The S-Rank Warden Devours the Academy - Chapter 25

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 25

Inside the Dark Sewage Field.
“What in the world is this skill…?”
Se Yong gritted his teeth and barely managed to keep his balance on one leg.
“You tell us to catch the Grinder Rats, then bind our legs? That’s just telling us to die, isn’t it?”
His voice trembled with indignation and frustration as he pressed the point.
Against fast, acoustically sensitive Grinder Rats, stripping away mobility seemed cruelly unfair.
But Sa Hyeon merely scoffed.
“The Gate doesn’t hand out Penalties to be nice to you.”
The Gate, which randomly inflicts Penalties on hunters as they enter—
it was a place without mercy.
“You’re not going to whine about redrawing your Penalty when you face a real dungeon?”
“……”
Se Yong pressed his lips together, having nothing to say. Just then, Mu Geon gestured urgently toward Se Yong and shouted a question.
“What did you say?!”
His hearing had been cut off; he couldn’t make out their conversation.
Se Yong, who’d been staring at him with a grim expression, soon pressed the argument again.
“But this is still class! Isn’t this too much? It’s not even torture!”
“This is torture…?”
His condition was clean—no phantom pain or anything like that.
Sa Hyeon made his confusion plain.
He thought he understood why today’s hunters all seemed to have lost their minds.
Raised like hothouse flowers, their heads were naturally full of nonsense.
Sa Hyeon let out a sigh and slowly approached the edge of the monster cage.
“If you’re going to complain, do it after you Clear. Failures don’t get a voice.”
His hand moved toward the lock on the monster cage.
Tension rippled through the assembled students.
“No, sir! You really want us to fight like this?!”
Eun Oh struggled to his feet with a painful limp and lodged his protest.
Sa Hyeon said nothing in reply.
Instead, the lock clicked open.
“Oh, and one more thing—if you don’t succeed within the hour…”
Sa Hyeon added quietly.
“It’s Additional Training.”
Clunk, screeeech—
The heavy iron gate swung open.
As if they’d been waiting, Grinder Rats poured out into the field.
Sa Hyeon turned away, leaving one last word behind.
“Training begins.”

* * *

Training Control Room.
“You can observe from here.”
Hae Sung guided Sa Hyeon to a position where he could see the monitors that covered the wall.
The screens displayed real-time feeds from various points throughout the sewage field.
“Better picture than I expected.”
The students moving about the field and their conversations came through crystal clear.
Sa Hyeon pulled a chair over and sat, then reached over to tap the thin, long microphone on the table.

—Ah, ah.

As Sa Hyeon pressed the microphone button and opened his mouth, his voice echoed across the field.
The students on screen all looked up at the ceiling in unison.

—If you think you’re going to die, call for SOS. Then you’ll have Additional Training waiting for you.

Jae Yoon was already carrying Eun Oh on his back, running to evade the monsters.
Eun Oh, slung across his shoulders, cried out eagerly.
“I’m not giving up halfway, no matter what!”
“Regular classes are already like this—I can’t imagine what the additional training will be like… honestly, I’d rather not find out….”
Gyeol, running alongside them, mumbled the words under his breath.
Meanwhile.
“What did you say?!?!”
Mu Geon, sensing the sound through the faint vibration of the speaker, shouted into empty air.
Hae Sung, witnessing this, spoke in a worried voice.
“…It looks like Mu Geon didn’t catch that. Will he be all right?”
“Leave him be. If it gets dangerous, he’ll yell loud enough.”
Sa Hyeon replied indifferently, sinking deeper into his chair.
Hae Sung nodded and cast a fleeting glance at Sa Hyeon’s face.
His chin propped on his hand, gazing at the monitor with drowsy eyes.
His pupils still gleamed crimson.
‘Sa Hyeon really is something….’
To apply a skill through paper as a medium—such an advanced technique. Hae Sung admired it quietly.
‘That image must have the Confusion Skill layered onto it.’
The caster’s mental fatigue was supposed to be enormous.
Yet against six A-rank operatives, Sa Hyeon looked entirely composed.
Hae Sung’s eyes naturally followed Sa Hyeon’s gaze.
It was the monitor showing Combat Team B.

