucas. Not in the surroundings.

In Leonard himself.

A strange pressure.

A twist of perception.

As if the mana around Lucas bent… not darkly, but differently.

And for a moment—

He thought it was demonic.

That cold, crawling aura. The way the sunlight curved around his figure—not rejecting him, but failing to settle on him. The same feeling that Velvetin had briefly radiated—

But no.

Leonard focused deeper. Peered not just with his eyes, but through the strands of sunlight-tethered insight, guided by the lingering echo of his heliowatch.

No mark.

No contract.

No residue.

Nothing demonic.

Just… wrong.

Twisted.

But not by choice.

Leonard's breath caught for just a second.

'What are you…?'

Lucas passed him without turning. His eyes fixed straight ahead. Not watching. Not wandering. Not searching.

Just walking.

Yet Leonard could feel it—

He knew.

He knew he was being watched.

And chose to say nothing.

The moment passed.

Lucas turned the corner into the inner corridor, disappearing behind a line of projection-glass windows.

Leonard remained still.

Silent.

His hand slowly drifted to his chest, where the artifact remained cool and unmoving.

No reaction.

No resonance.

But his instincts—a different sense altogether—whispered.

'He's not the Kin.'

That much, he was sure of.

But something in him is no longer bound to just one side.

Lucas Middleton didn't radiate prophecy.

He radiated contradiction.

And in Leonard's experience?

That was far more dangerous.

He exhaled slowly, eyes flicking upward to the sunlit rafters above, where the heliowatch spun like a patient sentinel.

Another mystery. Not the one he was looking for.

But still—

Leonard's gaze lingered on the corner where Lucas had vanished, that trailing edge of unnatural stillness clinging to the air like morning frost yet to melt. It wasn't just presence. It wasn't even mana.

It was something else.

A silence not born of absence—but suppression.

Like a voice that once screamed, now trained to whisper.

And it called to something deep within Leonard.

A part of him not shaped by sunlight.

A part of him that still remembered standing beneath the cathedral vaults, blood on the stone, and hearing a prophecy that should not have existed.

His fingers tightened slightly at his side.

Tempting.

To follow.

To listen to that wrongness and unravel it thread by thread.

But no.

He exhaled slowly, deliberately, and turned away.

"That is not my path."

The words echoed in his mind as he walked back toward the garden stairs—each step measured, reclaiming his focus with every breath.

Lucas Middleton was not the Kin of the Moon.

He could not afford to mistake interference for destiny.

And if Lucas had been bent, shaped, touched by something else—so be it.

Someone else would uncover it. Eventually.

Leonard's duty was not to purge the world's contradictions.

It was to find the one written in eclipse.

The one who would rise beneath silver light.

The one whose awakening would pull stars and ruin into alignment.

The one whose very presence would tear the veil between what the world is…

…and what it fears.

The Kin.

And with his solar thread still active, his list narrowed, and the academy growing more volatile by the hour—

He had no time for distractions.

No matter how loud they might become.

Leonard ascended the outer steps without pause, his coat catching briefly in the wind as he reached the overlooking balcony.

*****

Lucas's steps echoed softly down the corridor, his polished shoes tapping rhythmically against marble-veined stone. The filtered sunlight streaming in from the tall projection-glass windows laced across his coat in golden lines, but never quite touched him—like light refracting around a body not fully present.

He didn't look back.

He didn't need to.

That gaze—he had felt it.

Not the hungry kind the scouts wore.

Not the wary kind most cadets adopted around him.

No.

This one had been… examining.

Lucas narrowed his eyes slightly as he continued walking, letting his thoughts work in the silence. His memory flicked through faces and profiles—names and bloodlines, records, futures.

Who was that?

The boy had presence. That much was clear. Not in the flashy, aristocratic way. But something deeper, quieter, something that had grazed the edges of Lucas's awareness like a gloved hand brushing too close to a broken seal.

He combed through every record he could recall. Every notable cadet, every name with potential weight. And yet—

Nothing.

Not a trace. No association. No flagged lineage. No mention in any of the briefings he had absorbed.

And yet...

Strange.

His eyes narrowed slightly as he turned another corner, steps slower now.

Why does he look familiar…?

There was a fragment—a flicker—like a dream remembered only at the edge of waking. Not in the face itself, but in the feeling it stirred. As if he had once seen that boy standing not here, in the academy—but elsewhere.

In a hall of old stone.

In a cathedral steeped in silence and ancient weight.

In a place that did not exist in the timeline he knew.

Lucas's hand tightened slightly at his side, hidden by the folds of his coat.

Another change? Or just a thread I never noticed before?

Either way, he filed the image away. Locked it into the vault of memory where his instincts stored pieces that didn't yet make sense.

But not now.

Not yet.

Because there were more important things to take note of.

He reached the end of the corridor and exited through the arched entryway, stepping into the northern sector of the academy—the place where student records were processed, where the rune-coded access logs were maintained, where restricted personnel passed through more often than students ever realized.

Lucas's gaze sharpened.

His destination was clear.

Because if they had shown themselves—if that butler had appeared—then that meant certain backdoors would start opening. Certain patterns would accelerate.

That was something Lucas could make use of.

If they were moving already—if that veiled creature had stepped onto academy grounds in open daylight—then the gears were no longer merely turning in secret. They were grinding forward.

And if they were bold enough to appear, then they had sensed him, too.

Even without the demonic core, even without the contract that once tethered him to something darker, the remnants remained. The ash of Belthazor burned cold in his blood—and that thing had to have felt it.

Which meant a door was about to open.

Lucas stepped into the long hallway of the northern administrative wing, the cold mana-stabilized stone humming faintly beneath his boots. His pace remained casual, composed. But his mind raced ahead, already forming the next ten steps, the next lies, the next pressure points to exploit.

He knew how to move in shadow.

And more importantly—

He knew how to be seen when it mattered.

Just then—

A sound.

Soft. Syrupy.

A voice that slithered from the side like silk dragged through oil.

"~You…"