As he finished, Thion stepped back from the pulpit with the same controlled calm he always carried and returned toward his seat.

The movement drew attention toward Assistant Lucia Greydon as she rose from where she had been seated near the front. Sir Kaelen stood beside her, formal and composed despite the battered students before him, while Sir Regulus rose as well with his new usual measured seriousness.

The three made their way toward the pulpit together, their presence immediately shifting the hall's attention into something sharper.

Lucia stepped behind the pulpit first, adjusting her glasses slightly with one hand while holding her enchanted clipboard in the other.

"Good morning, second years," she said, her voice clear and steady. "And welcome back."

The words were simple, but there was something in her tone that carried more weight than usual. Lucia was not someone who wasted emotion openly, yet even she seemed to be looking at the students differently now. Her eyes moved across them, not with pity, but with professional recognition.

They had gone into Nalim as second-year students facing an assessment. They had returned looking more like people who had been forced to understand the meaning of survival in its rawest form.

"Due to your current physical states," Lucia continued, "we will proceed with the ranking announcement quickly. The format will remain the same as before. The full ranking list will be displayed for everyone to review, while only the top ten ranked students will be addressed directly."

A few students shifted immediately, exhaustion briefly giving way to anticipation.

Rankings mattered.

No matter how tired they were, no matter how badly they wanted rest, every second year knew the significance of where they stood after an assessment like this. Their rank was not simply about pride. It reflected combat performance, judgment, endurance, adaptability, resource management, decision-making, and overall growth.

For some students, it could confirm improvement. For others, it could expose weakness. And after seven days inside Nalim, no one wanted to discover that all their suffering had led to them dropping lower.

Lucia glanced down at the clipboard in her hands.

The board looked ordinary at first, but as she ran her fingers lightly across its surface, faint lines of Myst lit up along the edges. The enchantment responded instantly. Lucia swiped her hand upward, and a large magical screen unfolded above the stage, expanding into the air until every student in the hall could see it clearly.

Names began appearing across the screen.

One after another.

The full second-year ranking list displayed itself in glowing lines of light.

Immediately, the hall stirred.

Students looked up sharply despite their exhaustion. Some searched for their own names with tense eyes. Others looked first for the top ranks before checking themselves. A few smiled faintly when they saw improvement. Others visibly stiffened when they realized they had dropped. Some remained where they had been months ago, their expressions difficult to read as they tried to decide whether that meant stability or stagnation.

Whispers moved through the hall.

Not loud enough to be disrespectful.

But unavoidable.

A student near the back muttered in disbelief after noticing he had climbed three places. Another grimaced when he saw that someone he had previously outranked was now above him. Someone else let out a quiet laugh of relief when their position remained nearly unchanged.

Liam watched the screen in silence, though his attention was not as emotionally invested as many of the others. Charlotte, on the other hand, scanned the list quickly with a faintly curious look, though not with the desperation of someone deeply attached to rank. Dylan squinted upward and muttered something about his eyes not working anymore, then leaned slightly as if trying to locate his name without collapsing.

As the students processed the rankings, Sir Kaelen stepped forward slightly.

"Before any of you allow disappointment or pride to cloud your judgment," he said, his stern voice cutting cleanly through the murmurs, "there is something you should understand."

The hall quieted again.

Kaelen's posture remained upright, his hands folded behind his back as his gaze swept across the students.

"If your rank has declined, or if you remain in the same position you held months ago, that does not mean you performed poorly during this assessment. Many of you performed well. Some of you performed far better than your previous records suggested you would."

Those words caused some of the tense expressions in the hall to shift.

Kaelen continued without softening his tone.

"However, rankings are comparative. Your growth does not exist in isolation. If someone above you advanced further, adapted better, survived under harsher conditions, or made stronger decisions, then they will be placed higher. That is not an insult to your effort. It is simply the result of evaluation."

The words did their job.

Not completely, of course. Some students still looked disappointed. Others still clenched their jaws or stared at the screen with visible frustration.

But Kaelen's explanation softened the blow enough for many of them to understand what they were seeing more clearly. In a group where all one hundred students had survived the full seven days without Forced Extraction, remaining still in rank did not necessarily mean failure. It meant the competition had grown stronger.

That truth was difficult, but fair.

After a few more moments, Lucia raised her hand and dismissed the large magical screen. The full ranking list faded from view, leaving the air above the stage empty once more.

The hall grew quiet again.

Lucia looked over the students, then lowered her gaze briefly to the clipboard before speaking.

"We will now begin with the top ten students."

Lucia tapped the surface of her enchanted clipboard once again, and the faint glow along its edges brightened in response before spreading outward into the air above the stage.

The large magical screen reappeared, its surface rippling like disturbed water before settling into a clear image of one student moving through the terrain of Nalim. Lucia glanced down briefly, then lifted her gaze toward the exhausted second years standing across the hall.

"Rank ten, Lucian Kellor," she announced, her voice steady and formal.

The moment his name was spoken, several students turned their attention toward him. Lucian stood among the crowd with his shoulders slightly lowered from exhaustion, his academy attire torn across one side and stained with dirt from what looked like long contact with rocky terrain.

His face carried several bruises, and one sleeve had been ripped off entirely, revealing bandages wrapped tightly around his forearm.

Despite his condition, he remained standing upright, his expression controlled, though anyone looking closely could see the weariness in his eyes. He did not react much to hearing his name, but the faint tension in his jaw showed he had been waiting for this moment.

On the magical screen, Lucian's assessment highlights began playing. The first image showed him landing in a cracked valley filled with uneven stone formations and unstable cliffs.

Another showed him raising walls of earth to block a charging Horror-class demon before using the same terrain to crush its legs and expose its core.

There were brief flashes of him moving through a dry canyon, reinforcing the ground beneath his feet when it began collapsing, and using stone spikes to force a pack of lesser demons into a narrow path where he could handle them one by one. The footage made one thing clear: Lucian had endured a difficult zone, and he had done so mostly by relying on his own judgment.

Sir Kaelen stepped forward slightly as the screen continued playing. His expression remained stern, but there was a clear weight behind his words when he spoke.

"Lucian Kellor, your performance during this assessment was quite good. You showed that you are more than capable of functioning alone, without anyone beside you to give direction or cover your weaknesses."