Chapter 147: Resuming Competition

Many trainees felt they had suffered severe trauma in the inner world, remaining utterly listless and plagued by nightmares every night, continuously reliving that terrifying examination.

The personnel from the Black Castle were stationed at the hospital primarily to set up spell arrays, preventing the trainees in this vulnerable state from attracting sinister anomalies. However, their approach to medical treatment was conservative, reserving alchemical potions only for the most critical cases.

As for the transcendent beings of the Black Castle, apart from Sebastiana stopping by briefly while on duty, the others did not even show their faces. Those who checked in most diligently were emissaries from the royal court and mysterious entities connected with high-ranking nobility.

Under normal circumstances, the hospital's attending physicians—and even several esoteric entities—estimated that the vast majority of these trainees would need anywhere from several months to half a year to recover, while some might never recover at all.

If any trainee ultimately proved unable to endure, saving their life was not overly complicated; it would merely require taking them directly to the Cathedral of Digo to request the intervention of a cathedral bishop, using holy water to thoroughly cleanse the trainee. Yet, following such purification, that trainee's advancement in the mystical path would essentially come to an end, though shifting their practice toward the path of Holy Light might offer a glimmer of hope.

However, this purification demanded a price not only from the trainee themselves, but the cost was by no means cheap either. The Holy Light shines upon every devout believer, but the cathedral's expenses are no free lunch.

Yet this was merely the baseline scenario. In truth, while the external judgments were not entirely wrong, they lacked a crucial variable: the power of Mulan.

As the mastermind behind this brutal examination, Mulan's dark side could utterly suppress the evil forces contained within that sealed grimoire. Before Mulan, the power of such a book was like a lamb with its limbs bound, easily devoured or even controlled.

Before Mulan arrived at the hospital, all the trainees were trapped by nightmares, the dark forces intertwining deeply with their minds. The external manifestations were extreme mental exhaustion and continuous physical deterioration.

In reality, this entanglement between the dark power and the trainees' psyches was in a state of delicate equilibrium with their own willpower. Those who performed exceptionally well in the "examination"—whose willpower even slightly gained the upper hand—would begin their metamorphosis once given sufficient time, as their will ultimately triumphed over the dark forces.

Yet things were different now. After Mulan arrived at the hospital, that calm yet resonant roar was not merely meant to be heard by the students; it carried within it a profound manifestation of his own power.

The forces of the dark side were silently suppressed to mitigate the trainees' negativity, while the forces of the light side acted as the dominant, external guiding presence—namely, the ability of the Radiant Knight: Inspiration of Radiance.

The true transcendent power of a Radiant Knight unfolded within the hospital, causing positive, uplifting forces such as confidence, courage, and vitality to surge among the hundreds of trainees.

As the negative and positive forces waxed and waned against each other, the balance of the scale was instantly shattered.

The most prominent changes naturally manifested first among the elite group of trainees.

Hendal lay on his hospital bed, his eyes still as red as blood, his pupils stained a dark crimson. To avoid frightening the nurse caring for him, he generally kept his eyes closed. His heartbeat remained strong, yet agony perpetually plagued him.

When Mulan's voice shook the entire hospital, Hendal abruptly snapped his blood-red eyes open.

"Professor?"

Hendal struggled to sit up. His previously powerless limbs should have been incapable of performing such a simple task, but under the surge of sudden excitement, he actually managed to sit straight up, blood welling from the corners of his eyes.

"Don't, don't move around recklessly! I'm going to get someone!"

The young nurse in the ward was terrified by Hendal's appearance and bolted out of the room to summon the doctors and the people from the Black Castle. At that moment, however, many other wards were witnessing similar scenes.

Hendal paid no heed to the nurse's reaction, instead cupping his ear to listen intently. Until he heard the entirety of Mulan's words, his hands remained clenched into tight fists.

"Professor, I'm not that pathetic!"

Hendal had every right to say those words, because after overcoming his fear in the "examination ground," he had simply been worn down until his strength failed. At the very last moment, he had also realized that no one could possibly walk out of that exam alive; one of the professor's objectives was precisely to let everyone "die" once.

Half a month from now!

Hendal regulated his breathing as he lay back down on the bed. When the time came, even if he had to crawl, he would drag himself there. Having truly witnessed the horrors of the inner world, a much more intense excitement stirred within his heart.

"I am destined to belong to this world!"