* * *

Combat Team B, scattered in different directions.
With each step Mu Geon took across the shallow water flowing along the floor, splashes erupted loudly.
He had ventured deep into the sewage system.
Eventually, a single creature blocked his path, trapping him in place.
Mu Geon lowered his stance, bracing for combat.
The moment the Grinder Rat rushed at him, its sharp teeth clicking rapidly.
Mu Geon twisted his entire body to evade, then seized the creature by the nape of its neck.
Screeeech!
Heat poured from his palm, searing the monster’s hide a scorched red.
“That should do it.”
As he moved to deliver the final blow.
“……!”
A chilling sensation suddenly swept across his back. He spun around.
Shrieeek!
From the blind spot, another monster lunged straight at him.
Mu Geon released the creature he’d been holding and rolled away, clearing the space.
As he rose to his feet and looked up.
“……”
Three monsters encircled him.
He was surrounded.
The creatures had swarmed to the sound of his violent combat.
“…When did all of them gather like this?”
Mu Geon moistened his dry lips, a note of trouble in his tone.

* * *

“…This ridiculous penalty makes no sense.”
Elsewhere, Se Yong crouched in a corner of the sewage system.
Unable to hide his frustration, he ground his teeth.
His right leg dragged as he moved—his entire body was already battered and broken.
Merely holding back the Grinder Rats as they unleashed rapid volleys of attacks had pushed him to his limit. Yet Se Yong gritted his teeth and endured.
“I can’t lose to a freshman.”
Se Yong’s mouth twisted into a savage line.

And then there was Ryu Ah, another member of Team B.
She tapped her right arm with her left hand, tilting her head curiously.
“Oh, so you’re right-handed but your right arm’s gone numb?”
She smiled brilliantly, sweeping her long hair back.
“This is the perfect chance to give my left hand a moment to shine~!”
Ryu Ah pushed off the ground and sprang upward.
Her body glided like a ghost along the sewage tunnel wall.
Hanging from a pipe with her left hand, Ryu Ah suspended herself in the air.
Below her, a single Grinder Rat glinted its small eyes upward.
“Alright—here we go!”
Ryu Ah released the pipe and attempted a flamboyant spinning descent.
Normally she would have controlled gravity to land gracefully before unleashing a flurry of strikes, but….
“Huh—uh—what?”
Her unresponsive right arm flailed uselessly against the centripetal force.
Her weight shifted to one side like she was dragging an anchor, and she traced an entirely wrong trajectory as she plummeted.
“Aaagh!”
With a splash, she hit the water hard, skidding ungracefully across the surface.
“Ugh—even my landings won’t do what I want!”
As she wrung out her soaked hair and rubbed her aching lower back,
Screeeeeech—
The Grinder Rat approached with a menacing glare.
Ryu Ah flailed her left hand frantically.
“Wait, wait, timeout!! Just ten seconds, no, five seconds!!”

* * *

Unlike Team B’s camera feed—which was a chaos of activity—Team A’s was silent.
A pitch-black space, like a void.
Three figures hid their bodies within Sa Hyeon’s skill: the Shadow of Shade.
“―As expected, this first lesson is far from ordinary.”
Sa Hyeon let out a long sigh.
“Whoa! It really feels like my leg’s gone!”
Eun Oh rapped his numb right leg with his fist.
“…What do we do? I don’t think we’ll be able to move properly like this.”
Jae Yoon kneaded his limp left hand, his face creased with worry.
Sa Hyeon chewed his lip as he deliberated, then spoke with quiet resolve.
“We move together here.”
“Come on, running might be hard, but hunting solo should be fine, right? Moving around as a clump in a space this cramped will just get in our way!”
When Eun Oh voiced his objection, Sa Hyeon’s expression grew stern.
“I prefer moving alone too. But listen. You—your strength is in close-range rushes, and you can’t use one leg. Jae Yoon can’t use his dominant hand, so it limits his power. And my field of vision is cut in half.”
Sa Hyeon then laid out their strategy.
Having heard him out, Jae Yoon’s face brightened noticeably as he nodded.
“That sounds good!”
“Oh—this’ll be fun! I’m in!”
Eun Oh answered readily, then a question occurred to him.
“But what if one of us clears the stage first? What happens to the rest?”
Sa Hyeon replied calmly, as though he’d anticipated this.
“The clear condition is ‘hunt at least one,’ right? Clearing doesn’t mean you get kicked out, so we just need to time it so the three of us each take down one.”
“Ah!”
“That makes sense!”
Just before they entered the field, Sa Hyeon gave Eun Oh a word of caution.
“Remember what you learned from the instructor at the Gate yesterday? Strike only when you’re certain.”
“Got it!”
Eun Oh shouted with confidence.
Sa Hyeon exhaled softly and listened for movement beyond the shadow’s veil.
Inside the pipes that stretched out in a long line.
‘Timing is everything.’
Tap-tap-tap-tap—
He sensed the presence of a grinding monster.
Drawing steadily closer.
“―Go!”
Gyeol hurled himself out of the shadows.
Shriek—!
The Grinder Rat’s small eyes fixed on Gyeol.
Gyeol deliberately stomped through puddles as he sprinted down the straight pipe.
Drawn by the noise, the monsters converged.
One, two, and then… three.
Gyeol skidded to a halt at the end of the straight pipe and shouted.
“Now!!”
Crash—!
In that instant, the Grinder Rat hurled its massive body toward him.
Gyeol couldn’t see past the blocked view and tumbled down hard.
“Ugh….”
He clenched his teeth, barely holding back the snapping fangs.
“Hold on just a little longer!”
And then.
A tall figure emerged from the shadows.
Jae Yoon lifted Eun Oh with a single arm, effortlessly.
“Here we go!!”
Eun Oh’s lips curled upward, his eyes flashing with brilliance.
Jae Yoon hurled him forward with all his strength, like launching a cannonball.
Eun Oh cleaved through the air.

