Half a month later.
At any cost, Nikola had pushed himself to the limit to deliver several Destroyer specimens and Lava Hound specimens in his possession to the X Advancement Academy.
But the price of such a severe overextension of his potential would be weakness for the next decade or more.
The Academic World's hastily constructed front line had been expected to hold for three days. In the end, it lasted only a day and a half before the Destroyers' full-scale rampage utterly destroyed it and forced its defenders to declare it lost.
For nearly half of that day and a half, the line had been kept standing by the desperate efforts of the gray Bean Soldiers, which had maintained its last resistance and barely prevented it from collapsing outright.
After the battle, five of the ten Pioneers had fallen, not counting the Frost Sorcerer, who had been carrying out a secret mission.
The one piece of good news from the front was probably that Vicky, dean of the Light of Esoteric Arts Academy, had perished alongside a level-four Destroyer. Apart from Xuebeng, who had been sealed away, this was the only level-four Destroyer confirmed to have been defeated.
Thus,
even without having witnessed the battle, it was not hard to imagine how brutal it had been.
Nikola had been specially assigned an easy job in the rear of the Academic World. His eyes were full of undisguised grief. He closed them, then abruptly lifted his head and gazed through the High Tower's window at the azure sky, trying his hardest to conceal his fragile emotions.
"Rest in peace, Mentor."
As soon as the Frost Sorcerer had died, he had seen the footage his mentor had recorded before his death, documenting the moment he died.
Murmuring to himself, Nikola walked