In a third-floor ward, Hathaway likewise heard Mulan's words. She lay breathlessly on her bed with a smile blooming on her face, knowing for certain that she would recover.

Meanwhile, in the neighboring ward, Jenny, who had remained unconscious all this time, finally opened her eyes. She glanced around, recognizing that she was in a hospital, and saw Guy—who had missed the exam last time—slumped beside her bed.

'Hathaway will definitely go, won't she?'

Jenny closed her eyes once more.

Many trainees who had previously felt as though they were on death's door now felt a surge of hope ignite in their hearts.

Two days later, Hendal and Charkus were both able to get out of bed around the same time—one capable of walking with a cane, the other confined to a wheelchair.

Three days later, several more trainees became ambulatory. Furthermore, a strange rumor began to circulate through the hospital among the mobile students: if anyone couldn't make it to the Great Hall when the time came, they must be the bottom-feeder students, right?

The students who had recovered a certain degree of mobility were not very numerous, but their ranks were steadily growing. Though they constituted only a small fraction of the total population, they inexplicably exerted immense pressure on the rest.

Well, if someone failed to recover at least to the point of mobility, then even if no one said anything on the surface, people would surely look down upon them in secret.

This inadvertently fostered a collective yet peculiar driving force.

Roughly a week later, a considerable portion of the students had seen their physical conditions improve, having at least recovered to a state where their injuries were no longer irreversible.

This news had naturally reached the royal palace long ago, and had even spread throughout the circles of powerful imperial nobility. Mulan Jouster had actually delivered on his promise just as he said he would. Recalling his other statements only made people look forward to the future with even greater anticipation.

Since these elites were originally groomed to prepare for the transcendent world, having experienced such a brutal trial, it would be abnormal if they gained nothing from it.

Mulan was, of course, keeping a close eye on the trainees' progress. To be honest, there were still a handful of students who had suffered such devastating trauma that they could not recover. Yet by this point, the outside world paid little attention to them anymore; after all, the sufficiently outstanding batch appeared to be in good condition.

As for those who truly could not recover, it could only be said that being weeded out by the Black Castle was practically inevitable. Perhaps leaving early might not be a bad thing for those whose willpower and talent fell short.

...

On the tenth day, at the Cathedral of Digo, that same young cleric, upon concluding the morning prayer, instinctively swept his gaze across the departing believers out of habit, yet failed to spot anyone out of the ordinary.

The cleric sighed softly. Perhaps that believer would never come again; he hoped the man was alright.

Just as the cleric turned to leave, that familiar sensation welled up in his heart once more. He immediately looked in a certain direction, first spotting a man in a trench coat, and then noticing that the man was staring intently at a nearby chair.

The cleric instinctively walked over.

"Esteemed believer, is something the matter... Ah, Lord Knight Jouster!"

Upon seeing the trench-coated man turn his face, the cleric felt a slight shock. He had heard that the Queen's guardian knight was an exceptionally devout believer who frequently came to pray, but this was the first time he had ever laid eyes on him.

Mulan nodded slightly, then glanced back at the chair beside them.

"Greetings, Lord Cleric. I noticed someone left something behind. I can sense anguish radiating from that person; it seems they have sealed themselves away, yet they left a note behind."

The cleric looked toward the seat, where a slightly crumpled piece of paper lay upon the wooden surface.

It was a drawing. The backdrop depicted a massive statue of the Holy Light, in front of which stood a grey-robed figure whose facial features were rendered in hurried, indistinct strokes. In his left hand, the figure clutched a holy gospel, but a black serpent slithered forth from the book, wrapping tightly around the grey-robed man's neck and right arm, though the serpent's head was firmly gripped and restrained by his right hand.

"My Lord Jouster, please leave this matter to me. This believer likely wished not to be disturbed by others, but merely desired to bare their soul to the Divine."

Mulan cast a glance at the cleric.

"Very well. This is the Great Cathedral; no evil may arbitrarily defile this place. I trust you can handle it. May the Holy Light be with you."

"May the Holy Light be with you!"

Mulan turned and walked away. The cleric stepped forward and picked up the paper from the chair. Inspecting it closely, he discovered a line of exceptionally fine handwriting meticulously inscribed beneath the drawing, the penmanship impeccably neat and upright.

"My pain and sorrow, my confusion and hesitation, just like my faith in the Holy Light, remain forever by my side."