[Formless Sword (A-) skill activated!]

The path Eun Oh traced left a ripple of blue light.
In a heartbeat, he flew to the end of the pipe.
Slash, rip—!
In an instant, Eun Oh’s blade bit deep into the Grinder Rat’s neck, the one pinning Gyeol down.
Eun Oh’s sword flashed toward its next target as he bounced off the ground with his hands.
Rip—
Blood sprayed as Eun Oh turned his gaze to his final mark.
The Grinder Rat, sensing the threat, lashed out menacingly with its claws.
Eun Oh dropped his upper body flat and drove the blade’s point hard into its chest.
Squelch—!
The Grinder Rat’s eyes, which had gleamed moments before, gradually dimmed as its massive body collapsed to the floor.

-Eun Oh, Clear

A final voice echoed across the field.
“Nice!!”
Eun Oh broke into a satisfied smile.

* * *

“Cooperation that shores up each other’s weaknesses—clever indeed.”
Hae Sung let out a low murmur of admiration.
Now all that remained was for Gyeol and Jae Yoon to finish off the other two weakened rats.
Sa Hyeon chuckled and tapped the table with his index finger.
“When you’re weak, you pool your strength.”
This was survival, not competition.

Meanwhile, the movements of Class B grew noticeably frantic at news of Eun Oh’s clear.
Se Yong’s face, in particular, twisted in anguish.

-Damn it all.

Eun Oh’s legs were paralyzed just like mine, yet he still took down the Grinder Rats in this state?
He gripped his legs, stiff as plaster, and exhaled sharply through his nose.

-Impossible…!

Se Yong’s eyes gleamed as he pulled the Paper Slip that Sa Hyeon had handed him from his pocket.
Still radiating that sickly red glow—crude scribbling on crumpled paper.
Crunch. The Paper Slip crumpled in his grip.
Se Yong’s teeth ground together.

—All this because of some scrap of paper!

And like a madman, he tore the Paper Slip to shreds.
“—! Wait, hold on! If you forcibly deactivate it like that—!”
Hae Sung, watching on the monitor, cried out in alarm.
His eyes widened with shock as he turned them toward Sa Hyeon.
“The worst choice possible.”
Sa Hyeon let out a soft laugh.
His crimson eyes darkened in that instant.
BOOM—CRASH—CRASH—CRASH!
From the scattered fragments of Se Yong’s Paper Slip suspended in the air, a thick, searing force erupted in a violent wave.
A blood-red current coiled around Se Yong’s body like a serpent.

—Ah, ahhhhhhh!

A piercing scream shook the Training Control Room.

An S-rank Instructor Devours the Academy Episode 25

Author
Baek Roo-ga
Publisher
Daon Creative
Planning / Editing / Production
Yoon Tae-ri
Cover Art
Tong

UCI
G720:N+A036-20260512043.0026

ⓒ2026, Baek Roo-ga

※ This e-book is protected under the Copyright Law of the Republic of Korea.
No part of this work may be reproduced or modified in any form without the express permission of the author and publisher.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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