After the final exams ended, the Academy slipped fully into vacation mode.
Most students took advantage of this rare break to travel or return to their families for all manner of social engagements.
After all, for the children of nobility, vacations were often busier than the school term. Banquets, balls, matchmaking parties, and exchanges of favors filled every gap in their schedules.
But quite a few students also chose to stay at the Academy, using this quiet period to train or study subjects that interested them.
Greg was one of them.
At that moment, deep within the First Floor of the Academy Dungeon, the agonized screams of goblins echoed one after another.
Greg casually fired off a Fireball Spell, and scorching flames swallowed several goblins ahead of him, burning them into blackened lumps of charcoal.
A pungent, acrid stench filled the air, but he had long since grown used to it.
These days, he came here to kill goblins purely to relieve stress.
He truly hadn't expected his family to send someone straight to his door so soon after sending him a letter during the Exchange Meeting. It left him with a growing sense of danger.
If he hadn't had preparations for the Five-Academy Competition as an excuse, he might already have run out of reasons to delay returning to his family and been forced into a confrontation with them.
That would have made his plan to rescue his adoptive younger sister, Erin, much more difficult.
That was the last thing he wanted.
"Still, it's really strange..."
Muttering to himself, Greg flicked a Wind Blade behind him and sliced the head off a goblin attempting to ambush him:
"Wasn't Duke Sass's House supposed to have its scandals exposed in the middle-to-late stages of the plot? Why are they already acting